by Tom Clancy
The petty officer punched a button to eject a sonobuoy out the side panel. The helicopter continued forward, dropping four additional buoys at intervals of two miles to create a ten-mile barrier, then O’Malley held his aircraft in a wide circle, watching the sea himself as the petty officer examined the sonar display on his screen.
“Commander, what’s this I hear about the skipper? You know, the night before we sailed.”
“I felt like getting drunk, and he was kind enough not to make me drink alone. Didn’t you ever get drunk before?”
“No, sir. I don’t drink.”
“What’s this Navy coming to! You take her for a minute.” O’Malley took his hand off the stick and adjusted his helmet. It was a new one and he hadn’t quite gotten used to it yet. “You got anything, Willy?”
“Not sure yet, sir. Give me another minute or two.” “Fair enough.” The pilot contemplated his instruments briefly, then resumed his outside scanning. “I ever tell you about this thirty-five-footer in the Bermuda-to-Newport race? Storm beat hell out of it. Anyway, it had an all-girl crew and when the boat swamped they lost all their—”
“Skipper, I got a weak signal on number four.”
“Grateful as hell for being rescued, too.” O’Malley took the stick and brought the helicopter around to the northwest. “You don’t do any of that either, Mr. Ralston?”
“Strong drink giveth the desire, sir, but taketh away the ability,” the copilot said. “Two more miles, sir.”
“He even knows Shakespeare. There may be hope for you yet. Talk to me, Willy.”
“Still a ‘weak’ on number four. Nothing else.”
“One mile,” Ralston said, watching the tactical display.
O’Malley’s eyes scanned the surface, looking for a straight vertical line or a wisp of foam.
“Number four’s signal strength is now medium, sir. Getting a twitch on five.”
“Romeo, Hammer, I think we may have something here. I’m going to drop another LOFAR between four and five. Designate this one number six. Dropping—now!” Another sonobuoy was ejected clear of the aircraft.
“Hammer, this is Romeo,” called the controller. “Looks to us like the contact is north of the line, say again north.”
“Roger, concur on that. We ought to know something in a minute.”
“Skipper,” Willy called. “I have a ‘medium’ on six.”
“Romeo, Hammer, we’re going to dip on this character right now.”
Aboard Reuben James they marked the helicopter’s position, along with the line of sonobuoys.
O’Malley eased back on the stick to kill forward velocity, while his other hand eased the collective control down very gently until the helicopter was in hover fifty feet over the water. Willy unlocked the dipping sonar and lowered it to a depth of two hundred feet.
“Sonar contact, sir. Classify as possible submarine, bearing three-five-six.”
“Up dome!” O’Malley commanded.
The Seahawk lifted high and raced north for one mile. Hovering once more, O’Malley dipped his sonar a second time.
“Contact! Bearing one-seven-five. Sounds like a twin screw doing turns for maybe ten knots.”
“We’ve bracketed him,” the pilot said. “Let’s set this one up.” Ralston entered the numbers into the tactical computer.
“Bearing change, looks like he’s turning to port—yeah,” Willy confirmed. “Turning to port.”
“He hear us?” Ralston asked.
“He might hear the convoy and be turning to get a fix on them. Willy, up dome,” O’Malley ordered. “Romeo, Hammer, we have a maneuvering target, classify as probable submarine. Request weapons free.”
“Roger, Hammer, weapons free, repeat weapons are free.”
The pilot flew one thousand yards southeast. The sonar dome went down again and the helicopter hovered head into the wind.
“Got him again, sir,” Willy said excitedly. “Bearing three-five-five. Bearing is changing right to left, sir.”
“Going right past us,” Ralston said, looking at the TACNAV.
“Romeo, this is Hammer. We’re calling this a positive submarine and we are making a deliberate attack on this contact.” O’Malley held the aircraft in hover as his petty officer called off the bearing change. “Attack sequence.”
“Master Arm.” Ralston ran his hands across the buttons. “Torpedo Select, position one.”
“Set initial search depth two-fifty; course-select, Snake.” Ralston made the proper settings.
