by Ian Slater
“Oh — all fit again, are we?”
“Fit enough,” said David.
“Ah!” quipped the sergeant. “You signed up then?”
David stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“Come on, Yank,” the sergeant said derisively. “The bloody commandos. Beret boys. They asked you to sign on the dotted line. Right?”
“You’re in violation of secrecy,” said David, looking anxiously around. “You’re an MP. You should know—”
“Oh, pardon me, Sir Galahad,” retorted the sergeant, buttoning up his greatcoat, one of the blackened brass buttons hanging by a thread. “I didn’t realize you’d taken holy orders. And don’t tell me my fucking job.” He glared at Lili. “Anyway — common bloody knowledge, isn’t it?”
“What?” said David, hard-eyed. He felt Lili’s arm slip through his protectively, and for a second her perfume of roses washed over him and he was transported to a summer with Melissa, a warm breeze bending and teasing the young grass, Melissa’s breasts warm and pliant beneath him. A surge of arousal outstripped his anger and he decided there wasn’t any point in pursuing the question of security with the sergeant. The Brit was a little off the deep end anyway. Lili snuggled closer to David in the rain as the sergeant mockingly answered Brentwood’s question by repeating it.
“What’s common knowledge? For Christ’s sake, Brentwood, anyone with half a brain knows HQ’s recruiting. Fucking Arabs are threatening the Yids, right? Iraq’s going to drop a few CBs on ‘em. Right? So we’re going to send in some of our heros to the rescue. Right? Or aren’t you going?”
Brentwood saw the mad look in the sergeant’s eyes again, remembering the first time he’d seen him bellowing down the canal bank. This time Lili’s grip on David’s arm was one of alarm.
“You’re nuts,” said David before he could stop himself.
“Hey, hey, Yank. Button your beak!” the sergeant hissed. Lili moved in closer against David, holding him in tighter still.
“All right, old buddy,” said David placatingly.
“All right then, eh — eh?” The MP was getting out of control.
“David,” said Lili quietly, “please—”
As they walked off, Lili’s free arm stretching high above her in an effort to bring her floral umbrella over him, the rain was drumming on the canvas canopy of the HQ building, rivulets pouring over the edge, the rain so heavy, it was pitting the snow that still lay in dirty mounds by the sidewalk. The sergeant was shouting after them. “Better come by fifteen-thirty, mate. Or you’ll be fucking AWOL. Understand?”
“He is the nuts!” said Lili, wide-eyed, her bonnet shaking side to side.
David slipped his arm further about her. She told him first she would take him to the Grand Place to show him the four-hundred-year-old gilded Flemish gables surrounding the square; then they would go to the Museum of Art and she would present the “immortal” Rubens. “Do you like the little people?” she asked.
“Little people? Pygmies — in Brussels?”
“No, no, silly. The puppets.”
He didn’t answer, preoccupied with crossing the rain-spattered street in what was now heavy military traffic and still thinking about the sergeant’s blatant breach of security. David hated the idea of fingering anyone but knew he had no option. Too bad the sergeant had cracked, and the Englishman couldn’t know how much David sympathized, but Brentwood knew if he didn’t report what the sergeant had shouted about, a lot of American and British lives might be lost. What, for example, would have happened if Lili Malmédy had been a spy? “What’s that?” David snapped at her.”I mean pardon?”
“The puppets. Do you like them?”
“Yes,” he said. “Sure — I like puppets. I’ll have to make a call, too, okay?”
“Okay.” She said it with delight. “It is all right, we have time. After, we will go to the Toone.”
“Toone?”
“A puppet theater for — how do you say? — adults?”
“I guess.” It made him think of the British Special Air Service captain at the interview saying something about enjoying Flemish girls and what sounded like “Cokes.” He pressed Lili for an explanation.
“The same as in your country,” she answered. “Fizzy drinks.”
“No,” said David. “Way I heard it, I think it must be a Belgian word.”
“Oh — you must mean a Walloonian, not Flemish.”
“Okay,” he said. “A Walloonian word.”
“Then it must be C-O-U-Q-U-E-S. It is a—” she thought for a moment “—A vast cookie.”
“A cookie?”
“Yes. Very large. As big as—” She withdrew her arm from his, holding her hands about two feet apart.
