North Cape

CHAPTER 2

Forty degrees of frost. Eight degrees below zero F at sea level. The nuclear-powered Robert F. Kennedy came around sharply, bows swinging into the crushing fury of a Force 11 wind, twin screws churning furiously as she clawed her way-up a towering wave rising nearly twenty feet above her superstructure, then rocketed down into the pounding waters of the trough. The bows smashed deep into green Arctic waters. Tons of water sprayed over her decks, mast-high, turning instantly to ice that rattled-against the bridge like cannon shot. What liquid, not frozen instantly in the frigid air, clung to the bridge, the shrouds, any exposed part of the ship, added yet another microlayer of ice o the tons already weighting her down. Again and again the ship smashed into the waves, each time rising half submerged from an encounter that would have sent lesser vessels to the bottom with all the careless thought of a glacier crushing a hillock beneath its advance.

Fifty-to seventy-foot waves, whipped to a froth by the Arctic gale, marched down from the Great Barrier across two hundred miles of open sea. What was possibly the worst Arctic storm fir more than thirty years hunted through the desert wastes of the Arctic in a cyclonic storm of unbelievable proportions.

Formed from a katabatic storm somewhere on the Greenland Icecap and fed by a smaller low pressure area of relatively warmer, moister air, the two centers had met; the colder, moist, and therefore heavier air had settled down onto the glacier. The Greenland Icecap rises from the coast to nearly two thousand feet in the interior. The settling cold air had merely flowed down the eastern side of the icecap, encountered a low-pressure area off the foggy coast into which it rushed, picked up more moisture and speed, and spewed itself out into the Greenland Sea as a full-scale cyclone. Now, the storm, fully built and overpowering everything in its path, was sweeping in a huge curving arc up into the Norwegian and Barents seas. Lieutenant Commander Peter Folsom swiveled on his high seat as-Captain Henly Larkin, commanding officer of the RFK, came onto the bridge, peered out through the driving wipers, and shuddered. Folsom indicated the coffee pot and grinned as Larkin poured his famous oversized cup and carefully took a sip of the steaming black liquid as he came over to stand by Folsom.

“How’s she look, Pete?”

“A real ball coming up, Captain. The wind is about seventy-five knots and rising. The barometer is 28.52 and still falling — fast. We’ve had a four-tenths drop in the last half hour.”

“Anything coining in over the weather channel?”

“Thule’s forecasting what they call ‘heavy weather’ again. They claim that little breeze two days ago was only a prelude. At least 125-knot winds, possibly higher for this area in the next twenty-four hours.”

Folsom passed over the sheaf of flimsies that had come in since Larkin went off watch four hours before. Larkin took them over to his console and settled into the high stool with a muffled sigh of weariness and began to read. The picture was not good. Arctic cyclones are not to be fooled with. Any shipping without dire need steered well clear of such storms and even submarines moved down to the two-hundred-foot level to avoid the angry currents and crosscurrents churned up by the furious winds above. Larkin read on. The volume of meteorological information that had been gathered, collated, and disseminated in the past four hours was far more complete than that available to commercial shipping. In addition to the reports from the civilian agency weather satellites, the Department of Defense maintained a series of its own, devoted exclusively to gathering weather information strictly for the military. Larkin therefore had available to him more data about the storm and more accurate projections as to its future course than did commercial shipping. But Larkin had one other thing that commercial captains did not have — strict orders to maintain station in the Barents Sea at all costs, short of losing his ship. However, if it should become clear to Larkin that he was about to lose his ship, it would probably be too late to save her.

Larkin rubbed his eyes aid swiveled around to face Folsom at the adjacent panel. “Ah… my aching back. How long till contact?” He peered at his watch and checked it against the chronometer readout above his command console.

“Five minutes to go. Communications tells me everything is set. There shouldn’t be any trouble on this end.” Folsom slid out of the seat and walked over to the forward ports and stared out through the revolving screen into the wind-and wave-filled night. The ship crested another wave, tipped, slid and smashed again into the Arctic seas. Folsom hung onto the coaming, riding easily with the motion of the ship, and winced involuntarily as solid spray rattled like grapeshot against the tempered glass.

