Nuke Zone c-11

by Keith Douglass

  The Turkish representative took a sip of coffee before answering him.

  “No, I’m quite sorry. We have heard nothing.”

  “Would you tell me if you did?” Tombstone asked, unable to keep a trace of bitterness out of his voice.

  The Turkish representative drew away from him. “We abide by all international laws of armed conflict,” he answered. “These matters that we are here to discuss–they are between nations, between states. Not between individuals. If your lost airman is found, he will be treated appropriately.”

  “Appropriately according to whose standards?” Tombstone asked, his voice slightly louder.

  “Admiral,” he heard Tiltfelt say. “Perhaps we could-“

  “Answer the question,” Tombstone said.

  “According to international law,” the Turkish representative said firmly. He put his coffee cup down on the table with slightly more force than necessary. He turned to Bradley Tiltfelt. “If you might excuse us, I have matters I need to discuss with my staff before our next meeting.”

  “Of course,” Tiltfelt said promptly, shooting Tombstone a furious look. “May I have someone escort you back to your quarters? The ship is a maze if you’re not used to it.”

  “Very kind.” The Turkish representative bowed slightly, carefully watching Tombstone. “We will see you at eleven o’clock.”

  The Turkish entourage departed, flanked by the Marines ostensibly assigned as their escorts. That had been Tiltfelt’s one concession to security during a heated discussion over the dangers of having the delegations on board. The other delegations were provided with escorts only as requested to guide them through the maze of the ship’s passageways as a demonstration of trust and goodwill.

  As the door closed behind the Turkish entourage and the low murmur of voices rose again in the conference room, Tiltfelt turned to Tombstone.

  “Fuck this up, and you’ll be retired within twenty-four hours. I promise it.”

  1000 Local

  Starboard Passageway, 03 Deck

  Yuri Kursk waited until the rest of the room was chuckling appreciatively at a mildly ribald joke told by the Turkish representative.

  He slipped quietly out of the door to the conference room, and headed aft on the ship, walking purposefully.

  Six frames down, he turned left and moved over to the starboard passageway. He nodded to the sailors he met walking past, maintaining a purposeful look on his face. One stopped, hesitating as though to ask him if he were lost, but Yuri brushed quickly by. Seventy feet later, he was at his destination. This was the only dangerous portion of the mission, for he had no ready explanation for his presence outside Tombstone Magruder’s quarters. He could always say he was lost, and indeed that explanation might hold up. The aircraft carrier was massive, far bigger than he had imagined it from studying its technical specs. Translating the one million square feet of living space into an actual map of this vessel was an entirely different matter.

  Still, by watching the frame numbers engraved on metal strips on top of the main support members of the hull, he’d found his way to it with relatively little difficulty.

  Now, if he could get his bearings…

  The diagrams had shown a separate suite for VIPs on board the carrier, and it had been their estimation that that was where Tombstone Magruder would be berthed.

  He walked past his target door, and cast a quick glance at it. He smiled–the Americans made things childishly easy sometimes. Posted in the small metal frame on the doorjamb was Admiral Magruder’s business card.

  Yuri kept walking, careful to maintain his pace. He stepped over a knee-knocker and moved past the next frame, still looking for any hatch that showed the slightest possibility of granting him access to the compartment next to Admiral Magruder’s cabin.

  He found it. The metal plate indicated it was a teletype repair facility. Yuri tried the handle. It turned. He pushed the door open.

  At some time, the space must have served for repairing teletypes, but those days had long since past. Now it was a miscellaneous storage area, cluttered with mops and buckets and the normal equipment used for cleaning compartments.

  Perfect. In fact, it could not have been more ideal.

  Yuri closed the hatch behind him before he turned on the light to the compartment. He maneuvered between the buckets and wringers to the back wall. If he could only be certain–no, this must be it. He’d seen nothing else that looked like it might do. And there was certainly not enough space between what he’d estimated to be the end of the admiral’s cabin and this compartment for there to be any problem.

