Torpedo! (The Silent War Book 3) Page 7

  “Igor, old friend,” the Admiral said, “We both know the Americans would not dare to do such a thing. They never have. History proves that.”

  “Don’t depend on history, Admiral. A small group of dedicated naval officers, let us say almost as dedicated to their cause as you are to ours, such a small group can insure secrecy of their actions and can act. They will retaliate.”

  “No,” Zurahv said. “I do not agree. They know what we would do if they did that. We would put all our important people and most of our population into the air raid shelters and do what we should have done long ago, burn every major city in America, destroy every military installation. They have no civil defense, your own reports have proved that, no way of protecting their population as we have.” He filled his great chest with the cold air and let it out with a mighty whoosh. “And then, my friend, we will do the same thing to Mainland China!”

  “I don’t disagree with your thesis, Admiral, but I would point out that we cannot keep our people in the shelters for very long. The psychiatrists and psychologists say that two weeks is the maximum before severe strain sets in. The American missile submarines, knowing their homeland is a charred waste, could wait longer than that before they loose their nuclear devastation on us.

  “You make a good point,” Zurahv said. “But I still cannot accept the idea that a small group of naval officers will act this way. It is not the way they are trained, not the way they think.”

  “The man who commands their submarines in the Atlantic is named Brannon. He is a ranking Admiral. Do you know him?”

  “I have never met him, of course,” Zurahv said. “I know his record. A courageous and aggressive submarine commander in the Great War. A very good administrator since the war. A professional.”

  “Aggressive, you say,” Shevenko murmured. He stooped and picked up a chunk of ice and tossed it into the middle of a bush heavy with wet snow. The ice chunk sent a cascade of snow tumbling to the ground.

  “From small disturbances much downfall,” Shevenko said in a soft voice. “I must be getting back to my office, Comrade. Blagodar’yoo.” He used the colloquial “thank you” and smiled. “I trust that what I have told you, the picture I have given to you, will remain only with you?”

  “You have my word, Igor, and my deepest thanks,” Zurahv said.

  As soon as he returned to his office Admiral Zurahv called for the file on Vice Admiral Michael P. Brannon. He read it through slowly and then rang for his aide.

  “Send a priority message to Captain Kovitz. Order him to clear his patrol area at once and proceed, submerged, to Tripoli. No shore leave for officers or crew. Further orders will follow. Tell my staff I want to see them here within the hour.”

  Stefan Lubutkin laid Admiral Zurahv’s decoded message on Shevenko’s desk. “The Admiral has switched over to his new code, sir.”

  “As long as he doesn’t know we can read it,” Shevenko said. He picked up the message, read it, and smiled.

  Bob Wilson slept soundly on the flight to New York and dozed fitfully on the short flight to Washington. The Agency limousine was waiting for him at Washington’s National Airport. Carrying the wrapped box of cigars he went directly to Admiral Benson’s office.

  “Cuban cigars,” he said. “Friend of mine at the UN gave them to me. I stopped there to cover the memo you sent.”

  “How nice of him,” Benson said. He looked at Wilson. “How do they get Cuban cigars at the UN?”

  “I think they come in through Switzerland. You want me to give you a debriefing now or wait?”

  “Now,” Benson said. He uncapped a gold pen.

  “I was met at the Lydda Airport and taken to Dr. Saul’s country place. He knew about the loss of the Sharkfin. There’s been too much radio traffic and they can read most of our codes, just as we can read theirs. Dr. Saul knew why the Soviets sank the Sharkfin.”

  “That’s incredible!” Benson said. “I know the Mossad are good but to know something like that?”

  Wilson shrugged. “Look at it this way, sir. The Mossad has an advantage no one else has. The Soviet Union is full of dissident Jews who want to emigrate to Israel and the Russians won’t let them go. Every once in a while the Mossad smuggles some of them out of Russia. Nearly all the Jews in the Soviet Union are sponges. They soak up all sorts of information and some of them feed it to Mossad agents in the hope they’ll be taken out of Russia. You get enough pieces in place and you can solve any jigsaw puzzle.”

  “Did Dr. Saul know why the Soviets did this?”

