by Tom Clancy
“Looks kind of hazy to me,” an admiral said around his pipe. “How are we supposed to persuade somebody that this means anything?”
“A good question, sir. Any of these indicators taken in isolation would appear entirely logical in and of itself. What concerns us is why they are all happening at once. The problem of manpower utilization in the Soviet military has been around for generations. The problem of training norms, and integrity in their officer corps, is not exactly new either. What caught my interest was the battery thing. We are seeing the beginnings of what could become a major disruption within the Soviet economy. The Russians plan everything centrally in their economy, and on a political basis as well. The main factory that makes batteries is operating three shifts instead of the usual two, so production is up, but supply in the civilian economy is down. In any case, Admiral, you’re correct. Individually, these things mean nothing at all. It’s only when taken in combination that we see anything to be concerned about.”
“But you’re concerned,” CINCLANT said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Me too, son. What else are you doing about it?”
“We have an inquiry into SACEUR to notify us of anything they think is unusual in the current activities of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. The Norwegians have increased their surveillance in the Barents Sea. We’re starting to get more access to satellite photography of ports and fleet bases. DIA has been informed of our data, and is running its own investigation. More bits and pieces are beginning to show up.”
“What about CIA?”
“DIA is handling that for us through their headquarters at Arlington Hall.”
“When do their spring maneuvers begin?” CINCLANT asked.
“Sir, the annual Warsaw Pact spring exercise—they’re calling it Progress this year—is scheduled to begin in three weeks. There are indications that in keeping with the spirit of detente, the Soviets will invite NATO military representatives to keep an eye on things, and Western news crews as well—”
“I’ll tell you what’s scary about this,” Commander, Naval Surface Forces, Atlantic, grunted. “All of a sudden they’ve started doing what we’ve always asked them to do.”
“Try selling that to the papers,” Commander, Naval Air Forces, Atlantic, suggested.
“Recommendations?” CINCLANT asked his operations officer.
“We’re already running a pretty active training schedule ourselves. I don’t suppose it would hurt to beef that up. Toland, you said that what tipped you to this situation was this battery thing in the civilian economy. Are you looking for other economic disruptions?”
“Yes, sir, we are. That’s DIA’s brief, and my contact in Arlington Hall is also asking CIA to run some additional checks. If I might amplify on this point, gentlemen, the Soviet economy is centrally managed, as I said earlier. Those industrial plans they have arc fairly rigid. They don’t deviate from them lightly, since those deviations tend to have a ripple effect throughout the economy as a whole. ‘Disruption’ may be too strong a word at present—”
“You just have a nasty suspicion,” CINCLANT said. “Fine, Toland, that’s what we pay you for. Good brief.”
Bob took his cue and left. The admirals stayed put to talk things over.
It was a relief to leave. Much as he liked the attention, being examined by senior officials like a tissue culture on a petrie dish could make you old rather quickly. He walked through a covered walkway back to his building, and watched the late arrivals wander about looking for parking places. The grass was greening up. A civilian crew was mowing while another was fertilizing. The shrubbery was already beginning to grow, and he hoped they’d let the bushes expand a bit before they trimmed them back again. Norfolk could be pleasant in the spring, he knew, with the fragrance of azaleas on the salt-laden air. He wondered how pleasant it would be in summer.
“How’d it go?” Chuck asked.
Toland stripped off his jacket and allowed his knees to sag theatrically in front of the Marine. “Pretty well. Nobody snapped my head off.”
“Didn’t want to worry you before, but there’s people in there been known to do that. They say CINCLANT likes nothing better for breakfast than fried commander garnished with diced lieutenant.”
“Big surprise. He’s an admiral, isn’t he? I’ve done briefs before, Chuck.” All Marines thought all sailors were wimps, Toland reminded himself. No sense giving Chuck more encouragement for that view.
“Any conclusions?”
“CINCLANT ops talked about increasing training schedules. I got excused right after that.”