  Yuri knelt and dug in his briefcase for a moment, then extracted a harmless-looking radio. He adjusted the dials on it, then moved aside some cleaning supplies on a shelf and placed the radio behind them.

  So easy. So simple, and easy enough when the foolishly open, trusting nature of the Americans labeled each compartment so clearly.

  Yuri straightened, brushed a tiny bit of lint from his pants, turned off the lights, and left the compartment.

  As he stepped out into the passageway, he glanced right and left. A young sailor–a female one, he noticed bemusedly–approached him and eyed him oddly. “You need some cleaning gear, sir?” she asked politely. There was an undercurrent of suspicion in her voice.

  Yuri spread his hands out in front of him as if he were harmless, deepening his accent slightly. It was odd how that always worked to his advantage. Americans instinctively believed that anyone with a foreign accent was stupid. “I am lost, I think.”

  He pointed back toward the hatch. “Those numbers–my room?”

  The expression on the young sailor’s face cleared. Visitors getting lost on a carrier was a common occurrence, and the long-suffering permanent inhabitants of the aircraft carrier quickly learned to recognize the mixture of chagrin and embarrassment that went with asking for directions.

  “What were those numbers, sir?”

  Yuri handed her a scrawled piece of paper, the one that the admiral’s Chief of Staff had given him.

  “Here’s the problem.” She pointed to the first digit in the group. “You’re on the wrong deck–the floor, I mean.”

  She pointed down and spoke a little louder. “One floor down, you see.”

  “Ah, I understand.” He looked up and down the passageway. “But where are the stairs?”

  Her suspicions completely vanquished, the young sailor smiled. “If you’ll follow me, sir, I’ll take you straight there.”

  “You are too kind.”

  Yuri fell into step behind her.

  If the device did as its makers claimed, then the bomb would accomplish two purposes. First, since it was set to go off at three o’clock in the morning, it would undoubtedly catch Admiral Magruder in his room. The shrapnel from the shape charge should kill the man. Yuri glanced up at the overhead, smiling as he realized exactly where he was.

  Additionally, the upward force of the blast should cause some damage to the deck. In fact, if his estimation were correct, they were now directly below the waist catapult. It would not take much damage to sever the steam lines that ran to the catapult launch shuttle or warp it beyond immediate repair.

  At any rate, sometime within the next twenty-four hours, the USS Jefferson would find herself decapitated and severely restricted in her ability to launch aircraft.

  Yuri hoped it would be enough.

  1010 Local

  Admiral’s Briefing Room

  “Sorry I’ve kept you waiting–let’s get on with it,” Magruder said as he strode into the room. It was a relief to be back among his own kind, other sailors and officers. He felt uncomfortable in his stiff dress uniform surrounded by the other officers in their comfortable working uniforms.

  Tombstone turned to the senior Intelligence Officer. “What have you got for me?”

  Lab Rat looked grim. “It’s possible,” he said bluntly. “Based on the Falcon’s flight profile, I can’t rule out the possibility that it has a vastly more
capable power plant than we suspect.”

  He held up one cautionary finger. “I have no hard data to support that, Admiral, but it’s worth briefing all the squadrons on the possibility. They might want to take another look at their tactics against it.”

  Tombstone nodded. He was sure that a wealth of technical detail underlay Lab Rat’s warning, and equally certain that he didn’t need to hear it. If Lab Rat said that a warning was warranted, then so be it.

  “Anything else I need to know?”

  Lab Rat glanced around the room. “Not here, Admiral. If you will step into SCIE-“

  Tombstone shot him a surprised look. He followed the Intelligence Officer to the back of the conference room and into the highly secure intelligence spaces located directly off the TFCC. “What gives?”

  Lab Rat took a deep breath. “More speculation, Admiral. I’m short of proof on a lot of things these days. But you might want to read this.”

  Tombstone stared at the message, reached out to take it, and then drew his hand back. “Give it to me short,” he ordered. He glanced at his watch. “I have to get back to the goddamned diplomats in a while.”

