Red Storm Rising

33. Contact

"Captain?"

Morris started at the hand on his shoulder. He'd just wanted to lie down in his stateroom for a few minutes after conducting helicopter night landing practice, and-he checked his watch. After midnight. His face was sweaty. The dream had just started again. He looked up at his executive officer.

"What is it, XO?"

"We got a request to check something out. Probably a snowbird, but well, see for yourself "

Morris took the dispatch with him to his private bathroom, tucked it in his pocket, then washed his face quickly.

"'Unusual contact repeated several times, have attempted localization without success'? What the hell is this supposed to be?" he asked, toweling off.

"Beats the hell out of me, skipper. Forty degrees, thirty minutes north, sixty-nine, fifty west. They got a location but no ID. I'm having the chart pulled now."

Morris ran his hand through his hair. Two hours sleep was better than none. Wasn't it? "Okay, let's see how it looks from CIC."

The tactical action officer had the chart out on the table next to the captain's chair. Morris checked the main tactical-display scope. They were still far offshore in accordance with their orders to check out the hundred-fathom curve.

"That's way the hell away from here", Morris observed immediately. There was something familiar about the location. The captain bent over the chart.

"Yes sir, about a sixty-mile run", Ernst agreed. "Shallow water, too. Can't use the towed array there."

"Oh, I know what this place is! That's where the Andrea Doria sank. Probably somebody's got a MAD contact and didn't bother checking his chart."

"Don't think so." O'Malley emerged from the shadows. "A frigate heard something first. The winch on their tail was busted. They didn't want to lose it, so they were heading into Newport instead of New York because the harbors deeper. They say they copied a strange passive-sonar contact that faded out. They did a target-motion analysis and generated this position. Their helicopter made a few passes, and its magnetic anomaly detector registered right over the Doria, and that was that."

"How'd you find that out?"

O'Malley handed over a message form. "Came in right after the XO went to get you. They sent an Orion to check it. Same story. They heard something odd, and it faded out."

Morris frowned. They were chasing after a wild goose, but the orders came from Norfolk. That made it an official wild-goose chase.

"What's the helo status?"

"I can be up in ten minutes. One torpedo and an auxiliary fuel tank. All the gear's on line."

"Tell the bridge to take us there at twenty-five knots. Battleaxe know about this?" He got a nod. "Okay. Signal them what we're up to. Winch in the tail. Won't do us any good where we're going. O'Malley, we'll close to within fifteen miles of the contact and have you search for it. That puts you in the air about 0230. If you need me, I'll be in the wardroom." Morris decided to sample his new ship's "mid-rats." O'Malley was headed the same way.

"These ships are a little weird", the flyer said.

Morris grunted agreement. The main fore-and-aft passageway was on the port side instead of the centerline, for one thing. The "figs" broke a number of longstanding traditions in ship design.

O'Malley went down the ladder first and opened the wardroom door for the captain. They found two junior officers in front of the TV set, watching a taped movie that had mainly to do with fast cars and naked women. The tape machine, Morris had already learned, was run from the chiefs' quarters. One result of this was that a particularly attractive chest was instant replayed for all hands.

Midwatch rations, or "mid-rats," was an open loaf of bread and a plate of cold cuts. Morris got himself a cup of coffee and built a sandwich. O'Malley opted for a fruit drink from the cooler on the after bulkhead. The official Navy term for it was bug juice.

"No coffee?" Morris asked. O'Malley shook his head.

"Too much makes me jumpy. You don't want shaky hands when you're landing a helo in the dark." He smiled. "I really am getting too old for this crap."

"Kids?"

"Three boys, and ain't none of them gonna be a sailor if I have anything to say about it. You?"

"Boy and a girl. They're back in Kansas with their mother." Morris went after his sandwich. The bread was a little stale and the cold cuts weren't cold, but he needed to eat. This was the first meal in three days he hadn't eaten alone. O'Malley pushed the potato chips over.

"Get all your carbohydrates, Captain."

