Kreshenko remained still, not moving for the glass. Finally, in deference to the toast, he nodded. The man acted as though he hadn’t noticed Kreshenko’s small displeasure at the term new Russia or the mention of his dead brother, but Kreshenko knew that the man had. It was in this man’s cold eyes, and the captain knew immediately this visitor was no military person, or at least hadn’t been one for many years.
“What are you doing on my ship?” Kreshenko asked as he pushed aside the glass of vodka, which was still untouched.
The other man smiled, his eyes moving from the captain of Peter the Great to the still-half-full glass. He reached out and took the glass and drank the fiery liquid down. He closed his black eyes momentarily and then let out a satisfied breath. He then tossed the empty glass to the captain, who fumbled with it and then secured it before it crashed to the floor. The stranger unzipped his BDU top and then pulled a large envelope from its dry place.
“You endangered my ship and crew with that little stunt.”
“Yes.”
The captain looked at the envelope and then grudgingly accepted.
“May I assume my men are being dried and fed?”
“Your men are being taken care of,” Kreshenko said as he sat at his desk and broke the wax seal on the package.
“Perhaps to speed things along, go to the last page and examine the signature on the bottom.”
Kreshenko, with his eyes firmly affixed to the man he had instantly taken a dislike to, flipped through the sixteen pages, and then his eyes settled on the last name and signature, the commander in chief of the Russian Navy.
“Okay, you have impressive credentials. That still gives you no right to endanger my ship.”
The man laughed once more and then retrieved the bottle of vodka and poured again. He drank and then sat upon the captain’s bunk without asking.
“Captain Kreshenko, from this moment on, your ship will be in constant danger. So will the other two vessels of your rather small battle group.”
“Just who in the hell are you?” he asked, not bothering with the set of orders. He had seen that this man’s name had been blacked out on the official copies.
Once more, the glass was filled, and the stranger drank deeply. He started untying his boots. “Why, I’m the man who’s ordering you to turn Peter the Great, the Ustinov, and the Admiral Levchenko around one hundred and eighty degrees.”
This time, Kreshenko recovered far more quickly than the newcomer thought possible. He sprang to his feet, slamming the orders down on the desk.
“Back into the hurricane?”
“Yes, back into the hurricane.”
“Once more, sir, who are you?”
The man pulled off a wet boot and sock and then fixed the captain with a cold look. “I am Colonel Leonid Salkukoff; I am the assistant director of internal historical studies from Odessa. And I am here to repair a mistake from many, many years ago. A mistake we have well benefited from, but it has now run its course and its usefulness.” The tall man stood and faced the captain. “And you, my good captain, your crew, the other two warships, well, they are expendable in that endeavor. Now, shall we get Peter the Great turned around to meet our destiny?”
Kreshenko was feeling ill as he reached for the phone on his desk. “I want a flash message sent to both Red Banner Fleet North and to Presidential Command Authority in Moscow.” The captain held his hand over the phone as the radio room scrambled to make the connection. “We’ll see if President Putin is as accepting of the consequences in sending his prized flagship of the Red Banner Northern Fleet into danger as cavalierly as yourself.”
Kreshenko was stunned when the man completely undressed and was preparing for a shower when he stopped and smiled.
“President Putin has no say in this, Captain. The sooner you learn this harsh fact, the better off you will be.”
“You’re telling me that the president has no authority to order this ship back to home waters?”
Again, the irritating smile. “Captain, let me explain something to you,” he said as he wrapped a dry towel around his muscled hips and stopped in the doorway leading to the captain’s private head and shower. “Beyond certain offices in our government, the office of the president of Russia has never existed. Since the so-called fall of the Soviet State, the presidency, nor even the politburo, has been in charge of our country and never will be.”
“What are you saying?” Kreshenko was starting to become furious, but at the same time, a sick feeling of knowing struck his guts. He and his dead brother had spoken about it in private times, but they always thought it nothing but a conspiracy theory to scare the progressives in their country.
