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Fox, Anthony - Threat Warning Red PDF

366 Pages·2016·0.87 MB·English
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IN THE BATTLE-CODES OF NATO WARSHIPS THREAT WARNING RED MEANS “ACTION IMMINENT…” Suddenly the Soviet Union declares 90,000 square miles of vital Atlantic searoutes the exclusive territory of the battlefleets of the Warsaw Pact. On the bridges of warships at sea and in the corridors of NATO HQ tension mounts to crisis pitch. AS A MASSIVE SOVIET TASK FORCE CONVERGES ON A NATO SQUADRON, THE WORLD HOLDS ITS BREATH… THE WORLD HOLDS ITS BREATH… Anthony Fox Threat Warning Red Author’s note The paperback edition of this novel, which was first published in hardback in 1979, has been brought forward at rather short notice, and there has been no opportunity to update background political events. So there is no mention of Afghanistan, or Poland, or of the accelerated expansion of the Soviet fleet and weaponry, or - perhaps more importantly - of the disastrous and I believe inexcusable new cuts in the strength of the Royal Navy. The story should therefore be read in the context of 1979, please, not of 1982. A. F. Diagram of North Atlantic with exclusion area (threatwaringred-1.jpg) The principal social service a government can provide is to keep its people alive and free. Sir John Slessor Chapter One The Soviet spy trawler had been on the plot all night, and now with daylight she was easy to see about seven miles east-south-east, beyond the German destroyer. The trawler was one of the Mayak class, with white-painted upperworks and a lot of top-hamper in the form of loops, aerials and antennae, the usual equipment of the spy-ships: and this was a perfectly normal situation, an ordinary morning at sea - the NATO squadron exercising and that mutely hostile Soviet eye on them. So why on earth, Frank Comerford asked himself, did he suddenly get this feeling of some danger or ordeal ahead? Then he remembered: there’d been a signal yesterday about a concentration of spy trawlers off the Shetlands. It was the type of mass deployment of trawlers the Soviets went in for ahead of major NATO exercises: and as there was no such thing about to happen - they’d had the big one, just recently - there was no apparent reason for that swarm up there. He’d forgotten about the signal, but it must have been in his mind while he’d been sleeping, and he knew now why the sight of that solitary Mayak had triggered the presentiment. All the same, when he looked back on it afterwards it did seem a bit uncanny that one had had such a feeling: because later, in retrospect, you had to recognise that for the NATO squadron who were going to bear the brunt of it, this was where the build-up to the crunch did start. In the Skagerrak on this cool September morning with the sea low, humpy, shiny-green, HMS Devon riding the swell easily with her stabilisers’ help, the other two ships astern and the Russian skulking like a jackal down there in the direction of the Skaw. And a dozen others, he thought again, 400 miles northwest. What the hell for? He lowered his binoculars. Baden, the German, was on Devon’s port quarter and the Canadian, Winnipeg, was level with Baden on the other side. Course two- seven-zero, speed twelve knots. The greyish blur to starboard, northward, was seven-zero, speed twelve knots. The greyish blur to starboard, northward, was the south coast of Norway. Twenty-five miles away, he guessed, looking at it. But not exactly guessed: as Devon’s navigating officer he knew within a mile or two where she was, even though he’d been asleep for the last two hours. He asked Oram, the pink-faced officer of the watch, ‘Skipper still got his head down?’ Oram nodded. ‘Due for a shake at a quarter past.’ It was ten past seven. Anti-submarine exercises had lasted until just after five, and now there was a full programme of practices and evolutions for the day and night ahead; and two more days and nights of it after that, before they put into Oslo for a spell of civic functions, official receptions and so forth. This NATO squadron was no rest-home for tired sailors. Oram muttered, ‘Should pick up the others pretty soon.’ Their Soviet tail had chosen badly last night, when the NATO squadron had split into two groups and separated for night exercises thirty miles apart. Not even a spy ship could be in two places at once, and if the Russians had spun a rouble it must have fallen hammer-and-sickle down instead of up. The other way, they’d have stuck with the Commodore, the American flagship, with the Dutchman and the Dane and the Portuguese. That group’s night games had ended by now with a dawn shoot against a towed air target, and the American, Fermenger, was to have been using shells with a new type of nose-fuse from which the Soviets might have recorded some interesting vibrations. Instead they’d elected to cling to this smaller bunch, and they’d have heard nothing they hadn’t heard a hundred times before. It had been a routine A/S practice, tracking a small German submarine which had now gone home to Kiel. Comerford went over to the Decca machine, in the port after corner of the bridge. He didn’t envy the spy trawlermen their job. They even steamed in up the NATO ships’ tracks when rubbish had been ditched, and scooped up the gash to sort it for items that might be of interest to them. He was checking the