"That bug juice'll kill you." Morris nodded at the fruit drink.

"It's been tried before. I flew two years over 'Nam. Mostly search-and-rescue stuff. Got shot down twice. Never got scratched, though. Just scared to death."

Was he that old? Morris wondered. He had to have been passed over for promotion a few times. The captain made a mental note to check O'Malley's date of rank.

"How come you were in CIC?" the captain asked.

"I wasn't very sleepy and I wanted to see how the towed array was working."

Morris was surprised. Aviators didn't generally show this much interest in the ship's equipment.

"The word is you did pretty well with Pharris.

"Not good enough."

"That happens, too." O'Malley watched his skipper very closely. The only man aboard with extended combat experience, O'Malley recognized something in Morris that he hadn't seen since Vietnam. The flyer shrugged. It wasn't his problem. He fished in his flight suit and came out with a pack of cigarettes. "Mind if I smoke?"

"I just restarted myself."

"Thank God!" O'Malley raised his voice. "With all these virtuous children in the wardroom, I thought I was the only dirty old man here!" The two young lieutenants smiled at that, without taking their eyes from the television screen.

"How much experience you have on figs?"

"Most of my time is on carriers, skipper. Last fourteen months I've been an instructor down at Jax. I've done a lot of odd jobs, most of them with the Seahawk. I think you'll like my bird. The dipping sonar is the best I've ever worked with."

"What do you think about this contact report?"

O'Malley leaned back and puffed on his cigarette with a faraway look. "It's interesting. I remember seeing something on TV about the Doria. She sank on her starboard side. A lot of people have dived to look at the wreck. It's about two hundred feet of water, just shallow enough for amateurs to try. And there's a million cables draped over her."

"Cables?" Morris asked.

"Trawls. Lot of commercial fishing goes on there. They tangle their nets on the wreck. It looks like Gulliver on the beach at Lilliput."

"You're right! I remember that", Morris said. "That explains the noise. It's the tide, or currents whistling through all those cables."

O'Malley nodded. "Yep, that could explain it. I still want to give it a look."

"Why?"

"All the traffic coming out of New York has to pass right overtop the place for one thing. Ivan knows we got a big convoy forming up in New York-he has to know unless the KGB has gone out of business. That's one hell of a good place to park a submarine if they want to put a trailer on the convoy. Think about it. If you get a NLAD contact there, you write it off. The noise from a reactor plant at low power probably won't be louder than the flow noise over the wreck if they get in close enough. If I was a real nervy sub-driver, I'd think hard about using a place like that to belly-up."

"You really do think like them", Morris observed. "Okay, let's see how we should handle this…"

0230 hours. Morris watched the takeoff procedures from the control tower, then walked forward to CIC. The frigate was at battle stations, doing eight knots, her Prairie/Masker systems operating. If there were a Russian sub out there, fifteen or so miles away, there was no way she'd suspect a frigate was nearby. In CIC the radar plot showed the helo moving into position.

"Romeo, this is Hammer. Radio check, over," O'Malley said. The helicopter's on-board data link also transmitted a test message to the frigate. The petty officer on the helicopter communications panel checked it out, and grunted with satisfaction. What was that expression he'd heard? Yeah, right-they had a "sweet lock on momma's gadget." He grinned.

The helo began its search two miles from the grave of Andrea Doria. O'Malley halted his aircraft and hovered fifty feet above the rolling surface.

"Down dome, Willy."

In the back, the petty officer unlocked the hoist controls and lowered the dipping sonar transducer down a hole in the belly of the helicopter. The Seahawk carried over a thousand feet of cable, enough to reach below the deepest of thermocline layers. It was only two hundred feet to the bottom here, and they had to be careful not to let the transducer come near the bottom for risk of damage. The petty officer paid close attention to the cable and halted the winch when the transducer was a hundred feet down. As with surface ships, the sonar readout was both visual and aural. A TV-type tube began to show frequency lines while the sailor listened in on his headphones.

