by Tom Clancy
“Sir, this is Captain Jim Rosselli at the National Military Command Center. We have a disabled submarine in the Gulf of Alaska, USS Maine, an Ohio-class missile boat. Sir, she has prop damage and cannot maneuver. There is a Soviet attack submarine heading straight towards her, about ten miles out. We have a P-3C Orion ASW aircraft that is now tracking the Russian. Sir, he requests instructions.”
“I thought they can't track our missile submarines.”
“Sir, nobody can, but in this case they must have DF — I mean used direction-finders to locate the sub when she radioed for help. Maine is a missile submarine, part of SIOP, and is under DEFCON-TWO Rules of Engagement. Therefore, so is the Orion that's riding shotgun for her. Sir, they want to know what to do.”
“How important is Maine?” Fowler asked.
General Fremont took that. “Sir, that sub is part of the SIOP, a big part, over two hundred warheads, very accurate ones. If the Russians can take her out, they've hurt us badly.”
“How badly?”
“Sir, it makes one hell of a hole in our war plan. Maine carries the D-5 missile, and they are tasked counter-force. They're supposed to attack missile fields and selected command-and-control assets. If something happens to her, it would take literally hours to patch up that hole in the plan.”
“Captain Rosselli, you're Navy, right?”
“Yes, Mr. President — sir, I have to tell you that I was CO of Maine 's Gold Crew until a few months ago.”
“How soon before we have to make a decision?”
“Sir, the Akula is inbound at twenty-five knots, currently about twenty thousand yards from our boat. Technically speaking, they're within torpedo range right now.”
“What are my options?”
“You can order an attack or not order an attack,” Rosselli replied.
“General Fremont?”
“Mr. President — no, Captain Rosselli?”
“Yes, General?”
“How sure are you that the Russians are boring straight in on our boat?”
“The signal is quite positive on that, sir.”
“Mr. President, I think we have to protect our assets. The Russians won't be real pleased with an attack on one of their boats, but it's an attack boat, not a strategic asset. If they challenge us on this, we can explain it. What I want to know is why they ordered the boat in this way. They must know that it would alarm us.”
“Captain Rosselli, you have my authorization for the aircraft to engage and destroy the submarine.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Rosselli lifted the other phone. “GRAY BEAR, this is MARBLEHEAD ”—the current codename for the NMCC—“National Command Authority approves I repeat approves your request. Acknowledge.”
“ MARBLEHEAD, this is GRAY BEAR, we copy request to engage is approved.”
“That's affirmative.”
“Roger. Out.”
* * *
The Orion turned in. Even the pilots were feeling the effects of the weather now. Technically, it was still light, but the low ceiling and heavy seas made it seem that they were flying down an immense and bumpy corridor. That was the bad news. The good news was that their contact was acting dumb, running very fast, below the layer, and almost impossible to miss. The Tacco in back coached him in along the Akula's course. Sticking out the tail of the converted Lockheed Electra airliner was a sensitive device called a magnetic anomaly detector. It reported on variations in the earth's magnetic field, such as those caused by the metallic mass of a submarine.
“Madman madman madman, smoke away!” the system operator called. He pushed a button to release a smoke float. In front, the pilot immediately turned left to set up another run. This he did, then a third, turning left each time.
“Okay, how's this look back there?” the pilot asked.
“Solid contact, nuclear-powered sub, positive Russian. I say let's do it this time.”
“Fair enough,” the pilot observed.
“Jesus!” the co-pilot muttered.
“Open the doors.”
“Coming open now. Safeties off, release is armed, weapon is hot.”
“Okay, I have it set,” the Tacco said. “Clear to drop.”
It was too easy. The pilot lined up on the smoke floats, which were almost perfectly in a row. He passed over the first, then the second, then the third…
“Dropping now-now-now! Torp away!” The pilot added power and climbed a few hundred feet.
The Mark 50 ASW torpedo dropped clear, retarded by a small parachute that automatically released when the fish hit the water. The new and very sophisticated weapon was powered by an almost noiseless propulsor instead of a propeller, and had been programmed to stay covert until it reached the target depth of five hundred feet.
