First Salvo

by Charles D. Taylor

  “Was he like this when you found him?”

  “Yeah. We heard some noise from one of the cabins and found him inside on the floor curled around a bottle of Aquavit, snoring up a hell of a storm. Believe me, he hasn’t said a word.”

  “Well, let’s get him on the road to recovery. That cold water outside is a good starter. Got anything in the medical kit that could give him a jolt?”

  Wally searched through his pouch for a small vial. “This’ll probably do it. But it might kill him too.”

  “Tough. There’s no choice—and he’s not going to be missed,” Ryng said.

  With cold water and an injection of the drug, the man was functioning within fifteen minutes. He spoke no English, and much of whatever he said in his own language would likely have been incoherent to his own countrymen. Then Ryng tried Russian. The man’s eyes lit up with fear. Unconsciously, he attempted to push himself backward, as if he were trying to pass through the wall. His lips moved but there was no sound. Again Ryng spoke to him, this time in a more soothing voice, realizing that all the man could see around him were four men in black clothes much like the Black Berets wore, their faces a menacing black. He explained that they were Americans. Abject fear modulated to uncertainty in the captive. To back this up, two of them dragged the man down under the shack, pointing out their rubber boat.

  Back inside, the man’s expression softened somewhat. His face was flushed from the effects of the drug, his pupils dilated. Either he understood or assumed they were going to kill him there and then. Perhaps it was Ryng’s explanation of what might happen to his imprisoned compatriots if he didn’t answer their questions.

  The man was now willing to talk.

  The Black Berets had arrived a few days before, he began. No one in the village was concerned, since the huge planes bore the familiar Aeroflot markings. They saw a group of men leave the plane, but they looked just like other Russians they’d seen from time to time. When the Black Berets arrived in uniform in two trucks in the center of town, it was too late. They appeared just after a shift change. One of the trucks went directly to the mines. As far as he knew, the same shift was still up there after three days. The rest of the town had been rounded up and placed under guard, one group in the recreation hall, the other in the warehouse at the town pier. Since he had been drunk at the time, he decided that’s why they overlooked him. He’d gone out only once to find more to drink, somehow avoiding them by pure, drunken luck.

  On Ryng’s chart of the town, the man identified where the Black Beret unit was billeted. Bernie had half-a-dozen more questions to ask when he saw the man’s eyelids start to droop. His brilliantly flushed face turned a deathly pale. Then his eyes rolled back into his head.

  “I’m sorry, Bernie. All that booze in him and, look, he’s no spring chicken.” Wally shrugged. “Hey, he never knew what hit him.”

  Ryng removed his radio and pressed a button twice. Winters’s voice came back. “Yeah, Bernie?”

  “I’ve got what is probably an entire Black Beret platoon up here, Harry. They’ve been in town about three days. In addition to the locals being held at the rec hall, there’s a shift stuck up at the mines and apparently the balance of the town is at the town warehouse. I’m not as worried about them as I am about those funny-looking torpedoes of yours. They’re loading them on the Bears, four to a wing, and one of them’s already off somewhere.”

  “We finally convinced the one we picked up to talk a little,” Winters answered. “He was no ordinary sailor. Seems he was attached to the group that builds and services those things.” There was a second of silence. “Bernie, this guy is very difficult to talk with. Very stubborn…”

  “Have you tried a shot of that stuff you and Wally have in your kits? It worked here.”

  “Yeah, we have, Bernie. But this guy wasn’t too happy about it. We had to put him out cold first before we could give him a shot. And you know Marty—never has been very gentle about those things. The guy was willing to talk when he came around, but it’s very difficult to understand Russian spoken with a broken jaw.”

  “Shit, Harry.”

