by Tom Clancy
“What’s a service truck?” Liz Elliot asked.
“Those are the trucks they use to transport the missiles. They also have all the tools you use to work on them. There’s one truck per bird—actually more than one. It’s a big semi-truck, like a hook ‘n’ ladder truck, actually, with storage bins built in for all the tools and stuff—Jim, they look like they pulled the shroud—yeah! There are the warheads, it’s lit up, and they’re doing something to the RVs ... I wonder what?”
Fowler nearly exploded. It was like listening to a football game on the radio, and—“What does all this mean!”
“Sir, we can’t tell ... coming up to Uzhur now. Not much activity, Uzhur has the new mark of the -18, the Mod 5 ... no trucks, I can see sentries again. Mr. President, I would estimate that we have more than the usual number of sentries around. Gladkaya next ... that’ll take a couple of minutes....”
“Why are the trucks there?” Fowler asked.
“Sir, all I can say is that they appear to be working on the birds.”
“Goddamn it! Doing what!” Fowler screamed into the speakerphone.
The reply was very different from the cool voice of a few minutes earlier. “Sir, there’s no way we can tell that.”
“Then tell me what you do know!”
“Mr. President, as I already said, these missiles are old ones, they’re maintenance-intensive, and they were scheduled for destruction, but they’re overdue for that. We observed increased site security at all three SS-18 regiments, but at Alyesk every bird we saw had a truck and a maintenance crew there, and the silos were all open. That’s all we can tell from these pictures, sir.”
“Mr. President,” General Borstein said, “Major Costello has told you everything he can.”
“General, you told me that we’d get something useful from this. What did we get?”
“Sir, it may be significant that there’s all that work going on at Alyesk.”
“But you don’t know what the work is!”
“No, sir, we don’t,” Borstein admitted rather sheepishly.
“Could they be readying those missiles for launch?”
“Yes, sir, that is a possibility.”
“My God.”
“Robert,” the National Security Advisor said, “I am getting very frightened.”
“Elizabeth, we don’t have time for this.” Fowler collected himself. “We must maintain control of ourselves, and control of the situation. We must. We must convince Narmonov—”
“Robert, don’t you see! It’s not him! That’s the only thing that makes sense. We don’t know who we’re dealing with!”
“What can we do about it?”
“I don’t know!”
“Well, whoever it is, they don’t want a nuclear war. Nobody would. It’s too crazy,” the President assured her, sounding almost like a parent.
“Are you sure of that? Robert, are you really sure? They tried to kill us!”
“Even if that’s true, we have to set it aside.”
“But we can’t. If they were willing to try once, they will be willing to try again! Don’t you see?”
Just a few feet behind him, Helen D‘Agustino realized that she’d read Liz Elliot correctly the previous summer. She was as much a coward as a bully. And now whom did the President have to advise him? Fowler rose from his chair and headed for the bathroom. Pete Connor trailed along as far as the door, because even Presidents are not allowed to make that trip alone. “Daga” looked down on Dr. Elliot. Her face was—what? the Secret Service agent asked herself. It was beyond fear. Agent D’Agustino was every bit as frightened herself, but she didn’t—that was unfair, wasn’t it? Nobody was asking her for advice, nobody was asking her to make sense of this mess. Clearly, none of it made sense at all. It simply didn’t. At least no one was asking her about it, but that wasn’t her job. It was Liz Elliot’s job.
“I got a contact here,” one of the sonar operators said aboard Sea Devil One-Three. “Buoy three, bearing two-one-five ... blade count now ... single screw—nuclear submarine contact! Not American, screw’s not American.”
“Got him on four,” another sonarman said. “This dude’s hauling ass, blade count shows over twenty, maybe twenty-five knots, bearing my buoy is three-zero-zero.”
“Okay,” the Tacco said, “I have a posit. Can you give me drift?”
“Bearing now two-one-zero!” the first one responded. “This guy is moving!”
