by Peter Nealen
We’d expected the push on Berlin from Swiebodzin to be delayed, but the twelve hours had come and gone. Even the MEU commander couldn’t get a straight answer as to what the holdup was.
I could see Malinowski and Zawisza pouring smoke from their ears, even from out on the Iwo Jima.
So, we waited in the North Sea, after the Iwo linked up with the Dwight D Eisenhower’s Carrier Strike Group. But things weren’t all that quiet, despite our distance from the target.
It was clear that the EDC knew something was up. We wouldn’t have pulled a MEU out of the Baltic otherwise. And they weren’t happy about it.
Tucker, Burkhart, and I kept switching out in the Force platoon’s ready room, though as we caught up a little on sleep, the shifts got longer or shorter as we needed them to be. The assistant team leaders started taking shifts over time, too.
We didn’t have a lot of prep to do—the plan hadn’t appreciably changed, and we’d boarded ready for insert--but we kept going over our gear and “chalk-talking” the plan, over and over, ad nauseum. I was starting to see the rough floor plan of the Council building whenever I blinked.
I’d just come up from one more of those chalk-talk drills when the French made their displeasure with our presence in the North Sea known.
Scott was still in the ready room, watching the plot. As soon as I walked in, the mesh of crisscrossing vector and threat bubble lines, along with the opposing formations of aircraft caught my eye.
“What’s up?” I went to the coffee as I watched the plot. First things first.
“Looks like an alpha strike from the Charles de Gaulle.” Scott showed no sign that he was ready to get up and move, and I couldn’t exactly blame him. This was where things were happening.
I glanced at the video feed monitor, but this was all happening too far away. The plot was the only thing we had to go on.
Triarii and Marines watched in silence as the battle played out as small glowing symbols on the screen.
The first wave of F-35s opened fire on the incoming Rafale-Ms first. The Navy wasn’t playing. But neither were the French.
It was hard to follow the whole thing. There were two separate formations of Rafales, and they seemed to be at different altitudes. There was enough going on in the plot—and the plasma screen was small enough that the print was miniscule—that it was hard to track. But two or three Rafales suddenly blinked out, followed by one of the F/A-18Fs behind the F-35s.
Then the first vampires appeared.
“Vampires” is the Navy’s term for incoming missiles. And the Rafales had been armed with Exocets. This wasn’t just an aerial sweep. They were after the ships. Specifically, the Eisenhower and the Iwo.
Alarms whooped out in the passageways. “Incoming, incoming, incoming.” All over the ships, close in defenses were being manned and prepped, radars searching for the Exocet missiles as the AA guns, RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles, and the Phalanx CIWS miniguns spooling up and searching for targets.
More of the aircraft icons blinked out. The Rafales had started to turn back, but there were a lot more Exocets in the air. And they were coming in fast.
I felt myself tensing up. I hated this part. If anything, this was worse than waiting for the cruise missiles to come in while huddled in a bunker in Gdansk. You had a good chance in a bunker. You could dig deep enough that unless they threw a ground penetrator at you, they had only a miniscule chance of getting you.
On ship, you were stuck. And if they hit the ship hard enough, even if you were okay, the ship was going down, and you were stuck floating in the North Sea. Even in springtime, the life expectancy in that water wasn’t great.
We had zero control over our own destinies. We could only stare at the plot and wait to see what happened.
More of the Rafales went down. Almost an entire flight of Super Hornets had been taken out. There were two fewer F-35s, too. The Exocets kept coming.
The video feed shifted, turning toward the screening force, down to the south. The destroyers had opened fire, their 5-inch AA guns thumping off into the distance, as the boxy RAM launchers elevated under their radar domes, and the slender missiles streaked off over the water.
Far in the distance, flashes and puffs of black and gray smoke marked where missiles detonated over the ocean. A few of the “vampire” tracks disappeared. But more of them were coming in, and they were eating up the distance faster than the ships could launch countermeasures.
