Brink of War c-13

by Keith Douglass

  I nodded, containing my curiosity. Now, just where had he gotten that piece of information? Yes, I often took advantage of clear weather and no flight operations to work out on the flight deck, but I was purely in the class of most amateur athletes. I ran because it was good for me.

  "I notice for your schedule that there is some time free tomorrow morning. I, too, am a runner. Perhaps you would care to join me for an early workout?" he asked.

  Was this my contact? I had hoped Brent would be in view when it happened and be able to give me some subtle signal. Nevertheless, the offer seemed just too much of an opportunity to pass up. "I would. Thank you for the invitation."

  Vladimir looked pleased. "A few additional precautions you may wish to take," he said. "The weather is much colder than you are used to.

  Gloves and a face mask are helpful. If you do not have them, I will be happy to loan you an extra set of mine." I continued smiling, stifling the groan crowding in the back of my throat. Just the thought of exercise in this weather was more than I wanted to contemplate. "Good suggestions," I agreed. "Fortunately, I have my own equipment. What time shall I be ready?"

  "Will five o'clock be too early?"

  "Come now, Vladimir," the admiral broke in. "Surely you are not proposing to take our guest on a three-mile run in the dark in this weather?" He gestured vaguely around him, encompassing the weather outside the stuffy reception hall. "I really do think-" "On the contrary, Admiral," I said firmly. "It is not everyone's idea of fun, but I am rather looking forward to a stiff workout in the morning.

  Too many days of flying, of traveling ― perhaps we could finish with a sauna?" I turned my back to Vladimir. "I understand that is a Russian tradition."

  Vladimir nodded vigorously. "Of course. We have excellent facilities on the base itself ― if you have not experienced a true Russian sauna, you are in for a remarkable treat. It will be the highlight of your visit to Russia, I promise." He beamed congenially, obviously delighted at my acceptance.

  "At five o'clock, then," I said.

  Vladimir drifted back off into the crowd with one last friendly wave.

  I heard the admiral grumbling beside me in Russian. Then he turned away from me and spoke with one of his aides. They held a brief, whispered conversation in Russian. "Do not feel obliged, Admiral Magruder. Vladimir is well known to us for his obsession with running. But none of us would think the less of you if you decline."

  I regarded him levelly for a moment. Was there some reason the admiral wanted to keep me away from Vladimir? Or was Vladimir the contact man I had been seeking? If so, a morning run in this cruel climate was not too stiff a price to pay. "On the contrary, Admiral. I'm sure it will help clear the cobwebs from my brain. Perhaps you would care to join us?"

  I felt safe in making the offer, since the admiral was clearly not one of Vladimir's students. Probably the last time he had run had been when the limousine was too far from a heated walkway.

  "We will provide security for you, of course," the admiral said, a small bit of anger breaking through his mask of friendliness. "I'm sure there are men among my guards who will be delighted at the prospect of an early morning run with Vladimir."

  I waved a hand grandly. "I would not dream of imposing on them.

  Surely we will be perfectly safe if we stay around the base. After all, in these days, what have we to fear from one another?"

  "I cannot allow that," the admiral said firmly. "If anything happened to you, it would be my head."

  To the contrary, Admiral. I must confess, being constantly followed and escorted everywhere gets a bit weary for an American officer. I am sure you have had the same experience during your visits to America. Quite frankly, I relish the idea of spending some time alone running."

  "But what if-"

  "Are you saying it is not safe on this base?" I let the question hang in the air, implying as it did a lack of diligence on his part.

  "We are perfectly safe," the admiral snapped, all pretext of bonhomie now gone from his voice. "But surely you must know there are certain restrictions on all senior officers ― both in your country and in mine. One must not take chances."

  "Then perhaps that is something that you must learn from us as well," I said softly. "In my country, you would be quite safe walking alone on any military installation." Privately, I was not as certain of that sentiment as I would like to have been, but I was not about to back down now. If Vladimir was my contact person, then I had to meet with him alone.

