“God Almighty,” Painter said when Ryan finished. Davenport just stared poker-faced as he contemplated the possibility of examining a Soviet missile sub from the inside. Jack decided he’d be a formidable opponent over cards. Painter went on, “Do you really believe this?”
“Yes, sir, I do.” Ryan poured himself another cup of coffee. He would have preferred a beer to go with his corned beef. It hadn’t been bad at all, and good kosher corned beef was something he’d been unable to find in London.
Painter leaned back and looked at Davenport. “Charlie, you tell Greer to teach this lad a few lessons — like how a bureaucrat ain’t supposed to stick his neck this far out on the block. Don’t you think this is a little far-fetched?”
“Josh, Ryan here’s the guy who did the report last June on Soviet missile-sub patrol patterns.”
“Oh? That was a nice piece of work. It confirmed something I’ve been saying for two or three years.” Painter rose and walked to the corner to look out at the stormy sea. “So, what are we supposed to do about all this?”
“The exact details of the operation have not been determined. What I expect is that you will be directed to locate Red October and attempt to establish communications with her skipper. After that? We’ll have to figure a way to get her to a safe place. You see, the president doesn’t think we’ll be able to hold onto her once we get her — if we get her.”
“What?” Painter spun around and spoke a tenth of a second before Davenport did. Ryan explained for several minutes.
“Dear God above! You give me one impossible task, then you tell me that if we succeed in it, we gotta give the goddamned thing back to them!”
“Admiral, my recommendation — the president asked me for one — was that we keep the submarine. For what it’s worth, the Joint Chiefs are on your side, too, along with the CIA. As it is, though, if the crewmen want to go back home, we have to send them back, and then the Soviets will know we have the boat for sure. As a practical matter, I can see the other side’s point. The vessel is worth a pile of money, and it is their property. And how would we hide a 30,000-ton submarine?”
“You hide a submarine by sinking it,” Painter said angrily. “They’re designed to do that, you know. “Their property!’ We’re not talking about a damned passenger liner. That’s something designed to kill people — our people!”
“Admiral, I am on your side,” Ryan said quietly. “Sir, you said we’ve given you an impossible task, Why?”
“Ryan, finding a boomer that does not want to be found is not the easiest thing in the world. We practice against our own. We damned near always fail, and you say this one’s already passed all the northeast SOSUS lines. The Atlantic’s a rather large ocean, and a missile sub’s noise footprint is very small.”
“Yes, sir.” Ryan noted to himself that he might have been overly optimistic about their chances for success.
“What sort of shape are you in, Josh?” Davenport asked.
“Pretty good, really. The exercise we just ran, NIFTY DOLPHIN, worked out all right. Our part of it,” Painter corrected himself. “Dallas raised some hell on the other side. My ASW crews are functioning very well. What sort of help are we getting?”
“When I left the Pentagon, the CNO was checking the availability of P-3s out on the Pacific, so you’ll probably be seeing more of those. Everything that’ll move is putting to sea. You’re the only carrier, so you’ve got overall tactical command, right? Come on, Josh, you’re our best ASW operator.”
Painter poured some coffee for himself. “Okay, we have one carrier deck. America and Nimitz are still a good week away. Ryan, you said you’re flying out to Invincible. We get her, too, right?”
“The president was working on that. Want her?”
“Sure. Admiral White has a good nose for ASW, and his boys really lucked out during DOLPHIN. They killed two of our attack boats, and Vince Gallery was some kind of pissed about that. Luck’s a big part of this game. That would give us two decks instead of one. I wonder if we can get some more S-3s?” Painter referred to the Lockheed Vikings, carrier-borne antisubmarine aircraft.
“Why?” Davenport asked.
“I can transfer my F-18s to shore, and that’ll give us room for twenty more Vikings. I don’t like losing the striking power, but what we’re going to need is more ASW muscle. That means more S-3s. Jack, you know that if you’re wrong, that Russkie surface force is going to be a handful to deal with. You know how many surface-to-surface missiles they’re packing?”
