A garbled group of syllables came over the speaker.
McCafferty took the gertrude phone off the receiver and depressed the Transmit trigger.
“Zulu X-ray.” There came a pause of several seconds, then a scratchy reply.
“Hotel Bravo,” replied HMS Sceptre. McCafferty let out a long breath that went unnoticed by the rest of the attack center crew, all of whom were doing exactly the same thing.
“All ahead one-third,” the captain said. Ten minutes later they were within easy range of the gertrude. Chicago halted to communicate.
“Welcome to the Soviet back garden, old boy. Slight change in plans. Keyboard” -the code name for HMS Superb- “is two-zero miles south to check further on your route. We’ve encountered no hostile activity for the past thirty hours. The coast is clear. Good hunting.”
“Thank you, Keylock. The gang’s all here. Out.” McCafferty hung the phone set back in its place. “Gentlemen, the mission is a go! All ahead two-thirds!”
The nuclear attack submarine increased speed to twelve knots on a heading of one-nine-seven degrees. HMS Sceptre counted the American boats as they passed, then resumed her station, circling slowly at the edge of the icepack.
“Good luck, chaps,” her captain breathed.
“They should get in all right.”
“It’s not getting in that I’m worried about, Jimmy,” the captain replied, using the traditional name for a British sub’s first officer. “The ticklish part’s getting back out.”
STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND
“Telex for you, Commander.” An RAF sergeant handed the message form over to Toland.
“Thank you.” He scanned the form.
“Leaving us?” Group Captain Mallory asked.
“They want me to fly down to Northwood. That’s right outside London, isn’t it?”
Mallory nodded. “No problem getting you there.”
“That’s nice. It says ‘immediate.'”
NORTHWOOD, ENGLAND
He’d been to England many times, all on business with his opposite numbers at Government Communications Headquarters outside Cheltenham. His flights always seemed to arrive at night. He was flying at night now, and something was wrong. Something obvious . . .
Blackout. There were few lights below. Did that really matter now that aircraft had sophisticated navigation aids, or was it mainly a psychological move to remind the people of what was going on? If the continuous television coverage, some of it “live” from the battlefront, didn’t do that already. Toland had been spared most of that. Like most men in uniform, he had no time for the big picture while he concentrated on his little corner of it. He imagined it was the same for Ed Morris and Danny McCafferty, then realized this was the first time he’d thought of them in over a week. How were they doing? They were certainly more exposed to danger than he was at the moment, though his experience on Nimitz the second day of the war had given him enough terror to last the remainder of his life. Toland did not yet know that with a routine telex message sent a week before, he would directly affect their lives for the second time this year.
The Boeing 737 airliner touched down ten minutes later. Only twenty people were aboard, almost all of them in uniform. Toland was met by a car and a driver which sped him off to Northwood.
“You’re Commander Toland?” a Royal Navy lieutenant asked. “Please come with me, sir. COMEASTLANT wants to see you.”
He found Admiral Sir Charles Beattie chewing on an unlit pipe in front of a huge map of the eastern and northern Atlantic.
“Commander Toland, sir.”
“Thank you,” the Admiral said without turning. “Tea and coffee in the corner, Commander.”
Toland availed himself of the tea. He drank it only in the U.K., and after several weeks he found himself wondering why he didn’t have it at home.
“Your Tomcats have done well up in Scotland,” Beattie said.
“It was the aerial radar that made the real difference, sir. More than half the kills were made by the RAF.”
“Last week you sent a message to our air operations chaps to the effect that your Tomcats were able to track Backfires visually at very long range.”
It took Toland a few seconds to remember it. “Oh, yes. It’s the video-camera system they have, Admiral. It’s designed to identify fighter-size aircraft at thirty miles or so. Tracking something as big as a Backfire they can do at fifty or so if the weather’s good.”
“And the Backfires would not know they were there?”
“Not likely, sir.”
“How far could they follow a Backfire?”
