World in Flames wi-3

by Ian Slater

  For a reason no one could explain, the room’s fire alarm was still screaming, though its light had gone out. Lewis reversed his Ingram, using the butt to silence it.

  “Flashlight!” ordered Brentwood. “Two of you by the door — what’s left of it.”

  “Struth!” said Aussie. “The bastards!”

  “They’re gone!” said one of the troopers, looking around disbelievingly at the rubble. Brentwood, blinking hard, eyes gritty with dust, spotted a shoe by itself over near the desk. Behind the desk, its dark teak split asunder by the explosion, he saw a man whose face and eyebrows were plaster-white, dead, eyes staring heavenward, a neat bullet hole mid-forehead, only a faint trickle of purplish blood made dark by the dust congealed on the lapel of his suit, where the blood had dripped from his chin. But no more bodies were found in the rubble.

  “Who is it?” asked one of the troopers. “Suzlov?”

  “Yes,” answered David. “It’s him.”

  “We’ve got three minutes,” said the sapper corporal, his voice devoid of panic but insistent. “We’d better move, Lieutenant.”

  “Where the fuck to?” asked another, glancing out at all the tanks.

  “All right,” said David. “Red-green flares, Aussie. Out the west window over there. And watch the carpet.” The red-green sequence would be the signal for the SAS troops to don the SPETS overlays and withdraw as best they might.

  Aussie took his “Popsicle,” so called because the red and green self-propelled signal flares were no bigger than two frozen juice sticks. As he clipped a new magazine into the grip housing of his MAC, the flare pack in his left hand, and moved toward one of the COM’s west windows, one of the troopers covered him, shining the flashlight low, its beam a few inches above the carpet so they could see any indication of an Astrolite patch.

  A few more men from C Troop now passed through the hole that only a minute or so before had been a solid brick wall, one of them Cheek-Dawson, with a tourniqueted bloody left arm in a strap sling, his Kevlar helmet split down the left side, and a hemorrhaging leg wound. “Come on, Lieutenant,” he told Brentwood. “Time to go.”

  Brentwood was bending down, making absolutely sure, for the record, that Suzlov was dead, feeling for the slightest trace of a carotid pulse. “He’s cold,” he said.

  “Let’s go!” echoed another trooper nearby, as the Australian, crossing the carpeted hallway in two steps worthy of a danseur, made his way to the west window and fired the flares.

  “Everybody out of the building!” ordered David. “Assumption Cathedral. Now!”

  In less than a minute, even the wounded Cheek-Dawson had reached the ground floor, the order to “clear out” shouted and repeated down the stairwells.

  As they hit the cold, dark air, the snow now falling more heavily, they glimpsed dark humps of bodies in the light of the SPETS’ flares, some half-buried in the snowdrifts by the trees to their right, as they headed south for the short, desperate run to the cathedral near where several goshawks lay dead, having been caught in the crossfire.

  “Where’s Laylor?” asked David as the fourteen men — all that remained of his and Cheek-Dawson’s forty troopers— headed for the Assumption’s golden domes, which, capped with snow, formed a perfect symmetry.

  “On his way,” said one of the troopers.

  As they ran, David suddenly called out to Cheek-Dawson, “Suzlov was cold.”

  “What the devil are you on about?”

  “Stone bloody cold!” shouted David, adopting the Englishman’s swear word to drive home the message, his own voice drowning now beneath the rattle of a machine gun opening up from the top floor of the arsenal two hundred yards behind them, red tracer arcing gracefully through the blizzard, kicking up snow about them.

  “He wasn’t killed by us,” David explained. “They murdered him!”

