by Gordon Kent
All in all, things were going okay.
Then they got Fort Klock’s pos con on a probably Russian high-value submarine, and everything went up for grabs.
They were just entering the African littoral when Fort Klock sent them the set of sonograms that indicated a possible contact on a Russian submarine near Gibraltar. Alan didn’t see the tapes, but he got a précis, and he and the other senior intel officers discussed the possibility of a Russian sub’s coming into the Med again. Russia was a sagging old fighter, on the ropes financially and socially, but its navy still had punch, especially undersea. The early third-generation Victor IIIs were high-quality nuclear boats, and the Akula-class was among the best in the world. Early in a cruise, when people weren’t up to speed, you didn’t want to have one nearby, no matter what had happened to the Cold War.
It was some time since the Russians had sent a submarine to the Mediterranean, and this one had clearly sent a challenge, and then just disappeared, but it had apparently passed close to the Fort Klock.
A month into the cruise, Alan had learned to become a regular at flag-wardroom dinners, where much of the staff’s business was discussed and where things were often settled with Admiral Pilchard over coffee. Still eating, Pilchard was that night going through message traffic and asking Alan and the flag captain to comment. The admiral made no bones about sharing his worries with his staff, and he was worried about many things, to which the Klock’s possible contact was an unwelcome addition. After going through the message stack, he finished his food, waved to the messman for dessert and coffee, and fell silent until they appeared. Then he cleared his throat for their attention.
“Gentlemen, I want to direct your attention to our situation, and then I want to discuss our options. We’re in a bind: Philadelphia transited Gibraltar yesterday and is on the way to Naples, right on schedule. We’re at Launch minus thirty days—one of our two primary responsibilities on this cruise.
“The situation in Africa is going to hell in a hand-basket, and fast. To put it as baldly as possible, LANTFLEET wants our battle group in two places at once—in the West Med to cover the Peacemaker launch, and in the Bight of Benin to watch Zaire.” He looked around the table. The flag captain and the logistics officer were fully engaged; some of the other staff tried to look fascinated; some listened out of politeness. Strategy was not their problem, and they had been over this before, hadn’t they? Alan listened but let part of his mind go elsewhere; he’d heard it an hour before dinner, and he was worried about the NEO, about Rafe, about O’Neill—
“Craik has been working very hard to keep us up-to-date on Africa, but, Alan, I need more information. I’m putting us on our African station in another day, well up toward the Côte d’Ivoire, where we can run north in a hurry. If I can, I want to run to the Med in time to make our port call in Palma twelve days before Peacemaker. If that works, I mean to leave the Rangoon and her escorts down here, but I’ll only do that if the situation warrants—if Zaire’s calmed down by then, the whole BG meets up in the Med, and we’re home free. Until then, however, LANTFLEET seems unable to decide which is more important, Peacemaker or Africa, and if it’s Africa, is it an NEO or an intervention? They’re asking us for clarification.” He looked at Parsills. “What happens if we have to intervene?”
Parsills rolled a bit of bread between his fingers. “Likeliest, the Rangoon puts her marines on the beach, we get Fort Klock down here for bombardment. Probably we scrub Peacemaker.”
“You mean, we ask to scrub Peacemaker. That’s not our decision. There’s a lot of pressure to launch that thing; I’m not sure where it’s coming from. Maybe Congress.” The admiral glanced at Alan, undoubtedly reminded that Craik’s wife was a key player in the launch, but he went on talking to Parsills. “Ask LANTFLEET to get an assessment of how a postponement impacts BGs eight and nine. If one of them gets it added to the scenario, it’s going to screw something else up.” He looked back at Alan. “Where do we stand on a liberty port if we don’t make Palma?”
“Kravitz has done a good job of narrowing it down. The fact is, there’s nothing between here and Cape Town that makes it.”
“Jack, could we send the Rangoon and its folks down to Cape Town while we keep station, then trade with them?”
“Divide the BG into three? Come on. That’s two thousand miles.”
“Twenty-four hundred,” Alan said. “Kravitz did the fuel, talked it over with the Texaco. We’d need another oiler, tank up at Walvis.”
