by Tom Clancy
“They were, sir.” Rodgers held up a bottle of clear liquor.
Edwards gave the bottle a brief look, but shook off the thought. “Figures. If I guess right, these guys were the crossroads guards from the main highway—or maybe just a patrol. I don’t think they can guard every crossroads on this island. If we’re just a little lucky, maybe their bosses’ll never figure out we were involved in this.” A long shot, he thought, but what the hell?
“Skipper,” Smith said. “If you want to do that, we gotta—”
“I know. You and Rodgers stay here and get ready. If you see anything else we can use, pack it up. When we get back, we’ll have to haul ass.”
Edwards and Garcia loaded all the bodies into the back of the truck, careful to sort through the battle gear. They unloaded waterproof parkas whose camouflage pattern was almost identical with their own and a few other items that wouldn’t be missed, then drove off quickly down the road.
Luck was with them. There was no permanent guard post at the crossroads, perhaps because the farm road led nowhere. The Russians had probably been a patrol team, and had chosen the farm for a little informal R&R. Two hundred yards down the coastal highway the road paralleled a steep cliff. They halted the vehicle there and manhandled the bodies into the seats. Garcia emptied a jerrican of gasoline into the back and the two men pushed it toward the edge with the rear hatch open. Garcia tossed a Russian grenade into the back as it went over the edge. Neither man wanted to admire their handiwork. They ran back the half mile to the farmhouse. Everything was ready.
“We have to burn the house, Miss Vigdis,” Smith was explaining. “If we don‘t, the Russians’ll know for sure what happened here. Your mom and dad are dead, ma’am, but I’m sure they’d want you to stay alive, okay?”
She was still too much in shock to offer more than token resistance. Rodgers and Smith had cleaned off the bodies, and moved them upstairs to their own bedroom. It would have been better to bury them, but there just wasn’t time.
“Let’s get moving, people,” Edwards ordered. They should have been moving already. Somebody had to be coming to investigate the burning truck, and if they used a chopper . . . “Garcia, you watch the lady. Smith has the rear. Rodgers, take the point. We have to put six miles between us and this place in the next three hours.”
Smith waited ten minutes before tossing his grenade into the house. The kerosene he’d spread on the first floor went up at once.
USS CHICAGO
The contact was a lot better now. They had classified one ship as a Kashin-class missile destroyer, and her propeller-blade count indicated a speed of twenty-one knots. The leading elements of the Soviet formation were now thirty-seven miles away. There seemed to be two groups, the leading formation fanned out and screening the second. McCafferty ordered the ESM mast raised. It showed lots of activity, but he expected that.
“Up scope.” The quartermaster worked the operating ring, then snapped the handles into place and stepped back. McCafferty swept the horizon quickly. After ten seconds, he flipped the handles up, and the periscope was instantly lowered back into its well.
“It’s going to be a busy day, troops,” the captain said; he always let the attack center crew know as much of what was going on as possible. The more they knew, the better they could do their jobs. “I saw a pair of Bear-Fs, one due north, the other west. Both a good way off, but you can bet they’re dropping sonobuoys. XO, take her back down to five hundred feet, speed five knots. We’ll let them come to us.”
“Conn, sonar.”
“Conn, aye,” McCafferty answered.
“We got some pingers, active sonobuoys to the northwest. We count six of them, all very faint.” The sonar chief read off the bearings to the signal sources. “Still no active sonar signals coming from the target formation, sir.”
“Very well.” McCafferty returned the mike to its holder. Chicago’s depth was changing quickly, as they dove at a fifteen-degree angle. He watched the bathythermograph readout. At two hundred twenty feet the water temperature began to drop rapidly, changing twelve degrees inside of seventy feet. Good, a strong layer to hide under, and cold water deep to allow good sonar performance for his own sensors.