“Thule also said that we can expect snow toward the end. It seems to be one of those blasted Greenland storms, and when this one finally spilled over the edge it found a lowpressure area along the coast and kept coming… bringing everything in its path with it.” Larkin merely grunted as he continued to stare thoughtfully into the storm. His mind was churning with dozens of lines of thought, all ending at one consideration… the safety of the ship. Fourteen years of sea duty in every ocean of the world had taught him one certain lesson: the sea can never be trusted. Even the weather satellite system, with its computerized data reduction processes, was not to be trusted completely. There were too many unknowns, too many variables in the billions of cubic miles that comprised the ocean of air and the ocean of water that always obscured the pattern. Larkin had weathered both Mid-Atlantic hurricanes and South Pacific typhoons. He had seen a destroyer almost turned turtle in a South China Sea typhoon off the coast of Taiwan and rode out the Pacific typhoon of ’57 in a light cruiser. If nothing else, Larkin had immense respect for the sea. He was worried about this storm. If the predictions were right, it was going to get an awful lot worse before it got better. And, he remembered, it was here in the Barents Sea in 1942 that two lend-lease British destroyers had been sunk by just this same kind of Arctic cyclone. The RFK was a much more powerful and stouter ship than those two World War I tin cans—“tin cans” built in a day when they were really not much more than that — but still, every ship, every crew had its limit. One small mistake could be extremely fatal.

He turned to survey the bridge quickly, noting each station manned with all of the ship’s electronic and visual eyes and ears tuned outward to register the slightest alteration in the storm or the condition of the sea. Radar units quested ceaselessly to pinpoint the most insignificant object revealed by an instant’s break in wave or cloud that might turn out to be the conning tower of a submarine or rocket-loaded fighter bomber. For all intents and. purposes, the Barents Sea, edging the northern coasts of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as well as Norway and Finland, was enemy water. The panel above the ECM — electronic countermeasures — console was lit a bright red, indicating that the highly secret sonar, radar, and infrared jamming devices were in full operation. Any contact with a Soviet vessel — or that of any nationality — would be a matter of pure, blind luck in these seas, but Larkin was not one to trust luck any more than he trusted the sea.

“Helmsman, course and speed,” he called out. Folsom glanced at him for a moment, then went back to staring out the ports.

“026° at sixteen knots sir.”

Larkin considered a moment. “Sixteen knots against these head-winds, not bad. Let’s cut her back to ten. I don’t want to carry any more pressure on that bow patch-up than we absolutely have to have.”

Folsom nodded agreement and called out the changed speed, then ordered communications to make the proper correction in the rendezvous location and time and get it off. As he finished talking, the screen door swung open with a bang and a furshrouded figure stumbled in, followed by the banshee shriek of the wind. A howled chorus of “shut the door” rose from the bridge crew as they swung around as one man from their consoles to glare at the snow-covered apparition. The hatch was jerked from the man’s grip by the wind and thudded back against the stops, then just as perversely swung the other way and slammed shut, abruptly ending the noise. Lieutenant Commander Joel Bridges leaned wearily against the hatch and stripped the Arctic mask from his face with a great deal of care. The mask and his nylon all-weather gear were coated with an inch of solid ice. Bridges worked the zipper on the parka loose and pulled it down. The parka then fell away of its own volition and the ice coating dumped onto the deck plates in thick chunks.

Bridges stood swaying among the ruins of his parka, his face flushed in the sudden ninety-degree temperature change. His expression, as circulation began returning to his legs and anus, was almost comical.

“It’s colder than a bitch kitty out there!”

“Now, now, that’s no way to talk in the presence of your ranking officers, is it, Lieutenant?” Folsom asked innocently.

Bridges delivered a muffled comment, glaring from the corner of his eyes as he stumbled around in a wobbly circle looking for the coffee. Larkin chuckled and poured coffee for him. “I take it that it is cold. Anyone else out there?”

“No, sir, I sent them in about twenty minutes ago.”

“Good, there is no need to stand watch outside tonight. You can’t see anything anyway.”

“Amen. Your eyeballs freeze.” Bridges took the coffee and stumbled over to the second officer’s console and pulled himself up into the high seat and began massaging his legs. Twenty minutes passed slowly, twenty minutes in which the ship fought the angry seas while Larkin calmly continued to study the weather reports and maps displayed by his console. Only the intenseness of his concentration betrayed his worry. Larkin turned sharply at the buzz of the intercom. Folsom picked up the handset.

