by Tom Clancy
“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 hell 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. Classify this target as a Tango-class.”
“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 nobody 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 damned well have an elevator installed. I’ll get kids to cut the grass 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 Goddamned 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 hell of a letter of introduction here from Admiral Beattie.”
“He made too big a deal of it. All I did was pass 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 circumstances. 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 massive 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. “Hell, you made me famous, didn’t you?”
“You bloody 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 ships 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 ships in were the big Ro/Ros, the roll-on/roll-off container ships. Eight of them together carried a full armored division, and these were taken quickly to the Bassin Théophile Ducrocq. One by one, the ships lowered their curved stem ramps to the dock a
nd 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 assembly 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 assembly 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
It was four in the morning when they reached the top, only to find that this mountain had a number of “tops.” The Russians had the highest one, three miles away. Edwards’s group had a choice of two subsidiary peaks, each a few hundred feet lower than the adjacent thousand-meter summit. They picked the higher of the two, overlooking the small fishing port of Stykkisholmur, almost due north, and the large rock-filled bay that the map called Hvammsfjördur.
“Looks like a fine observation point, Leftenant Edwards,” Nichols judged.
“That’s good, Sarge, ‘cause I am not going another foot.” Edwards already had his binoculars on the eastern peak. “I don’t see any movement.”
“They’re there,” Nichols said.
“Yeah,” Smith agreed. “Sure as hell.”
Edwards slid down from the crestline and unpacked his radio.
“Doghouse, this is Beagle, and we are where you want us, over.”
“Give me your exact position.”
Edwards opened his map and read off the coordinates. “We believe there’s a Russian observation post on the next peak over. They’re about five klicks away, according to this map. We’re well concealed here and we have food and water for two days. We can see the roads leading into Stykkisholmur. Matter of fact, it’s nice and clear now, and we can see all the way to Keflavik. We can’t pick anything out, but we can see the peninsula.”
“Very well. I want you to look north and tell us what you see in detail.”
Edwards handed the radio antenna to Smith, then turned and put his field glasses on the town.
“Okay. The land is pretty flat, but higher than the water, on a shelf, like. The town is fairly small, maybe eight square blocks. There are some little fishing boats tied up to the docks . . . I count nine of them. The harbor north and east of the port is wall-to-wall rocks that go on for miles. I do not see any armored vehicles, no obvious signs of Russian troops—wait. I do see two four-by-fours parked in the middle of the street, like, but nobody around ’em. The sun’s still low, and there’s lots of shadows. Nothing moving on the roads. I guess that’s about it.”
“Very well, Beagle. Good report. Let us know if you see any Soviet personnel at all. Even one, we want to know about him. Stay put.”
“Somebody coming to get us?”
“Beagle, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
USS INDEPENDENCE
Toland stood in the Combat Information Center, watching the displays. Submarines concerned him the most. Eight allied subs were in the Denmark Strait, west of Iceland, forming a barrier that few submarines would be able to pass. They were supported by Navy Orions operating out of Sondrestrom, Greenland, something impossible until the Russian fighters at Keflavik had been whittled down. That closed off one possible avenue of access to Strike Fleet Atlantic. More submarines formed a line parallel to the fleet’s line of advance, and those were supported by the carrier-borne S-3A Vikings that operated continuously off the flight decks.
The Pentagon had leaked to the press that this Marine division was en route to Germany, where the battle hung in the balance. In fact, the tight formation of amphibs was twenty miles from his carrier on a course of zero-three-nine, four hundred miles from its real objective.
USS REUBEN JAMES
“We’re not heading north any longer,” Calloway said. Dinner was being served in the wardroom. The officers were plowing through the last fresh lettuce aboard.
“I believe you’re right,” O’Malley agreed. “I think we’re heading west now.”
“You might as well tell me what the devil we’re up to. I’ve been shut off from your satellite transmitters.”
“We’re screening the Nimitz battle group, except that when you’re motoring along at twenty-five knots, it’s not all that easy.” O’Malley didn’t like this. They were running a risk. It was part of war, but the pilot didn’t like any part of war. Especially risks. They pay me to do it, not to like it.
“The escort is mostly British, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, so?”
“That’s a story I can use to tell the people at home how important—”
“Look, Mr. Calloway, let’s say you file your story, and it got published in the local papers. Then let’s say a Soviet agent reads the story and passes it along to—”
“How would he do that? The government has undoubtedly put severe restrictions on all forms of communication.”
“Ivan has lots of communications satellites, same as us. We have two satellite transmitters on this dinky little frigate. You’ve seen ’em. How expensive do they look? Think maybe you could have one in your backyard, inside a bush maybe? Besides, the whole group is blacked out. Total EMCON. Nobody is transmitting anything at the moment.”
Morris arrived and took his seat at the head of the table.
“Captain, where are we going?” Calloway asked.
“I just found out. Sorry I can’t tell you. Battleaxe and we will continue to work together for a while as stem guard for the Nimitz group. We are now designated ‘Mike Force.’ ”
“We getting any more help?” O’Malley asked.
“Bunker Hill is heading this way. She had to reload her magazines and join up with HMS Illustrious. They’ll operate in close when they catch up. We’re going to outside picket again. We start doing real ASW work in another four hours. Still going to be a bastard trying to keep up with the carrier, though.”
USS CHICAGO
There were three contacts. All arrived within ten minutes. Two were ahead of Chicago, left and right of her bow. The third was on her port beam. Somehow, McCafferty realized, the Russians knew of the submarines they had killed. Probably some sort of radio buoy, he was sure. That meant all that his tactical successes had really accomplished was to draw more dangers in on the trio of American submarines.
“Conn, sonar. We have some sonobuoy signals at two-six-six. Count three buoys—four, make it four.”
More Bears? McCafferty wondered. A cooperative hunt?
“Skipper, you better come forw
ard,” the sonar chief called.
“What’s happening?” The waterfall display screen was suddenly crowded.
“Sir, we have three lines on sonobuoys forming up right now. Gotta be at least three aircraft up there. This one’s fairly close, looks like it’ll extend aft of us, maybe right on our friends.”
McCafferty watched the new signal lines appear at the rate of one per minute. Each was a Russian sonobuoy, and the line marched east as two others grew on different azimuths.
“They’re trying to box us in, Chief.”
“Looks that way, sir.”
Every time we destroyed a Russian ship we gave them a location reference. They’ve confirmed our course and speed of advance many times over. McCafferty had gotten his submarine back to the Svyataya Anna Trough. His path to the icepack was a hundred miles wide and three hundred fathoms deep. But how many Russian subs were there? The sonar crew continued to call off bearings to the submarine contacts while the captain watched the buoy lines extend.
“I think this is Providence, sir. She just increased speed—yeah, look at the noise now, she’s really increased speed. This buoy must be right near her. Still can’t find Boston, though.”
Bearing was constant to the two forward submarine contacts. He couldn’t develop a range figure unless he or they maneuvered. If he turned left, he’d then close on a third contact, which might not be a good idea. If he turned right, he’d run away from the submarine that might then close on Providence. If he did nothing, he’d accomplish nothing, but McCafferty didn’t know what to do.
“There’s another buoy, sir.” The new one was between the bearings of two existing contacts. They were trying to localize Providence.