  Cheek-Dawson stumbled. David grabbed the Englishman’s collar, propelling him forward toward the steps of the holy refuge. Cheek-Dawson was trying to fit it all together, but nothing would fit. With his arm hurting so badly, near to the point of him blacking out, only sheer will kept him going, that and Brentwood, who, he thought, must be as addled as he himself was from the unbelievable noise and shock of the short, fierce battle and now the thundering roar of the COM collapsing. All he could think of was that all the other Russian henchmen — General Marchenko, the KGB’s Chernko, et cetera — must have gotten out via some tunnel from the COM, or possibly through some other secret exit that Western Intelligence hadn’t twigged to.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Still too heavy, unable to rise the two hundred feet to the surface, the USS Roosevelt was crawling at a mere four knots, provided by her twin slit-recessed props in her aft ballast tank, moving toward the area directly beneath the four-hundred-yard-diameter hole that her torpedoes had blown in the ice roof. At five knots, it would take her another nineteen minutes even with the assist of the local current before the broken echoes of her active sonar would tell her she was beneath the ice-free hole.

  Within another half hour, however, the heat generated by her torpedo’s explosion would be completely dissipated and the ice hole would be starting to crust and freeze over again. Meanwhile the enemy sub, adjudged “hostile by sound,” was closing, having fired three torpedoes in response to the Roosevelt’s firing of one of its Mark-48 torpedoes to break open the ice. In response, Brentwood had launched the four Mark-48s toward the hostile and they were now running. Meanwhile, the men in “Missile Firing Control” remained as perplexed as the rest of the crew by the captain’s earlier order, still in force, to “man battle stations missile” and to begin the missile firing procedure sequence. They had received no authorization to launch, and no one aboard had received any indication of conditions that would justify Brentwood exercising his IAL — independent authority to launch.

  “Our fish closing…” reported Sonarman Emerson, watching the blips of one of the four M-48s from the Roosevelt moving toward one of the blips that had been fired from the hostile.”

  * * *

  “Wire disengaged,” advised Emerson, informing Control that the Roosevelt’s torpedo was now in automatic homing mode. “Three thousand yards… two thousand to go… fifteen hundred… one thousand… veering… veering… enemy fish closing in…” The three blips on the sonar screen — two enemy, one from Roosevelt—merged, the luminescent dots becoming one, swelling, then gone from the screen. Emerson swung about excitedly to Link. “We got ‘em…we got—”

  “Be quiet.” It was Capt. Robert Brentwood, disturbingly calm to those in Control, his words more like an older man’s dismissal of a younger, emotional wife, its implication— “Behave yourself”—startling to Zeldman, who was not only waiting anxiously for the three remaining 48s now about to go off the wire into automatic, but who was also envisaging him and Brentwood on the opposite sides of a court-martial over Brentwood’s order to “man battle stations missile”—the order continuing the preparatory procedures dangerously close to the point of no return.

  All Zeldman’s instincts were against interfering, but was he, he wondered, permitting his and Brentwood’s relationships with Rosemary and Georgina Spence to mislead him, holding him back from a higher responsibility to the crew if Brentwood could no longer—

  Suddenly Brentwood, while simultaneously monitoring the verification sequences of Missile Control, Sonar, and the helmsman’s report of the sub’s painfully slow progress to the area directly beneath the hole, turned to Zeldman. “You heard the order to disarm?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Zeldman, his anxiety increasing with Brentwood’s apparent clairvoyance. “Problem is, sir, that you didn’t order all missiles disarmed. We still have four with seven MARVs apiece. That’s twenty-eight warheads, each of three hundred kilotons, sir.”

  “The new D-5 Tridents we took aboard at Holy Loch,” cut in Brentwood, “are a hundred and fourteen thousand pounds each. The C-4 Tridents were sixty-five thousand pounds each.”

  Z
eldman couldn’t see it. Nor could anyone else in Control. So what if you fired a deactivated missile? The tube still filled with water. Besides, wasn’t Brentwood telling him the D-5s, no higher at forty-four feet than the C-4s, which also rose two feet “proud” above the fairing of the forty-two-foot pressure hull, were almost double the C-4s’ weight? But then, with Sonarman Emerson’s voice telling them the second two Mark-48s were closing in on the next hostile torpedo coming at them just over seven miles away at a depth of 1,215 feet, Zeldman now realized what Brentwood had over an hour before. Though the D-5s were almost twice as heavy as the C-4s that they had replaced, when the D-5s were released, the volume of water replacing them would be insufficient in weight to make up for their loss. It meant that rather than the sub being required to increase its buoyancy, by having to pump out more water, as it would had it been firing the lighter C-4 missile, in the case of the D-5, the volume of water pouring into the tube would weigh less than the missile it replaced. This in turn meant the sub would actually become lighter after a D-5 firing and would naturally rise, the damaged ballast tanks not needed.