“Shit.” Pilchard put the spoon on the plate with a clang. “They’ve got us between a rock and a hard place, gentlemen. We’re going to have some very unhappy ships here pretty soon; you can say they’re soft, but this isn’t wartime. Sailors want liberty. And they deserve it; I’ve been working their tails pretty hard, this last month. Well—” He looked up at Parsills. “Liberty’s the safest thing to forgo.”
“You bet.”
“Ships don’t sink from lost liberty.”
A voice from the end of the table said, “I’d recommend we put the Rangoon off Zaire, keep them ready down there while we stay where we are. Fuck a liberty port. From here, we can chainsaw air cover into the Med if we have to.”
Alan had his head down. He was picking at a small defect in the linen tablecloth. “Two aircraft,” he said.
“Two! More like ten! Have you done the math?”
“Yes, sir. Two F-14s and the S-3 to tank them, and if it’s in the eastern end of the Med we’d need a KC-10 or everybody goes into the water.”
Mutterings and groans. Some of them would do the math over, not believing him because he wasn’t part of their faction, nor an aviator. It was a political table, with pro- and anti-Pilchard factions, and pro- and anti-Parsills factions, and some nutcases who had been held over from Newman’s regime and somehow wanted him back. Alan wasn’t used to this way of massaging ideas; most of his experience had been down where the ideas got translated into tactics. Nonetheless, he knew his role: to supply facts and to suggest reasonable ideas. Now, he said, “We could send part of the aircraft to the Med to cover our asses up there. Shore-base them at Sigonella.”
“Negative that!” a deep voice boomed from the back. It was the staff plans captain, a diehard carrier pilot who had hated leaving the squadron level. Mildly, the admiral said, “We’re not going to negative anything just yet, Tommy.” He gestured toward Alan. “Craik means that we’re supposed to make a contribution to air cover over Bosnia, along with everything else—that’ll come up at appropriations time, or it will if we haven’t performed. Tommy, see what you can do with it—maybe one F-18 squadron and a couple of Prowlers?”
“I don’t like it,” the deep voice said.
“Neither do I. There’s lots of things I don’t like.”
The admiral picked up the spoon again, tasted a quarter-inch of ice cream on its tip, then pointed the spoon at Alan. “How much of a factor is this Russian sub?”
“If it’s a late-generation boat, it can give Klock a lot of training real fast. It may be coincidence, but there’s a Russian surface group in the Med, too, liberty-porting in Algiers, the last Kravitz looked. A high-value sub with a surface group would be unusual for the Russians in the Med, but—” Alan scratched his head. “I’d like to hear what other people think about the idea that this could be connected with Peacemaker.”
Several of the other staffers looked at each other. One winked: the staff intel officer was off on another wild hare, he meant. The idea was not new to the admiral, however; indeed, he and Alan had discussed it as soon as Klock’s pos con had come in. “Tell ’em your idea,” Pilchard said, spooning out a larger bite of ice cream.
So Alan laid it out: the Russian Navy wanted the US Navy to understand that launching Peacemaker annoyed it. They would express that annoyance by putting a high-value submarine nearby and causing the BG to wear itself out on ASW. The surface group, if connected, would provide a complicating element.
“There’s no evidence for th
at whatsoever,” a commander from operations said. Speculation bored the shit out of him.
“No, there isn’t,” Alan said, turning a little away from the table because the man was behind him.
“Then why are we going on about it?”
“Because,” the admiral said, “I think it’s important.” There was a little silence: somebody had shit on his face. Another commander cleared his throat and said that he didn’t see why the Russians would care enough about a missile test to go ballistic.
“They aren’t going ballistic,” Alan said. “If this is a gesture, they’re showing a lot of restraint. So far. Look, gentlemen, most of us have played games with Victors; it’s good training and it’s good, clean fun. Maybe that’s all this is, too. But remember that Peacemaker isn’t a missile. It’s a satellite put up by a missile. It’s low space, and if you’re paranoid, you think that the Americans are at it again, violating ABM treaties and trying to push Reagan’s Star Wars agenda. And trust me, the Russians are paranoid.”
