Countdown

CHAPTER 14

Captain First Rank Anatoli Chelyag was furious. "Idiots! I can have you shot for this! I should have you shot for this, this blatant and irresponsible destruction of the State's property!"

The eight seamen standing on the Pravda's mess hall deck glanced uneasily at one another, each looking as though he expected someone else to step forward and accept the blame.

"Get below!" Chelyag concluded. "I will deal with you later, when I have the time!"

The sailors filed from the mess hall, but Chelyag had the feeling he'd not made that much of an impression. While they all shared the responsibility for the accident ― himself included, he was quick to admit ― it was virtually impossible to make rankers accept the responsibility for their own actions.

It was, Chelyag thought, one of the flaws in the Soviet system, though he knew better than to admit that to anyone less trustworthy than himself. Russian submarine crewmen were usually assigned rather than being volunteers, and they tended to be indifferent seamen. Mistakes were inevitable, especially when the men were under pressure.

But could Russia's most modern, most deadly high-tech instrument of war actually be crippled by a thirty-meter length of ten-centimeter wire rope?

The two great Typhoon ballistic-missile submarines, his own Leninskiy Nesokrushimyy Pravda and Captain First Rank Dobrynin's Slavnyy Oktyabrskaya Revolutsita, had been lying side by side at their subterranean moorings, ready for sea, awaiting only the order from Admiral Karelin before proceeding with Derzkiy Plamya, Operation Audacious Flame. Save for the ground-line communications link with Kandalaksha, the cavern was cut off from the outside world. Chelyag had no way of knowing whether or not the diversionary operation Ognevoy had gone off as planned, whether or not the American carriers had been destroyed or damaged, whether or not American ASW aircraft or submarines might be waiting in the area off the Kola Inlet.

Then at 0740 hours, the awaited word had come. American and neo-Soviet aircraft were engaged over the Barents Sea off North Cape; the Yankee carriers were on the point of being overwhelmed by waves of Russian aircraft and missiles.

Pravda and Revolutsita were to leave their shelter at once, make their way north from the Kola Inlet to their assigned strategic bastion beneath the Arctic ice, and await final orders via ELF communications from Kandalaksha.

The Glorious October Revolution had pulled away from her moorings almost at once, the line-handling parties on her fore-and afterdecks cheering and waving as the great submarine slowly chugged past Lenin's Invincible Truth.

Chelyag had bellowed at his own line-handling parties. "Cast off astern!

Move yourselves! Do you want the Revolution to show us his ass as he leads us into the channel?"

It was a common practice to exercise naval crews against one another in good-natured competition, to accustom them to working under pressure, and to instill camaraderie and team spirit among the men. The afterdeck line-handlers had signaled "lines clear" even as the men on the pier were still slipping the huge loop on the stern line clear of its bollard and tossing it toward the waiting Pravda sailors. One man had grabbed the line, overbalanced, and fallen into the water between submarine and pier, dragging the stern line with him.

Unaware that his men aft were taking some strictly nonregulation shortcuts with proper naval procedure, Chelyag, in Pravda's weather cockpit high atop the sail, had ordered one quarter ahead on both engines. Pravda had churned slowly ahead, drawing away from the pier…

… and then the trailing stern line had fouled around the Typhoon's port screw, wrapping itself tightly about the shaft. Chelyag had felt the change in the vibrations coming through the deck, a hard, unpleasant shudder like the rasp of the keel going aground… and then the Pravda was swinging toward the pier, propelled now by her starboard engine alone.

Chelyag had bellowed the order "All stop!" Too late. Pravda had caught the pier on her port side midway between bow and sail, the collision hard enough to make Chelyag grasp the cockpit railing. The pier had crumpled like styrofoam, splintering with the impact and sending the dockside line-handlers scattering in every direction.

That had been an hour ago, and only now had the final word come up from damage control. There was a possibility that one of the blades on the Typhoon's port screw had been bent ever so slightly out of alignment. If true, it might be enough to cause significant cavitation. Cavitation, the creation of momentary pockets of vacuum behind a turning propeller that then collapsed with a distinctive sound, was the bane of all nuclear subs, which relied on absolute silence to remain undetected by their hunters within the ocean depths.

It would take at least twenty-four hours ― and more likely forty-eight ― to clear the propeller shaft and check the blade alignment. If the blade was bent, it would be another several days before it could be repaired or replaced. It was God's own luck ― and Chelyag said that to himself as a devout atheist ― that the shaft had not been bent or the turbine's bearings burned out. Something like that could have put the Typhoon out of commission for a month, longer if the spare parts were slow in arriving.

