Northern Fury- H-Hour

by Bart Gauvin

  “Hey, how about you don’t set down right in my blind spot, Coast Guard,” came the angry response.

  This is a recipe for disaster, and we don’t need any more of that today, she thought. Someone needs to take charge. In an instant she realized that the “someone” should be her. “Buck, take over the controls,” Abby ordered. “Take us up. I need to see the airspace so we can get some organization going on here.”

  “You got it, Abbs,” said Buck, gunning power to the engines to arrest their descent and get the helicopter climbing again.

  Abby let go of the controls once she was sure Buck had them. Pulling a pen out of one of her flight suit pockets she began jotting notes on the notepad velcroed to her knee. Then she keyed her HF radio.

  “Sandy Hook, this is Angel Lead, over.”

  The answer took longer than she thought it should have. She was about to call again when she heard, “Angel Lead, Sandy Hook. Go ahead, over.”

  “Sandy Hook, who’s managing the airspace over here at the QE 2 rescue site, over?”

  Another long pause, then, “Uh, Angel Lead, there was supposed to be a C-130 quarterbacking things out there. We’re still pulling ourselves back together here. We just had a gun battle outside the center.”

  Gunbattle? Abby wondered. I was just there not two hours ago.

  She pressed past her questions to what was important in the here and now, important to the people slowly dying in the water below. “Sandy Hook, give me a control frequency. I can act as air traffic control until you guys get your own bird out here, over.”

  The voice from Sandy Hood agreed, and in moments Abby was issuing orders to the other fliers. “Okay, everyone working the cruise ship wreck, this is Angel Lead. Listen up. I’m going to organize the airspace here so we don’t have any more close calls.” Without pausing for anyone to object she went on, “we’re going to set up a holding area two miles to the north. Everyone comes there and circles, okay? When I call you forward, you leave the holding pattern and I’ll guide you in to where the most survivors are. Any problems?” Now she did pause. “Okay then, unless you have a swimmer in the water, everyone back off to the holding area.”

  Abby resolved to remain as the airspace controller until one of the rescue C-130s arrived to take over the job, but seeing people down there in the water while her big helicopter’s cargo compartment remained empty pained her. Switching to her HF set, she radioed back to Sandy Hook to see when more help would come on station so she could get back to the work of saving lives.

  CHAPTER 89

  1925 CET, Sunday 13 February 1994

  1825 Zulu

  Ministry of Defense Building, Akershus Fortress, Oslo, Norway

  THE MOOD WAS grim among the staffers of the Norwegian Defense Ministry, both uniformed and civilian, as they gathered around the television at one end of the large, masonry-walled room, their low murmurs giving the place the feel of a funeral parlor. Large maps of Norway and the far north adorned the walls of the expansive room. Kristen Hagen had watched as one bleak message after another from the Far North battered down their morale. Now, they gathered around the television, each hoping to hear a word of comfort, a word of strength, some assurance that their world was not descending into some new dark age of history. They were waiting for a word from their King.

  The men and women inside the walls of the fortress were dealing with the same emotional whiplash as their fellow citizens outside the ministry. Just yesterday, they had all been anticipating the happy and historic moment when their country would host its first Olympic Games, when Norway’s winter sports competitors were sure to achieve excellence, when all had been right with their world.

  Then came that jarring series of events: the disappearance of the Soviet athletes, the cancellation of the games; the realization that war, so unthinkable just days before, was imminent; and then, just six hours ago, the stunning news that their country was being invaded for the second time in half a century. The confidence that Kristen had seen on Nils Dokken’s face over the intervention of the US Air Force made the subsequent aerial defeats over Finnmark all the more jarring as Kristen saw that confidence turn to disappointment and then despair on faces throughout the map room.

