WW III wi-1

by Ian Slater

  William Spence didn’t get the connection.

  “Torpedo attack,” explained the cook. “Night’s still the worst time — fancy radar or no. And if that happens, it’ll be bloody mayhem, laddie. Ship darkened. CIC dimmed — so you make sure you’ve piles of boxed sandwiches, and keep those thermos cups bunched, ready to go in the elastic basket. We go into search or evasive pattern, this tub’ll be swinging from starboard to port, port to starboard so fast, it’ll make your head spin. And it’ll last hours. And no onions or garlic. Old man’ll go spare— can’t abide ‘em.”

  “Hardly haute cuisine, Chief,” said Spence. The cook had seen many a recruit come and go, but there was something more likable about Spence than most — perhaps it was his unabashed naïveté, an eagerness that assumed the best in everyone he met, and the cherubic face that was in stark contrast with the salt-leathered scowls he got at times in the mess. Not all of them, like Johnson, who was peeling spuds for the freezer, were volunteers like Spence.

  “And that Yank bloke we have aboard,” said the cook. “NATO liaison fella. No Marmite for him. They don’t understand it.”

  “Can’t say I’m mad about it myself,” smiled Spence.

  “Ah,” said Johnson, “puts hair on your chest. Right, Chiefie? Iron in the old pecker,” said Johnson. “Cock stiffener.”

  Spence blushed. The cook said nothing — they were sending him choirboys, they were, all keen and woefully inexperienced in the ways of the world — but unlike some of his ilk, the chief cook aboard HMS Peregrine took no delight in watching the transition from recruit to leading seaman.

  “Never mind him,” said the cook, pushing the big thirty-two-once jar of black beef extract spread toward Spence. “Just don’t put it on till you’ve made all the other sandwiches. Most crew don’t like it when it’s been sitting around too—”

  “Action stations!”

  The cook’s voice was drowned out as the sound of the alarm and men running, grabbing life jackets, asbestos balaclavas, and gloves, thumped quickly through the guided missile destroyer. In an instant the high whine of abrupt start-stop electric motors could be heard bringing weapons into line with radar guidance. Peregrine heeled sharply to starboard at thirty knots, the flare of her bows lost in a gossamer of spray, phosphorescent with plankton. William Spence could hear the sudden dump! dump! dump! of the 155-millimeter — and then the hard-running-faucet sound of the IKARA torpedo-missile, Peregrine turning so violently to port that coffee spat out of the hot twin Silex pots that had been shoved hard against their metal guards.

  “A sub,” said Johnson, either very brave or feigning indifference.

  “Yes,” said the cook, “a sub, and you’d better get on with it. Soon as you’ve finished with that lot, you can put them in the freezer, give Spence here a hand with the sandwiches.” Johnson was getting mad as he was forced to hold hard on to the sink as the ship rose, bucked hard astarboard, and fell through a belly-wrenching slide into a deep trough. “Only the British bloody navy would have you peeling potatoes. On the Yank boats…”

  “Ships,” corrected Spence good-naturedly, more in the way one might help a friend rather than criticize.

  “Quite right, lad,” said the chef. “Ship.”

  “Ship, shit, what’s the difference? We aren’t sailors. I didn’t join up to peel—”

  The Peregrine now bashed its way through a wave, the heavy spray like fine rain above them, the second escort a lump against moon-tinted sea a quarter mile to port.

  “ ‘S’-pattern,” said Spence.

  But the chef was looking at Johnson, handing him back the scraper he’d dropped in the heavy, sharp roll. “That’s where you’re wrong, Johnson. We are sailors. Without food, lad, this ship can’t function.” He handed Johnson another potato. “All right then?”

  Johnson grunted.

  “Besides,” continued the cook, “if you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined.”

  “I didn’t,” said Johnson, his tone turning surly. “It was either this or a year in the nick.”

  “What for?” asked the cook. Spence was amazed; he’d never actually seen a real live criminal before, let alone worked next to one.

  “I found some silver,” said Johnson defiantly.

  “Where?” asked the cook.

  “In a house. Where else?”

  “What’s done is done,” said the cook, unscrewing a peanut butter jar, face going red. “Just so long as we don’t have any silver missing around here. Because—” continued the cook, handing the jar to Spence, “if we find anything missing, we’ll cut your bloody twinkie off. Like one of them ayatollahs. Right, Spence?”

