O'Malley lifted off again. He was averaging ten flight hours per day. Three ships had been torpedoed, two more hit by submarine-launched missiles in the past four days, but the Russians had paid dearly for that. They'd sent perhaps as many as twenty submarines into Icelandic waters. Eight had died trying to get through the picket line of submarines that was the fleet's outer defense. More had fallen to the line of towed-array ships whose helicopters were now backed up by those of HMS Illustrious, A bold Tango skipper had actually penetrated one of the carrier groups and put a fish into America's tough hide, only to be pounced on and sunk by the destroyer Caron. The carrier could now make only twenty-five knots, barely enough to conduct flight operations, but she was still there.

Mike Force-Reuben James, Battleaxe, and Illustrious-was escorting a group of amphibs south for another landing. There were still bears in the woods, and Ivan would go for the amphibious-warfare ships as soon as he had the chance. From a thousand feet, O'Malley could see Nassau and three others to the north. Smoke rose from Keflavik. The Russian troops were getting no rest at all.

"Won't be easy for them to track in on us," Ralston thought aloud.

"You suppose those Russian troops have radios?" O'Malley asked.

"Sure."

"You suppose maybe they can see us from those hills-and maybe radio a submarine what they see?"

"I didn't think of that," the ensign admitted.

"Mat's all right. I'm sure Ivan did." O'Malley looked north again. There were three thousand Marines on those ships. The Marines had saved his ass in Vietnam more than once.

Reuben James and O'Malley had the inshore side of the small convoy while the British ships and helos guarded to seaward. It was relatively shallow water. Their towed-array sonars were reeled in.

"Willy, drop--now, now, now!" The first active sonobuoy was ejected into the water. Five more were deployed in the next few minutes. The passive buoys used for open-ocean search were the wrong choice here. Stealth was not in the cards if the Russian subs were being informed where to go. Better to scare them off than to try finesse.

Three hours, O'Malley thought.

"Hammer, this is Romeo," Morris called. "Bravo and India are working a possible contact to seaward, two-nine miles bearing two-four-seven."

"Roger that, Romeo." O'Malley acknowledged. To Ralston: "Bastard's within missile range. That oughta make the Marines happy."

"Contact! Possible contact on buoy four," Willy said, watching the sonar display. "Signal is weak."

O'Malley turned his helo and moved back up the line.

KEFLAVIK, ICELAND

"Where do you suppose they are?" Andreyev asked his naval liaison officer. The position of the formation had been plotted on the map from the reports of several mountaintop lookout stations.

The man shook his head. "Trying to get to the targets."

The General remembered his own time aboard ship, how vulnerable he'd felt, how dangerous it had been. A distant part of his consciousness felt sympathy for the American Marines. But gallantry was a luxury the General could not afford. His paratroopers were heavily engaged, and he didn't need more enemy troops and heavy equipment-of course!

His division was deployed to keep the Americans away from the Reykjavik/Keflavik area as long as possible. His original orders remained operative: deny the Keflavik Air Base to NATO. That he could do, though it would mean the probable annihilation of his elite troopers. His problem was that Reykjavik airport would be equally useful to the enemy, and one light division wasn't enough to cover both places.

So now the Americans trailed their coats in plain view of his observers -a full regiment of troops plus heavy weapons and helicopters that they could land anywhere they wished. If he redeployed to meet this threat, he risked disaster when he disengaged his forward units. If he moved his reserves, they would be in the open where naval guns and aircraft could massacre them. This unit was being moved, not to join the others deployed against his airborne infantrymen, but to exploit a weakness within minutes instead of hours. Once in place, the landing ships could wait for relative darkness or a storm and race unseen across the water to landbound troops. How could he deploy his own forces to deal with that? His radars were finished, he had a single remaining SAM launcher, and the battleships had systematically exterminated most of his artillery.

"How many submarines out there?"

"I don't know, Comrade General."

USS REUBEN JAMES

Morris watched the sonar plot. The sonobuoy contact had faded off after a few minutes. A school of herring, perhaps. The ocean waters abounded with fish, and enough of them on active sonar looked like a sub. His own sonar was virtually useless as his ship struggled just to keep up with the 'phibs. A possible submarine to seaward-every sub contact was a possible cruise-missile sub-was all the Commodore needed to go to full speed.