Eyeball to Eyeball (Final Failure)

by Douglas Niles

  “Strikes should begin early in the morning, at first light, and continue throughout the day. Bomb damage assessments will be made before dark, and the second day’s sorties will be planned accordingly. The air campaign will continue until the invasion can be mounted, perhaps as soon as four days later. The longest expected delay is one week between first air raid and amphibious—slash—airborne troop landing.”

  “Good summary,” General Shoup said. “The Marines will be ready. But will the White House?”

  Perhaps fortuitously, or maybe ominously, Secretary of Defense McNamara chose that moment to walk into the room. The chiefs regarded him suspiciously as he took his seat at one end of the table. McNamara appeared not to notice the scrutiny.

  The relationship between the secretary and the military was complicated, even though it had lasted a long time, predating McNamara’s place in the administration by decades. Bob McNamara had worked for Curtis LeMay during the Second World War, analyzing the effectiveness of the American strategic bombing campaign against Japan. He had provided data and ideas as LeMay was conceiving his revolutionary plan to use incendiary munitions to incinerate Japanese cities. In fact, McNamara had been heavily involved in the detailed planning of the most horrific bombing attack of that war—which was not, as many people believed, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Instead, the firebombing of Tokyo, five months before the atomic bombs were used, had destroyed more property, devastated a larger area, and killed more people than any other air attack.

  Yet, in LeMay’s view, McNamara had softened in the years since the war. To LeMay, there was no difference in the morality of bombing a city with 100,000 bombs dropped by a thousand bombers, or destroying that same target with one bomb carried by a missile or single bomber. Yet the Secretary of Defense would not recognize the similarity, and the Air Force chief had grown increasingly disgusted with him.

  Now, McNamara seemed to have other things on his mind. “The President is investigating possibilities to bring the stand-off to an end. You all know that our Jupiter missiles in Turkey are obsolete. They’re short-ranged, exposed on outdoor launchers. Yet the Turks put a lot of faith in them. The idea is, we could move a nuclear submarine—a vessel that is essentially invulnerable to Soviet interception—into the eastern Mediterranean. From there, its Polaris missiles are every bit as much of a threat to the Russians as the Jupiters. We could tell the Turks—and the Russians—about the sub, and use that as a cover to get those damned MRBs out of there.”

  “You mean, he’s still trying to deal with the bastards?” LeMay blurted in obvious disbelief. “I tell you, Khrushchev’s only playing for time. You keep talking to him, and he keeps making progress on those missile sites! Dammit, the time to act was yesterday—time is slipping away from us!”

  Before LeMay could reply, an Air Force colonel entered the Tank and quickly carried a piece of paper over to the Chief of Staff. LeMay read the note and clenched his jaw around his cigar as he glared at the Secretary of Defense.

  “Things are heating up,” he said bluntly. He slid the piece of paper across the table. It stopped short, and McNamara had to stand up and lean over the reach it, while LeMay explained for the benefit of the other chiefs. “We have a U2 that’s more than thirty minutes overdue back to McCoy. I’m damn sure that means we’ve just had a U2 shot down over Cuba.”

  McNamara’s face paled as he read the confirmation on the piece of paper he’d finally retrieved. “I’ve got to take this to the President,” he said, rising turning toward the door.

  “Wait!” said LeMay. “We’ve got a squadron of bombers standing by at MacDill Air Force Base. The plan was they would be released if the Communists started firing those SAMs we’ve been watching. Well, I think we can deduce they’ve done that. It’s time to take out the antiaircraft missiles, at least.”

  “We don’t even know which battery did the firing!” McNamara objected.

  “Then we take ‘em all out!” the air force chief replied.

  “No. You’re not to take action until I’ve spoken with the President!” McNamara left the room at a fast walk.

  General LeMay turned to the other officers as soon as the door shut. His expression pained, he asked: “Could it be any goddamn worse if Khrushchev himself was our Secretary of Defense?”

  1640 hours (Saturday afternoon)

  USS DDG 507 Conning,

  350 miles NE of Cuba

  Seaman Duncan had forgotten all about the submachine gun and his “boarding party responsibility.” For the last two day’s he’d spent his time, when he wasn’t cooking or sleeping, patrolling the destroyer fantail with a belt of practice depth charges in his hand, another over his shoulder, and a third strapped around his waist. Like so many things in the military, there was a lot of standing around and waiting.

  But every so often the captain’s voice would come over the loudspeaker—“Sonar contact detected. Begin deployment of signal explosives.”

  Then, the sailor would toss a grenade overboard and hope for the best. He was one of four men on the afterdeck of the destroyer performing the function at any one time. He suspected that a couple more sailors were doing the same thing, closer to the bow. Chief Weber had told them to time their throws to about one every minute, and to continue until the captain gave the order to desist.

  Even though the little explosives weren’t supposed to do damage, Duncan took care to toss each one as far from the destroyer as he could. A passable baseball player, he guessed he was getting them out at least 150 feet or so. He watched them splash into the water and sink. He listened for the sound of an explosion but heard nothing—though every once in a while a swirl of bubbly turbulence would rise to the surface, presumably as proof of a detonation. But there was never any sign of a submarine.

