by Gordon Kent
Sneesen threw himself forward under the F-18. He wasn’t a runner, but fear and hero-worship and adrenaline drove him. He didn’t even think what would happen if the F-18 started rolling at that moment; he only knew he must go, dig into the nonskid and go. He tore across the deck, threw himself under the E-2 and felt something rake across his back like fire, and he hit the nonskid on his hands and elbows, and his face struck, but he scrabbled with hands and feet and kept moving—
“Foul deck! FAG in the wire! Foul deck!” Lieutenant Donitz heard the cry even through his protectors. He swung his head. The assistant LSOs had their mouths open. Donitz realized that he was being hit by a small enlisted man who was pounding his shoulder, who had apparently fallen or jumped off the deck on the LSO platform. What got him moving was that the kid was crying.
Donitz didn’t think. He had been an LSO too long; some of it was merely reflexes now. His thumb hit the button on the pickle switch and his voice was already roaring.
“WAVEOFF!” He must have busted Rafehausen’s eardrums, he thought.
Rafe had his hand on the throttle ready to go to full power, two hundred yards and four seconds from the deck when the cut lights went and the voice roared “WAVEOFF,” just as his sixth sense finally told him that something was definitely wrong in his landing area. The deeper dark down there in the dusk had to be another plane.
Smoothly, without hesitation, he ran the throttle forward to full power. Power is altitude. His airspeed was low, just above stall speed at this altitude—perfect for landing, shit for maneuver. Maybe five knots to play with. He lifted the nose by an adjustment so slight as to be unnoticed by the horrified watchers on the deck and felt the slow load of the S-3 respond. The turbofans charged and screamed in response to his throttle, and he edged the nose up another fraction, slowing his rate of descent. He still needed the aerodynamic edge of the flaps to keep him from stalling, so he discarded the notion of retracting them to get speed. Speed is not always power and altitude.
Three seconds from the ramp, Rafe remembered that he had a brand-new SENSO and an AI with no experience in the back, and he realized that neither would be ready to eject even if he had time to order it.
He could see the length of the deck now—no room even to touch and go. He uttered one word.
“Gear!”
Thank God, Cutter got it. He slapped a switch and turned his head, but Rafe never saw the look that Cutter gave him, mixed awe and terror. The landing gear began to retract, half a second and sixty feet from the ramp.
Later, and forever, both men would remember that Cutter, who had had three bad landings, had obeyed and acted.
More power came.
The S-3 was game, and so was Rafe, and her descent stopped as her nose crossed the line of the stern.
Sneesen watched his idol in slow motion as the S-3 roared toward the deck. It was all so clear, so final. He saw, with utter attention, as the landing gear twitched and began to retract. He saw the nose go up a fraction and the shallow dive bottom out at the stern deck edge. He even saw Rafehausen’s head, bent forward, dedicated. Then the E-2 mercifully blocked his view and he heard a sound like a cannon shot from the flight deck and all the LSOs threw themselves flat.
Sneesen’s chief watched from a prone position on the deck as the S-3’s high wings cleared the vertical stabilizers of the trapped F-18. The retracting landing gear missed the cockpit, because the plane’s nose-up attitude held the gear clear. The tail hook, however, slapped down on the F-18’s body and dragged up the length of the canopy. It cut a gouge in the airframe and in the air wing’s legends that would outlast every man and woman on the deck, before dangling into empty space fourteen feet off the deck. It still dangled there as the S-3 sailed down the centerline, perfectly trimmed, just clear of the deck. The Air Boss watched it go by below him, fighting for altitude. By the time it reached the bow, Rafe had got it sixty feet higher.
Any emergency on the flight deck communicates itself like a wave of light throughout the ship. On the deck itself, every sailor was either face-down on the nonskid or crouched behind the largest metal object he or she could find. Below decks, men and women were drawn to the plat camera images that could be seen on TV monitors in every space. As the S-3 clawed upward and away from the bow, eight thousand lungs exhaled simultaneously through four thousand throats, none less roughly than those of the Air Boss, who was muttering to himself Oh Jesus thank God oh thank God—
And aboard AG 703, Rafe continued to pray for altitude, but the battle had been won for ten long seconds. His grin was not relaxed, but it was genuine. He winked at Cutter, who was as gray as the plane, and called to his frozen backseaters:
“Everybody want to try that again?”
