The capture of Keflavik Airbase, June 15th 1986 – (Red Storm Rising fanfic)

[James G]

This is a short story which I have written. I've been thinking about this for sometime.
It is based upon the work of Tom Clancy (RIP) in his novel Red Storm Rising. I have expanded upon the battle presented in the book and tried not to deviate from it at all in scope and details.
There is an overview through the story and then three character perspectives. Some notes are at the bottom too.
Enjoy.

[James G]

The capture of Keflavik Airbase, June 15th 1986 – (Red Storm Rising fanfic)


The NATO facility at Keflavik on Iceland was under attack. Close to a hundred air-launched cruise missiles, fired from Soviet missile-bombers far offshore, exploded low in the sky above and all around the airbase. Civilian infrastructure was hit too; Keflavik was a joint military and civilian site. World War Three had just started and peaceful Iceland was on the frontlines.

Offshore, there was a civilian ship which was copying radio signals upon the launch of those missiles. MV Julius Fucik, a vessel registered in the Soviet Union, was disguised as the American-flagged SS Doctor Lykes. Both vessels were very similar with the former built to American specifications in a Finnish shipyard and when transformed at sea into the latter, the camouflage had been enough to pass a visual sighting confirmation from above by a US Navy aircraft flying from Keflavik. Upon receipt of the first of those signals, those aboard the Julius Fucik had sprung into action. The ship was carrying a regiment of Soviet Airborne Troops, paratroopers who could fight in many different manners, along with their equipment and much of the gear for their parent division too: the rest of which was waiting back home for the men aboard this ship to capture Keflavik before they would later fly in.

The Julius Fucik was a barge carrier. On her weather deck and in two more cargo decks below, there were a total of twenty of those cargo-carrying barges plus another four which were meant to look like barges but certainly weren’t at all. These were instead assault hovercraft and positioned at the rear of the ship. The specifically-built prefabricated parts covering their true identity were removed and the engines upon each started. The Julius Fucik had automated systems which moved each Kalmar-class vessel into position towards the elevator at the rear. Two went down into the water aft of the ship first and this was followed by the rapid delivery of the second pair into the sea to follow them.

The armed hovercraft each with a reinforced rifle company aboard, plus mortar team attachments (also a regimental command element inside one of them), raced away towards the Icelandic coast. The four Kalmars moved at fifty knots, bouncing over the choppy waters, and towards an opponent who had no idea of who and what was coming their way.


Lt.-Colonel Aleksandr Ivanovich Lebed was in hovercraft #3. The commander of the 234th Guards Parachute Regiment was crammed inside this high-speed vessel as it bounced atop the coastal waters off Iceland along with a few other key members of his regimental operations staff. They were all alongside riflemen from Lebed’s 2nd Company, good men who Lebed was proud to be riding into battle alongside. Each and every single man here had been under fire before when seeing action in Afghanistan. Lebed had been to that hellhole himself. The fight on Iceland promised to be very different and he could have taken it with other, inexperienced men. However, those in the four companies – the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th Companies from his regiment – went into this coming with him. There were US Marines ahead of them. They would be an opponent which Lebed had been told by his divisional commander General Andreyev (who remained aboard the Julius Fucik) who would be no walkover.

“Podpolkovnik,” his radioman grabbed his attention, “there’s an American aircraft above!”

Out of habit, Lebed looked upwards. He saw nothing to see of course. He was within the internal hull of this hovercraft. Going into battle inside the belly of such a steel beast was something that Lebed would never get used to. These were vessels built for use by the Naval Infantry – the Soviet Union’s marines – and he was used to parachute jumps and helicopter assault landings. He was a fish out of water inside the Kalmar.

“Aircraft engaged.” The radioman relayed what he was hearing from the commander of hovercraft #3. Lebed knew that there was a multi-barrelled 30mm cannon fitted for self-defence purposes. He would have expected to hear it firing yet there was too much other noise. The radioman finished his report, “Aircraft has flown away.”

If that aircraft had attacked, Lebed was sure that he couldn’t have stood a chance. This internal hold would have flooded in seconds. Fighting his way out would have been impossible. Thankfully, it hadn’t come to that.