  The latest blow arrived only minutes ago. An urgent message from AFNN confirmed what the staff officers in the operations center already suspected: Banak had fallen. The news was not unexpected. Even the most optimistic staffer had known the position was lost when an RF-5 reconnaissance jet overflew the wreckage of 2nd Mechanized Battalion north of Alta. The smoking devastation along the Altafjӧrd meant that any hope of meaningfully slowing the Soviet onslaught east of the Lyngen position was pure fantasy.

  “I thought,” Kristen started to ask Dokken, who had just explained all this to Kristen, “I thought our war plans always envisioned us ceding Finnmark to the Soviets and stopping them at the Lyngenfjӧrd?” This strategy had been the hallmark of Norwegian defense planning since at least the 1960s, to trade space for time in the rugged Far North.

  Dokken nodded his head, “Yes, but we always planned to execute a fighting withdrawal, slowing and bleeding the Soviets and giving our own forces time to mobilize and move north. None of our plans anticipated the Soviets penetrating all the way to Banak in just six hours. At that rate, the Russians will be here soon.” Dokken’s eyes looked far away, like that fact had just dawned on him as he said it.

  Kristen didn’t like that the man’s earlier optimism had shifted so quickly to pessimism, but she understood it.

  “We haven’t even fought the heavy Soviet armored forces yet,” Dokken continued, his head shaking. Kristen thought that if he kept it up he’d get dizzy. The man continued, “Compared to what’s going on in Germany right now this is…And when—” he cut off, unable to say the words, which was fine as a hush fell over the map room.

  “Shh!” people around them shushed, hissing and calling, “Quiet! The King! Listen.”

  The live feed from the Norwegian news agency was broadcasting a view of the interior of the Storting. The red carpet of the legislative chamber offset the room’s ornate wooden walls to create an effect that was warm and Nordic. The members of Norway’s government sat, packed close together in leather chairs behind standing desks that formed a U around the Speaker’s podium. Elsewhere around the operations center, two other televisions were broadcasting feeds from CNN and BBC, both showed the same picture from a slightly different angle. The prime minister had just finished his brief remarks introducing the monarch, and now the King was striding towards the dais.

  The assembled staffers maintained quiet respect as their Sovereign, tall and dignified in his business suit and tie, strode to the podium and looked around the room at the elected representatives of his people. Kristen, like nearly every other Norwegian, was a firm supporter of the monarchy. Now, she and her companions waited with quiet respect for their King to step into his role of leadership in the hour of crisis. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much she needed to hear from the King, how much she craved words of reassurance from the man who embodied her nation’s soul. Prime ministers and legislators came and went, and Kristen knew how fickle and inconsistent politicians could be, but the monarchy was an anchor for the political life of their country.

  The King looked around the legislative chamber from one end to another, making eye contact with as many of the representatives as he could in a brief moment, then bowed his head. He opened a folder on the dais and paused to add gravitas to the words he was about to speak. After a moment he looked up and began in a voice that was low, dignified, and reassuring to the people around her, and also to millions of Norwegians watching in their homes, in Home Guard arsenals, in flight ready rooms, and anywhere else a television could be found.

  2133 MSK, Sunday 13 February 1994

  1833 Zulu

  Main Ministry of Defense Building, Arbatskaya Square, Moscow, Russ
ian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

  Ivan Ivanovich Khitrov sat in his cramped office, watching the CNN feed broadcasting from Oslo. He blew a satisfied stream of cigarette smoke out of his mouth and leaned back, listening as the Norwegian King delivered his address. In his hand he casually twirled the king piece from his small chess set. The symbolism of his actions was not lost on him. The speech was in Norwegian, but a woman’s voice was translating in a hushed, respectful tone, and Khitrov was fluent in English. It was a fine speech, he admitted to himself after a few moments, a damned fine speech. The Nordic monarch was displaying just the right balance of strength, concern, defiance. It’s just the sort of thing to rouse a people to defend their land from a brutal invader, Khitrov thought. Absolutely perfect. He took a long drag from the stub between his lips, then delicately crushed it into the steel wastebasket by his desk.