Sneesen got a commendation later, and the plane crew bought him a fancy Walkman with stereo speakers when they all hit the beach. But the best thing he got was one of those little plastic figures that have captions on the bottom like “World’s Best Golfer” and “World’s Best Grandad.” Rafehausen had somebody in the squadron shop fancy it up and re-do it so it read “World’s Best Sailor,” and he gave it to him in a ceremony in the ready room. Afterwards, Rafehausen took him aside and was utterly serious, looking right at him, and he said, as if he was eighty and not thirty-two, “You’re a very brave young man.”
From then on, Sneesen was ready to kill for him.
11
September
The submarine base at Murmansk, Russia.
An expected but long-delayed summons came to Alexandr Petrovitch Suvarov, Captain First Class of the Russian Navy, on a late afternoon whose perfect, golden beauty was going unnoticed by the captain and his harried crew. Captain Suvarov had requested a real cruise, a deep cruise, both to try his boat and to justify why an officer of his seniority was commanding a single submarine, and the high command had put him off and put him off, stroking him, lying to him, bullying him. Soon, Sasha. Very soon, Sasha. Not today, Sasha. Now, today, suddenly, it was Report, Sasha!
The dockyard workers were shit. Under the empire, under the Soviet system, workers at Severodinsk had been the best, and they had got special privileges, like scientists, to manhandle the titanium and maintain the fragile systems. Now they were shit-eating idiots, like men who built refrigerators and cars. Not for the first time, or the last, Suvarov grunted his hatred/admiration for the Americans’ casual assumption of technical competence at every level, and he went back to reviewing every inch of every machine part delivered from the factory. The last factory. The one remaining defense plant that produced the fine-machined parts that made the reactor hum.
Suvarov welcomed the summons, because it gave him an excuse to air his rage at headquarters, and because it gave him a chance to test his new second officer, an unproven quantity who lacked sufficient sea time for his seniority. Suvarov gave him distinct orders, winked at his engineer, an older man who ought to be in semi-retirement at Malachite or Lazarit, and went down the ladder to his stateroom to shrug his heavy shoulders into a regulation tunic. Suvarov had avoided the tendency of Russian officers to add weight with rank. He lifted weights and he ran, and he was sometimes mistaken in the dark for a Spetznaz officer, which of course always displeased him in a pleasant way. And he had avoided the tendency to add acolytes; when he went to a naval office, he trailed no tail of junior officers to show his importance. The truth was, Suvarov was a bit of a puritan. Even a bit of a prig.
Even in the best of times, North Fleet Headquarters had been on the drab and industrial side. This was probably for the best, as now, in hard times, there was no real change to either the exterior of the buildings or their interiors. Indeed, the number of new computers and the haze of concealing cigarette smoke combined to suggest actual improvement and modernization. Suvarov cut through the legions of flunkies and doorway guards with a deceptive swagger, a pose he used only, contemptuously, on functionaries. He made it to the admiral within five minutes of entering the quarterdeck.
“First Captain Suva
rov of the Shark,” an aide murmured and withdrew.
“Sasha!” The admiral rose from his chair, embraced him swiftly but sincerely, and waved him to a chair, a fine eighteenth-century chair at odds with the massive official furniture. The admiral occupied its twin, which protested faintly under him.
“Sergei,” smiled Suvarov, after the embrace. They were still Sasha and Sergei; that was good, considering that the boy who had been his guide and tormentor through the Nakimov Academy was now Commander, North Sea Fleet. Same age, same training, utterly different types: one lean, honed, trying to seem younger; the other overweight, bearded, avuncular. Suvarov was the better sailor, the admiral the better politician. The difference explained their difference in rank.
“Sasha, I have a cruise for you! An old-style cruise.”
Come, thought Suvarov, this is promising. He doesn’t open with an admonition for the recent past. No criticisms for landing the Navy in hot, hot water for a little violation of Swedish neutrality. And a cruise? Too good to be true.
