"They might just come looking for us, too," Toland warned. "They have to know now what we did, and where we did it from." The commander of VF-41 looked out the window. One of his Tomcats sat half a mile away between two piles of sandbags. Four missiles were visible on the airframe. He fingered the Ace of Spades emblem on his chest and turned back.

"Good. If they want to fight us on our turf, in our radar cover, fine."

Alekseyev left his helicopter on the outskirts of the town and climbed into yet another BMP infantry carrier. Two ribbon bridges were operating. Fragments of at least five others littered the riverbanks, along with countless burned-out tanks and trucks. The commander of 20th Tanks rode with them.

"NATO air attacks are murderous," General Beregovoy said. "I've never seen anything like it. Even with our SAMs they close in. We get our share, but it's not enough, and things only get worse as we approach the front."

"What progress have you made today?"

"The main opposition at the moment is English. At least a brigade of tanks. We've pushed them back two kilometers since dawn."

"There's supposed to be a Belgian force out there also," Sergetov pointed out.

"They've disappeared. We don't know where they are-and, yes, that worries me also. I've placed one of the new divisions on our left flank to guard against counterattack. The other will join 20th Tanks when we resume the attack this afternoon."

"Strength?" Alekseyev asked.

"The Twentieth is down to ninety working tanks. Maybe less," the General said. "That number is four hours old. Our infantry has done better, but the division is now under fifty-percent nominal strength."

Their vehicle angled down onto the floating ribbon bridge. Each boxlike segment was bolted to two others, and the vehicle bobbed up and down like a small boat in the surf as they drove across the Leine. All three officers controlled their feelings, but none liked being locked inside a steel box over the water. The BMP infantry assault vehicle was technically amphibious, but many had sunk without warning and it was rare for anyone to escape when that happened. They could hear distant artillery fire. Air attacks at Alfeld happened without warning. It took just over a minute to complete the crossing.

"In case you're curious, that bridge we just crossed holds the record for the longest survival." He checked his watch. "Seven hours."

"What of that major you requested the gold star for?" Alekseyev asked.

"He was wounded in an air attack. He'll live."

"Give him this. Perhaps it will speed his recovery." Alekseyev reached into a pocket and came out with a five-pointed gold star attached to a bloodred ribbon. He handed it to the General. That major of engineers was now a Hero of the Soviet Union.

All the boats slowed on reaching the icepack. McCafferty inspected it through his periscope, a thin white line less than two miles away. There was nothing else visible. Few ships lingered so near the ice, and no aircraft were visible.

Sonar reported a gratifying amount of noise. The serrated fringe of the pack was composed of thousands of individual floes, slabs of ice a few feet thick, ranging in size from a few square feet to several acres. Every year they came loose with the spring thaw and drifted at random until the freeze began again. While loose in the brief arctic summer, they drifted at random, grinding against one another in a process that destroyed some of the smaller floes, which added to the never-ending groans and pops of the solid ice that went across the top of the pole all the way to the North Slope of Alaska.

"What's that?" McCafferty adjusted the scope slightly, turning the handle to the twelve-power setting. He'd glimpsed what might have been a periscope for the merest instant. It was gone now and-reappeared: the swordlike dorsal fin of a male killer whale. A puff of spray marked its breath, condensing to vapor in the polar air, then a few more whales appeared. What was it they called a family of orcas? A school-no, a pod. Up here hunting seals, probably. He wondered if the omen was good or bad. Orcinus orca was the scientific name: Bringer of Death.

"Sonar, do you have anything at one-three-nine?"

"Conn, we have eleven killer whales on that bearing. I make it three males, six females, and two adolescents. Pretty close in, I think. Bearing is changing slowly." The sonar chief responded as if insulted. There were standing orders not to report "biologicals" unless specifically ordered otherwise.

"Very well." McCafferty had to grin in spite of himself.

The other submarines of Operation Doolittle were strung out on a line more than ten miles across. One by one they went deep and headed under the pack. An hour later the freight train headed east, five miles inside the nominal edge of the pack. Twelve thousand feet below them was the floor of the Barents Abyssal Plain.

"Haven't seen a chopper all day," Sergeant Smith observed.

Conversation, Edwards noted, made a nice distraction from the fact that they were eating raw fish. He checked his watch. It was time to call in again. It had gotten so that he could assemble the radio antenna in his sleep.

"Doghouse, this is Beagle, and things could be a lot better, over."

"Beagle, we read you. Where are you now?"

"About forty-six kilometers from our objective," Edwards replied. He gave them map coordinates. There was one road yet to cross, and only one more row of hills, according to the map. "Nothing much to report except we have not seen any choppers today. In fact we haven't seen any aircraft at all." Edwards looked up. The sky was pretty clear, too. Usually they spotted fighters once or twice a day as they patrolled overhead.

"Roger that, Beagle. Be advised that the Navy sent some fighters over and beat them up pretty good around dawn."

"All right! We haven't seen any Russians since the chopper looked us over." In Scotland his controller shuddered at that. Edwards went on, "We're down to eating fish we catch, but the fishing's pretty good."

"How's your lady friend?"

Mike had to smile at that one. "She's not holding us back, if that's what you mean. Anything else?"

"Negative."

"Okay, we'll be back if we see anything. Out." Edwards flipped the power switch on the radio pack. "Our friends say the Navy chewed up some Russian fighters today."

"Bout time," Smith said. He was down to his last five cigarettes and stared at one now, deciding whether or not to reduce his supply to four. As Edwards watched, he opened his lighter to poison himself again.

"We go to Hvammsfjordur?" Vigdis asked. "Why?"

"Somebody wants to know what's there," Edwards said. He unfolded the tactical map. It showed the entrance to the bay to be crammed with rocks. It took him a moment to realize that while the land elevations were in meters, the depth curves on the map were in fathoms...