  Everything had gone well to this point, Khitrov reflected, better than he had even hoped, in fact. The attacks in North America, the chaos now engulfing the Turkish government in Ankara, even rumblings of the shipping losses outside the American ports, all his handiwork, had been brought to him right here in his office, and to tens of millions of households around the world, courtesy of the west’s voracious appetite for entertainment in the form of news. Watching his plans unfold had been supremely satisfying, in the way that a chess master enjoyed executing an artful opening. Or, more accurately, the way a hunter enjoyed stalking a particularly rare trophy. On that thought, Khitrov decided to replace nicotine with some of the celebratory vodka stashed in his desk for just this moment. He poured a finger of the clear liquid into a tumbler, swilled it around, and waited.

  The King’s speech was rising now in cadence and defiance. Legislators around the hall were nodding in approval, and Khitrov could almost feel the pride growing in the hearts of Norwegians everywhere, their commitment to defend their homeland hardening with each word. Perfect. He saluted his glass to the television. Absolutely perfect.

  1935 CET, Sunday 13 February 1994

  1835 Zulu

  Töcksfors, Sweden, six kilometers from the Norwegian frontier

  In a restaurant on the Swedish side of the border with Norway, Anatoli Skorniak had just signed the check for his dinner using the Finnish name of Kinnunen. He was watching the television along with the other patrons as the Norwegian King’s speech built to its climax. After poisoning the delivery truck driver this morning, the KGB agent had driven straight to the Swedish frontier, crossed over, and checked into a small hotel here in the sleepy village of Töcksfors. The rest of his day had been quiet as he waited to play his next part in the drama.

  Deciding the time was right, he stood and wandered out into the cold night, unnoticed by the other patrons, enthralled as they were by the spectacle of a monarch calling his people to arms. Skorniak turned left and walked the twenty meters to a phone booth outside a local bank. Entering the booth and shutting the door behind him, he removed a slip of paper from his breast pocket. He had of course memorized the number, but, being a professional he was taking no chances with the accomplishment of his mission. Skorniak dropped exact change into the machine for a call to Oslo before carefully dialing the number as he read it off the paper.

  As the Soviet agent entered the last digit of the call, a chain reaction began. Skorniak pictured it like the sparking tail of TNT, lazily racing toward it’s inevitable conclusion. The electrical signal from the phone booth’s telephone traveled east to the major telephone exchange in Karlstad. There, the automated system recognized the signal as an international call and connected it to cables that carried the electrical impulse back westward, to Oslo. Once the call arrived at the main Oslo exchange, the machines sent it racing at light speed along its way to one of the new towers that were giving downtown Oslo’s residents the novel ability to take advantage of an emerging technology: cellular telephones. One of these towers connected the signal with its final destination, a boxy mobile phone. This cellular phone had been waiting patiently inside the cargo compartment of Sven Sorensen’s delivery truck, parked flush against the south wall of the Storting, where the King of Norway was now making his impassioned call to arms to his country, and to the free world.

  The signal arrived and a circuit closed The device began to ring, unheard in the darkness of the truck’s cargo compartment. The same closed circuit that activated the phone’s ringer also sent electrical shocks down three wires leading to three improvised explosive detonators. These small, firecracker-like devices were initiators for a much larger, specially-designed bomb that occupied nearly the entire cargo area of the delivery truck. The explosives were shaped in such a way that much of the force of their detonation would be directed through the left side of the truck, the side that was currently parked inches away from the masonry of the nineteenth century south wall of the Storting.

  1936 CET, Sunday 13 February 1994

  1836 Zulu

  Ministry of Defense Building, Akershus Fortress, Oslo, Norway

  The King’s address was reaching a dignified but defiant crescendo. Many legislators were nodding vigorously, others began to clap. Kristen, along with all the other occupants of the operations center huddled around the television, nodded in steely determination at their monarch’s compelling show of defiance.

