Northern Fury- H-Hour

by Bart Gauvin

  “STOP!” Johansen shouted, just as the man depressed the firing trigger. The missile’s rocket engine ignited in a flash and the projectile shot skyward, corkscrewing as it arced after the receding jet.

  Erik didn’t wait to see if the RBS-70 hit its target. He lunged the few steps towards the two soldiers and shouted, “Move move MOVE!” as he grabbed and dragged them away from the launch point, forcing them to abandon the launcher and its laser designator that was guiding the missile towards the enemy jet. The two anti-air soldiers were confused, but after a moment they complied with their commander’s frantic order. The three men struggled through knee-deep snow between low, snow-covered trees until Johansen heard the ripping scream of another missile launch.

  “DOWN!” Johansen screamed as he dove into the snow. The explosion shook the ground behind them. Erik felt something strike his left shoulder blade like a blow from a steel pipe, but there was no pain. Bits of ice and frozen sod rained down all around as the three men buried their faces in the snow.

  Sokolov jotted marks in a notebook as he and Romanov observed the squadron of MiG-27s work over the airfield. The squadron commander, Kondor Lead, was loitering off the Ilyushin’s wing tip, directing the fighter-bombers of his squadron against the Norwegian defenses that still dared show themselves. The initial salvos of Kh-23Ms had effectively suppressed the enemy fire. Romanov noted that no return fire had come up from the airfield since the third missile had struck the west side of the runway.

  With no more missiles or gun bursts rising from around the airfield, Ilya listened as Kondor Lead directed his other bombers to methodically destroy the remaining targets around the enemy aerodrome. One pair of MiGs streaked up from the south and loosed a pair of Grom missiles into the small control tower next to the passenger terminal. Another Kh-23M blew apart the surviving Coast Guard helicopter, which had been sitting, unused due to a maintenance fault, on the tarmac in front of the military hangars. Romanov was impressed with the bombers’ precision, which was so unlike what he had seen in Afghanistan. The pilots, he noted with a trained eye, were being careful not to damage the runway, or the aviation gas storage area.

  Sokolov tapped Ilya on the shoulder and indicated the tally in his notebook. He said over the drone of the engines, “I’m not sure we destroyed them all,” he meant the enemy defenses around the airfield, “but we can’t wait any longer. The pathfinders are here.”

  He pointed downward to the south. Ilya, following his indication, saw a dozen helicopters flying up the valley at treetop level. He watched as a quartet put down on the flat, white expanse of a frozen lake two kilometers south of Lakselv in a flurry of downdraft-blown snow. The other eight were continuing up the west side of the valley when Romanov lost sight of them as the Ilyushin continued to circle lazily. He caught a glimpse of another four helicopters putting down in what looked to be some snow-covered farm fields three kilometers east of the town, but his gaze continued to be drawn to the smoke rising from around the airfield, where the MiGs were completing their attack runs.

  Løytnant Sigurd Berg knelt with Sergeant Pedersen and a radioman next to the icecrete bunker as they both listened to the ominous thwack-thwack-thwack of helicopter rotors reverberate from the south, west, and east. The MiGs’ attacks against Banak had been savage, and Berg had thought it wise to take the commander’s radioman and get out of the Coast Guard building before some Soviet pilot decided to put a missile into it.

  The radioman knelt behind Berg and Pedersen, listening as the troop screening south of Lakselv called in a sighting report.

  “Roger, Two,” the radioman said into his handset, attached by a coiled black telephone-like cable to the radio on his back, “we don’t know where Rittmester Johansen is right now, but I’ll tell the XO, over.”

  He moved the handset from his ear to his shoulder and clapped Berg on the arm. “Sir,” he reported, “2nd Troop says they just saw helicopters land south of town, just to the east of the E6!”

  “Can they engage?” asked Berg quickly.

  The other man shook his head. “No sir, it’s too far for their machineguns. The troop commander wants to know if he can call for the artillery?”

  Now it was Berg’s turn to shake his head. He and Johansen had discussed their intentions for how to use the artillery battery. The time was not yet right.

