Torpedo! (The Silent War Book 3) Page 15

  Captain Steel drained the large glass of orange juice he had ordered. “We’re not staying on track, sir. Admiral Brannon has committed an act of war. He did so on his own. The President, the Congress of the United States, has been deliberately ignored by Brannon. That should concern you, very greatly.

  “What concerns me is where does this madness of Brannon’s stop? I’ve lost one of my ballistic missile submarines. The Soviet Union has lost one of their newest attack submarines. What is next? Will the Soviets destroy two of my missile submarines and will Brannon then retaliate by destroying two of their submarines? You know, as well as I know, that our land-based nuclear missiles can be destroyed in the first Soviet nuclear strike. If that happens our only capability for retaliation lies in my missile submarines.” He leaned over the table, subjecting his sensitive nostrils to the Congressman’s cigarette smoke.

  “I will not allow this to go on, sir! I will not risk losing one more of my submarines! I came to you, confided in you, because I trust you. But if you cannot solve this I will be forced to take action!”

  Congressman Wendell leaned back in his chair and looked at the man across the table. He smiled softly.

  “Captain, I told you to let me study this and I’d solve it. This is a political matter and if you want to know something, your tit’s in the wringer just as much as Brannon’s is. You knew about this whole thing and you ain’t done anything about it and you’ll be out on your Jewish ass right alongside of Brannon.

  “Now you listen to me. We can’t go public with this as long as the Roosians don’t make any formal protests and I’m sure that ain’t gonna happen. We can’t force Brannon to resign because his personal life is so clean it nauseates me. But we got that stupid asshole, that Admiral McCarty on the Joint Chiefs. He’s a lightweight if I ever saw one. And like most lightweights who maneuver themselves into a nice position of power he gets worried if anyone tries to sneak anything by him. I’m havin’ dinner with him tonight at my house, got to rehearse him on his testimony before my committee, that business of the Navy wantin’ four more carriers. Might drop a word in his ear about how Admiral Brannon has run a sneak around the end of his line. McCarty was an aviator. They don’t usually like you submarine people. If I put it to him in the right way he might force Brannon to retire early. He knows how to put pressure on Brannon.”

  “Tonight, then?” Steel said.

  “Provided McCarty gives me the openin’ I need,” Congressman Wendell said. “I’ll be talkin’ to you soon.” He rose and shuffled out of the restaurant, leaving the check to be paid by Captain Steel.

  Out in the broad reaches of the Atlantic Ocean the U.S.S. Orca was making all possible speed westward. Far out to her starboard side the U.S.S. Devilfish was following a parallel course. Mission: intercept and shadow a Soviet ballistic missile submarine headed for the East Coast of the United States and sink that submarine if it gave any indication that it was opening its missile hatches to fire its nuclear missiles.

  Turk Raynor relaxed in a canvas chair on the starboard side of the Orca’s torpedo room. He cocked an eye toward the loudspeaker as it rasped, and listened to the Quartermaster of the Watch reporting the hourly course, speed, and depth. Raynor turned to one of his torpedo gang.

  “Way things are going, heading on this course, we’re gettin’ farther and farther from Holy Loch. Gettin’ farther and farther from a chance to go up to the Personnel Office and put in for my transfer. Way things are going lately I’ll never get off this fucking ship. We’ll probably be on war alert and all hands will be frozen in their duty stations.”

  Amos Spangler, a tall, slender torpedoman with arms roped with stringy muscle, lit a cigarette. “You get any dope on why we turned west and they opened up the throttle, Turk?”

  “Quartermaster told me that we’re runnin’ with the Devilfish. She’s about five miles out to starboard. Some Russian missile submarine is comin’ down from the north and we’re supposed to intercept her and if she makes a funny move we sink her.” The senior torpedoman stretched his arms above his head until his heavy shoulder muscles creaked.

  “Trouble with this fucking nuclear submarine Navy is that they don’t tell you a fuck-all about what’s goin’ on. I’ll bet those nuke poges we got aboard know all the operating dope. If you ain’t been to nuke school on these damned ships then you’re nothin’ but slave labor.”