* * *
It was just about time to slow down, Dubinin thought, another few thousand meters. His gamble, he felt, had been a good one. It seemed a wholly reasonable supposition that the American missile submarine would stay near the surface. If he'd guessed right, then by racing in just below the layer — he was running on one hundred ten meters — then surface noise would keep the Americans from hearing him, and he could conduct the remainder of the search more covertly. He was about to congratulate himself for a good tactical decision.
“Torpedo sonar on the starboard bow!” Lieutenant Rykov screamed from sonar.
“Rudder left! Ahead flank! Where is the torpedo?”
Rykov: “Depression angle fifteen! Below us!”
“Emergency surface! Full rise on the planes! New course three-zero-zero!” Dubinin dashed into sonar.
“What the hell?”
Rykov was pale. “I can't hear screws… just that damned sonar… looking away — no, it's in acquisition now!”
Dubinin turned: “Countermeasures — three — now!”
“Cans away!”
Admiral Lunin 's countermeasures operators rapidly fired off three fifteen — centimeter cans of gas-generating material. These filled the water with bubbles, making a target for the torpedo, but one that didn't move. The Mark 50 had already sensed the submarine's presence and was turning in.
“Coming through one hundred meters,” the Starpom called. “Speed twenty-eight knots.”
“Level off at fifteen, but don't be afraid of broaching.”
“Understood! Twenty-nine knots.”
“Lost it, the curve in the towed array just ruined our reception.” Rykov's hands went up in frustration.
“Then we must be patient,” Dubinin said. It wasn't much of a joke, but the sonar crew loved him for it.
* * *
“The Orion just engaged the inbound, sir, just picked up an ultrasonic sonar, very faint, bearing two-four-zero. It's one of ours, it's a Mark 50, sir.”
“That ought to take care of him,” Ricks observed. “Thank God.”
* * *
“Passing through fifty meters, leveling out, ten degrees on the planes. Speed thirty-one.”
“Countermeasures didn't work…” Rykov said. The towed array was straightening out, and the torpedo was still back there.
“No propeller noises?”
“None… I should be able to hear them even at this speed.”
“Must be one of their new ones…”
“The Mark 50? It's supposed to be a very clever little fish.”
“We will see about that. Yevgeniy, remember the surface action?” Dubinin smiled.
The Starpom did a superb job of maintaining control, but the thirty-foot seas guaranteed that the submarine would broach — break the surface — as the waves and troughs swept overhead. The torpedo was a scant three hundred meters behind when the Akula leveled out. The American Mark 50 anti-submarine torpedo was not a smart weapon, but a “brilliant” one. It had identified and ignored the countermeasures Dubinin had ordered only minutes before, and, using a powerful ultrasonic sonar, was now looking for the sub in order to conclude its mission. But here physical laws intervened in favor of the Russians. It is widely believed
that sonar reflects off the metal hull of a ship, but this is not true. Rather, sonar reflects off the air inside a submarine, or more precisely off the border of water and air through which the sound energy cannot pass. The Mark 50 was programmed to identify these air-water boundaries as ships. As the torpedo rocketed after its prey, it began to see immense ship-shapes stretching as far as its sonar could reach. Those were waves. Though the weapon had been programmed to ignore a flat surface and thus avoid a problem called “surface capture,” its designers had not addressed the problem of a heavy, rolling sea. The Mark 50 selected the nearest such shape, raced towards it—
— and sprang into clear air like a leaping salmon. It crashed into the back of the next wave, reacquired the same immense target shape—
— and leaped again. This time the torpedo hit at a slight angle. Dynamic forces caused it to turn and race north inside the body of a wave, sensing huge ships both left and right. It turned left, springing into the air yet again, but this time it hit the next wave hard enough to detonate its contact fuse.
* * *
“That was close!” Rykov said.
“No, not close, perhaps a thousand meters, but probably more.” The Captain leaned into the control room. “Slow to five knots, down to thirty meters.”
* * *
“We hit it?”