This was the hard part, O'Malley reminded himself. Hovering a helicopter in these wind conditions required constant attention-there was no autopilot-and hunting for a submarine was always an exercise in patience. It would take several minutes for the passive sonar to tell them anything, and they could not use their active sonar systems. The pinging would only serve to alert a target.

After five minutes they had detected nothing but random noise. They recovered the sonar and moved east. Again there was nothing. Patience, the pilot told himself He hated being patient. Another move east and another wait.

"I got something at zero-four-eight. Not sure what it is, a whistle or something in the high-frequency range." They waited another two minutes to make sure it wasn't a spurious signal.

"Up dome." O'Malley brought the helicopter up and moved off northeast for three thousand yards. Three minutes later the sonar went down again. Nothing this time. O'Malley changed positions again. If I ever write a song about hunting submarines, he thought, I'll call it "Again, and Again, and AGAIN!" This time a signal came back-two signals, in fact.

"That's interesting", the ASW officer aboard Reuben James observed. "How close is this to the wreck?"

"Very close," Morris answered. "Just about the same bearing, too."

"Could be flow noise", Willy told O'Malley. "Very faint, just like the last time."

The pilot reached up to flip a switch to feed the sonar signal into his headset. We're looking for a very faint signal, O'Malley reminded himself. "Could be steam noise, too. Prepare to raise dome, I'm gonna go east to triangulate."

Two minutes later, the sonar transducer went into the water for a sixth time. The contact was now plotted on the helicopter's on-board tactical display that sat on the control panel between pilot and copilot.

"We got two signals here," Ralston said. "About six hundred yards apart."

"Looks that way to me. Let's go see the near one. Willy―''

"Cable within limits, ready to raise, skipper."

"Up dome. Romeo, Hammer. You got what we got?"

"Affirmative, Hammer," Morris answered. "Check out the southern one."

"Doing that right now. Stand by." O'Malley paid close attention to his instruments as he flew toward the nearer of the two contacts. Again he halted the aircraft. "Down dome."

"Contact!" the petty officer said a minute later. He examined the tone lines on his display and mentally compared them with data he had on Soviet submarines. "Evaluate this contact as steam and plant noises from a nuclear submarine, bearing two-six-two."

O'Malley listened for thirty seconds. His face broke into a slight smile. "That's a nuc boat all right! Romeo, Hammer, we have a probable submarine contact bearing two-six-two our position. Moving to firm that fix up right now."

Ten minutes later they had the contact locked in. O'Malley made directly for it and lowered his sonar right on top of the contact.

"It's a Victor-class", the sonarman aboard the frigate said. "See this frequency line? A Victor with his reactor plant turned down to minimum power output."

"Hammer," Morris called. "Romeo. Any suggestions?"

O'Malley was flying away from the contact, having left a smoke float to mark it. The submarine probably hadn't heard them because of the surface conditions, or if he had, he knew his safest bet was to sit on the bottom. The Americans carried only homing torpedoes, which couldn't detect a submarine on the bottom. Once launched, they'd either motor along in a circle until running out of fuel or drive straight into the bottom. He could go active and try to flush the submarine off the bottom, he thought, but active sonar wasn't all that effective in shallow water, and what if Ivan didn't move? The Seahawk was down to one hour's fuel. The pilot made his decision.

"Battleaxe, this is Hammer. Do you read, over?"

"Took your time to call us, Hammer", Captain Perrin replied at once. The British frigate was monitoring the search closely.

"You have any Mark-11s aboard?"

"We can load them in ten minutes."

"We'll be waiting. Romeo, do you approve a VECTAC?"

"Affirmative" Morris answered. The vectored attack approach was perfect, and he was too excited at what they had here to be annoyed at O'Malley for bypassing him. "Weapons free."