  Wilson repeated what Shevenko had told him. When he finished, Benson asked what his response had been.

  “Dr. Saul has a top agent in Cairo. That guy knows the top KGB man in Cairo so word is going to get back to the KGB inside a day. I told Dr. Saul to tell the KGB that the only way out of this mess is to have Brezhnev call the President and tell him a terrible mistake has been made and that it won’t happen again.”

  “What makes you think Brezhnev would do that?”

  “I don’t know if he will,” Wilson said slowly. “But it’s worth a try. If he does then the whole mess stops right there. I think that the Kremlin will read the message pretty clearly. They play hard ball all the time. This is the sort of language they understand and pay attention to.”

  Admiral Benson capped his pen. “I think we’d better go see Admiral Brannon. But I don’t think we should tell him that you passed the word that we might sink the Soviet submarine. No sense in getting his Irish up. I just thought of something. Suppose that Brezhnev does call the President? The whole overhead will fall on Admiral Brannon for not reporting the loss of the Sharkfin. “

  Wilson ground out his cigarette in an ashtray. “That’s his worry, sir. He was the one who decided to keep this quiet, not us.”

  Admiral Olsen reached for the coffee carafe and poured for himself and Mike Brannon. “What do you think, Mike? I don’t much like Wilson going off like that without telling us but it’s done now and we can’t undo it. Do you think Brezhnev will call? And if he does what the hell are you going to tell the President when he wants to know why he wasn’t told about the Sharkfin?”

  “I don’t think he’ll call,” Brannon said. “If he does I can take the heat. I’ve got a hunch there’s a lot we’re not being told. That damned Soviet submarine was picked up on SOSUS heading back into the Mediterranean. God knows where she’ll end up, maybe in the Black Sea.” He drained his coffee cup.

  “Get off a message to Dick Reinauer on the Orca. I want him to proceed at all possible speed and rendezvous with the Devilfish. Tell the Black Room I want an ID on every ship that goes through the Strait of Gibraltar, I want to be told that information no matter what the time of day or night. I’ll blockade that damned Strait and if that murdering bastard of a submarine comes out I’ll sink the son of a bitch!”

  Admiral Zurahv finished telling his staff what Shevenko had told him an hour or so earlier and passed the photograph Shevenko had given him down the table.

  “Give me your thoughts, gentlemen,” he said in his heavy voice.

  “Comrade Admiral,” a heavy set naval captain sitting down near the end of the table said. “The evidence is clear from this photograph. The Americans have found their submarine and any naval officer of experience can tell what happened to it.

  “What we must do now is reason how they found their ship. I would say they used a bottom-charting sonar ship. They are very good at charting the ocean bottoms with sonar. We are sent their bottom charts from the United Nations and I have found them to be most accurate.

  “If they used a sonar search to find the submarine then they would mark the submarine on the bottom with sonar buoys. We use sonar buoys in the same way, when we have lost a practice torpedo, for example. Sonar buoy batteries operate for a month before they run down.”

  “So?” Admiral Zurahv rumbled.

  “When I was reading the daily ship movement report this morning I noticed that we have a freighter loading citrus
fruits and tobacco in the port of Bengasi. We used that same freighter last year in submarine maneuvers off the Aleutians. She has simple but effective sonar equipment on board. I suggest we send that ship along the course of the American submarine to listen for sonar buoys.”

  “A good idea,” Zurahv said. “What’s her next port of call, do you remember?”

  “Odessa, sir.”

  “Change it,” Zurahv ordered. “Get those assholes in the commercial departments moving to sell her cargo in France or the Netherlands so we’ll have a reason for changing her next port of call. Notify Lloyds of the change of ports, we want this to look normal.” He looked down the table.

  “How many of the new torpedoes do we have on hand?”

  “Eleven, sir,” a Commander answered.

  “Send them to attack submarines. Order a crash production schedule at once. As soon as the new torpedoes come out of the factory I want them tested and sent to operating submarines. Dismissed.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The U.S.S. Orca, sister ship of the U.S.S. Devilfish, raced southward at 500 feet, her nuclear reactor plant turning out 75 percent of its rated capacity. There was an air of quiet satisfaction, of competence proved, aboard the Orca. The chase of a Soviet missile submarine that had been detected by the sensor network as it left the Atlantic and headed northeast between the British Isles and Greenland had been successful.

