“You kidding?”
“I’ve been working on this computer program twenty hours a day since Monday, and I don’t get ops dispatches anymore.” Tyler frowned. He had heard something the other day at the Academy but not paid any attention to it. He was the sort who could focus his whole mind on a single problem.
Coleman looked up and down the corridor. It was late on a Friday evening, and they had it entirely to themselves. “Guess I can tell you. Our Russian friends have some sort of major exercise laid on. Their whole Northern Fleet’s at sea, or damned near. They have subs all over the place.”
“Doing what?”
“We’re not sure. Looks like they might have a major search and rescue operation. The question is, after what? They have four Alfas doing a max speed run for our coast right now, with a gaggle of Victors and Charlies charging in behind them. At first we were worried that they wanted to block the trade routes, but they blitzed right past those. They’re definitely heading for our coast, and whatever they’re up to, we’re getting tons of information.”
“What do they have moving?” Tyler asked.
“Fifty-eight nuclear subs, and thirty or so surface ships.”
“Gawd! CINCLANT must be going ape!”
“You know it, Skip. The fleet’s at sea, all of it. Every nuke we have is scrambling for a redeployment. Every P-3 Lockheed ever made is either over the Atlantic or heading that way.” Coleman paused. “You’re still cleared, right?”
“Sure, for the work I do for the Crystal City gang. I had a piece of the evaluation of the new Kirov.”
“I thought that sounded like your work. You always were a pretty good engineer. You know, the old man still talks about that job you did for him on the old Tecumseh. Maybe I can get you in to see what’s happening. Yeah, I’ll ask him.”
Tyler’s first cruise after graduating from nuc school in Idaho had been with Dodge. He’d done a tricky repair job on some ancillary reactor equipment two weeks earlier than estimated with a little creative effort and some back-channel procurement of spare parts. This had earned him and Dodge a flowery letter of commendation.
“I bet the old man would love to see you. When will you be finished down here?”
“Maybe half an hour.”
“You know where to find me?”
“Have they moved OP-02?”
“Same place. Call me when you’re finished. My extension is 78730. Okay? I gotta get back.”
“Right.” Tyler watched his old friend disappear down the corridor, then proceeded on his way to the men’s room, wondering what the Russians were up to. Whatever it was, it was enough to keep a three-star admiral and his four-striped captain working on a Friday night in Christmas season.
“Eleven minutes, 53.18 seconds, sir,” the sergeant reported, pocketing both bills.
The computer printout was over two hundred pages of data. The cover sheet plotted a rough-looking bell curve of speed solutions, and below it was the noise prediction curve. The case-by-case solutions were printed individually on the remaining sheets. The curves were predictably messy. The speed curve showed the majority of solutions in the ten- to twelve-knot range, the total range going from seven to eighteen knots. The noise curve was surprisingly low.
“Sergeant, that’s one hell of a machine you have here.”
“Believe it, sir. And reliable. We haven’t had an electronic fault all month.”
“Can I use a phone?”
“Sure, take your pick, sir.”
“Okay, Sarge.” Tyler picked up the nearest phone. “Oh, and dump the program.”
“Okay.” He typed in some instructions. “MORAY is… gone. Hope you kept a copy, sir.”
Tyler nodded and dialed the phone.
“OP-02A, Captain Coleman.”
“Johnnie, this is Skip.”
“Great! Hey, the old man wants to see you. Come right up.”
Tyler placed the printout in his briefcase and locked it. He thanked the sergeant one more time before hobbling out the door, giving the Cray-2 one last look. He’d have to get in here again.
He could not find an operating elevator and had to struggle up a gently sloped ramp. Five minutes later he found a marine guarding the corridor.
“You Commander Tyler, sir?” the guard asked. “Can I see some ID, please?”
Tyler showed the corporal his Pentagon pass, wondering how many one-legged former submarine officers there might be.
“Thank you, Commander. Please go down the corridor. You know the room, sir?”