“You’ll learn more in the orders, but suffice it to say, Captain, playtime in the world is over. I’m afraid the average person won’t be able to recognize Mother Russia in the next few years. The arrogant fools in the West will learn that the cold war was not lost by us. We won it the day we convinced them we lost it. Now, get this ship turned around or I’ll have you shot and turn it around myself.” The man calling himself Colonel Leonid Salkukoff lost his humorous smile as he ducked into the private head and the warm shower that awaited him.
Captain Kreshenko placed the phone down and then grimaced as he hit the intercom to the bridge.
“Second Captain Dishlakov, let’s get Peter the Great and our two escorts turned around. We’re going back into the hurricane. Let’s get all three ships buttoned up tight and prepare for rough seas. Set storm warning conditions throughout all three ships.”
As he sat and read the extraordinary orders he had ever been given, the captain felt the bulk of Russian advanced weaponry heel hard to starboard as she turned away from home and back into danger.
LOS ANGELES–CLASS ATTACK SUBMARINE USS HOUSTON
FOUR HUNDRED NAUTICAL MILES SOUTHWEST
It had been four hours since the message containing the Houston’s mysterious bogey had gone up the chain of command from Nimitz to Norfolk and then finally to Washington. In that time, Captain Thorne became convinced that CINCLANT and NATO command had totally lost their minds.
“Boat’s at a hundred feet and holding,” said officer of the deck Jacobs as he called out the depth. There actually had been no need to do so because the closer the submarine got to the surface, the fiercer the rolling of her bulk became. “I take that back. We’re rolling. Thrusters starboard!”
Thorne looked at the young lieutenant JG and slightly shook his head, wanting the young officer to calm down for the benefit of the crew. The man acknowledged that he received the captain’s silent advice and visibly settled.
Captain Thorne examined the orders he had received via ELF, the low-frequency method of communicating that was coded and protected from snooping ears. He shook his head as the Houston’s first officer joined him. He was tucking in his shirt as he approached Thorne and the message flimsy he held. The captain handed Lieutenant Commander Gary Devers the flimsy.
“You have got to be—” The first officer was cut off by a sharp roll as Houston actually breached the surface with her sail tower, exposing her numbered designation to the early morning sky. Number 713 stood out in all its white-painted glory before dipping back into the dark green tumult. They had gone from one hundred feet to almost nothing in one swell of the rough seas. “Jesus, that was embarrassing. Thank God we don’t have to hide from a warship at these shallow depths. Exposing ourselves like that would be a good way to get a Russian missile sent our way,” the first officer said as Houston finally settled.
“Up scope,” Thorne said as he held tightly to the periscope stanchion. As Thorne looked around him, he saw the anxious faces of the mere kids watching his every move. When the scope was up, he peered into the eyepiece. “Gary, let’s give the old girl a goose. Give her a shot of air, will you? Bring her as shallow as you can without exposing that damn sail to the elements again.”
“Aye, Skipper. Make your depth seventy-five feet.”
“Aye. Blo
wing negative to the mark. We’re coming shallow to seventy-five feet,” the chief of the boat repeated.
Throughout the length of Houston, loud pops were heard as the hull relaxed as she came to a shallower depth.
“There she is,” Thorne said as the scope cleared the high seas for the briefest of moments. The captain started using his Morse lamp high upon the radar antenna. Houston rolled hard to port as the men were heard cursing as they fought for handholds.
Through the beeping of the Morse signal, Devers could read: Disabled vessel, this is USS Houston, a United States submarine off your starboard beam. Are you under power or do you need assistance? I repeat, this is a United States warship. Do you need assistance? Finally, he pushed a button on the periscope, and although he knew he couldn’t hear it inside the thick-hulled sub, he had just sent out a blast of air through his warning horn affixed to the sail.
“Captain, we’re drifting right toward that hunk of junk,” Devers called out from the plotting station.
