First Strike c-19

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First Strike c-19 Page 8

by Keith Douglass


  “Good question. I’ll see if I can explain it.” Cowlings closed his eyes for a moment, and then continued, “There’s two reasons for making you study the details, the where-is-the-flag stuff. First, anybody can have a dumb-shit attack. Even a chief can overlook something that’s just so painfully obvious that you question his sanity. You’re a safety valve for those dumb-shit moments. No, you can’t second-guess him on every detail, but you can do a sanity check. Sometimes, the chief has a solution in mind that he needs to run by you. He can’t use you as a sounding board if you don’t have a clue what he’s talking about.

  “And that brings us to the second point: context. Your chief is an expert in every area of his own spaces, and knows a lot about the rest the ship as well. But his time and attention are spent in his own division. You, as an officer, have broader responsibilities, up to and including, when you get more senior, actually taking the ship into combat. Sure, you’re not ever going to know as much about engineering as a chief in engineering does — but what about when you’re talking to an operations-type chief? Then you’ll be the one who knows more about engineering, and you’ll be the one who can think across departments to come up with an answer. The sonar man might know that certain equipment can cause an artificial signal, or artifact, on his gear. But he probably won’t know that we changed bearings on the number-two reactor coolant pump two days ago. You probably will. You can think across departments because the chief knows more about the details. That makes sense?”

  Forsythe nodded. “It’s an awful lot to learn.”

  “No shit. But that’s why they pay you the big bucks. Have the men put up the tent, right?”

  Forsythe stood and said, “Thank you, sir. I guess I understand. I’ll go check on evening colors now.”

  “Oh, Ensign?” Cowling said as Forsythe started to leave. “Do you know where the flag is kept now?”

  Forsythe smiled. “For evening colors, it can be found at the top of the flag pole. Sir.”

  Sunset that day would be at 2018, according to the ephemeris. The chief had not only worked the calculation manually, but had also double-checked with the harbor master to make sure they were coordinated. At 2008, the evening colors detail was assembled and took their positions around the flag pole. Forsythe stood to one side, observing as the chief gave the orders.

  Five minutes before sunset, the chief called the detail to attention. Forsythe waited, the evening breeze warmed against his skin, the prospect of liberty in his mind. Sure, it might be a long duty night as intoxicated sailors staggered back on board, but tomorrow it would be history. Finally, his first long-awaited liberty. And in Bermuda, paradise.

  The chief lifted his portable radio to his lips, and spoke softly in it, confirming the time with his counterpart on the senior ship present in port. Forsythe marveled again at the sheer amount of planning, coordination, and precision with which both the morning and evening evolutions were conducted. You wouldn’t think it was such a big deal to everyone, getting it precisely on time.

  But it was. The sharpness during colors was a reflection of the discipline and training of the crew. Every flag on every ship hauled up at precisely the same moment, precisely at the moment that the sun first broke the horizon. And around the world, as the hours passed, every other military unit executing precisely the same drill in turn.

  Just then, off in the distance, Forsythe heard a chatter of gunfire. Automatic weapons? He was no expert, although he had qualified on the handguns and shotguns used in the Navy.

  The local police? The Navy? Forsythe stared across at the chief, growing concern on his face. The chief stepped away from the color guard, started for the quarterdeck then hesitated. He turned to Forsythe. “Sir?”

  We can’t screw up evening colors — we can’t. Just for a moment, Forsythe attempted to ignore the noise, to proceed on schedule. Nobody could fault him for doing that, could they? After all, he was supposed to observe evening colors. It was on the schedule. And if Lieutenant Commander Cowlings found out that he screwed this up, too, then…

  But Lieutenant Commander Cowlings was below decks. He wouldn’t have heard the gunfire. He wasn’t present to make the decision.

  More gunfire. Forsythe could hear it coming from different directions now. Then a loud siren broke out, one that took him a moment to identify. The chief, who was fifteen years older, recognized immediately.

  “That’s an air-raid siren!”