“Sure. Thanks, Corporal.”
Vice Admiral Dodge was sitting on the corner of a desk reading over some message flimsies. Dodge was a small, combative man who’d made his mark commanding three separate boats, then pushing the Los Angeles-class attack submarines through their lengthy development program. Now he was “Grand Dolphin,” the senior admiral who fought all the battles with Congress.
“Skip Tyler! You’re looking good, laddy.” Dodge gave Tyler’s leg a furtive glance as he came over to take his hand. “I hear you’re doing a great job at the Academy.”
“It’s all right, sir. They even let me scout the occasional ballgame.”
“Hmph, shame they didn’t let you scout Army.”
Tyler hung his head theatrically. “I did scout Army, sir. They were just too tough this year. You heard about their middle linebacker, didn’t you?”
“No, what about him?” Dodge asked.
“He picked armor as his duty assignment, and they gave him an early trip to Fort Knox — not to learn about tanks. To be a tank.”
“Ha!” Dodge laughed. “Johnnie says you have a bunch of new kids.”
“Number six is due the end of February,” Tyler said proudly.
“Six? You’re not a Catholic or a Mormon, are you? What’s with all this bird hatching?”
Tyler gave his former boss a wry look. He’d never understood that prejudice in the nuclear navy. It came from Rickover, who had invented the disparaging term bird hatching for fathering more than one child. What the hell was wrong with having kids?
“Admiral, since I’m not a nuc anymore, I have to do something on nights and weekends.” Tyler arched his eyebrows lecherously. “I hear the Russkies are playing games.”
Dodge was instantly serious. “They sure are. Fifty-eight attack boats — every nuclear boat in the Northern Fleet — heading this way with a big surface group, and most of their service forces tagging along.”
“Doing what?”
“Maybe you can tell me. Come on back to my inner sanctum.” Dodge led Tyler into a room where he saw another new gadget, a projection screen that displayed the North Atlantic from the Tropic of Cancer to the polar ice pack. Hundreds of ships were represented. The merchantmen were white, with flags to identify their nationality; the Soviet ships were red, and their shapes depicted their ship type; the American and allied ships were blue. The ocean was getting crowded.
“Christ.”
“You got that one right, lad,” Tyler nodded grimly. “How are you cleared?”
“Top secret and some special things, sir. I see everything we have on their hardware, and I do a lot of work with Sea Systems on the side.”
“Johnnie said you did the evaluation of the new Kirov they just sent out to the Pacific — not bad, by the way.”
“These two Alfas heading for Norfolk?”
“Looks like it. And they’re burning a lot of neutrons doing it.” Dodge pointed. “That one’s heading to Long Island Sound as though to block the entrance to New London and that one’s heading to Boston, I think. These Victors are not far behind. They already have most of the British ports staked out. By Monday they’ll have two or more subs off every major port we have.”
“I don’t like the looks of this, sir.”
“Neither do I. As you see, we’re nearly a hundred percent at sea ourselves. The interesting thing, though — what they’re doing just doesn’t figure. I — “ Captain Coleman came in.
“I see you let the prodigal son in, sir,” Coleman said.
“Be nice to him, Johnnie. I seem to remember when he was a right fair sub driver. Anyway, at first it looked like they were going to block the SLOCs, but they went right past. What with these Alfas, they might be trying to blockade our coast.”
“What about out west?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all, just routine activity.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Tyler objected. “You don’t ignore half the fleet. Of course, if you’re going to war you don’t announce it by kicking every boat to max power either.”
“The Russians are a funny bunch, Skip,” Coleman pointed out.
“Admiral, if we start shooting at them — “
“We hurt “em,” Dodge said. “With all the noise they’re making we have good locations on near all of ‘em. They have to know that, too. That’s the one thing that makes me believe they’re not up to anything really bad. They’re smart enough not to be that obvious — unless that’s what they want us to think.”
“Have they said anything?” Tyler asked.