O'Malley circled his aircraft at one thousand feet while he waited. This was really crazy. Was Ivan just sitting there? Was he waiting for a convoy to pass by? It was about an even-money chance that he'd heard the helicopter. If he'd heard the helo, did he want the frigate to come in so he could attack her? His systems operator watched the sonar display intently for any change in the signal from the contact. So far there'd been none. No increase in engine power, no mechanical transients. Nothing at all but the hissing of a reactor plant at fractional power, a sound undetectable from more than two miles off. No wonder several people had looked and found nothing. He found himself admiring the nerve of the Soviet submarine commander.

"Hammer, this is Hatchet."

O'Malley smiled to himself. Unlike American procedures, the Brits assigned helicopter names associated with that of their mother ships. HMS Brazen's helo was "Hussy." Battleaxe's was "Hatchet."

"Roger, Hatchet. Where are you?"

"Ten miles south of you. We've two depth charges aboard."

O'Malley switched his flying lights back on. "Very well, stand by. Romeo, the way I want to work this, you give Hatchet a radar steer to our sonobuoy and we'll use our sonar for the cross-bearing to drop. Do you concur, over?"

"Roger, concur," Morris answered.

"Arm the fish," O'Malley told his copilot.

"Why?"

"If the charges miss, you can bet he'll come off the bottom like a salmon at spawning time." O'Malley brought his helo around and spotted the blinking anticollision lights of the British Lynx helicopter. "Hatchet, tallyho, I have you now at my nine o'clock. Please hold your current position while we get set. Willy, any change in the contact?"

"No, sir. This dude's playing it awful cool, sir."

You poor brave bastard, O'Malley thought to himself. The smoke float atop the contact was about burned out. He dropped another. After rechecking his tactical display he moved to a position one thousand yards east of the contact, hovered fifty feet above the surface and deployed the dipping sonar.

"There he is," the petty officer reported. "Bearing two-six-eight."

"Hatchet, Hammer. We're ready for your VECTAC. Take your steer from Romeo."

Control of the British helicopter's course came now from Reuben James's radar, which steered it onto a precise northerly course. O'Malley watched the Lynx approach, checking to make sure the wind wasn't driving him off his own position.

"You will drop your charges one at a time, on my mark. Stand by, Hatchet."

"Standing by." The British pilot armed his depth charges and came forward at ninety knots. O'Malley lined up the blinking lights with the smoke float.

"Charge one-Mark-mark! Charge two-Mark-mark! Get clear!"

The Lynx pilot needed no encouragement. Scarcely had the second depth charge fallen free when the helo leaped upward and raced northeast. Simultaneously, O'Malley yanked up on his collective control to bring his delicate sonar transducer out of the water.

There was an odd flash of light from the bottom, then another. The surface of the sea turned to foam that leaped into the starry sky. O'Malley closed in and switched on his landing lights. The surface was churned with mud, and… oil? Just like in the movies, he thought, and dropped another sonobuoy into the water.

The bottom reverberated with the rumbles from the depth charges, but the system fiItered them out and locked in on the higher frequency sounds. They heard escaping air and rushing water. Someone aboard the submarine might have hit the ballast controls in a vain attempt to blow the submarine to the surface. Then there was something else, like water dropped on a hot plate. It was a moment before O'Malley had it figured out.

"What's that, skipper?" Willy asked over the intercom. "I never heard that before."

"The reactor vessel's ruptured. You're hearing a runaway nuclear reactor." God, what a mess that'll be this close into shore! he thought. No more diving on the Doria for a few years… O'Malley switched to the radio circuit. "Hatchet, this is Hammer. I copy collapse noises. We score that one as a kill. Do you claim the kill, over?"

"Our fox, Hammer. Thanks for the steer in."

O'Malley laughed. "Roger that, Hatchet. If you want the kill, you also get to file the environmental-impact statement. Out."

Aboard the Lynx, pilot and copilot exchanged a look. "What the devil is that?"

The two helicopters returned in loose formation and made a pass over both the British and American frigates to celebrate their kill. It was the second for Battleaxe, and Reuben James would now paint half a submarine on the side of her pilothouse. The ships recovered their helicopters and turned west for New York.