  “Until they tell you to get ready to fire. Then you’re damned important. Old Man comes down here to pass the time of day and make sure we ain’t fuckin’ off under the sun lamp or some fuckin’ thing,” Spangler said.

  “Don’t knock the Old Man. He’s good people,” Raynor growled. “If it wasn’t for some old hands on this tub we’d never know what was going on.” He stared at his torpedomen.

  “You people got to know we didn’t fire at no Goddamn electronic target when we blew them two out of the tubes. If you don’t know, we fired at a Russian submarine.”

  “Why the hell did we do that? We didn’t get no announcement of war starting.” Spangler asked.

  “Sharkfin is gone,” Raynor said flatly. “Quartermaster said the Russian submarine we went after with the sank the Sharkfin, couple of weeks ago. Old Iron Mike, sitting there in the Pentagon, thinks he’s back on a diesel boat in the war against Japan. He sent orders to Devilfish and us to get the Russian sub. We got her. Bam! Two! Now we’re gonna dog this Russian missile submarine and if the skipper of that tub makes one wrong fucking move we take him out like we took out the other one.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Spangler said. “We’re at fucking war!”

  “Word I get is that no war been declared,” Raynor said. “But if they keep up this silly shit you can bet your damned skivvies that if we ever get back to the States the Goddamned country will look like something that fucking cook makes in the Galley. Burned up. Like charcoal.”

  Captain Reinauer sat in the Wardroom, a chart of the Atlantic in front of him on the Wardroom table. Eckert, his XO, sat next to him, pointing with the tip of a pencil at the chart.

  “That’s the Russian’s course. We’re on a flat intercept, sir. Should make contact in the next eight hours if he doesn’t turn to starboard and head more toward the coast. Depending on his speed, it’s been varying.”

  Reinauer touched the chart with his forefinger. “Looks like Devilfish will make the first contact, she’s closer to his course line if he keeps coming as he is.” He looked around the table at his officers.

  “The order we received specified that we do complete surveillance of the Russian missile submarine. That means silent running. He can’t help knowing there’s one of us here but we’d like to keep him from knowing that there are two of us after him. Devilfish concurs. If they contact him first they won’t make any effort to go to silent running. They’ll dog him, follow him, run ahead of him, drop back, run alongside, always on his starboard hand.

  “We’ll go to silent running and a full alert sonar status. That means we’ll be doing a constant attack problem on the Russian and on the Devilfish, so we know where Devilfish is at all times. If the Russian opens his missile hatches we should be able to hear that. The word I had in Holy Loch was that the Russians use manual power to open their missile hatches. Takes them about four minutes to open a hatch and they open one or at the most two at a time.

  “That gives us time to get off torpedoes, provided we have a constant firing problem in the computers. Mr. Eckert will see to it that we have a continual attack problem running. Mr. Reiss will alert the torpedo room to the problem we face.” He paused and rubbed his beard. “We can’t go to Battle Stations and stay there for maybe days on end, once we make contact. We’ll have to play it by ear, once we find him.” He looked at Reiss.

  “I want you to fill in Turk Raynor. Impress on him the need for readiness to fire on a moment’s notice.”

  “Won’t we be breaking ComSubLant’s order to keep this information in the Wardroom, sir?” Reiss asked.

  “Oh, hell!” R
einauer snorted. “Do you think that everyone on this damned ship doesn’t know we sank a Soviet submarine? Do you think the crew doesn’t know that we’re going to sink another one if he makes a wrong move? You can’t keep that sort of information from a crew. They know.” The telephone on the bulkhead buzzed and he turned and picked the handset off the bulkhead. He listened for a moment and then put the handset back.

  “Devilfish may have made contact. Sonar reports she’s put on speed and is turning northward. Let’s go to Battle Stations. We’ll follow Devilfish into whatever she’s got. Go to silent running. Mr. Eckert, start a firing plot at once.” The Wardroom emptied and the soft, muted clanging of the Battle Stations alarm sounded throughout the Orca.