“No, sir.” Ryan was certain it was too many.
“We’re one carrier, and that makes us their primary target. If they start shooting at us, it’ll get awful lonesome — then it’ll get awful exciting.” The phone rang. “Painter here… Yes. Thank you. Well, Invincible just turned around. Good, they’re giving her to us along with two tin cans. The rest of the escorts and the three attack subs are still heading home.” He frowned. “I can’t really fault them for that. That means we have to give them some escorts, but it’s a good trade. I want that flight deck.”
“Can we chopper Jack out to her?” Ryan wondered if Davenport knew what the president had ordered him to do. The admiral seemed interested in getting him off the Kennedy.
Painter shook his head. ‘Too far for a chopper. Maybe they can send a Harrier back for him.”
“The Harrier’s a fighter, sir,” Ryan commented.
“They have an experimental two-seat version set up for ASW patrolling. It’s supposed to work reasonably well outside their helo perimeter. That’s how they bagged one of our attack boats, caught her napping.” Painter finished off the last of his coffee.
“Okay, gentlemen, let’s get ourselves down to ASW control and try and figure a way to run this circus act. CINCLANT will want to hear what I have in mind. I suppose I’d better decide for myself. We’ll also call Invincible and have them send a bird back to ferry you out, Ryan.”
Ryan followed the two admirals out of the room. He spent two hours watching Painter move ships around the ocean like a chess master with his pieces.
The USS Dallas
Bart Mancuso had been on duty in the attack center for more than twenty hours. Only a few hours of sleep separated this stretch from the previous one. He had been eating sandwiches and drinking coffee, and two cups of soup had been thrown in by his cooks for variety’s sake. He examined his latest cup of freeze-dried without affection.
“Cap’n?” He turned. It was Roger Thompson, his sonar officer.
“Yes, what is it?” Mancuso pulled himself away from the tactical display that had occupied his attention for several days. Thompson was standing at the rear of the compartment. Jones was standing beside him holding a clipboard and what looked like a tape machine. “
“Sir, Jonesy has something I think you ought to look at.”
Mancuso didn’t want to be bothered — extended time on duty always taxed his patience. But Jones looked eager and excited. “Okay, come on over to the chart table.”
The Dallas’ chart table was a new gadget wired into the BC-10 and projected onto a TV-type glass screen four feet square. The display moved as the Dallas moved. This made paper charts obsolete, though they were kept anyway. Charts can’t break.
“Thanks, Skipper,” Jones said, more humbly than usual. “I know you’re kinda busy, but I think I got something here. That anomalous contact we had the other day’s been bothering me. I had to leave it after the ruckus the other Russkie subs kicked up, but I was able to come back to it three times to make sure it was still there. The fourth time it was gone, faded out. I want to show you what I worked up. Can you punch up our course track for back then on this baby, sir?”
The chart table was interfaced through the BC-10 into the ship’s inertial navigation system, SINS. Mancuso punched the command in himself. It was getting so that they couldn’t flush the head without a computer command… The Dallas’ course track showed up as a convoluted red line, with tick marks displayed at fifteen-minute intervals.
“Great!” Jones commented. “I’ve never seen it do that before. That’s all right. Okay.” Jones pulled a handful of pencils from his back pocket. “Now, I got the contact first at 0915 or so, and the bearing was about two-six-nine.” He set a pencil down, eraser at Dallas’ position, point directed west towards the target. “Then at 0930 it was bearing a two-six-zero. At 0948, it was two-five-zero. There’s some error built into these, Cap’n. It was a tough signal to lock in on, but the errors should average out. Right about then we got all this other activity, and I had to go after them, but I came back to it about 1000, and the bearing was two-four-two.” Jones set down another pencil on the due-east line traced when the Dallas had moved away from the Icelandic coast. “At 1015 it was two-three-four, and at 1030 it was two-two-seven. These last two are shaky, sir. The signal was real faint, and I didn’t have a very good lock on it.” Jones looked up. He appeared nervous.