Mikhail Sergetov embraced his son in the Russian way, with passion and kisses to welcome him back from the front. The Politburo member took his son's arm and led him to his chauffeured Zil for the drive into Moscow.

"You've been hurt, Vanya."

"I cut my hand on some glass." Ivan shrugged it off. His father offered him a small glass of vodka, which he took. "I haven't had a drink in two weeks."

"Oh?"

"The General does not permit it in his command post," Ivan explained.

"Is he as good an officer as I thought?"

"Perhaps a better one. I've seen him in command at the front. He is a truly gifted leader."

"Then why haven't we conquered Germany?"

Ivan Mikhailovich Sergetov had grown up while his father had climbed the Party ladder nearly to the top, and he had often seen him switch in a moment from affable host to abrasive Party apparatchik. This was the first time it had ever happened to him, however.

"NATO was far readier than we had been led to expect, father. They were waiting for us to come, and their first mission of the war-before we had even crossed the border in force-came as a rude shock." Ivan explained the effects of Operation Dreamland.

"We were not told it was that bad. Are you sure?"

"I've seen some of the bridges. Those same aircraft raided a dummy command post outside Stendal. The bombs were falling before we knew they were there. If their intelligence had been better, I might not be here."

"So it's their air power?"

"That's a major part of it. I've seen their ground-attack fighters cut through a tank column like a harvester through a wheatfield. It's horrible."

"But our missiles?"

"Our missile troops practice once or twice a year, firing at target drones that plod along in a straight line up where everyone can see them. The NATO fighters fly between the trees. If the antiaircraft missiles on either side worked as well as their makers said, every airplane in the world would have been shot down twice over by now. But the worst thing of all are their antitank missiles-you know, just like ours, and these missiles work all too well." The younger man gestured with his hands. "Three men in a wheeled vehicle. One driver, one loader, one gunner. They hide behind a tree at a turn in the road and wait. Our column comes into view and they fire from a range of-say two kilometers. They're trained to go for the command tank-the one with the radio antenna up. As often as not the first warning we have is when the first weapon hits. They fire one more and kill another tank, then race away before we can call down artillery fire. Five minutes later, from another spot, it happens again.

"It's eating us up," the young man said, echoing the words of his commander.

"You say we are losing?"

"No. I say that we are not winning," Ivan said. "But for us that is the same thing." He continued with the message from his commander and saw his father settle into the leather seat of the car.

"I knew it. I warned them, Vanya. The fools!" Ivan gestured with his head to the driver. His father smiled and made a dismissive gesture. Vitaly had served Sergetov for years. His daughter was now a doctor because of the Minister's patronage, his son safe in the university while most of the young men in the country were under arms. "Oil expenditures are twenty-five percent above predictions. That is, twenty-five percent above my ministerial predictions. They are forty percent above the Defense Ministry's predictions. It never occurred to anyone that NATO aircraft would be able to find our hidden petroleum storage facilities. My people are reevaluating national reserves even now. I am to receive the interim report this afternoon if it's ready on time. Look around, Vanya. See for yourself."

There were hardly any vehicles in view, not even trucks. Never a lively city, now Moscow was grim even to Russian eyes. People hurried along half-empty streets, not looking around, not looking up. So many men were gone, Ivan realized. So many of them would never return. As usual his father read his thoughts.

"How bad are casualties?"

"Dreadful. Far over estimates. I do not have exact numbers-my posting is intelligence, not administration-but losses are very bad."

"This is all a mistake, Vanya," the Minister said quietly. But the Party is always right. How many years did you believe that?

"Nothing can be done about that now, father. We also need information on NATO's supplies. The data that gets to us at the front is over-processed, shall we say. We need better data to make our own estimates."

At the front, Mikhail thought. His anger at those words could not entirely suppress the pride he felt at what his son had become. He'd worried often that he'd turn into another young "nobleman" of a Party family. Alekseyev was not the sort to promote lightly, and from his own sources he'd learned that Ivan had accompanied the General to the battle line many times. The boy had become a man. Pity it had taken a war to make that happen.

