“Where the hell is Eldagsen?” Beregovoy peered down at the map. “That’s ten kilometers behind the line! Confirm that report!”
The ground shook under them, followed by the roar of jet engines and launching missiles.
“They just hit our radio transmitters,” the communications officer reported.
“Switch to the alternate!” Alekseyev shouted.
“That was the alternate. They took out the primary last night,” Beregovoy answered. “Another is being assembled now. So we use what we have here.”
“No,” Alekseyev said. “If we do that, we do it on the move.”
“I can’t coordinate well that way!”
“You can’t coordinate at all if you’re dead.”
USS CHICAGO
All hell was breaking loose. It was like a nightmare, except you woke up from those, McCafferty reminded himself. At least three Bear-F patrol aircraft were overhead, dropping sonobuoys all over the place, two Krivak-type frigates and six Grisha patrol boats had shown up on the sonar, and a Victor-III submarine had decided to come to the party.
Chicago had nibbled the odds down some. For the past few hours, fancy footwork had killed the Victor and a Grisha and damaged a Krivak, but the situation was deteriorating. The Russians were mobbing him, and he would not be able to keep them at arm’s length much longer. In the time it had taken him to localize and kill the Victor, the surface groups had closed five miles on him. Like a boxer against a puncher, he had the advantage only as long as he kept them away.
What McCafferty wanted and needed to do was talk with Todd Simms on Boston to coordinate their activities. He couldn’t, because the underwater telephone couldn’t reach that far and made too much noise. Even if he tried to make a radio broadcast, Boston would have to be near the surface, with her antenna up to hear him. He was sure Todd had his boat as deep as he could drive her. American submarine doctrine was for each boat to operate alone. The Soviets practiced cooperative tactics, but the Americans never felt the need. McCafferty needed some ideas now. The “book” solution to the tactical problem at hand was to maneuver and look for openings, but Chicago was essentially tied to a fixed position and could not stray too far from her sisters. As soon as the Russians understood that there was a cripple out there, they’d close in like a pack of dogs to finish Providence off, and he would not be able to stop them. Ivan would gladly exchange some of his small craft for a 688.
“Ideas, XO?” McCafferty asked.
“How about, ‘Scotty, beam us up!’ ” The executive officer tried to brighten things a bit. It didn’t work. So, okay, maybe the skipper wasn’t a Star Trek fan. “The only way I see to keep them off our friends is to get them to chase us awhile.”
“Go east and attack this group from the beam?”
“It’s a gamble,” the exec admitted. “But what isn’t?”
“You conn her. Two-thirds, and hug the bottom.”
Chicago turned southeast and increased speed to eighteen knots. This was a fine time to find out how accurate our charts are, McCafferty thought. Did Ivan have any minefields set here? He had to shut that thought out. If they hit one, he’d never know it. The executive officer kept the submarine within fifty feet of where the chart said the bottom was-actually he hedged, keeping fifty feet above the highest bottom marker within a mile. Even that would do no good if there was an uncharted wreck. McCafferty remembered his first trip into the Barents Sea. Somewhere close to here were those destroyers sunk as targets. If he hit one of those at eighteen knots . . .
The run lasted forty minutes.
“All ahead one-third!” McCafferty ordered when he couldn’t stand it anymore. Chicago slowed to five knots. To the diving officer: “Take her up to periscope depth.”
The planesmen pulled back on their controls. There was some minor groaning from the hull as the outside water pressure relented, allowing the hull to expand an inch or so. On McCafferty’s order the ESM mast went up first. As before there were several radar sources. The search periscope went up next.
A weather front was moving in, with a rain squall to the west. Fabulous, McCafferty thought. There goes ten percent of our sonar performance.
“I got a mast at two-six-four–what is it?”
“No radar signals on that bearing,” a technician said.
“It’s broken-it’s the Krivak. We got a piece of her, let’s finish her off. I-” A shadow went across the lens. McCafferty angled the instrument up and saw the swept wings and propellers of a Bear.
“Conn, sonar, multiple sonobuoys aft!”
