by Robert Gandt
“Where’s the sub now?”
“We don’t know. The ASW commander in the Arkansas is certain that it’s no longer in our periphery.”
“If they don’t know where he is, how do they know he’s not just waiting somewhere to take another shot?”
Vitale pointed to the window. “Look out there. What you’re seeing is the biggest sub hunt in modern history. When that Kilo boat so much as turns a blade—and he’ll have to very soon—they’re going to kill him.”
“How’d he get away after firing his torpedoes?”
The operations officer just shook his head. “One of the dirty little secrets about anti-submarine warfare is that the old diesel/electrics, which we gave up years ago, by the way, are the stealthiest boats in the world. The sub skipper is either brilliant or incredibly lucky. He took an obsolete submarine and a mercenary crew and managed to get inside the most powerful battle group in the world.”
“And then escape,” added Boyce.
“Maybe there’s a lesson in this,” said Fletcher. He walked around from the end of the table and gazed out the window. “Our technology and our tactics evolved during the Cold War to battle the Soviet Union. Somewhere along the way we forgot how to fight an enemy like Al-Fasr with old-fashioned weapons.”
“Sort of like getting knifed when you thought you were in a gun fight,” Boyce said.
“Something like that. A lot of mistakes were made in this campaign.” Fletcher stood with his hands clasped behind him, his back to the group at the table. “Most of them mine.”
A hush fell over the room. Morse was doodling on a notepad. Vitale’s mouth was half open. Stickney looked mesmerized. They were all watching Fletcher.
“The biggest mistake,” Fletcher went on, “was in letting the military chain of command be subverted by outside influences. That was my error. It’s one I will carry responsibility for to my grave.”
The silence hung in the compartment like a shroud. None of them had ever heard a flag officer bare his soul like Fletcher was doing.
“When they convene my court martial,” said Fletcher, “I will testify that it was my overweening ambition and my acquiescence to. . .” he paused, and everyone waited for him to mention Babcock, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “. . . my inappropriate deference to a non-military official.”
He turned and looked at them. “You all have brilliant careers ahead of you. I want you to remember what happened here so that you don’t have to repeat it. It seems that we go through something like this every generation or so—a short circuit in our military leadership. It happened in Vietnam, with politicians determining our targets. In Iran with the mismanaged hostage rescue. It happened in Lebanon when officials in Washington presumed to manage an air strike against the Syrians.”
Fletcher went back to his seat. “And history will show that it happened in Yemen.”
Stickney was the first to speak up. “ Admiral, may I ask the status of Mr. Babcock? The last I heard, he was—”
“In his quarters.” Fletcher glanced at his watch. “Within the hour, he will be flown off to Dubai, and then be on his way back to Washington where, no doubt, he will arrange for me to be relieved of this command.”
Maxwell caught the sardonic note in Fletcher’s voice. It was odd, he thought. In the past two days he had actually come to like the white-haired admiral—the same Fletcher whom he had written off as an empty suit. At the eleventh hour the admiral had reached deep inside himself and found a source of inner steel. The tragedy of Langhorne Fletcher was that it happened too late.
“You’re dismissed, gentlemen,” Fletcher said. “You have my thanks for a job well done.”
As the officers headed for the door, he added, “Commander Maxwell, before you leave, may I have a word with you?”
<>
The SCIF—Sensitive Compartmental Information Facility—was located amidships, down in the spaces of the Reagan’s Surface Plot, called Alpha Sierra. Two Marine sentries guarded the entrance. The bulkheads of the compartment were specially treated and padded to prevent bugging or passive emissions monitoring.
At his work table inside the SCIF, FBI agent Adam Korchek tilted back in his steel desk chair and rubbed his eyes. He hated this place—the claustrophobic sterility of the windowless compartment, Halite lamps glaring from the overhead, the drab gray furniture. One bulkhead was lined with tape reels and disc players. Across the compartment six cryptologists, linguists, and intelligence analysts were laboring at their consoles.