Minutes later, the radioman had something else to say. “Landing site sighted,” he was again relaying what was coming from the hovercraft’s bridge, “three hundred meters ahead!”

Lebed smiled. This was it. Battle was ahead. The company commander, Captain Ivanov, called out to his men to be ready. Ivanov was an excellent officer, a rising star. The 2nd Company was expected to do very well under him. Lebed would move forward just behind Ivanov’s men as he intended to command what would be nearly half of his regiment (the 234th Guards had nine rifle companies in total plus fire support units too) in battle right from the frontlines.

The shoreline was moments away.


Each hovercraft landed at Djupivogur Cove, which was a sheltered inlet on the southwestern side of the Keflavik Peninsula. In the middle of that peninsula lay the airbase itself and across open ground from Djupivogur Cove. The Kalmars came out of the water and raced across the gorse. It took them a minute of a ride far more bumpy for those inside each than that when at sea to reach the disembarkment site for their cargos.

They had stopped a quarter of a mile outside of the perimeter fence. The bow door opened and men ran out of each hovercraft. Behind them also came a pair of BMD-1 armoured vehicles too. These tracked infantry vehicles had a few paratroopers aboard yet their primary purpose for being here was their mounted weapons. A 73mm cannon, an anti-tank missile-launcher and three machine guns formed that armament.

Each of those vehicles joined the assault by the four rifle companies who approached the airbase ahead and took its surprised defenders under fire. As to the Kalmars, they made an about-turn and raced back across to the landing site. From there it was onwards back to the Julius Fucik for the hovercraft. They were on their way to pick up more men though unaware that by the time they reached there, the massive barge carrier would have a smouldering hole in its side.


Captain Arkady Semyonovich Sorokin was leading the 6th Company. His men had come out of hovercraft #2 and he was right behind them. As he ran forwards, one of those BMD-1s from inside came out at speed too. It nearly ran him down! The vehicle commander had his own mission to perform with the fire support given to Sorokin’s men but the damn fool almost killed him.

“Idiot!” Sorokin screamed pointless at the rear of the vehicle as it pushed on ahead with its cannon firing. There was plenty of other noise too. Sorokin’s men were engaging the Americans.

There was a company of US Marines as well as a platoon-sized detachment of US Air Force security police at Keflavik. The pre-mission briefing had covered their numbers, weapons and expected defensive positions. Sorokin had carefully listened to all of that and, like the three other company commanders, been given their own detailed task. They had been shown on the maps exactly where they would be deposited. From there, all four companies were to make separate attacks into Keflavik to overcome the defenders and seize certain objectives within. This wasn’t Sorokin’s first battle. He had expected it to be a mess away from the calmness of the planning room back aboard ship. As long as he and his men followed their orders, and everyone else did too, it should all work out in the end though. They were engaging an unprepared opponent with far superior numbers and with excellent fire support.

The 6th Company was fast in the firing line. Sorokin sought to control the battle. He was coordinating the advances made by his dismounted men as they moved forward along with the BMD-1s tasked directly towards them. Each platoon covered the other as they attacked. The perimeter fence was crossed – parts of it were blown apart – and the men entered the grounds of the airbase.

Explosions, gunfire, screams and shouts all came to his ears. The smell of burning jet fuel ravaged the insides of his nose. Sorokin saw men fall down dead yet others running onwards and fighting. He himself shoot at several men, unable to tell if he got two of them yet certain he killed another. The Americans put up a fight but it was disorganised and they were either killed where they stood or chased when they ran.

The 6th Company rapidly achieved the vast majority of its objectives and took very few casualties while doing so. Sorokin was carried forth among the furore of the fight.


Returning to the Julius Fucik, the Kalmars were waved off. There were more men aboard waiting to be picked up: three rifle companies who would clamber aboard a trio of the hovercraft from nets supposed to be attached for them to do so while into the fourth Kalmar men from one of the heavy weapons companies (carrying more mortars, RPGs, missile-launchers and machine guns) were meant to go. This would have formed the second wave of the 234th Guards’ assault and be brought into to provide a mopping-up force for any resistance holding out at Keflavik. That second wave wasn’t needed but if it had been, it wouldn’t have come by the Kalmars.

