Silent Hunter

by Charles D. Taylor

  The discussion continued through the morning. Options were considered, some tabled, some dropped, until they finally came back to what Chernavin knew they should have done much, much earlier. “What would you suggest, Admiral Danilov?”

  The heavy eyebrows shot up. He’d been getting progressively more tired as the useless discussion continued and he knew eventually they would ask him. “You’ve already come up with much of the answer. You said yourself,” he said, indicating his chief of staff, Captain First Rank Sergoff, “that there are only two doors to the Arctic for the Americans. Nothing can go through the Bering Strait without being tracked. Since you can’t sink them, pick them up one by one and follow them as they enter the Arctic Ocean.” He shrugged. “Simple enough.” Then he looked at Chernavin again, raising his dramatic eyebrows. “The North Atlantic is a different matter, eh?”

  Admiral Danilov’s heavy features presented a menacing appearance at times like this. He was taller than many submariners of his era, but was still under six feet. He’d entered the service when no man over six feet was accepted on those small diesel boats. Because he had little neck to speak of, his head appeared too large for his body. Danilov was husky—wide shoulders, heavy but not fat trunk, and arms that seemed to strain at his uniform seams. His powerful, stubby fingers were a lie to the rest of his body, for they were as nimble and quick as any quartermaster laying a course on a chart. Danilov’s face was full and square, and many said he looked enough like Brezhnev to have been his brother. That in itself was enough to contribute to his reputation. But beneath this gruff, bearlike aspect was a superb tactical mind.

  Admiral Chernavin waited silently for the other to continue. He was familiar with the dramatics and knew Danilov loved the audience. Let him enjoy it now.

  “You can’t very well stop them from going up through the Labrador Sea or the Denmark Strait or the Norwegian Sea now, can you? That would be the devil’s own time.” He chuckled. He drew a deep breath and waited until all eyes seemed to be fixed on his own. “I guess you should tell them they can’t go up there.” He enjoyed the silence that greeted his response. “Since we don’t have the ability to stop them any other way, I think that’s by far the best idea.”

  “Can you tell us how we ought to go about that?” Admiral Chernavin asked, amused by his own response, for he knew of no other answer either. Unlike most of the others around the table, he knew that Danilov was not only deadly serious, but was absolutely correct.

  “That’s for the politicians to figure out, Vladimir. I’m a submariner and I think I’ll keep it that way. I’d much rather retire and go live in my dacha than be a politician and die of a heart attack too young.”

  Another younger admiral, one who was not a submariner and had designs on someday becoming a politician, inquired, “How would you convince them that they ought to listen to a suggestion so wild?”

  “By making a deal with them. They love deals.” Danilov would much rather have them make a deal for the time being. He had no desire to go to sea in the near future. His wife was seriously ill and he wanted to be at her side.

  It was Admiral Chernavin’s responsibility to carry Danilov’s suggestion to the Kremlin and explain that it was the only solution that the best naval minds had been able to develop. He hadn’t the least idea what kind of deal could be made but, as Danilov had explained, that was up to the politicians. The Soviet Navy had strong feelings that the evolving crisis had been created by the politicians.

  Once Chernavin had stated his case, political minds pondered the situation and tried to imagine what the Americans might accept in exchange. It wasn’t until the following day, when the American ambassador to the United Nations made a speech before the General Assembly concerning Soviet troops poised on the Norwegian border, that the solution appeared to them.

  The following week the General Assembly heard from the Soviet ambassador. He concurred that the U.S. did indeed have a point. But, Moscow’s intentions were not aggressive toward their neighbors to the west. The annual NATO exercises called Teamwork took place in the North Atlantic and extended well into the Norwegian Sea and beyond the North Cape. These exercises were structured around American carrier battle groups, and impressed upon the Soviets the need to maintain tight security in their arctic territories. After all, the U.S. and Canada over the last few years had prepositioned military supplies in northern Norway scant distances from the Soviet border. These Teamwork exercises were designed to support amphibious landings by NATO forces on Norwegian territory. The Kremlin was forced to interpret these exercises as preparation for an invasion on the Soviet Arctic. As the Soviet ambassador stated—prepositioning could be considered the first cousin to an actual declaration of war. And now, Teamwork!

  Moscow had been so impressed with NATO’s annual display that they had no choice but to devise a method for protecting their arctic lands. While admitting the prepositioning of small amounts of armor and supplies, they denied any massive buildup. Not only were there no troops available to utilize this equipment, but much of their own effort had been only an exercise in prepositioning. The explanation was logical.

  Further, the ambassador explained, Moscow feared the return of American carrier battle groups that summer. Because the Scandinavian countries remained neutral, the Soviet government was ready to offer a solution—they would remove what limited materiel had been prepositioned near the borders if the U.S. would agree not to send any of their naval forces north of the Arctic Circle, approximately the sixty-seventh parallel, that year. By naval forces, the Soviets meant surface, air, and subsurface units. It seemed a small enough gesture on the part of both nations toward international peace.

  This olive branch was well received by members of the General Assembly.

