Red Storm Rising Part 71

McCafferty hung up the phone. "Sonar, you got anything that even looks like it might be something?"

"No, sir, it's clear right now."

"All ahead two-thirds." So, where the h.e.l.l is Boston? the captain asked himself.

"Funny how quiet things have got," the exec pointed out.

"Tell me about it. I know I'm acting paranoid, but am I acting paranoid enough!" McCafferty needed the laugh. "Okay. We sprint and drift north, fifteen minutes sprint, ten drift, until we're five miles ahead of Providence. Then we settle down to six knots and continue the mission. I'm going to catch a nap. Wake me in two hours. Talk to the division officers and chiefs, make sure the troops are getting some rest. We've been pus.h.i.+ng pretty hard. I don't want anybody to fold up." McCafferty grabbed half a sandwich as he walked forward. It was only eight steps to his stateroom. The food was swallowed by then.

"Captain to control!" It seemed he had only just closed his eyes when the speaker over his head went off. McCafferty checked his watch on the way out the door. He'd been asleep for ninety minutes. It would have to do.

"What do we got?" he asked the exec.

"Possible submarine contact on the port quarter. Just picked it up. We got a bearing change already-it's close. No signature yet."

"Boston?"

"Could be."

I wish Todd hadn't gone off like that, McCafferty told himself. He found himself wondering if they shouldn't just tell Providence to go to her best speed and screw the noise. That was fatigue talking, he knew. Tired people make mistakes, especially judgmental errors. Captains can't afford those, Danny.

Chicago was making six knots. No noise at all, the captain thought. n.o.body can hear us . . . maybe, probably. You don't really know anymore, do you? He went into the sonar room.

"How you feeling, Chief?"

"Hangin' in there, skipper. This contact's a beaut. See how he fades in and out. He's there, all right, but it's a cast-iron b.i.t.c.h to hold him."

"Boston headed off west a few hours ago."

"Could be him coming back, sir. Lord knows he's quiet enough. Or it could be a Tango on batteries, sir. I don't have enough signal to tell the difference. Sorry, sir. I just don't know." The chief rubbed raw eyes and let out a long breath.

"How long since you had any rest?"

"I don't know that either, sir."

"When we finish up this one, you hit the rack, Chief." The tracking party officer called forward next.

"I have a working range for you, sir. Five thousand yards. I think he's on an easterly course. Trying to firm that up." McCafferty ordered a fire-control solution to be run on the contact.

"What's this?" the chief asked. "Another sonar contact behind the first one, bearing two-five-three. He's following the other guy!"

"I need an ID, Chief."

"I don't have enough data, Captain. Both these guys are creeping."

Is Boston one of them? If so, which? If the one in front, do we warn him and reveal our position? Or shoot and risk shooting at the wrong one? Or just do nothing at all?

McCafferty went aft to the plotting board. "How close is this one to Providence?"

"Just over four thousand yards, coming in on her port bow."

"He probably has her then," the captain thought aloud.

"But who the h.e.l.l is he?" the tracking officer asked quietly. "And what's this Sierra-2 contact behind him?"

"Transient! Transient!" the sonar chief called. "Mechanical transient on Sierra-2!"

"Left fifteen degrees rudder," McCafferty ordered quietly.

"Torpedo in the water, bearing two-four-nine!"

"All ahead two-thirds!" This order was loud.

"Conn, sonar, we got increased machinery noises on Sierra-1. Okay, the front contact is a two-screw boat, blade count indicates speed of ten knots and increasing, getting some cavitation. Target Sierra-1 is maneuvering. Cla.s.sify this target as a Tango-cla.s.s."

"Boston's the one in back. All ahead one-third." McCafferty ordered his submarine to slow back down. "Get him, Todd!"

His wish was rewarded with an explosion fifteen seconds later. Simms had come up with the same tactic as his friend on Chicago. Close to a few thousand yards of the target, and give him no chance to maneuver clear. Fifteen minutes later, Boston joined her healthy sister.

"Talk about a tough four hours. That Tango was good!" Simms called over on the gertrude. "You in good shape?"

"Yes. We have the front guard position. You want to take the rear for a while?"

"You got it, Danny. See ya'."

ICELAND.

"Lead off, Sergeant Nichols."

The Russian outpost was three miles south and three thousand feet up. They climbed up the walls of the ravine and into relatively open ground. They were between the sun and the outpost. Edwards found that intellectually he believed what Nichols said about light conditions, and how the eye reacted to them-and how easy was it to spot something three miles away?-but walking like this felt like being naked on the street at rush hour. They had darkened their faces with camouflage makeup, and their uniforms blended in well with the color and texture of the land. But the human eye looks for movement, Edwards told himself, and we're moving. What am I doing here?

One step at a time. Walk softly. Don't raise any dust. Slow, easy pace. No sudden moves. Heads down. All the things Nichols had said echoed through his mind. Look at me, I'm invisible.

He commanded himself not to look up, but Edwards would have been less than human not to sneak an occasional look. The hill-mountain-towered above them. It really got steep near the top. A volcano? he wondered. There was no sign of activity at the summit. Maybe n.o.body is there? Right. Do us all a favor and be blind, or asleep, or eating, or looking for airplanes. He had to pull his eyes away from it.

The rocks he stepped over and around blended together after a while. Each member of the party walked alone. No one said anything. Every face was couched in a neutral expression that might have meant quiet determination or concealed exhaustion. Just walking the rocks safely required concentration.

