Fortunes of War

by Stephen Coonts

  13

  “Gentlemen, there is no Russian-held territory for us to return to,” Pavel Saratov said to his department heads. “There may be a few fishing villages too small for the Japanese to bother with,” the youngest one said. He was no more than twenty-three or twenty-four. “We could abandon the boat and swim ashore.”

  “You wish to fish, do you, Krasin?”

  The others pretended to chuckle. They were tightly crammed in around the small wardroom table. Captain Saratov continued: “Tokyo Bay is the largest port in Asia, perhaps in the world. We have ten torpedoes, four RPG’-GS, and a hundred kilos of plastique. I propose to enter the bay, reconnoiter, then hit them where it hurts the most.”

  “Captain, why don’t we just sink three or four ships out here and be done with it?”

  Saratov looked from face to face. Finally he said, “The question is, What can we do that will hurt them the most?”

  “Sir,” the engineer began, “I don’t think it is reasonable to ask the men to risk their lives to kick the Japanese. The fact is, Russia is in no position to oppose Japan. We no longer have the military capability to fight a war in the Moscow suburbs, much less in the western Pacific. The men know all this. What will we gain?”

  Pavel Saratov stared at the young officer, stunned. He had never heard such a comment from a junior officer. In the old days when political officers rode the ships, such a comment would have meant the immediate termination of a naval career. He tried to keep his face under control. Finally he said, “I am not asking the men to do anything. I give orders and they obey.” They said nothing to that. The execution was too fresh. “XO?”

  “You make the decision, Captain. I am with you wherever you go.”

  That was an old, old joke. No one laughed. Askold had a weakness for terrible jokes.

  “Thank you for that thought, XO. Should we go in? Your candid opinion, please.”

  Askold took out a pack of cigarettes, offered them around the table. Even Saratov took one. When they were smoking, the XO said, “We can hurt them worse inside. Sinking a big tanker in the harbor at Yokohama will have political implications in Japan that we can’t begin to calculate. They’ll probably get us before too long, no matter what we do. Let’s kick them in the balls while we have a leg to swing.”

  “What about afterward?” the engineer asked. Pavel Saratov didn’t answer. The young officer reddened. “I don’t know,” the captain said finally. “There probably won’t be an afterward,” one of them said crossly to the offender. “Do you wanted it written out and signed?”

  No one else had anything to say. “Back to your duties,” the captain said. “Sir, what should I put into the evening report to Moscow?” the com officer asked. “Nothing. There will be no evening report. There will be no radio transmissions at all unless I give a direct order.”

  “But, sir, we didn’t make an evening report last night or the night before. Moscow may think we’re dead.”

  “The Japanese may think that, too. Let’s hope so.”

  Bogrov lingered after the others left. He was from Moscow, a naval academy graduate. When he and Saratov were alone, he said, “You didn’t have to shoot Svechin.”

  “Oh, you precious little bastard, you think not, do you?”

  Bogrov came to attention to deliver the riposte. He must have been thinking about it all day. “I think that—“

  “Shut up! Fool! They must understand — all of them. I am master of this vessel. I swore an oath, and that oath means something to me. I will fight this boat. Every man will do his duty. I will execute any man who doesn’t. No one has a choice — not me, not you, not any of them.” Bogrov said nothing. “Everyone whines about conditions at home.” The captain made a gesture of irritation. “None of that is relevant.”

  Pavel Saratov crossed his hands on the table in front of him and lowered his eyes to them. His voice was very low. “If you say one negative or disrespectful word in front of the men, Bogrov, just one, I will put a bullet into that putrefying mass of gray shit you use for brains. You will obey orders to your last breath, your last drop of blood, or I’ll personally stuff your corpse into a torpedo tube.”

  Cassidy and his pilots quickly settled into a routine at Rhein-Main Air Force Base in Germany. Every day each pilot spent at least two hours in one of the simulators running intercepts, dog-fighting, handling emergencies. Another two hours were spent at the instructor’s station watching a comrade fly the box, as the simulator was known. The rest of the working day they studied the manual on the aircraft and took written tests designed to reinforce what they already knew and to find any areas that needed refreshing.

  The second evening in Germany, Bob Cassidy got them together as a group in a classroom near the simulator.

  “I’ve been told that some of you want to post mail on the net. Is that right?”

  “Yes, sir,” three or four of them muttered.

  “Okay, you may do so, but each letter must be censored by another officer. Pick your own censor. Any disputes that can’t be resolved amicably by the writer and censor go to Preacher Fain for resolution. All the letters must be encrypted before posting.”

  Nods and smiles all around. Four or five of them looked around the room, obviously considering whom they might ask to censor their mail. Bob Cassidy continued:

  “Everything we discuss in this room for the rest of the evening is classified. Everything.”

  All the faces were directed toward him again.

  “We are going to Russia this weekend. We’re going to be here for four more days, and we’ll fly each of those days. We’ll go in flights of four, with myself or Dick Guelich leading. We’ll keep doing the simulators, but we want to see each of you in the air, see how you handle the plane.

