CARRIER 6: COUNTDOWN By Keith Douglass

for lack of the Russians trying!”

“But to just go out and sink their submarine …” Vane began.

“Okay, sir,” Magruder said, spreading his hands. He was having more and

more trouble containing his impatience. “If you don’t like that,

another response would be an alpha strike, a bombing raid against the

airfields from which those air attacks were launched. We know which

ones were involved. If you want to pretend to believe that mutineers

launched that attack, fine. Hit the bases that launched the planes and

missiles. Knock out the radar and SAM sites. Send them a message that

we’re not going to stand for this kind of provocation.”

“And be guilty of greater provocation ourselves!” West pointed out.

Magruder shrugged pointedly. “I must also point out that we have

Resolution 982 to consider. Our response to the Russian attack could

incorporate the UN mandate as our moral imperative for involving

ourselves in the Kola.”

Resolution 982 had been passed by the UN Security Council a month

earlier, just after the violent coup that had ousted Leonov. It

condemned any use of nuclear weapons in Russia’s civil war and called

for UN control of all of Russia’s nuclear weapons, including her ICBM

submarines. Needless to say, all parties in Russia had flatly rejected

the idea, and so far, the resolution had served only to further isolate

the bloodily fragmented nation.

Still, Resolution 982 provided the legal framework for any future

intervention in Russia’s affairs.

“Until we have more, um, decisive backing from the UN,” Waring pointed

out, “Nine eighty-two is little more than pretty words. We must

consider the Russian response to our presence off their coast.”

“Indeed,” West said. “It is possible that Moscow is simply responding

to our provocation. We, after all, are the ones who sent two carrier

battle groups into their waters. We should remain sensitive to their

perceptions of the situation.”

Magruder sighed and settled back in his seat. Clearly, this was going

to be a long and bloodthirsty session.

CHAPTER 17

Sunday, 15 March

1340 hours (Zulu +2)

U.S.S. Galveston

Barents Sea

Galveston was cruising toward the edge of the ice pack at a depth of

eight hundred feet, still on silent routine, still dogging the wake of

the Typhoon submarine that had set out from Polyamyy over fifty hours

earlier.

The Typhoon had been traveling slowly, barely making ten knots,

sometimes slowing or suddenly reversing course as if checking for

shadows, a maneuver American submariners referred to as “Crazy Ivan.”

Galveston followed cautiously, silently, remaining in the Russian sub’s

baffles, quick to go dead in the water at each Crazy Ivan, remaining

nearly motionless as the Russian Typhoon slowly, like a self-propelled

island, rumbled past, once passing only a few hundred yards to

starboard. The Typhoon was half again as long as the Galveston and was

over four times more massive. A collision would have crumpled the Los

Angeles attack sub’s hull like tinfoil.

Faithful to Schedule-3, Galveston rose every six hours to within three

hundred feet of the surface, unreeling a long antenna cable in her wake

capable of receiving extremely low-frequency radio waves, or ELF. For

over fifty hours, no new orders had come through, and each time,

Galveston returned to her hiding place within the sheltering cone of

turbulent water spun off from the Typhoon’s twin screws.

Through most of that time, Sonarman First Class Ekhart had led the

chase, sitting in the sonar compartment, ears encased in the sonar

headset, a far-away glaze to his eyes as he followed in his mind the

movements of the giant ahead. For the past hour, the target, Sierra

Nine, had been probing the edge of the Barents Sea ice pack, rising

gradually until her conning tower was brushing just beneath the rugged

white ceiling of the ice.

Though Galveston was some ten to twelve miles south of the ice pack,

Ekhart was still having to rely on every trick in the book–and several

that weren’t in the book as well–to make sense out of what he was

hearing. Sound was curiously distorted beneath the ice, where sounds

reflected from the surface as though from a wall, and the ice itself

filled the depths with crackling, popping, and rasping noises that

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