“A cake!” he said.
“No, no,” she answered, “a cookie,” her face suffused with such enthusiasm that momentarily David felt much older. “It is a cookie,” she insisted. “You do not believe me?”
He took her hand and looked at her. “Yes,” he said, “I do,” and her smile told him unequivocally that she loved him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Rosemary stood on the dockside at Holy Loch watching the USS Roosevelt slip her moorings from the sub pen inside the huge, floating dock and pass her tender, the USS Topeka, as she made her way through the oily calm of the loch past the crushed-stone houses that lined the shore and the magnificent snow-mantled hills of Scotland’s western approaches, heading out toward the rougher water south in the Firth of Clyde.
She knew she might never see Robert again, and yet rather than the overwhelming sadness of saying good-bye numbing her as it had the first time, the clean, wintry smell of the loch, the snow-dusted blue of the hills, and the screech of gulls all came to her aid — their wild beauty enough to make the very idea of war seem momentarily unreal. Besides, the strain of these last few hours together before they’d reached the safety of Mallaig had worn her down so that she felt too tired to weep. In any case, with Robert on the Roosevelt’s bridge, the last thing she wanted him or any other of the crew aboard to see was a woman bawling her eyes out.
It was time to be strong, to return to Surrey, spend Christmas with her parents, and get on with her teaching again at St. Anselm’s in the new term. And to keep herself and “Junior”— Robert still insisted it would be a boy — well nourished, no small feat with rationing becoming more severe, the Allied convoys under constant attack from the Russian subs.
Taking off a tartan scarf Robert had bought her in Mallaig, she waved once more, his captain’s cap no more than a blip on the bridge atop the Roosevelt’s tall, tapered sail.
Robert had her framed in the circle of his binoculars. She was standing alone on the dock, dwarfed by the hills, and he was afraid for her. The “charmers” aside, who the police had told him had never bothered any of the wives, it was still possible in this war that a Soviet rocket attack from as far away as the Russians’ Baltic bases could kill her as easily as a depth bomb could implode his sub, killing every man aboard in seconds.
Now fully provisional and reloaded with the latest D-5 Trident missiles, the Sea Wolf was passing through the aerial arrays of the degaussing station.
Beyond the few small surface craft of the Royal Navy that would run noise interference for him until he reached the more open water of the Firth of Clyde, the best way to avoid detection from either spy trawlers or satellites, which might pick up either the Roosevelt’s thermal patch, from even the minute heat exchange of the sub’s exhaust systems, or its surface bulge, not visible to the naked eye, was to go deep. As well as the Sea Wolf’s speed being greater beneath the water, because of the absence of roiling, depth was the best defense against aircraft with magnetic anomaly detectors looking for the sub and its lethal load of six missiles, each D-5 with a range of six-thousand-plus nautical miles and with fourteen MIRVs, independently targeted reentry vehicles, of 150 kilotons each.
Normally the crew’s scuttlebutt would have been alive with rumor of where they were going
based on a word here and there around the dry dock. But this trip, it was different. Britain’s MI6—its secret services counterespionage branch — had discovered that a spy, a disc jockey on a Glasgow radio station, had, by using letter-for-letter code in his selection of record titles, been broadcasting departure times as well as the names of submarines egressing Holy Loch.
As a result, security at the base had been so tight that the base commander wouldn’t even risk verbal instructions to his captains for fear of parabolic directional mikes being beamed in from the hills around the loch. The result was that it was only now that Robert Brentwood, his sub’s food supplies the only factor limiting the normal war patrol of seventy-five days submerged, was going down below to Control, forward of the sail. As soon as he was clear of the firth, heading into the Irish Sea, he would dive, and only then would he open up the magnetic-tape-sealed heavy-gauge white plastic envelope to find out where he was going and what his mission was.
“Officer of the deck — last man down. Hatch secured.”
Zeldman took up his position as officer of the deck. “Last man down. Hatch secured, aye. Captain, the ship is rigged for dive, current depth one three two fathoms. Checks with the chart. Request permission to submerge the ship.”
“Very well, officer of the deck,” said Brentwood. “Submerge the ship.”
“Submerge the ship, aye, sir.” Zeldman turned to the diving console. “Diving officer, submerge the ship.”