  “Sunday, we will fly the planes to Chita Air Base in Siberia. Tankers will escort us there, refuel us enroute. We’ll go armed, ready to fight our way in.

  “The F-22 squadron commanders here in Germany have been more than cooperative. The enlisted technicians that we must have to maintain the planes have volunteered en masse. So have the maintenance and staff officers. I was in the unique position of having more volunteers than we could use, so, after consulting with the squadron COS, I took the very best people available. The Air Force will lift these folks and their equipment to Chita tomorrow.

  “As we speak, Sentinel missile batteries are on their way to Russia. The new Russian chief of staff, Marshal Stolypin, has agreed to place these batteries in the positions where the American technicians believe they will be the most effective.

  “The Russians view this squadron and the Sentinel missile batteries as tangible proof that America is willing to come to their aid. They are doing everything in their power to help us help them. The burden, quite simply, is on us to perform.

  “The time has come to lay the cards on the table, to speak the bald, unvarnished truth. I don’t know why you came with me — I have never tried selling before — I doubt if I’ll try it again. Regardless of why you are here, you need to know that the odds are excellent that you will die in combat within the next few weeks.

  “I want each of you to ask yourself, Is this what I want? Am I willing to kill other human beings? Am I willing to die to help Russia?

  “You are volunteers. Tonight is the last night I will send you home with a handshake and a thank-you. There will be no recriminations, no regrets if you come to me tonight and tell me you have reconsidered and want to go home. I understand. Tomorrow is a different deal. Tomorrow you will be in the Russian Air Army. Tomorrow I can promise nothing.”

  They looked at each other, trying to see what the people on their right and left thought. Everyone was wearing his poker face and checking to see how well the others wore theirs.

  “I can tell you, some of us will die. How many, I don’t know. Only God knows. But some of us will die. I don’t know who. Maybe all. I have no crystal ball. The fighting will be desperate. No quarter will be asked, none given. There are no ru
les in knife fights or aerial combat.

  “We are going to be flying and fighting over some of the most godforsaken real estate on the planet. If you eject, no helicopter will come looking for you. No rescue brigade is going to saddle up to drag your ass out of the bush. The CIA says they will try to help, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. If you can’t take care of yourself, you are going to die out there a million miles from civilization. I doubt if anyone will ever find your corpse. Siberia is huge beyond comprehension.

  “Think about it this evening. I’ll be in my room if anyone wants to talk.”

  Bob Cassidy left then. Before he went to his room, he went to the base communications office and put in a secure call via the satellite phone to General Tuck’s aide in the Pentagon, Colonel John Eatherly. He called each evening, told Eatherly everything. Tonight they discussed the pilots. “Will any of them quit?”

  “Lacy might. I don’t know. We’ll see.”

  “What about Hudek?” Eatherly asked. “I almost dropped my teeth when I saw his file. I think maybe you’re taking a big chance with him.”

  “He’s a killer, a psychopath.”

  “Hmmm …”

  “Some of the best aces have been crazy as bed bugs. Guys like Albert Ball, the Red Baron …”

  “A dozen or two I could name,” Eatherly agreed. “So I brought the guy. I hope I don’t live to regret it.”

  “Well, if he gets too weird, you can shoot him yourself. The Russian regs are a bit more liberal than the UCMJ.” The UCMJ was the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governed discipline in the U.s. armed forces. Cassidy laughed at that. “At least you can laugh,” Eatherly said. “That’s because I don’t know how many are going to quit on me. I’d better go find out.” Bob Cassidy said good night and walked back to the VOQ. In his room he worked on paperwork undisturbed until midnight, then turned out his lights and went to bed. No one even tapped on the door.

  After dark, the Russian submarine Admiral Kolchak raised its snorkel and started its diesel engines. The boat was twenty miles east of the island of Oshima, outside the entrance of Tokyo Bay. Saratov or the XO kept a constant watch through the periscope. After observing the lights of several freighters, Saratov concluded that visibility was down to about three miles in light rain. Every ship up there was radar-equipped, and the Japanese probably had shore-based radar to help keep track of shipping, so surfacing was out of the question. He worried about the destroyers that he couldn’t see. Was it carelessness, arrogance, hubris that caused the Japanese to leave the door to Tokyo Bay unguarded? Or had they set a trap, a trap to catch a fool?

  Saratov had no combat experience, of course. The Soviet/russian NAVY had not fired a shot since 1945, before the captain was born. He felt as green as grass, completely out of his element. Had he assessed this situation correctly, or was there something that he was missing?