For the past thirteen hours Korchek and Dick Mosely, the CIA officer who specialized in Arab terrorist organizations, had been analyzing the transcribed material that the marines had brought from Al-Fasr’s base compound. Most of the data was encrypted, which took time to decode and translate.
It was hard work, but by the time he’d worked through the third stack of transcriptions—the data from the optical storage unit in the Al-Fasr compound—Korchek knew he had struck paydirt. He now had half a dozen recorded SatComm conversations between Al-Fasr and someone who was obviously in an influential position. Though the official’s name was never explicitly used, it was clear in the transcription that he and Al-Fasr were more than well acquainted.
As he sifted through the piles of transcriptions, something still troubled Korchek. There were these snippets of encrypted one-way transmissions and received messages. Some were clearly intended for a clandestine warship, relaying information and points of intended movement of the Reagan and its battle group. From the content of the messages, Korchek deduced that they were intended for a submarine, presumably the Kilo class boat that had attacked the carrier.
Were these from the same the same source as the SatComm exchanges?
By his nature and experience, Korchek was a cynical man. He had no wife, no immediate family except for a pair of brothers in Chicago whom he despised. His early years in law enforcement had imbued him with a distrust of his fellow man, and it was this trait that had served him best in the field of counter intelligence. Like a bloodhound, Korchek had a knack of sniffing out the tiniest whiff of perfidy.
Now he was sniffing. He didn’t have the scent yet, but he knew that he was getting close.
Korchek returned to his piles of transcriptions. For another two hours he pored over them, puzzling out the meaning of the tiny encrypted snippets, looking for a pattern.
Suddenly it jumped off the page, jolting him like a hot spark. Of course! Korchek sat upright in the chair, staring at the piles of transcribed messages. It made perfect sense. Nothing solid, nothing provable, at least not yet. But he had the scent clearly in his nostrils.
He rose and went over the watch officer, a pudgy lieutenant commander in khakis. He gave the officer a pink memo sheet with a handwritten name on it. “Download the background investigation file on this man. For my eyes only.”
The watch officer looked annoyed. “Is this urgent?” he said. “I’m pretty busy getting—”
“Do you want me get the operations officer on the line? Just fucking do it and quit wasting time.”
The watch officer was not accustomed to being insulted by civilians. He glowered at Korchek for a second. Grudgingly, he picked up the pink sheet and read it.
A look of shock passed over his face. Nodding his head in amazement, he swung his chair around to his desk keyboard and began typing in the file download order.
<>
Fletcher’s eyes bored into him. “Why didn’t you tell me that your father was Harlan Maxwell?”
Maxwell was taken aback. “Ah, it wasn’t relevant, Admiral. I don’t bring up my father’s name in connection with my own career.”
Fletcher nodded. “Knowing you as I do now, I understand. It so happens I’m well acquainted with your father. Served under him when he had the Second Fleet. He was a very good officer, a hard man to work for sometimes, rather blunt and fixed in his opinions. But you always knew where you stood with Harlan Maxwell. Sort of like you, I suspect.”
Ma
xwell kept his silence, wondering where this was going.
Fletcher pulled an envelope from his shirt pocket. “This came in on the net the day before yesterday. It seems that your father was worried and wanted to know if you were okay. I didn’t answer, because at the time you weren’t okay. You had been shot down in Yemen.”
Maxwell felt an old familiar emptiness as he listened to Fletcher. How long had it been? More than two years since he and his father had communicated, and then only to exchange terse Christmas greetings. It had been that way for most of his adult life, this discordant relationship. The elder Maxwell could never stop being the Admiral—the senior presence in his life. He could never stop being the rebellious son.
Now the Admiral was worried about his son.
“I’m probably violating a confidence by telling you this,” Fletcher said. “In his note, Harlan asked me not to let you know. But I find it troubling, such a disconnect between father and son.”
