Silent Hunter

by Charles D. Taylor

  “I envy you, Hal, more than anyone ashore can imagine,” Reed said quietly.

  Abe Danilov rarely invited guests to his apartment. It was not so much that he disliked social contact; rather, he was selfish about saving all his wife’s time for himself—and giving all he could spare of his own to her. Anna Danilov was ill. Her days were numbered, and those close to her knew it. Her husband intended to fill those days with as much love as he could afford, and he begrudged every minute of his time that the navy required.

  The guest was Captain Sergoff, his chief of staff, who was part of the family, in Anna’s opinion. He’d been with Danilov much too long to be considered a guest anymore. While he was simply called Sergoff by the admiral and others senior to him, she knew he had a first name, and it was one that appealed to her—Pietr. Danilov would look up with surprise every time Anna used the man’s first name.

  Captain Sergoff had no family. He was an only child whose parents had died in the last of Stalin’s purges. Sergoff had been lucky at that early stage in his life, for his grandparents had survived the purge and raised him. Sent off to a naval school at an early age, he knew no other life but the service and he had never been married. Abe Danilov recognized his military talents at an early stage and Anna Danilov was the one to recognize his loneliness, treating him more like a son. Even in the final stages of her illness, she often asked her husband to invite Pietr Sergoff home. His tall, blond appearance was almost patrician in comparison to her husband’s compactness.

  “No, thank you, I think not,” she replied when Sergoff extended a platter to her politely. “I had too much at lunch,” she lied. Anna Danilov rarely ate, and was usually sick when she did partake of food.

  Danilov’s eyes clouded over as she continued her small talk with Sergoff. Discussion around the ministry that day had been about the imminent departure of a hunter/killer group of submarines for duty in the Arctic. He knew they would not be leaving immediately, for he would be their commander, but he dreaded the approaching day, for he feared leaving Anna. Staff members came to him often to ask if they would be involved since rumors surfaced or changed each day. He would smile and say that if anything were about to happen, he knew nothing about it. The latter was true—nothing was definite. But something would break soon. That was for sure.

  Now Sergoff turned from his conversation with Anna Danilov. “Isn’t that correct, sir? The Americans seem to be cooperating with us. There’s no sign of any of their ships moving northward.”

  “I think for once,” he replied, smiling at his wife, “that you can believe everything you read in the papers. There is no immediate threat. The negotiations are continuing briskly.” But Danilov was one of the few who knew exactly what was taking place. He was aware that the armament being withdrawn from near the Norwegian border was taking a circuitous path back toward Murmansk, and he also knew that the original orders to the American submarine squadrons had not actually been revoked. He had been in this business long enough to realize that neither side really could anticipate what would happen over the next month or so. It was not so much the firm plans that brought nations to the brink, but the ones that seemed minor at the time.

  Their small talk continued until it became obvious that Anna was growing tired. Then Sergoff volunteered, as he often did, to put some music on the record player. Anna Danilov loved the ballet and the opera. She had been a tireless patron during their years in Moscow, and now she asked Sergoff to pick something for her. When the music began, her face lit up. He had remembered her favorite Tchaikovsky ballet.

  Even the admiral smiled to himself as he helped her to the sofa. His chief of staff was as invaluable to his wife as he was to his admiral. It was strange how relationships developed. If only he could depend on Sergoff to help Anna when it came time to leave for the base at Polyarnyy.

  But that would not be the case because he desperately needed Sergoff. Perhaps, with a stroke of luck, there would be a meeting of the minds and he would not have to leave her. Yet he doubted that more each day. The intelligence reports from the American Pacific Coast indicated that the U.S. was preparing to release that submarine that had been building for years. And their Admiral Reed was known to be involved. He was to the Americans what Danilov was to his own navy. It became increasingly difficult to enjoy the music and Anna’s pleasure in it as the implications of Reed’s participation coursed through his mind.