Thorne slammed the handles up and then lowered the scope. He reached for the intercom. “Communications, keep trying on all frequencies until she responds.”
“Conn, radio, aye.”
Thorne leaned against the navigation console and then looked at the plot. “How soon until the De Zeven, Shiloh, and Bunker Hill arrive on station?”
“An hour, give or take five minutes. They’re having a far rougher time with Tildy than we are.”
“I imagine,” Thorne said as he examined the plot on the navigation board for what seemed like the thousandth time. “Plot the hurricane against the last weather report and prediction, will you, Gary?”
The first officer designated the edge of Tildy and then plotted the estimated position of the hurricane’s eye as close as he could with the information the boat’s computer had. The virtual reality app made the hurricane swirl as if it were a motion picture animation. The captain placed a finger in the estimated position of the eye, the calmest part of the storm, and tapped the spot.
“There it is. If CINCLANT and the president want that ship boarded, there’s the only place it will be possible. I estimate five hours until the hurricane’s eye if the phantom’s drift remains the same. If not, we’ll have to have one of the heavy cruisers attempt to take her in tow.”
Devers leaned over and silently concurred with the estimate. “Captain, maybe those in power have thought this through, but what if the Russians find out we’re attempting to board that derelict?”
Thorne laughed but immediately regretted it when he saw the anxious young faces of his control room crew.
“I guess at that time we’ll find out just how important this hunk of junk is to someone, won’t we?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Okay, let’s take one more look. Up scope,” he said as the chrome-and-plastic scope rose from the deck. “Damn, that thing is riding pretty low in the water. Either she’s taking on water and foundering or she’s far heavier than her listed displacement tonnage. If that’s the case, we need to—”
The flash in the eyepiece of the periscope sent the captain back hard enough that he almost lost his footing. It was as if the sun had exploded in the advanced optics of the scope.
“Captain, what—”
A pressure wave slammed into Houston, swinging her bow around fifteen degrees before her thrusters corrected her programmed position. She rolled hard to starboard and then to port as she finally started to settle. The captain gained his composure, and then, rubbing his eyes, which felt like they had been burned from his skull, he grasped the handles of the scope again and looked. He closed his eyes once more and rubbed them. He peered through the eyepiece again, expecting to see nothing but flaming wreckage on the surface of the rolling seas. Again, a bright flash and the Russian ship vanished. Before he could say or do anything, another bright flash that lit up the dark skies again wreaked havoc with his vision and the optics. The lens cleared, and then the vessel was back, rolling and pitching and sinking into a deep depression.
Houston suddenly went dark. Not even her emergency lighting came on. All her boards went out along with the overheads. Then, just as quickly, electrical power sprang back to life.
“Electromagnetic pulse?” the first officer asked, concerned when the captain started moving the periscope to the left, right, and then settling once more.
“I don’t have a clue, but that damn ship is still there. Chief of the Boat, I want a damage assessment and diagnostics run on everything.”
“Aye.”
The captain again slammed the handles of the scope to the up position and then lowered it. He looked around the control room at the anxious faces staring at him. He took a deep breath and then nodded at his first officer.
“Okay, take her to five hundred feet and hold station. Use thrusters to keep us even with the Simbirsk. Sonar, conn, I want shifts rotated every thirty minutes. I want fresh ears listening for any untoward intruders to our little drama.”
“Conn, sonar, aye. No contacts at this time other than our three sisters a hundred miles off. We did have a spike in the infrared band ten seconds before power shut down and another spike in radiation output at the same time.”
“From Houston?”
“Negative, conn. It came from our phantom.”
Throughout the boat, the rumors were really starting to fly. It seemed the USS Houston and her surface cronies were about to attempt the boarding of Russian state property, and they knew those same Russians wouldn’t be too fond of that little development. Now, they realized that whatever that ship was, it could possibly have the potential to send Houston and her crew to the bottom of the Atlantic.
The USS Houston went deep with her crew’s knowledge that there was something out there that rattled one of the most experienced submarine skippers in the world.
