Silent Hunter

by Charles D. Taylor

  When Andy Reed approached the quarterdeck of his new command that Monday morning, there was little doubt who the painters had been. Above the ornately carved shield of the submarine Cavalla was a second, handpainted sign We One Hundred Twenty-Eight.

  That had been seven years before. Back then, Andy Reed had been considered flag material and every sailor he knew looked forward to it. The selection board reached way down to give him his first star. But promotion to flag rank had taken him away from the squadron he commanded and he’d seen too many desks until this mission.

  Now, as he fell asleep, his last thought was of the We One Hundred Twenty-Eight sign that hung over the mantle in his house. The We Eight had been tied up much too long at its berth on the Potomac. As he slept, there were no thoughts of torpedoes or other weapons of war. Andy Reed never worried about the future.

  Traveling on the surface, Imperator was on an advanced stage of alert. Earlier in the evening there had been a near-collision with a surface object that had never been identified. Even Carol Petersen, who had been taking some air on the bridge, had been unable to see it, and Caesar had reported nothing. It was only in the final seconds that something activated his sensors for evasive action.

  Now, an hour before midnight, Imperator’s radar printed an airborne contact whose takeoff had been reported earlier by satellite. From an airbase well inside Siberia, the Soviet Badger had climbed to forty thousand feet as it headed east toward the Bering Strait. This particular aircraft, though armed with air-to-surface missiles, was fitted for electronic intelligence. It was a reconnaissance flight, preliminary to any attack.

  U.S. satellite recon maintained a steady picture once it was evident the Badger would soon enter air space affecting Imperator. A target designation link for the submarine was automatically fed into Caesar’s system. At a range of four hundred miles, the Badger began a slow descent, circling to the west and then the south of Imperator.

  At three hundred miles, the aircraft’s active electronic devices went silent. She turned purely to intelligence gathering, a myriad of detectors silently reaching out in the night to analyze the slightest electronic radiation from Imperator, A half hour before midnight, Andy Reed requested that Snow radiate signals from a brand new unit—nothing steady, just enough to attract attention, to lure the curious closer.

  The Badger turned toward Imperator and descended below five thousand feet, seeking the bait of new, highly classified equipment. This was akin to dangling raw meat. Snow activated his laser system as the Badger was drawn into the kill radius. There was never a warning, no indication to the Soviet air crew that they had come under fire. No explosion—nor any shock—occurred as Caesar carefully pinpointed the Badger with a ten-second irradiation.

  The Badger’s listening equipment noted the event with a high-pitched squeal a millisecond before the unit ceased to operate. Piercing noise deafened the operators, as the deadly sound penetrated through the radio headphones of the pilot and copilot. All equipment ceased functioning—navigation, radar, communications, targeting devices for weapons systems. In less than five seconds, the pilot understood he was under attack of some kind. Yet he was unable to either defend himself or return fire. The last Siberian base lost contact with him as he fought to regain control.

  The Badger turned sharply west, climbing once again as it did so. No better than a fish out of water, it flew through the inky night with no idea of true height, direction, or speed. Finding a large enough airfield in Siberia would be the luck of the draw, and approaching any military installation without preliminary identification would be hazardous. Parachuting into the cold Bering Sea was also an unacceptable alternative, since there was no chance of survival. There was no way they could respond to queries from the lazy and often bored radar installations as they closed the Siberian perimeter, but they had become a fresh contact for their nervous countrymen.

  Forty-five minutes after the laser attack, the Badger became the target of a missile from a friendly station. The air crew had little idea of their location, and there was no indication of their fate until the starboard wing tank erupted with the detonation. Imperator had brought down her first aircraft. Three more times within the next hour, other Badgers attempted to close them. One even fired a cruise missile. All of the aircraft met the same fate as the first. The missile dropped harmlessly out of control into the Bering Sea.