  “Stealth technology,” Lab Rat said. “There’s a possibility that somebody besides the U.S. has it.”

  “Who?” Tombstone said, unable to contain his impatience.

  “The former Soviet Union had the beginnings of a program at the end of the Cold War. Most of the engineers on it were Ukrainian. National intelligence estimates say they returned to Ukraine after the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, and are probably continuing their work along those same lines there.”

  Lab Rat paused for a moment, and his frown deepened. “Admiral, if Ukraine has stealth technology–operational or capable–it changes the whole complexion of this scenario.”

  It took a moment for Tombstone to catch on. When he did, the implications stunned him. “Turkey–it wasn’t necessarily Turkey,” he said, not wanting to hear his own words. “That makes even more sense, in one way. There’s not much tactical reason for Turkey to have launched on us–none, as far as I can see.”

  He thought back to the initial briefings he’d attended in the conference room. “They certainly don’t seem like they’re culpable, at least in public. They even seemed-” He struggled for a moment to find exactly the right word. “Outraged,” he concluded finally.

  “Angry at the United States, justifiably angry. And we know that Ukraine has fissionable materials taken from the long-range warheads that were left on her soil after the dissolution.”

  He stared at Lab Rat for a moment. “God, man, I’ve got to have more to go on than this.”

  Lab Rat nodded. “I know. I’ve asked for a special intelligence analysis of Ukraine’s nuclear capabilities as well as a complete rundown on their stealth program. I sent the query out this morning, and I’ve already got two very concerned intelligence officers calling on top-secret lines to talk to me. Not with answers–with more questions. Evidently, I’m not the first one to think of this possibility.”

  “Then why don’t they tell us this out in the field?” Tombstone raged. “I have lives depending on this sort of intelligence, decisions to make–and after yesterday, if we weren’t in a shooting war with Turkey, we almost are now. I’ve got one man injured, one still in the water somewhere, dead or alive.”

  “I’ve suggested we redirect satellite coverage to provide continual surveillance of Ukraine,” Lab Rat added. “In particular, I’m looking for any unusual troop movements, anything out of the ordinary, and most particularly, any indication of nuclear material being moved around on the ground.”

  “If that’s all we can get, that’s all we can get,” Tombstone answered. “It had better be enough.”

  7

  Friday, 7 September

  0200 Local

  USS Shiloh

  “Lieutenant,” the starboard lookout howled. “I got it, sir–I got it!”

  The officer of the deck darted across the bridge and jumped over the combing around the edge of the hatch. His foot caught on it in mid-leap, and he stumbled out onto the bridge wing, fetching up against the alidade.

  “What is it, Simpson? Dammit, you keep yelling. Didn’t anybody tell you how to make a proper contact report?”

  The lieutenant’s tirade came to a dead stop in midstream.

  The lookout grabbed the lieutenant by the left shoulder and turned him around so that he faced out toward the sea. The sky was partly cloudy, and the moon obscured by the overcast. Nevertheless, there was enough ambient light for the surface of the water to be clearly visible.

  “Just look, Lieutenant.” The lookout pointed.

  The officer stared, his eyes slowly resolving the pattern of shape and motion into the vision that had so excited the lookout. He grabbed the sound-powered phone microphone that hung around the lookout’s neck.

  “Combat, OOD. Set Condition Two AS. I’ve got a visual on a snorkel mast, range four thousand yards, bearing zero-four-zero. If sonar’s not holding it, I damned well want to know why.”

  The officer dropped the sound-powered phone and leaped back into the bridge, clearing the combing this time handily.

  “Ensign Carter, set Flight Quarters. Roust those helo smart-asses out of their racks. I want that bird turning in fifteen minutes.”

  The ensign nodded, then turned to the boatswains mate of the watch. “You heard the lieutenant. Set Flight Quarters.”

  As the first announcement blared out shipwide over the 1MC, the OOD called his CO, Captain Daniel Heather.