  A white flash, like lightning, briefly strobed into the room from north facing windows in the operations center. Kristen looked that way quickly, then back to the television in confusion. The screen now showed only the colorful bars of a lost signal. She was just opening her mouth to ask what the matter was when the windows of the room rattled loudly with the sharp boom of the passing blast wave, the effect of more than a ton of military-grade high-explosives. Kristen flinched, startled by the sound and shock. She looked back out the window in horror as a massive yellow plume of fire rose into the black sky over downtown Oslo. It was rising, exactly, from the direction of the Storting. Kristen’s hand flew to her mouth as she watched the flames dissipate into orange and yellow billowing clouds, then smoke. Around the room, dozens of others stood looking as well, all of them in stunned silence.

  2137 MSK, Sunday 13 February 1994

  1837 Zulu

  Main Ministry of Defense Building, Arbatskaya Square, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

  Khitrov raised his glass of vodka to the CNN commentator in Atlanta who was confusedly trying to explain to his viewers that they had lost their feed from Oslo but were working diligently to get it back as quickly as possible. Good luck with that, Khitrov thought with a comfortable smugness as he tipped the glass back and allowed the fiery liquid to travel down his throat. Perfect, he thought, and he reached forward to set the king piece back on the chessboard then knock it over with a flick of his finger. Absolutely perfect.

  PART VIII: COMPASS ROSE

  “The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.”

  —George Orwell

  CHAPTER 90

  2025 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994

  0125 Zulu, 14 February

  Montauk, Long Island, New York, USA

  THE LAND BREEZE had blown some of the sheets off corpses lying on the sand. Moonlight reflected here and there off shocks of silver hair matted by seawater. The rows of bodies stretched down the beach and into the darkness, seeming to go on forever. Jack Young hadn’t wanted to see this. Death was an integral part of the stories he’d covered. An image of those terrible shallow graves in Ossòwka, Poland, flashed into his mind. For Jack, the sight of bodies had never grown familiar to him, and he had certainly never expected to see a sight like this so close to home.

  The sleepy village of Montauk on the eastern tip of Long Island was the closest and most convenient place for rescue craft to deposit the Queen Elizabeth 2 survivors and victims before heading back out to sea to pluck more out of the cold waters. A steady stream of ambulances, police cruisers, rescue vehicles, and privat
e automobiles took the more fortunate to local hospitals across Long Island to be treated.

  By the time Jack arrived, the flow of rescue vehicles was ebbing. The only victims remaining were destined for a morgue, not a hospital, and their transfer there was obviously a matter of far less urgency. He shook his head, forcing himself to take in the whole moonlit scene. There was a story here that needed to be told. The passengers of the luxury liner had, largely, been elderly, some on second or third honeymoons, many enjoying the fruits of retirement, others seeking the nostalgia of the days when ships rather than airplanes carried people across the Atlantic. All were ill-prepared when fate dumped them into the waters of the North Atlantic, and the death toll showed it.

  Jack took out his small reporter’s notepad and flipped it open, scanning his observations from earlier in the day. He’d stopped at Gabreski Airport, thirty miles back west along Route 27, to investigate what had become the hub of the air rescue effort for the offshore disaster. There, stunned and confused victims told him that the cruise ship had been struck by a missile, two missiles, three missiles, a torpedo, a terrorist bomb. Even the rescue crews he spoke to were unsure about what had actually happened.

  Jack was already formulating the piece he planned to write for the morning edition. At Gabreski he’d found one of the rescuers more compelling than most. While walking among the shivering, blanket-clad victims inside a hangar, he spied a blond-haired woman wearing a flight suit, sitting on a bench with her head in her hands. Approaching and using his best reporter’s tone, he introduced himself, “Excuse me, Miss, I’m with the New York Times. May I ask you a few questions about what happened here?”

  The woman looked up, eyes red from exhaustion. The name tape of her flight suit read “Savage,” and he could see by her rank insignia that she was an officer. She nodded raggedly, and Jack began the interview. The flood of words that followed almost overwhelmed his ability to jot notes. She’d clearly needed to process what she’d seen.