Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy

“All right!” a destroyer captain observed.

“Gentlemen, we are delivering a total load of over two million tons of equipment, plus a complete armored division made up of reserve and National Guard formations. Not counting the materiel reinforcements, this is enough supplies to keep NATO in action for three weeks. This one goes through.

“Any questions? No? Then, good luck.”

The theater emptied, the officers filing past the armed guards onto the sunny street.

“Jerry?” Morris said quietly.

“Yes, Captain?” The pilot donned his aviator’s sunglasses.

“About last night-”

“Captain, last night we both had too much to drink, and to tell you the truth, I don’t remember all that much. Maybe six months from now we can decide what happened. You sleep well?”

“Almost twelve hours. My alarm clock didn’t go off.”

“Maybe you should get a new one.” They walked past the bar both had visited the night before. The captain and the pilot gave it a look, then laughed.

“Once more into the breach, dear friends!” Doug Perrin joined them.

“Just don’t give us any of this laying your ship alongside the enemy crap,” O’Malley suggested. “That ‘away boarders’ shit is dangerous.”

“Your job is to keep the bastards away from us, Jerr-O. Up to it?”

“He’d better be,” Morris observed lightly. “I’d hate to think he’s all talk!”

“We got a real nice bunch here,” the pilot observed angrily. “Jeez, I fly up all on my own, find a damned submarine, give it to Doug here, and do I get any respect?”

“That’s the problem with aviators. You don’t tell them how great they are every five minutes, they go and get depressed on you,” Morris said with a smile. He was a different person from the one who had mumbled through dinner last night. “Anything you need that we might have, Doug?”

“Perhaps we might exchange some foodstuffs?”

“No problem. Send your supply officer over. I’m sure we can negotiate something.” Morris checked his watch. “We don’t sail for another three hours. Let’s have a sandwich and talk over a few things. I got an idea for spoofing those Backfires that I want to try out on you . . .”

Three hours later, a pair of Moran harbor tugs eased the frigates away from the pier. Reuben James moved slowly, her turbine engines pushing her through the polluted water at a gentle six knots. O’Malley watched from the right seat of his helicopter, on alert for a possible Russian sub near the entrance to the harbor, though four Orion patrol aircraft were vigorously sanitizing the area. Probably the Victor they had killed two days before had been detailed to trail and report on the convoy, first to direct a Backfire raid, then to close and launch her own attack. The trailer was dead, but that did not mean that the sailing was a secret. New York was a city of eight million, and surely one of them was standing at his window with a pair of binoculars, cataloging the ship types and numbers. He or she would make an innocent telephone call, and the data would be in Moscow in a few hours. Other submarines would close on their expected track. As soon as they were outside of shore-based air cover, Soviet search aircraft would come looking, with missile-armed Backfires behind them.

So many ships, O’Malley thought. They passed a series of Ro/Ros, roll-on/roll-off container ships loaded with tanks, fighting vehicles, and the men of a whole armored division. Others were piled high with containers that could be loaded right onto trucks for dispatch to the front, their contents recorded on computer for rapid delivery to the proper destination. He thought about the news reports, the taped scenes of land combat in Germany. That was what this was all about. The Navy’s mission: keep the sea-lanes open to deliver the tools those men in Germany needed. Get the ships across.

“How does she ride?” Calloway asked.

“Not too bad,” Morris answered the reporter. “We have fin stabilizers. She doesn’t roll very much. If you have any problem, our corpsman can probably come up with something. Don’t be bashful about asking.”

“I will try to keep out of your way.”

Morris gave the man from Reuters a friendly nod. He’d arrived with only an hour’s warning, but he seemed to be a pro, or at least experienced enough to have all his gear packed in one bag. He took the last available bunk in officers’ country.

“Your admiral said that you’re one of his best commanders.”

“I guess we’ll find that out,” Morris said.

35 – Time on Target

USS REUBEN JAMES

The first two days went well. The escort force sailed first, blasting with their sonars at the shallow coastal water for possible submarines and finding none. The merchant ships followed, forming slowly into eight columns of ten each. The twenty-knot convoy was in a hurry to deliver its goods. Covered by a massive umbrella of land-based aircraft, it pressed on through the first forty-eight hours with only minor zigzagging as it sailed past the coast of New England and Eastern Canada, Sable Island, and the Grand Banks. The easy part was behind them now. As they left coastal waters for the Atlantic Ocean proper, they entered the unknown territory.

“About filing my dispatches . . . ” Calloway said to Morris.

“Twice a day you can use my satellite transmitter as long as it doesn’t interfere with official traffic. You understand that your reports will be run through Norfolk for sensitive information?”

“Quite so. Captain, you may believe me when I say that as long as I’m here with you, I will reveal nothing that would endanger your ship! I had quite enough excitement this year in Moscow.”

“What?” Morris turned and lowered his binoculars. Calloway explained what his spring had been like.

“Patrick Flynn, my opposite number from Associated Press, is aboard Battleaxe. Doubtless drinking beer,” he concluded.

“So you were there when all this boiled up. Do you know why all this started?”

Calloway shook his head. “If I did, Captain, I’d have filed the story long ago.”

A messenger appeared on the bridge wing with a clipboard. Morris took it, read through three messages, and signed for them.

“Something dramatic?” Calloway asked hopefully.

“Fleet weather-update and something about that Russian reconnaissance satellite. It comes overhead in another three hours. The Air Force is going to try and shoot it down before it gets to us, though. Nothing major. You’re comfortable, I presume. Any problems?”

“None, Captain. Nothing like a nice sea voyage.”

“True enough.” Morris stuck his head into the pilothouse. “General Quarters, Air Action.”

Morris led the reporter into the Combat Information Center, explaining that the drill he was about to see was to make sure his men could do everything properly even in the dark.

“One of those dispatches give you a warning?”

“No, but in six hours we’ll be outside of land-based fighter cover. That means Ivan is going to come looking for us.” And it’s going to get awfully lonely out here by ourselves, Morris thought. He gave his men an hour’s worth of drill. The CIC crew ran a pair of computer simulations. On the second one an enemy missile got through their defenses.

LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, VIRGINIA

The F-15 fighter rolled to a halt just outside the shelter building. The crew chief set the ladder next to the aircraft, and Major Nakamura climbed down, already looking aft at her scorched airplane. She walked over to examine the damage.

“Don’t look bad, Major,” the sergeant assured her. A fragment from the exploding rocket motor had drilled a hole the size of a beer can right through her left wing, missing a fuel tank by three inches. “I can fix that in a couple of hours.”

“You all right?” the Lockheed engineer asked.

“It blew, fifty feet away, and it just blew the hell up. You were wrong, by the way. When they blow, it’s pretty spectacular. Pieces all over the damned place. I was lucky I only caught one of them.” It had scared hell out of the pilot, but she’d then had an hour to recover. Now she was just mad.

“Sorry, Major. Wish I could say more than that.”

“Just have to try again,” Buns said, looking up at the sky through the hole. “When’s the next window?”

“Eleven hours, sixteen minutes.”

“That’s it, then.” She walked into the building, then upstairs to the pilots’ lounge. There was carpeting on the walls of the building for noise absorption. It also prevented serious injury to the pilots’ fists.

KIROVSK, R.S.F.S.R.

Unhampered, the Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite continued its orbit, and on its next pass over the North Atlantic found itself looking down on a collection of nearly a hundred ships in even columns. This must be the convoy their intelligence reports had told them about, the Russian analysts decided-and, they noted with satisfaction, it was out in the open, right where they could get at it.

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