The hovercraft couldn’t be loaded due to the several attacks made upon the Julius Fucik. There had first been a Harpoon missile strike and then a pair of F-15s had conducted two separate low-level passes firing their guns. The deaths incurred during the attacks made by the F-15s rather than the damage which the missile fired from the P-3 Orion caused this. Too many of the crew were dead. Those who had survived were tasked away from loading operations to keeping the ship afloat so it would make port. The top of the Keflavik Peninsula was being rounded and the ship was soon to start heading eastwards across to the harbour at Hafnarfjordur. There was still all of that cargo aboard along with the paratroopers. Therefore, orders came for the Kalmars to follow the Julius Fucik as it went to the harbour chosen for docking rather than for them to do anything really useful. The plan had looked perfect on paper but this was war and the unexpected would always crop up.

Hafnarfjordur was a small port which lay between Keflavik and Iceland’s capital Reykjavik. There were already other paratroopers there. In the spaces on the weather deck of the Julius Fucik where barges could have been, a pair of Mil-8 assault transport helicopters had been hidden under tarpaulin. There had been effort made to camouflage what was underneath them from distant observation using metal poles to create a different shape. When the Kalmar’s true identity had been revealed, so too had been those of the helicopters. The Mi-8s had been quickly readied for action. The first one had flown off the ship and headed for Hafnarfjordur laden with its human cargo. The flight of the other had been delayed first by a mechanical issue and then when the captain of the ship had performed the wonderful manoeuvre which he had to lessen the damage from the Harpoon hit. It was just about to fly when hundreds of 20mm shells from the F-15s had smashed into the Julius Fucik. Exploding while on deck, the crew and passengers – seventeen men – were all killed in the fireball which once was that helicopter. Those passengers were men from a GRU intelligence team on their way to provide rapid exploitation of real-time intelligence gained from captured equipment, documents and personnel at Keflavik.

The first helicopter missed all of that ‘drama’. It landed a platoon of riflemen (from the 8th Company; the one tasked for shipboard defensive missions) at Hafnarfjordur and then afterwards stayed airborne. It undertook the tasks set for the two of them yet did so alone now. That was to provide airborne reconnaissance, aid in communications relay and also to provide an armed overwatch. That Mi-8 was well-armed and in the skies above the smashed-up and fought-over Keflavik.


Junior Sergeant Sergey Revmirovich Govorkov – sometimes known among his comrades ‘Savely’ or at other times ‘Furious’ – was aboard that surviving helicopter. He was assigned to the 234th Guards’ reconnaissance platoon yet hadn’t been sent either aboard the Kalmars to Djupivogur Cove nor dropped off at Hafnarfjordur either. The regimental commander had personally selected him and a lieutenant to stay aboard the Mi-8 to be part of the aerial reconnaissance team. With a radio and a pair of binoculars, Savely and Lieutenant Kokorin were the eyes in the sky during the assault made to capture Keflavik.

This was important, they had been told, and they could do more up here than be down on the ground.

Savely would have rather been down below. He would have much preferred to be in the thick of the action taking place to take the airbase. There was a fight taking place there. However, he was being thrown around in the back of the helicopter like he was and away from that. Several firings had been made upon the Mi-8 from below with gunfire aimed upwards – thankfully no missiles – and each time that came, the pilot would unexpectedly turn either left or right, or go up or down with no warning given. Savely had been involved in many air assault operations during the fight against the dushman in Afghanistan where helicopters had dodged fire so this wasn’t something new… but it wasn’t fun either!

What Savely could see when he looked out of the windows in the passenger cabin wasn’t that much. There was thick black smoke lingering above Keflavik. When below, in and above the smoke, there was little to make out properly. The wild manoeuvring didn’t help yet that wasn’t the real issue here. The battlefield below was too complicated. Kokorin kept asking Savely what he would see and if he could understand it better than he could but there wasn’t much of an answer that he could give beyond a ‘maybe, sir’. Direct air intervention from the Mi-8 with its carried rockets pods and mounted machine guns wasn’t called upon. The riflemen of the 234th Guards didn’t need it. They had their own fire support down there. It wasn’t that type of fight for them, Savely understood. They were fighting across open ground where the airbase was with free fields of fire. If it had been mountainous terrain to fight over, with an enemy like the dushman, then the helicopter, and him too, could have been useful.