  Certainly, there was plenty activity to see on the surface. No less than four helicopters, based off of Randolph, swept back in forth within Duncan’s field of view. They hovered 100 feet or so above the water, and each had a long cable dangling from it, dipping into the gentle waves. They were dipping microphones, the sailor knew, seeking audio proof of the sub’s location.

  Twice he’d seen two or three of the choppers hoist their mikes from the water and hurriedly redeploy to new positions, all four taking up a generally square formation. He deduced that those occasions marked times when one source had gained a solid sonar contact, and the others redeployed to seek further confirmation. Once, Conning had heeled sharply and churned forward to join the choppers over a given section of ocean. The second destroyer—he’d heard she was named Viscount—patrolled opposite Conning, the two of them constantly circling, occasionally responding to contact reports with a surge of engines and a churning froth of wake.

  Farther out, twin-engine search planes, Grumman S2F Trackers, flew in lazy circles. Every once in awhile, one of the Trackers would drop something that would splash into the water, and the young sailor knew these were sonobuoys, active sonar devices that would help to establish a perimeter the Soviet sub would not be able to sneak through.

  The search routine seemed to follow a pattern. The helicopters were in the middle, circling and bobbing, checking the water, usually not moving very fast. The two destroyers remained outside the area where the helicopters operated, circling slowly. Occasionally the crew of one or the other destroyers would be ordered to deploy the explosive charges.

  Outside the circle created by the slowly cruising destroyers, the two Trackers curved through a wide arc. Beyond them all, standing off from the action but close enough for George to see clearly—maybe four miles away—the flattop Randolph held position. Many times during the course of the day, helicopters would return to the carrier to be replaced by a new quartet of choppers. Activity was constant everywhere he looked. The noise made by the helicopters competed with the wind, the wash of water breaking away from the destroyer’s hull, and the rumble of her engines.

  In the last twenty minutes, Seaman Duncan had gone through all three belts wort
h of practice depth charges, standing at the same post near the starboard stern of his fast guided-missile destroyer. Chief Weber came by to hand him another three belts, each with six grenades.

  “Are you sure there’s something down there, Chief?” Duncan asked.

  The NCO shrugged. “Word from the sonar guys is that they keep getting a faint hit. The sub’s gone silent, so it’s damned hard to find.”

  “Well, how long are we supposed to keep doing this?”

  “How do I know?” snapped the chief, in a rare display of temper. “Until that fucker comes up to the surface, or until we run out of grenades!” Weber, apparently even more frustrated than Duncan, stomped toward the ship’s superstructure.

  With nothing to do until the captain ordered another “deployment” of the signals, the young sailor simply looked down, staring, trying to penetrate the depths of the blue ocean. How long, he wondered, could that “fucker” stay submerged?

  1650 hours (Saturday afternoon)

  Submarine B-59, submerged

  350 miles NE of Cuba

  “What the hell are they trying to do?” demanded Captain Savitsky. The Foxtrot’s hull echoed with the resounding booms of underwater explosions, the relentless bombardment seeming like it had lasted for countless hours. The blasts were not as powerful as he would have expected—perhaps the Americans were using defective depth charges?—but the strain stretched captain and crew to the breaking point.

  And B-59 already had plenty of problems brought on simply by the long, grueling voyage—never mind the American harassment. The CO2 concentration in the air had reached critically dangerous levels. The ventilation unit remained inoperable, and the diesel coolers, encrusted with salt, had all failed. More than half a dozen men were prone in different parts of the boat, overcome by the lack of breathable air. The rest looked haunted and terrified, some of them stumbling around like sleepwalkers, others sitting still and staring, sightlessly, through the murky miasma of the submarine’s foul atmosphere.

  The three diesels were silent for now and could not be used this far under the surface, but the stink of fuel and burned oil still permeated everywhere within the long cylinder of the hull. The battery reserves had fallen dangerously, and the submarine currently floated at neutral buoyancy, completely stopped at some 200 meters below the surface. The sounds of the American fleet came through the hull as a vague hiss, sometimes louder than others. The ship noise faded periodically, giving rise to hope—which was shattered minutes later when the vessels came steaming back.

  The relentless pattern of explosions waxed and waned, while the pinging of active sonar searching for them made a nerve-wracking chorus in the background, like the singing of lethal mechanical crickets. Whenever the explosive charges faded momentarily, the pinging of the sonar seemed to ratchet up to an even higher volume.

  Savitksy paced around the small control center, checking the sonar screen, the depth and trim indicators. The helmsman sat at his controls, unable to do anything since the boat wasn’t moving. Weapons systems and damage control all languished in this kind of dying stasis—nobody could do anything!

  “Vasily Andreivich,” he said to his executive officer, speaking quietly out of caution. “Stand watch at the helm. I’m going to inspect the boat.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Arkhipov replied.

