Arctic Front wi-4

by Ian Slater

  “Where the hell are they coming from?” asked Norton, refusing to be drawn into any speculation about Freeman’s fitness for command. But his interjection was taken by the others as one that any duty-bound aide would have to make when his superior had his back against the wall. But if they thought that Freeman was venturing out alone to lick his wounds, they were wrong. As the general moved along the edge of the road, trucks rolling by him in the darkness, the drivers wearing infrared goggles and guided by MPs stamping their feet in the bitter cold as they kept a convoy of Second Army inching along wherever the road’s shoulder was too narrow, Freeman asked himself one question: Would he have replaced any commander who had experienced the defeats he had in the last few days? The answer was an unequivocal yes—if the commander had had sound intelligence about a possible sucker ploy. And “No,” if he hadn’t had reliable information of what the Siberians were up to.

  For the remainder of his walk, hands behind his back, head down against the bitter cold, Freeman thought of his index files, of all the notes he’d made about all the possible campaigns he might be called upon to fight, just as Schwarzkopf had predicted and readied himself for a desert war. He recalled the history of the Russias, of the Transbaikal, which he had read as assiduously as the chronicles of Sherman and Grant; and he thought, too, of Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers on that unforgettable day in ‘91 when, before the game against Toronto, Ryan confessed to his coach, “My back hurts, my heel hurts, and I’ve been pounding Advil all day. I don’t feel good. I feel old today. Watch me.” They had watched him, and after he performed the miracle, he proclaimed, “I never had command of all three pitches like I did tonight… It was my most overpowering no-hitter.”

  “By God,” Freeman told himself, “watch me, you bastards!” He walked for another half hour and on the way back to the G-2 hut availed himself of the MEF’s satellite hookup, ordering a call to the Pentagon on scrambler after which, without a word, he put down the phone and made his way back to the G-2.

  In the intelligence hut the colonel in charge was alarmed when he saw Freeman, the ice crust on the general’s eyebrows making him appear particularly despondent and grim. The colonel rose, forcing a smile, being as cheery as you could be with a man who had just lost his wife and who was now in the blackest hole of his career.

  “Coffee, sir?” asked a corporal.

  “Potemkin!” said Freeman. Norton, who’d been hunched over a pile of SITREPS that chronicled the disastrous day’s action, pushed himself away from the fold-up desk and walked over to where the general, snowflakes now melting and dripping from his coat, was taking off his gloves, rubbing his hands vigorously, and nodding his thanks. He took the coffee, gratefully cupping it with both hands, letting the steam clear his sinuses. “Sibir. Know what it means, Colonel?” he asked the intelligence chief without taking his eyes off the laid-out satellite photos. “Sleeping land,” Freeman answered for him. “That’s what we’ve been doing. Goddamn sleepwalking. Well, I’ve had enough!” Other officers in the hut stopped what they were doing and watched him. “Potemkin,” repeated Freeman. “Prince in the time of Catherine the Great. Whenever he heard she was leaving the Winter Palace to have a look-see among her subjects, Potemkin would have fake villages built all along her route, neat facades, so she wouldn’t know what the real situation was.” He looked around at the assembled officers. “Fake tanks, gentlemen. Fake launch sites — all of ‘em.”

  “But,” responded the intelligence colonel, “those cruise missiles they fired were real—”

  “Yes, but not from there.” Freeman was using the monocle to circle the lake. “Not around Baikal. Or from the islands— too obvious. In it.”

  It was said so calmly, matter-of-factly, yet almost casually, that for a second no one saw it, and when they did there were a few unsettling looks among the intelligence group. It wasn’t the first commander some of them had seen crack up. One of the junior officers laughed — perhaps it was the general’s idea of light relief.

  “Ah, yes,” put in a major. “Only one problem with that, sir.” The officer was astounded that no one saw the objection; it was so obvious.

  “The ice,” said Freeman, anticipating him, still looking at the photographs. “These photographs. Something bothered the about them earlier this evening.” The monocle was moving from one of the satellite photos to the amateur pictures reportedly taken by a member of the Jewish underground.”How thick is the ice on the lake?”

  “Two to four feet,” shrugged the colonel.

  “Exactly!” said Freeman. “And why is that?”

  One of the junior officers toward the back turned to whisper to his colleague, “Because it’s friggin’ winter.”

