refugees fleeing across the border into Eastern Europe. Even one
nuclear detonation in this war could set off repercussions that frankly,
ladies and gentlemen, we’re just not equipped to deal with.”
“Admiral Scott? What do you recommend?” the National Security Advisor
asked. He sounded subdued.
Scott extended a collapsible pointer, reached high, and tapped the DIDS
screen twice, close by the graphic symbol marking the Galveston. “I
think we have only one option open to us,” he said. “But we’re going to
have to move damned fast to exercise it.”
1439 hours (Zulu +2)
Control room/attack center
U.S.S. Galveston
Commander Montgomery pressed his eyes against the rubber light shield of
Galveston’s number-one search periscope. The attack sub was at a depth
of one hundred feet, creeping north toward the edge of the ice.
Underwater visibility was superb. Though still submerged, the sub’s
periscope gave Montgomery a view of shifting lights and darks; he could
see the white shimmer of the ice less than a mile ahead, brighter where
it was thin, deeply shadowed where pressure ridges plunged into the
aquamarine depths like inverted mountain ranges. The periscope view was
repeated on a television monitor on the attack center’s bulkhead,
showing open water overhead giving way to a ceiling of ice.
“Captain, comm shack.”
He reached for an intercom mike. “Captain here.”
“Sir, we’ve just had an ELF ring the bell. Message decodes as ‘Priority
FLASH, stand by for VLF communications, comply immediate.” That’s the
end of the transmission, sir.”
“Very well.” He turned from the periscope, catching the eye of
Galveston’s XO. “Mr. Harris, come about to one-eight-zero. As soon as
we’re well clear of the ice, come up to fifty feet.”
“Course one-eight-zero, aye, sir,” Harris repeated, following the
correct control room procedure. “Come to five-zero feet when we’re
clear of the ice, aye, sir.” He then turned and repeated the orders to
the helmsman and diving planes operator, who sat side by side at the
front of the control room.
As he listened to the litany of multiply repeated orders, Montgomery
wondered what Washington was so anxious about. It was almost forty
minutes past the last Sched-3 contact window.
It had been sheer luck Galveston was still trailing her ELF antenna and
had been close enough to the surface to pick up that first priority
flash.
Transmitted from enormous antennas at remote shore stations, extremely
low-frequency signals, broadcast at from 300 hertz to 3 kilohertz, could
penetrate the ocean to a depth of about three hundred feet, far deeper
than any other form of radio communications. The drawback was that the
laws of physics dictated that information could be transmitted on ELF
channels only very slowly, at a rate of about ten bits per minute; it
took fifteen minutes to transmit a three-letter code group, enough to,
say, order the sub to the surface to receive new instructions according
to a pre-arranged code, but not enough to transmit new and detailed
orders. Such code groups were called “bell ringers.”
Minutes later, Galveston was traveling slowly south away from the edge
of the ice. Once the long ELF antenna wire had been reeled in,
Montgomery ordered the shorter VLF antenna deployed, trailing it astern
from the top of Galveston’s sail. The very low-frequency band,
broadcast at between 3 and 30 kilohertz, could only penetrate the top
fifty feet or so of the ocean. By rising to such a shallow depth,
Galveston was dangerously exposed to any Soviet ASW aircraft that might
be in the area.
“Captain, comm shack.”
“Yeah. Go ahead.”
“Message coming through, sir. Code group Red-Charlie-One.”
“On my way.”
The message would be in code, of course. Red-Charlie-One was the
current designation for a launch-condition message, flagged urgent.
Montgomery had a chilling premonition about what might be in such a
message.
CHAPTER 18
Sunday, 15 March
1449 hours (Zulu +2)
Control room/attack center
Russian PLARB Slavnyy Oktyabrskaya Revolutsita
Surfaced, the Revolutsita had no trouble picking up the
satellite-relayed communication from Kandalaksha. Krasilnikov’s address
to the Russian people was still ringing in Dobrynin’s ears when the call
from Karelin had come through.
“Are all systems in readiness, Comrade Captain Dobrynin?”
Karelin’s voice was curiously flattened after being scrambled at the