Disconnect. There was an understatement, thought Maxwell. He and his father had been disconnected since the day Sam—that was before he received the call sign “Brick”—announced that he had declined his appointment to the U. S. Naval Academy.
His father, an academy grad and the son and grandson of academy alumni, was apoplectic. The chill lasted until Sam graduated from Rensselaer and took his commission in the U. S. Navy.
The next major rift occurred when Brick, then a test pilot, left active Navy duty to become an astronaut. To his father, it was a breach of tradition. Maxwells were seagoing naval officers, not space cowboys.
No one, however, stood taller or prouder in the viewing area than Harlan Maxwell on the day his son lifted off in the shuttle Atlantis. It was his first flight into space and, as it turned out, his last, which caused the next rift between the Maxwells.
His father had not spoken to him since he resigned from NASA.
“My father and I don’t see eye to eye,” Brick heard himself saying.
“I never had a son, just daughters,” said Fletcher. “But I know something about trying to live up to someone else’s expectations. My own father was an admiral, you know.”
Maxwell nodded. He knew that he liked Fletcher.
“I’m going to answer Harlan’s letter,” Fletcher said. “You know what I’m going to say?”
Maxwell shook his head.
“I’m going to tell him that if I had a son like you, I would be the proudest man in the world. If he doesn’t immediately sit down and tell you he loves you, he doesn’t deserve to be a father.”
Maxwell didn’t know what to say. Old emotions were whirling around inside him like a storm. “Sir, I don’t—”
“Do the same thing. Go write a letter to your old man. Tell him you love him. Trust me, son, he wants to hear that more than anything.”
Maxwell fought back a well of tears. He nodded and said, “Yes, sir. I’ll do that.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Destiny
Gulf of Aden
1905, Thursday, 20 June
“Range increasing on the primary target, Captain.”
Manilov looked at the technician on the sonar console. “Bearing and distance?”
“085 degrees, 5,200 meters on the primary. The two trailing targets, same bearing, 3,500 meters.”
Manilov acknowledged with a headshake. The battle group was moving away to the east. He had managed to stymie the searchers by concealing the Mourmetz directly beneath the huge mass of the aircraft carrier, then transitioning to a totally silent operating mode. For over six hours they had been concealed here, emitting no signal, registering no audible sound. The boat was only partially stable, and he had been compelled to use his crew for balance, moving them fore and aft, to help maintain the Mourmetz’s attitude.
In every direction he could hear the sub-hunters scouring the Gulf of Aden. They had failed to find the Ilia Mourmetz.
Now he could strike again.
Five thousand meters was still a suitable range for the SET-16 torpedo. He would not ascend to periscope depth. From where they were, at a depth of 210 meters, he would fire a salvo of four torpedoes.
Perhaps it would be enough to kill the Reagan. If he was lucky, he would strike a vital organ of the carrier.
“What are your intentions, Captain?”
Manilov glanced up at his executive officer, Dimitri Popov. The young officer had proven himself to be a capable second-in-command. With his cool, unruffled composure during the tense hours of combat, he had earned the respect of the men.
All his crew, even the lowest ranking enlisted seamen, had discharged their duties honorably. Since they had entered the Gulf of Aden, he himself had acquired a feeling for these men that was very much like familial love. In their crisp, unswerving response to his orders, he knew that he had their total trust.
Even in his most bizarre fantasies, he could not have imagined a sweeter finish to an otherwise dreary career. The epic adventure they had undertaken was the stuff of Russian fables. He and his gallant young crew had sailed into the teeth of an impossibly powerful foe. They had kept their appointment with destiny.
Popov was waiting for an answer.
“I think we should complete our mission, Mr. Popov.”
The executive officer’s expression didn’t change. “The men will follow your orders, whatever you decide, Captain.”
“And you, Mr. Popov?”
Popov brought his heels together with a click. “I am at your command, sir.”