  “No,” he said, “tell them—”

  Pedersen slapped Berg’s white parka and then pointed wordlessly to the western hills. The XO looked that way. His eyes adjusted quickly to the darker blues and grays of the shaded face of the valley wall. Motion caught his eye, and then he could make out the several green and brown-painted helicopters beneath the western cliff face. One by one they crested the top of the cliff, their silhouettes dark against the muted light of the sun setting in the southwest. Then they disappeared over the far side of the hill.

  A pair of Mi-24 gunships set down in a cloud of blowing snow just back from the cliff face. From his vantage point high above, Romanov saw several figures emerge from the snow cloud, struggling away from the helicopters through the deep snow.

  “Those are the forward air controllers,” Sokolov told him, indicating the soldiers just dropped off by the gunships.

  “A good place for them,” Romanov responded approvingly. It was true. Once the specially trained Soviet forward air controllers—FACs—reached their observation points atop the cliff, they would have eyes on the entire valley and would be able to call down air attacks more accurately on the Norwegian defenders around the town and airfield. After depositing their human cargo, the gunships dipped their noses and took off again amid a blizzard of blowing snow.

  Passing nearby, another pair of Mi-24s escorted a quartet of Mi-8 transports northward to deposit the last group of pathfinders at their designated landing zone up the fjӧrd. Then, due west of Lakselv, the gunships peeled off and turned east. Gaining altitude, the pilots lined up their aircraft to execute a “form a circle” attack on the airfield.

  “Now we’ll see how well those bombers did at finishing off the air defenses,” Sokolov noted, slapping his notebook closed.

  The first Hind dove from above the cliff face down towards the airfield. After a few seconds Romanov saw dirty gray streaks of smoke flash out from under the gunship’s stubby wings. The rockets shot down toward Banak and slammed into the hangars near the southwest corner of the runway. Suddenly Ilya saw a smoke trail corkscrew back up from the eastern treeline. A missile rode its launcher’s laser beam straight into the Mi-24’s air intakes above the helicopter’s bulbous canopy, where it exploded. The helicopter fell like a stone.

  “Apparently not well enough,” Sokolov said dryly as the second gunship began its dive.

  The gunner of the second Mi-24 loosed a salvo of rockets at the area from which the missile had been fired, then followed up with cannon fire that announced itself through dirty gray smoke. The final two Hinds made similar runs, shooting cannon and rocket fire into anything that looked like a viable target. Then, low on fuel after their long flight from the Soviet Union, the four gunships turned southeast and departed for a remote area along the Finnish border. There a flight of Mi-6 transport helicopters had landed to deposit fuel bowsers, armaments, and ground crews to set up a forward rearming and refueling point.

  Berg ducked his helmeted head behind the shelter of the icecrete wall as the last Hind gunship thundered overhead, spitting rockets and cannon rounds into some Coast Guard maintenance sheds two hundred meters away. He tried to make himself small, regretting perhaps for the first time his tall, one-point-eight-meter frame. Next to him Pedersen and the commander’s radioman crouched against the icy wall as well.

  The reverberations of the rockets’ explosions and the sound of the pounding Soviet helicopter’s rotors faded. Is it over? After a moment he heard the familiar sound of a snowmobile engine. The løytnant slithered out of the bunker and stood up to see Johansen, ridi
ng a shrapnel-scarred machine, pull up to the makeshift fortification and dismount. Johansen moved stiffly, and Berg noticed that the rittmester’s face was pale, lips pinched.

  “Sir,” Johansen called to him, concerned, “are you alright?”

  Johansen waved the question away. “Situation report,” he demanded through gritted teeth as he walked up and leaned his rifle against the icecrete wall.

  “Our air defenses were hit hard in this last attack, sir,” Berg answered quickly. His commander was clearly in pain, but also still in command. “None of the RBS-70 posts are answering on the radio—”

  “I just left Post Three,” Johansen interjected, wincing. “They’re alive but…launcher and missiles all destroyed.”