  Hal Snow stared at the bland, sand-colored bulkhead in his stateroom, contemplating the Badgers’ demise but finding little to concern himself with, since they would have done the same to him. He was pleased with his lethal craft, more so now that they had departed the fishbowl and Imperator was proving herself. As he’d watched her take shape over the past year he also understood that there was always time to get out—to return to a safer, saner life. But he wouldn’t. Whenever the thought crossed his mind, it was met in an instant by a singular desire to be the commanding officer of the greatest warship afloat. He was willing to acknowledge that they understood his ego at least as well as he did. Yet now, facing increasing danger.

  he felt the need to talk with someone. It wasn’t fear by any means, just the need to talk.

  Realizing sleep was impossible, Snow headed for the wardroom. It was empty and the coffee was old and thick and stale. Then he saw a cup with lipstick around the rim perched on the pantry shelf. The stewards often cleaned up stray cups before midnight, so perhaps Carol Petersen had just been there. She’d made the effort to communicate with him earlier in the day . . . why not? Snow had yet to understand that he was desperately in need of a friend.

  “I’ll bet that’s you, Captain,” she responded to his soft knock. “Come on in.”

  It never occurred to Snow to question how she knew it was he. “I’m not disturbing you, am I?” She was sitting at a writing desk folded out of the bulkhead, a blank sheet of paper before her, “Writing a letter home?” he asked when she shook her head to the first question.

  “I was thinking about it. You can see how far I’ve gotten.”

  “To your parents?”

  “Just my mother. Dad died five years ago. She’s all alone now. The rest of the kids are just like me—strung out around the world and no better at writing letters.” Snow was lowering himself into the chair beside her desk, but he stood up again. “Really, I’d be happy to leave if—”

  “No, please, Captain.” She pointed to the chair. “I know enough about you to think that maybe my friend, Caesar, had gotten you down.”

  “I don’t know if it’s that so much. Sometimes I have to keep reminding myself—that Caesar’s still a machine. I think I can handle that. It’s that laser system. I punched in the data to fire on those Russian planes.” Snow stroked his chin thoughtfully before looking back at her. “You understand we had to compromise a terrific weapon a little while ago. We should have saved it until the last minute. The Russians will figure out eventually that it was this ship that disabled that recon plane and dumped the others. Submarines don’t normally bring down aircraft, but this one did. I wish I’d saved that laser . . .”

  Carol studied her fingernails for a moment, then murmured, almost as an afterthought, “I wonder how much difference it makes whether they know it now, or a couple of days from now.”

  “It’s a matter of how much they know, I suppose. They’re not going to take the chance of losing any others tonight. Once the intelligence people on either side have the slightest inkling of something new, they pick away one bite at a time. Odds and ends fall together after a while. This time we left nothing to the imagination.”

  “Captain, you’ve been worrying when there’s really nothing you can do about it.” She paused. “Zapping those planes was just part of what’s getting to you, isn’t it?” Snow stood up as if he was about to leave. She said nothing. “Well, I can’t drink when things seem to be getting to me . . . and there’s no way I can go for a long walk to get everything out of my system.” Once again the words he might have said to make her an integral part o
f his crew wouldn’t come to the surface.

  She looked up quizzically. “I don’t know Captain Snow well enough to offer the answer you’re looking for, my friend. I’ve got an idea about you . . . directly . . . as much as I know about you at this stage.”

  “I suppose what you should tell me is to get back to the job I was hired for in the first place and stop grousing about it.” He moved toward the doorway. He had no idea now why he’d bothered . . . or perhaps he’d somehow made a move.

  “No,” she answered, “I’m not going to say anything of the kind, I’m going to say instead that I’m willing to talk to you again if you’re looking for someone other than one of your old submariners. I’m going to be one of your most valued shipmates, too, and you’d better believe that. Do you understand what I mean?” Her eyes held his as if she dared him to disagree.

  “I think so.”

  “Good. Then we have started understanding each other.