  “Now, it’s okay, Bernie. Listen. From what I can gather, they’re planning on sending just about every sub in the Northern Fleet down through the gap between Iceland and England. They must be up around here right now, or maybe even past here by now, if my geography is right. Anyway, they know damn well we got that choke point full of CAPTOR mines.” CAPTOR was the designation for a mine that the U.S. had developed as a defense against Soviet attack subs passing through choke points, the somewhat restricted waters through which a ship or submarine had to pass to get to open ocean. Nothing could activate the CAPTOR except for the target they had been programmed for. When its tiny computer identified the sound from the craft’s program—that of a nuclear attack submarine for instance— the engine activated. Immediately the mine became a homing torpedo, its one objective to silence the sound. Over the years, the U.S. had recorded the identifying sounds of every Soviet sub, and the CAPTORs now lying in wait were listening for the attack subs of Russia’s Northern Fleet. Sinking them would protect the Atlantic frontier and the American supply convoys to Europe.

  “I think these things are some sort of decoy,” Winters continued. “Apparently they’re designed to imitate the sub’s sound. Could be the CAPTORs will just chase down a bunch of decoys so the real subs can waltz right through later.”

  “Harry, get all of this back to base on the SSB. Make sure they copy. Then schedule a pickup for us about twenty-four hours from now. Tell them we’re somehow going to take care of the bombers here, and hopefully the troops too. You go back to that ship tonight and make sure she doesn’t plan to travel far. I think when the shooting starts here, she might want to beat it out in a hell of a hurry. We’ll meet you right where you’re talking now. If we’re not there in twelve hours, take off.”

  “Right, Bernie. Out.” Winters never said a word about the cold water. The only way to attach a device to that ship was to swim, and these were arctic waters. Even with a wet suit, they could last only so long. He knew Ryng had considered that even before he gave the order.

  ABOARD ADMIRAL PRATT’S JET 35,000 FEET ABOVE THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

  Darkness came quickly as Pratt’s plane flew east. Cobb and Carleton slept most of the time, while Pratt was just the opposite. Once he committed his mind to something new, he found that body and brain could not relax. He sorted through reams of classified materials in his briefcase as the shortened night passed. Nelson also experienced a sleepless night, but it was sheer emotion that kept him awake. He was about to take command of the only destroyer in the fleet whose name was raised in black script on the fantail. It was a perfect replica of the original John Hancock, a proud name and a proud ship. Nelson imagined how impressed his father would have been if he could have seen his son in command. Then he wondered what Tricia would have thought, but then he dropped that idea. She had divorced him. A woman with as much pride as her husband, Tricia Nelson could never accept second-class status in the Navy communities. Though he was sure she still cared for him, she divorced him to divorce them. At that stage of his life, career and success had seemed so much more important in this white navy. He wondered now.

  They landed the next morning under the blazing Mediterranean sun in the humidity of Naples. Pratt would spend most of the day in briefings at Sixth Fleet Headquarters, then fly out to the carrier Kennedy, on station off Malta with her battle group. John Hancock and Yorktown were part of that group. Nelson and Carleton had already found a plane that would shortly ferry the mail out to the carrier. From there it was just a hop by helo to their ships.

  Pratt was not surprised to learn that Henry Cobb would not be waiting for him. Instead, Cobb disappeared into another building which Pratt later learned was inhabited by ONI, the Office of Naval Intelligence. And when they found a bit of shade for a last handshake, Cobb announced that he had to run to make a flight out to Saratoga. That carrier, normall
y part of their battle group, was in the eastern Mediterranean, south of Cyprus.

  “I promise I’ll be back aboard Kennedy in two days, Admiral. I gotta get in the habit of calling you that again. There’re some loose ends I have to wrap up out there, and then back to business as usual.”

  Pratt smiled as he grasped Cobb’s hand. “Take care, Hank. Always keep your back to the bulkhead.”

  “Yeah, my friend.” Nelson gave him a pat on the butt. “I’ll be waiting for Dave to flash me that you’re back on board—intact,” he added.

  With a wave over his shoulder, Cobb was gone, going off by himself as usual.

  HENRY COBB

  Once aboard Saratoga, Cobb slept most of the afternoon. When he was awakened, he ate a full meal, knowing he might not have another for a day or two. Back in his quarters, he donned a jet flight suit. There was no one to bid him farewell as the red sun disappeared into the Mediterranean. He simply climbed in the back seat of a jet after waving a greeting to the pilot, and waited calmly for the carrier and her escorts to settle on a new course into the wind. It was unusual for an entire battle group to go through such an evolution for just one flight, but this was a special mission.