  Had to.

  "You will be followed by men in a transport, then," the admiral said, his voice surly. "Surely you cannot object to that. In case of a cramp, the effects of the weather ― for health purposes, you understand."

  "Very well, then. Now, the undersecretary for naval aviation ― I met him earlier, but I have not seen him tonight. I was hoping to discuss some of the finer points of carrier aviation with him." The admiral relaxed visibly. "Of course," he murmured. A few quiet words to his aide and I was escorted off in search of the man.

  In reality, I had no particular interest in speaking to the undersecretary. However, I had known the words that would arouse their interest. By this time, they were finding it tedious trying to get me talking about technical matters, and the possibility that I would divulge some interesting details on American carrier construction, particularly the catapults, was too tempting to bait.

  I managed to finesse the rest of the evening without mishap, unless you count having to dance around the finer details of catapult construction with the undersecretary. As I smiled, made small talk, and tried to keep names associated with faces, one thought kept intruding. Who was Vladimir?

  Was he who I hoped he was?

  8

  Monday, 21 December

  0900 Local (+3 GMT)

  USS Jefferson

  Commander Lab Rat Busby

  Trouble rarely begins during the daylight hours. Even as humans lose track of their circadian rhythms, confusing day and night in the endless cycle of watches, duty, and meals onboard a carrier, disaster always seems to know precisely what time it is. It happens in the early morning hours, and more often than not, the people that must deal with it are awakened by watch-standers pounding on their doors. This time, it was different. And that worried me.

  It was nine o'clock in the morning, and I had been at my desk for almost three hours after a hasty breakfast consisting primarily of cinnamon rolls and coffee. The sugar and caffeine were beginning to wear off, and I was starting to count the hours until an early lunch. I had the speakers in my office turned low, merely background noise. The normal tactical chatter surrounded me, filtered out of consciousness by my brain.

  Ever since the first detection of our Russian submarines, we had kept a continuous antisubmarine patrol in the air. One of my speakers was dialed up on that circuit.

  It was the tone of the pilot's voice more than the words he said that first caught my attention. I knew him, as I knew most of the pilots, and it wasn't often that he got excited. Not in public, at least.

  Commander "Rabies" Grill was one of the most experienced S3 pilots onboard. While we were in the Spratly Islands, we had had our first encounter with an enemy submarine firing surface-to-air missiles. He rotated off Jefferson a few years ago, and had returned just two months ago, selected for full commander and headed toward the prospective executive officer ― PXO ― slot with VS29. His flight crews complained about his love for country music, and said he was fond of singing to them during extended flights. I had heard Rabies singing, and I pitied them.

  Even now, I wouldn't have called his voice excited. Just out of character ― enough to catch my attention.

  "Home Plate, this is Hunter 701. Is our bird sweet?"

  Rabies was asking if his data link with the carrier was up and working. An odd question, since aircrews usually didn't worry about data links unless the carrier was bugging them. I glanced over at the data console to see for myself.

  The symbol for the an
tisubmarine warfare aircraft was clearly displayed, moving in a circular orbit approximately forty miles northeast of the carrier. There had been some concerns earlier that day about the ice moving and the meteorologist had recommended moving to the north to stay in open water. If ice started forming, the sonobuoys must be able to break through it to reach the water, but the ice would prevent the antenna from deploying and transmitting the information back to the aircraft.

  When Rabies had reported on station, he had noted that the water was essentially open at that point. However, the ice did indeed appear to be forming up to the south of his briefed pattern, and he was worried about problems later in the mission.

  Now it looked like he had other things to worry about.

  "Roger, Hunter 701. Good data link." The operations specialist's voice was calm and unconcerned. "Problem on your end?"

  "No. Just wanted to make sure it was good for you, too."

  The operations specialist rolled his eyes over the risque' remark.

