by Tom Clancy
And then the Russians will change their tactics again, Toland thought. Well, at least we have them reacting to us for a change.
FÖLZIEHAUSEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
After eight hours of vicious fighting that saw artillery fire dropping on the forward command post, Beregovoy and Alekseyev stopped the Belgian counterattack. But stopping them wasn’t enough. They’d advanced six kilometers before running into a solid wall of tanks and missiles, and the Belgian artillery was laying heavy intermittent fire on the main road supporting the Russian advance toward Hameln. Certainly they were preparing for another attack, Alekseyev thought. We have to hit them first—but with what? He needed his three divisions to advance on the British formations standing before Hameln.
“Every time we break through,” Major Sergetov observed quietly, “they slow us down and counterattack. This was not supposed to happen.”
“A splendid observation!” Alekseyev snarled, then regained his temper. “We expected that a breakthrough would have the same effect as in the last war against the Germans. The problem is these new light antitank missiles. Three men and a jeep”—he even used the American title for it—“can race along the road, set up, fire one or two missiles, be gone before we can react, then repeat the process a few hundred meters away. Defensive firepower was never so strong before, and we failed to appreciate how effectively a handful of rear-guard troops can slow down an advancing column. Our security is based on movement”—Alekseyev explained the basic lesson from tank school—“a mobile force under these conditions cannot afford to be slowed down. A simple breakthrough is not enough! We must blast a massive hole in their front and race at least twenty kilometers to be free of these roving missile-crews. Only then can we switch over to true mobile doctrine.”
“You say we cannot win?” Sergetov had begun to have his own doubts, but did not expect to hear them from his commander.
“I say what I did four months ago, and I was correct: this campaign of ours has become a war of attrition. For the moment, technology has defeated the military art, ours and theirs. What we’re doing now is seeing who runs out of men and arms first.”
“We have more of both,” Sergetov said.
“That is true, Ivan Mikhailovich. I have many more young men to throw away.” More casualties were arriving at the field hospital. The line of trucks running in and out never stopped.
“Comrade General, I received a message from my father. He wishes to know how things progress at the front. What should I tell him?”
Alekseyev walked away from his aide for a minute to ponder that.
“Ivan Mikhailovich, tell the Minister that NATO opposition is far more serious than we expected. The key now is supplies. We need the best information we can get on NATO’s supply situation and a determined effort to worsen that situation. We have received little information on how well the naval operations to kill NATO convoys are going. I need that in order to evaluate NATO’s endurance. I don’t want analyses out of Moscow. I want the raw data.”
“You are unhappy with what we get from Moscow?”
“We were told that NATO was politically divided and militarily uncoordinated. How would you evaluate that report, Comrade Major?” Alekseyev asked sharply. “I can’t go through military channels with that sort of request, can I? Write up your travel orders. I want you back here in thirty-six hours. I’m sure we’ll still be here.”
ICELAND
“They should be there in half an hour.”
“Roger that, Doghouse,” Edwards replied. “Like I said, no Russians visible. We haven’t seen any aircraft all day. There was some movement on the road west of us six hours ago. Four jeep-type vehicles. Too far off to tell what was in them, and they were southbound. The coast is clear. Over.”
“Okay, let us know when they get there.”
“Will do. Out.” Edwards killed the radio. “People, we got some friends coming in.”
“Who and when, skipper?” Smith asked at once.
“Didn’t say, but they’ll be here in half an hour. Must be an air drop.”
“They come take us out?” Vigdis asked.
“No, they can’t land a plane here. Sarge, you got any opinions?”
“Same as yours, I ’spect.”
The plane was early, and for once Edwards saw it first. The C-130 Hercules four-engine transport skimmed down from the northwest, only a few hundred feet over the eastern slope of the ridge they were on. A stiff breeze blew from the west as four small shapes emerged from the aft cargo door and the Hercules turned abruptly north to leave the area. Edwards concentrated on the descending parachutes. Instead of drifting down into the valley below them, the parachutists were coming straight down to a rock-filled slope.
“Oh, shit, he misjudged the wind! Come on!”
The parachutes dropped below them as they ran downhill. One by one they stopped, losing their shape in the semidarkness as the men landed. Edwards and his party moved rapidly, trying to remember where the men had landed. Their camouflage ’chutes turned invisible as soon as they touched the ground.
“Halt!”
“Okay, okay. We’re here to meet you,” Edwards said.
“Identify yourself!” The voice had an English accent.
“Code name Beagle.”
“Proper name?”
“Edwards, first lieutenant, U.S. Air Force.”
“Approach slowly, mate.”
Mike went forward alone. At length he saw a vague shape half-hidden by a rock. The shape held a submachine gun.
“Who are you?”
“Sergeant Nichols, Royal Marines. You picked a bloody poor place to receive us, Lieutenant.”
“I didn’t do it!” Edwards answered. “We didn’t know you were coming until an hour ago.”
“Balls-up, another bloody balls-up.” The man stood and walked forward with a pronounced limp. “Parachuting’s dangerous enough without coming into a fucking rock garden!” Another figure came up.