Kokorin finally did see something of significance though. “Sergeant, come look at this. Is that the field headquarters for those Yankee marines burning there?”

It took Savely a few seconds to figure out where the officer with him meant. He recalled the maps and the latest photographs he had seen. The secret agents who had been here in the days before the war started, GRU Spetsnaz operatives who’d walked into Keflavik and took their pictures without anyone stopping them, had located the command post for the US Marines. Kokorin was pointing at the right building.

“That is it, I think, sir.” Savely had his binoculars focused on the building. “It looks like… oh… yob tvoyu mat!” The curse was directed at the un-listening pilot who’d just swung the Mi-8 away. Savely saw tracers rising from the ground moments later and that explained why, but still, this was ridiculous.

“It is it.” Kokorin seemed sure. He got on the radio and called in that the primary opponent on the ground down there had their headquarters knocked out. Savely wasn’t so sure if the issue there was as important as the officer believed it to be but there you go. His lieutenant believed so and called it in with the urgency that he did.

[lordroel]

Jan 12, 2019 19:38:54 GMT James G said:

This is a short story which I have written. I've been thinking about this for sometime.
It is based upon the work of Tom Clancy (RIP) in his novel Red Storm Rising. I have expanded upon the battle presented in the book and tried not to deviate from it at all in scope and details.
There is an overview through the story and then three character perspectives. Some notes are at the bottom too.
Enjoy.

Nice work James G, this gives me the urge to create a thread about Red Storm Rising and then flesh it out as it has so much in it that people can disuse.

[James G]

Fired from Tupolev-16 and Tupolev-22M bombers flying from the Kola to launch points off Iceland, the Keflavik Peninsula area had been battered by those waves of land-attack cruise missiles. They had been aimed at fixed targets all over the general area to not so much destroy the place – the Soviets wanted it as a functioning airbase post-assault after all – but rather to quickly smash resistance less American demolitions take place to do real damage. The majority of these missiles didn’t strike their targets perfectly. Failure to gain perfect accuracy ranged from missing those targets by a few metres to hundreds of meters. Sometimes this mattered, sometimes this didn’t. Exploding while in the sky, at various low-level altitudes, caused the detonations to scatter shrapnel everywhere which caused immense casualties away from direct blasts effects. The command post of the company of US Marines assigned to defend Keflavik had been the target of one of those missiles whose accuracy was only a little bit off (nine metres didn’t matter that much) while the civilian air terminal was somewhere hit with a wave of shrapnel instead of gutted by fire.

Keflavik was an airport as well as an airbase. Civilian aircraft from all over the world came to the airport either as a stopover or a destination. There had long been the issue that the Americans had raised with the Icelandic government over visitors to the airport wandering around at will to the very edges of the cordoned-off military parts but also given free reign to do anything they wished while in Iceland when it was clear that so many of them were Soviet spies on reconnaissance tasks. The Icelandics had refused to believe that there was that level of hostile military activity. Iceland was a peaceful nation! Iceland was also a member of NATO, a country with no armed forces and a strategic airbase on its soil: that was how the Soviets viewed the country.

There were fifteen men carrying Danish, Finnish and Swedish passports who had arrived at Keflavik a week before the war began. They had come in individually but met up once at the hotel where they were all staying in within Reykjavik. Acting as tourists, they had travelled through the Reykjavik-Keflavik area and collected weapons and equipment waiting for them. These men were Spetsnaz. When the cruise missiles came in and the Julius Fucik launched those hovercraft, the Spetsnaz team went into action. They hit the defences where they were weakest and those were the Icelandic police at Keflavik’s airport terminal. The facility was secured quickly and the men were moving on the aircraft control tower where the US Air Force now had their people after the civilian control staff had been ordered out when Keflavik was shut to non-military flights.

