World in Flames wi-3

by Ian Slater

  “It’s not all the men,” said Leach. “Not yet. But it’s only a matter of time.”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “That Alfa, sir. We all heard it going down. Split wide open — their reactor squeezed flatter’n a pancake, I reckon.”

  Robert Brentwood’s tone changed utterly. “Who have you noticed? I mean, which men—”

  “Guys from the engine room mainly — where there was a lot of flooding — and in the torpedo room. A lot of leakage in there, I think.” He hesitated. “As well as Control.”

  “You told anyone else about this?”

  “No, sir.” Leach’s confidence was growing in direct proportion to Brentwood’s discomfort.

  “Well, hold your horses, Leach. We’d better have a good look at everyone’s dosimeters before we rush to any conclusions. We’ll do another shield check just to make sure. If it’s here, we’ll seal it.”

  “If it isn’t, sir?”

  “Then you’re correct, Leach. We’re in a lot of trouble.” Brentwood made to go but stopped at Control’s curtain and looked back. “I won’t cover this up if it’s true. But I want you to keep quiet until we’re sure. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well,” said Brentwood, and with that he knew that a load had fallen from Leach’s shoulders — onto his.

  * * *

  When he reentered Control, the chief engineer was poring over the blueprints of the ship — for its size, it was the most complicated of any vessel ever designed, more intricate than the space shuttles. “Captain?”

  “Yes, chief?”

  “RRO wants to see you down in the reactor room.”

  “Very well. You come up with any ideas about how we’re going to refloat this baby, Chief?”

  “Not so far, Captain.”

  “Any way we can get that ballast tank self-patching?”

  The chief shook his head. “No hope there, Captain. Goddamned cave-in. Hole’s too big. Drive a truck through it. Damn lucky the pressure hull’s intact.”

  * * *

  As Brentwood walked down through Sherwood Forest, aft of the sub’s sail where the six fifty-seven-ton Trident D-5 missiles stood, a row of three towering either side of him, resting in their forty-two-foot-high, seven-foot-wide tubes, he could hear the steady wash of the forty-ton ventilator like a gentle breeze through a copse of birch. Droplets of condensation beaded the tall, chocolate-colored tubes as if they were sweating, enough deadly power in their forty-two warheads— each reentry vehicle with a six-thousand-mile range and independent navigational equipment — to take the three hundred kilotons to within a circular error of probability of plus or minus two hundred yards from a target.

  And yet, trapped beneath the ice, what good were they unless Roosevelt could rise and break through? To make matters worse, the 114,000-pound D-5s were heavier than the old 68,000-pound C-5s, meaning the sub was even more firmly weighed down on the shelf than she might otherwise have been.

  When he reached the anteroom of the reactor, Brentwood took off his shoes, slipping on a pair of the yellow felt-lined plastic bootees so that any odd piece of radioactive dust that he might conceivably pick up would remain in the reactor room when he changed back to his regular soft-soled deck shoes. “What have we got, Leo?” he asked Lieutenant Galardi, who, despite his white coveralls, looked more like the family dentist than a reactor room officer. He was also a man of few words.

  “Captain, we’ve been rapped and it’s not coming from this baby. That goddamned Alfa we sank tore apart — including her reactor. With everything else going on, only a few boys have reported it, but soon, as we get normal lighting back, everyone’s going to notice they’ve got a dose of gamma radiation.”

  “How big a dose?”

  “Not exactly sure.” Galardi paused. “I’d like to call in all dosimeters, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Go ahead. What are we up to now in rads?”

  “We’ve passed Greenpeace recommended dosage,” said Galardi, with a rare smile that Brentwood found distinctly unsettling.

  “Hell, Leo — even God’s passed Greenpeace’s recommended dosage. How bad do you think it is? I mean, if the rate you’ve seen so far doesn’t decrease, what’s the prognosis?”

  “If it goes up—”

  “Come on, Leo, don’t dance. You’ve always given me straight answers. Let’s keep it that way.”

  “If it keeps climbing, sir, we’re all going to lose some hair.”

