The petty officer lowered the fuel hose and retrieved his line. He was glad to close the door and strap himself back into his chair. Officers, he told himself, were too smart to do what he just did.
“Bravo, this is Hammer, where do you want us, over?”
“Hammer, Bravo, come right to one-three-zero and rendezvous with Hatchet eight miles from Bravo.”
“On the way.” O’Malley curved around Reuben James and headed southeast.
“Hammer, Romeo, be advised Sea Sprite from Sims just finished off that Charlie for you. We got a ‘well done’ from the screen commander for that prosecution, over.”
“Tell the Commodore ‘you’re welcome.’ Bravo, Hammer, what is it we’re after, over?”
“We thought it was a twin-screw submarine. We’re not quite so sure now, Hammer,” Perrin replied. “We’ve fired three torpedoes at this target now for zero hits. He got one off at us, but it prematured in our wake.”
“How close was it?”
“Fifty yards.”
Ouch! the pilot thought.
“Okay, I have Hatchet in sight. Bravo, it’s your ball game. Where do you want me now?”
Morris had allowed himself to fall far behind in the hunt for the now-dead Charlie. On his command the frigate went to full speed, closing on Battleaxe at twenty-five knots. In response to the multiple submarine contacts, the convoy was turning slightly south.
O’Malley’s Seahawk hovered seven miles from Battleaxe while Hatchet ran back home for fuel and sonobuoys. Again the process of dipping and moving began.
“Nothing,” Willy reported.
“Bravo, Hammer, can you give me a rundown of what this target’s been doing?”
“We’ve nearly gotten him twice atop the layer. His course is generally south.”
“Sounds like a missile boat.”
“Agreed,” Perrin answered. “Our last datum point was within one thousand yards of your position. We have nothing at this time.”
O’Malley examined the data transmitted from Battleaxe’s plot. As was usually true of submarine course tracks, it was a collection of vague opinions, shaky judgments, and not a few wild guesses.
“Bravo, you’re a sub-driver. Talk to me, over.” This was lousy radio procedure, but what the hell?
“Hammer, the only thing that makes the least bit of sense is that he’s extremely fast.” O’Malley examined the tactical display more closely.
“You’re right, Bravo.” O’Malley pondered this. A Papa, maybe? he wondered. Twin screws, cruise missiles, fast as a thief.
“Hammer, Bravo, if we proceed on the assumption that he’s very fast, I recommend you go east until Romeo comes off sprint and can give us a bearing.”
“Concur, Bravo. Give me a vector.” On command from Battleaxe, the Seahawk ran twenty miles east and began dipping his sonar. It took fifteen minutes to load another pair of Stingray torpedoes on Hatchet, along with fuel and sonobuoys.
“What do you think we’re after, skipper?” Ralston asked.
“How’s a Papa grab you?” O’Malley asked.
“But the Russians only have one of those,” the copilot objected.
“Doesn’t mean they’re saving it for a museum, mister.”
“Nothing, sir,” Willy reported.
Reuben James came off sprint, turning to a southerly heading to bring her sonar to bear on the remaining contact. If only Battleaxe still had her tail, Morris thought, we could triangulate on every contact, and with two helos . . .
“Contact, evaluate as possible submarine, bearing zero-eight-one, bearing—changing slowly, looks like. Yeah, bearing changing north to south.” The data went at once to Battleaxe and the screen commander. Another helicopter joined the hunt.
“Down dome!” This was the thirty-seventh time today, O’Malley thought. “My ass is asleep.”
“Wish mine was.” Ralston laughed without much humor. Again they detected nothing.
“How can something be exciting and boring at the same time?” the ensign asked, unconsciously echoing the Tomcat pilot days ago.
“Up dome! You know, I’ve wondered that a few times myself.” O’Malley keyed his radio. “Bravo, Hammer, I got an idea for you.”
“We’re listening, Hammer.”
“You have Hatchet dropping a line of buoys south of us. Deploy another line west. Then I start pinging. Maybe we can flush the guy into doing something. You ever get herded by a dipping helo when you were driving subs?”