  Freeman surprised and alarmed the young lieutenant by having overheard the remark. As the general turned, the monocle caught a glint of light, giving him an unbalanced, even mad look even as he concurred. “Precisely, Lieutenant. Winter. But why does the ice cover vary? That’s the question.”

  The monocle popped out into Von Freeman’s hand, and he garnered the men in closer. “Look here!” The monocle was tapping the photos again. “These amateur shots which you got from the Jewish underground. Fuzzy, bit out of focus.” And then he turned to the K-14 satellite pictures. These were much sharper, but they had one thing in common — apart from being in black and white. The monocle moved from the southwestern end near Port Baikal to the far north of the 390-mile-long lake. “Some of the ice is whiter-looking than the rest. The amateur shots, taken from the southern shore, show the same thing.” The officers crowding around the table saw the splotchy effect easily enough. “You said, Colonel,” continued Freeman, “that the ice thickness varies from two to four feet.”

  “Yes, sir.” The colonel saw the general’s point. “That would explain why some areas are whiter, more dense, than others.”

  “But why?” Freeman asked, and again answered his own question. “Spring water escaping from fissures in the bottom of the lake. Happens in all lakes, gentlemen. I’m something of an authority on ice.”

  “Jesus!” the junior lieutenant said, but this time he spoke so softly that Freeman didn’t hear it.

  “Met boys call it upwelling,” continued Freeman. “Common enough. Same thing happens at sea. Springs bubble up and spread out. Reflects the light differently.” Freeman let them wait. He wasn’t the most flamboyant general in the U.S. army for nothing. Substance, yes, but he knew the value of style. And this is where the training, the reading — the Patton-like attention to detail — paid off. “Subs,” he said. “They’re using subs, gentlemen. Lake is more than twice the size of the Grand Canyon. And deeper, over six thousand feet. They’ve been doing a Potemkin on us, gentlemen. Fake launch sites like fake tanks. We’ve been firing off cruise missiles at over a million bucks a pop for sweet fuck all. They’re imitating the nerpa!”

  Norton thought it was the name of a ship.

  “Seal!” explained Freeman. “I remember it because it was mentioned in the chronicles of Genghis Khan.” Freeman’s monocle slid southeast of Baikal.”Genghis Khan was born here. Ruled from Vladivostok to Moscow.” Freeman was shaking his head in admiration. “Magnificent son of a bitch. Then his descendants were swept out by the Cossacks. Cossack cavalry was like our M-1s — went through ‘em like crap through a goose. But even then the Mongols — they thought Baikal was holy — knew about the nerpa. Only freshwater seal in the world.”

  The G-2 was looking across at Norton, visibly alarmed, the general’s rambling, seemingly unconnected soliloquy a symptom of crackup. But the G-2 officer was mistaken, and Norton knew they were in the midst of a Freeman brainstorm.

  “For the life of me,” said Freeman, “while I was out there tonight walking I couldn’t understand why that damn seal was on my mind.” He turned to Norton. “Like the rivers, Dick. Kept at me. Soon as I heard our Tomahawks had hit their marks but the missiles kept coming. There was only one answer. Missiles were there but they weren’t. Submarines. But how could th
ey transport something as big as a submarine to Baikal? And there’s no shipbuilding on Baikal. Nothing. Anyway you need an enormous infrastructure.” Freeman looked about his audience. “The nerpa seal, gentlemen.” The monocle in his right hand was tapping his temple. “The seal. Has to breathe. Spends its winter in the water using a dozen or so air holes — has to keep them open so he picks the thin ice. That’s how the subs do it, gentlemen. Pop up through the thin ice, fire, and go back down.” There was a stunned silence of admiration broken by Freeman. “Problem is, gentlemen, what to do?”

  “Hit the ice?” said the junior lieutenant eagerly. “With our cruise missiles. Or have our subs launch ICBMs — conventional warheads.”

  Freeman shook his head. “Thinking in the right direction, son, but you’re missing a few things. No good hitting the ice. Warhead explodes, expends all its energy on impact. Remember how far Baikal is from the coast, from here. We’ve been dropping them by air. From our subs — even one close to the coast— a cruise missile, travelling at five hundred miles per hour, even if it could reach the lake from the coast, which it can’t, would take hours. By that time their sub would be long gone from its firing position.”