Chaff canisters popped into the air, as the guns kept thumping and more RAM launches blasted out over the North Sea. More of the RAMs hit their targets. The cloud of incoming Exocets thinned still more.
Then several of the Phalanx CIWS systems opened up, spitting streams of rounds out into the missiles’ paths. More ugly black puffs erupted out on the horizon, far closer this time.
Then one of the destroyers on the screen took a hit.
A massive fireball erupted amidships, quickly turning into a boiling mushroom cloud of black smoke. Fragments flew from the impact, and a moment later, a secondary explosion broke the ship’s back.
A glance at the plot told me that the USS Truxton was going down. I hoped that most of the crew got off.
The Truxton was only the first.
A dozen more Exocets were detonated by RAMs and CIWS fire in the next handful of seconds. Then the USS San Jacinto took a hit.
The cruiser held up a bit better than the destroyer Truxton had. The Truxton’s fore half was already almost completely underwater, and her aft section was listing badly and burning, belching black smoke over the water. The San Jacinto took the hit to her stern, mangling her aft gun turret and tearing up her helipad. The SH-87 on the pad was already starting to burn.
Another Exocet streaked overhead, heading straight for the Dwight D. Eisenhower herself. One had slipped through the screen.
The Eisenhower opened fire with her own CIWS, even as chaff canisters popped like there was no tomorrow. Streaks of tracers, barely visible in the afternoon sunlight, despite the high overcast, intersected the incoming missile, which detonated with a black puff only a couple thousand yards off the carrier’s bow. Fragmentation showered down into the water, kicking up a barrage of little white fountains.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, it was over.
Two ships hit. A lot fewer aircraft were returning than had gone out, on both sides. We had no way of knowing how many casualties had been taken between the destroyed aircraft, the stricken destroyer, and the wounded cruiser, but we sure hadn’t come through unscathed.
As I watched the remnants of the Truxton burn, I couldn’t help but think that the sooner we got on the ground, the better.
***
Finally, the word reached the strike group. After too many unexplained delays, the offensive had finally left Swiebodzin and crossed the German border. Unfortunately, they’d delayed long enough that it appeared that most of the 1st and 2nd EDC Divisions were waiting for them, along with a good portion of the Bundeswehr. And the 4th EDC Division was gathering to the north, according to drone reconnaissance, ready to join the party.
We were supposed to wait thirty-six hours after the offensive had kicked off to launch. That should give the EDC time to draw the majority of their forces south and east, leaving Brussels all but undefended. Unfortunately, the delay had already thrown that plan to hell in a handbasket, and the EDC had to know that the MEU off to the north wasn’t there just for grins. The alpha strike from the Charles de Gaulle had made that abundantly obvious.
Equally unfortunately, when the problem was first brought up after the last of the surviving sailors from the Truxton had been recovered, the MEU commander appeared to be ready to follow the letter of the plan, no matter how badly it had already gone. Which would have only given the enemy even more time to prepare.
But his subordinate commanders pointed to the air attack as a sign that we couldn’t afford to wait. Add in the stalled offensive south of Dijon—which still hadn’t managed to move—
and the intensifying fighting east of Berlin, and if we didn’t move soon, we’d be facing another alpha strike that we probably wouldn’t get through so easily. All it would take would be a hit on the Iwo Jima or the Fort McHenry and the MEU could be crippled before even getting ashore.
So, we turned south and headed for the Belgian coast. Unfortunately, that meant passing within a hundred fifty nautical miles of the Danish shore.
All the Triarii and Force Recon team leaders were in the ready room when the Danish coastal defense Harpoons came in. So, once again we got a front row seat.
The first sign that anything was happening—well, aside from the vampires suddenly appearing on the plot—was when the Leyte Gulf, Monterrey, and Vella Gulf started launching Tomahawk cruise missiles off to the east. That would be the counter-battery fire, aimed at the coastal defense launchers set up on the island of Rømø, if the plot was accurate.