  We’ll work together. That’s more important to me than you can understand. Now, Captain, I do have to finish this letter to my mother. Good night.”

  “Good night.” Walking back to his stateroom, Snow could not quite imagine whether he felt more in command of his ship, or still at odds with himself.

  The object Imperator had almost collided with earlier now began to bear more import. Though the Kremlin was aware of Imperator’s passage through the northern Pacific, the voyage had yet to be announced to the American people. The master plan was to make the announcement as she surfaced on the opposite side of the icepack days later.

  Like so many great plans, however, they failed. Imperator had been seen. In the early evening of the fourth day, as a brilliant red sun was tinting the fog banks, the submarine appeared as a great black sea monster to two men in a fragile skin boat.

  Their craft, fashioned from walrus skin stretched over a bone-and-wood frame, showed little change through generations of Eskimos. The only departure from tradition as they challenged the frigid arctic waters was the addition of motors. The added power allowed them to extend the range of fishing and hunting areas, But once there, these natives would revert to their ancient ways, paddling by hand into their favorite fishing area or sneaking up on an unsuspecting seal, the motor long since silenced.

  Imperator might have passed as a sea monster that evening if the occupants of the skin boat had both been aging Eskimos, The submarine appeared suddenly, immense and threatening as the fog parted, and the monster bore down on them through the floe ice at a tremendous speed. Tons of water rose in a bulge over the submarine’s bow, foaming down into hollow gulleys on either side. The Eskimo was transfixed as he peered at the submarine’s bulky sail more than a thousand feet to the rear. The creature made no sound. There was only the surflike rumble as the parted waters and ice fell back in white foam. It seemed as if this monster had been sent to claim them. The other man, a research scientist taking a moment to fish with a native friend, was the first to react. Though he had seen nothing like Imperator before, he was not superstitious. Dropping the motor back in the water, he yanked repeatedly on the starting cord. Perhaps a healthy, natural fear made him forget to prime it.

  The simple act of pulling at the engine was enough for the computer deep inside the submarine. Caesar’s sensors immediately located the tiny craft bobbing on the surface directly ahead, and put Imperator’s rudder over sharply. The sub could not maneuver as rapidly on the surface as in its natural element, but responded quickly enough to ease away from the tiny craft. As she did, the stern began to swing toward the skin boat. Caesar waited only long enough to ensure they would miss before reversing his rudder angle. The stem moved in the opposite direction.

  The Eskimo and the scientist remained seated, staring speechlessly as the immense black creature sped silently past them. It was so close that there was no doubt it was man-made. The scientist could project how much of this submarine must be below the surface. It was the size of an aircraft carrier . . . and there were no markings to identify it. But nothing like this was known to man. It could have passed as a bad dream for the scientist, or an apparition for the Eskimo, if they hadn’t noticed a person appear in the sail just before the fog bank closed around them again. The scientist in the skin boat doubted she saw them, but there was no doubt in his mind that he had seen a woman peering in their direction, as if she knew something was out there, but was unable to perceive it through the fog. Then, it was gone, as rapidly as it had appeared.

  Since there had been no markings, there was no way to tell who had built this monstrous craft. It could be dangerous to his country, and the natural suspicion in waters so close to Siberia would be that it was of Russian origin. It was unlikely something like that could be built in America without the people knowing of it.

  As they tossed in the deep swell left by the passing of the submarine, the scientist remembered to prime the engine before he pulled the starting cord. The motor roared into life instantly, and they were off at top speed for the Eskimo village where the scientist radioed their sighting to Fairbanks.

  Within hours the wire services had picked up the story.

  On a submarine located 150 miles north of Prudhoe Bay in the Arctic Ocean, unaware of the media attention about to be focused on Imperator, another lonely captain was saying good night. Abe Danilov neatly folded Anna’s letter after the first reading and lay back on his bunk with one hand under his head.