“North Sea?” he said, hopefully. “Iceland?”
“Better!” the admiral said. “Much better. And between us old boys, Sasha, it will be a long time before the President sees fit to allow you anywhere near a Nordic country, you understand?”
Ah. The sharp knife rather than the thick bludgeon. “The American coast?”
“No, Sasha. Your old hunting ground. The Mediterranean.” Sergei beamed with pleasure. Well he might. Suvarov had longed to return to the Mediterranean. Too seldom they showed their ships and submarines in that strategic water. The Americans had begun to sneer, and Suvarov with them. Blue-water navy. Where? Within fifty miles of Mother Russia? But they are sending me. And I’m known to be dangerous. Splendid. What’s the catch?
“Are you ready for sea?”
Sasha snorted, meaning, In these times with such slipshod crap, I am never ready as I was taught to be ready. The admiral leafed through Suvarov’s orders, which sat on his lap in a blue plastic folder that was grained to look like leather and embossed with the gold seal of the Naval Command. “I say this to you privately, as it was said to me, Sasha. We are trying to make a point, not start a war, yes? We lack the muscle to demand that the United States give up a godawful weapon, an against-the-balance-of-power toy their scientists have given them. Do you know what I am talking about?”
Suvarov did not. Once he might have. Once upon a time he would have read all the intelligence reports for himself, back when he did not need sleep. He shook his head, trying to make it look like the angry no of a man who hadn’t the time.
“Don’t worry, Sasha, I’m not sure they would have given you these reports anyway.” The admiral made a face. “It is an American program, called Peacemaker. A wonderful name, because it is absolutely as peaceful as any other force America sends to destabilize our sphere of influence and destroy our empire. It is like Coca-Cola and the free market, eh? It is like—” He was going to go off on a hobby-horse, and then he saw what he was doing and he caught himself. “Peacemaker is supposed to be a spy satellite that can be deployed by a theater commander, fired from a ship or a submarine. It is to be in low-earth orbit and capable of being maneuvered in orbit—not unlike, let us say, some sort of aircraft, perhaps. Only eighty miles up. To ‘surveil.’ To ‘fill in the temporary gaps in the satellite network.’ That has been the story for two years; it’s in the newspapers, some of it. Now, our intelligence people think maybe too much is being made of too little—that, even in an open society, the Americans are being very, very public about their Peacemaker—because they’re hiding something. You have read Poe—The Purloined Letter? Like that.
“It has occurred to a committee at the National Academy of Sciences that Peacemaker could in fact be something else, maybe something left over from their so-called ‘Star Wars’—perhaps a prototype satellite hunter-killer, a weapon to destroy other nations’ satellites. Not only our spy satellites, Sasha, but communications. Information warfare. Which we hardly even understand, yet, and the Americans may be getting ready to wage it.”
“If they develop one, then we will develop one.”
“Oh, Sasha! You are a brilliant commander and also a little fool! American technology is so far beyond the rest of us—! Have you read that Englishman, Fuller, as I have asked you?”
Suvarov made a little hissing sound, the sort of noise a kid lets escape him when he is scolded. “Not yet, not yet—”
“Bah. You are unchanged since school. You read Poe, but you don’t read strategy.” He reached way forward, leaning over his own gut, to tap Suvarov’s thigh. “Sasha, defensive weapons make for security. Our ‘attack boats’ can defend our boomers, our ballistic missile submarines. Thus, they defend stability. Yes?”
“Sergei, I do not need to read this ‘Fuller’ to understand the basics of nuclear strategy and diplomacy, I thank you.”
“Then listen. Space weapons that destroy, let us say, communications satellites, change the balance of power too fast and too much. They make other nations spear-waving barbarians against the cartridge rifle. Understand?”
Suvarov turned this over in his mind until he was satisfied. Yes. Reaching out into space to destroy another country’s communications satellites would cost the user nothing but money. It would make the concept of a national fortress—one achieved by geography, by air defense systems, by armed perimeters—irrelevant. He nodded heavily.