Not that it would do that much good, if those were Harpoons. The Harpoon was a fire-and-forget missile. Once it was in the air, destroying the launcher wouldn’t do anything to stop it from hitting its target. The new ones could receive targeting updates remotely, but they didn’t necessarily need them.
More chaff popped off, and every gun on every ship in the screen opened fire. More RAMs streaked out of their box launchers, following the radar toward the incoming missiles.
The whole thing took only a few minutes this time. The Danes were still holding their precious aircraft back. And the batteries hadn’t swamped the defenses with missiles, like they could have.
Maybe their supplies were lower than we’d feared.
One by one, the incoming Harpoons succumbed to chaff, RAMs, and, finally, concentrated CIWS fire. Only two got through.
One struck the already wounded San Jacinto, though this time the missile slammed directly into the hull instead of detonating just off the stern. The fireball engulfed her stern quarter, and as the smoke billowed into the sky, she was already beginning to noticeably list to port.
The other couldn’t quite be considered a direct hit. The Eisenhower’s CIWS hit the missile on its final approach, and the detonation sprayed shrapnel against the carrier’s port side, tearing the CIWS mount apart and punching deeply into her hull. Smoke was starting to rise from her flank as we watched the video feed. But she was still afloat, and still operational.
I glanced at my watch. Three more hours until we launched.
It wasn’t going to get any easier, the closer we got. We’d just have to grit our teeth and pray that we didn’t catch a lucky missile before we got within striking distance.
Chapter 26
A problem with doing joint ops with the US mil, and especially while riding on Navy ships, is that the operation is entirely dependent on decisions completely outside of our control. You can’t just say, “Screw this, we’re going,” when you’re stuck on a ship and dependent on the Navy and Marine Corps to get you to the target.
Our launch time came and went, while the MEU Commander waited for some confirmation that the offensive aimed at Berlin had drawn off more of the EDC’s forces. We didn’t know what confirmation he was going to get, but I did know that the MEU and the Carrier Strike Group were flying drones at extremely high altitude over the north coast of Europe.
An hour past when we were supposed to be in the air and heading south, a new insert time came down, about an hour and a half after that. Then that got changed, as another attack from the French Navy came in. It was beaten off without any casualties this time.
The day wasn’t getting any younger. And we were sitting just below the flight deck, kitted out and ready to go, waiting and wondering if the targets were even going to be there when we finally reached Brussels.
I looked around at the teams where we were sitting on the deck, leaning on rucks that had been stacked against the bulkhead. Nobody talked, but I could see the thoughts written on blank faces as we stared at the overhead, or drummed fingers on weapons.
The EDC had to know that we were coming. This operation had already gone over the timeline, and they clearly knew that a MEU was sitting up there in the North Sea, within striking distance of the Netherlands and Belgium. If I was in charge of their security, I would have gotten the Council to dispersed bunkers as soon as the first alpha strike failed.
Unfortunately, we were getting no updates. All we could do was wait for the word to go up on deck and get aboard the Ospreys.
I’d hated that about the Marine Corps back when I had still been in. Having been a Grex Luporum team leader for several years, trusted with every bit of information that the organization could push down to us, often having to make strategic-level decisions at the spur of the moment, based on what intel I could gather…
I hated it even more.
I checked my watch for what felt like the fiftieth time. It was almost 1000. I shoved my sleeve back over the watch, leaning back on my ruck and trying not to get too pissed off. Every moment of delay meant we were less likely to catch our targets all in one place.
Boots clattered on the ladderwell that led down from the flight deck. Kowacs stuck his head through the hatchway. “Time to go!”
We heaved ourselves to our feet. Most of us had still had our arms through our ruck straps, but David and Chris had to put theirs back on. We were all pretty heavy. Each man had twelve mags on his chest, one in the gun—except for the Mk 48 gunners, who would stay back with the gear. More ammo, water, batteries, and chow were stashed in the rucks.
We had no way of knowing how long we were going to have to hold before we could be relieved. Especially after the delays we’d already endured.