  Spence didn’t know what to say.

  “Well it doesn’t matter anyway, does it?” Johnson continued, unrepentant, swinging the french fry cutter toward him. “I mean we’re all for Davy Jones.” He saw Spence’s alarm and smiled. “Yeah, that’s right, mate. Food for the fucking fishes, we are. What flamin’ chance ‘ave we got next to one of them Russian subs? You answer me that.” The ship was slowing down, the bell signaling end-of-action and standby stations.

  “See?” said Johnson, waving his peeler in the general direction of the combat information center in the heart of the ship. “They don’t know what’s fucking going on.”

  “Probably just a drill,” said the cook.

  Johnson tossed another potato into the bucket. “You know how many miles we’ve got to go yet?” he asked them ominously.

  “Next couple of days,” said William, “the Americans will take over. Midway point.”

  “Oh,” said Johnson. “I see. Once the Yanks take over, we’ll be all right. Don’t you know we’ll be taking their convoy back?”

  Spence didn’t reply — Johnson seemed so jaded about everything that no matter what you said, he’d pick fault with it.

  “You married, Spence?” asked Johnson.

  “No, I’m not actually.”

  “Well, actually,” said Johnson, “it’s just as well. No widow.” The cook shifted off the safety sleeve on the automatic meat slicer, then swung it around, Johnson’s grooved face distorted in its shining surface.

  “Stow it!” said the cook. He was the boss of the galley and preferred informal rules, despite the British navy’s long tradition of tar and feathers, but when yobbos like Johnson started upsetting people unnecessarily, then he was prepared to pull rank. For a second Johnson said nothing, and in the uneasy silence the cook thought of his wife and two children, teenagers, in Portsmouth — and ruminated on the fact of how things had changed. Oh, there’d always been the shipboard whiners like Johnson as long as he’d been in the navy, but he couldn’t have imagined a rating daring to speak with such a defeatist streak in him since the first day out. Fortunately, for every Johnson out there, he hoped — believed — there were two or three Spences, otherwise it was going to be a long, grumpy business in Peregrine’s crew’s mess.

  It wasn’t only Johnson that he wondered about. With NATO there were foreigners you had to cater to — a Yank or two at the table — usually one would like his meat rare — and a sprinkling of Scandinavians, all blond and looking as if they had just been skiing. And there were Dutch hippies who smoked a lot—”not always tobacco, mate”—and had everybody wondering whether, when push came to shove, they’d be up to it. “Democratic disease, “ the chef had explained to young Spence. And the Krauts, of course, always liked the British ships best. More beer rations. Spence was too friendly, too young really, to be on a ship with all these other blokes — and always asking questions — what wine was best with this and that, and the cook telling him no wine was any bloody good on ship because everything ended up getting sloshed and corked anyway.

  “Wait till the war’s over, laddie,” the cook had finally told him. “Get this lot down pat and next thing you’ll find yourself on some shore establishment doing the hors d’oeuvres for the admiral’s party.” But William Spence had a theory — that if he could learn to make dishes for eve
ryone, for “all the sixteen nationalities in NATO” coming from all kinds of different backgrounds, then he’d have a head start when he was demobbed. He had told the cook that he’d started a list of what wines did travel best — now, that surely had to be of use if you were going into the cruise trade after the war.

  Sometimes Spence’s zeal just plain wore the cook down, but he tried not to dampen the kid’s enthusiasm. He’d seen too many go the other way. Maybe the kid had a point about the wines as nowadays they were trying all new bottling techniques anyway. In any case, the cook knew the boy had the “gift” of all great chefs. Organization. Being the cook of HMS Peregrine, one of Britain’s star hi-tech destroyers, the chief petty officer had seen hundreds come and go through his charge, and he’d known many of them who could cook meals that you’d never forget. But he hadn’t met many who could do that and who also possessed the ability to pace themselves, never to have one dish rushing in the wake of another, or too far apart, but just to appear naturally, and always, but always, at the right temperature. That’s where art came in.

  “Now, when you’ve finished with those spuds, Johnson,” said the cook, “I want you to put this vitamin C on them before you start the next lot.”