  “But,” cut in the colonel, “General, you just finished saying you can’t transport a submarine to a lake. And their very length-”

  “Midgets,” said Freeman. “That’s all I can think of. It has to be.” He turned to Norton. “Dick — young David Brentwood?”

  “SAS?”

  “Yes. His brother. Crackerjack sub skipper—”

  “Pacific Fleet, sir.”

  “Yes. Where the hell is he?”

  “Haven’t got a clue, General.”

  “Find out. Immediately. I need expert advice. And Dick?”

  “Sir?”

  “David Brentwood. Where’s he?”

  Norton shrugged. “Far as I know, he’s still on Ratmanov. Or at one of the Alaskan—”

  “Get him, too. No reason why we can’t make this a family affair.”

  “Sir,” proffered Norton, “if it’s information about midget subs, I suggest we save time and call the Pentagon. They’ll—”

  “No, no. I’ve already done that,” said Freeman, his irritability rising in direct proportion to his excitement, the men around him watching with the awe of beginning violinists realizing they were watching a maestro conducting and composing at the same time. “I’ve already got the information on that.” He seemed grumpy that Norton hadn’t made the connection. “Goddamn it! Nerpa’s a small seal, you see. Only four and a half feet long. A midget.

  “Most likely candidate, the Pentagon says,” Freeman announced, “is this thing. A GST — standing for gaseous storage in a toroidal hull.” He flattened a crumpled fax. The GST was an ugly thing to look at.

  “Designed,” Freeman informed his listeners, “by some Italian joker called Guinio Santi.”

  The picture of the sub looked like what the Pentagon and others had described as a “Michelin tire man lying on his side.” This was before the outer, more streamlined hull, was added on. It made the GST look like a huge egg, the multiple bicycle-tube ring effect under the superstructure created by three-inch-diameter piping that, wound around and around the hull, allowed engineers to overcome the problems of making a simple, relatively cheap, nonnuclear, quiet submarine. This also meant it was a much less detectable submarine. Because of the wraparound piping, the GST, unlike the other nonnuclear subs, did not have to come up for air so often and risk disclosing its position either by showing a snorkel or by creating thermal patching, which put regular nuclear and diesel-electric subs in danger from aerial and satellite surveillance.

  And so, ironically, its plans stolen from the Italian designer by Chernko’s agents, the fat, egg-shaped GST, using a constantly reusable, nonnuclear chemical-exchange-powered engine — originally scheduled by its manufacturer, the Kuznetsky Metallurgical Kombinat, or KMK works in Novokuznetsk, 180 miles southeast of Novosibirsk, to create chaos among the Allied blue water fleets — was now, following the loss of Vladivostok and other Siberian naval bases on the coast, being used not in the Pacific or Atlantic but in the inland Sea of Baikal.

  But if this much was known about the midget sub, it took Captain Robert Brentwood, USN, after a gruelling ten-hour flight by chopper and jet to Hokkaido and Second Army HQ, to fully explain to Freeman and the rest of the officers in G-2 exactly why the toroidal hull was so dangerous. With a total displacement of only 250 tons against the Soviet-made Alfa’s 4,200 tons and the U.S. Sea Wolfs 10,000 tons, the toroidal-shaped hull would occupy less than 6 percent of regular attack-size submarines. Only fifty feet long, it was designed specifically to defeat the superior sound-detection technology of the United States and her allies, its exhaust gases being constantly stored and scrubbed rather than being expelled into the water. With a burst speed of twenty-five knots submerged, faster than most full-size diesel-electric subs, and a cruising speed of plus or minus fifteen knots, it could range 230 miles without coming to the surface. Except, as Brentwood pointed out, to fire its missiles. And even these would be fired subsurface, after its “pic” and/or small float-drum charges had blown a hole in the thinner ice.

  “It’s a formidable weapon,” conceded Brentwood. “Compared to our subs, a GST of this type would look like a speck of fly dirt. The Iraqis were being trained for midget subs in Poland, but when the Gulf war came Hussein never got a chance to use them. Couldn’t get them through the embargo.”

  “Why the hell didn’t we go for it?” asked Freeman.

  “Because,” said Brentwood, with elegant simplicity, “we thought we had the best.”

  “How big a crew?” Freeman asked.