Two minutes later it was clear the contact was heading straight for USS Maine.
“Is this possible?” Jim Rosselli asked. The radio message had gone from Kodiak straight to the NMCC. The commander of the patrol squadron didn’t know what to do and was screaming for instructions. The report came in the form of a RED ROCKET, copied off also to CINCPAC, who would also be requesting direction from above.
“What do you mean?” Barnes asked.
“He’s heading straight for where Maine is. How the hell could he know where she is?”
“How’d we find out?”
“SLOT buoy, radio—oh, no, that asshole hasn’t maneuvered clear?”
“Kick this to the President?” Colonel Barnes asked.
“I guess.” Rosselli lifted the phone.
“This is the President.”
“Sir, this is Captain Jim Rosselli at the National Military Command Center. We have a disabled submarine in the Gulf of Alaska, USS Maine, an Ohio-class missile boat. Sir, she has prop damage and cannot maneuver. There is a Soviet attack submarine heading straight toward her, about ten miles out. We have a P-3C Orion ASW aircraft that is now tracking the Russian. Sir, he requests instructions.”
“I thought they can’t track our missile submarines.”
“Sir, nobody can, but in this case they must have DF—I mean used direction-finders to locate the sub when she radioed for help. Maine is a missile submarine, part of SIOP, and is under DEFCON-TWO Rules of Engagement. Therefore, so is the Orion that’s riding shotgun for her. Sir, they want to know what to do.”
“How important is Maine?” Fowler asked.
General Fremont took that. “Sir, that sub is part of the SIOP, a big part, over two hundred warheads, very accurate ones. If the Russians can take her out, they’ve hurt us badly.”
“How badly?” “Sir, it makes one hell of a hole in our war plan. Maine carries the D-5 missile, and they are tasked counterforce. They’re supposed to attack missile fields and selected command-and-control assets. If something happens to her, it would take literally hours to patch up that hole in the plan.”
“Captain Rosselli, you’re Navy, right?”
“Yes, Mr. President—sir, I have to tell you that I was CO of Maine’s Gold Crew until a few months ago.”
“How soon before we have to make a decision?”
“Sir, the Akula is inbound at twenty-five knots, currently about twenty thousand yards from our boat. Technically speaking, they’re within torpedo range right now.”
“What are my options?”
“You can order an attack or not order an attack,” Rosselli replied.
“General Fremont?”
“Mr. President—no, Captain Rosselli?”
“Yes, General?”
“How sure are you that the Russians are boring straight in on our boat?”
“The signal is quite positive on that, sir.”
“Mr. President, I think we have to protect our assets. The Russians won’t be real pleased with an attack on one of their boats, but it’s an attack boat, not a strategic asset. If they challenge us on this, we can explain it. What I want to know is why they ordered the boat in this way. They must know that it would alarm us.”
“Captain Rosselli, you have my authorization for the aircraft to engage and destroy the submarine.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Rosselli lifted the other phone. “GRAY BEAR, this is MARBLEHEAD”—the current code name for the NMCC—“National Command Authority approves I repeat approves your request. Acknowledge.”
; “MARBLEHEAD, this is GRAY BEAR, we copy request to engage is approved.”
“That’s affirmative.”
“Roger. Out.”
The Orion turned in. Even the pilots were feeling the effects of the weather now. Technically it was still light, but the low ceiling and heavy seas made it seem that they were flying down an immense and bumpy corridor. That was the bad news. The good news was that their contact was acting dumb, running very fast, below the layer, and almost impossible to miss. The Tacco in back coached him in along the Akula’s course. Sticking out the tail of the converted Lockheed Electra airliner was a sensitive device called a magnetic anomaly detector. It reported on variations in the earth’s magnetic field, such as those caused by the metallic mass of a submarine.
“Madman madman madman, smoke away!” the system operator called. He pushed a button to release a smoke float. In front, the pilot immediately turned left to set up another run. This he did, then a third, turning left each time.