One of those cruise missiles exploded at the least opportune moment. It was off-target and detonated in the sky outside of the terminal building. The Spetsnaz inside were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The glass blew out first, showering them with the contents of so many windows, and then the pressure wave from the detonation brought down much of the building atop them. Eleven of the fifteen men were killed. Such casualties in terms of the dead, and with the four other men all being injured too, meant that the tower mission was a washout. They couldn’t do anything else either due to the state that the survivors were in.

The Soviet Airborne turned up soon enough and found these so-called supermen desperate for their assistance.


Colonel Lebed’s men had won this fight. Keflavik was nearly taken. There was still some mopping up to be done but victory had been gained. The fight had been violent and intense, as all good fights were, but gone faster than he had expected it to. The message came later from the helicopter above – buzzing around and not doing much but drawing fire to be honest – that the US Marines’ CP had been knocked out early yet he personally didn’t consider that a factor in the fight which the 234th Guards, led by him personal on the ground, had won here. It was the fighting skill of his men which had won this.

There were bodies everywhere. Fires raged in scattered locations. Single shots could be heard in places where the wounded enemy were finished off. Lebed’s radio crackled with messages incoming, especially from the major with him on the ground (one of his battalion commanders who was serving as his second-in-command for the multiple rifle companies rather than leading his battalion as one unit) reporting on final progress. Lebed paid attention to all of this but his mind was on the bigger picture.

He’d won Keflavik Airbase. This all was his to savour the honours which would come.

The major reported casualties. The dead numbered a dozen plus at the moment though there would be more to come. Of those dead, Captain Ivanov was among them. Lebed had seen that man die. He’d been standing five meters away when someone shot him dead with a bullet to the forehead. There was an explosion of the captain’s skull and Lebed had been covered in blood, bone and brain matter. It had been unpleasant. Lebed’s radioman, a combat veteran who’d surely seen things worse than that, had thrown up. He’d shot that man a look of disgust: this was war and such sights were expected. Ivanov had been a good man and he’d get a posthumous medal – his wife would be the widow of a Hero of the Soviet Union – like all those who gave their lives valiantly here.

Lebed was expecting a bigger reward than just a medal.

The matter of the torn-up Spetsnaz team was brought to Lebed. The four men who’d survived all needed attention from his overworked medics. He couldn’t help grinning with schadenfreude at their misfortune. They’d come here to take all of the glory but that belonged to him instead. His medical detachment was small and not going to get any bigger for the time being. Lebed had been told that due to an attack made on the Julius Fucik, the second and third waves of his regiment being brought in by hovercraft or helicopter weren’t happening. The second wave would have been more riflemen – which he didn’t now need – but the third had medical personnel along with engineers and others. What could be done for the Spetsnaz would be done but they would be treated with equal priority alongside his own wounded men. If they had an issue with that, the could take that up with the Americans who’d attacked the ship.

As to the Americans, the ones badly-wounded were being shot during the mopping up phase here. It was a matter of mercy killing, nothing sinister. The rest were being secured as POWs. Lebed looked in on that process and found nothing wrong with the treatment given. Others might disagree but they were the defeated opponents of his men. If they got bashed about and relieved of personal possessions, so what? Only the fatally-wounded were being killed. The rest were going to live and get a free flight out of here: for that they should be grateful. If this had been Afghanistan and they had been dushman, then they would be joining the dead rather than being allowed to breathe.

There was some final work here to be done in clearing out individual armed Americans who were held-up in places and securing the place. Lebed left his second-in-command, the eager Major Zhirkov, to do that. He would go to Hafnarfjordur and report to General Andreyev there… that was if the ship which his commander was on, the one which had been shot up, managed to get there that was.


Iceland had no armed forces despite being a full member of the NATO alliance. There were some policemen who had access to weaponry and a militarised coast guard – one which had fought non-fatal conflicts in recent years with their British ‘allies’ – yet no real military units. In the main it was the Americans who formed what was deemed the Iceland Defence Force based at Keflavik though other NATO nations took part on occasion. That was the sole military force based on Iceland in peacetime and it consisted of aircraft flying from the airbase there rather than any major group of armed troops. The security policemen with the US Air Force and the company of US Marines were all that they were to defend Iceland. An oversized battalion of more US Marines, complete with tanks & artillery & helicopters, formed as Marine Amphibious Unit, was due to arrive on Iceland on June 16th. Alas, they weren’t going to be now.