  “Stops them going brown,” said William. “The vitamin C.”

  “I fucking know that,” said Johnson. He sprinkled the vitamin C around and tied the heavy plastic bag with double twist. “Good as dead!” he said. “Subs. That’s what we need. This surface shit is a crock—”

  “We’ve got subs,” said Spence before the chef could tell Johnson to shut up.

  “Nine,” said Johnson. “Jesus Christ, the Russians have hundreds.”

  “So have the Americans,” answered William.

  “Right!” joined in the cook.

  “You know—” said Johnson, his hand grabbing the cold stove rail as Peregrine climbed up out of a trough.

  “Know what?” asked William Spence, feeling a little seasick in the closed-off and overheated air that was being recycled through the galley.

  “Moscow’s only got to move all their crap down the road. Yanks have to move their shit across the whole friggin’ Atlantic.”

  “You should be in comedy, Johnson,” said the cook nonchalantly. “You’ve missed your vocation, laddie. We ought to send you round to the hospitals, we ought. They could do with a cheery bastard like you.”

  “Haven’t you heard of rollover?” asked Spence challengingly.

  “Oh ‘cor. Spare me, will you? Rollover.”

  “Yes,” said William Spence. “We roll over them. Just push through.”

  Johnson finished peeling the potato, stared at it for a moment, and let it crash to the bottom of the bucket. “Rollover Beethoven. You sound like one of those fucking admirals. They do the rolling, we do the over.”

  “What would you do then?”

  “I’d leave it up to the Yanks and the Russians. Their war, not ours.”

  “But we’re part of NATO,” said Spence.

  “Listen, mate — in this world it’s everyone for himself. NATO, TATO, who gives a shit?” He was using the peeler as a pointer. “You don’t look after Number One, sweetheart, nobody will.”

  “Perhaps you should have gone to jail instead,” said Spence— the first time the cook had heard Spence angry.

  “Now, that,” rejoined Johnson, “is the first bright idea you’ve had, Sunshine.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “Because, ducky—” Johnson savagely extracted a rotten spot from the potato “—I didn’t know some silly bastard’d start shoving — did I?” He moved the bucket of potatoes over toward the sink. “Well, now I know and I’m telling you, mate — any friggin’ thing hits this ship and I’m first off — Beaufort raft and all.”

  The cook heard the buzz on the bridge-to-mess intercom, and as he picked it up, wondered whether he should put Johnson on report. “Right, yes, sir. Right away, sir.” He clipped the phone back on its cradle. “Sandwiches and coffee to the bridge. Corned beef and lettuce for the old man. No pickles.” He paused before giving Spence the plastic tray, checking that all the indents for cups, plates, and so forth were spotlessly clean. “Sub pack ahead of us.”

  “How far?” asked Spence, trying not to sound frightened.

  “A ways off yet,” said the cook, “but it’ll be a long night ahead of us, boys.”

  “What did I bloody tell you?” said Johnson. “I thought our mob were supposed to knock ‘em off up near fuckin’ Greenland with all the super-duper mines we planted down there. Christ— now we’re in for it.”

  * * *

  During the trawlers’ mine attack on R-1 and R-1’s defense, ocean noise was such that it shook the fine instrumentation of sonar buoys and towed arrays for thousands of miles. By sheer chance it provided a noise cover that seemed heaven-sent by the Soviet sub pack approaching the GIUK choke points in two groups. The first group was heading for the Greenland-Iceland Gap, close in to the extended ice sheet, using it as added protection against which ASROC and other antisubmarine warfare missiles could not penetrate other than by blowing themselves up. The second group of seventy subs, using the static and a heavy sea for cover, was going for the Faeroe-Iceland Gap. NATO’s mines in both the narrow Greenland-Iceland Gap and the Iceland-Faeroe Gap had been beaten by the Soviet subs, who, with the help of the Walker spy ring secrets, had found out how to best “baffle”—or alter — their noise signatures-similar to altering sounds from a car.

  But once through the ice-free Iceland-Faeroe Gap, the submarines were detected through “thermal patching,” the Soviets’ COMONES — computer-controlled emission systems — not being nearly as sophisticated as the Americans’. Here the Russians’ luck ran out and there was a terrible slaughter.