  “Chief, get the flag down! Now! Have the color guard standby to cast off all lines on my order.”

  The deck of the submarine exploded into motion. The chief yelled, “Grab the axes,” and started hauling down colors himself as the rest broke from formation and headed for the mooring lines. The chief stood in the middle, directing them, roughly folding the flag but not taking time to do it precisely.

  Forsythe ran to the forward hatch, slid down the ladder, and grabbed the microphone. “All hands, this is the Officer of the Deck. Make all preparations repel boarders. Engineers, disconnect us from shore power immediately and make all preparations for getting underway. Command Duty Officer, Control Room.”

  Forsythe grabbed the getting-underway checklist and began going down it, monitoring reports from the chief over the radio. Five seconds later, Cowlings burst into the control room.

  “Gunfire, sirens, and air-raid sirens. The chief has the flag and I have the color guard standing by to cast us off.”

  Cowlings blinked twice, and some of the color drained out of his face. Then he nodded. “I’ll take that.” Forsythe handed him the checklist and the mike. “Get top side and sever the shore power lines and the mooring lines. Use the axes if you have to.”

  “Already issued. On my way.” On his way out, Forsythe grabbed another of the portable radios, tuned it to the same channel, and ran out on the deck.

  In theory at least, each duty section contained every necessary rating and necessary officer to get the ship underway in an emergency. Like every other requirement in the Navy, submariners took this one seriously. As Forsythe headed back up the ladder to the forward deck, he ran over the names on the watch section, mentally putting them in their underway duty stations. Yes, they could do it — but just barely. On paper, they had all the right qualifications. What they lacked was experience. Half of the enlisted sailors were just as junior and inexperienced as he was.

  The chief had sailors staged next to each mooring line. Each one held a firefighting ax at the ready. The chief seemed to be everywhere at once, checking on the engineers, giving last minute instructions.

  Amidships, engineers scrambled to disconnect the cables that provided hotel services, the potable water, sewer services, and compressed air to the ship while her own power plant was on standby. The connections had quick release fixtures, and one by one, the sailors snapped them off and tossed them back on the pier. The sewer return line, known as the CHT, dumped a couple of gallons of foul-smelling liquid into the ocean. Under normal circumstances, there would be serious civilian and military penalties for polluting the water.

  Deal with that later. In fact, if we’re doing the right thing, no one will ever say a word about it.

  The primary responsibility of the in-port duty section was to keep the ship safe. In this case, when it sounded like all hell was breaking loose ashore, that meant getting underway. There was nowhere in the world they were as safe as below the surface of the sea.

  “Cast us off, Chief,” Forsythe shouted as he trotted up to them. “Can you turn things over to the boatswain’s mate here? We could use a hand below decks on the navigation plot.”

  “Aye-aye, sir. Can do.” The chief passed the boatswains mate his radio and double-timed back to the forward access hatch.

  Forsythe turned to the boatswain’s mate. “What am I forgetting?”

  “Nothing, sir. Be nice if we had somebody on the pier to haul the rest of those lines so we make sure they don’t get tangled in the shafts. I’m pulling aboard the lines on this end, just for that rea
son.”

  “Can you get someone down on the pier to do it all?”

  The boatswains mate nodded. “But it’ll be tricky, sir. With a mooring lines detached, if you start the ship moving too fast, we’ll pull away from the gangway and leave him on the pier. And I don’t think any one of us wants that. All lines have been cut except for the two lines abeam, so we’re ready to go on short notice. I send one guy down to the pier and we’re disconnected from everything else.” The boatswains mate shrugged. “It’s as safe as we can make it here.”

  “Do it,” Forsythe ordered. “Cast off the moment everyone is back on board.”

  Things moved rather quickly from that point, and Forsythe stepped back out of the way, letting the boatswain’s mate run things. His radio crackled with a steady stream of orders as, below decks, Cowlings ran through the getting-underway checklist. For just a moment, he thought he felt the turbine come up to speed, and then sensation faded. Everything on board the submarine was shock mounted for maximum acoustic silence, and that included the main turbines.

