He folded his arms, and waited for Forte to voice the obvious objection.
It took some time in coming. Forte sat in his chair, his eyes on the floor, rehearsing the sequence of events. He went over what Salvatore had said three times. There didn’t seem to be any holes in the argument.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “maybe what you- Hey! What about the frogmen who’ll go over the wreck after the Texas is sunk? If we fired projectiles, the empty shell casings would be evidence.”
“True.”
“Then how about the Elbows? They’re a hell of a lot bigger than a shell casing.”
“True. In fact, the Elbows carousel is about the size of a large wastebasket. Mostly electronic gear and wiring. It weighs exactly eighty-three pounds five ounces. We haven’t decided on how to do it, exactly, but we’re working on it.”
“Working on what?”
“How to get rid of the Elbows units, of course.”
“Can’t be done,” Forte said categorically, glad to find an objection to using the beam weapons.
“On the contrary, we have four foolproof methods already designed and under test. Merely a matter of choosing the best one. As a matter of fact, I thought of a fifth only this morning.”
“While drinking it?”
Salvatore laughed dutifully. “You see, when the ship sinks, a water-sensitive timer set for, say, twelve hours, begins running. The Russians won’t send down frogmen immediately, for fear of running into booby traps. They’ll wait until daylight. So we’ll have all night to get rid of the Elbows carousels. When the twelve-hour time period elapses, at two in the morning, say, an encapsulated balloon inflates from a bottle of compressed helium gas. When fully inflated, it will trigger explosive bolts to fire, severing the Elbows carousel from its foundation on the deck. The balloon shoots to the surface, with the carousel on its tether, and right on up into the dark night sky. The prevailing winds carry the carousels far inland. There a second explosive charge, set to go off at twenty thousand feet, distributes the wreckage over five square miles of farmland, safe from detection by the enemy. Of course, it might kill a few cows. How does that sound?”
“Pretty fancy, if somewhat hard on the cows. Do you think it will work?”
“Oh, it’ll work all right. I tested it this morning in computer simulations. But the other four ideas are better. The point is, whichever one we use, the Russian frogmen will find nothing to justify having sunk the Texas. That’s what counts, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Well?”
Forte smiled grimly. “Shoot!”
19 JANUARY 1998
speed.
One word said it all. Without blazing speed, the sudden apparition of the Texas, even with Elbows blazing, wasn’t likely to inspire the panic that would ensure a furious Russian bombardment. And only the sinking of the flagship of the Texas Navy would arouse the bitter condemnation of Russia that President Wilson Wynn was counting on to support him in his rejection of the booby-trapped Washington Protocols. Speed they had to have.
They didn’t have it.
This realization became depressingly clear as the team of naval architects and propulsion experts, led by Dr. Herbert Chilton Fallows, toured the engine and boiler rooms of the Texas. T. D. Roebuck’s assessment that it would be twenty-six more months before the propulsion train was again operative was borne out by the extreme disorder of the below-decks spaces. Huge valves, snarled hosing, gear boxes, stacks of pipe, parts of a disembowled turbine, chain hoists, a disassembled pump, and severed multi-colored wiring hanging from the overhead formed an almost impenetrable jungle of litter in the narrow passageways through the machinery. From a boiler a cloud of acrid smoke issued as welders labored to reinforce the lining where hairline cracks had appeared. At a makeshift table of two-by-fours, three engineers tried to make sense of a blueprint. In the next compartment, a shipfitter was heating a two-gallon coffee pot with a blowtorch. To a layman’s eye, everywhere was confusion, disorder, pools of water from overhead leaks, work half done and abandoned. But to Fallows and his companions, everything made sense and seemed to be proceeding with an efficiency they could do little to improve upon. In their mind’s eye, they could visualize what it would look like twenty-six months hence. It would be a vast improvement over previous design and performance. Still, it wouldn’t be anything like good enough. Despite all the innovations and refinements in the engine room and laminar-flow hull, the old Texas wouldn’t steam at above thirty-five knots flank speed. That was fast for even a new man-of-war-but not fast enough, by a long shot.