“Submerge the ship, aye, sir. Dive — two blasts on the dive alarm. Dive, dive.”
The wheezing sound of the alarm followed, loud enough for the crew in Control to hear but not powerful enough to resonate through the hull. A seaman shut all the main ballast tanks. “All vents are shut.”
“Vents shut, aye.”
A seaman was reading off the depth. “Fifty… fifty-two… fifty-four…”
One of the chiefs of the boat was watching the angle of the dive, trim, and speed. “Officer of the deck, conditions normal on the dive.”
“Very well, diving officer,” confirmed Zeldman, turning to Brentwood. “Captain, at one-thirty feet, trim satisfactory.”
“Very well,” answered Brentwood. “Steer four hundred feet ahead standard.”
Zeldman turned to the helmsman. “Helm all ahead standard. Diving officer, make the depth four hundred feet.”
They were just flattening out at three ninety when Brentwood heard, “Sonar contact! Possible hostile surface warship, bearing two seven eight! Range, twenty-four miles.”
Brentwood turned calmly to the attack island. “Very well. Man battle stations.”
“Man battle stations, aye, sir,” repeated a seaman, pressing the yellow button, a pulsing F sharp, slurring to G, sounding throughout the ship.
Brentwood turned to the diving officer. “Diving officer, periscope depth.”
“Periscope depth, aye, sir.”
Brentwood’s hand reached up, taking the mike from its cradle without him even looking. “This is the captain. I have the con. Commander Zeldman retains the deck.”
Beneath the purplish-blue light over the sonar consoles, the operator advised, “Range twenty-four point two miles. Possible surface hostile by nature of sound.”
“Up scope,” ordered Brentwood. “Ahead two-thirds.”
“Scope’s breaking,” said one of the watchmen. “Scope’s clear.”
Brentwood’s hands flicked down the scope’s arms, and, his eyes to the cups, he moved around with the scope. On the COMPAC screen Zeldman could see the dot, moving so fast at forty knots, it had to be a hydrofoil.
Brentwood stopped moving the scope. “Bearing. Mark! Range. Mark! Down scope.” Above the soft whine of the retracting periscope Brentwood reported, “I hold one visual contact. Range?”
“Twenty-two point three miles,” came the reply.
“Range every thousand yards,” ordered Brentwood.
“Range every thousand yards, aye, sir. Range forty-six thousand yards.”
“Forty-six thousand yards,” confirmed Brentwood. The possible hostile was almost within firing range. “Officer of the deck, confirm MOSS tube number.”
“MOSS in for’ard tube four, sir.”
“Very well. Angle on the bow,” said Brentwood. “Starboard three point two.”
“Check,” came the confirmation.
“Range?” asked Brentwood.
“Forty-five thousand yards.”
“Forty-five thousand yards,” repeated Brentwood. “Firing point procedures. Master four five. Tube one.”
“Firing point procedures, aye, sir. Master four five. Tube one, aye… solution ready… weapons ready… ship ready.”
“Con,” said Brentwood. “Not hostile. Repeat not hostile.”
It was a British E-boat with a similar noise signature, probably due to repairs on its prop, to that of a 180-foot-long Russian Nanuchka attack boat. It was the fact that the British E-boat had suddenly increased speed to sixty-seven kilometers, at least nine kilometers an hour faster than a Russian Nanuchka missile boat, that had saved her from being sunk by Roosevelt.
As he gave the order to stand down from battle stations and began tearing open the “orders” envelope, Robert Brentwood recalled that it was an NKA Nanuchka that had crippled his brother Ray’s fast-guided missile frigate off Korea.
* * *
With everyone still coming down from battle stations. Executive Officer Peter Zeldman kept a sharp eye on the planesmen and the other crew on watch, making sure the adrenaline didn’t find its way into overcompensation in the controls.
Brentwood tore open the envelope then, having read his instructions, spoke calmly, purposefully, into the PA.
