“Upper deck forward. There’s room for fifteen or so just aft of the flight deck.” Lieutenant Ames knew this but didn’t say so. He’d flown with his DSRV across the Atlantic several times and across the Pacific once, every time on a different C-5.
“May I ask what the big deal is?” the pilot inquired.
“I don’t know,” Ames said. “They want me and my baby in Norfolk.”
“You really take that little bitty thing underwater, sir?” the loadmaster asked.
“That’s what they pay me for. I’ve had her down to forty-eight hundred feet, almost a mile.” Ames regarded his vessel with affection.
“A mile under water, sir? Jesus — uh, pardon me, sir, but I mean, isn’t that a little hairy — the water pressure, I mean?”
“Not really. I’ve been down to twenty thousand aboard Trieste. It’s really pretty interesting down mere. You see all kinds of strange fish.” Though a fully qualified submariner, Ames’ first love was research. He had a degree in oceanography and had commanded or served in all of the navy’s deep-submergence vehicles except the nuclear-powered NR-1. “Of course, the water pressure would do bad things to you if anything went wrong, but it would be so fast you’d never know it. If you fellows want a check ride, I could probably arrange it. It’s a different world down there.”
“That’s okay, sir.” The sergeant went back to swearing at his men.
“You weren’t serious,” the pilot observed.
“Why not? It’s no big deal. We take civilians down all the time, and believe me, it’s a lot less hairy than riding this damned white whale during a midair refueling.”
“Uh-huh,” the pilot noted dubiously. He’d done hundreds of those. It was entirely routine, and he was surprised that anyone would find it dangerous. You had to be careful, of course, but, hell, you had to be careful driving every morning. He was sure that an accident on this pocket submarine wouldn’t leave enough of a man to make a decent meal for a shrimp. It takes all kinds, he decided. “You don’t go to sea by yourself in that, do you?”
“No, ordinarily we work off a submarine rescue ship, Pigeon or Ortolan. We can also operate off a regular submarine. That gadget you see there on the trailer is our mating collar. We can nest on the back of a sub at the after escape trunk, and the sub takes us where we need to go.”
“Does this have to do with the flap on the East Coast?”
“That’s a good bet, but nobody’s said anything official to us. The papers say the Russians have lost a sub. If so, we might go down to look at her, maybe rescue any survivors. We can take off twenty or twenty-five men at a time, and our mating collar is designed to fit Russian subs as well as our own.”
“Same size?”
“Close enough.” Ames cocked an eyebrow. “We plan for all kinds of contingencies.”
“Interesting.”
The North Atlantic
The YAK-36 Forger had left the Kiev half an hour before, guided first by gyro compass and now by the ESM pod on the fighter’s stubby rudder fin. Senior Lieutenant Viktor Shavrov’s mission was not an easy one. He was to approach the American B-3A Sentry radar surveillance aircraft, one of which had been shadowing his fleet for three days now. The AWACS (airborne warning and control system) aircraft had been careful to circle well beyond SAM range, but had stayed close enough to maintain constant coverage of the Soviet fleet, reporting every maneuver and radio transmission to their command base. It was like having a burglar watching one’s apartment and being unable to do anything about it.
Shavrov’s mission was to do something about it. He couldn’t shoot, of course. His orders from Admiral Stralbo on the Kirov had been explicit about that. But he was carrying a pair of Atoll heat-seeking missiles which he would be sure to show the imperialists. He and his admiral expected that this would teach them a lesson: the Soviet Navy did not like having imperialist snoopers about, and accidents had been known to happen. It was a mission worthy of the effort it took.
This effort was considerable. To avoid detection by the airborne radar Shavrov had to fly as low and slow as his fighter could operate, a bare twenty meters above the rough Atlantic; this way he would get lost in the sea return. His speed was two hundred knots. This made for excellent fuel economy, though his mission was at the ragged edge of his fuel load. It also made for very rough flying as his fighter bounced through the roiled air at the wave tops. There was a low-hanging mist that cut visibility to a few kilometers. So much the better, he thought. The nature of the mission had chosen him, rather than the other way around. He was one of the few Soviet pilots experienced in low-level flying. Shavrov had not become a sailor-pilot by himself. He’d started flying attack helicopters for frontal aviation in Afghanistan, graduating to fixed-wing aircraft after a year’s bloody apprenticeship. Shavrov was an expert in nap-of-the-earth flying, having learned it by necessity, hunting the bandits and counter revolutionaries that hid in the towering mountains like hydrophobic rats. This skill had made him attractive to the fleet, which had transferred him to sea duty without his having had much say in the matter. After a few months he had no complaints, his perqs and extra pay being more attractive than his former frontal aviation base on the Chinese border. Being one of the few hundred carrier-qualified Soviet airmen had softened the blow of missing his chance to fly the new MiG-27, though with luck, if the new full-sized carrier were ever finished, he’d have the chance to fly the naval version of that wonderful bird. Shavrov could wait for that, and with a few successful missions like this one he might have his squadron command.
He stopped daydreaming — the mission was too demanding for that. This was real flying. He’d never flown against Americans, only against the weapons they gave to the Afghan bandits. He had lost friends to those weapons, some of whom had survived their crashes only to be done to death by the Afghan savages in ways that would have made even a German puke. It would be good to teach the imperialists a lesson personally.
The radar signal was growing stronger. Beneath his ejection seat a tape recorder was making a continuous record of the signal characteristics of the American aircraft so that the scientific people would be able to devise a means of jamming and foiling the vaunted American flying eye. The aircraft was only a converted 707, a glorified passenger plane, hardly a worthy opponent for a crack fighter pilot! Shavrov checked his chart. He’d have to find it soon. Next he checked his fuel. He’d dropped his last external tank a few minutes earlier, and all he had now was his internal fuel. The turbofan was guzzling fuel, something he had to keep an eye on. He planned to have only five or ten minutes of fuel left when he returned to his ship.
This did not trouble him. He already had over a hundred carrier landings.
There! His hawk’s eyes caught the glint of sun off metal at one o’clock high. Shavrov eased back on his stick and increased power gently, bringing his Forger into a climb. A minute later he was at two thousand meters. He could see the Sentry now, its blue paint blending neatly into the darkening sky. He was coming up beneath its tail, and with luck the empennage would shield him from the rotating radar antenna. Perfect! He’d blaze by her a few times, letting the flight crew see his Atolls, and —
It took Shavrov a moment to realize that he had a wingman.
Two wingmen.
Fifty meters to his left and right, a pair of American F-15 Eagle fighters. The visored face of one pilot was staring at him.
“YAK-106, YAK-106, please acknowledge.” The voice on the SSB (single side band) radio circuit spoke flawless Russian. Shavrov did not acknowledge. They had read the number off his engine intake housing before he had known they were there.
“106, 106, this is the Sentry aircraft you are now approaching. Please identify yourself and your intentions. We get a little anxious when a stray fighter comes our way, so we’ve had three following you for the past hundred kilometers.”
Three? Shavrov turned his head around. A third Eagle with four sparrow missiles was hanging fifty meters from his tail, his “six.”
“Our men compliment you on your ability to fly low and slow, 106.”
Lieutenant Shavrov was shaking with rage as he passed four thousand meters, still eight thousand from the American AWACS. He had checked his six every thirty seconds on the way in. The Americans must have been riding back there, hidden in the mist, and vectored in on him by instructions from the Sentry. He swore to himself and held course. He’d teach that AWACS a lesson!