“Communications is ready. Shall I have them pipe it up here, sir?” Larkin nodded. He lit a cigarette and made himself comfortable at his console, then picked up the handset and pressed the button that cut in the secrecy circuits and slipped the ear-plug wire around his ear. Immediately he heard the operator two decks below begin his “ident” call on the ultratight FM scrambled frequency.

“Got him, sir.”

“Beatle to Target One: …I read your signal… five by five… stand by… for transmission.”

The characteristically drowsy voice of the reconnaissance pilot came through on the FM channel clearly in spite of the storm and havoc raging in the intervening twenty thousand feet between ship and aircraft. Larkin pressed a third tab and glanced around quickly to make sure the banks of tapes were all running, and then took a long drag at his cigarette.

“Clear, go ahead.”

High-frequency chatter sounded briefly over the handset. The tape reels spun madly and the bridge echoed to the tortured squeal of the telemetry. The guard stood looking straight ahead impassively. Folsom sat on his stool at the executive officer’s console and tried to appear disinterested in the little drama being played out at the next console. He did not succeed any more than did the eight other officers and enlisted men on the bridge. Only Larkin knew who was aloft or why. Only the captain of the rendezvous vessel was entrusted with the knowledge of the trite but very true phrase — supersecret mission — so secret that the entire project did not possess a code name. The identification label was changed with every mission flown. Tonight the mysterious pilot and aircraft were known as Target. Two weeks ago in the Indian Ocean the name had been Phoebus. Larkin became aware of a faint hissing noise filling the background as the pilot began to speak. For Cod’s sake, he thought, not again. The last rendezvous had taken three hours while the communications section had struggled to maintain contact. For three hours Larkin had steamed a zigzag pattern around a fixed point while the aircraft had flown long, looping orbits around a rotating imaginary point and the ionosphere had wreaked havoc with the radio transmission. For three hours Larkin had sweated blood, knowing that even the vastness of the southern Indian Ocean was not big enough to hide both an aircraft and a large battle cruiser from hostile submarines or roving ASW patrols. Now he was praying that they would not experience similar trouble only 170 miles off the coast of the Soviet Union.

But after a few moments the hissing began to fade and the pilot’s voice came through again, slow and measured but clear:

“Transmission complete… fuel load… low… proceeding to refueling… point… at minus… thirty-five minutes… everything in clear… working like a charm… no… trouble from… Reds… ECM gear… working… perfectly.” Larkin hunched forward and spoke directly into the handset. “It looks as though you won’ t be completing this sweep… or returning to base for a while,” he said.

“We have new orders for you in supplembntary transmission coming up. I have been instructed to tell you by voice that you are to review them after’’—he stressed the word—

“refueling. We will remain on station here, waiting for you to report in. The mission should he completed by i800 hours tomorrow. You will rendezvous with us tomorrow night, same location.”

Larkin paused and unconsciously lowered his voice. “I have also been instructed to add that this mission is of the highest importance to East-West relations and must be completed at all costs, short — of detection.”

“I… understand…”

Larkin did too, only too well in fact. What he would pass along, locked into the tapes, was an almost impossible task. “Stand by for transmission.” Larkin keyed the tape decks to transmit to the circling aircraft.

Teleman sat thinking while the encoder clicked out the receipt of the transmission from the ship. He too understood only too.well what Larkin’s verbal instructions meant. And he was rather puzzled. This certainly did not sound like a routine patrol, the last of this watch before returning to base. Never before had he flown a mission pattern that in any way brought him in range of enemy rockets or aircraft. Heretofore all missions over hostile territory — which was anywhere in the world, including the United States — had been flown at altitudes above eighty thousand feet. He glanced out the slit beside his head and banked the aircraft a few degrees to see the storm below. Darkness was only an hour away, but the setting sun shed enough light on the cloud cover to highlight the intensity of the storm, even from twenty thousand feet. The storm, seen from above, resembled a devilish badlands: long, twisting canyons and arroyos of saw-edged cloud. The depths of the canyons were filled with hell’s own blackness, contrasting sharply with the evil red of the peaks and ridges. The late afternoon sunlight filtered suddenly as he passed beneath a thick blanket of high-flying ice crystals. The sun dipped below the rim of the storm and immediately its light turned a somber gray, deathly solid in its low intensity. In spite of himself, Teleman shivered involuntarily.