  His good night could not be heard, because his lips never moved. It had been just a whisper from the recesses of his heart. Anna was thousands of miles away, and he toyed with what time it might be at their apartment in Moscow. More than likely the sun was already well into the sky. Natalya probably had arrived to straighten up the apartment and prepare some food for the day, even if Anna would later refuse what was offered. That was more likely at that stage of the disease.

  Danilov hoped that somehow she would be able to sense that thousands of miles from her bedside her man had wished her a loving good night. In recent months he liked to believe that couples could develop a special sensitivity—that certain awareness when their mate was thinking of them. There were times he had been sure in the last few days that Anna was actually transmitting her innermost thoughts to him. Now he was responding in kind.

  Right this moment, he was acknowledging her letter, silently attempting with all his power to let her know that he was as proud as she was of young Boris, who had just become a doctor. He was their second son, and the last child, born in 1966 when the family was still in Leningrad. Arriving after Eugenia, his fate was already unknowingly sealed by his older sister. No matter what he did. no matter how hard he tried to please his father, there was little room in Danilov’s heart to offer equal love to a second son. Anna’s letter was much different in approach from the earlier ones because she had begun by saying, “I’m going to tell you who your son, Boris, is and why I have loved him so specially in his short lifetime.”

  As he lay in his bunk remembering each line of her letter, he wondered why he’d never realized how much Boris was like him. Anna claimed that Sergoff had first emphasized that to her. One night during a dinner party, when the admiral had left the room, Sergoff considered a photograph of the admiral as a young officer in Sebastopol for a few moments. Then he pointed out to Anna how much the boy resembled his father. It was a remarkable likeness. Anna Danilov recognized how similar their mannerisms were, the short temper, an inability to suffer fools that had made the boy so many enemies at school, not to mention neatness, vanity, orderliness—they were both perfectionists.

  Boris Danilov imitated his father because he so wanted the man’s approval. The boy worshiped his father and yearned for a love that was not forthcoming because it was his older brother who had been chosen to follow in the father’s footsteps. Anna had written: “Boris’s fate was that you only had room in your disciplined heart for one boy to succeed you and one daughter to be a princess.” That was why his son—the best student, the one who never broke his fa
ther’s rules, the one who ate everything on his plate—finally determined to become independent. Yet even when he had announced that he had an appointment to a special school for the sciences, with the vague hope of shocking his father, his natural ability had still gone unrecognized.

  Anna Danilov’s time was limited and she was now urging her husband to accept what mattered to her the most—love.

  Most important, Abe, when you are next in Moscow why don’t you contact some of your friends at the air force ministry and ask about your second son, Boris. You will learn that he is one of the finest students in space medicine. He tells me that two of his class will be selected to become cosmonauts—and he is at the head of the class! Find out who your son is. Learn to love him and his accomplishments, and the pride you show will be returned by a boy who so wanted to please you for so many years.

  Before Abe Danilov whispered good night once more, he also sent a message that said how hard he would try to follow her wishes. He understood what she was saying. It was urgent that he settle his business and return home as quickly as possible. She was right. He’d known it for years. But somehow he’d never been able to put it into words.

  While not a word was heard from Moscow concerning the voyage of Imperator, concrete actions were taken despite the little they knew of her capabilities. There were wise men in the Kremlin power structure who, while trusting Abe Danilov implicitly, felt that he was rushing headlong into the unknown without the power to match it. Imperator’s power had already been demonstrated. With accurate, submerged-cruise-missile capability and a destructive laser system, there was little doubt that Imperator promised many more surprises.

  Six additional high-speed attack submarines were dispatched to positions beneath the icecap to await further orders from Abe Danilov. A Spetsnaz commando unit, trained exclusively in cold regions warfare, was detached to an airbase near Murmansk. They were placed on an arctic jump alert to defend an underwater demolition unit. For some reason, a forward-thinking individual had suggested the necessity of control of air space over the arctic regions.