Red Storm Rising Part 57

Two minutes later, the sonar transducer went into the water for a sixth time. The contact was now plotted on the helicopter's on-board tactical display that sat on the control panel between pilot and copilot.

"We got two signals here," Ralston said. "About six hundred yards apart."

"Looks that way to me. Let's go see the near one. w.i.l.l.y-"

"Cable within limits, ready to raise, skipper."

"Up dome. Romeo, Hammer. You got what we got?"

"Affirmative, Hammer," Morris answered. "Check out the southern one."

"Doing that right now. Stand by." O'Malley paid close attention to his instruments as he flew toward the nearer of the two contacts. Again he halted the aircraft. "Down dome."

"Contact!" the petty officer said a minute later. He examined the tone lines on his display and mentally compared them with data he had on Soviet submarines. "Evaluate this contact as steam and plant noises from a nuclear submarine, bearing two-six-two."

O'Malley listened for thirty seconds. His face broke into a slight smile. "That's a nuc boat all right! Romeo, Hammer, we have a probable submarine contact bearing two-six-two our position. Moving to firm that fix up right now."

Ten minutes later they had the contact locked in. O'Malley made directly for it and lowered his sonar right on top of the contact.

"It's a Victor-cla.s.s," the sonarman aboard the frigate said. "See this frequency line? A Victor with his reactor plant turned down to minimum power output."

"Hammer," Morris called. "Romeo. Any suggestions?"

O'Malley was flying away from the contact, having left a smoke float to mark it. The submarine probably hadn't heard them because of the surface conditions, or if he had, he knew his safest bet was to sit on the bottom. The Americans carried only homing torpedoes, which couldn't detect a submarine on the bottom. Once launched, they'd either motor along in a circle until running out of fuel or drive straight into the bottom. He could go active and try to flush the submarine off the bottom, he thought, but active sonar wasn't all that effective in shallow water, and what if Ivan didn't move? The Seahawk was down to one hour's fuel. The pilot made his decision.

"Battleaxe, this is Hammer. Do you read, over?"

"Took your time to call us, Hammer," Captain Perrin replied at once. The British frigate was monitoring the search closely.

"You have any Mark-11s aboard?"

"We can load them in ten minutes."

"We'll be waiting. Romeo, do you approve a VECTAC?"

"Affirmative," Morris answered. The vectored attack approach was perfect, and he was too excited at what they had here to be annoyed at O'Malley for bypa.s.sing him. "Weapons free."

O'Malley circled his aircraft at one thousand feet while he waited. This was really crazy. Was Ivan just sitting there? Was he waiting for a convoy to pa.s.s by? It was about an even-money chance that he'd heard the helicopter. If he'd heard the helo, did he want the frigate to come in so he could attack her? His systems operator watched the sonar display intently for any change in the signal from the contact. So far there'd been none. No increase in engine power, no mechanical transients. Nothing at all but the hissing of a reactor plant at fractional power, a sound undetectable from more than two miles off. No wonder several people had looked and found nothing. He found himself admiring the nerve of the Soviet submarine commander.

"Hammer, this is Hatchet."

O'Malley smiled to himself. Unlike American procedures, the Brits a.s.signed helicopter names a.s.sociated with that of their mother s.h.i.+ps. HMS Brazen's helo was "Hussy." Battleaxe's was "Hatchet."

"Roger, Hatchet. Where are you?"

"Ten miles south of you. We've two depth charges aboard."

O'Malley switched his flying lights back on. "Very well, stand by. Romeo, the way I want to work this, you give Hatchet a radar steer to our son.o.buoy and we'll use our sonar for the cross-bearing to drop. Do you concur, over?"

"Roger, concur," Morris answered.

"Arm the fish," O'Malley told his copilot.

"Why?"

"If the charges miss, you can bet he'll come off the bottom like a salmon at sp.a.w.ning time." O'Malley brought his helo around and spotted the blinking anticollision lights of the British Lynx helicopter. "Hatchet, tallyho, I have you now at my nine o'clock. Please hold your current position while we get set. w.i.l.l.y, any change in the contact?"

"No, sir. This dude's playing it awful cool, sir."

You poor brave b.a.s.t.a.r.d, O'Malley thought to himself. The smoke float atop the contact was about burned out. He dropped another. After rechecking his tactical display he moved to a position one thousand yards east of the contact, hovered fifty feet above the surface and deployed the dipping sonar.