“Set.”
“Okay, Willy, get ready for Yankee-search,” O’Malley ordered, meaning a search using active sonar.
“Ready, sir. Bearing to contact now two-zero-zero, changing right-to-left rapidly.”
“Hammer his ass!” O’Malley switched the sonar signals into his headset.
Willy thumbed the button and the sonar transducer fired off a series of pings. The wave fronts of sound energy reflected off the submarine’s hull and came back to the transducer. The contact suddenly increased engine power.
“Positive contact, bearing one-eight-eight, range eight hundred yards.”
Ralston fed the last numbers into the fire-control system: “Set!”
The pilot brought his thumb across the stick to a button on the right side and pressed it home. The Mark-46 torpedo dropped free of its shackles and plunged into the sea. “Torp away.”
“Willy, secure pinging.” O’Malley keyed his radio. “Romeo, we just dropped on a diving two-screw submarine, approximately eight hundred yards from us on a bearing of one-eight-eight. Torpedo is in the water now. Stand by.”
The Mark-46 torpedo was set on a “snake” pursuit pattern, a series of undulating curves that carried it in a southerly direction. Alerted by the helicopter’s sonar, the Soviet submarine was running at flank speed and diving to evade the torpedo.
“Hammer, Romeo, be advised that Hatchet is en route to you in case your torp misses, over.”
“Roger that,” O’Malley acknowledged.
“It’s got him!” Willy said excitedly. The torpedo was on automatic pinging as it closed with the submarine. The captain made a hard right turn, but the fish was too close to be fooled.
“Hit! That’s a hit!” Willy said almost as loudly as the noise of the explosion. Directly ahead of them the surface seemed to jump, but no gout of foam leaped up. The torpedo had gone off too deep for that.
“Well,” O‘Malley said. In all his years of practice he’d never fired a live fish at a live sub. The sounds of the dying sub seemed the saddest thing he’d ever heard. Some oil bubbled to the surface. “Romeo, we’re calling that one a kill. Tell the bosun to get out his paintbrush. We are now orbiting to look for wreckage and possible survivors.” Another frigate had rescued the entire crew from a downed Russian Bear the previous day. They were already on the mainland for interrogation. But there would be none from this incident. O’Malley circled for ten minutes, then turned for home.
ICELAND
“Beagle, you all fed and rested?” Doghouse asked.
“I guess you could say that.” Edwards had been waiting for this, but now that it had come it sounded ominous enough.
“We want you to patrol the southern shore of the Hvammsfjördur and let us know of any Russian activity you see. We are particularly interested in the town of Stykkisholmur. That’s a small port about forty miles west of you. As before, your orders are to evade, observe, and report. You got that?”
“Roger. How long we got?”
“I can’t say that, Beagle. I don’t know. You want to move right along, though.”
“Okay, we’ll be moving in ten minutes. Out.” Edwards dismantled the antenna, then stowed the complete radio assembly in the backpack. “People, it’s time to leave this mountain retreat. Sergeant Nichols?”
“Yes, sir?” Nichols and Smith came over together.
“Were you briefed on what we’re supposed to be up to?”
“No, sir. Our orders were to relieve your party a
nd await further instructions.” Edwards had already seen the sergeant’s map case. He had cards for the whole western Icelandic coast, all but their drop zone in a pristine condition. Of course, the purpose of their coastal reconnaissance was clear enough, wasn’t it? The lieutenant took out a tactical map and plotted their course west.
“Okay, we’ll pair off. Sergeant Smith, you take the point along with one of our new friends. Nichols, you take Rodgers with you and cover the back door. You both have a radio, and I’ll take the third and keep the rest of the party with me. The groups stay within sight of each other. We keep to the high ground as much as possible. The first hard-surface road we hit is ten miles west of here. If you see anything, you drop and report in to me. We are supposed to avoid contact. No hero crap, okay? Good, we’ll move out in ten minutes.” Edwards assembled his gear.
“Where we go, Michael?” Vigdis asked.