  0225 Local

  TFCC

  USS Jefferson

  “They had to come up sooner or later,” Gator declared. He pointed at the small symbol now blinking red on the tactical display. “A partly cloudy night, being held down by the helos–man, he’s probably running low on battery power.”

  “Helicopters or S-3’s?” his assistant watch officer asked.

  In answer, Gator picked up the Batphone that connected him with the TAO in CDC. After a brief discussion, more of a confirmation really, Gator turned back to the watch officer. “Both. This time, that little bastard’s not getting away.”

  0242 Local

  Seahawk 601

  “I know I should have gone to the carrier,” Lieutenant Commander Rando Spratley grumbled. “You fly the F bird, you go to the carrier and get a dipper. None of this two-crews-and-one-helo bullshit you get on a cruiser.”

  He sighed, looking at his copilot for sympathy. “If we were on the carrier, we’d be pulling Alert 15 every fourth day–not every fifteen minutes.”

  “So you say. But you sure as hell wouldn’t be officer in charge of a helo detachment. At best, you’d be the senior lieutenant commander in charge of coffee. And pulling a whole lot more duty-standing than you do now.

  “Yeah, well.”

  In truth, Rando wouldn’t have traded his tour on board the cruiser for duty on the bird farm. No way. Out here, it was just the Shiloh and her two helos, an eight-person aircrew detachment with support personnel along. They went alone and unafraid, and were capable of killing damned near anything that was looking to paint the profile of an Aegis cruiser on its conning tower.

  Moreover, much as he hated to admit it, Rando drew a fair amount of satisfaction from his interactions with the black-shoe crew. Surface sailors were a different breed of people, that much was true. But they had their good points as well.

  “Get our head back in the game,” his copilot chided. “That submarine went sinker fifteen minutes ago. I don’t know about you, but I want him bad, real bad. He’s a damn sight too close to my stereo for my comfort.”

  “And just what the hell do you think I’m doing out here, playing with myself?” Rando snapped back. “If anybody would bother to give me a decent fly-to point, we might manage to get this mission started.”

  “Coming at you now.” The copilot transmitted the location for the first sonobuoy to the pilot’s console.

  “You’re right–too damned
close,” Rando said. His voice was markedly more serious than it had been a few minutes ago. “Think that lookout really saw something?”

  “No doubt in my military mind,” the copilot answered. “Besides, it wasn’t only the lookout–the OOD saw it as well.”

  “And we’ll see it last.” Rando put the helicopter into a hard turn and headed for the first drop point.

  0250 Local

  TFCC

  USS Jefferson

  “So why don’t we have him yet?” Batman asked. “People, I need answers–not excuses.”

  Gator spoke up, his voice cool and level in contrast to the admiral’s. “Sir, the water gradient is for shit. There’s a strong negative sound-velocity profile. That’ll pull all sonar signals straight down to the bottom. And with as much garbage in the water as there is out here, the bottom’s going to soak up most of the sound energy. Active sonar, sounds coming from the submarine itself.” Gator shook his head. “This is a horrible ASW environment.”

  “Like I said–no excuses.” Batman’s voice was ragged from lack of sleep. “If you think the water conditions suck, try living with them in your stateroom.”

  Tombstone took one step forward and laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder. There was nothing he could say, nothing he could do–not here, not in front of the watch team. Yet he knew too well the edge on which Batman was operating. Events were moving fast, too fast, and there were no decent explanations coming out of anyone. The crew, both on the ship and in the air wing, was getting jumpy.

  But at least the aircrews could alternate Alert 15 watches. There was no relief for the admiral in command of a battle group, not really.

  Tombstone had experienced that all too often during the days when he commanded Battle Group 14. And now, even though he was on board, his presence provided no relief for Batman. It was his battle group, his ship, and his air wing. Not Tombstone’s. To have offered to take off part of the load, to alternate in some sort of watch schedule with him, would not only have been tactically unsound, but would have amounted to an expression of no confidence in Batman’s abilities.