  Overhearing the conversation between Brentwood and the executive officer, Sonarman Link still didn’t get it, but Emerson did, and it wiped away any umbrage Emerson had taken from Brentwood’s curt injunction to be quiet. Old “Bing” Brentwood was clearly a genius. There was no doubt in Emerson’s mind that if they survived the war, Robert Brentwood would become vice admiral in no time and probably, like JFK, would become president.

  “Enemy torpedo destroyed!” announced Link matter-of-factly. “Hostile vessel still closing.”

  At the hostile’s speed of forty-five miles per hour, it would be in very close range within eleven minutes, and by now its active radar would have confirmation that its target, the Roosevelt, was traveling at no more than five knots. The hostile hadn’t fired any more torpedoes, suggesting to Brentwood that it was now going to rely on its superior speed to outmaneuver its slow target. The Hunter/Killer would try to stop him reaching the hole, unless Roosevelt could increase speed and so buy time. Brentwood unclipped the hand mike.

  “Torpedo firing control. Stand by for snapshot two. One.”

  “Standing by for snapshot, sir.”

  “Very well. It’ll come in a rush,” added Brentwood. “Minimum range — one mile.”

  “Understood, sir. One mile.”

  “Just keep him away from me,” intoned Brentwood.

  “You give me the angle, sir,” repeated Torpedo Control, “and we’ll get ‘im.”

  “Chief engineer?” called Brentwood.

  “Sir?”

  “Possible to turn our main prop at all?”

  “Sir, it’s bent to hell and gone — it’d shake the guts out of her. Too much torque. In half an hour — maybe less — we’d have leaks popping up—”

  “What can you give me?” Brentwood cut in. “Maximum, Chief?”

  “Five and a half,” said the chief resignedly but not liking it. “Maybe six with the help of the current, but we’ll wake up every son of a bitch from here to the South Pole, Captain.”

  “We’ve already done that, Chief. Give it a burl.”

  “Hold on to your dentures,” the chief advised. “It’s gonna shake ‘em loose.”

  It was an understatement, and as if that weren’t enough, a report came in that not only was the oxygen generator down, but no attempts could be made to bleed oxygen from reserve bottles because of damage sustained to their valve heads and regulators.

  “Also,” the damage report seaman was shouting, above the bone-shuddering noise of the main prop, “oxygen and Freon gas scrubbers — closing down.”

  “Very well — light candles!” shouted Zeldman as Brentwood hooked back into missile firing control verification procedures.

  “I hope,” Brentwood yelled out to the weapons officer, “those tube liners can take a bit of vibration?”

  “No sweat!” came the weapons officer’s report, his voice loud over the intercom, practically blasting the headphones off Brentwood, starting a throbbing, hot, needlelike pain in his left ear. The prop, though bent only a few thousandths of an inch, was turning the pressure hull into what felt like an unbalanced spin dryer out of control, the torque creating mayhem in the kitchen, where hamburgers became airborne, coffee shot from pots in marble-sized globules, the crew hanging on to every hold bar, nook, and cranny they could find, the men in Control buckled up while the OOD gripped the back of the planesmen’s chairs. But the chief, as chiefs were wont to do, lived up to his promise and delivered six knots, which together with the four knots of the emergency “bring it home” twin screws in the after ballast tank, were pushing Roosevelt at ten knots, chopping her ETA in the area beneath the hole from what was a minute ago twelve minutes to less than six, the burning of the perchoate candles mixing with the stench of sweat that was pouring out of the men. Emerson gave up on sonar echoes, the sub’s din overwhelming its hydrophone sensors.

  After three more minutes, Brentwood shouted orders to stop all engines in order to take an active sonar pulse. Emerson’s screen showed the Hunter/Killer was now at eleven thousand yards.