  CHAPTER 15

  Anton Simonov was uncomfortable. Educated by the State as a mechanical engineer he had adapted well to KGB work. He often told his wife that working for the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnost or working as an engineer wasn’t that much different. Both jobs depended heavily on research and careful reasoning; both jobs gave one satisfaction if done well. The major drawback as he saw it was that once a man had attained some degree of rank he must, of necessity, engage in politics. Anton Simonov was not a politician.

  He sat in a chair in front of Leonid Plotovsky’s desk in a sparsely furnished office in a wing of the Kremlin. He watched the old man peer at the pictures Simonov had brought to the office. Plotovsky pulled the earplug for the tape recorder out of the forest of stiff hairs that stuck out of his ear and turned off the recorder.

  “Disgusting,” the old man said. “Revolting, absolutely revolting! To think that good men died in the Great War to save this nation from Hitler’s barbarians and now we breed scum like this!” He slammed his hand down on his desk console of buttons and his secretary opened the door to his office. He hastily began to turn the pictures over.

  “Tea for the two of us,” he growled and she withdrew.

  “I need something honest to wash the taste of this filth out of my mouth,” he said. “You must need something, you’ve seen these things more than once.”

  “No more than I had to see them, Comrade,” Simonov said

  “I can understand that,” Plotovsky said. He thanked his secretary for the two mugs of hot tea and waited until she had left the room and closed the door.

  “There are no pictures of the Admiral’s face, Simonov.”

  “No, sir. Gaining admittance to his apartment, planting cameras and microphones and tape recorders would have been a major operation, sir. He has two servants, bodyguards, really. They never leave his apartment together. One is always there.” He drew a long, slow breath.

  “However, I think we have what could be called a considerable body of circumstantial evidence, Comrade. If I may be allowed, let me outline that for you.

  “There are the pictures of Lubutkin waiting to be picked up by the Admiral in his official car and of the pickup. There are the pictures of the two of them leaving the car and walking to the door of the Admiral’s apartment building. The lighting in that street is excellent and the number of the building can be seen very clearly. In some of those pictures the Admiral can be seen patting Lubutkin’s rear end as they walk to the door of the building.

  “Then there are the other pictures,” Simonov continued. “Those of Lubutkin and his roommate, who, incidentally, is a dissident and is not registered as living in Lubutkin’s apartment. Those pictures clearly establish that Lubutkin is a sexual pervert. He buggers his roommate, his roommate buggers him. The pictures and the tape recordings leave no doubt as to his character.

  “Finally, if we have to, we can use the driver as a witness against the Admiral. He is unwilling to give witness, as I note in my report, but he can be forced to do so.”

  “He’s also a pervert, according to your report,” Plotovsky growled. “But it would be evidence of a sort, the damned condemning the damned. I agree with you that we should not use him unless we have to do so. If we do he would have to be eliminated. Not that it would be any loss. Well, I can only say that you have done a remarkable job in a very short time, Anton Simonov. I won’t forget it.”

  Simonov looked away from Plotovsky. To enjoy the favor of a politician was, in his estimation, almost as dangerous as being in disfavor. He turned his eyes back to the old man behind the desk.

  “Thank you, Comrade. One more thing, to finish my train of thought: The pictures establish the fact that the Admiral and Lubutkin were, shall we say, companionable. The tape recordings, that section where Lubutkin’s roommate asks him to have the Admiral come to their apartment for an orgy, that establishes that the Admiral’s fondness for Lubutkin was based in one thing, sexual perversion.”

  “It’s disgusting,” the old man said. He turned some of the pictures over and stared at them, his thin lips curling in revulsion.

  “But not uncommon,” Simonov said. “I have done some research in this area, sir. I found that this sort of perversion was quite popular in ancient Greece, in old Rome and in the Mayan civilization. It was common in those nations to use young boys and young men as prostitutes.”

  “As nations they all went under, didn’t they? Pulled down by their own excesses?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We could arrest Lubutkin, make him testify about his relations with the Admiral.” Plotovsky said. “We could promise him immunity and then dispose of him after the evidence had been given.”