Back in SD-1, Fallows convened his assistants in the cafeteria. He pulled a crumpled paper from his pocket. “Got this from the naval attache at our embassy in Moscow, via Washington this morning. Says: ‘Best information now available indicates Presidium will send newly formed Seventeenth High Seas Fleet to American waters on courtesy visit preceding signing of Washington Protocols. Seventeenth Fleet consisting of newest and most powerful Red units, presently includes the following: the super-battle cruiser Karl Marx, 76,000 tons; helicopter carriers Beria, Yezhov, and Zinoviev; aircraft carriers Dzerzhinsky and Andropov; six missile cruisers; twelve Kura-class destroyers; and a communications ship, two fleet tankers, two mine sweepers, one amphibious support ship, three attack submarines, and four supply ships. The auxiliaries are expected to lie off shore and take no part in port calls. Updates will be filed as compiled.’
“That’s our competition, gentlemen: twenty-four of the most modern, fastest ships afloat, not counting support ships-Serdyuk, you’re the house expert on the Soviet Navy. What is the speed of the fastest ships that will come calling?”
The small, bald, bespectacled Ivan Serdyuk put down his coffee. “The Kura-class destroyers are the fastest afloat. They’ve been clocked at fifty-three knots in a moderate sea. Analysts believe they can make up to sixty knots. Even the Karl Marx can exceed thirty-three knots, and it is the slowest of the ships you’ve named.”
“And the Texas may make thirty-five knots,” Fallows said. “Well, there’s the problem in a nutshell. Unless we can somehow put a much larger press of canvas on that old scow, somehow beef up the speed fifty percent or more, we won’t be doing the job we’re being paid to do.”
Bitter laughter greeted his solemn words.
“You’re asking for heaven-tomorrow,” one of his assistants commented drily. “Increments in speed of this type of ship have been at the rate of about one knot every seven years over the past century, as you know better than anybody. Yet you want us to add something like thirty knots to the speed of that bloody bucket of rust within four months. With all due respect, Dr. Fallows, you’re barmy.”
Fallows nodded. “You’re right-I’m barmy. Still, we’re going to do it. Start thinking . . .”
In the nonstop brainstorming sessions that continued through the week, the first thought upon which all could agree was that the present propulsion system had to be scrapped outright. For one, it could not be reassembled anywhere near the deadline. And even if it were, the screws weren’t designed for higher speeds: whatever gain was achieved in increased speeds of shaft rotation would be canceled out by cavitation. One engineer, with a taste for overkill, had even computed that, with a shaft speed sufficient to propel the ship at only twenty-nine knots, the vibration of the screws would shake the ship apart.
Something radically different was required. Furthermore, whatever solution was found had to be absolutely and irrefutably practical, for while there would be time for computer-model simulations, there would be none for scale-model tests. It had to be right the first time.
A bright young engineer, Leften Stravrianos, a refugee from Turkey, came to the morning conference one day with the galley proofs of a yet unpublished scientific paper that purported to prove that extremely highspeed air jets, thrusting downward from the periphery of a vehicle, would replace the heavy, inefficient plastic aprons used in ground-effect machines. According to the paper’s calculations, there appeared to be no theoretical limit to the weight such OEMs could support.
“That’s antedeluvian,” Fallows scoffed. “It’s been tried in laboratories and in the field. It doesn’t work. If I had time, I could spend two or three hours telling you why it doesn’t- Next screwball, front and center!”
“You’ve got a closed mind, boss,” Stavrianos said stiffly. “Look, this is really the stuff. Instead of directing the jets downward at ninety degrees, they’re angled inward 3.7 degrees. The proper deviation from the vertical was discovered when the researchers tried fore-and-aft deviations. So far, they haven’t been able to establish any theoretical basis at all for the results, but talk about synergism, why-”
“Here, let me see that,” Fallows said impatiently. He grabbed the paper from the young man’s hand and rapidly scanned the dense lines of text. At first, he punctuated his reading with a muttered “Twaddle,” or “Nonsense!” or “God preserve us!” But after a time he fell silent, absorbed in the experimental data. He strode over to the nearest computer terminal and busied himself for the next ten minutes checking out the computations in the article.