  Berg nodded. That means that none of our RBS-70 posts are still in operation. He went on, “Only one of the Bofors guns is responding, Gun Four, and the Skyguard radar took a hit as well when those jets came over.”

  Johansen shifted his weight and said, “I passed Gun Four on my way back. Told them to hold fire and save their rounds for the ground fight.”

  The “ground fight” was looking more likely every minute, Berg thought. He went on, “2nd Troop reported enemy transport helicopters disembarking troops two kilometers south of town. I think those Hinds also put some people up in the hills west of here. 1st Troop reported that they heard several helicopters east of town, but no visual. 2nd Troops asked for artillery against the landing zone south of town.”

  “No!” Johansen said firmly. “No. We need to keep our artillery…for when the enemy main force arrives. Those landings are just…the pathfinders.” He was breathing heavily, needing to pause mid-speech to catch himself, but it didn’t seem like he noticed this himself.

  “That’s what I told him, sir,” Berg assured his commander. “2nd Troop is continuing to observe. They reported a few minutes ago that the enemy are south of town. They’re probably setting up a drop zone for parachutists.”

  Johansen grimaced, then nodded his understanding. “You stay here, Berg,” he instructed. “I’m going down to 2nd Troop to get eyes on that drop zone. Is there any word from Battalion?”

  Berg shook his head no.

  “Well, keep trying,” Johansen ordered, grabbing his rifle and turning to walk back towards his snowmobile.

  Then Berg saw his boss’s wound. A piece of wood, clearly a shard of a tree, stuck several centimeters out through the left shoulder of the man’s parka. The white material around the wound was dark with blood.

  “Sir, you’re wounded,” Berg called. “Let me get you a medic.”

  Johansen paused, then nodded and slumped against a tree. Berg summoned the Squadron medic, who clucked his tongue as he peeled the parka off Johansen’s shoulders. The rittmester winced as the aid man gingerly extracted the piece of lumber from his back and wrapped the wound with a bandage.

  “This really needs stitches, sir,” the medic said. “At the very least you need to rest.”

  Johansen waved the man’s concern away. Instead, he grabbed his parka, picked up his rifle and walked to the snowmobile. “Just get us in touch with Battalion,” Johansen ordered over his shoulder as he mounted the snowmobile. “We’re going to have a serious fight on our hands soon. Tell them that we can’t hold here without them. Tell them to hurry.”

  CHAPTER 83

  1705 CET, Sunday 13 February 1994

  1605 Zulu

  Halselva Dam, fourteen kilometers northwest of Alta, Finnmark, Norway

  A HUNDRED KILOMETERS TO the west under a slowly darkening sky, the bulk of the Norwegian Army’s 2nd Mechanized Battalion, the armored weight of the Norwegian Army in the far north, was stalled where the E6 highway bridged the frozen Halseva stream. The column of over a hundred dark green vehicles covered with mottled white camouflage paint stretched several kilometers north from the small dam. Leopard tanks, M113 armored personnel carriers, M109 self-propelled howitzers, trucks towing Bofors guns, and smaller G-Wagens were all interspersed on the snowy, windswept road, engines idling. The ribbon of E6 highway that clung to the western side of the Altafjӧrd already lay in the shadows of mountains rising from the dark water. An icy wind blew under a blanket of high, scattered clouds turning a faint evening pink.

  Major Laub clenched his jaw, trying not to shiver as the cold, damp wind seeped through his parka like it was nothing more than a wet blanket. He stood with the battalion commander and a knot of helmeted officers, gazing at the roadblock barring their way towards Alta, and Banak beyond. An abatis of more than a dozen trees lay interlocked in a tangled mess across the road a dozen meters beyond the dam. The tops of the tall Norwegian spruce now drooped into the waters lapping at the downhill side of the road to the left.

  “This has to be the work of the same people that slowed Løytnant Berg’s progress this morning,” the battalion commander was grumbling as he bowed his head, studying a folded tactical map against the side of his command vehicle.