  For a few moments, with Anna and Sergoff engrossed in their music, Danilov’s inner thoughts completely masked Tchaikovsky. Reed—Rear Admiral Andrew Reed—the foreign flavor of the syllables echoed back and forth across his mind, yet there was a familiar ring to them also. He knew the name as well as his own. If Reed had been born in Russia, and Abe Danilov in America, would they have assumed each other’s bodies? Each other’s position in life? Each other’s . . .?

  There were so many similarities. While Danilov was older and therefore slightly more senior in their respective navies, their careers had followed remarkably similar patterns, Both had been involved in the early stages of nuclear propulsion; each had worked with the designers of new classes; each had commanded the first of a class. And, the Russian concluded, they were both simple men . . . family men . . . they had been loyal to their wives. He respected that in a man.

  Danilov knew all about the American. He’d studied Reed’s career folder often, a standard procedure when operating in an area where your opposite could be expected to appear, Abe Danilov was sure they had played cat-and-mouse games—once with their own submarines in the North Atlantic, later when they were squadron commanders evaluating their own commanding officers in the Pacific. The Russian admiral kept close track of his American encounters—especially with this Reed for some reason—and he hoped that his opposite would agree with him on the score: there had been no winners on either occasion.

  A sense of respect had evolved from their brief competition. Often, when the hierarchy in the Kremlin was boasting of the superiority of their submariners, Danilov hoped he would never have to face Admiral Reed. It wasn’t fear of the other man by any means; it would be the contrary—the challenge of a lifetime! But deep inside the burly, gruff facade that was Abe Danilov, there was also a man who did not want to take the life of one who could almost be his brother. . . nor did he want to hurt the family that must have been as beautiful as his own.

  Fear often has a momentous influence on decisions. Among most people in leadership positions, it is not the gut-wrenching fear of failure or death. It is the fear of the unknown, or, more aptly, the fear of failing to challenge the unknown.

  In Washington it was accepted that Soviet ballistic missile submarines lurked under the arctic icecap waiting for a signal all hoped might never come. It was known that the Russian threat was there and that they could be located by American attack submarines given enough time. Instead, it was the unknown that created a rising anxiety within the Washington power structure—the Soviet threat concerning an American warship crossing that arbitrary line, the Arctic Circle. Would the Kremlin enforce their threat, especially now that they were going through the motions of removing their prepositioned materiel on the Norwegian border? Or, presented with the challenge, would they back down, considering the retaliation an attack on an innocent ship might bring?

  The Kremlin decision makers found themselves faced with the same gnawing concerns. They expected American submarines to seek out their missile boats under the icepack. Each country had been attempting to ferret out the other’s missile threat since the game began twenty-five years before. Their greatest fear had been that the U.S. would send a ship—just one lone ship—on a mission beyond the Arctic Circle to test their seriousness. To back down would be to admit defeat on a major issue they themselves had created. And the submarine building on the Washington coast was almost certainly nearing completion. The power of the weapon wasn’t nearly as much a concern as how it might be utilized. All weapons had eventually been countered or matched in the history of war, but th
e method of employing it was the single unknown that carried the greatest threat. They knew that Washington had hurried its completion once the Kremlin determined to solidify its arctic bastion.

  In Washington certain hawks favored sending a carrier battle group into the Norwegian Sea immediately. That would show the Russians how much the U.S. regarded such threats. The final decision was reached without consulting many of the doves, who would opt to trust the Soviet withdrawal agreement and in return would stay to the south of the Arctic Circle for the time being. The doves might have had more influence if American intelligence hadn’t been able to trace a withdrawn Soviet tank battalion back to a railroad siding no more than twenty miles south of Murmansk. Since that city was less than a hundred miles from the Norwegian border, it was less than a two-hour trip by high speed tank. In the final analysis, testing the Soviets was necessary, but wiser heads agreed that the sacrifice should be minimal.