“Okay, how’s this look back there?” the pilot asked.
“Solid contact, nuclear-powered sub, positive Russian. I say let’s do it this time.”
“Fair enough,” the pilot observed.
“Jesus!” the copilot muttered.
“Open the doors.”
“Coming open now. Safeties off, release is armed, weapon is hot.”
“Okay, I have it set,” the Tacco said. “Clear to drop.”
It was too easy. The pilot lined up on the smoke floats, which were almost perfectly in a row. He passed over the first, then the second, then the third....
“Dropping now-now-now! Torp away!” The pilot added power and climbed a few hundred feet.
The Mark 50 ASW torpedo dropped clear, retarded by a small parachute that automatically released when the fish hit the water. The new and very sophisticated weapon was powered by an almost noiseless propulsion instead of a propeller, and had been programmed to stay covert until it reached the target depth of five hundred feet.
It was just about time to slow down, Dubinin thought, another few thousand meters. His gamble, he felt, had been a good one. It seemed a wholly reasonable supposition that the American missile submarine would stay near the surface. If he’d guessed right, then by racing in just below the layer—he was running at one hundred ten meters—surface noise would keep the Americans from hearing him and he could conduct the remainder of the search more covertly. He was about to congratulate himself for a good tactical decision.
“Torpedo sonar on the starboard bow!” Lieutenant Rykov screamed from sonar.
“Rudder left! Ahead flank! Where is the torpedo?”
Rykov: “Depression angle fifteen! Below us!”
“Emergency surface! Full rise on the planes! New course three-zero-zero!” Dubinin dashed into sonar.
“What the hell?”
Rykov was pale. “I can’t hear screws ... just that damned sonar ... looking away—no, it’s in acquisition now!”
Dubinin turned: “Countermeasures—three—now!”
“Cans away!”
Admiral Lunin’s countermeasures operators rapidly fired off three 15-centimeter cans of gas-generating material. These filled the water with bubbles, making a target for the torpedo, but one that didn’t move. The Mark 50 had already sensed the submarine’s presence and was turning in.
“Coming through one hundred meters,” the Starpom called. “Speed twenty-eight knots.”
“Level off at fifteen, but don’t be afraid of broaching.”
“Understood! Twenty-nine knots.”
“Lost it, the curve in the towed array just ruined our reception.” Rykov’s hands went up in frustration.
“Then we must be patient,” Dubinin said. It wasn’t much of a joke, but the sonar crew loved him for it.
“The Orion just engaged the inbound, sir, just picked up an ultrasonic sonar, very faint, bearing two-four-zero. It’s one of ours, it’s a Mark 50, sir.”
“That ought to take care of him,” Ricks observed. “Thank God.”
“Passing through fifty meters, leveling out, ten degrees on the planes. Speed thirty-one.”
“Countermeasures didn’t work ... ,” Rykov said. The towed array was straightening out, and the torpedo was still back there.
“No propeller noises?”
“None ... I should be able to hear them even at this speed.”
“Must be one of their new ones....”
“The Mark 50? It’s supposed to be a very clever little fish.”
“We will see about that. Yevgeniy, remember the surface action?” Dubinin smiled.
The Starpom did a superb job of maintaining control, but the thirty-foot seas guaranteed that the submarine would broach—break the surface—as the waves and troughs swept overhead. The torpedo was a scant three hundred meters behind when the Akula leveled out. The American Mark 50 antisubmarine torpedo was not a smart weapon, but a “brilliant” one. It had identified and ignored the countermeasures Dubinin had ordered only minutes before and, using a powerful ultrasonic sonar, was now looking for the sub in order to conclude its mission. But here physical laws intervened in favor of the Russians. It is widely believed that sonar reflects off the metal hull of a ship, but this is not true. Rather, sonar reflects off the air inside a submarine, or more precisely off the border of water and air through which the sound energy cannot pass. The Mark 50 was programmed to identify these air-water boundaries as ships. As the torpedo rocketed after its prey, it began to see immense ship-shapes stretching as far as its sonar could reach. Those were waves. Though the weapon had been programmed to ignore a flat surface and thus avoid a problem called “surface capture,” its designers had not addressed the problem of a heavy, rolling sea. The Mark 50 selected the nearest such shape, raced toward it—
—and sprang into clear air like a leaping salmon. It crashed into the back of the next wave, reacquired the same immense target shape—
—and leaped again. This time the torpedo hit at a slight angle. Dynamic forces caused it to turn and race north inside the body of a wave, sensing huge ships both left and right. It turned left, springing into the air yet again, but this time it hit the next wave hard enough to detonate its contact fuse.