“We found the lieutenant—I think he’s dead!”
“Need help?” Mike asked.
“I need to wake up and find myself home in bed.”
Edwards soon found that the party sent to rescue him—or whatever their mission was—had gotten off to a disastrous start. The lieutenant in command of the group had landed on one boulder and fallen backward on another. His head hung from the rest of his body as if on a string. Nichols had sprained his ankle badly, and the other two were uninjured but shaken. It took over an hour to locate all their gear. There was no time for sentiment. The lieutenant was wrapped in his parachute and covered with loose rocks. Edwards led the rest back to his perch on the hilltop. At least they’d brought a new battery pack for his radio.
“Doghouse, this is Beagle, and things suck, over.”
“What took so long?”
“Tell that Herky-Bird driver to get a new eye doctor. The Marines you sent here got their boss killed, and their sergeant ripped his ankle up.”
“Have you been spotted?”
“Negative. They landed in rocks. It’s a miracle they weren’t all killed. We’re back on the hilltop. We covered our tracks.”
Sergeant Nichols was a smoker. He and Smith found a sheltered spot to light up.
“Sounds rather excitable, your lieutenant.”
“He’s only a wing-wiper, but he’s doin’ all right. How’s the ankle?”
“I’ll have to walk on it whether it’s fit or not. Does he know what he’s about?”
“The skipper? I watched him kill three Russians with a knife. That good enough?”
“Bloody hell.”
33
Contact
USS REUBEN JAMES
“Captain?”
Morris started at the hand on his shoulder. He’d just wanted to lie down in his stateroom for a few minutes after conducting helicopter night landing practice, and—he checked his watch. After midnight. His face was sweaty. The dream had just started again. He looked up at his exec
utive officer.
“What is it, XO?”
“We got a request to check something out. Probably a snow-bird, but—well, see for yourself.”
Morris took the dispatch with him to his private bathroom, tucked it in his pocket, then washed his face quickly.
“ ’Unusual contact repeated several times, have attempted localization without success’? What the hell is this supposed to be?” he asked, toweling off.
“Beats the hell out of me, skipper. Forty degrees, thirty minutes north, sixty-nine, fifty west. They got a location but no ID. I’m having the chart pulled now.”
Morris ran his hand through his hair. Two hours’ sleep was better than none. Wasn’t it? “Okay, let’s see how it looks from CIC.”
The tactical action officer had the chart out on the table next to the captain’s chair. Morris checked the main tactical-display scope. They were still far offshore in accordance with their orders to check out the hundred-fathom curve.
“That’s way the hell away from here,” Morris observed immediately. There was something familiar about the location. The captain bent over the chart.
“Yes, sir, about a sixty-mile run,” Ernst agreed. “Shallow water, too. Can’t use the towed array there.”
“Oh, I know what this place is! That’s where the Andrea Doria sank. Probably somebody’s got a MAD contact and didn’t bother checking his chart.”
“Don’t think so.” O’Malley emerged from the shadows. “A frigate heard something first. The winch on their tail was busted. They didn’t want to lose it, so they were heading into Newport instead of New York because the harbor’s deeper. They say they copied a strange passive-sonar contact that faded out. They did a target-motion analysis and generated this position. Their helicopter made a few passes, and its magnetic anomaly detector registered right over the Doria, and that was that.”
“How’d you find that out?”
O’Malley handed over a message form. “Came in right after the XO went to get you. They sent an Orion to check it. Same story. They heard something odd, and it faded out.”
Morris frowned. They were chasing after a wild goose, but the orders came from Norfolk. That made it an official wild-goose chase.
“What’s the helo status?”
“I can be up in ten minutes. One torpedo and an auxiliary fuel tank. All the gear’s on line.”
“Tell the bridge to take us there at twenty-five knots. Battleaxe know about this?” He got a nod. “Okay. Signal them what we’re up to. Winch in the tail. Won’t do us any good where we’re going. O’Malley, we’ll close to within fifteen miles of the contact and have you search for it. That puts you in the air about 0230. If you need me, I’ll be in the wardroom.” Morris decided to sample his new ship’s “mid-rats.” O’Malley was headed the same way.
“These ships are a little weird,” the flyer said.
Morris grunted agreement. The main fore-and-aft passageway was on the port side instead of the centerline, for one thing. The “figs” broke a number of long-standing traditions in ship design.
O’Malley went down the ladder first and opened the wardroom door for the captain. They found two junior officers in front of the TV set, watching a taped movie that had mainly to do with fast cars and naked women. The tape machine, Morris had already learned, was run from the chiefs’ quarters. One result of this was that a particularly attractive chest was instant-replayed for all hands.
Midwatch rations, or “mid-rats,” was an open loaf of bread and a plate of cold cuts. Morris got himself a cup of coffee and built a sandwich. O’Malley opted for a fruit drink from the cooler on the after bulkhead. The official Navy term for it was bug juice.
“No coffee?” Morris asked. O’Malley shook his head.
“Too much makes me jumpy. You don’t want shaky hands when you’re landing a helo in the dark.” He smiled. “I really am getting too old for this crap.”