This is the end of it. The last hike. The last hill to climb. The end, Edwards promised himself. After this I drive a car to get the morning paper. If I can't have a one-story house I'll d.a.m.ned well have an elevator installed. I'll get kids to cut the gra.s.s for me and sit on the porch watching them.

Finally the hilltop was behind him. He had to sneak his looks over his shoulder now. For some reason the helicopter full of Russian paratroopers didn't come. They were somewhat safer now. So Nichols stepped up the pace.

Four hours later the mountaintop was behind a knife-edge ridge of volcanic rock. Nichols called a halt. They'd been moving for seven hours.

"Well," the sergeant said. "That was easy enough, wasn't it?"

"Sarge, next time you jump out of an airplane, please break your ankle," Mike suggested.

"Hard part's behind us. Now all we have left is to climb this wee hill," Nichols pointed out.

"Might want to get some water first," Smith said. He pointed to a stream a hundred yards away.

"Good idea. Leftenant, I do think we should be atop the hill as quick as we can."

"Agreed. This is absolutely the last G.o.dd.a.m.ned hill I ever climb!"

Nichols chuckled. "I have said that myself once or twice, sir."

"I don't believe it."

USS INDEPENDENCE.

"Welcome aboard, Toland!" Commander, Strike Fleet Atlantic was a three-star billet, but Rear Admiral Scott Jacobsen would have to settle for the job instead of the rank for the moment. The life-long aviator was the most senior carrier-division commander in the Navy, and was the replacement for the late Admiral Baker. "You have one h.e.l.l of a letter of introduction here from Admiral Beattie."

"He made too big a deal of it. All I did was pa.s.s along an idea somebody else came up with."

"Okay. You were on Nimitz when the task force got hit, right?"

"Yes, sir, I was in CIC."

"The only other guy who got out was Sonny Svenson?"

"Captain Svenson, yes, sir."

Jacobsen picked up his phone and punched three digits. "Ask Captain Spaulding to join me. Thank you. Toland, you, me, and my operations officer are going to relive that experience. I want to see if there might be something our briefing left out. They're not going to punch any holes in my carriers, son."

"Admiral, don't underestimate them," Toland warned.

"I won't underestimate them, Toland. That's why I have you here. Your group got caught too far north for the circ.u.mstances. Taking Iceland was a beautiful move on their part. It screwed our plans pretty well. We are going to fix that, Commander."

"So I gather, sir."

USS REUBEN JAMES.

"Ain't she pretty!" O'Malley said. He flipped his cigarette over the side and crossed his arms, staring at the ma.s.sive carrier on the horizon. She was just a dim gray shape, with aircraft landing on the flat deck.

"My story is supposed to be about the convoy," Calloway sniffed.

"Well, they're making port right about now. End of story." The pilot turned with a wide grin. "h.e.l.l, you made me famous, didn't you?"

"You b.l.o.o.d.y aviators are all the same!" the Reuters correspondent snapped angrily. "The captain won't even tell me where we're going."

"You don't know?" O'Malley asked in surprise.

"Well, where are we going?"

"North,"

LE HAVRE, FRANCE.

The port had been cleared in expectation of the convoy. The merchantmen were brought past several wrecks of s.h.i.+ps that had died from Soviet mines, some laid before the war, others dropped from aircraft. The port had also been bombed six times by long-range fighter-bombers, each time at a murderous price from French air defense forces.

The first s.h.i.+ps in were the big Ro/Ros, the roll-on/roll-off container s.h.i.+ps. Eight of them together carried a full armored division, and these were taken quickly to the Ba.s.sin Theophile Ducrocq. One by one, the s.h.i.+ps lowered their curved stern ramps to the dock and the tanks began to roll off. They met a continuous taxi-rank of low-loader tractor-trailers, each of which would carry a tank or other armored fighting vehicle to the front lines. Loaded, they rolled off one by one to the a.s.sembly point at the Renault facility adjacent to the port. It would take hours to unload the division, but it had been decided nevertheless to move everything in a body to the fighting front, less than five hundred kilometers away.

After what had seemed an endless, tense voyage, arrival was a culture shock for the American troops, many of them National Guardsmen who rarely went overseas. The dock workers and traffic police were too exhausted from weeks of frantic work to show any human emotion, but ordinary people who had learned, despite heavy security, that reinforcing troops were landing came out, first in small groups, soon in small mobs, to watch the new arrivals. The American troops were not allowed to leave their company areas. After some informal negotiations, it was decided small delegations would be allowed to meet briefly with some of the troops. The security risk was minor-the telephone lines in and out of all NATO ports were under tight control-and there was an unexpected result to this exercise in simple courtesy. Like their fathers and grandfathers, the arriving troops saw that Europe was worth fighting for. The people who were often seen merely as threats to American jobs had faces and hopes and dreams, all of which were in danger. They were not fighting for a principle, or a political decision, or a treaty made of paper. They were here for these people and others not the least different from those they'd left at home.

It took two hours longer than they'd hoped. Some vehicles were broken down, but the port and police officials had organized the a.s.sembly points with skill. The division moved off in the early afternoon at a steady fifty kilometers per hour, driving down a multilane highway cleared for its path. Every few yards, someone stood to wave while the troops made final checks on their gear. The easy part of their journey was about to end.

ICELAND.