Malenkov nodded, but neither expected the cry of pain that escaped. For several seconds they waited for the Americans to appear over the edge of the pipe. When nothing happened, Dolinski and Gromeko helped Malenkov through his painful slide to the edge of the pipe. Fedulova, already treading the water at the end of the pipe, reached up and helped Malenkov into the water.
Fedulova took the face mask off, dipped it in the water, and then slid it over Malenkov’s face. Malenkov raised his right hand in a weak sign of “okay.”
“Chief, you stay with him. Lieutenant Dolinski, you carry the knapsacks. I will tow Zosimoff’s body with me.”
“One question, Lieutenant?” Fedulova asked.
Gromeko nodded.
“How do we get his body into the K-122 once we’re there? The tube is only big enough for one person as a time.”
“It’ll work. The person in the tube has nothing to do but shut the top hatch. We can do that from the outside.”
A minute later the heads of the four Spetsnaz warriors dipped beneath the waters and disappeared from sight. Blood trailed from the bandaged wound on Malenkov and the dead body of Zosimoff. Gromeko glanced at his diver’s watch. The fluorescent hands showed fifteen minutes after two.
In the drainpipe behind them, starlight revealed a coil of wire that had fallen out of Dolinski’s knapsack.
ELEVEN
Monday, June 5, 1967
“WHAT are your recommendations?”
“We could go active on sonar,” Chief Stalzer said.
Joe Tucker shook his head. “Against regulations to do that in port. You don’t know what damage you’re going to do.”
“Don’t know if someone is in the water,” Burnham added.
“Fry their ass.”
“Not really,” Burkeet said. “Could destroy their eardrums if they’re near the sonar.”
“XO, we can always request permission from Subic Operations Center. They can authorize it,” Burnham said.
MacDonald raised his hand. “I have to tell Admiral Green. Meanwhile,” he pointed at the XO, “Joe Tucker, the Coghlan is parked farthest from us. Out near the end of the pier. I need to talk with their skipper and get them involved in this.”
Joe Tucker’s eyebrows furrowed. “Coghlan?”
MacDonald nodded. “The admiral would have to get us permission to use sonar. It would take some time for that to happen, but if we can get another ship to activate its sonar, maybe we can get a passive noise triangulation on this possible submarine.”
“Why don’t we take the motor whaleboat and take off along the line of bearing?” Oliver asked.
“How’s that?” Burkeet asked.
“If we drag a line or wire behind it, it only has to be periscope depth, about fifty feet. If the submarine is in the harbor, we’ll snag it.”
“Sounds simple,” MacDonald added.
“Too simple,” Joe Tucker said.
“Better than sitting here,” Stalzer said. When everyone looked at him, he added, “Sorry. I was thinking out loud.”
“Chiefs have been known to do that,” Joe Tucker said with a smile. “Chief’s right, Captain. Let’s do both. Let’s send the motor whaleboat out along the line of bearing to see what they can see, and I’ll wake up the sonar team on another ship.”
“Sounds like a plan, but let’s do the triangulation before we start putting boats in the water. Meanwhile, I will contact Admiral Green,” MacDonald said. He reached over and patted Oliver on the shoulder. “Good job, sailor. I guess the other question I have is, what are you doing here in the middle of the night?”
“The chief wanted me to do the PMS today,” Oliver replied. “I didn’t finish it yesterday and it needed to be finished by quarters tomorrow morning.”
MacDonald looked at the chief. “Well done, Chief Stalzer.”
“Thank you, sir. I try to keep our team to a schedule.”
Stalzer failed to see Burnham roll his eyes.
Boatswain Mate Manny Lowe appeared back of the group standing in the doorway to Sonar. “Captain, XO!” he said.
Everyone turned.
“What is it, Boats?” MacDonald asked.
“There’s been an incident ashore, sir. Subic Base Operations is warning everyone to be alert. They’ve had some sort of shooting near the warehouses.”
“What kind of shooting?” Burnham asked.
“Don’t know, sir. They just said for all ships to increase their security until they have apprehended whoever was shooting at the marines.”