McCafferty slapped the scope handles up and lowered the scope. “Take her down! Make your depth four hundred feet, left full rudder, all ahead full.”
A sonobuoy deployed within two hundred yards of the submarine. The brassy sound of its pings reverberated through the hull.
How long for the Bear to turn and drop on us? On McCafferty’s order a noisemaker was ejected into the water. It didn’t work, and he fired off another. One minute passed. He’ll try to get a magnetic fix on us first.
“Rewind the tape.” The duty electrician was grateful to have something to do. The video record of his five-second periscope exposure showed what looked like the remains of a Krivak’s topsides.
“Passing three hundred feet. Speed twenty and increasing.”
“Scrape the bottom, Joe,” McCafferty said. He watched the tape rerun, but that was only to have something for his eyes to do.
“Torpedo in the water port quarter! Torpedo bearing zero-one-five.”
“Right fifteen degrees rudder! All ahead flank! Come to new course one-seven-five.” McCafferty put the torpedo on his stern. His mind went through the tactical situation automatically. Russian ASW torpedo sixteen-inch diameter, speed about thirty-six knots, range four miles, runs about nine minutes. We’re doing-he looked-twenty-five knots. It’s behind us. So if he’s a mile behind us . . . seven minutes to cover the distance. It can get us. But we’re accelerating at ten knots per minute . . . No, it can’t.
“High-frequency pinging aft! Sounds like a torpedo sonar.”
“Settle down, people, I don’t think it can catch us.” Any Russian ship in the neighborhood can hear us, though.
“Passing through four hundred feet, starting level out.”
“Torpedo is closing, sir,” the sonar chief reported. “The pings sound a little funny, like-” The sub shook with a powerful explosion aft.
“All ahead one-third, right ten degrees rudder, come to new course two-six-five. What you just heard was their fish hitting the bottom. Sonar, start feeding me data.”
The Russians had a new line of sonobuoys north of Chicago, probably too far off to hear them. Bearings to the nearest Soviet ships were steadying down: they were heading right for Chicago.
“Well, that’ll keep them off our friends for a while, XO.”
“Super.”
“Let’s go south some more and see if we can get them to pass us. Then we’ll remind ’em what they’re up against.”
ICELAND
If I ever get off this rock alive, Edwards thought, I’ll move to Nebraska. He remembered flying over the state many times. It was so agreeably flat. Even the counties were nice neat squares. Not so in Iceland. For all that, it was easier going than they had enjoyed since leaving Keflavik. Edwards and his party kept to the five-hundred-foot elevation line, which kept them at least two miles from the gravel coast road, with mountains at their backs and a good long field of view. Up to now they had seen nothing more than routine activity. They assumed that every vehicle on the move had Russians aboard. That probably was not true, but since the Soviet troops had appropriated so many civilian vehicles there was no way to tell the sheep from the goats. That made them all goats.
“Enjoying your rest, Sarge?” Edwards and his group caught up with Smith. There was a road half a mile farther ahead, the first they’d seen in two days.
“See that mountaintop?” Smith pointed. “A chopper landed on it twenty minutes ago.”
“Great.” Edwards unfolded his map and sat down. “Hill 1063-that’s thirty-five hundred feet.”
“Makes a nice lookout point, don’t it? You suppose they can see us from there?”
“Ten or eleven miles. Depends, skipper. I figure they’re using it to watch the water on both sides. If they have any brains, they’ll keep an eye on the rocks, too.”
“Any idea how many people they have there?” Edwards asked.
“No way. Maybe nobody-hell, they might have been making a pickup, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Maybe a squad, maybe a platoon. You gotta figure they have a good pair of spotting glasses and a radio.”
“And how do we get past them?” Edwards asked. The ground was mostly open, with only a few bushes in sight.
“That’s a real good question, skipper. Pick our routes carefully, keep low, use dead ground-all the usual stuff. But the map shows a little bay that comes within four miles of them. We can’t detour around the far side without running into the main road-can’t hardly do that.”