Free Shadow Hunter by Geoffrey Archer Page A

The first is to ensure we can control the sea line of communication – SLOC for short. The SLOC is the route across the Atlantic along which American reinforcements would be shipped if Europe were threatened by the Warsaw Pact.
    â€˜Right now, warships from the US and from European countries including Spain and Portugal are securing the SLOC for convoys – down here.’
    Commander Polk pointed rapidly from the Southwest Approaches down to Gibraltar, and westwards across the Atlantic.
    â€˜What you are on board today, gentlemen, is the flagship of Striking Fleet Atlantic. The task for this group is to take control of the sea and the air, right up to the Arctic Circle. The
Eisenhower
is now here, just south of Iceland. And we’re headed here.’
    The journalists’ gaze was directed at the most northerly tip of Norway.
    â€˜What we’re doing this year is something new. We’re taking this little tub, 90,000 tons of her, right up to longitude 24 degrees East. Now that’s in the Barents Sea, and the Soviets like to think of those waters as their own.
    â€˜Gentlemen, the second main purpose of this exercise is to show the Russians and ourselves that we have the power and the motivation to get right up into the Arctic and stop them, if they try it on.
    â€˜We’ve got three jobs to do; to back up land-based airpower with our own combat planes in order to defendnorth Norway; to locate and destroy enemy surface ships and submarines trying to take over the Norwegian Sea; and to get their missile subs before they can scoot under the ice, and nuke our families back home.’
    The correspondent for the TV networks raised his hand to interrupt.
    â€˜Aren’t you gonna be a pretty big target for the Soviets to hit, if you go right into the Barents?’
    â€˜Sure. That’s why in past exercises we’ve not gone further north than Westfjord.’
    His pointer landed on the Lofoten Islands some four hundred miles south of the northern tip of Norway.
    â€˜And if this exercise was for real, we sure as hell wouldn’t put a carrier up there until the air and sea threat had been minimized.
    He turned back to the vu-foil map.
    â€˜There are two main threats Aircraft we look after ourselves; submarines – we have a British Royal Navy Anti-Submarine-Warfare force ahead of us, moving north in the Norwegian Sea. The
HMS Illustrious
Task Group provides the first ASW screen; we provide the second.’
    He looked at his watch. They had to get moving. He could give them more later. First he had to brief them for the photo-opportunity which had presented itself that morning.
    Admiral Vernon Kritz was proud of his ship, and proud of the role it played in containing the Communist menace. He was glad to have the media on board, so they could tell the world just how good his ship was. But this morning something extraordinary had happened that had made him doubly pleased.
    Without their realizing it, he would deploy the media like one of his own weapon systems. What they would show on breakfast television back home was going to make those soft-heads on Capitol Hill choke on their granola. ‘It’s time to trust the Russians’ was their cry. The hell it was!
    The Admiral had summoned his PIO, while the media group were being given their breakfast, and told him whatthe photo-reconnaissance aircraft had spotted at first light. When he’d seen the pictures of the Soviet freighter and its deck cargo, the commander had blasphemed in astonishment, then apologized hastily, conscious that the Admiral was a deeply religious man.
    â€˜Don’t tell ’em exactly what they’re gonna see,’ Admiral Kritz had cautioned. ‘Let ’em think they’re getting the first close-ups
anyone’s
seen. They’ll get a kick outta that!’
    All the print journalists and stills photographers were bundled aboard one SH-3 Sea King helicopter, the television team aboard