“Anyone hurt?” Joe Tucker asked.
“Don’t know, sir. They just said to increase our security.”
GROMEKO tugged the dead weight of Zosimoff with him. The weights in the diver’s belt made it harder. He looked up through the clear water and could make out the shadowy outlines of the other three, above and ahead of him. They would reach the K-122 minutes before him.
The weight of the dead man was forcing him to swim deeper than the others. He wondered for a moment if he was going to be able to make it. Then he shook his head. Spetsnaz warriors never had thoughts such as this!
Fedulova and Malenkov were traveling in tandem. Gromeko glanced upward. He could make out Malenkov’s weak kicking. Good! The man was still alive. Dolinski would reach the submarine first. He hoped the GRU Spetsnaz officer would let Malenkov go first.
His eyes dropped as he kicked a little harder. Zosimoff’s head bounced off Gromeko’s stomach as he swam, and when he kicked his flippers for forward motion, his calves and feet hit the body. It was the only way he could move, dragging Zosimoff slightly behind him.
A dark shadow blocked the starlight for a moment. Gromeko looked up, thinking a boat had passed over them, but there was nothing there. Must have been a cloud or a piece of harbor flotsam. He would have heard the engine of a small boat. But boats were heading this way.
The shadow passed again, but Gromeko ignored it. He concentrated on keeping Zosimoff’s body alongside him. The K-122 could not be too far ahead of them.
“UP periscope,” Bocharkov ordered, flipping the handles out, and riding the lens up through the water. He turned the periscope, starting his three-hundred-sixty-degree reconnaissance visual. As he hurried around the compass heading, he passed a series of running lights, causing him to bring the periscope back, focusing on the scene to his right.
“I have multiple small boats leaving the north side of the harbor,” he said.
“Sir, I have lots of noise spikes of small motors coming from the same direction,” Chief Diemchuk announced.
Bocharkov focused the lens with his fingers, concentrating on the boat in the middle. “Looks like a landing craft,” he said slowly, as he shifted the lens onto another boat to the right of the first one. “Second contact bearing zero-two-four appears to be a patrol boat. The hull is too dark to identify, but the fluorescents riding its bow wake show greater speed than the other one.” He leaned back from the periscope and looked at the clock on the bulkhead. It was twenty minutes after two.
“Do you think they have detected us?” Orlov asked.
Bocharkov bit his lip. He nodded. “That is always a possibility, but the destroyers are still tied up ashore and have yet to move.”
“THERE it is again, sir!” Oliver shouted.
“We heard it on the speaker,” Stalzer said, patting the petty officer on the shoulder.
Both sonar technicians looked at the captain.
“What do you think?” he asked Burkeet.
Every head turned to the ASW officer.
“I agree with the chief and Petty Officer Oliver, sir. It sounds like a periscope.”
“Could be outside,” Burnham said.
Stalzer shook his head. “It would be the first time I’ve heard a periscope rise from this distance. It would be near impossible for us to hear a periscope rise if it was even at the edge of Subic Bay.”
“The bearing goes through Subic Bay and out to sea,” Burnham argued.
“This one i
sn’t out in Subic Bay. It’s in the harbor.”
Everyone looked at Stalzer.
“I know, I know,” Stalzer said. “I don’t believe I said it either. It’s impossible. A Soviet submarine is inside an American-controlled harbor? It is as dumb as an American submarine . . .”
Everyone stopped.
MacDonald stepped outside Sonar and hurried to the nearest telephone.
“Where’s he going?” Burnham asked.
“Probably to call the admiral,” Joe Tucker said as he pushed past Burnham to follow MacDonald. At the curtain, he turned. “Lieutenant Burkeet, keep recording the noises. We’ll need them later.”
“Aye, sir.”
MacDonald was at his chair in Combat. Nearby, hanging on makeshift hooks along the edge of an electronics bay, were several metal-covered logbooks. He grabbed one labeled “Olongapo,” flipped over the metal cover, and started rifling through the messages.
“What you looking for, sir?” Joe Tucker asked as he stepped up.
