“I’ll take care of it, sir,” Garcia said quietly. The private was standing behind the kneeling prisoners. One of them was making some noise, but even if he hadn’t been gagged, none of the Americans knew a word of Russian. They had no chance at all. Garcia stabbed from the side, sticking his knife completely through one neck, then the other. Both men fell. It was over quickly. The private and the lieutenant went into the kitchen to wash their hands.
“Okay, we load them back into the four-by-four and drive it back to the main road. We’ll see if we can fake an accident and torch the vehicle. Get some liquor bottles. We’ll make it look like they were drinking.”
“They were, sir.” Rodgers held up a bottle of clear liquor.
Edwards gave the bottle a brief look, but shook off the thought. “Figures. If I guess right, these guys were the crossroads guards from the main highway-or maybe just a patrol. I don’t think they can guard every crossroads on this island. If we’re just a little lucky, maybe their bosses’ll never figure out we were involved in this.” A long shot, he thought, but what the hell?
“Skipper,” Smith said. “If you want to do that, we gotta-”
“I know. You and Rodgers stay here and get ready. If you see anything else we can use, pack it up. When we get back, we’ll have to haul ass.”
Edwards and Garcia loaded all the bodies into the back of the truck, careful to sort through the battle gear. They unloaded waterproof parkas whose camouflage pattern was almost identical with their own and a few other items that wouldn’t be missed, then drove off quickly down the road.
Luck was with them. There was no permanent guard post at the crossroads, perhaps because the farm road led nowhere. The Russians had probably been a patrol team, and had chosen the farm for a little informal R&R. Two hundred yards down the coastal highway the road paralleled a steep cliff. They halted the vehicle there and manhandled the bodies into the seats. Garcia emptied a jerrican of gasoline into the back and the two men pushed it toward the edge with the rear hatch open. Garcia tossed a Russian grenade into the back as it went over the edge. Neither man wanted to admire their handiwork. They ran back the half mile to the farmhouse. Everything was ready.
“We have to burn the house, Miss Vigdis,” Smith was explaining. “If we don’t, the Russians’ll know for sure what happened here. Your mom and dad are dead, ma’am, but I’m sure they’d want you to stay alive, Okay?”
She was still too much in shock to offer more than token resistance. Rodgers and Smith had cleaned off the bodies, and moved them upstairs to their own bedroom. It would have been better to bury them, but there just wasn’t time.
“Let’s get moving, people,” Edwards ordered. They should have been moving already. Somebody had to be coming to investigate the burning truck, and if they used a chopper . . . “Garcia, you watch the lady. Smith has the rear. Rodgers, take the point. We have to put six miles between us and this place in the next three hours.”
Smith waited ten minutes before tossing his grenade into the house. The kerosene he’d spread on the first floor went up at once.
USS CHICAGO
The contact was a lot better now. They had classified one ship as a Kashin-class missile destroyer, and her propeller-blade count indicated a speed of twenty-one knots. The leading elements of the Soviet formation were now thirty-seven miles away. There seemed to be two groups, the leading formation fanned out and screening the second. McCafferty ordered the ESM mast raised. It showed lots of activity, but he expected that.
“Up scope.” The quartermaster worked the operating ring, then snapped the handles into place and stepped back. McCafferty swept the horizon quickly. After ten seconds, he flipped the handles up, and the periscope was instantly lowered back into its well.
“It’s going to be a busy day, troops,” the captain said; he always let the attack center crew know as much of what was going on as possible. The more they knew, the better they could do their jobs. “I saw a pair of Bear-Fs, one due north, the other west. Both a good way off, but you can bet they’re dropping sonobuoys. XO, take her back down to five hundred feet, speed five knots. We’ll let them come to us.”
“Conn, sonar.”
“Conn, aye,” McCafferty answered.
“We got some pingers, active sonobuoys to the northwest. We count six of them, all very faint.” The sonar chief read off the bearings to the signal sources. “Still no active sonar signals coming from the target formation, sir.”
“Very well.” McCafferty returned the mike to its holder. Chicago’s depth was changing quickly, as they dove at a fifteen-degree angle. He watched the bathythermograph readout. At two hundred twenty feet the water temperature began to drop rapidly, changing twelve degrees inside of seventy feet. Good, a strong layer to hide under, and cold water deep to allow good sonar performance for his own sensors.
Two hours before he had removed a torpedo from one of his tubes and replaced it with a Harpoon missile. It gave him only one torpedo ready for instant use if he found a submarine target, but a salvo of three missiles available to fling at surface ships, plus his Tomahawks. He could fire either now, and expect hits, but McCafferty didn’t want to fire at just anything. There was no sense wasting a missile on a small patrol craft when there was a cruiser and a carrier out there waiting for him. He wanted to identify specific targets first. It wouldn’t be easy, but he knew that easy things didn’t have to be done by the 688-class subs. He went forward into sonar.
The chief caught him out the corner of his eye. “Skipper, I may have a bearing to Kirov. I just copied six pings from a low-frequency sonar. I think that’s him, bearing zero-three-nine. Trying to isolate his engine signature now. And if-okay, some more sonobuoys are dropping to the right.” The display showed new points of light well to the right of the first string, and a sizable gap between the two.
“Think he’s dropping them in chevrons, Chief?” McCafferty asked. He got a smile and a nod for an answer. If the Soviets were deploying their sonobuoys in angled lines left and right of the formation, that could mean that their ships were heading right for Chicago. The submarine would not have to maneuver at all to intercept them. She could stay as quiet as an open grave.
“They seem to be alternating them above and below the layer, sir. A pretty fair gap between them, too.” The chief lit a cigarette without averting his eyes from the screen. The ashtray next to him was crammed with butts.
“We’ll plot that one out. Good work, Barney.” The captain patted his sonar chief on the shoulder and went back to the attack center. The firecontrol tracking party was already plotting the new contacts. It looked like an interval of just over two miles between the sonobuoys. If the Soviets were alternating them above and below the layer, there was a good chance he could sneak between a pair. The other question was the presence of passive buoys, whose presence he could not detect.
McCafferty stood at the periscope pedestal, watching his men at work as they entered data into the fire-control computers, backed up by other men with paper plots and hand-held calculators. The weapons-control panel was lit up by indicators showing ready. The submarine was at battle stations.
“Take her up to two hundred feet, we’ll listen above the layer for a few minutes.” The maneuver paid off at once.
“I got direct-path to the targets,” the sonar chief announced. They could now detect and track sound energy radiating directly from the Soviet ships, without depending on the on-again, off-again convergence zones.
McCafferty commanded himself to relax. He’d soon have work enough.
“Captain, we’re about due for another sonobuoy drop. They’ve been averaging about every fifteen minutes, and this one might be close.”
“Getting that Horse-Jaw sonar again, sir,” sonar warned. “Bearing three-two-zero at this time. Signal weak. Classify this contact as the cruiser Kirov. Stand by-another one. We have a medium frequency active sonar bearing three-three-one, maneuvering left-to-right. We classify this contact as a Kresta-II ASW cruiser.”
“I think he’s right,” the plotting officer said. “Bearing three-two-zero is close to our bearings for a pair of screen ships, but far enough off that it’s probably a different contact. Three-three-one is consistent with the center screen ship. It figures. The Kresta will be the screen commander, with the flagship a ways behind him. Need some time to work out the ranges, though.”