In Reykjavik, KGB personnel poured out of the extensive embassy complex in military uniform and armed too. They took control of the capital where they secured parliamentarians as well as communications. Some casualties came among the natives though resistance was, as they say, futile. Drivers, cooks, cleaners and typists at the embassy were all recent transfers for other personnel and formed a strike team for this mission. The KGB had their lists of important people to detain as well as a long-standing plan. While taking the country’s leaders into custody, they cut off communications from the outside world too when securing the relay stations for telephone and satellite links. Embassies of the countries which the Soviet Union were now at war with which were also inside Reykjavik (smaller ones than the Soviet diplomatic compound) would be dealt with when troops arrived but for now they were silenced.

Hafnarfjordur was a port which sat on the coastal road linking Reykjavik to Keflavik. It was closer to the capital than where the airbase/airport was yet the distances weren’t that great. The few Soviet soldiers here had been dropped off by that helicopter and then left alone. They set up a security zone and enforced that well: a trio of civilians had already been shot. No one else was going to make the same foolish mistake as them in approaching these men. The paratroopers waited for the Julius Fucik. It was a long wait and there were thoughts which entered the minds of some of them as to what would be the situation if the ship didn’t make it though no one put enough thinking into any long-term idea. Regardless, the Julius Fucik, lower in the water than she should have been, turned up in the end. Gravely-wounded, she made harbour. It was a hard docking. The ship would never sail again when grounded on the harbour’s rocky bottom. The men and equipment aboard were here now though. Soviet forces had come here to stay and brought with them everything they would need to do that.


Captain Sorokin caught a ricochet in the ankle during the mopping up phase at Keflavik.

The 6th Company had been ordered by Colonel Lebed to do most of that work while he used the three other companies for other tasks. There were scattered Americans all over the place. Such armed men were to be routed out of hiding spots and given the chance to surrender. If they didn’t, then they would suffer the consequences of such stupidity.

Sorokin was stupid himself though. He went too far forward as some of his men were eliminating a pair of men hidden among the ruins of a hangar which had partially fallen down. If all the BMD-1s hadn’t set off for Hafnarfjordur then he would have used them. However, there they where they were and Sorokin and his men were here. Those Americans had been using their M-16s to cover attempts to take out the other man. Sorokin had his men rush forward following the use of RPGs but one of the two Americans hadn’t been subdued. He let out a stream of bullets which shot off all over the place. Sorokin dove for the ground but one of the bullets caught him after hitting something else, maybe someone else.

“I’ve been shot!”

Sorokin let out a scream afterwards. The pain had been there at first but then more of it came. Throughout his entire body, pain radiating from his ankle shot. He looked down to see if it was still there, sure that such pain could only come from it being shot off. There was blood everywhere.

Was his ankle, and thus his foot, still part of him?

Someone grabbed him under the arms. Sorokin tried to see who it was but to no avail. Whoever it was, they dragged him away and out of the firing line. There was more of that. Whomever was in this hangar, held out until the very end. Sorokin shut his eyes and closed his mouth. A medic was working on him. He just tried to close his mind to it all. He had let himself and everyone down with his emotional display and knew it.

Instead of the fighting ongoing around him, his mind focused on the image of his deceased daughter. Svetlana. His Svetlana killed in that German terror attack against Pskov’s Young Octobrists when they’d been at the Kremlin. Sorokin had hoped to ‘meet’ with some Germans at Keflavik – it was NATO base after all – to avenge her. More than that though, he wanted to see her again… but he didn’t too… not now anyway.

Sorokin passed out.

He awoke an hour later in one of the medical tents. There were dozens of casualties being treated. They told him that he would live and he wouldn’t lose his leg nor anything else. He was badly hurt though and needed more treatment than could be given here. He realised that he’d be leaving Iceland soon. Sorokin would want to stay but he had been stupid in putting himself in the firing line and so he deserved to fly home in disgrace.