“The telephone number of the Coghlan.”
“The Coghlan?”
“I would estimate he’s nearly a half mile from us.” His finger traced the numbers downward until he found what he wanted. “Ah! Here it is.” He quickly dialed the number. “If we have a Soviet submarine inside the harbor area, then a half-mile separation will be sufficient for us to get a location on it.”
As the phone rang, he turned to Joe Tucker. “If this Ron Kennedy can get his sonar team up and tracking this noise, then we’ll know real fast if it is an anomaly or if we have an intruder in the harbor.”
A sleepy voice answered the other end. It was not sleepy when MacDonald explained to his fellow skipper what he wanted. When he hung up, he turned to Joe Tucker. “Now I’ll call the admiral.” He sighed.
“You know Green will be over here in minutes,” Joe Tucker warned.
MacDonald nodded, his finger misdialing the second number. He hit the disconnect and redialed. He knew he was doing the right thing, but even doing the right thing could make you the butt of jokes for decades to come.
GROMEKO knew he was falling farther behind the three men ahead. He no longer could make them out, so now as he pulled the weight of Zosimoff along, he glanced at the wrist compass every few seconds to stay on course. The submarine should be at periscope depth and as low as he was swimming; he would run right into it—unless it had left.
Something bumped him on the left side, knocking him to the right and causing him to lose his grip on Zosimoff. Without thinking, he quickly reached back, luckily grabbed the sleeve of the dungaree shirt, and pulled the body back to him. What in the hell was that?
He looked right and left, treading water for a few moments, then attributed it to more flotsam in the heavily polluted waters of the harbor. He started swimming again, kicking harder, trying to make up for time he was losing. If he arrived at the K-122 after—
He was hit again. This time his hand trailed along the side of the thing that hit him. It took several seconds for it to pass. Shark! He had been a diver long enough to know. The blood from Malenkov and from Zosimoff had led it, or them, to him. He kept swimming.
Sharks circled their prey before dashing forward. They glided up, rubbing their skins, which were one continuous work of taste sensors, against their prey to determine if it was edible. Then they attacked, ripping and tearing their prey to threads with teeth honed by evolution since the age of dinosaurs. Gromeko had just been rubbed.
He stopped. The water was murky and he would hardly see the shark if it attacked. He pulled the knife from his ankle scabbard. And he waited. He allowed Zosimoff to drift downward slightly to give him room for the attack. The sound of his speeding heart filled his ears. To die as shark bait this far from home doing a mission in enemy waters—where was the irony of that?
Suddenly Zosimoff was jerked from his grip. The last he saw of the body was the waving hair as it disappeared downward. Without waiting, he turned and continued swimming toward the submarine. He picked up speed without carrying the body, but somewhere behind him was a big shark, and he did not know if Zosimoff would sate its appetite.
“SOMETHING is happening,” Bocharkov said.
Ignatova stepped into the control room. “It’s nearly two thirty,” he said. “Thirty minutes before they are due back.”
Bocharkov nodded. “Prepare for an emergency exit, Lieutenant Commander Orlov.” He turned to Ignatova. “Return to the forward torpedo room, XO. As soon as they are on board we are going to head out. Too much activity topside for me.”
“Do you think they know we are here?”
Bocharkov bit his lower lip. “Don’t know. All I can do is watch the destroyers now. With only small boats surfing across the harbor, the worst they can do is accidentally run into the periscope.”
“Maybe the Spetsnaz team has been discovered,” Tverdokhleb said, seated at the navigation table, one leg over the arm of the chair and his left hand drumming a cigarette on the table.
Bocharkov and Ignatova looked at the taciturn navigator.
Tverdokhleb shrugged. “If they have run into resistance and managed to escape, maybe the Americans saw them jump into the harbor. Maybe that is why we are seeing hundreds of boats scattering across the water.” He shrugged again. “Just thinking out loud.”
“Hundreds of boats?” Orlov asked.
Bocharkov shook his head. “Tens of boats is more accurate, but our esteemed navigator may have a point.” He turned back to the periscope. “Run up the radio antenna and get the communications officer up here immediately.”