  “Six to eight, sir,” replied Brentwood. “Essentially same controls as for any submarine. Long shifts. Probably twelve hours on, twelve off, three to four men each shift. Minimum would be captain, engineer, electronics warfare officer, and CPO or enlisted man on the rudder control. General, asked Brentwood, “do we have any wreckage of the cruise missiles used against Second Army? Any that didn’t go off?”

  “They all went off,” said Freeman grimly. “Why?”

  “Well, I’d guess they were using SS-21Ds — suB-1aunched, converted land-attack missiles. Twenty-one feet long, two-thousand-mile range. It’s so much like our Tomahawk, we call it the Tomahawski.”

  The junior lieutenant thought it was amusing. Freeman didn’t. He was figuring that with each salvo fired on Second Army being a minimum of twenty missiles, there wasn’t just one GST out there that they had entrained to Port Baikal from wherever the hell they were making them — there were more. He put it to Brentwood.

  “Once clear of the water,” said Brentwood, “missile’s jack-knife fins extend, reach Mach 1.2 in two minutes. And I’d say with ripple launch, General, and given their length, we’re looking at maybe four missiles apiece.”

  “What’s this ripple launch?”

  “Well, sir, you fire one missile from your starboard forward tube, the second, port aft, to counteract the rocking effect of the first missile. Then you fire port forward, then port aft.”

  “How long would you say to launch?” Freeman put to him.

  “Two minutes. Four minutes and they’re loafing.”

  “Holy dooly!” said the young lieutenant, with a high whistle.

  Freeman glowered at him then looked at Brentwood. “So how many subs do they have?”

  “I think we’re looking at five, General. If I’m right about four missiles apiece. That we can’t be sure of. But if we’re talking twenty missiles a salvo, then that’s just about—”

  “Yes, yes,” said Freeman impatiently.

  “I should add, General, it depends on the thickness of the ice or if there’s an open space due to upwelling. They could probably launch in less time. Same thing happens when you’re in the polar ice. You can get wafer thickness or—”

  “Yes, yes,” cut in Freeman, again impatiently, his mood reflecting his and G-2’s realizatio
n that if he could not take out the subs — and he couldn’t by air or missile attack because of the ice roof — he’d lose the war. “They have to be taken out,” he said, looking steadily at Brentwood, who felt his stomach roll over like an ice-encrusted ship, capsizing, top-heavy in the polar pack.

  * * *

  When Freeman outlined his plan, he didn’t make it an order but a request, adding, “Besides, your brother’s experienced in these matters. He’ll be a great help.” Freeman paused.”You’re the oldest, aren’t you?” Freeman made his question about Brentwood being the eldest sound like small talk at a cocktail party.

  “Yes, sir,” said Brentwood evenly. “I’m the oldest.”

  “I hope I don’t embarrass you, Captain, but damn, your father must be proud of you boys.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Brentwood parried.”I haven’t seen him in over a year. I’ve been at sea for so long—”

  “Good! Good!” said Freeman, slapping Brentwood affectionately on the back as he steered him over to the map table. “And when this is over, we’ll see you two get special leave. Fair enough?”

  Robert Brentwood looked across at General Freeman.”Fairest thing I’ve heard all day, General.”

  “By God, Brentwood, that’s the spirit.” He turned to Norton. “I wish that old limey fart—” He paused. “What’s his name, Dick? At the White House?”

  “Soames, sir. Brigadier Soames.”

  “Yes, well I wish he was here. We’d show him American know-how. Eh, Dick?”

  “General, that lake is heavily defended. Now that railhead at Port Baikal is bound to be heavily defended. Only place in the south where they could have slid a midget down slips direct from the rail tracks.”

  “Defended by AA batteries, yes,” responded Freeman, “but they’re expecting fighters, bombers, Dick. Not a commando raid.”

  Norton was confused. “But sir, the risk of a drop through all that AA—”

  “Drop?” said Freeman, surprised. “Who the hell said anything about a drop?” He thrust his monocle at the map. “I’m not going to send brave men to drop on top of AA fire. You’ve got it ass backwards, Dick. We’ll fly them in. Can leave in the dark, but it’ll have to be a daylight raid, given our scanty intelligence on the layout of Port Baikal.” He was talking to Brentwood now. “Your brother’ll lead an SAS/Delta troop. Twelve men.” Without a pause he told Norton to make the preparations. “Now, Brentwood, you tell the what you need. I suggest seven more men from our navy base in Hokkaido to bring your strength to eight. Or do you want to pick your own outfit?”