At Hafnarfjordur, the Julius Fucik was starting to be off-loaded. There was a lot aboard to come off the ship. The engine rooms and lower compartments had been flooded when the ship was purposefully grounded in the harbour yet the cargo decks were just fine. The barges within them plus the few left on the weather deck were all full of equipment and stores alongside more of that elsewhere aboard. The Julius Fucik was a big ship and could have carried even more than was brought here. Men came off it too, the last of the 234th Guards as well as the divisional commander.

Coming down from Reykjavik was the senior KGB man from the embassy, Petrov. General Andreyev met with him and they exchanged unmeant pleasantries. What was more important as an arrival at Hafnarfjordur was the convoy coming up from Keflavik where the BMD-1s there had arrived making the short drive. The ship was full of more armoured vehicles yet they still had to come off the barges. For now, this armoured component was here. They were sent onwards by the divisional commander though who wanted them to go up to the airport at Reykjavik. Keflavik was still a mess and, while taken, was full of broken American aircraft and also other battle damage. The smaller Reykjavik Airport was fully open. The airlift to bring in the rest of the 76th Guards Airborne Division would take place through there. Soon enough, Keflavik would be fully open though not just yet.

The unloading of the Julius Fucik, the arrival of the KGB head honcho and the passage through of the armoured vehicles were all watched from afar even with those observing not fully understanding all that they were seeing. There were some Americans who’d got away from Keflavik, neither taken prisoner there nor been ‘mopped up’. This was the first day of their long adventure on the run in Iceland.


Sergeant Govorkov was turfed out of the helicopter along with Lieutenant Kokorin. Orders came for it to land at Keflavik and when it did, the Mi-8 was on the ground when above there was a low-flying aircraft in the sky circling the captured base. Told it was an American naval aircraft, Savely searched for a weapon to use against it. His AK-74 wasn’t going to cut it. There was nothing he could find though and no one who might have had a missile-launcher took the moment to fire upon it either.

What the hell was going on here!?

The helicopter was given over to Colonel Lebed. Apparently, the regimental commander was off to Hafnarfjordur. That was what he told Kokorin anyway: he didn’t say anything to Savely. This led him to believe that the commander of the 234th Guards was angry at him for nothing good coming from the flight made in the skies while the battle was going on below. It wasn’t his fault though! Enraged and seeking to lash out, Savely looked for a fight.

He found one.

There was a commotion where some of the American prisoners were. Savely saw it and so did Kokorin as the two of them were looking for Major Zhirkov to report to him. Two men, both Soviet Airborne paratroopers, hit the ground after being punched squarely in the face. A third man went running. Other soldiers raised their rifles just as Savely was.

“Don’t shoot him!”

Kokorin wasn’t someone whom Savely always found impressive in terms of his professionalism which Savely expected from a man entrusted with the position which he was as a reconnaissance officer, but he had a booming and commanding voice: one better than most drill sergeants. Like everyone else, upon that command Savely didn’t shoot.

“Go get him then, Furious. Bring the boxer back here.”

Savely didn’t need telling twice. He shot off after the man and caught up quick. There was cheering behind him. Savely wore a proud smile and, for his watching audience, put on a show for them. He leapt through the air as his final flurry to bring down the prisoner. The man turned on him, trying to punch him. Savely dodged that and hit him back. He hit him a couple of times before the man’s struggles stopped. He then started to drag him back. The cheers got louder.

“Well done.”

“Thank you, sir.” Savely was proud of himself and couldn’t help the grin.

“Let’s tie him up and stick him with the others.”

Savely had gotten his fight and been the hero. He was happy with that. The morning had been frustrating but it had ended well enough.


Iceland was in Soviet hands.

Full and complete control over the whole island would take some time to be fully established but the southwestern corner was fully taken the morning of the invasion. It was down there where an occupier of the island needed to hold securely to manage the rest from. If NATO wanted this island back, they would have to fight for it. That wasn’t expected though. The Soviets aimed for the war to be over by the end of the month, the middle of next month at the latest. The Pskov Division would remain on the island along with the Soviet Air Force fighters sent here in the meantime. The occupation was supposed to be easy, bloodless and finish when the war was won on Soviet terms.

