‘Right now, warships from the US and from European countries including Spain and Portugal are securing the SLOC for convoys — down here.’
Commander Polk pointed rapidly from the Southwest Approaches down to Gibraltar, and westwards across the Atlantic.
‘What you are on board today, gentlemen, is the flagship of Striking Fleet Atlantic. The task for this group is to take control of the sea and the air, right up to the Arctic Circle. The Eisenhower is now here, just south of Iceland. And we’re headed here.’
The journalists’ gaze was directed at the most northerly tip of Norway.
‘What we’re doing this year is something new. We’re taking this little tub, 90,000 tons of her, right up to longitude 24 degrees East. Now that’s in the Barents Sea, and the Soviets like to think of those waters as their own.
‘Gentlemen, the second main purpose of this exercise is to show the Russians and ourselves that we have the power and the motivation to get right up into the Arctic and stop them, if they try it on.
‘We’ve got three jobs to do; to back up land-based airpower with our own combat planes in order to defend north Norway; to locate and destroy enemy surface ships and submarines trying to take over the Norwegian Sea; and to get their missile subs before they can scoot under the ice, and nuke our families back home.’
The correspondent for the TV networks raised his hand to interrupt.
‘Aren’t you gonna be a pretty big target for the Soviets to hit, if you go right into the Barents?’
‘Sure. That’s why in past exercises we’ve not gone further north than Westfjord.’
His pointer landed on the Lofoten Islands some four hundred miles south of the northern tip of Norway.
‘And if this exercise was for real, we sure as hell wouldn’t put a carrier up there until the air and sea threat had been minimized.
He turned back to the vu-foil map.
‘There are two main threats Aircraft we look after ourselves; submarines — we have a British Royal Navy Anti-Submarine-Warfare force ahead of us, moving north in the Norwegian Sea. The HMS Illustrious Task Group provides the first ASW screen; we provide the second.’
He looked at his watch. They had to get moving. He could give them more later. First he had to brief them for the photo-opportunity which had presented itself that morning.
Admiral Vernon Kritz was proud of his ship, and proud of the role it played in containing the Communist menace. He was glad to have the media on board, so they could tell the world just how good his ship was. But this morning something extraordinary had happened that had made him doubly pleased.
Without their realizing it, he would deploy the media like one of his own weapon systems. What they would show on breakfast television back home was going to make those soft-heads on Capitol Hill choke on their granola. ‘It’s time to trust the Russians’ was their cry. The hell it was!
The Admiral had summoned his PIO, while the media group were being given their breakfast, and told him what the photo-reconnaissance aircraft had spotted at first light. When he’d seen the pictures of the Soviet freighter and its deck cargo, the commander had blasphemed in astonishment, then apologized hastily, conscious that the Admiral was a deeply religious man.
‘Don’t tell ’em exactly what they’re gonna see,’ Admiral Kritz had cautioned. ‘Let ’em think they’re getting the first close-ups anyone’s seen. They’ll get a kick outta that!’
All the print journalists and stills photographers were bundled aboard one SH-3 Sea King helicopter, the television team aboard another. The outing was described as a ‘photo-opportunity’ to get aerial shots of the Eisenhower and of a Soviet ship that was passing them in the opposite direction about ten miles away.
‘It’s a merchantman,’ the PIO commander explained. ‘But we treat all Soviet ships as hostile. Even if they’re not warships, they’re sure as hell spying on us.’
The helicopters took off and flew in tandem, one hundred yards apart.
The television correspondent wore an intercom headset so he could tell the pilot of his cameraman’s requirements. Their first request was for a couple of circuits of the Eisenhower.
Satisfied they’d shot the carrier from every conceivable angle, the helicopter banked away to the south to fly low and fast towards the Soviet freighter’s position, which had been radioed to the helicopter from a Hawkeye radar plane circling overhead.
‘She’s some sort of container ship, ’bout twenty thousand tons, called the Rostov. We believe she’s headed for Cuba, but don’t quote me…’ the commander shouted above the grinding whine of the helicopter’s machinery.
‘How do you know that’s where she’s going?’ the correspondent bellowed back.
The commander put his finger to his lips conspiratorially.
‘Not allowed to tell!’
The cameraman had been sitting with his legs out of the open side-door while filming, a safety harness buckled round his chest attached at the other end to a hook on the helicopter’s roof. But the wind was bitterly cold, and the crew-chief closed the door again for the transit to the next location.
There was little room inside. This was an anti-submarine machine, packed with sonar screens, control panels, and a massive winch for dunking the heavy sonar transducer in and out of the sea. There was a nauseating reek of hot oil.
‘Okay… We got the Sov on the nose,’ the pilot’s voice drawled over the intercom. ‘We’re comin’ up astern. We’ll pass left of her then turn right across her bows, and come back the other side. Okay?’
‘That’ll be just great,’ the correspondent answered, tapping his cameraman on the shoulder to be ready.
The crew chief slid back the big square door and the cold blast of air took their breath away. The tail of the Sea King sank as the pilot slowed to fifty knots. The grey-green sea surged a hundred feet below, the wind whipping white streams of spray from the wave caps.
To their left the black hull and cream superstructure of the freighter came into view. The correspondent pointed at it unnecessarily; the cameraman was already filming. On the funnel a red band bore the hammer and sickle. They’d need a close-up of that; the correspondent saw the cameraman’s fingers press the zoom button. Good boy! He didn’t need to be told.
Rusting red and orange containers were stacked on the outer edges of the deck, forming a corral with a space at the centre. There was something stored there. Fin-like objects, cocooned in pale fabric.
The helicopter reached the bows of the freighter and turned across them, giving the cameraman a long, continuous shot, showing the ship from 360 degrees.
‘See that stuff in the middle there?’ the correspondent’s voice crackled in the throat microphone. ‘Can’t see what it is. Can you?’
‘Look like wings to me,’ the pilot answered.
‘Like what?’
‘Wings. Aircraft wings. Could be MiGs. With the rest of the planes in the boxes.’
‘Shit man! We gotta get a closer look at that!’
‘I can go round again if you want, but I can’t get closer’n two hundred and fifty feet. Otherwise the big man has me against the wall for harassing the Russians!’
‘Let’s try it!’
The correspondent put his lips close to the cameraman’s ear and told him to focus on the cargo in the middle of the deck. A raised thumb signalled he’d understood.
They repeated the circuit but came no closer; the shape of the cargo still could not be defined. The cameraman shook his head and shouted into the correspondent’s ear, ‘Get him over the top!’