by Tom Clancy
“How many submarines out there?”
“I don’t know, Comrade General.”
USS REUBEN JAMES
Morris watched the sonar plot. The sonobuoy contact had faded off after a few minutes. A school of herring, perhaps. The ocean waters abounded with fish, and enough of them on active sonar looked like a sub. His own sonar was virtually useless as his ship struggled just to keep up with the ’phibs. A possible submarine to seaward—every sub contact was a possible cruise-missile sub—was all the Commodore needed to go to full speed.
O’Malley was dipping his sonar now, trying to reacquire the lost contact. He was the only one who could keep up with things.
“Romeo, this is Bravo. Be advised we are prosecuting a possible missile-carrying submarine.” Doug Perrin had to assume the worst case.
“Roger that, Bravo.” According to the data-link picture, three helicopters were backing Battleaxe up, and the British frigate had interposed herself on the line from the contact to the amphibious ships. Be careful, Doug.
“Contact!” Willy said. “I have an active sonar contact bearing three-zero-three, range two three hundred.”
O’Malley didn’t have to look at his tactical display. The submarine was between him and the ’phibs.
“Up dome!” The pilot hovered while the sonar transducer was winched in. The contact was alerted now. That made it harder. “Romeo, Hammer, we have a possible contact here.”
“Roger, understood.” Morris was looking at the display. He ordered the frigate to close at flank speed. Not a smart tactic, he had no choice but to pounce on the contact before it got within range of the ’phibs. “Signal Nassau we’re working a possible contact.”
“Down dome!” O’Malley ordered. “Drop it to four hundred and hammer!”
Willy activated the sonar as soon as the proper depth was reached. He got a screenful of echoes. The transducer was so close to the rocky bottom that nearly twenty rocky spires showed up. A swiftly running tide didn’t help matters. Flow noise around the rocks gave numerous false readings on the passive plot also.
“Sir, I got a whole lot of nothing here.”
“I can feel him, Willy. The last time we pinged, I bet we had him at periscope depth and he ducked down deep while we came over.”
“That fast?” Ralston asked.
“That fast.”
“Skipper, one of these things might be moving a little.”
O’Malley keyed his radio and got permission to launch from Morris. Ralston set the torpedo for circular search, and the pilot dropped it into the sea. The pilot keyed the sonar into his headphones. He heard the whine of the torpedo’s propellers, then the high-frequency ping of its homing sonar. It continued to circle for five minutes, then switched over to continuous pinging—and exploded.
“Explosion sounded funny, sir,” Willy said.
“Hammer, Romeo—report.”
“Romeo, Hammer, I think we just killed a rock.” O’Malley paused. “Romeo, there’s a sub here, but I can’t prove it just yet.”
“What makes you think that, Hammer?”
“Because it’s one damned fine place to hide, Romeo.”
“Concur.” Morris had learned to trust O’Malley’s hunches. He called up the amphibious commander on Nassau. “November, this is Romeo, we have a possible contact. Recommend you maneuver north while we prosecute.”
“Negative, Romeo,” the Commodore replied at once. “India is working a probable, repeat probable contact that’s acting like a missile boat. We’re heading for our objective at max speed. Get him for us, Romeo.”
“Roger. Out.” Morris set the phone back in place. He looked at his tactical action officer. “Continue to close the datum point.”
“Isn’t this dangerous, rushing after a submarine contact?” Calloway asked. “Don’t you have your helicopter to keep them at arm’s length?”
“You’re learning, Mr. Calloway. It’s dangerous, all right. I think they mentioned that the job could get that way when I was at Annapolis . . .”
Both her jet turbines were running flat-out, and the frigate’s knife-edge bow sliced through the water at over thirty knots. The torque from her single screw gave the ship a four-degree list to port as she raced to close the submarine.
“This is getting nasty.” O’Malley could see the frigate’s mast clearly now, the distinctive crosstrees well above the horizon as he covered fifty feet over the water. “Talk to me, Willy!”