Meanwhile, the Revolutsita was already on his way out of the Kola Inlet.

Chelyag was not looking forward to informing Admiral Karelin that he was still in port.

Gradually, it became clear that the attack was over. At least three separate waves of Russian planes had hurled themselves against the American battle force off North Cape, a total of at least three hundred aircraft. One hundred fifty cruise missiles of various types had been launched, both from aircraft and from bases on the Kola Peninsula.

But the battle force had survived. The clear victor in the engagement had been the Americans with their AIM-54C Phoenix, coupled with the remarkable Phalanx CIWS covering the last-ditch ship defense at knife-fighting range.

Tombstone was still adjusting to the idea that they'd actually come through the attack relatively unscathed.

Of course, there had been losses…

This time, the battle ops meeting was being held aboard the Shiloh, which had taken over coordination for the entire carrier battle force. Coyote was back aboard the Jefferson and running things for the wing as Deputy CAG, freeing Tombstone to join Admiral Tarrant's planning staff. He'd flown across less than an hour before, aboard one of Shiloh's two SH60B LAMPS III ASW helos, dispatched by Tarrant especially for him. All of Jefferson's helos were still engaged in SAR work ― marine search and rescue for the aviators still lost somewhere at sea.

Tombstone was just wrapping up his after-action report. Tarrant, as always crisply attired in a spotless uniform, rested with one leg hitched up over a corner of the chart table, listening attentively. Nearby, another rear admiral, John H. Morrisey, the commanding officer of CBG7 just arrived off the Eisenhower, leaned against a bulkhead. Bald and bulldog-ugly, he too was neatly attired, the rack of colored ribbons on his left chest gleaming in the compartment's overhead fluorescents like peacock's plumage. After a long, active morning and a crowded helicopter flight, Tombstone felt conspicuously rumpled.

"We've also begun coordinating all air Ops with the Eisenhower," Tombstone was saying. He glanced at Admiral Morrisey, who smiled slightly and nodded. "That way, both air wings can share the grunt work. Both carrier wings are still at flight quarters. Both carriers are maintaining four aircraft on Alert Five, and four more on Alert Fifteen." An aircraft on Alert Fifteen could be put into the air in fifteen minutes. An Alert Five aircraft had the pilot suited up and strapped in, ready to launch on five minutes' notice.

"We're maintaining extra-strength CAPS, of course," Tombstone continued.

"And at any given moment, we have two EA-6B Prowlers up and running recon flights along the Russian coast, just outside their twelve-mile limit, plus at least two Hawkeyes, positioned to give us AEW deep inside the Kola Peninsula.

In the last three hours, there have been no further air strikes. In fact, there's been no hostile activity from the other side at all." Tombstone glanced down at the briefing notes he'd scrawled for himself on a clipboard legal pad during his flight across to the Shiloh. "Combat losses. Carrier Air Wing Twenty lost seven aircraft this morning. The breakdown was four Tomcats, two Hornets, and one Prowler. Of those crews, fourteen people, eight were recovered. Four other aircraft were pretty badly shot up, but they managed to get back to the Jeff and trap. They've already been shoved over the side in order to clear the deck. I don't have a final report from Eisenhower's CAG, but a first estimate gives them combat losses of three Tomcats, one Hornet." He consulted his clipboard once more. "That's all I have at this time, sir."

"Very good, Stoney," Admiral Tarrant said. He slid off the table and looked at the other officers in the room. "Anyone have questions? Comments?"

Admiral Morrisey stirred. "Enemy aircraft losses were ― what? One hundred forty, you said?"

"That's the estimate, Admiral. Most of those were knocked down by F14 Phoenix strikes, though, and many were not confirmed."

"Still not bad… a kill ratio of twelve to one."

"Nine to one if you count our junkers," someone else pointed out.

"Yeah, but we don't know how many Russkis were junkers by the time they made it back to base." Morrisey looked pleased. "I'd say our boys are holding to the old Top Gun balance sheets."

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Navy's kill ratio had averaged two or three enemy planes downed for every one of their own lost. Then the Navy Fighter Weapons School ― better known as Top Gun ― had opened at NAS Miramar, near San Diego. A grueling, five-week course in Air Combat Maneuvers that pitted naval aviators in realistic mock combat against better aviators, Top Gun had literally changed the course of the air war in Vietnam almost overnight. As soon as Top Gun graduates had begun flying combat missions ― and passing on their training to their fellow aviators ― the Navy's kill ratio had rocketed to thirteen to one.