With Scott in the lead—he would be the last one off the bird, making sure nothing and no one got left aboard—we trooped up onto the flight deck. I was used to getting aboard for insert in the dark. It was odd getting onto the Osprey, with its engines already spun up, the props turning, in broad daylight. The prop wash plucked at us as we filed toward the ramp.
Ours wasn’t the only bird lined up for launch. The Recon and NSW birds were already in the air, circling overhead, and three more birds were lined up on the flight deck, waiting for the Grex Luporum teams.
The infantry sections and the GROM guys didn’t get Ospreys. The Triarii were riding aboard the Iwo Jima’s old CH-53 Super Stallions, and the Poles had come with their own air assets—a pair of PZL W-3 Sokół helicopters. They’d launched already—the helos were slower than the Ospreys, so they needed more time to cover the distance to the target.
Kowacs grabbed my arm before I could get to the Osprey. He leaned in close and still had to shout to be heard over the wind and the roar of engines. “The 7th BCT just broke through south of Eisenhüttenstadt, and we’ve got confirmation that the Council’s called an emergency meeting. They’ve got elevated security and air defenses are on alert. Sounds like there’s some unrest in Brussels, so they might lock down at any moment. The alpha strike on Le Havre is launching in thirty minutes, and your SEAD mission is going to be right behind it.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Good to hear. First time things have gone right since we got on this boat.”
He returned the buffet. For a skinny old guy, he packed a lot more strength than I might have guessed. I turned toward the Osprey, as Jordan and David climbed the ramp.
I was the last one on, swinging my ruck off and stowing it at my feet, my rifle unloaded and muzzle-down as I buckled in. I gave Kowacs a thumbs up, then passed the signal along to the crew chief at the ramp.
A moment later, we surged off the Iwo Jima’s deck and into the sky.
We were on the way.
***
I appreciated Kowacs’ updates, as brief as they had been. They’d provided a lot more insight on the situation than anything we’d gotten from the Marines or the Navy. We might be on pretty good terms with the Force Recon platoon and Gomułka’s GROM guys, but it was clear that to the majority of our allies, we were scumbag contractor supernumeraries, strap hangers who were j
ust there to fill in numbers. We just needed to fall in and watch our sectors, we didn’t need to know what was going on.
We’d see how long that lasted once we got on the ground, and the metal met the meat.
Sitting in the belly of the Osprey, I passed along what Kowacs had told me. All of it. We operated on the principle that every man had to have as much of the full picture as possible, because if any of us went down, the rest were going to have to step up.
After that, all we could do was sit and wait. We couldn’t even see much out the portholes in the Osprey’s fuselage. And if we could have, we probably wouldn’t have been able to see the Growlers and Super Hornets going overhead, on their way to hammer the Belgian coastal defenses and the French Navy.
I said a quiet prayer for those pilots. It wasn’t entirely out of charity, either. If they got shot out of the sky, we were in a lot of trouble.
Without specific word to that effect, we didn’t know exactly how far out we’d launched. So, we didn’t know for sure how long we had before landfall.
I craned my neck to try to see out. We were low as hell—the pilots were doing their damnedest to stay below the radar. It was going to make us slower, but if we got in close before being spotted, it would be worth it.
That was how I was able to see when we flew over the Netherlands coast, just before the crew chief called over the intercom that I’d plugged my headset into. “Feet dry. Fifteen minutes.”
I passed it along to the rest of the team as best I could. I still couldn’t make out many details, looking out at the fields and marshes passing beneath us. We were too low and moving too fast.
Fields flashed by underneath us. The bird suddenly dipped and banked. I could only assume we were under fire, but I couldn’t see as I was thrown back against the jump seat.
If anything, we got lower and faster. A glance out the porthole showed me that we were within feet of cutting power lines with the props. I had to hand it to the pilot. He had balls.
“Five minutes!” That didn’t come over the intercom. The crew chief yelled it at the top of his lungs so that all of us could hear, holding up his hand with fingers spread to emphasize his words.