  “When will you know for certain?” Brentwood realized he’d left himself wide open for a joke — when your hair falls out — but neither of them was in the mood.

  “I’ll need a half an hour, Captain. Even then we’d have to hear what the experts in the Oxford Rad Lab say to know for sure.”

  “Well, Leo, there aren’t any of them around at the moment.”

  “I noticed that, Captain.”

  Brentwood took off the bootees and glanced at his watch. It was 0545. By 0615 he would have a rough idea of whether Leach’s fears were fully justified. “Surely to God it isn’t that powerful that it can come straight through the hull?”

  “Oh, it’s not that,” Leo assured him. “It’s in the water. The leaks. We’re swimming in the goddamned stuff.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  The jumbled ice of the Yalu proved better cover than Freeman could have reasonably hoped for, and up close, what had seemed, looking down from Outpost Delta, like chunks no more than three or four feet high were in fact enormous shards of ice over ten feet in height, the moonlight throwing the jagged landscape of the river into sharp relief.

  The patrol could easily see their way across. And so, Freeman knew, could the Chinese if they were in the area. He was determined to move slowly, for though he didn’t fear land mines — the shifting ice too precarious to plant them due to the changing pressure of the ice — he was nevertheless alert to the possibility of booby traps.

  On the point, Freeman would go ahead, checking the immediate area about him before waving on the patrol. High overhead the dot of an eagle crossed the moon’s face, passing through the aura of ice needles that was clearly visible as a golden ring. Finally the patrol eased its way off the frozen river toward the black humps of hills that faded into the snow-covered foothills of Manchuria.

  All this time Freeman was calmly surveying escape routes should firing suddenly erupt around them, his nose as much a guide as his eyes — alert for the smell of wood smoke, which, while it mightn’t necessarily signal an NKA or Chinese position, would warn him of a village where the Chinese might be storing arms and other supplies as a forward base.

  There was a sudden ice fall. Freeman flicked off the safety catch of his squad automatic weapon, its triangular box magazine pressing in firmly against his side. But soon all was quiet again, and in another little while they came upon a track, or rather series of tracks, leading up from the river, where the grass in the flood margin had been stomped down, frozen like coarse hair, prone to crack underfoot. Freeman knew he had only two options: to go on where they couldn’t help but make some noise or to head back.

  It might be, Freeman realized, that there were no Chinese or NKA units anywhere in this section, but with the north-south valleys running down to the river, offering natural revetment areas for armor, the general couldn’t believe that the Chinese wouldn’t use the Manchurian side as a staging area. And if the North Koreans had successfully dug tunnels all along the DMZ — the last one being discovered in 1990—despite American ground-movement sensors, this area could be riddled with underground supply dumps, the Chinese divisions waiting for the next snowstorm that could nullify U.S. air strikes and blind the U.S. artillery’s forward observation posts. He knew that if he were the PLA commander, he’d sure as hell be using the sector.

  After Pyongyang, Freeman figured he understood something of Kim’s strategy, telling Jim Norton once that Kim was a “Korean Montgomery”—wouldn’t move until he had a “four-to-one advanta
ge in toilet rolls.” It wasn’t his — Freeman’s— way, but he knew that it, too, won battles.

  Ironically, he felt safe the farther the patrol penetrated the hillocks on the northern side. Providing they didn’t find any evidence of Chinese or NKA presence following the last attack on Outpost Delta, his patrol would be left alone. And if there were troops in the area, they would only attack if discovered, unlikely to reveal themselves — saving everything for a surprise attack.

  He motioned the squad to stop, waited, and listened some more. He’d known of more than one patrol who, in their eagerness to get the nail biting over with, had kept moving forward without pausing long enough each time. And when you didn’t rest, the sound of your breathing, your heart thumping, drowned all other noise — including the enemy’s.

  Freeman could smell both his and his men’s sweat and thanked God the wind was blowing against them from the north.