  “That speech was just so much unmitigated crap,” the head of the CIA stated to the others around the table. “Too many good men have been lost in the past couple of months to accept that kind of baloney. We have the lists of divisions and their commanders who are scattered near Murmansk just waiting to move out.” He slid a sheaf of papers toward the middle of the table. “Anybody care to look at that? Pretty close to an invasion plan if you ask me. That’s so goddamned different from what that clown claimed at the UN . . . it would make the devil blush . . .” He sputtered on about orders of battle and numbers, but it was all unnecessary. Each man around the table understood the purpose of the Soviet offer all too well.

  But in another part of Washington, the possibilities of the situation were scrutinized more carefully by ambitious politicians with eyes on reelection. There had been a great deal of logic in the Soviet offer. Instead of an eye for an eye, they were presenting a solution where it seemed neither side had to lose either an eye or even a shread of dignity. The concept also appealed to many of the more liberal members of the NATO community.

  Those powerful but short-term members of Congress blissfully unaware of the extent of Soviet expansion along the Norwegian border, were impressed with the idea of cooling off an area that appeared to be bubbling over. Extensive debate followed in both the Senate and the House. White House advisors appeared caught up by the positive aspects of the debate.

  Within days, the Russians provided proof of their goodwill by commencing the removal of the materiel they had admitted to. Though it would be inconclusive that time of year, they even invited satellite confirmation of their efforts. U.S. intelligence sources knew, however, that the vast majority of materiel remained hidden under camouflage.

  Once the Kremlin had made their first move for the sake of goodwill, they went right ahead and set a date a few weeks hence that American naval forces should remain south of the Arctic Circle. Since American naval units generally operated in the Mediterranean or warmer waters during the winter months, there was nothing north of that line other than a few submarines conducting normal operations. The timing in the Kremlin had been superb.

  A week later, poised at the same table, the CIA director turned to the senior naval of
ficer after completing his diatribe about the extent of Soviet forces that remained poised on the Norwegian border. “We don’t have a choice, do we, Admiral?”

  The admiral shook his head from side to side.

  “I’ll be making my recommendation to the White House shortly. We have to test them—we have to send a ship north of the line . . .”

  “If the Soviet Union is able to keep us out of the Arctic—turn it into their own bathtub . . .” The admiral was again shaking his head. “If they control Norway, that means their SSBNs are as secure as a baby in mother’s arms . . .”

  Another admiral opened his briefcase and took out photographs that had been enlarged for release to the news media. Some were clear, some dark and grainy, but they all displayed exactly the same subject—Soviet ballistic-missile submarines. Included were the older, smaller Yankee class; the ten-thousand-ton Deltas with their longer-range missiles; and the massive, twenty-five-thousand-ton Typhoons—each more menacing than the next. The Typhoons could hit their U.S. targets without ever leaving the dock. They hid below the icecap only for their own protection. To allow the Soviet Union to control Norway and the Arctic would create a “bastion for these marauders,” as the admiral put it.

  While a special ambassador was dispatched to Moscow to discuss elements of the offer with his counterparts, one of the deepest American plants in the Soviet apparatus observed discreetly as the Soviet military dismembered its prepositioned force—at least the amount that had been admitted to. The withdrawal was the beginning of a complete circle, with tanks, artillery, and supplies first being loaded on trucks or trains headed south. At a point a few hundred miles south of Murmansk, they began a wide turn, eventually heading back to the Murmansk sector.

  The CIA clarified the situation to the White House, and various senior members of the military were called in for advice. At the same time, Congress was encouraged to continue their debate. It seemed wiser that the general public and the Soviet Union understand that the offer was still being considered.

  Another interested party in Washington was that same deep Soviet plant in the naval communications system. There were two types of orders issued in the following weeks to the various submarine commands—those under a clearance weak enough to reveal that the submarine squadrons would revert to normal operating status, and others at the highest classification that maintained exactly the same orders as before. The Kremlin understood this implicitly. It was no different than the methods they often employed themselves. So they allowed their special ambassador to continue negotiations, blissfully unaware of military preparations. He entertained his American counterpart like visiting royalty, which provided excellent press.

  But the decision seemed already to have been made on both sides.

  As often as Andy Reed had been inside Imperator’s enormous pen on the Washington coast, he never ceased to stare in awe at his surroundings. The “fishbowl” was the nickname for the underground cavern, which had served as both the birthplace of this magnificent submarine and now the technical center for her shakedown.

  It appeared from the inside as if a mountain had been hollowed out, which was partially true. In actuality, a high section of the coastline had been excavated and the dirt dumped well out to the sea by dredges. A man-made cocoon was then constructed over it and extended seaward to complete the fishbowl effect. The area selected was sparsely populated and little traveled. There was minimal concern among those few natives who noticed the unusual changes. The dredges dug out a channel over a two-year period from the open sea into the fishbowl. Every few months sections of a floating dry dock were moved inside to be joined together. Generators were delivered. A miniature shipyard evolved.