One of the lieutenants at the back said, “What’s the idea with the Libyan bombing plans?”
“That’s just to keep people busy while we bore holes in the water,” Parsills growled.
“Peacemaker isn’t a device so we can bomb Libya?”
Parsills was going to say something sharp, but the admiral looked at him and frowned. Alan jumped in and said, “I wish I’d thought of that, Fred. No, Peacemaker’s going off from the Gulf of Sidra to show the Libyans that they don’t own the Med. I really think that’s all of it—except that the orbit brings it back over Libya several times, maybe as a reminder to them.”
“I don’t see the Russian connection,” somebody else said from the other side of the table. “I don’t buy it.”
Alan glanced at the admiral, waited for an okay, which came in the form of a nod, and said, “There’s a Russian Balzam-class surveillance boat off the Canaries. It’s just what you’d want if you were going to carry out SW ops down here.”
“You said in the Med!”
“The Russians have more than one high-value submarine. If that boat up in the Med is an Akula, its presence means something serious. It left port with the surface group. We know that. If there is a second boat, it would be a major deployment.”
People leaned forward. Suddenly, the atmosphere changed: were they talking serious business here?
The admiral was now actively enjoying the puddle of melted ice cream and strawberries. Turned out he liked ice cream that way. “Alan, you better prepare for a two-ocean ASW effort. Gentlemen, it looks to me like a major deployment already. We have to take the Russians seriously.” The remnants of the Newman faction exchanged glances.
“It’s in hand, sir. I could brief it Friday morning.”
The admiral put his spoon down. “You’re not going to be here Friday morning. We’ll talk about it.”
Stunned, Alan looked at Parsills, who winked.
“Staff meeting, 0800 tomorrow,” Pilchard said. “I want recommendations on the issues of keeping the BG split, pulling it back together before Peacemaker, and keeping ourselves viable in two oceans. Tommy, be prepared to discuss sending aircraft to Sigonella. We will reach a decision before the meeting is over.” He rose. “Gentlemen, enjoy your coffee without us, please. Alan, we need to talk. Jack, you come, too.”
The admiral’s suite had a form of living room that served as study and office, with chairs only a little less comfortable than those in the squadron ready rooms. A young white messman (the new Navy, those old racial habits finally breaking down) was setting out a tray of coffee when they went in; with a nod from the admiral, he was gone. Without preliminary, the admiral sat down and, after offering a box of pretty good cigars, said to Parsills, “Tell him, Jack.”
“There’s a feeler on your friend O’Neill.”
Alan, still recovering from the admiral’s you won’t be here on Friday, which had sounded to him like a career-ending announcement of failure, now felt a thrill of anticipation. “That’s great!”
“From the French.”
The admiral was working on a cigar before lighting it. Now he sniffed it. “For once, things went our way. The ambassador down there is away—called back ‘for consultation,’ as they say, which means in diplomatese that Washington is fed up with Mobutu. So a feeler came through French military intelligence—military, which is why it didn’t go to the CIA first. Somebody French and military in Kinshasa contacted the naval attaché—not an accident, because these guys apparently know each other. Anyway, before he reported through channels, he told me, as US military commander on the spot.”
“Where’s O’Neill?”
Parsills picked the story up. “He doesn’t know. What’s happening is this, and it’s changing fast: French military intel is leaning on whoever snatched O’Neill to cough him up.” He raised an eyebrow at Alan as he accepted a cigar from the admiral. “Any idea why it would be military and not civilian intelligence, by the way?”
“Maybe—there’s some sort of rivalry. Or worse. When I was in Bosnia, they said you couldn’t tell the French things, there were leaks. Or maybe it’s just that the military are the diehards who want to hold on to Africa. Except that now they’re the ones who seem to have come to us, and we’re the bad guys, if you’re French.”
“This French mil guy—whoever he is—told the attaché that they want O’Neill handed over. He doesn’t have O’Neill, that’s apparently certain, and he’s not going to get him. The word we got is that French military intel is trying to pressure the kidnappers to give him up to the Kinshasa embassy.”
“God, that would be great.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. This is all second-hand.”