“They have scheduled a test launch from a ship, in the Mediterranean. The test itself violates the ABM treaty. They know that, of course they know that—probably why they’re doing it so soon, a year ahead of the schedule they made public in ‘95. We want them to know we want the test stopped. I am sure that the drunkard in the Kremlin will be telling his pal the US President the same thing; so will our people in the UN, but our command believe the message should come from us of the Navy, as well—in the form of action. In the form that their command will understand—eh? So.” He folded his big, heavy hands over Suvarov’s orders, as if keeping them secret until Suvarov had been lectured. “You will shadow a US battle group now assembling in Norfolk and tag them as you see fit. You must allow yourself to be detected from time to time but not held, so that they get the message. You must seem a potential danger and an angry comment. If you can embarrass them by penetrating their screen, please, those rules are removed. But Sasha—” and here the admiral turned his bulk on the tiny chair, and the hard gray eyes had little of friendship in them. “Sasha, please understand me, and Moscow. You do not start a war. You back down if threatened. You make our comment and then you are the reliable old adversary who usually plays by the rules. Things are too fragile now. We cannot afford a real incident that would lose us the IMF money or the German heating oil.” He made the same face. “Or the Coca-Cola.”
Suvarov nodded. He was already pondering places he knew like old friends in the twisty currents of the western Mediterranean.
“Any surface ships?” he asked, hopefully.
“A Sovremenny group. Just a couple of destroyers and some support ships, and something to watch their test. And those ships mostly not worth a crap.”
“They’re handy if they make noise in the water at the right times.”
“And they give the American admiral more to think about. Yes. By the way, you’re in luck—it’s a man named Newman, his first flag—two years ago, he commanded the Fillmore and got so rattled in the South China Sea, you remember? Very bright, but unwise, if you understand me. You’ll sail rings around him. Anyway, that’s all in the briefing book. Would you like to meet the commander of your task force?”
“Is he senior to me?”
“No.”
“Then Sergei, let me command the task force from the Shark. Come, we have practiced this. In peacetime, it can work.”
Sergei smiled, but warmth did not lift the corners of his mouth.
“Perhaps. Let me take it up with Kandinsky and the rest.” He held out the blue folder. “Ready for sea in fourtee
n days, and we will meet for dinner. How is your second officer?”
“Splendid.”
“Good. He does not have enough sea time. Make sure you give it to him with honor and glory, old friend. It is time he went up the ladder.”
The second officer was the admiral’s son. Suvarov wondered if the admiral’s son was there to watch him, or whether he had gotten this beautiful cruise because of the golden boy aboard. No matter. He was taking to sea the finest ship ever built by the Soviet Union, and he was being ordered to take her in harm’s way, on a mission that mattered. It would be complicated; it was political. No matter.
“I must see to my ship.”
The admiral returned his salute.
Ten minutes after he boarded his boat, his mood had infected every sailor aboard. He had a picked crew, a professional crew, and now they smiled and joked and sang. He watched them carefully and turned up the discipline a notch.
If this was his last time, it would be the best. A great game at sea, with an American carrier battle group as the opponent, and with that element of profound risk that made it worthwhile.
12
Fleetex
Fleetex 3–96 had been planned for four months, but it had been planned one way by Admiral Newman and another by the rest of the Navy—the way Alan had glimpsed when he had put in those four days at LantCom in Norfolk. The Navy’s way had been rehearsed on paper and in computer simulations. It had been trained for by ships and squadrons.
From ten hours before it ever started, Admiral Newman’s way was a disaster.
The Andrew Jackson, with her battle group, had sailed again from Norfolk and was positioning itself in the Bahamas.
At 2330 on the calm night preceding the storm that would be Fleetex 3–96, the ASW module was deserted except for the watch stander, an aging black warrant officer named Charlie Hamilton, and LTjg Nixon, who was squeezed comfortably between two computers, digesting a two-month-old copy of Jane’s Defense Weekly and trying to overcome the anxiety of her first big at-sea operation. Since the carrier quals, the skipper had been on Rafehausen; Rafehausen had been on everybody else; the admiral had loomed over the lot like a mountain balanced on a rock. The only thing she felt no anxiety about was her part in it: she was rock-solid on the LantCom scenario, could have briefed it in her sleep.