“Stykkisholmur,” he answered. “You feel okay?”
“I can walk with you, yes.” She sat down beside him. “And when we get to Stykkisholmur?”
Mike smiled. “They didn’t tell me that.”
“Why they never tell you anything?”
“It’s called security. That means the less we know, the better it is for us.”
“Stupid,” she replied. Edwards didn’t know how to explain that she was both right and wrong.
“I think when we get there, we can start thinking about a normal life again.”
Her face changed. “What is normal life, Michael?”
Another good question, Edwards thought. But I have too much on my mind to chew that one over. “We’ll see.”
STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
The battle for Hameln and the battle for Hannover were now essentially the same action. Two hours before, the NATO forces had withdrawn to the west, south of the industrial city, allowing them to shorten lines and consolidate. Soviet units were probing forward cautiously, suspicious of another German trap. Alekseyev and Commander-in-Chief West pored over their maps in an attempt to analyze the consequences of the NATO withdrawal.
“It allows them to put at least one, probably two brigades in reserve,” Alekseyev thought. “They can use this Highway 217 to move troops rapidly from one sector to another.”
“How often have the Germans given ground voluntarily?” his superior asked. “They didn’t do this because they wanted to. Their lines were overextended. Their units are depleted.”
“So are ours. The Category-B units we’re committing to battle are taking losses almost a third greater than the ‘A’ units they replace. We are paying dearly for our advances now.”
“We have paid dearly already! If we fail now it will all have been for nothing. Pasha, we must attack in force. This entire sector is ready to collapse.”
“Comrade General, that is not my impression. Resistance is spirited. German morale remains high despite their losses. They have hurt us badly and they know it.” Alekseyev had returned from the forward command post at Fölziehausen only three hours before.
“Viewing the action from the front lines is very useful, Pasha, but it hinders your ability to perceive the larger picture.”
Alekseyev frowned at that. “The larger picture” was frequently an illusion. His commander had told him that very thing many times.
“I want you to organize an attack along this entire front. NATO formations are gravely depleted. Their supplies are low, they have taken massive casualties. A vigorous attack now will sunder their lines on a fifty-kilometer front.”
“We don’t have enough A units to attack on this scale,” Alekseyev objected.
“Keep them in reserve to exploit the breakthrough. We’ll launch the attack with our best reserve divisions from Hannover in the north to Bodenwerder in the south.”
“We don’t have the strength for that, and it will use up too much fuel,” Alekseyev warned. “If we have to attack, I suggest an assault on a two-division front here, south of Hameln. The units are in place. What you propose is too ambitious.”
“This is not a time for half measures, Pasha!” CINC-West shouted. He’d never raised his voice to Alekseyev before. The younger man found himself wondering what pressure was being applied to his commander, who calmed down now. “An attack along a single axis allows a counterattack along a single axis,” he continued. “This way we can greatly complicate the enemy’s task. He can’t be strong everywhere. We will find a weakness, break out, and drive our remaining A units through to the Rhein.”
USS REUBEN JAMES
“Drop now-now-now!” O’Malley yelled. The eighth sonobuoy ejected from the side of the Seahawk, and the pilot brought the helicopter around and headed back east.
O’Malley had already been up for three long, grueling hours this time, with precious little to show for it. Stop, dip, listen; stop, dip, listen. He knew there was a sub down there, but every time he thought he was beginning to get a line on it, the damn thing slipped away! What was it doing different?
Hatchet was having the same problem, except its sub had turned around on it and nearly scored a hit on Battleaxe. The frigate’s violent wake turbulence had detonated the Russian torpedo astern, but it had been close, too close by half. He brought the helicopter into hover.
“Down dome!” They hovered for a minute. Nothing. It began again. “Romeo, this is Hammer. You got anything, over?”
“Hammer, he just faded out a moment ago. Our last bearing was three-four-one.”
“Cute. This character’s listening for you to stop your sprint, and he cuts his power back.”
“That’s a fair guess, Hammer,” Morris said.