  It was a small thing in the moonglow, a depression no more than a few feet wide and an inch or so deep, but with the intuitive sense of the experienced soldier, Freeman was already leery of it. Cradling his SAW in his left arm, he lay down and crawled within a foot of the depression, its outline like that of a big serving dish. Drawing the knife from his calf scabbard, he gently probed the edges of the depression, the blade sounding as if it were passing through coarse sugar. He waited for the click of metal on metal that would signify a mine. There was none. Instead, the knife was stuck. He waved the patrol back several yards and signaled for them to cover up, helmets down tight, but no chin strap. If it was a mine, nonmetallic or not, and went off, the concussion beneath the helmets would lift the chin straps so hard, it’d snap their jawbones. He tried pulling the knife again, and this time it came out. It was a circular cane-woven dish that the blade had sunk into — the kind he’d seen villagers using, tossing up the rice grain during the harvest, but much firmer than the grain platter he had at first thought it was. As he drew it closer to himself, he saw the black hole that it had been covering and knew he was looking at a tunnel entrance.

  Slowly he replaced the cover, then eased his way back through the snow to the squad. Now he knew why the trail wasn’t mined — it was a pathway from the tunnel to the river. His whisper was soft, distinct, and as Wezlinski, first rifleman in the patrol, noticed, Freeman’s instructions were remarkably unhurried.

  “It’s a tunnel entrance,” he told Wezlinski. “If it’s active, we know my hunch is right and we can call down artillery on these gooks.” Quietly he turned his arm to see his watch.

  “Give me twenty minutes,” he told Wezlinski. “If I don’t pop back up — or you hear one hell of a racket — then you’ll know I’ve found the bastards. Then you get the hell out of here and zero in the artillery.”

  He took a handful of snow to moisten his mouth in the cold, dry wind. Next he took out a plastic muzzle protector, slipped it over the end of the SAW’s barrel so as to keep out the snow, laid it down by the path, then drew both.45 pistols, checking the magazines. “When I come out,” he whispered softly, “I’ll stick a glove on one of these.45s. You see it sticking up, hold your fire. If I don’t find my way back here or have to come out somewhere else, I’ll fire a red flare. That’ll give your buddies up in Delta a position for artillery fire. You’ll have to move fast back across the river. Understand? Now, synchronize your watch.”

  “But—” said Wezlinski in amazement. “You aren’t going down there, General?”

  Freeman tapped him, fatherly, on the shoulder. “Our boys did it all the time in ‘Nam. Only way to find out whether it’s an old tunnel — or if it’s loaded to the gills.”

  “But, General—” said Wezlinski, his voice tight with fear. “Why don’t we just throw in a bunch of grenades, General?”

  “Won’t tell us a damn thing, son. Way they make these rat-holes, they twist and turn — got vents in them, blind corners, the whole shebang. Even use bamboo screens across to deflect shrapnel. Like goin’ down a mine, son. Got to see it for yourself.”

  Freeman pushed the SAW back to Wezlinski — the big weapon too unwieldy in a tunnel. He checked the six grenades he had clipped to his belt, took off his helmet, put on the tear gas mask from his pack, and moved toward the hole, a 7-shaped flashlight in his left hand, the.45 from his right holster in the other hand. Wezlinski heard a shuffle of ice as the general slid down into the hole.

  When Wezlinski passed the word back, the tail-end Charlie, facing the river, shook his head. “No way you’d get me down there, man,” he whispered. “He’s nuts!”

  * * *

  Slowly extending his arms out in the pitch darkness, the first thing Freeman noticed was that the tunnel was no more than four feet wide and about six feet high, though now and then he felt his hair brush the ice-cold dirt of the roof so that he was forced to stoop. After five yards — he was careful to keep count — he felt the tunnel veering sharply to the left, then going straight for another two yards before it swung hard left again, then right. He thought he heard something up ahead, stopped, but if it had been something moving, it was gone now.

  Then he heard it again. At first it seemed to be going away from him, but then was coming toward him — a faint scrambling. He resisted the temptation to use the flashlight. Then there was a fast rushing movement, a furry rat racing over his feet. He could smell them now — a stream of them.

  The fact that the rats had apparently turned back toward him indicated he was coming to a cul-de-sac. He heard another sound: a tinkling. He brought his wrist up close to his eyes so he could read the watch face. He’d been down only three minutes. It had seemed like an eternity. The thought of rats gnawing his face if he should fall turned his stomach.