Two hours before he had removed a torpedo from one of his tubes and replaced it with a Harpoon missile. It gave him only one torpedo ready for instant use if he found a submarine target, but a salvo of three missiles available to fling at surface ships, plus his Tomahawks. He could fire either now, and expect hits, but McCafferty didn’t want to fire at just anything. There was no sense wasting a missile on a small patrol craft when there was a cruiser and a carrier out there waiting for him. He wanted to identify specific targets first. It wouldn’t be easy, but he knew that easy things didn’t have to be done by the 688-class subs. He went forward into sonar.
The chief caught him out the corner of his eye. “Skipper, I may have a bearing to Kirov. I just copied six pings from a low-frequency sonar. I think that’s him, bearing zero-three-nine. Trying to isolate his engine signature now. And if—okay, some more sonobuoys are dropping to the right.” The display showed new points of light well to the right of the first string, and a sizable gap between the two.
“Think he’s dropping them in chevrons, Chief?” McCafferty asked. He got a smile and a nod for an answer. If the Soviets were deploying their sonobuoys in angled lines left and right of the formation, that could mean that their ships were heading right for Chicago. The submarine would not have to maneuver at all to intercept them. She could stay as quiet as an open grave.
“They seem to be alternating them above and below the layer, sir. A pretty fair gap between them, too.” The chief lit a cigarette without averting his eyes from the screen. The ashtray next to him was crammed with butts.
“We’ll plot that one out. Good work, Barney.” The captain patted his sonar chief on the shoulder and went back to the attack center. The fire-control tracking party was already plotting the new contacts. It looked like an interval of just over two miles between the sonobuoys. If the Soviets were alternating them above and below the layer, there was a good chance he could sneak between a pair. The other question was the presence of passive buoys, whose presence he could not detect.
McCafferty stood at the periscope pedestal, watching his men at work as they entered data into the fire-control computers, backed up by other men with paper plots and hand-held calculators. The weapons-control panel was lit up by indicators showing ready. The submarine was at battle stations.
“Take her up to two hundred feet, we’ll listen above the layer for a few minutes.” The maneuver paid off at once.
“I got direct-path to the targets,” the sonar chief announced. They could now detect and track sound energy radiating directly from the Soviet ships, without depending on the on-again, off-again convergence zones.
McCafferty commanded himself to relax. He’d soon have work enough.
“Captain, we’re about due for another sonobuoy drop. They’ve been averaging about every fifteen minutes, and this one might be close.”
“Getting that Horse-Jaw sonar again, sir,” sonar warned. “Bearing three-two-zero at this time. Signal weak. Classify this contact as the cruiser Kirov. Stand by—another one. We have a medium-frequency active sonar bearing three-three-one, maneuvering left-to-right. We classify this contact as a Kresta-II ASW cruiser.”
“I think he’s right,” the plotting officer said. “Bearing three-two-zero is close to our bearings for a pair of screen ships, but far enough off that it’s probably a different contact. Three-three-one is consistent with the center screen ship. It figures. The Kresta will be the screen commander, with the flagship a ways behind him. Need some time to work out the ranges, though.”
The captain ordered his submarine to stay above the layer, able to duck beneath it in seconds. The tactical display was evolving now. He had a workable bearing on Kirov. Almost good enough to shoot on, though he still needed range data. There seemed to be a pair of escor
ts between him and the cruiser, and unless he had a proper range estimate, any missile he launched at the Soviet flagship might attack a destroyer or frigate by mistake. In the interim, the solution on the attack director set the Harpoons to fly straight for what he believed to be the battle cruiser Kirov.
Chicago began to zigzag left and right of her course track. As the submarine changed her position, the bearing to her sonar contacts changed also. The tracking party could use the submarine’s own course deviation as a baseline to compute ranges to the various contacts. A straightforward process—essentially an exercise in high-school trigonometry—it nevertheless took time because they had to estimate the speed and course of the moving targets. Even computer support couldn’t make the process go much faster, and one of his quartermasters took great pride in his ability to use a circular slide rule and race the computer to a hard solution.