“Lots of bottom echoes, sir. The bottom must look like a city, all these damned things sticking up. We got eddies—we got too many things here, sir. Sonar conditions suck!”
“Go passive.” The pilot reached up and flipped the switch to listen in. Willy was right. Too much flow noise. Think! he told himself. The pilot looked at his tactical display. The amphibs were a scant ten miles away. He couldn’t hear them on his sonar, but there was about a 30-percent chance that a submarine could. If we had him at antenna depth before, he probably has a fair idea where they are . . . but not good enough to shoot.
“Romeo, Hammer, can you warn the ’phibs off? Over.”
“Negative, Hammer. They are running away from a probable contact to seaward.”
“Great!” O’Malley growled over the intercom. “Prepare to raise dome, Willy.” A minute later they were heading west.
“This sub-driver’s got real balls,” the pilot said. “He’s got brains, too . . .” O’Malley keyed his radio.
“Romeo, Hammer, put November’s course track on your tactical display and transmit to my gadget.”
It took a minute. O’Malley blessed the unknown engineer who’d built this feature into the Seahawk’s tactical computer. The pilot drew an imaginary line from their only contact on the sub and Nassau’s projected course. Figure the sub is going at twenty- to twenty-five knots . . . The pilot reached down and stabbed his finger on the glass tube.
“That’s where the bastard is!”
“How do you know?” Ralston asked. O’Malley already had the Seahawk heading that way.
“ ’Cause if I was him, that’s where I’d be! Willy, next time we dip, keep the dome at exactly one hundred feet. Tell you one other thing, Mr. Ralston—this guy thinks he’s beat us.” Nobody beats the Hammer! O’Malley circled over the spot he’d selected and brought the Seahawk into hover.
“Down dome, Willy. Passive search only.”
“One hundred feet, listening, skipper.” Seconds stretched out into minutes while the pilot worked his controls to keep the helicopter stationary. “Possible contact bearing one-six-two.”
“Go active?” Ralston asked.
“Not yet.”
“Bearing is changing slowly, now one-five-nine.”
“Romeo, Hammer, we have a possible submarine contact.” The helicopter’s on-board computer transmitted the data to Reuben James. Morris altered course to bear down on the contact. O’Malley raised his sonar dome and deployed a sonobuoy to mark the position and hold the contact while he moved to another position. The frigate was now four miles from the helicopter.
“Down dome!” Another minute’s wait.
“Contact, bearing one-nine-seven. Buoy six shows contact bearing one-four-two.”
“Gotcha, sucker! Up dome, let’s go get him!”
Ralston worked the attack system as O’Malley moved south to get right behind the target. He set their last torpedo for a search depth of two hundred feet, and a snake course.
“Down dome!”
“Contact, bearing two-nine-eight.”
“Hammer!”
Willy punched the active sonar button. “Positive contact, bearing two-nine-eight, range six hundred.”
“Set!” Ralston said immediately, and the pilot jammed his thumb on the red release button. The burnished green torpedo dropped into the water.
And nothing happened.
“Skipper, the torp didn’t activate—dead torp, sir.”
There wasn’t time to curse. “Romeo, Hammer, we just dropped on a po
sitive contact—bad torpedo, negative function on the torp.”
Morris clenched his fist on the radiotelephone receiver. He gave course and rudder orders. “Hammer, Romeo, can you continue to track the target?”
“Affirmative, he’s running hard on course two-two-zero—wait, turning north . . . seems to be slowing down now.”
Reuben James was now six thousand yards from the submarine. The ships were on converging courses, with each in firing range of the other.
“Crash stop!” Morris ordered. In seconds the entire ship was vibrating from the reverse power. The frigate slowed to five knots inside a minute, and Morris ordered a speed of three knots, bare steerageway. “Prairie/Masker?”
“Operating, sir,” the ship control officer confirmed.