"I'll see what I can do."

The Svyatana Anna Trough was their last bit of deep water. The freight train of fast-attack submarines slowed almost to a halt as it approached the edge of the icepack. They expected to find two friendly submarines here, but "friendly" was not a word that went well with combat operations. All the American submarines were at battle stations. McCafferty checked the time and the location. So far everything had gone according to plan. Amazing, he thought.

He didn't like being the lead boat. If there were a Russian patrolling the edge of the pack… he'd get first shot, McCafferty knew. Wondering if the "he" would be a speaker of English or Russian.

"Conn, sonar, I got faint machinery noises bearing one-nine-one."

"Bearing change?"

"Just picked it up, sir. Bearing is not changing at the moment."

McCafferty reached past the duty electrician's mate and switched on the gertrude, a sonar telephone as archaic as it was effective. The only noise was the hissing and groaning of the icepack. Behind him the exec got the firecontrol tracking party working on a torpedo solution for the new target.

A garbled group of syllables came over the speaker.

McCafferty took the gertrude phone off the receiver and depressed the Transmit trigger.

"Zulu X-ray." There came a pause of several seconds, then a scratchy reply.

"Hotel Bravo," replied HMS Sceptre. McCafferty let out a long breath that went unnoticed by the rest of the attack center crew, all of whom were doing exactly the same thing.

"All ahead one-third," the captain said. Ten minutes later they were within easy range of the gertrude. Chicago halted to communicate.

"Welcome to the Soviet back garden, old boy. Slight change in plans. Keyboard"-the code name for HMS Superb-"is two-zero miles south to check further on your route. We've encountered no hostile activity for the past thirty hours. The coast is clear. Good hunting."

"Thank you, Keylock. The gang's all here. Out." McCafferty hung the phone set back in its place. "Gentlemen, the mission is a go! All ahead two-thirds!"

The nuclear attack submarine increased speed to twelve knots on a heading of one-nine-seven degrees. HMS Sceptre counted the American boats as they passed, then resumed her station, circling slowly at the edge of the icepack.

"Good luck, chaps," her captain breathed.

"They should get in all right."

"It's not getting in that I'm worried about, Jimmy," the captain replied, using the traditional name for a British sub's first officer. "The ticklish part's getting back out."

"Telex for you, Commander." An RAF sergeant handed the message form over to Toland.

"Thank you." He scanned the form.

"Leaving us?" Group Captain Mallory asked.

"They want me to fly down to Northwood. That's right outside London, isn't it?"

Mallory nodded. "No problem getting you there."

"That's nice. It says 'immediate.'"

He'd been to England many times, all on business with his opposite numbers at Government Communications Headquarters outside Cheltenham. His flights always seemed to arrive at night. He was flying at night now, and something was wrong. Something obvious…

Blackout. There were few lights below. Did that really matter now that aircraft had sophisticated navigation aids, or was it mainly a psychological move to remind the people of what was going on? If the continuous television coverage, some of it "live" from the battlefront, didn't do that already. Toland had been spared most of that. Like most men in uniform, he had no time for the big picture while he concentrated on his little corner of it. He imagined it was the same for Ed Morris and Danny McCafferty, then realized this was the first time he'd thought of them in over a week. How were they doing? They were certainly more exposed to danger than he was at the moment, though his experience on Nimitz the second day of the war had given him enough terror to last the remainder of his life. Toland did not yet know that with a routine telex message sent a week before, he would directly affect their lives for the second time this year.

The Boeing 737 airliner touched down ten minutes later. Only twenty people were aboard, almost all of them in uniform. Toland was met by a car and a driver which sped him off to Northwood.

"You're Commander Toland?" a Royal Navy lieutenant asked. "Please come with me, sir. COMEASTLANT wants to see you."

He found Admiral Sir Charles Beattie chewing on an unlit pipe in front of a huge map of the eastern and northern Atlantic.

"Commander Toland, sir."