  Savitsky started toward the stern, where the stink and oppressive heat in the engine room nearly knocked him down. The duty engineer looked up, eyes glazed and hollow. The four engineer mates sat listlessly, two of them dozing—or maybe already dead? The other two watched as the captain made his way down the narrow catwalk past the silent engines and through the narrow hatch to the after torpedo room.

  The torpedo men there nodded listlessly as the captain stepped slowly along the narrow, gray tubes, pausing to whisper encouragement to them. He was proud of these brave Russian sailors, here in the far stern of the boat. Not a breath of air stirred, yet somehow each man clung to consciousness. They had four torpedo tubes, each loaded with one of the “fish,” with four more torpedoes in reserve, ready to be loaded to replace any that were fired.

  Moving forward again, he came back through the engine room, clapping a few of the engineer mates on the shoulder as they nodded at him. He looked at the three big diesels, cloaked with oil, slick with condensation. Would they ever come to life again? He shuddered at the fatalistic thought. Of course they would—as soon as this goddamn harassment stopped!

  But when would the Americans give up the hunt? He began to feel more strongly that he and his men were doomed, that they would die down here, smothered by the merciless sea. And for what? Had their country gone to war, without them even knowing that fact? He felt more and more certain that the simmering conflict of the Cold War had erupted into full boil. Would they be crushed, drowned by a lethal and murderous enemy, even though they had the power to strike back, to lash out with powerful violence?

  His men deserved better than to die like that, unresisting, not even recognizing their danger—the true and warlike state of affairs. That much he could see clearly, even though the rest of his thoughts were becoming increasingly cloudy and confused. Blindly he struck out at a bulkhead, punching it so hard that he bruised his fist. Damn them! Damn the Americans!

  Savitsky weaved his way back to the middle of the boat, leaning on the bulkheads or holding onto an overhead pipe for balance. He returned to the command center directly under the center sail, the station where he spent most of his time. The boat’s nerve center still seemed to be operating at reasonable efficiency. The passive sonar display revealed the locations of ships on the surface, still cruising on all sides of the submarine. The man watching the screen, though gaunt and sweaty, remained alert and focused.

  Just beyond him, however, the sailor at the helm had been overcome by hypoxia and lay on his back on the deck, unmoving except for his chest, which rose up and down like a bellows as he struggled to breathe air that had precious little oxygen to give. Savitsky decided to leave him for now—there was no need to steer a motionless boat.

  Grimly, the captain continued his inspection, moving forward now. The galley was empty, since every man remained at general quarters—and cooking, even the boiling of water for tea, was forbidden when the boat was running silent. The clank of a metal pot against the steel grate of a stove could be a telltale clue, revealing the sub’s location to the listeners, with their advanced electronic search equipment, lurking above.

  In the forward torpedo room, things also seemed nearly normal. The torpedo men sat listlessly near their six tubes, ready to launch on the captain’s command. Five of the tubes were loaded with conventionally armed torpedoes. The sixth was empty, ready to receive Feklisov’s “baby,” should the captain order it armed. None of the crew in here seemed to have lost consciousness, perhaps because this far from the engine room the air was a little better. Lieutenant Commander Feklisov looked up and managed a wan smile as the captain came over to him and his special weapon, the torpedo with the ten-kiloton nuclear warhead.

  “How are you holding up, Anatoly Yakovlivich?” Savitsky asked softly.

  “As well as anyone,” the young engineer answered. He patted his “baby” in its shiny gray tube. “I’m ready to go to work if you need me.”

  “I hope it won’t come to that,” the captain replied. “But if it does, I have all confidence in you. Stay ready.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Feklisov replied. “If you give the word, it will be ready to shoot within a minute.”

  Savitsky returned to the command center, proud of his brave men, but bitterly angry at a situation that seemed to doom them all. He was utterly at a loss as to what he could do next. Were his options really exhausted? Could they only cower here and wait for the inevitable end?

  And the pinging, and the booming, and the searching, continued relentlessly from above.

  1655 hours (Saturday afternoon)

  Flight Deck, CVN Enterprise

  150 miles East of Cuba />
  The F4 Phantom, both General Electric turbojets roaring, quivered on the foredeck of Enterprise, lined up for take off with the nose wheel hooked into the catapult track. In the pilot’s seat, Derek Widener pushed those mighty engines to full power, afterburners blasting blistering heat and rocket-force thrust from the twin exhausts. He watched carefully, saw the flight officer chop his hand down, and immediately felt the powerful compression as the catapult whipped the big jet forward like a child’s toy. The explosive force rocked him back in his seat and shot the aircraft the short distance to the forward lip of the flight deck, off the bow of the ship, and into the air.

  Under the pilot’s control now, jet engines still roaring with that almost unimaginable thrust, the Phantom quickly rocketed up and away from the massive warship, like a bird set free from a huge but constricting cage. A catapult launch was always a thrill, and Widener couldn’t help but whoop in exhilaration as the powerful engines carried them higher and higher.