Torpedo! (The Silent War Book 3) Read online

  “I know that Admiral Brannon has made changes. He’s a good man, I had him as a Squadron Commander when I first went to diesel submarines, when I got out of boot camp and sub school. When I went into the nukes the damned nuke sailors didn’t even have to carry stores and that was Captain Steel’s direct order. His nuke people didn’t even have to keep their living spaces clean! We guys, the second class citizens who hadn’t qualified for his nuclear schools had to do the dirty work aboard submarines. Sure, I know Admiral Brannon has changed a lot of that stuff but I’m still a second class citizen in this Navy, Captain.

  “Look at this ship. It’s a damned good submarine and you’re a damned good Captain. But when we’re in port, which isn’t very damned much, we have two Officers of the Watch, one senior officer in charge of the reactor end of the ship, one junior officer in charge of the rest of us. We have two Chiefs of the Watch, two Watch sections. Last time we were in port I was Acting Chief of the Watch and the Senior Chief of the Watch was a nuke Chief Electronics Technician who’s been in the Navy six years and he never smelled salt water until he came aboard here six months ago. And he’s giving me orders! I’ve had it up to here, Captain. I want off, sir. And if they don’t like it they can give me my discharge.”

  “You feel that strongly, Raynor? You’d throw away seventeen years of good service?”

  Turk Raynor stood up. “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “Think it over,” Captain Reinauer said. “We’re probably going to be on this exercise for a week or more. See me before we get back into port and let’s talk again.” He smiled. “And thanks for leveling with me, Turk. I appreciate it.”

  Eckert knocked at the cabin bulkhead and came in and found Captain Reinauer sitting at his desk.

  “Here’s our ETA on station, sir, and our course. What did the Turk want, Skipper, anything important?”

  “He wants out of nukes,” Reinauer said.

  “My God, another one? The Chief Quartermaster put the same request to me earlier today. Two people in the radio gang feel the same way. It’s almost like a disease.”

  “Call it the ‘Captain Steel disease,’ ” Captain Reinauer said.

  “What the hell can you do about it?”

  “Not much except what I’m doing,” Reinauer said. “Write another confidential letter to Admiral Brannon and fill him in on the way things are.”

  The buzzer on Mike Brannon’s telephone console sounded. “Commander Fencer of Operations on the line, sir,” Brannon’s Chief Yeoman said. Brannon picked up the phone and punched the lighted button on the console.

  “Commander Fencer, sir. We have a SOSUS report on a surface ship that cleared the Strait of Gibraltar. That ship then proceeded on an identical course followed by the Sharkfin and held to that course until it passed out of sensor range, sir.”

  “You wouldn’t have an ID on that ship, would you, John?”

  “So happens we do, Admiral. We footprinted her a year or so ago off the Aleutians. She was working as a target for Soviet submarines and she got over the SOSUS network there. We got her footprint and an aircraft visual on her, sir. She’s a Soviet general cargo freighter, ten thousand tons, cargo booms fore and aft. She’s got some sonar gear aboard. We heard her working the Soviet submarines.”

  “Thank you,” Brannon said. “Please keep me informed.” He turned to John Olsen who had walked in with a thick stack of papers.

  “Manpower reports on re-enlistments, Mike.” Brannon filled Olsen in on the report from the Black Room.

  “What the hell is she doing running down the Sharkfin’s course line?” Brannon said. “How many Soviet freighters clear the Med and head out on that course? She’d be on a more southerly heading if she was going to Cuba.”

  “We could find out,” Olsen said. “If Fencer has her foot-printed then he knows her name and registry. We could check with Lloyds. Where’s the Medusa?”

  “I moved her fifty miles to the north. Devilfish is near her. I didn’t want Medusa too close to the Sharkfin in case that rogue submarine came back. The captain of that damned submarine might be off his rocker. If he came back and saw Medusa there he might take a crack at her.

  “Let me know what Lloyds says about that freighter’s next port of call,” Brannon walked to the chart on his wall and studied it as Olsen left.