"Good combat ratios are all very admirable," Tarrant said, "but they don't help us in this situation. The Russians, remember, can always ferry in more aircraft. It will be some time before we have that luxury. In other words, this command cannot afford to lose even one aircraft, not even if we trade it for fifteen of the enemy's."

"I should also point out, sir," Tombstone added, "that from now on exhaustion is going to be a factor. Some of my people have been up three times so far this morning. Most have been up twice. With the heavy patrol schedule, I expect that by dawn tomorrow every NFO I have will have been up at least four or five times, and that's going to start wearing them down fast.

Same goes for the deck crews, turning around that many aircraft, round-the-clock refueling and rearming. Those guys're going to be dead on their feet soon. Exhaustion means mistakes, accidents, and downtime when equipment fouls or bits of metal get scattered across a flight deck."

"Understood," Tarrant said. "All I can tell you is that we're going to have to play this one as it's dealt to us. Other questions?"

"Yeah," a tall, gangly commander next to Tarrant said. "Why the Sam Hill'd they do it?"

"Not my department, Dan," Tombstone said with a tired smile. "I'd say the answer's more in your line of work."

The tall commander was Daniel Sykes, and he was Tarrant's chief intelligence officer. It was his responsibility to know what the Russians were doing, and why.

Sykes shook his head. "So far, we just don't have the data to go on.

The Russians lost… call it fifty percent casualties. Plus one hundred fifty cruise missiles, not counting the ones on bombers that got clobbered before they could launch. Nearly all of them shot down or decoyed into the sea."

Only three cruise missiles had made it through the carrier group's defenses, but those three had hurt, Tombstone thought. The Blakely had rolled over and sunk in five minutes, taking 201 of the 205 men aboard with her.

There'd simply been no time for her to lower boats, and no time for helicopters to rescue more than those four before the rest succumbed to hypothermia. In Ike's battle group, besides minor damage to the Gettysburg from an antiradar missile, the frigate John C Pauly had taken a half-ton warhead from a Kingfish amidships, while in CBG14 both the DDG Truesdale and the FFG Dickinson had been badly mauled. All three of those ships were again under way, the fires aboard under control, the wounded air-evaced to the Jefferson, where they were being made ready for a series of medevac flights to Narvik, then Lakenheath, and finally the States. It had been touch-and-go aboard the Dickinson and the Pauly for a while, though.

And of course, Dickinson hadn't been hit by a missile. Friendly fire, obviously, could be no less deadly than hostile fire.

"The point is," Sykes concluded, "that this was one hell of an expensive adventure for them. They wouldn't have started it without a damned good reason."

"Radio intercepts have been talking about a rebel group grabbing control of some of the Kola airfields, an intelligence officer with Morrisey's staff pointed out. "The word from Washington is that Moscow is claiming the attack was mounted either by Blue forces, or by mutinous Reds with anti-American feelings."

"Does anybody seriously believe that?" Tarrant asked. There were no takers, only a number of heads shaking slowly back and forth. "The Reds could be trying to discredit the Blues, of course. But I can't see that what they hoped to win in propaganda points was worth one hundred forty of their front-line aircraft."

"They gambled and they lost," Captain Maxwell, Tarrant's chief of staff suggested. "If they'd managed to sink even one of our carriers…"

"They came damned close to doing just that," Tarrant said. "But-"

There was a knock on the door, and a first class yeoman poked his head in. "Excuse me. Admiral Tarrant?"

"Yes."

"Two priority messages, sir, FLASH URGENT."

"Give 'em here." Tarrant took the dispatch flimsies, which had obviously just come up from Shiloh's decoding shack. He scanned each briefly, then passed them around. "It's just possible, that we have here the reason for the Russian attack."

Tombstone read the messages when they came to him. The first was a repeat of a message from the Galveston, with header information indicating that it had been relayed by satellite to Washington, where it had been re-coded and transmitted to the Shiloh. The body of the message was curt and to the point.

TIME: 0848 HRS, ZULU+2 TO: COCBG14 FROM: COSSN770

PLARB TYPHOON DEPARTED KOLA INLET 0830 HRS. SSN770 IN PURSUIT. REQUEST ORDERS, SCHED-3/ELF.

MONTGOMERY SENDS.

Routing the message through D.C. accounted for the four-hour delay in Shiloh's receiving it. The Joint Chiefs, maybe even the President and his advisors, must still be mulling this one over, because the second message, from the commanding officer of the Atlantic fleet, was even more curt.