  The man on the pier hauled all the lines in out of the water, and then ran back on board. The final line was severed on board the ship, and, because of the tension it was under, it slashed back across the pier, narrowly missing the sailor. He jumped nimbly out of the way, then hauled the bitter end out of the water. The process was repeated at the forward spring line.

  “Come on, Billy!” The boatswain’s mate shouted. “Move your ass!”

  There was a low groan as the bolts holding the gangway to the ship took the whole stress. The submarine was not underway yet, but now it was subject to the currents and wind, and both were pushing it away from the pier.

  The young sailor, a yeoman, darted up the gangway, leaping over the last six feet to land solidly on the deck.

  “Now!” the boatswain’s mate said. Engineers snapped off the cotter pins and the gangway pulled away from the ship, screeching its way down the side and leaving marks on the antiechoic coating.

  The boatswains mate pulled a whistle out of his pocket. He issued one sharp blast on it, then shouted, “Underway.” He repeated the announcement on his radio.

  “Everybody below decks, Boats,” Forsythe heard Cowling say. “Ensign Forsythe, you take conning tower, but be ready to clear the decks on short notice. I don’t plan on staying surfaced any longer than I have to.”

  “Aye-aye, sir,” Forsythe said. He watched as the sailors scuttled down the forward hatch, pulled it shut behind them and secured it. Forsythe then climbed into the conning tower and took his station. The distance between the submarine and the pier increased and water roiled around the bow as the propeller and the bow thrusters began to operate.

  More gunfire, closer this time. At the land end of the pier, a cluster of men with automatic weapons were assembling.

  “OOD, Conning Officer. I’m under fire.”

  “Secure the watch and get your ass down here,” Cowling snapped. “Now.”

  Forsythe ducked down into the lockout chamber in the sail, pulled the hatch down behind him and continued down the ladder a short distance. He spun the wheel behind him, securing the hatch, then made his way into the control room to stand behind the chief of the boat, his normal underway station as conning officer.

  “Green board, sir,” the chief of the boat said, indicating that the telltale indicators showed all hatches secure.

  “Pressurize the submarine,” Cowlings ordered. Seconds later, Forsythe’s ears popped as blasts of compressed air increased air pressure inside the subway slightly, testing every seal.

  “Pressurization set,” the chief said. “The ship is ready for sea, sir.”

  “Very well. Conning officer, periscope depth. Or, just a little less than that — I want the decks awash, but not the entire sail. Be ready to dive as soon as we’re clear of the channel and commercial shipping.”

  “I recommend seventy feet, at the keel, sir,” the chief said immediately.

  “Very well. Make your depth seventy feet.” Cowlings turned to Forsythe. “Get the antenna deployed and get an OPREP message out to Second Fleet and COMSUBLANT. Tell them what you heard, that we’re underway, and that, unless otherwise directed, my intentions are to head for deep water. Once I’m satisfied that we’re in no immediate danger, we’ll come to communications depth for further guidance. If they’ve got a major problem with that, they can reach us on ELF.” Cowlings’s mouth quirked slightly. “Put it in a little more tactful terms, but make sure you tell them that we’re out of contact for about eight hours, other than ELF.”

  SIX

  Washington, D.C.

  The Beltway

  Advanced Solutions

  2200 local (GMT-5)

  To an outsider, Advanced Solutions looked like any one of a number of small defense contractors known as the Beltway Bandits that lived and died off defense industry contracts. They sprang up overnight like mushrooms, flourished briefly on one or two contracts, and disappeared just as suddenly, either through insolvency if unsuccessful, or being absorbed into larger corporation if they were so lucky as to actually make a profit. Indeed, the exterior office had the requisite mauve and blue furnishings, metallic veneered name plates, and other accoutrements of prosperity that tried to give the impression of solvency without actually achieving it. The receptionist could spout knowledgeably about Advanced Solutions’s prospects, the current and anticipated contracts, and their hiring requirements. Unemployed aerospace professionals provided a steady flow of remarkably similar résumés, but Advanced Solutions never seemed to have any openings. And this, too, was typical of most Beltway Bandits.