“Okay, I got a barrier to the west if he heads that way. I think he’s going due south, and we’re dipping for him now. Out.” O’Malley switched to intercom. “You got anything, Willy?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Prepare to raise dome.” A minute later the helicopter was moving again. They dipped their sonar six more times in the next twenty minutes and came up blank.
“Again, Willy. Prepare to lower. Set it down to, uh, eight hundred feet this time.”
“Ready, sir.”
“Down dome.” O’Malley squirmed in his seat. The outside temperature was moderate, but the sun made a greenhouse of the cockpit. He’d need a shower when he got back to the frigate.
“Searching at eight hundred feet, sir,” the petty officer said. He was hot, too, though he’d brought a pair of cold drinks along for the flight. “Sir, I have something . . . possible contact bearing one-eight-five.”
“Up dome! Romeo, Hammer, we got a possible contact south of us. Going after it now.”
“Hammer, we have nothing anywhere near you. Be advised Bravo and Hatchet are working a contact. Two torps have been launched with no hits.”
Nobody ever said it was easy, the pilot thought. He moved three thousand yards and dipped the sonar again.
“Contact, this one’s for real. Type-two engine plant bearing one-eight-three.”
O’Malley checked his fuel. Forty minutes. He had to get this one in a hurry. He ordered the dome up again and went another three thousand yards south. His shoulders flexed against the seat straps. It seemed to take forever for the sonar dome to get down to search depth.
“There it is again, sir, north of us, bearing zero-one-three. Bearing is changing. Zero-one-five now.”
“Set it up!” Thirty minutes’ fuel. Time was their enemy now. Ralston punched up the Master Arm and Select buttons.
“Willy: hammer!” The sonar sent out five ranging pings.
“Zero-one-nine, range nine hundred!”
Ralston set search depth and pattern. O’Malley brought his thumb across the stick and dropped the torpedo.
The submarine went to full power and turned left away from the helicopter while the torpedo plunged to eight hundred feet before beginning its search. O’Malley growled to himself that he’d launched from a bad angle, but it would have taken too long to reel in and reacquire. He hel
d the aircraft in hover and listened over his headset as the whine of the torpedo screws chased after the deeper thrum of the Charlie’s powerful twin screws. The nuclear sub maneuvered frantically, trying to turn inside the pursuing torpedo.
“They’re on the same bearing now,” Willy reported. “I think the fish has him—hit!”
But the Charlie didn’t die. They heard the sound of blowing air, then it stopped. A wild cacophony of mechanical noise followed as the contact moved off to the north, then faded as the submarine slowed. O’Malley didn’t have enough fuel to pursue. He came around west and headed for Reuben James.
“Hammer, Romeo, what happened?”
“We hit him, but he’s still alive. Stand by, Romeo, we’re coming in skosh fuel. Five minutes out.”
“Roger that, we’ll be ready for you. We’re vectoring another helo onto the Charlie. I want you to join Hatchet.”
“How come we didn’t kill him?” Ralston asked.
“Almost all Russian subs have double hulls, and that dinky hundred-pound warhead on the Mark-46 isn’t gutsy enough to give you a kill every time. You try to attack from the stem if you can, but this time we couldn’t. If you get a stem hit, you pop the shaft seals and flood his engine room. That’ll kill anybody. They didn’t tell you to go for a stem shot in school, did they?”
“Not especially.”
“Figures,” O’Malley growled.
It was good to see the Reuben James after four hours. It would have been even better to visit the officers’ head, O’Malley thought bleakly. He brought the Seahawk over the port corner of the frigate’s stem and paced the ship. Aft, Willy opened the sliding door and tossed down a messenger line. The frigate’s deck crew attached a refueling hose to the line and Willy hauled it in, plugging the hose into the fuel tank. The procedure was called HIFR, for helicopter in-flight refueling. While O’Malley fought his helo through the roiled air behind the ship, fuel was pumped into his tanks, giving him another four hours’ endurance. Ralston kept his eyes on the fuel indicators while O’Malley flew the aircraft.
“We’re full up, Willy. Secure.”