  Bob Wilson’s secretary stepped out of her office. “Marjorie just rang me. Admiral Benson is on his way down the hall to see you. Button your shirt collar and get your tie back up where it belongs. I’ll get some coffee. Do all sailors drink coffee all the time?”

  “Yup,” Wilson said. He cinched up his tie and straightened up the mass of paper on his desk. Admiral Benson walked in the door as Wilson’s secretary put two cups of coffee on his desk. The Admiral smiled his thanks and sat down in a chair beside the desk.

  “You hear anything from the Mossad as yet?”

  “Just conversation,” Wilson said. “Dr. Saul calls every day. Their reports confirm what we’re hearing. A lot of in-fighting going on in the Politburo. We can make a good guess what it’s all about.”

  “No indication of whether Brezhnev will call the President?”

  “We’ll know the minute he does,” Wilson said. “We’ve got a tap on the hot line so we’ll know as soon as he calls.”

  Admiral Benson’s face went white. “My God!” he said in a half whisper. “You can’t be serious! The Agency hasn’t tapped the President’s hot line to the Soviet Union!”

  “We did that the day it was installed,” Wilson said. “It would surprise you to know how mealy-mouthed some of our big, bold Presidents really are. I think what this country needs is a President who knows all the four-letter words and who’d say them out loud to the Russians.” He grinned at Admiral Benson.

  “I’d love to have a camera in place in the Kremlin if we had a President like that and watch the interpreter’s face when he had to tell Brezhnev that the President of the United States just told him to go fuck himself.”

  Admiral Benson shook his head like a prize fighter who had just been hit with a hard left hook. “When is the deadline for that phone call?”

  “Tomorrow evening, sir. But we shouldn’t be too rigid on that. You’ve got a seven hour time difference between Moscow and here. The Politburo likes to meet in the evening, which makes it early afternoon here, but sometimes they meet until late at night. Which means they might not take any action until the following day, Moscow time.”

  “So we wait,” Benson said.

  “Yup,” Wilson said. “And for your information, sir, Admiral Brannon has ordered another attack submarine to join up with that one he sent to where the Sharkfin was sunk.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Admiral Brannon stopped at the desk of his Chief Yeoman and took off his muffler and his heavy uniform overcoat. The Chief looked at his desk notepad.

  “You’ve got a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at lunch, sir. One call this morning from the Sub Base at New London. They want to know when Sharkfin will arrive. I told them you’d get back to them sometime today. Admiral Olsen is in your office, sir.” Brannon nodded his thanks and went in to his office.

  “Morning, John,” he said to Olsen. “You get any information on that Soviet freighter from Lloyds?”

  “Her original port of call was Odessa with tobacco and citrus fruits from Libya, Mike. Her skipper notified Lloyds that his owners had diverted him to France, to Brest.”

  “Doesn’t figure,” Brannon said. “He could have gone across the Mediterranean and offloaded in Marseilles. Saved a lot of sea time and fuel. Fencer said that freighter had worked with Soviet subs off the Aleutians, that’s where they got her footprint. He said the freighter was working Soviet submarines with sonar. My guess is that the Russians have sent her down Sharkfin’s course to find out if the Medusa put down sonar buoys around the Sharkfin.”

  “Might be that they didn’t believe what Wilson told to his contact in Israel,” Olsen said slowly. “They want to run a check for t
hemselves.” He looked at Brannon.

  “The deadline for that phone call from Brezhnev is tonight, Mike.”

  The red light on Bob Wilson’s scrambler telephone flashed and then began to blink. Wilson picked up the telephone handset and heard Isser Bernstein’s voice.

  “I don’t have good news, Bob,” Bernstein said. “We have learned that the person who is supposed to make that telephone call has been sick in bed for the past week. He has a bad case of Asian Flu.” Bernstein chuckled. “I think that’s a sort of poetic justice, Asian Flu. He has seen no one but his doctors, taken no phone calls since he got sick.”

  “You’re sure?” Wilson asked.