“Good. We ought to have a packet of satellite shots later today. There are some questions coming in from Langley and Arlington. Nothing firm yet, but I think they might be stumbling onto some odd data. If it turns out you’re right, Bob—well, you know how it works.”
“Sure. Somebody closer to D.C. will make The Discovery. Shit, I don’t care about that, Chuck, I want to be wrong! I want this whole friggin’ thing to blow over, then I can go home and play in my garden.”
“Well, maybe I got some good news for you. We got our TV tied into a new satellite receiver. I talked the communications guys into letting us tap into Russian television to catch their evening news. We won’t learn anything hard, but it’s a good way of catching moods. Just tried it out before you got here, and found out Ivan’s running a film festival for all of Sergey Eisenstein’s classics. Tonight, The Battleship Potemkin, followed by all the others, and ending on May 30 with Alexander Nevsky.”
“Oh? I have Nevsky on tape.”
“Yeah, well, they took the original negatives, flew them to EMI in London to make digitalized masters, and rerecorded the original Prokofiev score on a Dolby format. We’ll be making tapes. Your machine VHS or Beta?”
“VHS.” Toland laughed. “Maybe this job has a few bennies after all. So, what new stuff do we have?”
Lowe handed him a six-inch file of documents. Time to get back to work. Toland settled in his chair and began sorting through the papers.
KIEV, THE UKRAINE
“Things are looking better, Comrade,” Alekseyev reported. “Discipline in the officer corps has improved immeasurably. The exercise with 261st Guards went very well this morning.”
“And 173rd Guards?” CINC-Southwest asked.
“They too need further work, but they should be ready in time,” Alekseyev said confidently. “The officers are acting like officers. Now we need to get the privates to act like soldiers. We’ll see when Progress begins. We must have our officers turn away from the usual set-piece choreography and seek realistic engagement scenarios. We can use Progress to identify leaders who cannot adapt to a real combat environment and replace them with younger men who can.” He sat down opposite his commander’s desk. Alekseyev calculated that he was exactly one month behind in his sleep.
“You look weary, Pasha,” CINC-Southwest observed.
“No, Comrade General, I haven’t had the time.” Alekseyev chuckled. “But if I make one more helicopter trip I think I shall sprout wings.”
“Pasha, I want you to go home and not return for twenty-four hours.”
“I—”
“If you were a horse,” the General observed, “you would have broken down by now. This is an order from your commander-in-chief: twenty-four hours of rest. I would prefer that you spend it all sleeping, but that is your affair. Think, Pavel Leonidovich. Were we now engaged in combat operations, you would be better rested—regulations require it, a harsh lesson from our last war with the Germans. I need your talents unhindered—and if you drive yourself too hard now, you won’t be worth a damn when I really need you! I will see you at 1600 tomorrow to go over our plan for the Persian Gulf. You will be clear of eye and straight of back.”
Alekseyev stood. His boss was a gruff old bear, so much like his own father had been. And a soldier’s soldier. “Let the record show that I obey all orders from my commander-in-chief.” Both men laughed. Both needed it.<
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Alekseyev left the office and walked downstairs to his official car. When it arrived at the apartment block a few kilometers away, the driver had to awaken his general.
USS CHICAGO
“Close-approach procedures,” McCafferty ordered.
McCafferty had been tracking a surface ship for two hours, ever since his sonarmen had detected her at a range of forty-four miles. The approach was being made on sonar only, and under the captain’s orders, sonar had not told the fire-control party what they were tracking. For the time being, every surface contact was being treated as a hostile warship.
“Range three-five hundred yards,” the executive officer reported. “Bearing one-four-two, speed eighteen knots, course two-six-one.”
“Up scope!” McCafferty ordered. The attack periscope slid up from its well on the starboard side of the pedestal. A quartermaster’s mate got behind the instrument, dropped the handles in place, and trained it to the proper bearing. The captain sighted the crosshairs on the target’s bow.