  The Orca had taken up the chase, traveling at high speed until the computer charting of the Soviet submarine’s course and position indicated that Orca was within extreme sonar range. The Orca’s crew went to Battle Stations and Captain Dick Reinauer began the delicate process of closing on the Soviet submarine without being detected. Periodically, the Orca turned to port or starboard to allow the lateral sensors along its hull to focus on the noise made by the other submarine as it moved through the sea. Gradually, steadily, the Orca closed the range.

  The Soviet submarine, apparently unaware it was being followed, continued steadily on course. The Orca crept closer, running silent with all unnecessary machinery shut down to avoid detection. The crew talked in whispers. Captain Reinauer spoke softly into a telephone to the Battle Stations sonar operator.

  “How do you read him?”

  “He’s noisy as hell,” the sonar operator answered in a whisper. “He’s got a cooling water pump that must have worn out its bearings. He’s got a chip on one blade of his screw or else the screw is warped a little, he’s making a hell of a lot of screw noise.”

  “Start computer constant ranging,” Reinauer ordered. He watched the video screen in front of him in the Attack Center as white figures began to appear on the screen.

  “Twenty-one hundred yards,” Reinauer whispered to Arnold Eckert, his Executive Officer. “I think this is close enough. We’ll take him now.” He picked up the telephone.

  “Sonar, stand by for a transmission.” He turned to Eckert. “Come left to course three three five. Sonar, send the following message. ‘Tag, you’re it. Sorry we can’t invite you aboard for a cup of coffee.’ End of message. I want you to hit him with every decibel we’ve got in the transmitters. XO, come to all ahead full as soon as the transmission starts. Sonar, transmit!”

  The sonar operator on the Soviet submarine screamed in agony and tore his earphones off as the Orca’s powerful sonar transmitters blasted their sound into the Russian submarine’s sonar ears. There was silence for a few moments and then the Soviet submarine’s answer came back.

  “We would prefer tea, thank you. You are very good at this game, my friend. I may send my sonar crew for a long walk on the ice the next time we go to the Pole. End transmission.”

  The Orca swung away in a long curving arc, slowing to her usual twenty-knot cruising speed. “We can chalk up a solid hit on that one,” Reinauer said with a grin, his white teeth gleaming in his curly black beard. “We nailed that rascal fair and square. He never heard us at all. That’s the third one of those bastards we’ve sneaked up on without them knowing it. Let’s go home, Arnie. Set a course for Holy Loch.” He turned to the Officer of the Deck.

  “Take her up to periscope depth and send an exercise concluded message. Tell them the score is three to nothing, our favor. We’ll advise ETA at Holy Loch later.”

  The Orca’s radioman sent the transmission and then punched a button on a tape cassette as a light showed on his console. He picked up the telephone and dialed the Attack Center.

  “Incoming radio traffic, sir. Routine message indicated.”

  Sitting in his small cabin Captain Reinauer read through the message. Lieutenant Eckert, who functioned as the ship’s Navigator as well as Executive Officer, came into the cabin.

  “You wanted me, sir?”

  “We aren’t going home,” Reinauer said. “We’re ordered to rendezvous with the Devilfish down off the Strait of Gibraltar. ComSubLant’s orders. He’ll advise us further.”

  “I wondered where the Devilfish was going when she left Holy Loch in such a hurry,” Eckert said. “Gibraltar? I’d guess some of the Sixth Fleet is going home and we’re going to make dummy attacks. When it’s over maybe we’ll get liberty in some good port in Portugal or Spain.”

  “Lay down a course and advise me of our ETA on station,” Reinauer said. “We’re supposed to make all possible speed. Put that in the log book.”

  “Will do,” Eckert said. “Bet you a beer that Iron Mike has got something planned to shake up the surface ship boys. And we can do that, provided the Devilfish doesn’t foul things up.