“Not herded, Hammer, but I have gone far out of my way to avoid one. Stand by while I get things organized.”
“You know, this one’s a nervy bastard. He’s gotta know we’re onto him, but he isn’t breaking off. He really thinks he can beat us.”
“He has for the last four hours, boss,” Willy observed.
“You know what the most important part of gambling is? You have to know when it’s time to quit.” O’Malley circled up high and turned his search radar on for the first time that day. It was not very useful for detecting a periscope, but it might just scare a sub running near the surface into heading back under the layer. The sun was sinking, and O’Malley could pick out the two other helicopters working this contact from their flying lights. They dropped two lines of passive sonobuoys, each eight miles long, at right angles to each other.
“The picket lines are in place, Hammer,” Captain Perrin called. “Begin.”
“Willy: hammer!” Six hundred feet below the helicopter, the sonar transducer pounded the water with high-frequency sonar pulses. He did this for one minute, then reeled in and flew southeast. The process lasted half an hour. By this time his legs were knotting up, making his control movements awkward.
“Take over for a few minutes.” O’Malley took his feet off the pedals and worked his legs around to restore circulation.
“Hammer, Bravo, we have a contact. Buoy six, line Echo.” This was the east-west line. Buoy number six was third from the west end, where the north-south “November” line began. “Weak signal at this time.”
O’Malley took the controls back and headed west while the other two helicopters circled behind their respective lines.
“Gently, gently,” he murmured over the intercom. “Let’s not spook him too much.” He picked his course carefully, never heading directly for the contact, never heading far away from it. Another half hour passed, one miserable second at a time. Finally they had the contact running east at about ten knots, far below the layer.
“We now have him on three buoys,” Perrin reported. “Hatchet is moving into position.”
O’Malley watched the blinking red lights about three miles away. Hatchet dropped a pair of directional DIFAR buoys and waited. The display came up on O’Malley’s scope. The contact passed right between the DIFARS.
“Torpedo away!” Hatchet called. The black-painted Stingray dropped invisibly into the water, half a mile in front of the oncoming submarine. O’Malley closed and dropped his own buoy to listen as he brought the Seahawk into hover.
Like the American Mark-48 torpedo, the Stingray didn’t use conventional propellers, which made it hard to locate on sonar both for O’Malley and the submarine. Suddenly they heard the sound of propeller cavitation as the submarine went to full power and turned. Then came hull-popping noises as she changed depth abruptly to throw the fish off. It didn’t work. Next came the metallic crash of the exploding warhead.
“Hit!” Hatchet called.
“Down dome!”
Willy lowered the sonar transducer one last time. The submarine was coming up.
“Again!” Ralston wondered. “That’s two in a row.”
“Set it up! Willy, hammer him.”
“Range four hundred, bearing one-six-three, I have an up-doppler.”
“Circular search, initial search depth one hundred.”
“Set,” Ralston replied.
O’Malley dropped his torpedo at once. “Up dome! Bravo, the hit did not kill the target, we just dropped another one on him.”
“He might be trying to surface to get his crew off,” Ralston said.
“He might want to fire his missiles, too. He should have run when he had the chance. I would have.”
The second hit finished the submarine. O’Malley flew straight back to Reuben James. He let Ralston land the Seahawk. As soon as its wheels were chocked and chained down, he got out and walked forward. Morris met him in the passageway between the helo hangars.
“Great job, Jerry.”
“Thanks, skipper.” O’Malley had left his helmet in the aircraft. His hair was matted to his head with perspiration and his eyes stung from hours of it.
“I want to talk over a few things.”
“Can we do it while I shower and change, Cap’n?” O’Malley went through the wardroom and into his stateroom. He stripped out of his clothing in under a minute and headed for the officers’ shower.
“How many pounds you sweat off on a day like this?” Morris said.