  "You need to talk to the USW module ― we're sweet and hot on number six, and I'm not hearing you talk to me about it."

  "Hot?" The operations specialist now sounded interested. I could picture him leaning forward over his console, picking up his white grease pencil, and preparing to scratch notes on his radar screen as he watched the symbol representing the aircraft he was controlling track across it.

  "How hot?"

  "How does positive acoustic contact on a Victor and an Akula strike you? That hot enough?" I could hear the undercurrent of cool amusement in Rabies's voice. Rabies might take the brunt of some good-humored teasing within the squadron, but unlike most pilots, he was no slouch when it came to USW. Most pilots left it to their TACCOS, but Rabies knew more about it than just the tactical implications of getting his aircraft from one spot to another, of positioning it to drop sonobuoys where the TACCO wanted them.

  "How close are they?" It was the TAO's voice now, breaking in on the interchange.

  "Look for yourself," Rabies answered. "You said the data link was good, didn't you?" He left unspoken the possibility that the TAO couldn't read. But implied it quite clearly.

  The circuit fell silent for a few moments. I could imagine the panic that was starting in CDC, the squawking over the bitch box, the calls going out over the ship's internal telephone system. Within a few moments, the TAO would have talked to the flag TAO, who would call the admiral. I glanced at the clock on the wall. Admiral Wayne was a believer in intelligence. Any second now… The phone rang. I picked it up myself. "Busby."

  "Get down here." The admiral's sharp Boston voice was unmistakable.

  As was his immediate reaction to new data on the missing Russian submarines. "You have been listening, I take it? Judging from the speed at which you answered the telephone, one might even suspect you had anticipated my call."

  Admiral Wayne and I had been on three cruises together. If I could not anticipate his wants by now, I truly was a sorry intelligence officer.

  "Of course I'm listening, Admiral." I left unanswered the rest of his comment.

  "Do you know anything about this? Anything more than we've discussed?"

  Another odd question, coming from him. By now Admiral Wayne should have known that anything I knew, he knew.

  But maybe not so odd, given what had happened before. After all, Admiral Wayne had known about the American submarines in the area. And he had not told me. It was a simple matter of mistrust breeding mistrust, and one of the reasons I prefer to have no secrets from my admiral.

  But RHIP ― rank has its privileges. I hauled my skinny butt up out of my chair and headed for TFCC.

  As soon as I stepped into the small compartment located immediately off of the admiral's conference room, I knew this situation had gotten worse in the few moments it had taken me to walk down there from CVIC. In addition to the normal watch standards, there were three submarine officers in TFCC. I knew one of them well, Commander Hank Fowler. He was attached to the admiral's staff as the submarine community representative. I had found him to be a normal type of submariner ― that is to say, extremely bright, lacking in social skills, and having a utterly odd, dry sense of humor.

  Submarines have three rules I = E/R, P = MA, and

  "You can't push a rope." They are generally funny as hell, if you can get past the weirdness.

  I stuck my head in SCIF, the Specially Compartmented Information module located immediately next to TFCC. I doubted that there was anything new to be learned there, but I wanted my people to know I was in the area.

  That way, they could find me if they needed to.

  Two seconds ― that's all it took. Then I stepped inside TFCC. I moved just barely inside the heavy steel hatch that separated the compartment from the conference room, which opened onto a small vestibule. I made eye contact with the admiral, then settled in to wait. He knew I was here and he would yell if he needed me.

  Immediately, I knew we were in trouble. Not the carrier, but the submarine traveling with our battle group.

  At the depths at which they operate in order to remain concealed, submarines have very few options for communication. They can launch a transmitter buoy, which will reach the surface and broadcast their message to anyone listening. Noisy, and it gives away the submarine's position.

  If she's got time, the submarine can come shallow, send the message to the satellite, and back down to us directly. But there are disadvantages to giving up the protection of depth as well. Finally, there was the low-frequency option. The submarine carried an acoustic generator that could broadcast low-frequency tones. In addition to using her underwater telephone, code-named Gertrude, she could transmit a series of tonals that would pass a coded message to any platform with the appropriate receivers.

