by Tom Clancy
The nonsense you think at times like this! he raged at himself.
He’d failed. His men had trusted him with command, and he’d failed them, the Archer told himself. He looked around at the bodies in the snow and each seemed to accuse him. He could kill individuals, could pluck aircraft from the sky, but he’d never learned how to lead a large body of men. Was this Allah’s curse on him for torturing the Russian flyers? No! There were still enemies to kill. He gestured to his men to enter the building through several broken, ground-floor windows.
The Major was leading from the front, as the mudjaheddin expected. He had gotten ten of them right up to the side of the bunker, then led them along the wall toward the main door, covered by fire from the rest of his company. It was going well, he thought. He’d lost five men, but that was not very many for a mission like this . . . Thank you for all the training you gave me, my Russian friends ...
The main door was steel. He personally set a pair of satchel charges at both lower corners and set the fuses before crawling back around the corner. Russian rifles blazed over his head, but those inside the building didn’t know where he was. That would change. He set the charges, pulled the fuse cords, and dashed back around the corner.
Pokryshkin cringed as he heard it happen. He turned to see the heavy steel door flying across the room and smashing into a control console. The KGB Lieutenant was killed instantly by the blast, and as Pokryshkin’s men raced to cover the breach in the wall, three more explosive packs flew in. There was nowhere to run. The Border Guards kept firing, killing one of the attackers at the door, but then the charges went off.
It was a strangely hollow sound, the Major thought. The force of the explosions was contained by the stout concrete walls. He led his men in a second later. Electrical circuits were sparking, and fires would soon begin in earnest, but everyone he could see inside was down. His men moved swiftly from one to another, seizing weapons and killing those merely unconscious. The Major saw a Russian officer with general’s stars. The man was bleeding from his nose and ears, trying to bring up his pistol when the Major cut him down. In another minute they were all dead. The building was rapidly filling with thick, acrid smoke. He ordered his men out.
“We’re finished here,” he said into his radio. There was no answer. “Are you there?”
The Archer was against a wall next to a half-open door. His radio was switched off. Just outside his room was a soldier, facing down the corridor. It was time. The freedom fighter threw the door aside with the barrel of his rifle and shot the Russian before the man had had a chance to turn. He screamed a command, and five other men emerged from their rooms, but two were killed before they got a chance to shoot. He looked up and down the corridor and saw nothing but gun flashes and half-hidden silhouettes.
Fifty meters away, Bondarenko reacted to the new threat. He shouted an order for his men to stay under cover, and then with murderous precision, the Colonel identified and engaged the targets moving in the open, identified by the emergency lighting in the corridor. The corridor was exactly like a shooting gallery, and he got two men with as many bursts. Another ran toward him, screaming something unintelligible and firing his weapon in a single extended burst. Bondarenko’s shots missed, to his amazement, but someone else got him. There was more shooting, and the sound of it reverberating off the concrete walls completely deafened everyone. Then, he saw, there was only one man left. The Colonel watched two more of his men fall, and the last Afghan chipped concrete only centimeters from his face. Bondarenko’s eyes stung from it, and the right side of his face recoiled at the sudden pain. The Colonel pulled back from the line of fire, flipped his weapon to full automatic, took a deep breath, and jumped into the corridor. The man was less than ten meters away.
The moment stretched into eternity as both men brought their weapons to bear. He saw the man’s eyes. It was a young face there, immediately below the emergency light, but the eyes . . . the rage there, the hatred, nearly stopped the Colonel’s heart. But Bondarenko was a soldier before all things. The Afghan’s first shot missed. His did not.
The Archer felt shock, but not pain in his chest as he fell. His brain sent a message to his hands to bring the weapon to the left, but they ignored the command and dropped it. He fell in stages, first to his knees, then on his back, and at last he was staring up at a ceiling. It was finally over. Then the man stood by his side. It was not a cruel face, the Archer thought. It was the enemy, and it was an infidel, but he was a man, too, wasn’t he? There was curiosity there. He wants to know who I am, the Archer told him with his last breath.
“Allahu akhbar!” God is great.
Yes, I suppose He is, Bondarenko told the corpse. He knew the phrase well enough. Is that why you came? He saw that the man had a radio. It started to make noise, and the Colonel bent down to grab it.
“Are you there?” the radio asked a moment later. The question was in Pashtu, but the answer was delivered in Russian.
“It is all finished here,” Bondarenko said.
The Major looked at his radio for a moment, then blew his whistle to assemble what was left of his men. The Archer’s company knew the way to the assembly point, but all that mattered now was getting home. He counted his men. He’d lost eleven and had six wounded. With luck he’d get to the border before the snow stopped. Five minutes later his men were heading off the mountain.
“Secure the area!” Bondarenko told his remaining six men. “Collect weapons and get them handed out.” It was probably over, he thought, but “over” would not truly come until that motor-rifle regiment got here.
“Morozov!” he called next. The engineer appeared a moment later.
“Yes, Colonel?”
“Is there a physician upstairs?”
“Yes, several—I’ll get one.”