  When the fishbowl was done, navy tugs would appear towing sections of the hull constructed at various locations on the West Coast. Most shipments to the fishbowl came in this manner, and usually in the middle of the night. The skilled workers who made Imperator a reality also came by sea. They worked intense twelve hour shifts for a week at a time, then would depart as they came, returning two weeks later to resume their shifts. Their paychecks sealed their mouths.

  Reed remained enthralled with the fact that such a project could continue as secretively as this one. There was no doubt in his mind that it would not have occurred this way if Imperator had been constructed with government funds. The fact that she was spawned by private funding through a consortium of defense contractors made her secret existence possible. There had never been a name for the organization, at least not one known on the outside. They simply had been known among themselves as the “consortium” when the project began, and the name had stuck. Retired officers became covert advisors, involving only active-duty personnel whose assignments would conceal their time at the fishbowl.

  “She looks like she could slide out tonight, doesn’t she. Andy?” Hal Snow cut a recruiting-poster figure in his uniform.

  “Yup. But how long do you think it would take if I said get ready for sea now?”

  Reed had often compared Imperator to an aircraft carrier, for the giant submarine was longer and would displace more tonnage when fully loaded and submerged. Yet the comparison wouldn’t stick. Most of an aircraft carrier rode above the surface for the whole world to see, while Imperator was like an iceberg on the surface. Ninety percent of her bulk lay below.

  “It’s just a matter of final testing from the main reduction gears aft.” Snow smiled knowingly. “The computer says everything’s hunky-dory, but I just want to make sure for myself. I’ve got my engineers making personal inspections now—the old submariner in me.” The old guard were not opposed to computers: they simply had greater trust in a human being than an electronic wonder. “The reactor’s been on line without a whimper for so long that we hardly pay attention anymore. Auxiliary engineering’s been double-checked until they can repeat the status of each unit in their sleep. Every pump and valve has been through each test at least three times. The only thing I can’t guarantee is weapons. Haven’t fired a one,” he joked.

  ‘Then you could get underway tonight if you had to?”

  Snow peered out of the comer of his eye. “After I’ve run my final tests on the shafts . . . I suppose so.”

  “Don’t bet that it might not be soon.”

  “I thought you said I could probably squeeze out twelve weeks.”

  “I said eight—that I’d try for twelve. Now I doubt it.”

  “I still have a lot of incomplete job orders that are close to ten on our list.”

  “Make sure you have the parts on board if you have to get underway beforehand. You’ve got the talent to do that at sea.”

  Hal Snow paused thoughtfully. “You know, I don’t think you could find a better man than me for this job right now, but I hope you’ve got someone else in mind after this tour. I think I’m from another generation . . .”

  “We both are.”

  They were standing near the stem, looking forward. The sail structure was larger and higher than the bridge on a destroyer, yet it appeared a last-second thought on a submarine longer than four football fields. Andy Reed had yet to be included totally by the inner circle, whose evolving strategy was based on arctic confrontation. It was only after a late-night meeting two days before that he was informed orders might be coming any day.

  “There’s just one item holding me back now, Andy.” Reed turned curiously to his friend.

  “That broad, Andy. Every damn day someone comes in to see me with only one thing on his mind—is the navy really crazy enough to send her off with us? I’m not losing my grip on this crew, but I’ve never run into anything tougher. They still won’t speak to her.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course I do. I don’t have any choice. She controls the brains of the ship. Without her, that computer might be useless at the wrong time. She’s got me by the shorts!”

  “Do you get along?”

  Snow shrugged disconsolately. “I suppose so. She’s polite, understands the navy,
does her job . . . and she doesn’t take shit from anybody.”

  “Doesn’t have to either,” Reed said, as he smiled and gestured for the other to follow while he meandered along the dockside. It was no different than the first female astronaut. The consortium wanted to exhibit some element of liberalism. Not only was Carol Petersen one of the most talented computer designers, she was destined to succeed, for she was their display piece.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised that, if there was some guy just as qualified as Carol Petersen, the navy still would have had to accept her. The times they are a-changing,” he added wistfully.

  As they strolled beside Imperator, Snow returned to a question he’d asked before. “You expect I’ll head directly for the ice?”

  “Couldn’t say. But it looks more like it to me each day.”

  “Still too bad you can’t go with me.”

  “I’d give my right arm but they want to see what you can do alone. I’ll catch up.” Reed stopped and turned to the other man. “You’ve never been worried about anything before in your life. Are you starting now?”

  “Negative. Nothing of the sort. I imagine it’s more like the first man in space, or Armstrong stepping out onto the moon. When the greatest thing that will ever happen in your life is about to take place, you’re not scared or worried. You have to be excited about the unknown. It’s just that I’d like to know when and where—a normal human reaction, I think the shrinks would agree.”

  Nothing more was said until they reached the head of the dock and looked down the length of Imperator from the bow. She’s beyond comprehension, Reed thought to himself, yet there she is. Sleek and black, the giant submarine lay silently in the water, waiting to emerge from her cocoon. Many of her weapons had been delivered in the past few months—torpedos, missiles, tanks, helicopters, everything that could be stored deep within her hull except her marine contingent. Troop movements were watched too closely by the media. When they came aboard, they’d be transferred at sea.