HMS Invincible was now out of operation and about halfway home. American attack subs were returning to normal patrol patterns, and all Soviet subs were reported to be off the coast, though this data was sketchy. They were traveling in loose packs and the noise generated made tracking difficult for the patrolling Orions, which were short of sonobuoys. Still and all, the operation was about over, the J-3 judged.
“You heading for Norfolk, Admiral?” Harris asked.
“Thought I might get together with CINCLANT, a post-action conference, you understand,” Foster said.
“Aye aye, sir,” Harris said.
The New Jersey
She was traveling at twelve knots, with a destroyer fueling on either beam. Commodore Eaton was in the flag plot. It was all over and nothing had happened, thank God. The Soviets were now a hundred miles ahead, within Tomahawk range but well beyond everything else. All in all, he was satisfied. His force had operated successfully with the Tarawa, which was now headed south to Mayport, Florida. He hoped they’d be able to do this again soon. It had been a long time since a flag officer on a battleship had had a carrier respond to his command. They had kept the Kirov force under continuous surveillance. If there had been a battle, Eaton was convinced that they’d have handled Ivan. More importantly, he was certain that Ivan knew it. All they awaited now was the order to return to Norfolk. It would be nice to be back home for Christmas. He figured his men had earned it. Many of the battleship’s men were oldtimers, and nearly everyone had a family.
The Red October
Ping. Jones noted the time on his pad and called out, “Captain, just got a ping from Pogy.”
The Pogy was now ten miles ahead of the October and Dallas. The idea was that after she got ahead and listened for ten minutes, a single ping from her active sonar would signal that the ten miles to the Pogy and the twenty or more miles beyond her were clear. The Pogy would drift slowly to confirm this, and a mile to the October’s east the Dallas went to full speed to leapfrog ten miles beyond the other attack sub.
Jones was experimenting with the Russian sonar. The active gear, he’d found, was not too bad. The passive systems he didn’t want to think about. When the Red October had been lying still in Pamlico Sound, he’d been unable to track in on the American subs. They had also been still, with their reactors only turning generators, but they had been no more than a mile away. He was disappointed that he’d not been able to locate them.
The officer with him, Bugayev, was a friendly enough guy. At first he’d been a little standoffish — as if he were a lord and I were a serf, Jones thought — until he’d seen how the skipper treated him. This surprised Jones. From what little he knew of Communism, he had expected everyone to be fairly equal. Well, he decided, that’s what I get from reading Das Kapital in a freshman poli-sci course. It made a lot more sense to look at what Communism built. Garbage, mostly. The enlisted men didn’t even have their own mess room. Wasn’t that some crap! Eating your meals in your bunk rooms!
Jones had taken an hour — when he was supposed to be sleeping — to explore the submarine. Mr. Mannion had joined him. They started in the bunkroom. The individual footlockers didn’t lock — probably so that officers could rifle through them. Jones and Mannion did just that. There was nothing of interest. Even the sailor porn was junk. The poses were just plain dumb, and the women — well, Jones had grown up in California. Garbage. It was not at all hard for him to understand why the Russians wanted to defect.
The missile had been interesting. He and Mannion opened an inspection hatch to examine the inside of the missile. Not too shabby, they thought. There was a little too much loose wiring, but that probably made testing easier. The missile seemed awfully big. So, he thought, that’s what the bastards have been aiming at us. He wondered if the navy would hold onto a few. If it was ever necessary to flip some at old Ivan, might as well include a couple of his own. Dumb idea, Jonesy, he said to himself. He didn’t ever want those goddamned things to fly. One thing was for sure: everything on this bucket would be stripped off, tested, taken apart, tested again — and he was the navy’s number one expert on Russian sonar. Maybe he’d be present during the analysis… It might be worth staying in the navy a few extra months for.
Jones lit a cigarette. “Want one of mine, Mr. Bugayev?” He held his pack out to the electronics officer.
“Thank you, Jones. You were in university?” The lieutenant took the American cigarette that he’d wanted but been too proud to ask for. It was dawning on him slowly that this enlisted man was his technical equal. Though not a qualified watch officer, Jones could operate and maintain sonar gear as well as anyone he’d known.
“Yes, sir.” It never hurt to call officers sir, Jones knew. Especially the dumb ones. “California Institute of Technology. Five semesters completed. A average. I didn’t finish.”
“Why did you leave?”
Jones smiled. “Well, sir, you gotta understand that Cal Tech is, well, kinda a funny place. I played a little trick on one of my professors. He was working with strobe lights for highspeed photography, and I rigged a little switch to work the room lights off the strobe. Unfortunately there was a short in the switch, and it started this little electrical fire.” Which had burned out a lab, destroying three months of data and fifteen thousand dollars of equipment. “That broke the rules.”
“What did you study?”
“I was headin’ for a degree in electrical engineering, with a strong minor in cybernetics. Three semesters to go. I’ll get it, then my masters, then my doctorate, and then I’ll go back to work for the navy as a civilian.”
“Why are you a sonar operator?” Bugayev sat down. He had never spoken like this with an enlisted man.
“Hell, sir, it’s fun! When something’s going on — you know, a war game, tracking another sub, like that — I am the skipper. All the captain does is react to the data I give him.”
“And you like your commander?”
“Sure thing! He’s the best I’ve had — I’ve had three. My skipper’s a good guy. You do your job okay, and he doesn’t hassle you. You got something to say to him, and he listens.”
“You say you will go back to college. How do you pay for it? They tell us that only the ruling class sons go to university.”
“That’s crap, sir. In California if you’re smart enough to go, you go. In my case, I’ve been saving my money — you don’t spend much on a sub, right? — and the navy pitches in, too. I got enough to see me all the way through my masters. What’s your degree in?”
“I attended a higher naval school. Like your Annapolis. I would like to get a proper degree in electronics,” Bugayev said, voicing his own dream.
“No sweat. I can help you out. If you’re good enough for Cal Tech, I can tell you who to talk to. You’d like California. That is the place to live.”
“And I wish to work on a real computer,” Bugayev went on, wishful.
Jones laughed quietly. “So, buy yourself one.”
“Buy a computer?”
“Sure, we got a couple of little ones, Apples, on Dallas. Cost you about, oh, two thousand for a nice system. That’s a lot less than what a car goes for.”
“A computer for two thousand dollars?” Bugayev went from wishful to suspicious, certain that Jones was leading him on.
“Or less. For three grand you can get a really nice rig. Hell, you tell Apple who you are, and they’ll probably give it to you for free, or the navy will. If you don’t want an Apple, there’s the Commodore, TRS-80, Atari. All kinds. Depends on what you want to use it for. Look, just one company, Apple, has sold over a million of ‘em. They’re little, sure, but they’re real computers.”
“I have never heard of this — Apple?”
“Yeah, Apple. Two guys started the company back when I was in junior high. Since then they’ve sold a million or so, like I said — and they are some kinda rich! I don’t have one myself — no room on a sub — but my brother has his own computer, an IBM-PC. You still don’t believe me, do you?”
“A working man with his own computer? It is hard to believe.” He stabbed out the cigarette. American tobacco was a little bland, he thought.