“Bearing—mark!”
The quartermaster squeezed the button on the “pickle,” transmitting the bearing to the MK-117 fire-control computer.
“Angle on the bow, starboard twenty.”
The fire-control technician punched the data into the computer. The microchips rapidly computed distances and angles.
“Solution set. Ready for tubes three and four!”
“Okay.” McCafferty stepped back from the periscope and looked over at the exec. “You want to see what we killed?”
“Damn!” The executive officer laughed and lowered the periscope. “Move over, Otto Kretchmer!”
McCafferty picked up the microphone, which went to speakers throughout the submarine. “This is the captain speaking. We just completed the tracking exercise. For anyone who’s interested, the ship we just ‘killed’ is the Universe Ireland, three hundred forty thousand tons’ worth of ultra-large crude-carrier. That is all.” He put the mike back in its cradle.
“XO, critique?”
“It was too easy, skipper,” the executive officer said. “His speed and course were constant. We might have shaved four or five minutes on the target-motion analysis right after we acquired him, but we were looking for a zigzag instead of a constant course. For my money, it’s better to proceed like that on a slow target. I’d say we have things going pretty well.”
McCafferty nodded agreement. A high-speed target like a destroyer might well head directly for them. The slow ones would probably be altering course constantly under wartime conditions. “We’re getting there.” The captain looked over to his fire-control party. “That was well done. Let’s keep it that way.” The next time, McCafferty thought, he’d arrange for sonar not to report a target until it got really close. Then he’d see how fast his men could handle a snapshot engagement. Until then he decided on a strenuous series of computer-simulated engagement drills.
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
“Those are batteries. Okay, it’s confirmed.” Lowe handed over the satellite photographs. A number of trucks were visible, and though most had their loadbeds covered by canvas, the loadbeds of three were exposed to the high-flying satellite. What he saw were the bathtub-shapes of oversized battery cells, and gangs of seamen manhandling them across a pier.
“How old are these shots?” Toland asked.
“Eighteen hours.”
“Would have been useful this morning,” the younger man grumped. “Looks like three Tangos nested together. These are ten-ton trucks. I count nine of them. I checked around, each individual battery cell weighs two hundred eighteen kilograms empty—”
“Ouch. How many to fill up a sub?”
“A lot!” Toland grinned. “We don’t know that, exactly. I found four different estimates, with a thirty-percent spread. It probably differs from ship to ship anyway. The more you build of a design, the more you’re tempted to fool around with it. That’s what we do.” Toland looked up. “We need more access to these.”
“Already taken care of. From here on we’re on the distribution list for all shots of naval sites. What do you think of the activity for the surface ships?”
Toland shrugged. The photographs showed perhaps a dozen surface combatants, ranging from cruisers to corvettes. The decks of all were littered with cables and crates; a large number of men was visible. “You can’t tell much from this. No cranes, so nothing massive was being onloaded, but cranes can move, too. That’s the problem with ships. Everything you need to know about is under cover. All we can tell from these photos is that they’re tied alongside. Anything else is pure supposition. Even with the subs, we’re inferring that they’re loading batteries aboard.”
“Come on, Bob,” Lowe snorted.
“Think about it, Chuck,” Toland replied. “They know what our satellites are for, right? They know what their orbital paths are, and they know when they will be at any given point in space. If they really want to fake us out, how hard is it? If your mission was to fake out satellites, and you knew when they came, you think you might play games with the other guy’s head? We depend too much on these things. They’re useful as hell, sure, but they have their limitations. It’d be nice to get some human intelligence on this.”
POLYARNYY, R.S.F.S.R.
“There’s just something weird about watching a guy pour cement into a ship,” Flynn observed on the ride back to Murmansk. No one had ever told him about ballast.
“Ah, but it can be a beautiful thing!” exclaimed their escort, a junior captain in the Soviet Navy. “Now if only your navies can do the same!”