ship’s to sort it for items that might be of interest to them. He was checking the ship’s position by Decca, getting readings on green and purple and then checking those figures back against the pulsing master-guard to make sure they matched. Decca gave him an intersection at 57 degrees 41 North, 8 degrees 20 East. Now he could check those latitude and longitude figures against the readings on the SINS dials on the bulkhead. SINS stood for Ship’s Inertial Navigation System, and it was spot-on. Marvellous to have all these machines to do your work for you. Not that one relied on them all that much; half the satisfaction of his own job was the employment of the navigator’s art and this included the use of a basic tool, the sextant, pretty well every day. Any damn fool could read dials. … He went down the portside steps and past the lower section of the enclosed bridge, and opened the heavy screen door to the extruding, open-air, wing. A rush of wind met him, cool morning wind, salt-tasting, air bright from the haze of the rising sun astern. The thin cloud-layer screening the sun wouldn’t last long, it would melt during the next half-hour, raise the curtain on another sparkling late- summer day. Gulls wheeled squawking over grey-green sea curling from Devon’s stem; there was hardly any movement on her as she carved her way into it, parting it and leaving it to mend again astern. The steel deck-plating of the foc’sl he was looking down at it across the top of the Exocet missile installation and beyond that the twin 4.5” gun-turret - was green-painted, new-looking with the shine of sea-dew on it. Devon was a DLG - destroyer, large, guided-missile - but she was the size of a cruiser and she had a cruiser’s complement and power; they’d classified her as a destroyer because the Treasury hadn’t been keen to approve the order for a new class of cruiser. Whatever you labelled her she was a compact, handsome ship and, now that she had the French surface-to-surface Exocet missile system, not badly armed. Her main missile system was Seaslug, back aft - Seaslug being surface-to-air and with a surface-to-surface potential too - and there were Seacat mountings on each quarter with anti-missile missiles for close-range defence. To round it off there was that twin 4.5” turret - radar- controlled, quick-firing, automatic. By NATO standards and certainly in comparison with the other ships in this squadron, Devon was well armed. In comparison with the newer Soviet missile-ships - well, that was something else. She was good-looking as well as functional. But nothing like as pretty as Baden, the German steaming on her port quarter, with that long, high flare of bow and the two sleek, cowled funnels. Baden had no missiles and no helicopter: her teeth were two turrets for’ard and two aft, and torpedoes, and of course anti- submarine weapons. She wasn’t just pretty, Comerford thought, she was downright beautiful. She wouldn’t be as comfortable to live in as Devon was; downright beautiful. She wouldn’t be as comfortable to live in as Devon was; even in this low swell she had a lot of motion on her, and in anything like bad weather she was washing down all the time; but she was something to rest your eyes on, all right. … And she was flying the same flag as Devon and the Canadian on the other quarter flew, and this grey-green wet stuff was the Skagerrak where Jutland was fought in 1916 and where Germans and British had died at each others’ hands in numerous actions since that huge one…. Just as he got back to the central bridge there was a squawk from the loudspeaker, from the plot down in the Ops Room. Something about contacts on two-six-six. Those would be the other ships of this squadron: the plot would have had them a long time ago if longer-range radar sets hadn’t been shut down to frustrate the AGI, the spy trawler. Within a few minutes the watchkeepers here on the bridge could see them - one of them, to start with, and just upperworks. That would be Fermenger, the American. Gram’s assistant, the second officer of the watch, reported with his glasses at his eyes, ‘Ship right ahead -‘ and then, lowering the binoculars and glancing round, seeing the skipper arriving in the bridge at that moment, added ‘- sir.’ The yeoman of the watch retrieved a clipboard of signals from Devon’s captain, who’d held it out sideways without looking to see who’d take it: he’d been reaching with the other hand for his binoculars. Now he’d slid on to his high swivel seat in the starboard for’ard corner, behind his own console of order instruments. He’d have read through that batch of signals before coming up, between being shaken at 0715 and appearing here now at - Comerford checked the time - 0731. They’d been due to rendezvous with the other ships at half past, so this wasn’t bad. ‘Pilot?’ Ramrod back: up on the high seat he looked enormous. George Henry Ashton was a tall, spare but heavy-boned man, with a big nose and jaw and rather deepset eyes: and as tireless as some kind of robot. deepset eyes: and as tireless as some kind of robot. Comerford went across the bridge. ‘Morning, sir.’ ‘Freshen my memory, would you, about the day’s programme?’ ‘There’s a shoot at nine, sir.’ He was reaching into his pocket for the Daily Orders. ‘Towed surface target.’ He’d unfolded the pink foolscap sheet. ‘The helicopter goes into Kjevik at 8.45.’ For mail - landing it and bringing off any that might be waiting there for them. Kjevik being the airport at Kristiansand. ‘When does the shoot finish?’ ‘Eleven, sir. Balloon runs from eight to nine, I should have mentioned. The helo’s due back at eleven-fifteen, and there’s an NBCD exercise until twelve- thirty.’ NBCD meant damage-control: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical. Ashton asked him, ‘Taking one of the others in tow at some stage, aren’t we?’ ‘We’re to be towed by Winnipeg, from twelve-thirty to fourteen hundred. At fourteen-fifteen there’s an AA Gunex - firing ships only ourselves, Baden and Winnipeg while the others RAS from White Rover: RAS stood for replenish-at- sea, and White Rover was a tanker, a Royal Fleet Auxiliary, which was sea, and White Rover was a tanker, a Royal Fleet Auxiliary, which was operating with the squadron. Comerford added, ‘They’ll have finished by the time we’ve had our shoot, and we RAS at sixteen hundred. On completion we rejoin the Commodore for officer-of-the-watch manoeuvres. Then the night exercise programme––’ ‘Enough to be going on with. Thank you.’ There was some talking on the R/T now, from the lower section of the bridge to starboard. Comerford heard an American voice saying, ‘Immediate execute, Corpen starboard one eight. Stand by -‘ Ashton called down, ‘Not us, is it, Yeoman?’ ‘First division only, sir.’ The Commodore was about to lead the ships which were with him now into a right-wheel, in fact. Then no doubt he’d order this group to join up with him. In Devon’s bridge Ashton and Comerford watched the American ship through their glasses as her shape began to alter, to lengthen into silhouette as she turned. Fermenger was only three or four years old, one of the latest of the Knox-class frigates and with modifications to cabin and bridge layouts to provide accommodation for an admiral - in this instance a commodore - and his staff. As she swung into profile you could see the distinctive funnel shape, that bulbous expansion that carried masts and search-radar aerials. But her length was already shortening again as she continued round, swinging the rectangular bulk of her helicopter hangar towards them; and now she was piping up on the R/T again, that same American voice laconically addressing the second division now. Ashton glanced round at the OOW. ‘I’ll take her.’ He told Comerford, ‘Shan’t need you, pilot. If you’re going down, tell the Commander I’d like a word at his convenience.’ convenience.’ ‘Aye aye, sir.’ He was ready for some breakfast; and it was decent of George Henry to dispense with his services. It was also somewhat untypical: there was a certain rigidity both of manner and behaviour from Devon’s captain nowadays. Physically he was immensely strong: right now, for instance, he’d had two hours’ sleep, and twenty-four hours ago he might have had three or four, but he was alert, vigorous, ready for another day-and-night stretch of work. Unfortunately he expected similar powers of endurance in his subordinates. When Comerford, after twenty-six hours on his feet at one stage of the recent NATO exercises, had been seen yawning, Ashton had suggested he should report to the doctor for a check-up. The rigidity came out in several areas: in his attitude to disciplinary matters, and a refusal to listen to accounts of difficulties such as machinery breakdowns. And it wouldn’t be making his outlook any sunnier now to know that his ship was running on only one boiler. The mechanical seal on the main feedpump to the starboard one had failed during the basin trial in Kiel on Thursday of last week, prior to departure on the Monday. Devon’s Engineer Commander had reported the defect to Ashton and at the same time signalled SPDC, the Spare Parts Distribution Centre at Newcastle, for a replacement. But a strike by loaders at Heathrow had left them still without the spare on that Sunday night when they were due to sail at 0800 next morning. ‘Why don’t we have a spare on board?’ ‘We do normally, sir, but we had to hand it over-to Shropshire at Den Helder and there was supposed to be a replacement on the way, but––’ ‘Either you forgot to order it, or it didn’t come and you forgot to chase them?’ ‘I was going to explain, sir––’ ‘I don’t want explanations, Chief. I want heads of departments I can rely on. What are you going to do about it?’ ‘We could fit an emergency packing. But that’s very unreliable. We can get the spare flown to Oslo now, though, so we’d only be without it for a few days - and meanwhile––’ ‘Make the emergency repair, but don’t flash up that boiler. Make sure the spare seal does reach us in Oslo. Do I have to warn you -‘ sarcasm creeping in now - ‘to arrange in advance for Customs clearance?’ Comerford went down the steps into the thwartships gangway, and into his chartroom. He found Hunt, his yeoman, at work inside. Hunt was a radarman and a volunteer for this job, which consisted mainly of keeping charts and reference books up to date. ‘Don’t you eat breakfast nowadays?’ Hunt looked round. ‘Had it, sir. Wanted to make a start on these north Norway corrections.’ After Oslo, they’d be going north. Comerford heard the yeoman shout, ‘Executive, sir!’ and Ashton’s order into the microphone, ‘Starboard fifteen. Revolutions one-five-zero.’ Devon was heeling to the turn as he passed behind

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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.