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