  “He has been under the care of the best chest man in his country. The doctor is of my faith and is an old friend of mine. I am sure. What I think you should do, old friend, is to put everything on the back burner, as you people say. Delay events as long as you can.”

  “I agree,” Wilson said. “Shalom. “He put the handset back on its cradle and sat staring at the wall of his office, debating in his mind if he should tell Admiral Benson what Bernstein had told him or to let events take their course.

  A few minutes after Wilson had talked with Isser Bernstein, Stefan Lubutkin stuck his head around the door into Shevenko’s office. “If there is nothing more, Comrade Director?”

  “No, nothing. It’s the ballet tonight, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. And thank you. Until tomorrow, Comrade Director.”

  “Have you got a pretty girl to take to the ballet, Stefan?” Shevenko called out. “I understand that girls are quicker to yield after they have watched the male ballet dancers perform.” Lubutkin blushed and withdrew his head.

  Later that evening, during the second act of the ballet, Lubutkin left his seat and went through a heavily brocaded curtain that concealed an exit door. He slipped through the door and stood in the dark alleyway outside the theatre. He saw the black limousine and walked to it and opened the door and got into the back seat. Admiral Zurahv smiled at him.

  “Your boss lied to us, Stefan,” the Admiral said. “The Americans did not find their submarine. If they had done so they would have marked the spot with sonar buoys. There are no such buoys.”

  “The picture?” Lubutkin said. “It looked genuine.”

  “It did,” the Admiral said. “But it could have been faked. I am having it analyzed now by one of our photo experts.”

  “He lies to everyone,” Lubutkin said. “And he lies about everyone. He lied to me. He told me he went to East Berlin and that is where he got the picture and the information. Our man in East Berlin never saw him.”

  “He did leave Moscow,” Zurahv said. “One of my people saw him board the airliner, saw him return. Where did he go?”

  “I think to West Berlin,” Lubutkin said. “I think he went there to see a woman. He is a notorious one for women.”

  “A woman?” Admiral Zurahv said genially. “He doesn’t know what a treasure he has in his own office. You’ll stop by my apartment after the ballet, little one?”

  “Now, if you like, darling,” Lubutkin said. “The ballet is boring.” His slim hand found its way under the flap of the Admiral’s greatcoat. “You’re such a big bear of a man,” he murmured. The Admiral grinned and picked up the car’s telephone and dialed a number. “Let me talk, you naughty boy,” he murmured.

  “Zurahv here,” he growled into the telephone. “Issue orders at once to Captain Kovitz to leave Tripoli and to proceed down the course line of his target and listen for sonar buoys. Yes, I know what the freighter Captain said. He’s a merchant marine captain and he knows little about sonar. I want a reliable check. Yes. Send those orders at once.” He hung up the telephone and spoke into the car’s intercom system to the driver.

  “My apartment.” As the car moved out of the alleyway he unbuttoned his greatcoat to give Lubutkin greater freedom.

  Captain Nikita Kovitz watched from the bridge of his submarine as the crew of a Libyan motor launch struggled to unshackle a cable that held his ship’s bow to a mooring buoy in the outer reaches of Tripoli harbor. There was a splash in the water and a bellow of criticism from the coxswain of the motor launch. Captain Kovitz grinned at the Officer of the Deck.

  “Clumsy bastards probably dropped the shackle in the water. Those monkey men can’t do anything right. Wait until they get well clear with that motor launch before we get underway. We’ll be on the surface for an hour before submerging. Keep a sharp lookout for fishing boats. The bastards don’t usually carry running lights and if we hit one of them we’ll be tied up in court here for six months. I’m going below, notify me fifteen minutes before we dive.” .He dropped down the ladders to the Command Center where he checked the log book and then he went to his cabin. His Navigator came in response to his summons.

  “I want to traverse the Strait of Gibraltar at night, submerged, Navigator. Make sure that our speeds are right for that timing. When we leave the Strait we’ll go to four hundred feet and proceed at fifteen knots. We’ll slow to ten knots when we reach the target area. I want a Battle Condition One sonar watch set at that time.”