“A lot.” The pilot pushed the shower button, closing his eyes as the cold water sprayed over him. “You know, I’ve been saying for ten years that the -46 needed a bigger warhead. I hope to hell those bastards in ordnance will listen to me now!”
“The second one. What was it?”
“If I had to bet, I’d say it was Papa. Great job from the sonar guys. Those steers you gave us were beautiful.” He pushed the button again for more cold water. O’Malley emerged a minute later, looking and feeling human again.
“The Commodore is writing you up for something. Your third DFC, I guess.”
O’Malley thought about that briefly. His first two were for rescues, not for killing other men.
“How soon will you be ready to go up again?”
“How does next week grab you?”
“Get dressed. We’ll talk in the wardroom.”
The pilot raked his hair into place and changed into fresh clothing. He remembered the last time his wife had told him to use baby powder to protect his skin from the abuse of sweaty, tight clothes, and how stupid he’d been to reject the suggestion as not in keeping with aviator machismo. Despite the shower, there were a few patches of skin that would continue to itch and chafe. When he went to the wardroom, he found Morris waiting for him with a pitcher of iced bug juice.
“You got a diesel boat and two missile boats. How were they operating? Anything unusual?”
“Awfully aggressive. That Papa should have backed off. The Charlie took a smart route, but he was boring in pretty hard, too.” O’Malley thought it over as he drained his first glass. “You’re right. They are pushing awful hard.”
“Harder than I expected. They’re taking chances they ordinarily wouldn’t take. What’s that tell us?”
“It tells us we got two more busy days ahead, I guess. Sorry, Captain, I’m a little too wasted for deep thinking at the moment.”
“Get some rest.”
37
The Race of the Cripples
STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
Two o’clock in the morning. The attack would begin in four hours despite all his efforts to change it. Alekseyev stared at the map with its symbols of friendly units and intelligence estimates of enemies.
“Cheer up, Pasha!” Commander-in-Chief West said. “I know that you think we use up too much fuel. It will also destroy their remaining stocks of war supplies.”
“They can resupply, too.”
“Nonsense. Their convoys have suffered heavily, as our own intelligence reports have told us. They are sending one massive shipment across now, but the Navy tells me they are sending everything they have against it. And in any case it will arrive too late.”
Alekseyev told himself that his boss was probably right. After all, he had made his rank on the basis of a distinguished career. But still . . .
“Where do you want me?”
“With the OMG command post. No closer to the front than that.”
The OMG command post, Pavel thought ironically. First 20th Guards Tank Division was supposed to be the operational-maneuver group, then a two-division formation, then three divisions. Every time the breakthrough maneuver had been frustrated, until the very term “operational-maneuver group” sounded like some kind of absurd joke. His pessimism returned. The reserve formations held for exploitation of the attack were far behind the front, so as to be able to move to wherever the best penetration of NATO lines happened. It might take hours for them to reach the proper point. NATO had demonstrated a remarkable ability to compensate for sudden breakthroughs, he reminded himself. Alekseyev set this thought aside as he had with so many others and left the command center, collected Sergetov, and once again found a helicopter to take him on the trip west. His aircraft waited on the ground for its usual fighter escort.
The use of fighters to escort a single helicopter lifting off from Stendal was a pattern NATO air-control officers had noted before, but they’d never had the available units to do anything about it. This time it was different. An AWACS control aircraft over the Rhein watched the chopper lift off with three MiGs in attendance. The sector controller had a pair of F-4 Phantoms returning from a counter-air mission south of Berlin, and he vectored them north. The fighters skimmed the trees, their own radars off as they followed a safe-transit lane used by Russian aircraft.
Alekseyev and Sergetov sat alone in the back of the Mi-24 attack helicopter. There was room for eight combat-loaded infantrymen, so both had room to stretch and Sergetov took the chance for a nap. Their escorting MiGs were a thousand meters overhead, circling continuously as they watched for low-flying NATO fighters.
“Six miles,” came the call from the AWACS.
One Phantom popped up, illuminated two MiGs with its radar, and loosed a pair of Sparrow missiles. The other fired two Sidewinders at the helicopter.