“I don't know, sir,” the operator said. “He went shallow in a hurry, and the fish went charging up after him, circled around some—” the sonarman traced his finger on the display. “Then it exploded here, close to where the Akula disappeared into the surface noise. Can't say — no break-up noises, sir, I have to call it a miss.”
* * *
“Bearing and distance to the target?” Dubinin asked.
“Roughly nine thousand meters, bearing zero-five-zero,” the Starpom replied. “What is the plan now, Captain?”
“We will locate and destroy the target,” said Captain First Rank Valentin Borissovich Dubinin.
“But—”
“We have been attacked. Those bastards tried to kill us!”
“That was an aerial weapon,” the executive officer pointed out.
“I heard no airplane. We have been attacked. We will defend ourselves.”
* * *
“Well?”
Inspector Pat O'Day was making furious notes. American Airlines, like all the major carriers, had its ticket information on computer. With a ticket number and flight numbers, he could track anyone down. “Okay,” he told the woman on the other end. “Wait a minute.” O'Day turned. “Dan, there were only six first-class tickets on that flight from Denver to Dallas-Fort Worth, the flight was nearly empty — but it hasn't taken off yet because of ice and snow in Dallas. We have the names for two other first-class passengers who changed to a Miami flight. Now, the Dallas connection was for Mexico City. The two who changed through Miami were also booked on a DC-10 out of Miami into Mexico City. That plane's off, one hour out of Mexico.”
“Turn it around?”
“They say they can't because of fuel.”
“One hour — Christ!” Murray swore.
O'Day ran a large hand over his face. As scared as everyone else in America — more so, since everyone in the command center had informed reason to be frightened — Inspector Patrick Sean O'Day was trying mightily to set everything aside and concentrate on whatever he had at hand. It was too slim and too circumstantial to be considered hard evidence as yet. He'd seen too many coincidences in his twenty years with the Bureau. He'd also seen major cases break on thinner stuff than this. You ran with what you had, and they had this.
“Dan, I—”
A messenger came in from the Records Division. She handed over two files to Murray. The deputy assistant director opened the Russell file first, rummaging for the Athens photo. Next he took out the most recent photo of Ismael Qati. He set both next to the passport photos just faxed in from Denver.
“What do you think, Pat?”
“The passport one of this guy still looks thin for Mr. Qati… cheekbones and eyes are right, mustache isn't. He's losing hair, too, if this is him…”
“Go with the eyes?”
“The eyes are right, Dan, the nose — yeah, it's him. Who's this other mutt?”
“No names, just these frames from Athens. Fair skin, dark hair, well-groomed. Haircut's right, hairline is right.” He checked the descriptive data on the license and passport. “Height, little guy, build — it fits, Pat.”
“I agree, I agree about eighty percent worth, man. Who's the Legal Attache in Mexico City?”
“Bernie Montgomery — shit! he's in town to meet with Bill.”
“Try Langley?”
“Yeah.” Murray lifted his CIA line. “Where's Ryan?”
* * *
“Right here, Dan. What gives?”
“We have something. First, a guy named Marvin Russell, Sioux Indian, member of the Warrior Society, he dropped out of sight last year, somewhere in Europe, we thought. He turned up with his throat cut in Denver today. There were two people with him, they flew out. One, we have a picture but no name. The other may be Ismael Qati.”
That bastard! “Where are they?”
“We think they're aboard an American Airlines flight from Miami to Mexico City, first-class tickets, about an hour out from the terminal.”
“And you think there's a connection?”
“A vehicle registered to Marvin Russell, a/k/a Robert Friend of Roggen, Colorado, was on the stadium grounds. We have fake IDs from two people, probably Qati and the unknown subject, recovered from the murder scene. There's plenty enough to arrest on suspicion of murder.”
Yeah, Jack thought. Had the situation not been so horrible, Ryan would have laughed at that. “Murder, eh? You going to try and make the arrest?”
“Unless you have a better idea.”
Ryan was quiet for a moment. “Maybe I do. Hold on for a minute.” He lifted another phone and dialed the United States Embassy in Mexico City. “This is Ryan calling for the Station Chief. Tony? Jack Ryan here. Is Clark still there? Good, put him on.”