  The pilot set course just a few points east of north. It was not long before they passed over the southern coast of Turkey. The pilot never touched his radio, even though they were overflying a country at war. All that was required was a steady identification signal for military ground stations on a pre-established frequency. The flight had been cleared the day before from Washington. They landed at a small port on the southern coast of the Black Sea. The pilot refueled quickly and disappeared back to Saratoga.

  A jeep took Cobb to a darkened pier. At the end, a small hydrofoil bobbed in the calm waters of the Black Sea. He was greeted by a man wearing the dark uniform of the Turkish navy, though he was American and spoke perfect English. Extending his hand in greeting, he said, “Welcome, Henry. Somehow, someone picked the weather perfectly.”

  “All the way across?” Cobb asked Lassiter, shaking hands. “As far as we can tell. When you get out in the middle, you’ll find the normal swells but no chop. Just sweet summer zephyrs.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  Lassiter gave a signal. Instantly the powerful diesel engines grumbled into life. At full speed on the calm waters, foils extended, they would be on the other side of the Black Sea, the Russian side, in three-and-a-half hours, just before sunrise. Then Lassiter would be on his own in that boat. He didn’t expect any problem, but one never knew. The odds were that the Russians didn’t know that he’d taken their hydrofoil the night before. Everything on board was intact. His men were trained to respond to the Soviet radio codes every four hours. So, as far as Soviet Black Sea Fleet headquarters knew, this boat was still following its normal independent patrol assignment. But it couldn’t last forever. Lassiter wanted desperately to be able to dump the hydrofoil at just the right time. That was highly preferable to hearing the final roar of MiGs diving on them.

  Cobb’s destination was the Crimea. Attached by a narrow spit of land to Mother Russia, it jutted out into the Black Sea. The Crimea contained the historic cities of Sevastopol, home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet; Yalta, where Stalin twisted the arms of Churchill and Roosevelt in 1945; and Simferopol, training center for the terrorists who had so exacerbated the current Greek-Turkish conflict. The Crimea was also the location of General Keradin’s summer dacha, where the head of the Strategic Rocket Forces and his deputies were meeting that weekend. It was a strategy session, Cobb knew, just like those in Washington. However, DNI had explained to him personally that this was the final conference, the one that would decide at what stage they would launch and what the initial targets would be—if the Red Army did not own Western Europe within forty-eight hours after D-Day.

  Lassiter and Cobb had worked together before. Neither one needed to speak until something important had to be said. Finally, Cobb broke the silence. “Where you going after this?”

  Lassiter shrugged. “Depends if I still have this boat under my feet.” He brushed away the hair streaming over his face. “You know what the Russians are planning with this little war they engineered here?”

  “Sure. They want to clean out the Bosporus and Dardanelles—the choke points. Then they can come and go as they please over the next few days.” The boat heeled to the side as one of her foils slid down a long swell. Cobb steadied himself with one hand on the railing. “It’s all a matter of choke points, I was told. Keep ’em in their holes and we’ve at least got a chance.”

  “There’s a hell of a lot of them already out in the Med.”

  “What they got out there so far we can handle,” Cobb said. “I saw the intelligence reports and some satellite photos. They sent a carrier through the other day. There’re still a lot of destroyers and cruisers in here, and just about all of the subs. The Montreux Convention doesn’t allow their subs to pass through the Turkish straits. I suppose they’re saving some of them to open the choke points and keep them open.”

  “Makes sense,” Lassiter mused. “You know, Hank, I sure do love these little boats; turn on a dime, lots of power for your nickel.”

  “Sounds like fun. I wish you had a few more.” He paused and contemplated the idea. “Perhaps I could hang around for an extra day or two.”

  “We might locate a few more by tomorrow night.” Lassiter beamed.