“Kids?”
“Three boys, and ain’t none of them gonna be a sailor if I have anything to say about it. You?”
“Boy and a girl. They’re back in Kansas with their mother.” Morris went after his sandwich. The bread was a little stale and the cold cuts weren’t cold, but he needed to eat. This was the first meal in three days he hadn’t eaten alone. O’Malley pushed the potato chips over.
“Get all your carbohydrates, Captain.”
“That bug juice’ll kill you.” Morris nodded at the fruit drink.
“It’s been tried before. I flew two years over ’Nam. Mostly search-and-rescue stuff. Got shot down twice. Never got scratched, though. Just scared to death.”
Was he that old? Morris wondered. He had to have been passed over for promotion a few times. The captain made a mental note to check O’Malley’s date of rank.
“How come you were in CIC?” the captain asked.
“I wasn’t very sleepy and I wanted to see how the towed array was working.”
Morris was surprised. Aviators didn’t generally show this much interest in the ship’s equipment.
“The word is you did pretty well with Pharris.”
“Not good enough.”
“That happens, too.” O’Malley watched his skipper very closely. The only man aboard with extended combat experience, O’Malley recognized something in Morris that he hadn’t seen since Vietnam. The flyer shrugged. It wasn’t his problem. He fished in his flight suit and came out with a pack of cigarettes. “Mind if I smoke?”
“I just restarted myself.”
“Thank God!” O’Malley raised his voice. “With all these virtuous children in the wardroom, I thought I was the only dirty old man here!” The two young lieutenants smiled at that, without taking their eyes from the television screen.
“How much experience you have on figs?”
“Most of my time is on carriers, skipper. Last fourteen months I’ve been an instructor down at Jax. I’ve done a lot of odd jobs, most of them with the Seahawk. I think you’ll like my bird. The dipping sonar is the best I’ve ever worked with.”
“What do you think about this contact report?”
O’Malley leaned back and puffed on his cigarette with a far-away look. “It’s interesting. I remember seeing something on TV about the Doria. She sank on her starboard side. A lot of people have dived to look at the wreck. It’s about two hundred feet of water, just shallow enough for amateurs to try. And there’s a million cables draped over her.”
“Cables?” Morris asked.
“Trawls. Lot of commercial fishing goes on there. They tangle their nets on the wreck. It’s looks like Gulliver on the beach at Lilliput.”
“You’re right! I remember that,” Morris said. “That explains the noise. It’s the tide, or currents whistling through all those cables.”
O’Malley nodded. “Yep, that could explain it. I still want to give it a look.”
“Why?”
“All the traffic coming out of New York has to pass right overtop the place for one thing. Ivan knows we got a big convoy forming up in New York—he has to know unless the KGB has gone out of business. That’s one hell of a good place to park a submarine if they want to put a trailer on the convoy. Think about it. If you get a MAD contact there, you write it off. The noise from a reactor plant at low power probably won’t be louder than the flow noise over the wreck if they get in close enough. If I was a real nervy sub-driver, I’d think hard about using a place like that to belly-up.”
“You really do think like them,” Morris observed. “Okay, let’s see how we should handle this . . .”
0230 hours. Morris watched the takeoff procedures from the control tower, then walked forward to CIC. The frigate was at battle stations, doing eight knots, her Prairie/Masker systems operating. If there were a Russian sub out there, fifteen or so miles away, there was no way she’d suspect a frigate was nearby. In CIC the radar plot showed the helo moving into position.
“Romeo, this is Hammer. Radio check, over,” O’Malley said. The helicopter’s on-b
oard data link also transmitted a test message to the frigate. The petty officer on the helicopter communications panel checked it out, and grunted with satisfaction. What was that expression he’d heard? Yeah, right—they had a “sweet lock on momma’s gadget.” He grinned.
The helo began its search two miles from the grave of Andrea Doria. O’Malley halted his aircraft and hovered fifty feet above the rolling surface.
“Down dome, Willy.”
In the back, the petty officer unlocked the hoist controls and lowered the dipping sonar transducer down a hole in the belly of the helicopter. The Seahawk carried over a thousand feet of cable, enough to reach below the deepest of thermocline layers. It was only two hundred feet to the bottom here, and they had to be careful not to let the transducer come near the bottom for risk of damage. The petty officer paid close attention to the cable and halted the winch when the transducer was a hundred feet down. As with surface ships, the sonar readout was both visual and aural. A TV-type tube began to show frequency lines while the sailor listened in on his headphones.
This was the hard part, O’Malley reminded himself. Hovering a helicopter in these wind conditions required constant attention—there was no autopilot—and hunting for a submarine was always an exercise in patience. It would take several minutes for the passive sonar to tell them anything, and they could not use their active sonar systems. The pinging would only serve to alert a target.
After five minutes they had detected nothing but random noise. They recovered the sonar and moved east. Again there was nothing. Patience, the pilot told himself. He hated being patient. Another move east and another wait.
“I got something at zero-four-eight. Not sure what it is, a whistle or something in the high-frequency range.” They waited another two minutes to make sure it wasn’t a spurious signal.