None of that was going to happen though.


Colonel Lebed received his congratulations from General Andreyev. The divisional commander was greatly pleased at the success gained at Keflavik. There was a later minor issue over the casualty numbers which Lebed gave him because they all hadn’t been counted and some paratroopers died from their injuries but it was only minor. Lebed led the 234th Guards through their role as occupation troops waiting for the war to be won and his own glorious future career with the Keflavik victory being the backbone of that. Alas, that wasn’t to be. The US Marines returned to Iceland and in far greater numbers than before. Lebed lost his life leading his men, dying in battle the day before the surrender was made.

Captain Sorokin was told by both Lebed and Andreyev that he hadn’t disgraced himself by getting wounded in the fight for Keflavik. He’d done well! He and his men had preformed as a credit to the Pskov Division and the whole of the Soviet Airborne. He needed medical attention though for his combat wound and that couldn’t come while on Iceland. Sorokin was evacuated out. Later, while recovering back in the Rodina, Sorokin learnt the truth about his little Svetlana. He was given the chance for vengeance and took in when he played a small but vital role following his promotion to major in the coup d’état which eliminated the Soviet leadership.

Sergeant Govorkov survived the fighting on Iceland and was taken prisoner. Savely didn’t enjoy captivity either on Iceland, aboard ship nor when they sent him to Canada. The humiliation as a prisoner of war wasn’t fun. He saw home months later when he was part of a prisoner swap post-war arranged between NATO and the reformed Soviet Union. He found the country he returned to difficult to adjust to especially as a discharged soldier in a nation where they were many former military personnel all seeking employment when there wasn’t much. The adjustment was difficult. However, Savely was a man who could turn disadvantage on his head if given the right amount of luck. Luck came his way. Savely would get into many adventures, live a fruitful life and die an old man in his bed many years later.


The End


Notes
1 – For the hovercraft, in the book, Clancy uses the NATO designation of ‘Lebed’. The Soviets called the hovercraft a ‘Kalmar’. I used the latter due to the identical name of a character in the story. Information on the Lebed/Kalmar can be found here: www.soviethammer.net/img/upload/lebeds.jpg
2 – The ship Julius Fucik is sometimes transliterated as the Yulius Fuchik. Information can be found here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Yulius_Fuchik
3 – Colonel Lebed should need no introduction.
4 – Govorkov – Savely – is a fictional Russian character from several well-known stories and films. He is a Rambo like figure. Information can be found here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savely_Govorkov
5 – Sorokin is from the novel and took place in the assault on Iceland (unseen) and then later was involved in the Moscow Coup to avenge his murdered daughter.

[James G]

Jan 12, 2019 19:46:19 GMT lordroel said:

Jan 12, 2019 19:38:54 GMT James G said:

This is a short story which I have written. I've been thinking about this for sometime.
It is based upon the work of Tom Clancy (RIP) in his novel Red Storm Rising. I have expanded upon the battle presented in the book and tried not to deviate from it at all in scope and details.
There is an overview through the story and then three character perspectives. Some notes are at the bottom too.
Enjoy.

Nice work James G , this gives me the urge to create a thread about Red Storm Rising and then flesh it out as it has so much in it that people can disuse.

Thank you. The whole story is something that can be broken down though it is a bit all over the place when looking it as a TL rather than the novel it is meant to be.

[lordroel]

Jan 12, 2019 19:55:09 GMT James G said:

Jan 12, 2019 19:46:19 GMT lordroel said:

Nice work James G , this gives me the urge to create a thread about Red Storm Rising and then flesh it out as it has so much in it that people can disuse.

Thank you. The whole story is something that can be broken down though it is a bit all over the place when looking it as a TL rather than the novel it is meant to be.

Well Red Storm is a classic novel, while it has many details, a lot is not mentioned and could be filled in so it fits with the novel and maybe a little bit beyond it as this small fanfic shows.

[sandyman]

Great short story most enjoyable.