The tension seemed to grow by degrees, then it plateaued. The years of training were paying off. Data was handled, plotted, and acted upon in seconds. The crew suddenly seemed a physical part of the gear they were operating, their feelings shut off, their emotions submerged, only the sweat on their foreheads betraying that they were men after all, and not machines. They depended absolutely on their sonar operators. Sound energy was their only indication of what was happening, and each new bearing report triggered furious activity. It was clear that their targets were zigzagging, which made the range computations even more difficult.
“Conn, sonar! Active sonobuoy close aboard to port! Below the layer, I think.”
“Right full rudder, all ahead two-thirds,” the executive officer ordered instantly.
McCafferty went to sonar and plugged in a set of headphones. The pings were loud but . . . distorted, he thought. If the buoy was below the temperature gradient, the signals radiating upward would be unable to detect his submarine—probably. “Signal strength?” he asked.
“Strong,” the chief replied. “Even money they might have picked us up. Five hundred yards farther out and they lose us for sure.”
“Okay, they can’t monitor them all at once.”
The XO moved Chicago a thousand yards before returning to base course. Overhead, they knew, was a Bear-F ASW aircraft armed with homing torpedoes and a crew whose job it was to listen to the sonobuoy signals. How good were the buoys and the men? That was one thing that they didn’t know. Three tense minutes passed and nothing happened.
“All ahead one-third, come left to three-two-one,” the executive officer ordered. They were now through the line of buoys. Three more such lines were between them and their target. They’d nearly determined range for three of the escorts, but not to the Kirov yet.
“Okay, people, the Bears are behind us. That’s one less thing to worry about. Range to the nearest ship?” he asked the approach officer.
“Twenty-six thousand yards. We think he’s a Sovremenny. The Kresta is about five thousand yards east of him. He’s pinging away with hull and VDS sonars.” McCafferty nodded. The variable-depth sonar would be below the layer and had scant chance of detecting them. The hull sonar they’d have to pay attention to, but it wouldn’t be a problem for a while yet. Okay, the captain thought, things are going pretty much according to plan—
“Conn, sonar, torpedoes in the water, bearing three-two-zero! Signal faint. Say again torpedoes in the water, three-two-zero, bearing changing—additional, lots of active sonars just lit up. We’re getting increased screw noises for all contacts.” McCafferty was in the sonar room before the report ended.
“Torpedo bearing change?”
“Yes! Moving left-to-right—Jesus. I think somebody’s attacking the Russians. Impact!” The chief jabbed his finger at the display. A series of three bright spokes appeared right on the bearing to Kirov. The display suddenly went berserk. The high-and medium-frequency segment lit up with active sonar lines. The lines indicating ships became brighter as the ships increased engine speeds and changed direction as they began to maneuver.
“Secondary explosion on this contact—holy shit! Lots of explosions in the water now. Depth charges, maybe, something’s really ripping the water up. There’s another torpedo—way off, bearing changing right to left.”
The display was now too complex for McCafferty to follow. The chief expanded the time scale to allow easier interpretation, but only he and his experienced operators could understand it.
“Skipper, it looks like somebody just got inside on them and launched an attack. He got three solid hits on Kirov, and now they’re trying to beat on him. These two ships appear to be converging on something. I—another torpedo in the water, don’t know whose. Gawd, look at all these explosions!”
McCafferty went aft.
“Periscope depth, now!” Chicago angled upward, taking a minute to reach her position.
He saw what might have been a mast on the horizon, and a column of black smoke, bearing three-two-zero. Over twenty radars were operating along with a number of voice radios.
“Down scope. We have any target solutions?”
“No, sir,” the XO answered. “When they started maneuvering, all our data went to hell.”
“How far to the next sonobuoy line?”
“Two miles. We’re positioned to run right through a gap.”
“Make your depth eight hundred feet. Ahead full, move us in.”
Chicago’s engines sprang into life, accelerating the submarine to thirty knots. The executive officer dived the boat to eight hundred feet, ducking deep below a sonobuoy set for shallow search. McCafferty stood over the chart table, took a pen from his pocket, and unconsciously began chewing on the plastic end as he watched his sub’s course take him closer and closer to the enemy formation. Sonar performance dropped virtually to nil with the high speed, but soon the low-frequency sounds of the exploding ordnance echoed through the steel hull. Chicago ran for twenty minutes, zigzagging slightly to avoid the Russian sonobuoys, as the fire-control men kept updating their solutions.
