Ian Slater - Arctic Front

But here, in Laugharne, he and Georgina were away from it all, in the world of Under Milk Wood, not twenty minutes from the tiny, rough-and-ready room, with the copy of Van Gogh’s “Bedroom” tacked on the worn white wall, where the drunken genius of Dylan Thomas had poured forth its heart. For Georgina, despite what her father had earlier referred to as her “somewhat radical” politics, or perhaps because of them, the room had quite unexpectedly become a shrine when her cool reason happened upon the banal yet arresting truth of the heart that the “heart hath reasons that reason cannot know.”

Georgina snuggled dose to him, holding him. The panic-filled disorientation of the nightmare drained from him as she gently nibbled a lobe of his ear, the nails of her trailing, sensuous touch stroking him until all thoughts of the Moscow raid were replaced by visions of her astride him, gently rocking back and forth, her hair softly whipping his chest, her lips against his. But for now Georgina hadn’t moved from where she was. But he knew she would stop stroking him soon, taking off the engagement ring, and he would moan, “Oh, God, no.” Which meant “Yes, but tease the a little longer.” Then slowly she would rise from the bed, fending him off, and walk about the room wearing his khaki drill shirt, slipping on, pulling up her panties, slowly swaying like a tart in front of him and then, holding onto the two bedstead knobs at the end of the bed, gently pushing herself, thrusting, against the brass bars, moving sideways against them.

“No more!” he begged.

She pretended not to hear him; then suddenly she pulled the cord of the overhead light and all was in darkness. He would have to find her. When he did she switched the light on. “I love you,” she said, and enjoyed watching him watch her. “We’ll do it,” she told him. “ Any way, every way — until you’re sore.”

He moaned, his arms outstretched, feeling for her hair.

“Love you,” he said. In answer her tongue slid down on him, her lips tight about him, sliding back and forth with a furious intensity.

Deep in Ratmanov’s control bunker, Lieutenant General Dracheev was stressing the importance of a quick response to his Special-Purpose Forces, or SPETS — emphasizing how the moment any enemy paratroopers were detected or even suspected of being dropped on the island fortress, the SPETS teams must go out and engage. “Pomnite Antverpen “—”Remember Antwerp,” Dracheev reminded them. “Cut them to pieces before they even touched ground.”

As General Douglas Freeman stepped out of his plane onto the rain-polished tarmac at Elmendorf, and a push of reporters, some in anoraks, their hoods up against the pelting rain, crowded about him, he was handed an urgent message from the White House. It read:

UNDER NO CONDITION ARE YOU TO PERSONALLY LEAD AIRBORNE ASSAULT. GENERAL J. GREY, JCS.

Freeman’s first order upon arriving at Cape Prince of Wales was that the CBN reporter was to get off Little Diomede—”posthaste.” Another CBN reporter who challenged him on this order had a follow-up question. “Is it true, General, that you’ve referred to the Siberians as rats?”

“Well, they sure as hell aren’t family,” retorted Freeman.

Some of the British reporters from ITN thought this was rather good, but the CBN reporter was determinedly grim-raced. “Is it true, General, that you said, ‘We’ll pound them so hard’—” He consulted his notes.”—’they’ll have to pipe in sunlight’?”

“I did not — wish I had!”

The CBN lead story, flashed around the world, was that General Freeman called the Siberians “vermin.” As this was being received by enemy troops as well as those at home, the CBN reporter, in what he said would probably be his last broadcast from Little Diomede because of the general’s “extraordinary” order that no newsmen were to remain on the island, asked the general via the satellite linkup whether he was conscious of the “extremely delicate ecological system of the Arctic,” and did he have any information on “what adverse effects would be produced on the environment because of the imminent bombing of Ratmanov Island?”

“Well, sir,” answered Freeman looking at the video hookup of the CBN reporter on the forlorn western side of Little Diomede, the same bitter Arctic wind tearing at the gaggle of microphones thrust before Freeman’s race and flapping the Eskimo-style hood of the CBN man. “Seems you’re a lot less worried than I am about the environment.”

“What do you mean, General?” asked the reporter, somewhat nonplussed by the unexpected retort. All the reporters at the conference were now looking at the linkup picture of the CBN reporter on Little Diomede.

‘ “That blue fur collar on your hood,” said Freeman. “Arctic fox, isn’t it?”

The reporter’s face was turning red. “I — don’t know, General.”

Freeman looked grim. “I respectfully suggest, sir, that you find out. Blue Arctic fox is on the endangered species list. One of the most beautiful animals on God’s earth. Crying shame to be butchering them just to keep us warm. You should know—” The general turned to all of the reporters clustered about him, some of them wearing identical parkas, “—that it is strict Defense Department policy not to use animal fur in deference to our concern for the environment. Synthetics only — and that goes for everything from gloves to full winter uniform.”

“That true?” asked Colonel Dick Norton, the general’s aide.

“Yes it is, Dick. My God, did you see that Greenpeace fella? Thought he’d have a goddamn stroke right on the spot. That’ll break up their marriage with the media for a while I’ll tell you.” Stopping, pulling on his gloves tightly, he told the general of Alaska Air Command, “I want that CBN joker off Little Diomede. Now!”

“And if he doesn’t go?” enquired a brassy CBN news crew chief out of Anchorage.

Freeman ignored the newsman’s question. He had learned his lesson in Iraq. To give them a deadline by which they had to remove the reporter from the island might be to let slip an approximate ETA for the new wave of U.S. bombers he was asking Alaska Air Command to send over Ratmanov. Instead, Freeman told the news chief that Little Diomede would undoubtedly be suspected by the Russians of being a laser indicator — bouncing lasers off suspected Soviet SAM and radar sites to provide slide cones down which laser-guided bombs could plummet to their targets with pinpoint accuracy. In fact, no such plan was afoot. The laser designators would be the attacking aircraft themselves.

Freeman entered his mobile trailer, which was dug deep in the Alaskan tundra on Cape Prince of Wales, and gave his second order for Alaska Air Command to undertake another bombing run against Ratmanov. If it was effective, it would give the enemy commander a surprise Freeman doubted he could anticipate.

Kneeling beside his cot, Freeman prayed that he would be proven wrong — that Rat Island might be neutralized quickly and effectively. As he made his supplication he could hear the sonic booms racing across the tundra only fifty miles away from the enormity that was Siberia.

It was only a few pinpricks of light on the amber screen at first, and the Siberian operator on the eight-to-midnight watch deep in Ratmanov control dismissed it as possibly a burst of white noise caused by the notoriously changeable Arctic atmosphere. But the next second the top third of the screen was a haze of tiny lights, and he knew what it was. He called the officer of the watch. “Khlam”—”Chaff,” he told the lieutenant — strips of foil cut to various wavelengths to clutter the radar, overloading it with incoming signals, as a cover for another air attack. The only good thing about the chaff was that it meant the Americans couldn’t use laser slides — the chaff would cut the beam.