"There he is," the petty officer reported. "Bearing two-six-eight."

"Hatchet, Hammer. We're ready for your VECTAC. Take your steer from Romeo."

Control of the British helicopter's course came now from Reuben James's radar, which steered it onto a precise northerly course. O'Malley watched the Lynx approach, checking to make sure the wind wasn't driving him off his own position.

"You will drop your charges one at a time, on my mark. Stand by, Hatchet."

"Standing by." The British pilot armed his depth charges and came forward at ninety knots. O'Malley lined up the blinking lights with the smoke float.

"Charge one-Mark-mark! Charge two-Mark-mark! Get clear!"

The Lynx pilot needed no encouragement. Scarcely had the second depth charge fallen free when the helo leaped upward and raced northeast. Simultaneously, O'Malley yanked up on his collective control to bring his delicate sonar transducer out of the water.

There was an odd flash of light from the bottom, then another. The surface of the sea turned to foam that leaped into the starry sky. O'Malley closed in and switched on his landing lights. The surface was churned with mud, and . . . oil? Just like in the movies, he thought, and dropped another son.o.buoy into the water.

The bottom reverberated with the rumbles from the depth charges, but the system filtered them out and locked in on the higher frequency sounds. They heard escaping air and rus.h.i.+ng water. Someone aboard the submarine might have hit the ballast controls in a vain attempt to blow the submarine to the surface. Then there was something else, like water dropped on a hot plate. It was a moment before O'Malley had it figured out.

"What's that, skipper?" w.i.l.l.y asked over the intercom. "I never heard that before."

"The reactor vessel's ruptured. You're hearing a runaway nuclear reactor." G.o.d, what a mess that'll be this close into sh.o.r.e! he thought. No more diving on the Doria for a few years . . . O'Malley switched to the radio circuit. "Hatchet, this is Hammer. I copy collapse noises. We score that one as a kill. Do you claim the kill, over?"

"Our fox, Hammer. Thanks for the steer in."

O'Malley laughed. "Roger that, Hatchet. If you want the kill, you also get to file the environmental-impact statement. Out."

Aboard the Lynx, pilot and copilot exchanged a look. "What the devil is that?"

The two helicopters returned in loose formation and made a pa.s.s over both the British and American frigates to celebrate their kill. It was the second for Battleaxe, and Reuben James would now paint half a submarine on the side of her pilothouse. The s.h.i.+ps recovered their helicopters and turned west for New York.

MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

Mikhail Sergetov embraced his son in the Russian way, with pa.s.sion and kisses to welcome him back from the front. The Politburo member took his son's arm and led him to his chauffeured Zil for the drive into Moscow.

"You've been hurt, Vanya."

"I cut my hand on some gla.s.s." Ivan shrugged it off. His father offered him a small gla.s.s of vodka, which he took. "I haven't had a drink in two weeks."

"Oh?"

"The General does not permit it in his command post," Ivan explained.

"Is he as good an officer as I thought?"

"Perhaps a better one. I've seen him in command at the front. He is a truly gifted leader."

"Then why haven't we conquered Germany?"

Ivan Mikhailovich Sergetov had grown up while his father had climbed the Party ladder nearly to the top, and he had often seen him switch in a moment from affable host to abrasive Party apparatchik. This was the first time it had ever happened to him, however.

"NATO was far readier than we had been led to expect, father. They were waiting for us to come, and their first mission of the war-before we had even crossed the border in force-came as a rude shock." Ivan explained the effects of Operation Dreamland.

"We were not told it was that bad. Are you sure?"

"I've seen some of the bridges. Those same aircraft raided a dummy command post outside Stendal. The bombs were falling before we knew they were there. If their intelligence had been better, I might not be here."

"So it's their air power?"

"That's a major part of it. I've seen their ground-attack fighters cut through a tank column like a harvester through a wheatfield. It's horrible."

"But our missiles?"

"Our missile troops practice once or twice a year, firing at target drones that plod along in a straight line up where everyone can see them. The NATO fighters fly between the trees. If the antiaircraft missiles on either side worked as well as their makers said, every airplane in the world would have been shot down twice over by now. But the worst thing of all are their ant.i.tank missiles-you know, just like ours, and these missiles work all too well." The younger man gestured with his hands. "Three men in a wheeled vehicle. One driver, one loader, one gunner. They hide behind a tree at a turn in the road and wait. Our column comes into view and they fire from a range of-say two kilometers. They're trained to go for the command tank-the one with the radio antenna up. As often as not the first warning we have is when the first weapon hits. They fire one more and kill another tank, then race away before we can call down artillery fire. Five minutes later, from another spot, it happens again.