  He waited for ten seconds or so, hoping that his eyes might adjust to any faint moonlight that might be penetrating a vent— if there were any — but if anything, it was blacker than before. He heard the tinkling again.

  * * *

  Up above the tunnel, in the world of moonlight and fresh air, Wezlinski cursed silently to himself. Someone in the squad had broken wind and the odor of putrefied baked beans engulfed him, and he thanked God for the breeze that whipped it downwind toward the river.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  “Officer on parade!” called the SAS sergeant major. “Atten-shun!” There was a crash of rubberized Vibram boots from the eighty-man squadron that shook the hall.

  “At ease, gentlemen,” said Major Rye. “Gather ‘round.” As they all crowded in about the twelve-foot-square table, Cheek-Dawson at the adjacent corner, ready, upon Major Rye’s word, to take off the cover, Rye announced, “Another HALO jump, gentlemen. That’s why we’ve been giving you lots of practice up in Scotland. This, however, is not an exercise. Gentlemen, you have been requested!. Code name for the operation is ‘Merlin.’ “

  There was silence following a few joking comments such as “ ‘Bout time…”—comments that would immediately have been withdrawn had they foreseen what now lay before them as, with a flick of the wrist, Rye and Cheek-Dawson removed the green cloth cover from the model of the mission’s target. The scale on the accompanying map Cheek-Dawson was pinning on the wall showed the target was no more than an hour’s flight from the Allies’ most forward airfields — no farther than the Wales-to-Scotland exercises. But even David Brentwood, who, in the Australian’s consistently gregarious presence, had adopted a self-protective nonchalance, could not suppress his surprise. The very air seemed to quiver as the new “Sabre” squadron crowded around the model.

  “Son of a bitch, Aussie!” said Thelman. “You’ve just lost a bundle.”

  “Bloody hell!” retorted the Australian. “The fix is in.”

  “It is indeed,” said Major Rye, looking up at them. “As you gentlemen will appreciate, the location of this target had to be kept from you till the last moment. Now, however, the request has come and you have a full twenty-four hours to walk it through. Inch by inch.” He paused. “Any SAS target, gentlemen, is important. The very fact SAS
is called in makes it so. But I can tell you quite frankly that this is the most important in our history. I have it on good authority both from 10 Downing Street and, for you American chaps, from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that if we do not succeed in—” he paused “—in ‘adjourning’ a meeting which intelligence tells us is scheduled for tomorrow night, the war on the European continent will suddenly shift to chemical and possibly all-out nuclear war.”

  The red-star-topped Byzantine spires were at once familiar and unfamiliar to every man in the room. While they did not know the names of all its salient features, there was no one who didn’t recognize the grim and forbidding grandeur of the Kremlin, the cluster of gold cupolas that were atop the once proud yellow brick imperial palaces and cathedrals of the czar of all the Russias, and amid them, the high, ocher-red walls that now contained the seat of Soviet power. In thirty-six hours, they were told, in the Council of Ministers Building, the Politburo and STAVKA of the Supreme Soviet would meet to put their signatures to what the KGB had already decided — to launch nerve gas attacks against the entire NATO front.

  “The three troops of Sabre squadron,” explained Rye, “will be designated A for Alfa, B for Bravo, C for Charlie — each troop of sixteen subdivided into your four-man modules. Fluent Russian speakers from among the twelve-man HQ group will attach themselves to any of the troops as necessary during the operation. Lieutenant Laylor, leading A Group, will be the first out of three Hercules we’re using for the operation. Group A’s job is to establish and provide a perimeter of fire, Group B will eliminate the Politburo-STAVKA, and Group C will provide backup and detonations for retreat and for pickup, which I’ll get to in due course. One Hercules per group. Second group, B, I must emphasize again, will concern itself only with getting into the Council of Ministers and eliminating the enemy war cabinet. Those of you in this group may require more of the Russian translators than A or C, but I don’t expect there’ll be a great deal of time for conversation anyway.”