  “Any fish yet?” Brentwood asked Emerson.

  “No, sir.” Brentwood estimated the Roosevelt would have to stop in another three minutes if he was to engage any torpedoes the attacking sub might fire, leaving him only three minutes to retaliate and hopefully blow the HUK’s torpedoes out of the water. He called for full speed ahead, and again they were assaulted by a kind of shaking none of them had ever known.

  “Sir!” cried Emerson, alarming everyone who heard him. So ingrained were they with the idea of being quiet on the sub that despite the tremendous roaring of the ship itself, shouting in Control was a “noise short” violation, as alien and upsetting to them as any moral dilemma they could possibly imagine. Emerson was cupping his hands about his mouth. “… flow…”

  Robert Brentwood leaned down, straining to hear Emerson’s words, but it was no use. Suddenly Emerson leaned forward, tapping swiftly on the computer’s keys, the screen reading, “Hole in ice has shifted — now above us.”

  Brentwood shouted again for “stop engines,” someone shouting in the relative silence, “Thank Christ!”

  “Where’s the hostile, Emerson?” asked Zeldman.

  “Bearing zero four one, sir. Speed forty knots.” Brentwood gave the helmsman the order to bring about Roosevelt’s bow. On the screen they could see the Hunter/Killer had fired one more fish at sixty-nine hundred yards.

  “Torpedo firing control. Stand by for snapshot two. One,” ordered Brentwood. “Angle on the bow zero seven.”

  “Angle on the bow zero seven.”

  “Shoot when ready.”

  Final bearing and distance were given and Brentwood heard the firing control officer announcing, “Solution ready… weapons ready… ship ready… stand by! Shoot! Fire!”

  Brentwood turned to Peter Zeldman. “Unravel the VLF. I want to be ready to receive the moment we surface.”

  The planesmen were so tense, the OOD told them to take a deep breath, that it’d be okay. They weren’t comforted. This was definitely not by the book.

  Brentwood told everyone to hang on, cautioning the crew that with the damage already sustained, they were unlikely to be able to slow her down much on the rise.

  The Mark-98 missile firing control system was all systems go, except for tube three, whose humidity control had gone haywire during the severe vibration.

  Beneath the hum of the missile verification sequence, they could hear the steady roll of the VLF drum unwinding the antenna that would trail for over a thousand feet behind them if the hole in the ice was wide enough.

  After the missile verification procedures and sequences were completed, Brentwood inserted his key to complete the circuit. The gas/steam generator ignited the small exhaust rocket at the base of number one tube. The sudden buildup of steam pressure from the rocket pushed the missile out of the tube, the blue protective mem
brane cap atop the tube shattering concentrically, the missile rising above the fairing of the pressure hull. The solid propellant of the first-stage booster ignited, the missile’s needlelike aerospike, which would extend its range if necessary, slid out of the nose, the missile now clearing the surface of the ice-free hole, back-flooding beginning immediately, the weight of the sub decreasing, the sub rising as the first ICBM burst clear of water, its orange tail flattening momentarily on the sea-air interface, its feral roar heard in the sub, and soon seen on radar screens all over the world, including those in SAC and on the Kola Peninsula, rising high over the vast ice cap in as straight a trajectory as could be attained, then falling back, crashing immediately, clearly unarmed, onto the ice pack and disintegrating.

  This was followed by the second missile, lightening the Roosevelt further and also viewed on the radar screens of both sides as, unarmed like the first, it went up and fell in like fashion, crashing harmlessly into the ice miles from the Roosevelt, which was now broaching. Bursting through the ice hole in the Arctic Sea, the sub was hidden in a frenzy of gossamer white, her bow angle at forty-five degrees, water streaming off her into the churning sea, made more turbulent by the fierce bubbling of the torpedoes exploding a half mile away, breaking the spine of a Rubis-class Hunter/Killer, a French nuclear sub that had attacked Roosevelt after failing to get either prop or cavitation matchup because of Roosevelt’s damaged prop, the French sonar operator, running blind with only sound to guide, having misidentified the American Sea Wolf as a Russian Alfa.