The Colonel found that he was sweating. The building still held some warmth. He dropped the field radio off his back and was stunned to see that two bullets had hit it—and even more surprised to see blood on one of the straps. He’d been hit and hadn’t known it. The sergeant came over and looked at it.
“Just a scratch, Comrade, like those on my legs.”
“Help me off with this coat, will you?” Bondarenko shrugged out of the knee-length greatcoat, exposing his uniform blouse. With his right hand he reached inside, while his left removed the ribbon that designated the Red Banner. This he pinned to the young man’s collar. “You deserve better, Sergeant, but this is all I can do for the present.”
“Up ’scope!” Mancuso used the search periscope now, with its light-amplifying equipment. “Still nothing . . .” He turned to look west. “Uh-oh, I got a masthead light at two-seven-zero—”
“That’s our sonar contact,” Lieutenant Goodman noted unnecessarily.
“Sonar, conn, do you have an ident on the contact?” Mancuso asked.
“Negative,” Jones replied. “We’re getting reverbs from the ice, sir. Acoustic conditions are pretty bad. It’s twin screw and diesel, but no ident.”
Mancuso turned on the ’scope television camera. Ramius needed only one look at the picture. “Grisha.”
Mancuso looked at the tracking party. “Solution?”
“Yes, but it’s a little shaky,” the weapons officer replied. “The ice isn’t going to help,” he added. What he meant was that the Mark 48 torpedo in surface-attack mode could be confused by floating ice. He paused for a moment. “Sir, if that’s a Grisha, how come no radar?”
“New contact! Conn, sonar, new contact bearing zero-eight-six—sounds like our friend, sir,” Jones called. “Something else near that bearing, high-speed screw . . . definitely something new there, sir, call it zero-eight-three.”
“Up two feet,” Mancuso told the quartermaster. The periscope came up. “I see him, just on the horizon . . . call it three miles. There’s a light behind them!” He slapped the handles up and the ’scope went down at once. “Let’s get there fast. All ahead two-thirds.”
“All ahead two-thirds,
aye.” The helmsman dialed up the engine order.
The navigator plotted the position of the inbound boat and ticked off the yards.
Clark was looking back toward the shore. There was a light sweeping left and right across the water. Who was it? He didn’t know if the local cops had boats, but there had to be a detachment of KGB Border Guards: they had their own little navy, and their own little air force. But how alert were they on a Friday night? Probably better than they were when that German kid decided to fly into Moscow . . . right through this sector, Clark remembered. This area’s probably pretty alert . . . where are you, Dallas? He lifted his radio.
“Uncle Joe, this is Willy. The sun is rising, and we’re far from home.”
“He says he’s close, sir,” communications reported.
“ ’Gator?” Mancuso asked.
The navigator looked up from his table. “I gave him fifteen knots. We should be within five hundred yards now.”
“All ahead one-third,” the Captain ordered. “Up ’scope!” The oiled steel tube hissed up again—all the way up.
“Captain, I got a radar emitter astern, bearing two-six-eight. It’s a Don-2,” the ESM technician said.
“Conn, sonar, both the hostile contacts have increased speed. Blade count looks like twenty knots and coming up on the Grisha, sir,” Jones said. “Confirm target ident is Grisha-class. Easterly contact still unknown, one screw, probably a gas engine, doing turns for twenty or so.”
“Range about six thousand yards,” the fire-control party said next.
“This is the fun part,” Mancuso observed. “I have them. Bearing—mark!”
“Zero-nine-one.”
“Range.” Mancuso squeezed the trigger for the ’scope’s laser-rangefinder. “Mark!”
“Six hundred yards.”
“Nice call, ’Gator. Solution on the Grisha?” he asked fire control.
“Set for tubes two and four. Outer doors are still closed, sir.”
“Keep ’em that way.” Mancuso went to the bridge trunk’s lower hatch. “XO, you have the conn. I’m going to do the recovery myself. Let’s get it done.”
“All stop,” the executive officer said. Mancuso opened the hatch and went up the ladder to the bridge. The lower hatch was closed behind him. He heard the water rushing around him in the sail, then the splashes of surface waves. The intercom told him he could open the bridge hatch. Mancuso spun the locking wheel and heaved against the heavy steel cover. He was rewarded with a faceful of cold, oily saltwater, but ignored it and got to the bridge.
He looked aft first. There was the Grisha, its masthead light low on the horizon. Next he looked forward and pulled the flashlight from his hip pocket. He aimed directly at the raft and tapped out the Morse letter D.
“A light, a light!” Maria said. Clark turned back forward, saw it, and steered for it. Then he saw something else.
The patrol boat behind Clark was a good two miles off, its searchlight looking in the wrong place. The Captain turned west to see the other contact. Mancuso knew in a distant sort of way that Grishas carried searchlights, but had allowed himself to disregard the fact. After all, why should searchlights concern a submarine? When she’s on the surface, the Captain told himself. The ship was still too far away to see him, light or not, but that would change in a hurry. He watched it sweep the surface aft of his submarine, and realized too late that they probably had Dallas on radar now.
“Over here, Clark, move your ass!” he screamed across the water, swinging the light left and right. The next thirty seconds seemed to last into the following month. Then it was there.