  They lapsed into silence. After a while, Cobb went below to change into his next outfit. When he came up again, Lassiter clapped his hands in amusement. Cobb was dressed like a Crimean peasant, the clothes authentic right down to the grape stains that a vineyard worker would have on his work clothes during harvest season. Keradin’s dacha was also a working winery, and Washington had decided such an outfit provided the only means for someone to get close to the general.

  WENDELL NELSON

  John Hancock rolled gently in the Mediterranean swell. The hum of her engineering plant came infrequently to Nelson’s ears. It was a sound that had so assimilated itself into his makeup over the years that he was already attuned to the ship he’d taken over just a few hours before.

  It had been a quick and simple change of command. Nelson was escorted to the captain’s cabin as soon as he’d stepped from the helo on Hancock’s fantail. Her CO went over the classified material in the captain’s safe, then offered a rundown on the department heads and the condition of the ship. As soon as they finished, the captain called the executive officer and told him to make final preparations. There was little time for niceties.

  Five minutes later, those members of the crew not on watch assembled on the fantail. Nelson read his orders. He turned to the former captain, saluted, and intoned the ritual words, “I relieve you, sir.” He then became Commanding Officer of U.S.S. John Hancock, 7,800 tons of destroyer, as big as a modern cruiser—bigger than anything he’d ever ridden.

  Now Wendell Nelson was reading the latest operation orders, the details put to paper by the administrative types. These were law, the golden words passed down from Washington to Norfolk to the fleet command in Naples to the battle group at sea to the individual commanding officers. Throughout his reading, Nelson always came back to what all captains of all surface ships knew—the carrier was the heart of the battle group, the one element that could launch a devastating strike on enemy territory. It was the ship that had to be protected at all costs. Destroyers were expendable!

  Hancock was an antisubmarine destroyer with surface-to-air missiles for point defense. She was part of the screen whose duty was to protect the carrier from submarine attack, to search out and kill Soviet attack submarines before they got within range of the carrier.

  He finished his reading and carefully locked the material back in his safe. On top he placed the shrink-wrapped op orders that were only to be opened when Condition One was set—when war was declared.

  Nelson ambled up to the bridge after a tour around the main deck of the ship. He leaned on the railing outsi
de the pilothouse for a moment, adjusting his eyes to the darkness so he could identify the other ships in the screen. In the center, miles distant, he could make out the mass of the carrier John F. Kennedy.

  Then he went into the pilothouse to the chart table and opened the night orders. The chief yeoman was efficient—Nelson’s orders were already inserted in plastic to protect them from weather. And, he noted, they had already been passed around the wardroom, for the signature of each officer was already below them. It was a good omen, he decided—a good, efficient ship. He knew they’d do a fine job for him. The wardroom’s initial surprise at a black CO gave him an advantage early on, he decided, remembering the night he’d been drinking with Dave Pratt and Bernie Ryng in some long-forgotten “O” club. Ryng had claimed Nelson’s dark features were inscrutable, a perfect face for intelligence work. Pratt had agreed with Bernie. An inscrutable captain also, Nelson mused now with amusement.

  He wandered out on to the bridge wing again and stared back over at the imposing outline of Kennedy. He was sure Pratt was on the bridge, surveying the new command surrounding him. I’m glad you’re calling the shots, Dave, Nelson said to himself. We’ll do all right.

  TOM CARLETON

  Like Cobb and Ryng, Carleton could sleep anywhere, and he took advantage of the long flight to rest himself as much as possible. But like Pratt and Nelson, he was also excited about his new command. He felt like a child wandering into a candy store clutching five dollars in his hand and with no one to tell him how to spend it.

  Yorktown was the key to defending a carrier battle group from air attack. Her AEGIS fire-control system coupled with sophisticated detection and tracking functions could direct the weapons of the entire force. One-third of her cost was for the ship herself, the rest for an electronic installation unrivaled by any in existence. Tom had spent his last six months as a prospective commanding officer in schools and simulators. He’d commanded destroyers before and he was an engineer, but he had to relearn his trade, especially in accepting the reality that the commanding officer of an AEGIS cruiser no longer fought his ship from the bridge. Instead, he sat before a fire-control display system inside an electronics-filled space and communed with a computer to fight his ship.