lots of 'shine," he concluded with a grin. The sun had risen for the last time nearly five weeks before, and wouldn't truly set for another five. They were so close to the North Pole here in Iceland that in summer the sun wandered in a lazy circle around the azure sky, dipping fractionally below the northwestern horizon but never truly setting. It was something that took getting used to.
"Fighter weather," agreed Lieutenant Colonel Bill Jeffers, commander of the 57th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, the "Black Knights," most of whose F-15 Eagle interceptors were sitting in the open a bare hundred yards away. The pilots were in those fighters, waiting. They'd been waiting for ninety minutes now. Two hours before, they'd been warned of a large number of Soviet aircraft taking off from their tactical air bases on the Kola Peninsula, destination unknown.
Keflavik was always a busy place, but for the last week it had been a madhouse. The airport was a combination Navy and Air Force base and a busy international airport at which many airliners stopped to refuel.
The past week had seen this traffic supplemented by grim tactical fighters transiting from the United States and Canada to Europe, cargo aircraft transporting overloads of critical equipment, and airliners returning to America crowded with pale tourists and dependents of the military men who were now on the battle line. The same had happened to Keflavik. Three thousand wives and children had been evacuated. The base facility was cleared for action. If the Soviets kicked off the war that seemed to be springing from the ground like a new volcano, Keflavik was as ready as it could be.
"With your permission, Colonel, I want to check a few things at the tower. This forecast is pretty solid, for the next twelve hours anyway."
"Jet stream?" Colonel Jeffers looked up from the yard-square chart of isobars and wind-trees.
"Same place it's been all week, sir, no sign at all of a change."
"Okay, go ahead."
Edwards put on his cap and walked out the door. He wore a thin blue officer's jacket over his Marine-style fatigues, pleased that the Air Force was still pretty casual about dress codes. His jeep held the rest of his "battle gear," a .38 revolver and pistol belt, and the field jacket that went with the camouflage gear everybody had been issued three days before. They'd thought of everything, Edwards reflected as he started up the jeep for the quarter-mile drive to the tower. Even the flak jacket.
Keflavik had to get hit, Edwards reminded himself. Everybody knew it, prepared for it, and then tried not to think about it. This most isolated of all NATO outposts on the western coast of Iceland was the barred gate to the North Atlantic. If Ivan wanted to fight a naval war, Iceland had to be neutralized. From Keflavik's four runways flew eighteen Eagle interceptors, nine sub-hunting P-3C Orions, and deadliest of all, three E-3A AWACS birds, the eyes of the fighters. Two were operating now; one was circling twenty miles northeast of Cape Fontur, the other directly over Ritstain, 150 miles north of Keflavik. This was most unusual. With only three AWACS birds available, keeping one constantly in the air was difficult enough. The commander of the Iceland defense forces was taking all of this very seriously. Edwards shrugged. If there really were Backfires bearing down on them, there was nothing else for him to do. He was the brand-new squadron meteorological officer, and he'd just given his weather report.
Edwards parked his jeep in an officer's slot next to the tower and decided to take his .38 with him. The lot was not fenced, and there was no telling if someone might want to "borrow" his handgun. The base was crawling with a company of Marines and another of Air Force police, all looking very nasty with their M-16 rifles and web belts festooned with grenades. He hoped they'd be careful with those. Late the next day, a whole Marine Amphibious Unit was due to arrive to beef up base security, something that should have been done a week earlier but had been delayed, partly because of the Icelandic sensitivity regarding large numbers of armed foreigners, but mainly due to the unreal speed with which this crisis had developed. He trotted up the outside stairs and found the tower's control room crowded with eight people rather than the usual five.
"Hi, Jerry," he said to the boss, Navy lieutenant Jerry Simon. The Icelandic civilian controllers who usually