“This is the captain speaking. USS Roosevelt has been ordered north through the GI Gap to hold stations beneath the ice cap. Duration will be seventy-five days unless otherwise ordered by SACLANT during rendezvous with TACAMO aircraft. This will mean that we’ll be in shallow waters part of the time, but we will have air cover from our bases in Greenland on our port flank as we head up, and some long-range ASW aircraft from Iceland on our starboard flank before we’re in the safety of Molly Malone and environs.” He paused, handing the envelope to Zeldman for countersignature. “Consequently, silent running is the order of the day. Soviets have been dropping buoy-attached hydrophone arrays all over the approaches whenever they can get through our air cover. Same as we do. I might as well tell you that there is no way we can completely avoid the arrays, which may send our signature to Soviet Hunter/Killers, but we can minimize the risk and could luck out. Once we’re under the ice, our safety margin increases. If, however, we cannot avoid being heard, we’ll be in a fight which we’re ready for. That is all.”
“Molly Malone?” asked a perplexed cook’s helper, his first haul on the Roosevelt. A chief of the boat poured himself another coffee, offering the pot around. “Molloy Deep,” he explained, “about seven hundred miles from the Pole. Over fifteen thousand feet straight down. Less chance of being detected.”
“You mean we just sit there?”
“You hayseed,” said a torpedoman’s mate. “Christ, three thousand feet’s our crush depth.”
“What I mean,” the chief told the newcomer, “is that there’s lots of deep water room so we can keep moving to different launch spots.” The chief quickly switching the subject to the chromium guard around the twin silex glass coffeepots. “Those are a bit loose,” he told the cook’s helper. “Better make sure they’re secure. Don’t want anything dropping. They’d hear it from here to Murmansk.”
“No sweat,” put in the cook. “Once we’re north of sixty-five, we’ll be under drift ice. North of seventy-five, we’re under pack. Have a roof over our heads, eh, Chiefie?”
“Don’t matter. Fix those guards.”
“Will do.”
As the chief walked out of the mess, the cook’s helper noted, “He doesn’t look too happy.”
“Ah,” retorted the cook, “probably put a packet on us going s
outh — instead of north.”
“What’s wrong with north?”
“Friggin’ dangerous,” said a torpedoman’s mate. “Ain’t nothin’ right with it. Fuckin’ cold, too.”
In Control, Robert Brentwood told the navigator to instruct the Cray NAVCOMP to plot a course for latitude sixty-two degrees north, longitude thirty-two degrees ten minutes west, which would bring Roosevelt to a point over the Reykaanes Ridge, south of Iceland. This position would put them 430 miles southwest of Iceland’s North Cape before they headed for the narrow Denmark Strait of the GI — Greenland-Iceland— Gap, in parts no deeper than five hundred feet. From there Brentwood intended to execute a zigzag/weave pattern leading eleven hundred miles farther north to Koldewey Island at the southernmost extent of the pack ice that extended like a long, right-handed thumb pointing down from the Pole into the Greenland Sea.
In all, the war patrol would run west of Scotland to Reykaanes Ridge, then north beyond Koldewey Island to the fifteen-thousand foot deeps along the Fracture Zone around Spitzbergen Island, putting the Sea Wolf between Greenland’s northern reaches and northwestern Russia. In all, the journey of around three thousand miles would normally take her the best part of four days at her flank speed of thirty knots plus. But moving more slowly, at a third of her speed, so the cooling pumps would not have to work so hard, therefore limiting the sub’s noise, the slower trip, while navigating through the ice fields and the southward-flowing East Greenland Current, would take around thirteen days.
While the Greenland-Iceland Gap was known to mariners at large as the GI Gap, to the NATO sub crews it was the “Gastrointestinal Tract”—the one where ships’ quartermasters recorded a higher than usual consumption of Pepto-Bismol as drift ice, calved from the pack ice, ground together all around you like a giant grinding his teeth. It also added ominous and forbidding tones to the sound waves coming in via the Sea Wolf’s towed passive sonar array, which was integrated with the conformal bow-mounted passive hydrophones. Which meant it could confuse sonar operators.
Brentwood bent over the chart, carefully circling the six stations he would have to maintain in the Arctic deep, ready on a moment’s notice, should the occasion ever arise, to attack one or all of the more than forty-five Russian navy, army, and air force bases on Kola Peninsula — from the ice-free ports of Polyarnyy and Murmansk in the west as far east as Amderma on the Kara Sea and Uelen on Siberia’s edge that looked out on the Bering Sea, less than a hundred miles from Alaska and only eleven hundred miles from Unalaska, where his sister, Lana, was stationed.