  “Unfortunately, we cannot,” Simonov said. He chose his words carefully. He was skirting the quicksand now and if he didn’t tread carefully he could be sucked down.

  “I posted two people in an apartment we requisitioned that was next to Lubutkin’s apartment. We made a peephole so the men could observe, so they would know when to film, when to activate the tape recorders. Lubutkin came home last night after seeing the Admiral and the usual perversions between the two roommates went on. After they had finished we took the film out of the camera and one of the men took it to the laboratory to process it, that was our usual procedure.

  “The other man on duty heard a quarrel between Lubutkin and his roommate. This was not unusual, they often quarreled. When my man looked through the peephole a while later he saw two naked bodies on the floor. He called the office and we sent a team at once. We found both men dead. They had stabbed each other with knives from their kitchen.” Simonov paused, hoping that his forehead only felt hot, that it was not in fact sweating.

  “A lovers’ quarrel, if I may use that expression, Comrade.”

  “I see,” the old man said. “I suppose it could happen that way. These people are not rational.” He looked at Simonov, his old eyes shrewd.

  “How is it that Shevenko did not know what was going on under his nose? Do you suppose that he was sampling this slimy creature’s so-called pleasures? Igor used to have a reputation for being a great man for the ladies. Could a man change, prefer young men to women, as he ages? I don’t know about such things.”

  “Oh, no!” The words burst out of Simonov’s lips. “Not Igor, sir! I don’t know if he even knew about Lubutkin’s perversions. I haven’t talked with him about this. To have done so would have been to violate your confidence, Comrade.”

  “And you would never think of doing that,” Plotovsky said in his dry voice. He reached out and touched a button on his desk console. His secretary opened the door between their offices and looked in.

  “Summon Igor Shevenko here at once,” Plotovsky said. He turned to Simonov. “I must ask you to wait in my secretary’s office while Shevenko is here. She will get you some fresh tea and some cakes.”

  When Shevenko arrived at Plotovsky’s office the pictures were in a neat pile at one side of the desk, a piece of paper covering the top photograph. Shevenko entered the office and shook hands with the old Communist leader and sat down in the chair where Simonov had been sitting.

  “I wanted to talk to you about this business of the Admiral,” Plotovosky began. “But before we get to that, did your aide, th
at nice young man, what’s his name, Lubutkin? Yes. Did he report for work this morning?”

  “No sir, he did not. It is the first absence he has been guilty of since he began working for me two years ago.”

  “Do you know why he didn’t come to work?”

  “Yes, sir, I do. The State Medical Examiner called me not an hour ago. He is dead. The Medical Examiner told me that he and his roommate, I didn’t know he shared his apartment and my office is checking now with the Housing Administration to see if his roomer was registered, the Medical Examiner told me that he and his roomer apparently had a fight and killed each other. The Medical Examiner also confirmed what I had learned two days ago, that Lubutkin was a pervert. If you will permit me sir, it is distasteful, the Medical Examiner found semen in each of the dead men’s rectums.”

  Plotovsky nodded his head. “You learned of his perversion two days ago?”

  “Yes, sir. I asked Internal Security to begin a surveillance of Lubutkin yesterday. The surveillance was to have begun today. The paperwork, you know, Internal Security has to have everything down in writing and in triplicate, that took some time.” His heavy face took on a somber cast.

  “I was perhaps derelict, Comrade, in not suspecting him earlier. But he was such an efficient aide. I considered myself lucky to have such an eager worker.”

  “I can understand that,” Plotovsky said. “These days the young people don’t know the meaning of work and sacrifice. They live for pleasure.” He looked up, his hooded lizard-like eyes half hidden behind their drooping eyelids.

  “Now you have to look for another eager young man, don’t you? Someone who is willing to work long hours and keep a tight mouth about what he knows of your work.”

  Shevenko paused. The conversation was taking a turn he didn’t like. Apparently the old man had known of Lubutkin’s death. The question was, how much did he know? He looked at the floor and then up at Leonid Plotovsky.