  “Bob Miller doesn’t make mistakes,” Reinauer said. “He’s a damned good submariner and the Devilfish is a good ship.”

  “Nobody’s as good as we are, Skipper. Oh, almost forgot, sir. Turk Raynor wants to see you on personal business. You want me to notify him he can see you now?”

  Reinauer nodded. “Better notify the crew we’re not going back to Holy Loch, that we’re on a special training exercise with Devilfish. I want everyone on their toes. I don’t want Devilfish to outdo us, no matter what the exercise is.”

  Wilbur “Turk” Raynor, TM 1/c, rapped softly on the bulkhead of the Captain’s cabin and entered when he heard the command to do so. He stood at attention in the center of the small cabin.

  “At ease, Turk,” Captain Reinauer said. “Sit down in that chair. What’s on your mind?”

  “I want off, Captain,” Raynor said. His large, seamed face was set and hard.

  “Off? What do you mean?”

  “I want a transfer back to the diesel boats when we get back to port, sir.”

  Captain Reinauer took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and offered one to the torpedoman, who shook his head. “Now wait a minute, Turk. You know what you’re asking for? You’re asking for the worst mark that could ever be put in your record, you realize that?”

  “Yes, sir, I know that. I still want off, sir.”

  “Let’s make it man to man,” Reinauer said quietly. “Word of honor, Turk. What you say to me is like saying it to one of your gang. What’s wrong? This is a happy ship, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a good ship, Captain, and you’re a good skipper. The best. But I’m just tired of being a second class citizen in this submarine Navy. I want back on the diesel boats where I don’t have those damned nuke people to contend with.”

  “Second class citizen is a pretty harsh phrase,” Reinauer said slowly. “You’re the leading torpedoman aboard. I’ve given you as high a quarterly marks as I could give, four-oh on deportment and everything else except three nine on proficiency in rate and no one is four-oh in proficiency. Not even the captain of a submarine.”

  “That’s one of the things I want away from, sir. All the nuke people get an automatic four-oh on everything, direct order from Captain Steel. It isn’t fair, sir.”

  “That’s something I can’t change,” Reinauer said. “Okay, we’re talking man to man, what I say stays with you. What you say stays with me. Let me tell you a few things you might not know.

 
“I’ve given you the quarterly marks you deserve and those marks are damned high. That makes you a good man in the Navy’s eyes. If you ask for a transfer out of nuclear submarines that’s a black eye for Captain Steel, if you see what I mean. He doesn’t want good men asking to get out of nuclear submarines

  “What they’ll do when we get back to port and I submit your request is haul you up in front of a special board. The only way that board can justify the transfer of a good man is to find him unreliable to serve in any area where there is nuclear power or nuclear weapons.

  “You know what that means? It means the end of your career. You’ll never make Chief. I doubt you’ll get diesel submarine duty. They’ll put you on some yard tug or as a Master at Arms in some recruit training camp until you get your twenty years in. How long will that be, three more years? Or they could send you to a weather station up on the deep frost line in Alaska. You’ll never make Chief, never.”

  “I’m never going to make Chief anyway,” Raynor said stubbornly. “I’ve taken the Chief’s exam every six months for the past four years, sir. Never scored less than three nine. They don’t make very many Chief Torpedomen, you know that. Those they do make are all nuke dudes, that four-oh across the board on their quarterly marks gives them the edge they need to beat the non-nuke types. It’s a losing game, Captain.”

  “It might change, you know that. A lot of things have changed since Vice Admiral Brannon took over as ComSubLant. The word I’ve been given is that he isn’t through making changes in some of Captain Steel’s directives.”

  “That won’t change things much, Captain. This whole submarine Navy has to be changed, sir. We’re talking man to man, okay, let me lay it on you.

  “I’ve been in the Navy for seventeen years. I’ve got a clean record, never been in trouble, always did my job. I’ve been First Class for nine years, sir. You’ve got Chiefs in this nuclear Navy who’ve only been in the Navy for five, six years! They ship in for nukes under that damned Ninety-Nine Zero One program, they go to school for two, three years, and they come out of school as Second Class Petty Officers. A year later they’re made First Class. A year after that they’re Chiefs.