Calloway had kept out of the way with his mouth shut—but this was too much. “Captain Morris, aren’t we a sitting duck?”
“Yep.” Morris nodded. “But we can stop faster than he can. His sonar should just be coming back on line—and we’re not making enough noise to hear. Sonar conditions are bad for everybody. It’s a gamble,” the captain admitted. He radioed for another helicopter. Illustrious would have one to him in fifteen minutes.
Morris watched O’Malley’s helicopter on radar. The Russian sub had slowed and gone deep again.
“Vampire, vampire!” the radar technician called. “Two missiles in the air—”
“Bravo reports her helo just dropped on an SSGN, sir!” the ASW officer sang out.
“This is getting complicated,” Morris observed coolly. “Weapons free.”
“Bravo has splashed one missile, sir! The other one’s heading for the India!”
Morris’s eyes focused on the main display. A symbol was marching toward HMS Illustrious—moving very fast.
“Evaluate vampire as SS-N-19—Bravo evaluates her contact as Oscar-class. She reports a hit, sir.” Four helicopters were swarming around the v submarine-contact symbol now.
“Romeo, Hammer, the bastard’s right underneath us—bearing just reversed on us.”
“Sonar, Yankee-search on bearing one-one-three!” Morris lifted the radiotelephone. “November, turn north now!” he ordered the Nassau.
“India is hit, sir. The vampire scored on India . . . wait, India helo reports he dropped another torp on the contact!”
Illustrious would have to look out after herself, Morris thought.
“Sonar contact, sir, bearing one-one-eight, range fifteen hundred.” The data went into the fire-control director. The solution light blinked on.
“Set!”
“Shoot!” Morris paused for a moment. “Bridge, combat: all ahead flank! Come right to zero-one-zero.”
“Bloody hell,” observed Mr. Calloway.
On the frigate’s starboard side, the triple torpedo tube mount swung out and loosed a single fish. Below, the engineers listened to their engines go from idle to maximum power. The frigate settled at the stern as the propeller churned the water to foam. The powerful jet turbines accelerated the ship almost like an automobile.
“Romeo, Hammer: warning, warning, the target just fired a fish at you!”
“Nixie?” Morris asked. The ship was moving too fast for her own sonar to work.
“One in the water and another ready to stream, sir,” a petty officer responded.
“That’s it, then,” Morris said. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette, looked at it, then tossed the whole pack into a waste can.
“Romeo, Hammer, this contact is a Type-Two engine plant. I evaluate this contact as a Victor-class. Now at full speed, turning north. Your torp is pinging the target. We’ve lost the fish he sent your way.”
“Roger, stick with the sub, Hammer.”
“Aren’t you one cool bastard!” O’Malley said into the intercom. He could see smoke rising from HMS Illustrious. Idiot, the pilot said to himself. You shouldn’t have dropped the first torp! All he could do now was ping.
“Skipper, the torp just went to continuous ping. It seems to be closing the target, ping interval is shortening. Hull-popping noise, the sub is changing depth again, coming up, I think.”
O’Malley saw a disturbance in the water. Suddenly the spherical bow of the Victor came through the surface—the submarine had lost depth control trying to evade the fish. What followed a moment later was the first warhead explosion O’Malley had ever really seen. The submarine was sliding back down when a plume of water appeared a hundred feet from where the bow had poked up.
“Romeo, Hammer, that was a hit—I saw the sonuvabitch! Say again, that’s a hit!”
Morris checked with his sonar officer. They hadn’t picked up the Russian torpedo’s homing sonar. It had missed.
Captain Perrin scarcely believed it. The Oscar had taken three torpedo hits so far and still there were no breaking-up noises. But the machinery noise had stopped, and he had the submarine on his active sonar. Battleaxe closed at fifteen knots when the black shape appeared amid a mass of bubbles on the surface. The captain ran to the bridge and put his binoculars on the Russian ship. The sub was a bare mile away. A man appeared atop the submarine’s sail, waving wildly.