  However, without the code book, the message could not be unscrambled.

  Most USW assets now carry some form of recording equipment. While they may not be able to decode the signal immediately, they can transmit the frequency information to the aircraft carrier.

  And we can decipher it. Oh yes, we can. And the chaos that I was seeing in the flag plot right now was evidence of that.

  "How bad is it?" Admiral Wayne demanded. He was nose-to-nose with Commander Fowler.

  "About as bad as it gets." Hank was as worried as I'd ever seen him.

  "There's triple redundancy built into every system, but even that sometimes isn't enough. If three reactor coolant pumps are down, she's got problems." He shook his head, acknowledging the effect of Murphy on any sensitive military mission. "If it had to happen, you have to figure it would be here." "How many does she have onboard?" the admiral asked.

  "Four ― with a couple of emergency measures built in as well. There are things that they can do, Admiral, and they may be able to fix some of it. But I have to tell you, being at depth, I wouldn't want to try. Too much goes wrong, you have to shut a reactor down ― and there you are. You have to use your batteries to come shallow, then maybe you don't have enough power to restart the reactor later on. And there you are, stuck shallow in Russian waters."

  Finally, the admiral turned to me. "Anything to add?"

  I shook my head. There was no additional intelligence data I could provide, nothing that would matter in this situation. There were submarines in the area, nasty tough ones, and our boat had problems.

  The admiral stared at the large-screen display as though he could will it to change. The geometry of the attack was perfectly clear there ― our submarine, theirs, and the carrier battle group. "It's always a trade-off, isn't it?" He shook his head. "We can provide some additional protection for our own ship by moving the destroyer in closer to her, but that's likely to tip our hand. They'll know that we know, and we will know that they know that we know. Oh, what a tangled web we weave…" "When first we practice to deceive," I said, finishing the quotation.

  Between Murphy and Shakespeare, I figured we summed the situation up pretty well.

  The submariner spoke then. "Th
ere is one other possibility."

  Whatever it was, I could tell by his expression he didn't like it. "They do carry a certain amount of spare parts, as well as some crackerjack mechanics and engineers. I've seen a submarine machinist's mate completely rebuild a main coolant pump while we were on a mission. It was amazing ― when we got back to port, the company that built it damn near cried. The tolerances were all off, he'd jury-rigged some gaskets, and it worked like a charm. And quiet ― quieter than the original. I think they offered him a ton of money to leave the Navy, but he didn't."

  The admiral looked skeptical. "So you think they can fix it?"

  The submariner nodded. "Even if they can't, they can still operate with one pump. Not as fast, not as long. And no captain is going to like it, operating without triple redundancy. But they can do it for a while ― maybe long enough to get another pump fixed. If you want them to."

  Admiral Wayne stared at him for a moment. "It always comes down to this, doesn't it?" he said softly. "For the skipper on that sub and for me. How far are we willing to go to finish the mission? What do you think he's going to want?"

  "I think he is going to want to finish the mission." Fowler smiled a little, and I caught a glimpse of the kind of decisions he must have had to make during his command tour. "The first thing they make sure of in sub school is that you're not afraid of the deep water. Or claustrophobic. If I were that skipper, knowing what my mission was, I'd want some peace and quiet so I could take a shot at fixing at least one of the pumps.

  Remember, he's not screaming for rescue right now. He's just advising us of the situation, letting us know what he can and can't do. If he needs help, don't worry ― you'll hear about it."

  "If you were him, where would you like to be?" I asked.

  Fowler pointed a stubby finger at a series of lopsided, stretched-out circles. "There. That looks to be the nearest thing I've seen to an undersea canyon in this part of the world. Deep water, and the canyon will trap most of the sound. It's the closest thing to a hideout around."