  “The earlier message said that a freighter equipped with sonar made that run and got a negative result,” the Navigator said. “If we’re listening for sonar buoys it must mean the Americans have found their submarine and have marked it. I can’t believe that, not in that depth of water.”

  “Nothing is impossible,” Kovitz said. “If Admiral Zurahv sent a freighter to search out the possibility of sonar buoys around our target it means that someone has told him the Americans found their submarine. I don’t think the Admiral would come up with that idea by himself. He’s not one of our more innovative thinkers.

  “Apparently he wants us to double-check on the freighter’s results. That figures, our sonar is much better than what they’d have on some freighter.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Navigator said. “I’ve been wondering why they ordered us here to port in such a hurry. Do you know?”

  “No,” Kovitz said. He got up from his chair and went to a chart on the bulkhead above his desk. “Once we begin the sonar search I want everyone to be alert. If we don’t find anything on the first run down the course line we’ll make runs back and forth on either side of the course line. The target may have skewed well off the course line after she was hit.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Navigator said. He cleared his throat. “Comrade Captain, we are not at war so one must assume that some very complicated political events are taking place. The summons you received to fly to Moscow, you didn’t mention anything about that trip to me, Comrade.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Captain Kovitz said. “You’d better take care of laying down the courses and speeds, we’ll be submerging in a half hour or so.”

  Admiral Brannon was finishing his second cup of coffee when the telephone rang at 2000 hours, eight o’clock in the evening. His wife rose from the dinner table and went into the kitchen to answer the phone. She came back, smiling and nodding her head at Brannon, who went into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

  “Commander Fencer, Admiral. The Watch Officer in the Black Room just informed me that the submarine that had been patrolling off Morocco and then left that area and went into the Mediterranean has been footprinted clearing the Strait of Gibraltar. She’s running on the same course as Sharkfin was on, sir.”

  “Thank you, Commander. Are you at home? Could you meet me in the Black Room in, oh, half an hour or so? Good.” He put the phone in its cradle and then picked it up again and dialed the Officer of the Day at the Pentagon and ordered a car and driver to pick him up and another car and driver to get Admiral Olsen. Twenty minutes later he walked into the Black Room.

  “You got here in a hurry, John,” he said to Olsen. “Your Swedish ESP working or something?”

  “No, sir. This is Joan’s bowling night and I stayed in the office to catch up with some of the paperwork. The OOD checked the Out Log and found I was still in the building.�
�� He nodded at the lighted glass wall of the Black Room where a black line was barely moving on a course slightly to the north and west out of the Strait of Gibraltar.

  “Our boy is back. He sure as hell isn’t on his way to his regular patrol area off Morocco. If he were he would have turned south by now.”

  Brannon turned to Commander Fencer. “You people do a damned good job, John. I want you to tell your watch standers that, if you will.

  “Could you have them lay down Sharkfin’s course from her last position report on out to where we found her?”

  Fencer spoke into the microphone and a red line appeared on the glass wall and overlaid the creeping black line.

  “I wonder where that murdering son of a bitch is going, what he’s up to?” Brannon growled. “Is he going back out to the scene of the crime to gloat?”

  “Might be something else,” Olsen said. “Wilson told his contact to tell the Russians that we had found Sharkfin and taken pictures of her on the bottom. The Russians are pretty damned good sailors. If I were in their shoes right now I’d figure that if we found the Sharkfin we’d put down sonar buoys to mark her on the bottom. Maybe they’re trying to listen for those buoys, see if we were running a bluff.”

  “Medusa would drop sonar buoys, wouldn’t she, when she found Sharkfin on the bottom?” Brannon looked at Commander Fencer.

  “Yes, sir, that’s standard operating procedure. When the Medusa picks up an ocean bottom formation that looks odd or unusual and needs detailed charting, she drops sonar buoys to mark the area so she can home in on the buoys and make as many runs over the area as she has to get a good bottom charting or to take pictures.”