"Thank you," the Admiral said without turning. "Tea and coffee in the corner, Commander."

Toland availed himself of the tea. He drank it only in the U.K., and after several weeks he found himself wondering why he didn't have it at home.

"Your Tomcats have done well up in Scotland," Beattie said.

"It was the aerial radar that made the real difference, sir. More than half the kills were made by the RAF."

"Last week you sent a message to our air operations chaps to the effect that your Tomcats were able to track Backfires visually at very long range."

It took Toland a few seconds to remember it. "Oh, yes. It's the video-camera system they have, Admiral. It's designed to identify fighter-size aircraft at thirty miles or so. Tracking something as big as a Backfire they can do at fifty or so if the weather's good."

"And the Backfires would not know they were there?"

"Not likely, sir."

"How far could they follow a Backfire?"

"That's a question for a driver, sir. With tanker support, we can keep a Tomcat aloft for almost four hours. Two hours each way, that would take them almost all the way home."

Beattie turned to face Toland for the first time. Sir Charles was a former aviator himself, last commander of the old Ark Royal, Britain's last real carrier. "How sure are you of Ivan's operating airfields?"

"For the Backfires, sir? They operate from the four airfields around Kirovsk. I would presume you have satellite photos of the places, sir."

"Here." Beattie handed him a folder.

There was a degree of unreality to this, Toland thought. Four-star admirals didn't chew the fat with newly frocked commanders unless they had nothing better to do, and Beattie had lots of things to do. Bob opened the folder.

"Oh." He looked at a photo set for Umbozero, the field east of Kirovsk. There'd been lit smokepots during the satellite pass, and the resulting black smoke had completely hidden the runways to visual light, with flares messing up the infrared imaging systems as well. "Well, there are the hardened shelters, and maybe three aircraft. Was this taken during a raid?"

"Correct. Very good, Commander. The Backfire force left the airfield three hours before the satellite pass."

"Trucks, too-fuel bowsers?" He got a nod. "They refuel them right after they land?"

"We think yes, before they get into the shelters. Evidently they don't like the idea of fueling inside a building. Seems reasonable enough. Ivan's had problems with accidental explosions the last few years."

Toland nodded, remembering the explosion at the main ordnance storage facility for the Russian Northern Fleet in 1984. "Be a hell of a nice time to catch them on the ground-but we don't have any tactical aircraft that'll reach nearly that far. B-52s could do it, but they'd be murdered. We learned that over Iceland."

"But a Tomcat could trail the Backfires nearly to the Russian doorstep, and that could allow you to predict exactly when they'll land?" Sir Charles persisted.

Toland looked at the map. The Backfires reentered Russian fighter cover about thirty minutes, flying time from their home bases.

"Plus or minus fifteen minutes… yes, Admiral, I think we can do that. I wonder how long it takes to refuel a Backfire." There was a lot of thinking going on behind those blue eyes, Toland saw.

"Commander, my operations officer will brief you on something called Operation Doolittle. We named it after one of your chaps as a clever bit of subterfuge to weasel the assets from your navy. For the moment, this information is eyes-only to you. Be back here in an hour. I want your evaluation of how we can improve the basic operational concept."

"Yes, sir."

They were in New York harbor. O'Malley was in the wardroom finishing up the written account of the destruction of the Soviet submarine when the growler phone on the port bulkhead started making noise. He looked up and discovered he was the only officer in the room. That meant he had to answer it.

"Wardroom. Lieutenant Commander O'Malley."

"Battleaxe here. May I please speak to your CO?"

"He's taking a nap. Can I help you, or is it important?"

"If he's not too busy, the captain wishes to invite him to dinner. Half an hour from now. Your XO and helicopter pilot also if he's available."

The pilot laughed. "The XO's on the beach, but the helo driver's available if the Queen's ships are still wet."

"Indeed we are, Commander."

"Okay. I'll go wake him up. Be back to you in a few minutes." O'Malley hung up and went out the door. He bumped into Willy.

"Excuse me, sir. The torpedo-loading practice?"