  Moscow’s decision was no easier. Would the destruction of a single ship, when it crossed that invisible line, justify the chances of retaliation? They could not back down, nor could they stand tall before the world for what most likely would amount to an assassination of a small ship. The debate within the Kremlin consumed no less time than that in Washington. When Soviet intelligence intercepted orders directing an American marine amphibious unit to a point near the Aleutian Islands for transfer, concern increased. Though the orders made little sense, the security surrounding the directive was in conjunction with the orders issued to U.S. submarines destined for the Arctic. The message was also limited to exactly the same high-level individuals in the U.S. involved with that mysterious submarine.

  They had no choice but to sink any American ship that crossed that line.

  Carol Petersen climbed up through the aft hatch onto Imperator’s deck. She paused for a moment, looking down the vast expanse of rounded black hull before crossing the gangway to the dock with a tired smile on her face. For a woman whom none of the crew would speak to, she still smiled a great deal. Carol decided soon after reporting that it would accomplish nothing to be equally rude. Instead, she had a cheery greeting for everyone and became a favorite among the yard workers. She managed to make coveralls look neat and appealing with her efficient, short brown hair, brown eyes, and high cheekbones; and there was always a trace of makeup, even at the end of a long day. When she smiled, her eyes sparkled.

  But she was tired now. The engineers had been conducting manual and visual checks in the after engine spaces and three times she had to override the computer’s emergency alarm. She continued to run headlong into invisible lines she couldn’t cross and rules that wouldn’t bend where she was concerned. Now she learned to her dismay that naval engineers maintained an inbred distrust for safety checks other than their own. There was no possible way she could convince them that the master computer, Caesar, was as closely in touch with their machinery as they were—for twenty-four tireless hours a day and with an unerring capability of reporting the tiniest flaw, one unnoticeable to a man, within milliseconds.

  She would be going to sea in this behemoth and she relished the idea, especially since she was breaking another tradition. She could accept the shunning now, as long as the men would eventually come to realize one inevitable fact. That neither Imperator nor Snow nor the crew could get along without her.

  In the weeks that followed, the final events careened irretrievably into place. A small guided-missile frigate in the reserve force was dispatched toward the Arctic Circle. Admiral Andy Reed designated the rendezvous point for the screening group of submarines that would eventually join Imperator. She possessed the firepower of a carrier battle group and was capable of landing marines on the north coast of Norway if that became a necessity.

  Admiral Abe Danilov, much to his dismay, received final orders that would send him away from his Anna. He would take command of a hunter/killer group of attack submarines in Polyarnyy. It was a foregone conclusion that the American submarine preparing to depart the Washington coast would transit the Arctic Ocean for Europe’s Northern Flank, and Danilov was considered the best man to intercept it. Before his departure, he was called into the office of the commander in chief of the Soviet Navy. His old friend reviewed the behind-the-scenes negotiations of the past few weeks, emphasizing their futility. Now, the preservation of the Arctic as a Soviet domain for their ballistic-missile force appeared to rest on Abe Danilov’s shoulders.

  Fahrion rolled sharply to starboard, her bow plunging deep into the Atlantic. Green water swept back over the deck of the little guided missile frigate, swirling about her launcher before the high sharp angles of her bow reappeared. The ship shuddered, rising against tons of water gullying back on either side of the deckhouse. Heavy spray leaped to the pilothouse windows. The miserable, freezing lookouts, drenched within seconds of stepping out to the open bridge, ducked heads as the water lashed about them.

  “Combat has a bearing on that contact, Captain.” The voice of the officer of the deck—the OOD—was steady. “That type of signal belongs on those big Russian bombers, but they’re jamming us like hell.”

  “No other signals yet?” the captain inquired casually. He had told his officers that their training mission had been altered by Washington, that they had been designated for a special mission that could be hazardous. But he could tell them nothing beyond that. The original Soviet warning concerning the frigate’s voyage had been delivered verbally to the White House by the Soviet ambassador—Fahrion must reverse course. There had been no public dissemination of the threat in either Washington or Moscow. The Kremlin would not announce that they were about to annihilate a sacrificial cow in international waters any more than Washington would admit that the ship’s fate might already have been sealed without opening it up for debate on Capitol Hill. Soviet resolve had to be tested. Both sides were well aware of that. The threat had not been an idle one. Its impact on superpower strategy could be immense.