“Looks… awfully rough… down there… you be able to hold… through that stuff?”

“I don’t anticipate any real trouble,” Larkin replied. “So far it’s nothing we can’t handle.” Inwardly though, Larkin was worried. Although the RFK was new and built to more exacting specifications than any other ship m history, she had been damaged’ a week previously. Steaming slowly out of Newport, Rhode Island, Naval Base she had collided with a destroyer in a freak accident. In the heavy fog the destroyer had come off second best, but her sharply raked bow had gashed a hole in the RFK’s port bow, slashing through several structural. members. An emergency patch had been rigged at the almost deserted Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Naval Yards by a skeleton crew and the bow section shored up with temporary braces. This mission was too important to delay and there had been no other ship with the required equipment anywhere-within steaming range.

Now, the weather satellite information and photographs that had come in just prior to contact had shown the entire Arctic region as far east as Novaya Zemlya and west to Iceland in for the worst Arctic gale in years — worse in all appearances than the Great Storm of 1942. And now, the RFK, less than 170 miles from the Soviet coast and forty miles off Norway’s North Cape, was also directly in the storm’s track.

“We’ll be here,” he said: with considerably more confidence than he felt at the moment. The seas were increasing and the stabilizers were just about useless in the heavy waters. He noted that Folsom, bent over the console, had just ordered the RPM’s on the engines stepped up to furnish stabilizing air around the hull.

“We are going to start quartering a fifty-mile circuit in fifteen minutes.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw the white flicker of another wave break mast-high and come crashing down against the forward ports. “So we’ll be here.”

“Good…” The transmission garbled and quickly cleared. “Say again,” Larkin requested.

“Good… take it… easy… down there… see you tomorrow.”

“Right, clear.” Larkin stubbed his cigarette out and got up from the console. He waved to the marine and ordered Folsom to stand down from security. He thought for a moment, leaning against the console, feeling again the crushing weight of responsibility come down over him just as it had the night the destroyer sheared through the bow, or that afternoon off the North Vietnamese coast. He took a deep breath and shook his head reluctantly, then beckoned Folsom to join him at the plotting table, and quickly explained that they would stay on station for another twenty-four hours. For the next ten minutes they discussed the advantages and disadvantages of various courses that would allow them to take the brunt of the storm in the easiest manner possible. Finally, they settled on a straight run to the northeast that would bring them abreast of the North Cape, some one hundred miles north by 1100 hours. Both were convinced that it would be better to ride directly into the teeth of the gale now, before it unleashed its better than one-hundred-mile-an-hour winds, as it was expected to do late tomorrow. They Would then be able to run before the storm, arriving back on station at 1700 hours. This allowed a onehour lead time for any unexpected delays or heavier seas than Folsom picked up the maps and spread them out on the chart amble. He drew a fine line in red between their present position and the expected turn-around point north of the Cape.

He pointed with the pencil at the exposed position. “Actually it might be better to come farther west to bring us under the lee of the Cape.” He waited expectantly for Larkin’s answer.

Larkin shoved his cap back and rubbed his forehead. “Ordinarily, yes. But in this weather, I just don’t trust these waters. They shoal too damned easily and the average depth runs less than ten fathoms. If we pick up any more ice, and it looks like we’re going to, we’d be in big trouble. No, I think I’d prefer to make the turn in the open sea and take my chances with the wind and waves.”

“You’re the boss.” Folsom nodded and bent over the table again, to — begin the intricate task of plotting a course that would take them into the teeth of eighty-to ninety-knot headwinds that had a tendency to quarter unexpectedly. Even with the latest in inertial gyroscopes aboard, he still had a tricky problem in navigation on his hands — to take them a total of 223 nautical miles in twenty-four hours and bring them back to a starting point less than half a mile wide, all with terrible winds and towering waves that would combine to push the battle cruiser in a myriad of directions during the voyage. Larkin nodded to himself and turned away, satisfied that the ship was in capable hands with Folsom at the helm. He went below for breakfast.