THE telephone rang. MacDonald picked it up. While they waited for the Coghlan’s sonar team to man their position, he had moved the telephone outside of the Dale sonar compartment.
“Dale speaking,” he answered. He acknowledged the voice on the other end and then hung up. “Admiral Green is on his way over.”
“I hate it when I’m right,” Joe Tucker mumbled.
The telephone rang again. This time it was the lead sonar technician on the Coghlan. MacDonald handed the telephone to Stalzer. What would happen now would be that the Coghlan and Dale operators would focus on the same noise, each take a line of bearing on the signal, and then draw the lines outward until they crossed. Where they crossed would reveal the location of this mysterious signal that everyone seemed hell-bent on identifying as a Soviet Echo class submarine.
The officers stepped out of the sonar compartment to give Stalzer and Oliver room to work.
“I can’t believe the Soviets would be this dumb,” Burnham said, his voice trailing off as everyone looked toward him.
“I think he is outside the harbor. Inside, he is too close for his cruise missiles,” Joe Tucker said.
“Probably related to the expected attacks later today,” MacDonald offered.
“What attacks?” Burnham asked sharply. “In Vietnam?”
MacDonald shook his head. “Not now, Ops. Later.” Only one thing made sense to MacDonald. If this submarine was inside the harbor, it was spying. It was reconnoitering the Americans, gaining intelligence for when the two largest fleets in the world would fight for dominance of the seas. From some of his own intelligence-gathering missions just outside the twelve-mile national water limits, he knew exactly what this submarine was doing if they were “dumb” enough to be inside the harbor. Neither navy doubted that someday they would have that showdown. What if this was it?
“Most likely a sound propagation anomaly,” Joe Tucker said, his eyebrows furrowed.
Stalzer leaned into Combat, straddling the doorway. He held his hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. “Coghlan is turning up its gear, sir,” he said to Burkeet. “It’ll be another five minutes before they’re ready.”
MacDonald looked at the clock on the aft bulkhead of Combat. It was two thirty in the morning. It was going to be a long day for him. He tried to recall when he’d last had eight hours’ sleep in a row.
“Why would they be out there, Captain?�
�� Burkeet asked MacDonald.
MacDonald pinched his nose. It had been a long time, probably before they departed Pearl Harbor on the first leg of their deployment from San Diego.
“They’ve been trailing the Kitty Hawk battle group since we left Japanese waters,” Joe Tucker answered. “They’re waiting for us to come out. I hate to think what it would mean if we have one sitting a few thousand yards from us.”
“Could be,” MacDonald added. “You never know with Mad Ivan what he is up to, but I doubt seriously he’d attack us inside the harbor.”
“Why, sir?”
“Well, Lieutenant Burkeet, remember Pearl Harbor?”
The ASW officer nodded.
“We are still looking at photographs and movies of the event. Even today we recoil from what happened on December 7. Have you ever read about the Battle of the Aleutians or the Battle of the Solomons?”
“I studied them at the Academy,” Burkeet answered.
“Those two battles were at sea. Sea battles are more palatable to the world than those that rage ashore like Pearl Harbor. At sea, when the battle is over, the ocean covers the battlefield, and peace reigns from horizon to horizon.” He paused. “That’s why I don’t think this is a hostile act in terms of blood, guts, and gunpowder.”
MacDonald glanced up as Boatswain Mate Second Class Manny Lowe stepped through the opened watertight hatch.
“Sir, the officer of the deck sends his respects and sent me to find you.”
“You found me, Petty Officer Lowe. What is it?”
“Sir, Subic Operations Center has issued a report of intruders near the warehouses. Apparently there has been gunfire and some marines are either dead or wounded or both. They think the intruders escaped into the harbor . . .”
A shiver went up MacDonald’s spine. He didn’t need the Coghlan’s line of bearing, for he knew in his gut the Echo was sitting in the harbor out there. What in the hell were the Soviets trying to prove? A surge of anger welled up inside of him.
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