“Help the ladies,” the man said. He held the raft against the submarine’s sail with his motor. Dallas was still moving, had to be to maintain this precarious depth, not quite surfaced, not quite dived. The first one felt and moved like a young girl, the skipper thought as he brought her aboard. The second one was wet and shivering. Clark waited a moment, setting a small box atop the motor. Mancuso wondered how it stayed balanced there until he realized that it was either magnetic or glued somehow.
“Down the ladder,” Mancuso told the ladies.
Clark scrambled aboard and said something—probably the same thing—in Russian. To Mancuso he spoke in English. “Five minutes before it blows.”
The women were already halfway down. Clark went behind them, and finally Mancuso, with a last look at the raft. The last thing he saw was the harbor patrol boat, now heading directly toward him. He dropped down and pulled the hatch behind himself. Then he punched the intercom button. “Take her down and move the boat!”
The bottom hatch opened underneath them all, and he heard the executive officer. “Make your depth ninety feet, all ahead two-thirds, left full rudder!”
A petty officer met the ladies at the bottom of the bridge tube. The astonishment on his face would have been funny at any other time. Clark took them by the arm and led them forward to his stateroom. Mancuso went aft.
“I have the conn,” he announced.
“Captain has the conn,” the XO agreed. “ESM says they got some VHF radio traffic, close in, probably the Grisha talking to the other one.”
“Helm, come to new course three-five-zero. Let’s get her under the ice. They probably know we’re here—well, they know something’s here. ’Gator, how’s the chart look?”
“We’ll have to turn soon,” the navigator warned. “Shoal water in eight thousand yards. Recommend come to new course two-nine-one.” Mancuso ordered the change at once.
“Depth now eight-five feet, leveling out,” the diving officer said. “Speed eighteen knots.” A small bark of sound announced the destruction of the raft and its motor.
“Okay, people, now all we have to do is leave,” Mancuso told his Attack Center crew. A high-pitched snap of sound told them that this would not be easy.
“Conn, sonar, we’re being pinged. That’s a Grisha death-ray,” Jones said, using the slang term for the Russian set. “Might have us.”
“Under the ice now,” the navigator said.
“Range to target?”
“Just under four thousand yards,” the weapons officer replied. “Set for tubes two and four.”
The problem was, they couldn’t shoot. Dallas was inside Russian territorial waters, and even if the Grisha shot at them, shooting back wasn’t self-defense, but an act of war. Mancuso looked at the chart. He had thirty feet of water under his keel, and a bare twenty over his sail—minus the thickness of the ice...
“Marko?” the Captain asked.
“They will request instructions first,” Ramius judged. “The more time they have, the better chance they will shoot.”
“Okay. All ahead full,” Mancuso ordered. At thirty knots he’d be in international waters in ten minutes.
“Grisha is passing abeam on the portside,” Jones said. Mancuso went forward to the sonar room.
“What’s happening?” the Captain asked.
“The high-frequency stuff works pretty good in the ice. He’s searchlighting back and forth. He knows something’s here, but not exactly where yet.”
Mancuso lifted a phone. “Five-inch room, launch two noisemakers.”
A pair of bubble-making decoys was ejected from the portside of the submarine.
“Good, Mancuso,” Ramius observed. “His sonar will fix on those. He cannot maneuver well with the ice.”
“We’ll know for sure in the next minute.” Just as he said it, the submarine was rocked by explosions aft. A very feminine scream echoed through the forward portion of the submarine.
“All ahead flank!” the Captain called aft.
“The decoys,” Ramius said. “Surprising that he fired so quickly...
“Losing sonar performance, skipper,” Jones said as the screen went blank with flow noise. Mancuso and Ramius went aft. The navigator had their course track marked on the chart.
“Uh-oh, we have to transit this place right here where the ice stops. How much you want to bet he knows it?” Manc
uso looked up. They were still being pinged, and he still couldn’t shoot back. And that Grisha might get lucky.
“Radio—Mancuso, let me speak on radio!” Ramius said.
“We don’t do things that way—” Mancuso said. American doctrine was to evade, never to let them be sure there was a submarine there at all.
“I know that. But we are not American submarine, Captain Mancuso, we are Soviet submarine,” Ramius suggested. Bart Mancuso nodded. He’d never played this card before.
“Take her to antenna depth!”
A radio technician dialed in the Soviet guard frequency, and the slender VHF antenna was raised as soon as the submarine cleared the ice. The periscope went up, too.
“There he is. Angle on the bow, zero. Down ’scope!”
“Radar contact bearing two-eight-one,” the speaker proclaimed.
The Captain of the Grisha was coming off a week’s patrolling on the Baltic Sea, six hours late, and had been looking forward to four days off. Then first came a radio transmission from the Talinn harbor police about a strange craft seen leaving the docks, followed by something from the KGB, then a small explosion near the harbor police boat, next several sonar contacts. The twenty-nine-year-old senior lieutenant with all of three months in command had made his estimate of the situation and fired at what his sonar operator called a positive submarine contact. Now he was wondering if he’d made a mistake, and how ghastly it might be. All he knew was that he had not the smallest idea what was happening, but if he were chasing a submarine, it would be heading west.