Manilov nodded, touched by the display of loyalty. He gazed around the control compartment at the tense young faces—Antonin, Popov, Borodin, Keretsky—the eager warrants, the conscripted sailors. Each trusted him with his life. Each had his own soaring hopes, aspirations, dreams of the future. Many had left young wives and infant children back in Mother Russia.
They had a right to live.
For the first time since their voyage began, Manilov’s sense of ultimate destiny was tempered by another emotion. It nibbled at him now, buzzing in his brain like a gnat.
They trust you with their lives.
The men had done everything he had asked of them. More, actually. None had volunteered for a suicide mission. They were mercenaries, not martyrs. They had taken unthinkable risks, completed their assigned mission with skill and daring. It was not their fault the damned obsolete SET-16 torpedoes had failed to kill the Reagan, not their doing that the hull of the carrier had been constructed to resist conventional warheads.
Ah, if the Mourmetz’s torpedoes had been tipped with nuclear warheads, it would have been a different story. The invincible Reagan would be vaporized in a cloud of steam.
“5,400 meters, Captain, range increasing. We still have a valid firing solution.”
Four more torpedoes. He could expect at least two to strike the primary target. And then what? The damned ship still might not sink. The anti-submarine force hovering around the Reagan would pounce like a pack of jackals. The Mourmetz would be doomed.
So be it. It’s your destiny.
Perhaps. But was it theirs? Did he have the right to take them with him into eternity—all in pursuit of some mystical Russian fate?
No.
He barked out the order: “Forward five knots, come starboard to 170 degrees. Maintain 220 meters.”
Every head in the control compartment swung toward him.
“The torpedo tubes are loa fded and ready, Captain.” said Popov.
“Seal them. The war is over for us. We’re departing the area.”
A buzz of whispered conversation spread through the control compartment. He could see jubilation on their faces. The war is over for us.
“May I ask where we’re heading, sir?” Popov asked. His eyes were shining.
“Around the horn, down the east coast of Africa. Near Mombasa. That is our best escape route. We’ll pick the exact spot after we’ve established contact ashore.”
Beyond that, he had no idea. They would have to scuttle the Mourmetz, w
hich would be painful for him. They had no choice. The boat was about to become the object of the greatest submarine hunt—
“Aircraft overhead,” called out Borodin from his console. Then, seconds later, “Sonobuoys in the water.”
Silence filled the control compartment. Manilov rushed over to Borodin’s display.
“Contact,” the sonar technician called out. “They’re pinging us!”
“Depth 250 meters,” Manilov ordered. “Slow to three knots, left 090 degrees.”
“It’s a large aircraft,” Borodin reported. “Four engines, turboprop.”
Manilov frowned. A P-3 Orion. That was troubling. Probably from one of their bases in the Persian Gulf. The P-3 carried a crew of twelve or so, and had the most sophisticated airborne sub-tracking system in the world.
His options were limited. He could stop forward motion and remain motionless here beneath the thermal layer, adrift in the depths like a suspended carcass. Their survival would depend on the sonar-deflecting anechoic tiles on the Mourmetz’s hull. Or he could turn and try to slip out of the search area, returning to the littoral waters off the Yemeni coastline. Or he could run for the rocky shoreline of Socotra, the island twenty miles south in the Arabian Sea.
He didn’t like any of the choices. The P-3 was just the advance scout. Within minutes, the entire anti-submarine force of the Reagan battle group would join the hunt.
The thought struck Manilov that he could still fire his torpedoes. The Reagan was still within range. The source of the torpedoes would be instantly clear. The sub-hunters would have a positive location on the Mourmetz.
Again he thought of his gallant young crew. No, he decided. They deserved to live.
<>
“MAD, MAD, MAD!” called out the petty officer running the magnetic anomaly detection gear. He stabbed the position lock key on his panel, fixing the exact location of the contact in the Orion’s inertial guidance navigational computer.