The small press group that had been allowed to stand on a pier and watch the neutralization of the first two Yankee-class fleet ballistic missile submarines was being carefully managed, Flynn and Calloway noted. They were being driven around in groups of two and three, each group with a naval officer and a driver. Hardly unexpected, of course. Both men were amazed that they were being allowed onto so sensitive a base at all.
“A pity that your president did not allow a team of American officers to observe this,” the escort went on.
“Yeah, I have to agree with you there, Captain,” Flynn nodded. It would have made a much better story. As it was, a Swede and an Indian officer, neither a submariner, had gotten a closer look at what the reporters called the “cement ceremony,” and reported somberly afterward that, yes, cement had been poured into each missile launch tube on the two submarines. Flynn had timed the length of each pour, and would do some checking when he got back. What was the volume of a missile tube? How much cement to fill it? How long to pour the cement? “Even so, Captain, you must agree that the American response to your country’s negotiating position has been extremely positive.”
Through all this, William Calloway kept his peace and stared out the car’s window. He’d covered the Falkland Islands War for his wire service, and spent a lot of time with the Royal Navy, both afloat and in naval shipyards watching preparations for sending the Queen’s fleet south. They were now passing by the piers and work areas for a number of surface warships. Something was wrong here, but he couldn’t quite pin it down. What Flynn did not know was that his colleague often worked informally for the British Secret Intelligence Service. Never in a sensitive capacity—the man was a correspondent, not a spy—but like most reporters he was a shrewd, observant man, careful to note things that editors would never allow to clutter up a story. He didn’t even know who the station chief in Moscow was, but he could report on this to a friend in Her Majesty’s embassy. The data would find its way to the right person.
“So what does our English friend think of Soviet shipyards?” the captain inquired with a broad smile.
“Far more modern than ours,” Calloway replied. “And I gather you don’t have dockyard unions, Captain?”
The officer laughed. “We have no need for unions in the Soviet Union. Here the workers already own everything.” That was the standard Party line, both reporters noted. Of course.
�
�Are you a submarine officer?” the Englishman inquired.
“No!” the captain exclaimed. A hearty laugh. Russians are big on laughs when they want to be, Flynn thought. “I come from the steppes. I like blue sky and broad horizons. I have great respect for my comrades on submarines, but I have no wish to join them.”
“My feelings exactly, Captain,” Calloway agreed. “We elderly Brits like our parks and gardens. What sort of sailor are you?”
“I have shore assignment now, but my last ship was Leonid Brezhnev, icebreaker. We do some survey work, and also make a way for merchant ships along the Arctic Coast to the Pacific.”
“That must be a demanding job,” Calloway said. “And a dangerous one.” Keep talking, old boy . . .
“It demands caution, yes, but we Russians are accustomed to cold and ice. It is a proud task to aid the economic growth of your country.”
“I could never be a sailor,” Calloway went on. He saw a curious look in Flynn’s eyes: The hell you couldn’t . . . “Too much work, even when you’re in port. Like now. Are your shipyards always this busy?”
“Ah, this is not busy,” the captain said without much thought.
The man from Reuters nodded. The ships were cluttered, but there was not that much obvious activity. Not so many people moving about. Many cranes were still. Trucks were parked. But the surface warships and auxiliaries were cluttered as if . . . He checked his watch. Three-thirty in the afternoon. The workday was hardly over. “A great day for East-West détente,” he said to cover his feelings. “A great story for Pat and me to tell our readers.”
“This is good.” The captain smiled again. “It is time we had real peace.”
The correspondents were back in Moscow four hours later, after the usual uncomfortable ride on an Aeroflot jet with its Torquemada seats. The two reporters walked to Flynn’s car—Calloway’s was still hors de combat with mechanical problems. He grumbled at having gotten a Soviet car instead of bringing his Morris over with him. Bloody impossible to get parts.