  “Prigotovitsya vsplyt!”—”Prepare for surfacing!” was one of the oft-repeated phrases that morning of the NATO attack on the Russian Northern Fleet.

  Protected by F-IIIAs — Ravens — from Upper Haywood and the Norwegian bases, NATO’s Nimrods came out of Scotland’s Kinross Air Station, with searchwater radar and aerial-release depth bombs. The American Lockheed search-and-attack Vikings, with infrared sensors, magnetic anomaly detectors, and homing torpedoes, closed with thirty F-15 Sea Eagles out of Keflavik. The attack spread out from the shallow 190-mile-wide gap to Wyville Thomas Ridge two hundred miles south, where the water depth increased to two thousand meters. It was the “high,” as one of the Viking pilots put it, of all their years in NATO, as one Soviet captain after another ordered, “Prepare to surface.” Nineteen subs, eleven nuclear and four diesel-electrics, were outright kills, and four forced to the surface, white smoke pouring out of them high into the pristine air, their crews having no alternative but to ditch into the ice-cold Arctic waters. Some managed to get rafts inflated in time to drag themselves, half-frozen, aboard, but it was the first time since World War II that the Russian navy, at least its submarine branch, had come under such attack and proved so wanting. The American Vikings’ under-wing ECM — electronic countermeasures— worked superbly well, not only in jamming the Russians’ “snoop tray” radars but also in feeding the submarine force and its Russian battle group false over-the-horizon echoes. This caused two of the Soviet ASW helo carriers to fire Cruise missiles at empty air, and one of the Tango-class subs to send back an advisory “burst” message that was picked up by two of the Vikings. Thus identified, the submarine never stood a chance as a Mark 46 torpedo streaked through the water at twenty-five meters a second, its explosion rupturing two of the Tango’s forward watertight compartments, torpedo room, and crew’s mess, the sub driving nose-first to the bottom, its implosion registered by a Sea King helo from HMAS Invincible.

  “Like bloody Clapham Junction,” said one Nimrod bombadier after the fourth sub had gone down. Neither the Turkish nor Greek NATO radar operators, two nationalities that normally would never share the same console, had heard of the British Rail choke point in London that was notorious for terrible tra
in crashes. But both Turk and Greek operators knew what he meant. Carnage. It was on a scale predicted by only a few of the sonar experts who, in the not-so-cold war, had gone hunting, “pinging” the Russians until they withdrew in confusion because of inferior sonar.

  The public relations assistant to CINCHAN — Commander in Chief Channel Forces in Northwood, U.K. — handed Admiral Newsome the information in a jubilant mood. “It’s all coming home to roost, sir.”

  “What is?”

  “Soviets’ deficiencies. We knew their sonar was bad, but-well, no matter how many SSNs they have, subs aren’t much use to them if they don’t know precisely where we are.”

  The admiral knew this and he also knew the other Soviet deficiencies: inferior repair facilities and not nearly the same number of overseas bases or coastal listening stations as the Americans had. The admiral also knew that the NATO forces had been lucky; the absence of large numbers of Russian fighters due to Soviet “surge” tactics now being used on Germany’s central front had allowed the British Nimrods and American Vikings to go about their sub killing unmolested, the Russians having concluded, correctly, that if they won Western Europe quickly enough, the NATO sea lines would be rendered useless. Consequently, the admiral did not share his aide’s mood of exhilaration.

  “We can both see and detect one another’s battle groups from four hundred miles away,” the assistant was explaining to a member of the press, admitted only on the understanding that all details of the battle would then be quashed. The admiral’s assistant was explaining to the newspaperman that while both the Soviets and Americans at times did have comparable early-warning radar on their fixed-wing planes and helicopters, the American carriers were so potent in terms of air cover that they could search four times the area as their Soviet counterparts “in any given time frame.”

  It was an enormous advantage. And it now became clear to CINCHAN, in Northwood, and ACNE — Allied Commander Northern Europe — in Kolsas, Norway, why in the prewar years the Soviets developed an obsession with shadowing any Allied ship they could, often using their fishing trawlers. It had been an attempt to make up for their lack of bases on the continental shelves, which the Americans possessed. The Soviets had been shadowing the NATO ships in those years not just for information about size and armament but really operating as seaborne early-warning stations in the event of war.