TIME: 0515 HRS, ZULU-5 TO: COCBG14 FROM: COMLANT

STAND BY FOR FURTHER ORDERS.

HAMPTON SENDS.

In other words, take no action until you hear from Washington, or your ass is in a sling.

And they had good reason to be thinking this one over carefully.

A Typhoon ballistic-missile sub had put to sea during the height of the air battle over the carrier battle force. The timing was indeed suspicious.

"How was this transmitted?" Tombstone asked, holding up the message from Galveston. Submarines normally refrained from risking any communication that might give their positions away.

The yeoman, still standing by the door, explained that Galveston had extended a UHF antenna above the surface and zip-squealed the message, coded and packed into a compressed digital format that allowed it to be transmitted to a military comsat in a burst less than a hundredth of a second long. There was still the danger that the message would be picked up by Russian eavesdroppers ― or that the antenna would be tagged by their radar for the few seconds it was above the surface, but in this case the risk was acceptable.

Obviously, though, Montgomery wasn't yet aware of the air battle that morning, cut off as he was from routine communications with the outside world.

All he knew was that he had a Russian PLARB by the tail, and he wanted to know what to do with it. His orders were to track them if they appeared, to destroy them if they prepared to launch. They said nothing about how long he was to maintain his covert reconnaissance. "Sched-3/ELF" referred to a timetable for Galveston to receive messages by extremely low-frequency radio.

At 1400 hours, and every six hours after that, she would rise to within a hundred feet of the surface where she could receive ELF communications.

"Thank you, son," Tarrant told the yeoman. "You're dismissed."

After the sailor had left, he turned to the planning staff again. "Well?

Opinions?"

Morrisey frowned. "Possibly the Russians are just taking advantage of the confusion to get their PLARB boats clear of Polyamyy. If there is trouble with rebel forces in the area, they'd want their boomers out of there, and fast."

"But there hasn't been, Admiral," Sykes said. "All of our intelligence indicates that Leonov's Blue forces have taken up positions in the south."

"Still, some dissidents or mutineers-"

"Would be unable to mount an attack of the sort we've witnessed this morning," Tarrant said. "My guess is that the attack was precisely to keep us busy, off balance while they slipped one or more of their boats to sea. The question is, why?"

"Nuclear attack on the United States?" someone asked. There was a deathly hush in the room after that.

"Or nuclear blackmail," another voice added. "Telling us to stay out of their fight, or they nuke New York."

"They've already attacked us," a junior staffer pointed out.

"They're afraid we're going to retaliate."

"More likely, they plan to blackmail the Blues," Morrisey suggested.

"Would they fire on their own cities?" somebody asked.

"They might," Tarrant conceded. He sighed. "In any case, this one's already been bucked up the chain.

It's way too hot for us to handle at this level." He paused, looking at the others. "But while we're waiting for Washington to make up their minds, I'm going to send off a status report, and I'm going to include a strong recommendation that they give Galveston the order to sink that PLARB. Just in case the target is New York."

The meeting broke up shortly after that, with no firm planning beyond carrying out a modified version of the original orders.

The carrier battle force would take up position at a point sixty miles north of the Norway-Russian border, called Bear Station, and wait. The planning staff would meet again when word one way or the other came through from Washington.

"By the way, Stoney," Tarrant said, as the others were already leaving the room. "After I make my report, I expect to be deluged with questions from the Pentagon about the Great Experiment. The Washington press corps is going to be all over their ass and ours."

"The women."

"That's right. Were any lost this morning?"

Tombstone nodded slowly. "Yes, sir. One. An F-14 RIO in VF-97. We pulled the pilot out of the drink a couple of hours ago. He's going to be all right, but he doesn't think she ejected."

"Ejection seat failure?"

"Maybe. Or she just wasn't found. We still have SAR helos out, looking for all our MIAs, of course, but in water this cold, even if she did make it down in one piece…"

"I understand. What was her name?"

"Lieutenant j.g. Elizabeth Harper."

"Okay. I'll pass that on. Thanks."

"Lieutenant Lowe told me that she performed extremely well. He asked me about recommending her for the Navy Cross."

"Hmm. We'll have to see about that. Okay, CAG. Thank you."

Aboard the helo, on his way back to the Jefferson, Tombstone found time to think of Harper ― and the five other naval officers off the Jefferson who'd not been recovered. He'd not known any of them well ― all had been relative newcomers to CVW-20 ― but they would be missed.

The mourning would come later, however, once they got through this.

If they got through it. Right now, it was not at all certain that they would.