“Check fire! Check fire!” he screamed. “Ship Control, bring us alongside quick as you can!”
He didn’t believe it. The Oscar showed a pair of jagged rents on her upper hull and floated with a 30-degree list from the ruptured ballast tanks. Men were scrambling out of the sail and the forward deck hatch.
“Bravo, Romeo. We just killed a Victor-class inshore. Please advise your situation, over.”
Perrin lifted the phone. “Romeo, we have a wounded Oscar on the surface, the crew is abandoning ship. He fired two missiles. Our Sea Wolves splashed one. The other hit India in the bows. We are preparing to conduct rescue operations. Tell November that he may continue his promenade. Over.”
“Way to go, Bravo! Out.” He switched channels. “November, this is Romeo, did you copy Bravo’s last transmission, over?”
“Affirmative, Romeo. Let’s get this parade to the beach.”
General Andreyev took the report from the observation post himself before handing the radiophone to his operations officer. The American landing ships were now five kilometers from Akranes lighthouse. They’d proceed probably to the old whaling station in Hvalfjördur to wait their chance.
“We will resist to the end,” the KGB colonel said. “We’ll show them how Soviet soldiers can fight!”
“I admire your spirit, Comrade Colonel.” He walked over to the corner and picked up a rifle. “Here, you may take this to the front yourself.”
“But—”
“Lieutenant Gasporenko, get the colonel a driver. He’s going to the front to show the Americans how Soviet soldiers fight.” Andreyev watched with dark amusement. The chekist could not back down. After he was gone, the General summoned his divisional communications officer. All long-range radio transmitters except for two would be destroyed. Andreyev knew he could not surrender yet. His troopers would have to pay a bill in blood first, and the General would suffer for every drop. But he knew it would soon reach a point at which further resistance was futile, and he would not sacrifice his men for nothing.
ALFELD, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
It was over for a while. The second attack had nearly done it, Mackall thought. The Russians had run their tanks fiat-out and gotten to within fifty yards of the American positions, close enough that their old, obsolete cannon had destroyed half of the troop’s tanks. But that attack had faltered on the brink of success, and the third attack at dusk was a halfhearted affair executed by men too tired to advance into the kill zone. He could hear the noise behind him of another action under way. The Germans west of the town were under heavy attack.
STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
“General Beregovoy reports a heavy counterattack from the north—toward Alfeld.”
Alekseyev accepted the news impassively. His gamble had failed. That’s why it’s called gambling, Pasha.
Now what?
It was very quiet in the map room. The junior officers who plotted the movements of friendly and enemy forces had never talked much, and now were not even looking over to the other map sectors. It was no longer a race to see whose forces got to their objectives first.
The word you’re looking for is gloom, Pasha. The General stood next to his operations officer.
“Yevgeny Ilych, I am open to suggestions.”
He shrugged. “We must continue. Our troops are tired. So are theirs.”
“We’re throwing inexperienced troops against veterans. We have to change that. We will take officers and NCOs from the A units that are off the line and use them to beef up the C units now arriving. These reservists must have experienced combat soldiers to leaven their ranks, else we send them like cattle to the slaughter. Next, we will temporarily suspend offensive operations—”
“Comrade General, if we do that—”
“We have enough strength for one last hard push. That push will be at the time and place of my choosing, and it will be a fully prepared attack. I will order Beregovoy to escape the best way he can—I cannot trust that order to the radio. Yevgeny Ilych, I want you to fly to Beregovoy’s headquarters tonight. He’ll need a good operational brain to assist him. That will be your assignment.” I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself, you traitorous bastard. Use it well. More importantly, it got the KGB informer out of the way. The operations officer walked off to arrange transport. Alekseyev took Sergetov back into his office.
“You’re going back to Moscow.”
42
The Resolution of Conflict
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
“Amazing what a pair of fives can do . . .”