4
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Rear Admiral Harley Dickerson—Scooter to the men and women who knew him best—was waiting outside the national security advisor’s office with none of his staff present. General Maxwell Caulfield, former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been talked into taking the advisor’s job after the Overlord incident the previous year. He saw his old friend as he strolled into his outer office. After greeting his assistants and getting his missed calls, he turned with a curious look toward the man waiting patiently. He read the messages as he smiled toward his visitor.
“Scooter, what in the hell brings you out of that dungeon at the Pentagon? You spooks haven’t had enough after our little alien encounter?”
Harley Dickerson stood and shook his friend’s hand. They had worked together closely during the past three years of dealing with the Overlord incident. Dickerson was a liaison between DARPA, the US Navy, and several other darker entities inside defense circles.
“Max, we need to talk,” was all Dickerson said as he leaned in with Caulfield’s hand still clutched in his own.
The general raised his brow and then glanced at his two assistants. “I’ve got a briefing with the president in”—he looked at his watch—“fifteen minutes, Scooter. Can it wait? We have a developing situation at sea regarding the Operation Reforger IV exercise. We had to cancel the damn thing last night, a little coup for our friends the Russians, but if—”
“Max, make the time—now.”
Caulfield saw the anxiety in the younger man’s face and then simply gestured to his open door. “Liz, no calls for the next few minutes.”
Once inside the small office, Caulfield offered Dickerson coffee, and he refused, opting to open his briefcase instead. Caulfield sat behind his desk. He looked at the pictures of his family and the uniform he once wore. The old marine corps blues were a part of his past life now. Today and forever afterward, Maxwell Caulfield would be wearing what it was he was wearing today, civilian suits from varying Men’s Discount Warehouse stores. And as his assistants both quipped, he had absolutely zero taste in civilian clothing. Yes, he missed
the far simpler life of a marine.
Dickerson tossed a small stack of photos and typed pages onto Caulfield’s desk and then sat back down. Max saw the man he knew as unflappable bite on a thumbnail as he picked up a photograph and scanned it. The black-and-white image depicted a very grainy view of a large ship. It was low in a depression inside a deep trough of water, something Caulfield had experienced many times in his career aboard ships. The vessel was in heavy seas.
“One of ours?” he asked, looking up at Dickerson.
“No. This was taken through the periscope of a tailing submerged asset in the North Atlantic last night. This was transmitted this morning to our offices and those of the chief of naval operations.”
“Why isn’t Jim Hardy bringing this to me, then?” Max asked as his eyes bored in at Dickerson. This was a breach of military etiquette. His boss at the Pentagon should have been briefing him personally on anything having to do with Operation Reforger IV.
“The admiral isn’t in this loop, only my department at intel. Besides, by the time I started explaining things to him, this thing could blow up in our faces.”
“What could blow up?” Caulfield asked.
“Max, we have a seventy-five-year-old ship of war out there that was reported sunk before the end of World War II. The name of the vessel is the Simbirsk, a Russian battle cruiser verified as being sunk by the German navy in 1944.”
Before Caulfield could register this shock, Dickerson tossed a file onto his desk after unlocking it from a compartment in his briefcase. Max Caulfield looked up with the photo of the Simbirsk still in his hand.
“And this?”
“A file on a warship of our own.”
“Don’t keep me guessing here, Scooter. I don’t have the time for it,” Caulfield countered.
“A destroyer escort, same vintage as our Russian war casualty. This file is on the USS Eldridge. This is all we have on her. It seems the Department of the Navy, or at least at the time, the Department of War, lost the entire file just after the incident. Many people in my group think it was intentionally lost by the navy department on orders from none other than President Roosevelt. The rumor is the navy boys tried to do something rather extraordinary that had not been cleared with the war department. That was right around the time that Admiral Stark, the chief of naval operations, lost a lot of influence at the White House.”
Beyond the Sea--An Event Group Thriller Page 8