Five levels up, Nassau's captain was standing on the bridge wing. His normal battle station was in CIC, but the ship was not moving, and he figured that this was as good a place as any to watch. Over a hundred missiles were inbound from the northeast. As soon as raid warning had been received an hour earlier, all of his boat crews had set to lighting off the smoke pots set on the rocks in this so-called anchorage. That was his best defense, he knew, hardly believing it himself. The point-defense guns at the comers of the flight deck were in automatic mode. Called R2D2s for their shape, the Close-In-Weapons-System Gatling guns were elevated twenty degrees, pointing off to the threat axis. That was all he could do. It had been decided by the air-defense experts that even firing off their chaff rockets would do more harm than good. The captain shrugged. One way or another, he'd know in five minutes.
He watched the cruiser Vincennes to the east, steaming in slow circles. Suddenly four smoke-trails erupted from her missile launchers, and the missile firing cycle began. Soon the northeastern sky was a solid mass of gray smoke. Through his binoculars he began to pick out the sudden black puffs of successful intercepts. They seemed to be coming closer, and he noticed that the missiles were, too. And the Aegis cruiser could not get them all. Vincennes emptied her magazines in four minutes, then bent on full speed to race between a pair of rocky islands. The captain was amazed to see it. Someone was taking a billion-dollar cruiser into a rock garden at twenty-five knots! Even off Guadalcanal-
An explosion rocked the island of Hrappsey, four miles away. Then another on Seley. It was working!
Ten miles up, the Russian missiles switched on their radar seeker heads and found their target windows crammed with blips. Overloaded, they automatically scanned the largest for infrared signatures. Many of the blips gave off heat, and the missiles automatically selected the largest for their attention as they made their final Mach 3 dives. They had no way of knowing that they were attacking volcanic rocks. Thirty missiles got through the SAM defenses. Only five of them actually aimed themselves at ships.
Two of Nassau's R2D2s swiveled together and fired at a missile traveling too fast too see. The captain looked in the direction of the barrels just in time to see a white flash a thousand feet overhead. The sound that followed nearly deafened him, and he realized how foolish it was to be exposed when fragments dinged off the pilothouse next to him. Two more missiles fell into the town to his west. Then the sky cleared. A fireball to the west told him that at least one ship had been hit. But not mine!
"Son of a bitch." He lifted the phone to the Combat Information Center. "Combat, Bridge, two missiles fell into Stykkisholmur. Let's get a helo over there, there's gonna be some casualties."
As Toland watched, the tapes of the air engagement were replayed at fast speed. A computer tallied the kills. Everything was automated now.
"Wow," the intelligence officer said to himself
"Not like before, was it, son?" Jacobsen observed. "Spaulding, I want word on the 'phibs!"
"Just coming in now, sir. Charleston took a hit and broke in half. We have minor damage to Guam and Ponce-and that's it, Admiral!"
"Plus Wainwright." Jacobsen took a deep breath. Two valuable ships and fifteen hundred men were gone, yet he had to call it a success.
"The attack should be over by now."
Andreyev didn't expect rapid information. The Americans had finally succeeded in damaging his last radar, and he had no way of tracking the air battle. His radio-intercept crews had copied numerous voice transmissions, but they'd been too faint and too fast for any conclusion other than that a battle had in fact been fought.
"The last time we caught a NATO carrier force, we smashed it," the operations officer said hopefully.
"Our troops above Bogarnes are still under heavy fire," another reported. The American battleships had been hitting them for over an hour. "They are taking serious losses."
"Comrade General, I have a-you'd better listen to this, it's on our command circuit."
The message repeated four times, in Russian: "Commander Soviet Forces Iceland, this is Commander Strike Fleet Atlantic. If you don't get this, somebody will get it to you. Tell your bombers better luck next time. We'll be seeing you soon. Out."
Sergetov staggered up to the traffic-control point in time to see a battalion of tanks move down the road toward Alfeld. He stood slumped over, hands on his knees, as he watched the tanks roll off.
"Identify yourself!" It was a KGB lieutenant. The KGB had taken over traffic management. The authority to shoot violators came easy to the KGB.
"Major Sergetov. I must see the area commander at once."
"Attached to what unit, Sergetov?"