The admiral stirred in his deep chair. He exhaled cigar smoke. “I want to send you on another little trip—to Kinshasa. The ostensible reason is to pay a courtesy call on the embassy and get the local read on the situation. Actually, I do want you to do that. It’s damned important. But I also—” He blew smoke out the side of his mouth and knocked ash off into a big ashtray. He looked tired in the room’s low light. He was twenty years older than Alan and kept just as tough a schedule. “You’ve done well since you got here. Better than I ever hoped. You’re a damned good officer. Consider this my way of saying thank you: I thought you’d want to be there if your friend comes out.”
Alan found it hard to swallow. “Thank you, sir.”
“Take a good uniform. Talk to the station—the CIA people—if you can. I suspect they’ll be doing the negotiation; he’s their guy, after all. If you can go along, do it—after all, you’ll be the only one there he knows. Or who knows him.”
The flag captain rolled his cigar between his fingers. “Kinshasa’s pretty chaotic, sir. I’d like Craik to take somebody with him.”
The admiral looked at Alan, then up at Parsills. “What’d you have in mind—marines?”
But Alan already knew what he wanted, and, before Parsills could speak, he said, “If I may, sir—There’s a guy in CVIC, ex-SEAL. He’s intel, he’s smart, he knows a lot. Good guy in a chaotic city.”
“Officer or EM?”
“First Class Petty Officer, sir. Silver Star.”
The two older men looked at each other. Pilchard shrugged, nodded; Parsills reached across to use the ashtray, said, “Suits me,” and that was that.
“When do I go?”
Pilchard smiled. “You’d go right now if I had a plane on the flight deck for you, wouldn’t you? Late tomorrow, if things don’t change. We can’t speed things up beyond that, but we might put it off if there’s news. You just be ready, and stand by for changes.” He stabbed the air with the cigar. “You be careful, but get me some straight dope. I know O’Neill is your first reason for going; okay. But use the trip to get us some straight dope. Anything that will clarify what we’re doing out here. Get me the embassy’s call on the possibility and timing of an NEO or an intervention—that’s my priority.” He looked straight at Alan. “Do I have
to say, ‘Don’t do anything stupid?’” He answered his own question. “You know Africa; you’ve been in harm’s way there and come out in one piece. This should be routine. However—” He slipped down a little, became less formal. “Y’know, I was an attaché a long time ago. Unless embassies have changed, they’re awful places. They don’t think like we do. So, this is an order: don’t take any shit from them. I’ll write your orders broadly enough so you have a little discretion where O’Neill’s involved, and I’ll make it damned clear you’re there to get their input, so they won’t pull some ‘need-to-know’ crap on you. Can Kravitz cover for you for, mm, let’s say five days?”
“With the CAG AI to help, yes, sir. Okay if Kravitz briefs you a couple of times?”
“Well, his style is boring, but the stuff is good. We’ll survive.” He straightened and prepared to stand, the sign that Alan was being dismissed. “Talk to those people. Get me the truth. Get your friend. Then come back and write us an op plan and we’ll go on with this damned cruise.”
Alan faced the two older men, both standing now. The room was blue with cigar smoke. He tried to think of something to say, and finally he said what was simple and honest. “Thank you, sir.”
When he was gone, the two older men looked at the door where he had vanished, and the admiral sat down, and after some seconds he said, “How far will he go to get his buddy, if he has to?”
Parsills, who had known both O’Neill and Craik in the Gulf, thought about it. “Pretty far. Real far.”
The admiral nodded. “Good for him.” He seemed to be talking to himself, looking inward at—the past? “Good for him …”
22
November
Sarajevo.
The cold in Sarajevo was vicious. There was no heat in Dukas’s apartment building, or so it seemed; he slept in quilted underwear and a marine winter bag and he was always cold. Pipes froze; civilians died of carbon-monoxide poisoning from trying to stay warm with charcoal grills; the UN Officers Club was the only place that always seemed warm. Dukas dreamed of Florida, Hawaii, California. He wrote himself orders to Naples to confer with the NIS officer there, and Naples was almost as cold as Sarajevo.