The MiGs were caught looking the wrong way when their threat receivers went off. One dashed to the ground and evaded. The other exploded in midair as the surviving wingman radioed a warning. Alekseyev blinked in surprise at the sudden gout of light overhead, then grabbed for his seatbelt as the helicopter turned hard left and dropped like a stone. It was almost in the trees when the Sidewinder chopped off the tail rotor. Sergetov awoke and shouted in surprise and alarm. The Mi-24 spun in the air as it crashed into the trees and bounced the last fifty feet to the ground. The main rotor came apart, sending pieces in all directions, and the sliding door on the left side of the aircraft popped off as though made of plastic. Alekseyev went out right behind it, dragging Sergetov with him. Once again his instincts had saved him. The two officers were twenty meters away when the fuel tanks exploded. They never heard or saw the Phantoms that continued west to safety.
“Are you hurt, Vanya?” the General asked.
“I didn’t even piss my pants. That must mean I’m a seasoned veteran.” The joke didn’t work. The young man’s voice shook along with his hands. “Where the hell are we?”
“An excellent question.” Alekseyev looked around. He hoped to see lights, but the entire country had a blackout in force, and Soviet units had learned the hard way about using lights on the highways. “We have to find a road. We’ll head south until we hit one.”
“Where is south?”
“Opposite from north. That is north.” The General pointed to a star, then turned to select another. “That one will lead us south.”
SEVEROMORSK, R.S.F.S.R.
Admiral Yuri Novikov monitored the progress of the battle from his underground headquarters a few kilometers from his main fleet base. He was stung by the loss of his principal long-range weapon—the Backfire bombers—but the way the Politburo had reacted to the missile attack was a greater shock. Somehow the politicians thought that it meant a ballistic-missile attack from the same area was possible, and no amount of argument to the contrary would change their minds. As if the Americans would risk their precious ballistic-missile subs in such restricted waters! the Admiral growled to himself. He was up against fast-attack boats—he was cer
tain of it—and he was being forced to go after them with half his assets to prevent their escape. He didn’t have that many assets to go around.
The Commander-in-Chief of Soviet Northern Fleet had had a good war to this point. The operation to seize Iceland had gone almost perfectly—the boldest Soviet attack ever staged! The very next day he had smashed a carrier battle group, an epic victory for his forces. His plan to use his missile-armed bombers and submarines in combination against the convoys had worked well, particularly after he’d decided to use the bombers to eliminate the escort ships first. Submarine losses to date had been heavy, but he’d expected that. The NATO navies had practiced antisubmarine warfare for generations. There had to be losses. He’d made mistakes, Novikov admitted to himself. He should have gone after the escorts in a systematic way sooner—but Moscow wanted the merchants killed most of all, and he’d acceded to the “suggestion.”
Things were changing now. The sudden loss of his Backfire force—it would be out of action for another five days—forced him to take his dedicated anticarrier submarine teams and send them against the convoys, which meant crossing NATO’s picket line of submarines, and losses there were heavy, too. His force of Bear reconnaissance bombers was hard hit. The damned war was supposed to be over by now, Novikov thought angrily. He had a powerful surface force waiting to escort additional troops to Iceland, but he couldn’t move that group until the campaign in Germany was within sight of its conclusion. No battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy, he reminded himself.
“Comrade Admiral, satellite photographs have arrived.” His aide handed over a leather dispatch case. The fleet intelligence chief arrived a few minutes later with his senior photo-interpretation expert. The photos were spread out across a table.
“Ah, we have a problem here,” the photo expert said.
Novikov didn’t need the expert to tell him that. The piers at Little Creek, Virginia, were empty. The American amphibious assault force had sailed with a full Marine division. Novikov had watched the progress of Pacific Fleet units to Norfolk with great interest, but then his ocean-reconnaissance satellites had both been killed, and launch authority on the last of them had been withheld. The next photo showed the carrier berths, also empty.