"It's eating us up," the young man said, echoing the words of his commander.

"You say we are losing?"

"No. I say that we are not winning," Ivan said. "But for us that is the same thing." He continued with the message from his commander and saw his father settle into the leather seat of the car.

"I knew it. I warned them, Vanya. The fools!" Ivan gestured with his head to the driver. His father smiled and made a dismissive gesture. Vitaly had served Sergetov for years. His daughter was now a doctor because of the Minister's patronage, his son safe in the university while most of the young men in the country were under arms. "Oil expenditures are twenty-five percent above predictions. That is, twenty-five percent above my ministerial predictions. They are forty percent above the Defense Ministry's predictions. It never occurred to anyone that NATO aircraft would be able to find our hidden petroleum storage facilities. My people are reevaluating national reserves even now. I am to receive the interim report this afternoon if it's ready on time. Look around, Vanya. See for yourself."

There were hardly any vehicles in view, not even trucks. Never a lively city, now Moscow was grim even to Russian eyes. People hurried along half-empty streets, not looking around, not looking up. So many men were gone, Ivan realized. So many of them would never return. As usual his father read his thoughts.

"How bad are casualties?"

"Dreadful. Far over estimates. I do not have exact numbers-my posting is intelligence, not administration-but losses are very bad."

"This is all a mistake, Vanya," the Minister said quietly. But the Party is always right. How many years did you believe that?

"Nothing can be done about that now, father. We also need information on NATO's supplies. The data that gets to us at the front is-overprocessed, shall we say. We need better data to make our own estimates."

At the front, Mikhail thought. His anger at those words could not entirely suppress the pride he felt at what his son had become. He'd worried often that he'd turn into another young "n.o.bleman" of a Party family. Alekseyev was not the sort to promote lightly, and from his own sources he'd learned that Ivan had accompanied the General to the battle line many times. The boy had become a man. Pity it had taken a war to make that happen.

"I'll see what I can do."

USS CHICAGO.

The Svyatana Anna Trough was their last bit of deep water. The freight train of fast-attack submarines slowed almost to a halt as it approached the edge of the icepack. They expected to find two friendly submarines here, but "friendly" was not a word that went well with combat operations. All the American submarines were at battle stations. McCafferty checked the time and the location. So far everything had gone according to plan. Amazing, he thought.

He didn't like being the lead boat. If there were a Russian patrolling the edge of the pack . . . he'd get first shot, McCafferty knew. Wondering if the "he" would be a speaker of English or Russian.

"Conn, sonar, I got faint machinery noises bearing one-nine-one."

"Bearing change?"

"Just picked it up, sir. Bearing is not changing at the moment."

McCafferty reached past the duty electrician's mate and switched on the gertrude, a sonar telephone as archaic as it was effective. The only noise was the hissing and groaning of the icepack. Behind him the exec got the fire-control tracking party working on a torpedo solution for the new target.

A garbled group of syllables came over the speaker.

McCafferty took the gertrude phone off the receiver and depressed the Transmit trigger.

"Zulu X-ray." There came a pause of several seconds, then a scratchy reply.

"Hotel Bravo," replied HMS Sceptre. McCafferty let out a long breath that went unnoticed by the rest of the attack center crew, all of whom were doing exactly the same thing.

"All ahead one-third," the captain said. Ten minutes later they were within easy range of the gertrude. Chicago halted to communicate.

"Welcome to the Soviet back garden, old boy. Slight change in plans. Keyboard"-the code name for HMS Superb-"is two-zero miles south to check further on your route. We've encountered no hostile activity for the past thirty hours. The coast is clear. Good hunting."

"Thank you, Keylock. The gang's all here. Out." McCafferty hung the phone set back in its place. "Gentlemen, the mission is a go! All ahead two-thirds!"

The nuclear attack submarine increased speed to twelve knots on a heading of one-nine-seven degrees. HMS Sceptre counted the American boats as they pa.s.sed, then resumed her station, circling slowly at the edge of the icepack.

"Good luck, chaps," her captain breathed.

"They should get in all right."

"It's not getting in that I'm worried about, Jimmy," the captain replied, using the traditional name for a British sub's first officer. "The ticklish part's getting back out."