  But behind the facade, a highly professional and skilled team was at work. The two recruiters, nephew and uncle, were funded as a black operations project, so far off the books that their budget never even raised an eyebrow in defense oversight circles. Indeed, their expenditures were so small compared to most of their ilk that no one would have noticed anyway. They drew primarily on military personnel on detached assignment, and, with Uncle Thomas doing the brainstorming and Tombstone the mission planning, they were able to do far more with far less than any other covert organization. Their skills were specialized, not used in every conflict, but called in to play whenever the United States needed small, sensitive aviation missions executed with the utmost secrecy.

  At present, the staff of Advanced Solutions consisted of only four people — the two Magruders, Greta, the receptionist, and Tombstone’s backseater, Navy Lieutenant Jeremy Greene, also a Tomcat pilot. On this particular morning, all except Greta were gathered in the conference room, a secure, carefully shielded space that was cleared for the most sensitive information in defense circles. They were reading the message traffic coming in from the fleet and getting their updates from CNN, just like the rest of the world, and most especially the military establishment.

  Tombstone swore quietly as he saw yet another Russian transport land heavily on the airfield. One part of his mind, the part that didn’t give a damn about national security or anything else except flying, noted that the landing was a clumsy one. The transport bounced three times before it finally decided to settle down, and the Bear’s initial taxi had almost run her off the strip.

  Beside him, his backseater seethed. An excellent pilot in his own right, he was increasingly proficient as a RIO, although the assignment often annoyed him. Still, all of their aircraft were configured for two pilots, and having him aboard assured him that someone could get them home even if Tombstone were incapacitated.

  Of the three, his uncle was the quietest. His gaze was fixed on the screen, his fingers drumming monotonously on the fake-wood table. A deepening scowl framed his eyebrows and strong features.

  “Damn, I should have stayed with my squadron,” the younger aviator said. He shot up out of his chair as though on afterburner and started pacing the room. “Something’s going down, and I’m not going to be part of it.

  “Settle down,” Tombstone said mildly. He stared at the
younger man, seeing himself fifteen — okay, twenty — years ago. “You really think we’re going to bomb the Russians out of Bermuda? A few quick strikes and it’s over? Because I have to tell you, that’s not going to happen. There’s too many civilians there, natives, tourists, everything else. No, this isn’t going to be over quickly, not at all.”

  “You mean we’ll just sit here and let them land Russian forces on American soil?” The younger man demanded incredulously. “How can you sit there and watch this?”

  An embarrassed silence hung in the room for a moment. Tombstone and his uncle exchanged a telling glance, one that was simultaneously confident and slightly amused. “What?” Greene demanded. “I hate it when you two start the telepathy stuff.”

  Finally, Tombstone spoke. “It isn’t our soil,” he said quietly. “We forget that sometimes. We can’t just go storming in there without an invitation of some sort. A United Nations’ resolution, a request from the Bermuda government, something of that sort.”

  For a moment, the youngster looked befuddled, but he recovered quickly. “I know it’s not a state. But it’s right off our coast! You mean to tell me that we’re going to put up with that? What about Cuba, or something like that? We didn’t put up with nuclear weapons there. Why should we put up with it in Bermuda?”

  “Oh, we won’t,” Tombstone assured him. “You can be sure of that. But it’s not a simple matter when a foreign government is involved. And the question of civilian casualties — well, every nation in the world knows how sensitive we are to that, especially since the Middle East. All they have to do is invite CNN to broadcast pictures of a dozen sunburned tourists being held at the airfield and we’ll back off immediately. We’re not going to risk their lives. And, even if we are invited to take action, there will be some pretty strong restrictions to avoid collateral damage, not only to the tourists and people, but to the tourist industry infrastructure as well.”

 

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