  “Nothing yet, Captain. Should they be searching any particular band?”

  The captain had looked it up the night before in the privacy of his sea cabin. “J-band. Just tell them to search J-band for now.”

  When the OOD relayed the request to combat, he overheard a voice in the background mutter that J-band was missile-homing radar. But he said nothing to the captain. The watch standers held on tightly as Fahrion rolled heavily from side to side, continuing to dig her bow deep into the trough before shaking the water off like a puppy.

  For the captain, each minute grew more agonizing as he awaited the inevitable. Everything that he could possibly do to protect his ship had been done in drills the previous day. There was little defense available to these ships, but he’d promised himself that everything in his power would be attempted to get his crew and himself home safely to their families. This cruise had begun innocently enough as an annual two weeks at sea, a training period for reservists. There had been no bands or parades as they pulled away from the pier at Newport. Though a training cruise was odd this time of year, most of them had been doing this for years and it was an enjoyable change from civilian life.

  “Captain.” A voice from combat echoed out of the speaker above his head. “We have contact with a J-band radar . . . it’s steady.” There was a pause. “Captain, it appears to be a homing device . . . but the book says what we have seems to be a Soviet missile. I’m checking the book again.”

  The captain raced for the general quarters alarm himself, pressing down the ship’s PA button at the same time. “Damage Control, this is the captain,” he shouted breathlessly. “Prepare for missile attack . . . prepare for missile attack.” His voice echoed throughout the ship to a stunned crew before it was drowned out by the general alarm.

  There was so little time. The AS-6 missile would climb steeply to achieve cruise level and would travel at Mach 3 before diving sharply at its target. It was difficult to pick up on radar, even harder to defend against. And Fahrion’s only real defense was her Phalanx Gatling gun,
a last-ditch effort when the missile was already plunging downward.

  “High-speed contact!” The frantic voice echoed through the bridge speaker. “Intermittent. . . there’s no aircraft like that.”

  The captain blanked out the last words from combat. He was already giving orders to his weapons officer to activate Phalanx. That meant that when the Gatling gun’s fire-control radar locked on the missile—if it ever did—it would spew heavy bullets at more than five tons of highspeed missile dropping down on them. The intent was to destroy a warhead containing more than eleven hundred pounds of high explosive—if the bullets could penetrate it.

  “I have a second contact . . . slightly behind the first.” Fahrion’s captain silently noted to himself that there was one Phalanx and two missiles now targeted on his ship.

  “Fire chaff . . .” Time seemed to stop until the chaff canisters burst in a final effort to decoy the oncoming missiles. With an ear-splitting chatter, Phalanx automatically opened fire. An overwhelming din filled the pilothouse, silencing any last thoughts.

  The first missile plunged through the pilothouse, detonating a split second later on the deck underneath. There was a flash, but no one in the pilothouse heard the sound for the entire forward deckhouse lifted into the air, disintegrating. Seconds later, the other missile plunged into the engineering spaces. That blast split Fahrion in two.

  Just beyond the Arctic Circle, icy, stormy waters ripped at the burning remnants of Fahrion. The bow section had drifted a few hundred yards from the stern before turning turtle. After the disintegration of the entire superstructure, there was little left to identify it as part of a once-proud guided-missile frigate. The after section lit up in a brilliant gout of flame as the final storage tank for the helicopter’s avgas exploded. Diesel fuel spread in an ugly, brown patina to merge with the foamy North Atlantic. Great rollers tore at the exposed engine room. Here and there desperate survivors struggled for a handhold in the wreckage. There were few of them, and their numbers dwindled rapidly as the cold, gray sea claimed them one by one until there was no longer any sign of life.