“That was close!” Rykov said.
“No, not close, perhaps a thousand meters, but probably more.” The Captain leaned into the control room. “Slow to five knots, down to thirty meters.”
“We hit it?”
“I don’t know, sir,” the operator said. “He went shallow in a hurry, and the fish went charging up after him, circled around some—” The sonarman traced his finger on the display. “Then it exploded here, close to where the Akula disappeared into the surface noise. Can’t say—no breakup noises, sir, I have to call it a miss.”
“Bearing and distance to the target?” Dubinin asked.
“Roughly nine thousand meters, bearing zero-five-zero,” the Starpom replied. “What is the plan now, Captain?”
“We will locate and destroy the target,” said Captain First Rank Valentin Borissovich Dubinin.
“But—”
“We have been attacked. Those bastards tried to kill us!”
“That was an aerial weapon,” the executive officer pointed out.
“I heard no airplane. We have been attacked. We will defend ourselves.”
“Well?”
Inspector Pat O‘Day was making furious notes. American Airlines, like all the major carriers, had its ticket information on computer. With a ticket number and flight numbers, he could track anyone down. “Okay,” he told the woman on the other end. “Wait a minute.” O’Day turned. “Dan, there were only six first-class tickets on that flight from Denver to Dallas-Fort Worth, the flight was nearly empty—but it hasn’t taken off yet because of ice and snow in Dallas. We have the names for two other first-class passengers who changed to a Miami flight. Now, the Dallas connection was for Mexico City. The two who changed through Miami were also booked on a DC- 10 out of Miami i
nto Mexico City. That plane’s off, one hour out of Mexico.”
“Turn it around?”
“They say they can’t because of fuel.”
“One hour—Christ!” Murray swore.
O‘Day ran a large hand over his face. As scared as everyone else in America—more so, since everyone in the command center had informed reason to be frightened—Inspector Patrick Sean O’Day was trying mightily to set everything aside and concentrate on whatever he had at hand. It was too slim and too circumstantial to be considered hard evidence as yet. He’d seen too many coincidences in his twenty years with the Bureau. He’d also seen major cases break on thinner stuff than this. You ran with what you had, and they had this.
“Dan, I—”
A messenger came in from the Records Division. She handed over two files to Murray. The Deputy Assistant Director opened the Russell file first, rummaging for the Athens photo. Next he took out the most recent photo of Ismael Qati. He set both next to the passport photos just faxed in from Denver.
“What do you think, Pat?”
“The passport one of this guy still looks thin for Mr. Qati ... cheekbones and eyes are right, mustache isn’t. He’s losing hair, too, if this is him....”
“Go with the eyes?”
“The eyes are right, Dan, the nose—yeah, it’s him. Who’s this other mutt?”
“No name, just these frames from Athens. Fair skin, dark hair, well-groomed. Haircut’s right, hairline is right.” He checked the descriptive data on the license and passport. “Height, little guy, build—it fits, Pat.”
“I agree, I agree about eighty percent worth, man. Who’s the Legal Attaché in Mexico City?”
“Bernie Montgomery—shit! He’s in town to meet with Bill.”
“Try Langley?”
“Yeah.” Murray lifted his CIA line. “Where’s Ryan?”
“Right here, Dan. What gives?”