“That’s a question for a driver, sir. With tanker support, we can keep a Tomcat aloft for almost four hours. Two hours each way, that would take them almost all the way home.”
Beattie turned to face Toland for the first time. Sir Charles was a former aviator himself, last commander of the old Ark Royal, Britain’s last real carrier. “How sure are you of Ivan’s operating airfields?”
“For the Backfires, sir? They operate from the four airfields around Kirovsk. I would presume you have satellite photos of the places, sir.”
“Here.” Beattie handed him a folder.
There was a degree of unreality to this, Toland thought. Four-star admirals didn’t chew the fat with newly frocked commanders unless they had nothing better to do, and Beattie had lots of things to do. Bob opened the folder.
“Oh.” He looked at a photo set for Umbozero, the field east of Kirovsk. There’d been lit smokepots during the satellite pass, and the resulting black smoke had completely hidden the runways to visual light, with flares messing up the infrared imaging systems as well. “Well, there are the hardened shelters, and maybe three aircraft. Was this taken during a raid?”
“Correct. Very good, Commander. The Backfire force left the airfield three hours before the satellite pass.”
“Trucks, too-fuel bowsers?” He got a nod. “They refuel them right after they land?”
“We think yes, before they get into the shelters. Evidently they don’t like the idea of fueling inside a building. Seems reasonable enough. Ivan’s had problems with accidental explosions the last few years.”
Toland nodded, remembering the explosion at the main ordnance storage facility for the Russian Northern Fleet in 1984. “Be a hell of a nice time to catch them on the ground-but we don’t have any tactical aircraft that’ll reach nearly that far. B-52s could do it, but they’d be murdered. We learned that over Iceland.”
“But a Tomcat could trail the Backfires nearly to the Russian doorstep, and that could allow you to predict exactly when they’ll land?” Sir Charles persisted.
Toland looked at the map. The Backfires reentered Russian fighter cover about thirty minutes, flying time from their home bases.
“Plus or minus fifteen minutes . . . yes, Admiral, I think we can do that. I wonder how long it takes to refuel a Backfire.” There was a lot of thinking going on behind those blue eyes, Toland saw.
“Commander, my operations officer will brief you on something called Operation Doolittle. We named it after one of your chaps as a clever bit of subterfuge to weasel the assets from your navy. For the moment, this information is eyes-only to you. Be back here in an hour. I want your evaluation of how we can improve the basic operational concept.”
“Yes, sir.”
USS REUBEN JAMES
They were in New York harbor. O’Malley was in the wardroom finishing up the written account of the destruction of the Soviet submarine when the growler phone on the port bulkhead started making noise. He looked up and discovered he was the only officer in the room. That meant he had to answer it.
“Wardroom. Lieutenant Commander O’Malley.”
“Battleaxe here. May I please speak to your CO?”
“He’s taking a nap. Can I help you, or is it important?”
“If he’s not too busy, the captain wishes to invite him to dinner. Half an hour from now. Your XO and helicopter pilot also if he’s available.”
The pilot laughed. “The XO’s on the beach, but the helo driver’s available if the Queen’s ships are still wet.”
“Indeed we are, Commander.”
“Okay. I’ll go wake him up. Be back to you in a few minutes.” O’Malley hung up and went out the door. He bumped into Willy.
“Excuse me, sir. The torpedo-loading practice?”
“Okay, I’m going to see the skipper anyway.” Willy had complained that the last practice had gone a little slow. He handed the petty officer his report. “Take this down to the ship’s office and tell ’em to type it up.”
O’Malley went forward and found the door to the captain’s stateroom closed, but the do-not-disturb light was switched off. He knocked and went in. The noise surprised him.
“Don’t you see it!” The words came out as a gasp. Morris was lying on his back, his hands balled into fists on the blanket. His face was covered in sweat and he breathed like a man finishing a marathon.
“Jesus.” O’Malley hesitated. He didn’t really know the man.
“Look out!” This was louder, and the pilot wondered if anyone in the passageway outside might hear it and wonder if the captain were-he had to do something.