“Okay, all ahead one-third and take her back up to periscope depth,” McCafferty said. “Tracking party, stand by for a firing run.”
The sonar picture cleared up rapidly. The Soviets were continuing to hunt frantically for whoever had fired at their flagship. One ship’s trace was entirely gone—at least one Russian ship had been sunk or crippled. Explosions rippled through the water, punctuated by the screeing sound of homing torpedoes. All were close enough to be a matter of real concern.
“Shooting observation. Up scope!”
The search periscope slid upward. McCafferty caught it low and swept the horizon. “I—Jesus!” The TV monitor showed a Bear only half a mile to their right, heading north for the formation. He could see seven ships, mainly mast tops, but one Sovremenny-class destroyer was hull-down, perhaps four miles away. The smoke he’d seen before was gone. The water resounded with the noise of Russian sonars.
“Raise the radar, power-up, and stand by.”
A petty officer pushed the button to raise the submarine’s surface-search radar, activated the system, but kept it in standby mode.
“Energize and give me two sweeps,” the captain ordered. There was a real danger here. The Soviets would almost certainly detect the submarine’s radar and try to attack it.
The radar was on for a total of twelve seconds. It “painted” a total of twenty-six targets on the screen, two of them close together about where he would have expected Kirov to be. The radar operator read off ranges and bearing, which were entered into the Mk-117 fire-control director and relayed to the Harpoon missiles in the torpedo tubes, giving them bearing to target and the range at which to switch on their seeker-heads. The weapons officer checked his status lights, then selected the two most promising targets for the missiles.
“Set!”
“Flood tubes.” McCafferty watched the weapons-panel operator go through the launch sequence. “Opening outer doors.”
“Solution checked and valid,” the weapons officer said calmly. “Firing se
quence: two, one, three.”
“Shoot!” McCafferty ordered.
“Fire two.” The submarine shuddered as the powerful impulse of high-pressure air ejected the weapon from the tube, followed by the whoosh of water entering the void. “Fire one . . . fire three. Two, one, and three fired, sir. Torpedo tube doors are shut, pumping out to reload.”
“Reload with Mark-48s. Prepare to fire Tomahawks!” McCafferty said. The fire-control men switched the attack director over to activate the bow-mounted missiles.
“Up scope!” The quartermaster spun the control wheel. McCafferty let it come all the way up. He could see the smoke trail of the last Harpoon, and right behind it . . . McCafferty slapped the periscope handles up and stepped back. “Helix heading in! Take her down, all ahead flank!” The submarine raced downward. A Soviet antisub helicopter had seen the missile launch and was racing in at them. “Left full rudder.”
“Left full rudder, aye!”
“Passing through one hundred feet. Speed fifteen knots,” the XO reported.
“There he is,” McCafferty said. The pings from the helicopter’s active sonar reverberated through the hull. “Reverse your rudder. Shoot off a noisemaker.” The captain ordered his submarine back to an easterly course and reduced speed as they dropped through the layer. With luck the Soviets would mistake the noisemaker for the cavitation noises of the submarine and attack it as Chicago drew clear.
“Conn, sonar, we have a destroyer heading in, bearing three-three-nine. Sounds like a Sovremenny—torpedo in the water aft. We have one torpedo in the water bearing two-six-five.”
“Right twenty degrees rudder. All ahead two-thirds. Come to new course one-seven-five.”
“Conn, sonar, new contact, twin screws, just started with a low-frequency sonar, probably a Udaloy, blade count says twenty-five knots, bearing three-five-one and constant. Torpedo bearing changing, heading aft and fading.”
“Very well.” McCafferty nodded. “The helicopter dropped on the noisemaker. We don’t have to sweat that one. All ahead one-third, make your depth one thousand feet.”