  Right now a little experience would be a comfort. He consoled himself with the thought that the Japanese didn’t have any more experience than he did. His neck and arms began to ache. He kept his eyes glued to the scope, kept it moving. Two hours later, he was still at it. He wanted as much of a charge on the batteries as possible before he secured the diesel engines and lowered the snorkel. If only this were his old nuclear-powered Alfa boat! He could stay on the bottom of Tokyo Bay until the food ran out. Not so with this dieselstelectric museum artifact; Admiral Kolchak could remain submerged for about seven days with the electric motors barely turning over. Even with the engines off, lying on the bottom, seven days was about the limit — the air would be so foul that the men would be in danger of death by asphyxiation. Every hour he was in the bay the chances of remaining undetected diminished. He had no time to waste. He must either attack the Japanese or sneak away out to sea. He worked his way toward the entrance, waiting for a ship to come along that was going in. If the Japanese had passive listening devices — hydrophones — at the entrance, the sound of a freighter rumbling through might hide the sound of this boat. He had to play it like the Japs were listening, because they might be. The damned fools should be, anyway. Midnight passed, then one o’clock. The XO relieved Saratov at the scope for fifteen minutes while he relieved himself, looked at the chart, and drank a hot cup of tea. It was past two when he saw a big container ship, over fifty thousand tons, steaming along the channel to enter the bay. It was bearing down on the sub, making about ten knots. He was tempted to torpedo it then and there. No. We can do more damage inside. He got out of the container ship’s way, then muttered to the officer of the deck, “This one. We go in with this one.” lie kept the snorkel up. Running at ten knots on the battery would quickly drain it, and he couldn’t afford that. On the other hand, the boat made a lot more noise with the diesels running than it did on the battery. If the Japs had hydrophones at the entrance to the bay, the odds were good that they would hear the sub. Even if the Japanese hear it, Pavel Saratov thought, they may not recognize the sound for what it is. Or they may ignore it. He needed a nearly full charge on the battery going in. Tomorrow night he would have little time to put a charge on, and he might need every amp to evade antisubmarine forces. He thought the problem through and made his choice. He turned the boat and fell in about five hundred meters behind the freighter. It was huge, and lit up like a small city. With the scope magnification turned up, he could read the words on the stern: LINDA SUE, MONROVIA. There were actually two little spotlights on the stern rail that illuminated the name. He had spent the evening studying the chart of the bay. He recognized the turn in the channel off Uraga Point and the naval anchorage. He stayed with Linda Sue as she steamed slowly and majestically along the channel that would take her to the container piers at Yokohama or Tokyo. There were numerous small craft in the bay, despite the limited visibility and rain— launches, fishing boats, police cruisers. Several small fishing craft were silhouetted against the city lights on the western shore of the bay, which ran from horizon to horizon. Then he saw a boat anchored just outside the shipping channel. Reluctantly, he ordered the diesel secured and the snorkel lowered. The sound of the diesel exhausting through the snorkel was loud if one was on the surface listening, so Saratov decided to play it safe. He cruised up to Yokohama and examined the hundred or so ships waiting to get to the piers for loading and unloading. A forest of ships from nations all over the world — all except Russia. Well, they were all fair game as far as he was concerned, discharging and taking on cargo in a belligerent port. It took five hours to cruise up the bay, then back south, where he picked a spot to settle into the bottom mud a kilometer offshore from a refinery on the northern edge of Yokosuka, north of the naval base. A pier led from the refinery out into the water about a half kilometer. Two conventional tankers were moored to it, but at the very end rested a liquid natural gas — LNG — TANKER, with a huge pressure vessel amidships. He had a splitting headache. He stood in the control room massaging his neck, rubbing his eyes.

  No one had much else to say. When they did want to communicate, they whispered, as if the Japanese were in the next room with a glass against the wall. Perhaps they sensed they were on the edge of something, something large and fierce and infinitely dangerous. Saratov smiled to himself, went to his tiny stateroom, and stretched out on the bunk. Although the men didn’t know it, the boat was probably safer in the mud of Tokyo Bay than it had been at any time since the start of hostilities. Tonight. They would roll the dice tonight. In the meantime, he had to sleep.

  The two NAVY enlisted demolition divers sat across from Pavel Saratov in the wardroom, sipping tea. It was late afternoon. Dirty dishes were stacked to one side of the table. The demolition men were magnificent physical specimens. Of medium height, they didn’t have five pounds of fat between them. With thick necks, bulging biceps, and heavily veined weight lifter’s arms, these two certainly didn’t look like sailors. “Where did the NAVY get you guys?” Saratov asked. “We were Spetsnaz, Captain,” one of them said. His name was stenciled on his shirt: Martos. The other was named Filimonov.
“They disestablished our unit, discharged everybody. We had a choice — a gang of truck hijackers or the seagoing NAVY.”

  “Hmmm,” the captain said, sipping tea. Filimonov explained. “The hijackers were the better deal. Less work, more money. Unfortunately, they liked to brag and throw money around. We thought they would not be with us long. Last we heard only a few are still alive, hiding in the forest.”

  “Capitalism is a hard life.”

  “Very competitive, sir.”

  “I want you to destroy a refinery. Could you do that?”

  “A refinery! With the plastique?”

  “I thought you might go out through the air lock in the torpedo room, swim ashore — the distance is about a kilometer — plant the explosives, then swim back to us.”

  They looked at each other. “It would be possible, sir. When?”

  “Tonight. As soon as it’s dark. How long would it take?”

  “The longer we have, the better job we can make of it.”

  “I want to start fires they can’t easily extinguish, do maximum damage.”

  “Ahh, maximum damage.” Martos grinned at the captain, then at Filimonov. Half his teeth were gray steel.