“Jesus, Jack, what the hell is—” Ryan cut him off.
“Shut up, John. I have something for you to do. We have two people coming in to the airport there on an American flight from Miami, due in about an hour. We'll fax you the photos in a few minutes. We think they might be involved in this.”
“So, it's a terrorist gig?”
“Best thing we have, John. We want those two, and we want them fast.”
“Might be a problem from the local cops, Jack,” Clark warned. “I can't exactly have a shoot-out down here.”
“Is the ambassador in?”
“I think so.”
“Transfer me over and stand by.”
“Right.”
“Ambassador's office,” a female voice said.
“This is CIA Headquarters, and I need the Ambassador right now!”
“Surely.” The secretary was a cool one, Ryan thought.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Mr. Ambassador, this is Jack Ryan, Deputy Director of CIA—”
“This is an open phone line.”
“I know that! Shut up and listen. There are two people coming into Mexico City airport in an American Airlines flight from Miami. We need to pick them up and get them back here just as fast as we can.”
“Our people?”
“No, we think they're terrorists.”
“That means arresting them, clearing it through the local legal system and—”
“We don't have time for that!”
“Ryan, we can't strong-arm these people, they won't stand for it.”
“Mr. Ambassador, I want you to call the President of Mexico right now, and I want you to tell him that we need his cooperation — it's life-and-death, okay? If he doesn't agree immediately, I want you to tell him this, and I need you to write it down. Tell him that we know about his retirement plan. Okay? Use those exact words, We know about his retirement plan
.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you say exactly that, do you understand?”
“Look, I don't like playing games and—”
“Mr. Ambassador, if you do not do exactly what I'm telling you, I will have one of my people render you unconscious and then have the DCM make the call.”
“You can't threaten me like that!”
“I just did, pal, and if you think I'm kidding, you just fucking try me!”
“Temper, Jack,” Ben Goodley cautioned.
Ryan looked away from the phone. “Sir, excuse me. It's very tense here, okay, we've had a nuclear device go off in Denver, and this may be the best lead we have. Look, there isn't time for niceties. Please. Play along with me. Please.”
“Very well.”
Ryan let out a breath. “Okay. Tell him also that one of our people, a Mr. Clark, will be at the airport security office in a few minutes. Mr. Ambassador, I cannot emphasize enough how important this is. Please do it now.”
“I'll do it. You'd better calm down up there,” the career foreign-service officer advised.
“We're trying very hard, sir. Please have your secretary transfer me back to the Station Chief. Thank you.” Ryan looked over to Goodley. “Just hit me over the fucking head if you feel the need, Ben.”
“ Clark.”
“We're faxing some photos down, along with their names and seat assignments. Okay, you are to check in with the airport security boss before you grab 'em. You still have the airplane down there?”
“Right.”
“When you have 'em, get 'em aboard, and get 'em the hell up here.”
“Okay, Jack. We're on it.”
Ryan killed the line and picked up on Murray. “Fax the data you have to our Station Chief Mexico. I have two field officers on the scene, good ones, Clark and Chavez.”
“ Clark?” Murray asked, as he handed the fax information to Pat O'Day. “The same one who—”
“That's the man.”
“I wish him luck.”
* * *
The tactical problem was complex. Dubinin had an anti-submarine aircraft overhead and could not afford to make a single mistake. Somewhere ahead was an American missile submarine that he fully intended to destroy. He had ordered it to protect himself, the captain reasoned. He had been fired upon with a live weapon. That changed matters greatly. He really should radio fleet command for instructions, or at least to announce his intentions, but with an aircraft overhead that was suicide, and he'd brushed close enough to death for one day. The attack on Admiral Lunin could only mean that the Americans were planning an attack on his country. They'd violated their favorite international hobbyhorse — the seas were free for the passage of all. They'd attacked him in international waters before he was close enough to commit a hostile act. Someone, therefore, thought there was a state of war. Fine, Dubinin thought. So be it.