  Laub, nodded sourly. Not known for his cheery disposition even during good times—which these decidedly were not—the major looked back at the motionless vehicles of his battalion with a look of pure vehemence. The soldiers in the lead vehicle, exhausted after a full night of preparing to move and then a full day of driving over icy roads, had been slow to radio back a report of the obstacle. As a result, the following vehicles had accordioned forward before stopping, compressing the previously disciplined spacing between the vehicles until many were nearly fender to fender. If the Soviets catch us like this we’re in serious trouble, Laub fumed.

  “Alright,” the commander said, looking up from his map, “Laub, call C Company. I want a rear guard behind us until we get moving again, and tell B Company to throw a platoon forward across the obstacle. Whoever did this is still out there, and I won’t have us surprised again. Where are the pioneers to clear this? We have to get moving!”

  Laub snatched the hand mic from the radioman. He had called the support platoon five minutes ago and ordered their pioneers to come forward. The major pushed the talk button and hissed into it, “This is Griffin Three, where are those pioneers, over?”

  Then he saw them, jogging forward past the stalled vehicles with their satchels of explosives.

  “They’re en route, sir,” Laub reported to the commander, pointing.

  The wind gusted again. This time Laub did shiver, but it was only partly due to the cold. The major couldn’t shake the feeling of unease, of being watched.

  The dam formed part of the highway where the Halselva stream flowed into the fjӧrd. Four hundred meters up the valley, Spetsnaz Captain Cyril Okhotnik, the erstwhile leader of the USSR’s Olympic biathlon team, lay prone atop a small tarp laid over the snow. They’d arrived at this destination on skies meant for competing against the world’s best, though this was a much more practical use, if you asked him.

  The athlete observed the milling knot of Norwegian officers on the road below him through the scope of his Dragunov SVD sniper rifle. To his right, another member of his team did the same. Behind them, a third ski soldier whispered into a high frequency radio. Today they were competing for far more than gold.

  After slipping out of Lillehammer the previous morning, the Soviet biathletes had driven north on the E6 for twenty hours, stopping only for fuel and to steal what equipment they needed. In their wake they had left a small trail of bodies, including a security guard at a construction company who had come across the team as they raided the firm’s explosives shed, and the driver of a truck carrying a load of pipes. After dumping the driver’s body in a nearby stream, they’d overturned the trailer at a convenient bridge. Next, they had raided a local lumber yard for chainsaws and other equipment, then driven several dozen kilometers further to cut their first abatis. Their objective was the farthest north of any of their supposed Olympic companions, and there had been no time to lose on the trek north.

  Okhotnik wa
s disappointed a couple of hours later when a column of Norwegian Army vehicles rumbled through a village where the Soviets were devouring a quick breakfast. Apparently, the obstacles hadn’t slowed the enemy as much as intended. The team leader almost despaired that his mission was a failure, but the column had been a small one and the biathletes resolved to redouble their efforts. They selected this site along the fjӧrd north of Alta, and spent the morning and afternoon felling trees and preparing. Now with satisfaction the Spetsnaz looked down upon the fruits of their labor.

  “Sabra reports they’re on final approach,” reported the radioman in a low voice. Okhotnik did not respond but continued to observe the knot of enemy officers through his scope, fixing his sights on the one with the map. That’s the commander, he thought. His index finger remained outside the trigger guard, but he knew it would not be long now.

  Laub froze and cocked his head at the sound. He wasn’t sure he had heard it at first, but then it grew, the low grumble of jet engines from up the fjӧrd. All the officers were looking that way now, shifting uneasily on their feet like a herd of antelope that smelled a wolf. They all squinted north.

  Suddenly one man shouted, “I see them! Four aircraft, due north, coming in low!” From the rear of the column, vehicle horns, the warning for air raid, began to sound.

  The battalion commander folded his map quickly and stuffed it into his parka, ordering, “To your posts! Get those Bofors guns into action now! I want—”

  Captain Okhotnik watched as the man he guessed was the commander stuffed the map into his jacket and began issuing orders. It was time. He could hear the jets as well. “On me,” he said in a low voice to the other sniper a few meters to his right. The other man did not move, except to join his leader in slipping his finger inside the trigger guard of his rifle.