"Okay, I'm going to see the skipper anyway." Willy had complained that the last practice had gone a little slow. He handed the petty officer his report. "Take this down to the ship's office and tell 'em to type it up."

O'Malley went forward and found the door to the captain's stateroom closed, but the do-not-disturb light was switched off. He knocked and went in. The noise surprised him.

"Don't you see it!" The words came out as a gasp. Morris was lying on his back, his hands balled into fists on the blanket. His face was covered in sweat and he breathed like a man finishing a marathon.

"Jesus." O'Malley hesitated. He didn't really know the man.

"Look out!" This was louder, and the pilot wondered if anyone in the passageway outside might hear it and wonder if the captain were-he had to do something.

"Wake up, Captain!" Jerry grabbed Morris by the shoulders and lifted him up into a sitting position.

"Don't you see it!" Morris shouted, still not really awake.

"Settle down, pal. You're tied to the pier in New York harbor. You're safe. The ship is safe. Come around, Captain. It's okay." Morris blinked his eyes about ten times. He saw O'Malley's face about six inches away.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Glad I came. You all right?" The pilot lit a cigarette and handed it to the captain.

Morris refused it and stood. He walked to his basin and got a glass of water. "Just a dumb dream. What do you want?"

"We've been invited out to dinner next door in half an hour-I guess a reward for giving them the Victor. Also, I'd like your deck crew to practice loading torps on my bird. Last time was a little slow, my petty says."

"When do you want 'em to do it?"

"Soon as it gets dark, Captain. Better they should learn it the hard way."

"Okay. Half an hour on dinner?"

"Yes, sir. Be nice to have a drink."

Morris smiled without much enthusiasm. "Guess it would. I'll wash up. Meet you in the wardroom. This thing formal?"

"They didn't say so. I wasn't planning to change, if that's all right with you, skipper." O'Malley was wearing his flight suit. He got lonely without all the pockets.

"Twenty minutes."

O'Malley went to his stateroom and ran a cloth over his flight boots. The flight suit was new, and he figured that was dressy enough. Morris worried him. The man might come apart, not something that should happen to a commanding officer. That made it partly his problem. Besides, O'Malley told himself, he's a pretty good man.

He looked better when they met again. Amazing what a shower could do. His hair was brushed back and his service khakis pressed. The two officers went aft to the helicopter pad, then down the brow to the dock.

HMS Battleaxe gave the appearance of a larger ship than the American frigate. In fact she was about twelve feet shorter, but seven hundred tons heavier, various differences in her design reflecting the philosophies of her builders. She was undeniably prettier than her American counterpart, her unexciting hull lines more than balanced by a superstructure that looked as though it had been sculpted to sit atop a ship instead of a parking lot.

Morris was glad to see that things were informal. A youthful midshipman met them at the foot of the brow and escorted them aboard, explaining that the captain was on the radio at the moment. After the customary salutes of flag and duty officer, the midshipman led them into the ship's air-conditioned citadel, then forward to the wardroom.

"Hot damn, a piano!" O'Malley exclaimed. A battered upright was secured to the port bulkhead with two-inch line. Several officers rose and introduced themselves.

"Drinks, gentlemen?" a steward asked. O'Malley got himself a can of beer and moved toward the piano. A minute later he was battering his way through some Scott Joplin. The wardroom's forward door opened.

"Jerr-O!" a man with four stripes on his shoulder boards exclaimed.

"Doug!" O'Malley jumped up from the stool and ran to shake his hand. "How the hell are you!"

"I knew it was your voice on the radio. 'Hammer" indeed. The American Navy's run out of competent pilots and scraped you up, eh?" Both men laughed out loud. O'Malley waved his captain over.

"Captain Ed Morris, meet Captain Doug Perrin, MBE, RN, and a shitload of other acronyms. Watch this turkey, skipper, he used to drive submarines before he went straight."

"I see you guys know each other."

"Some bloody fool decided to send him to lecture at HMS Dryad, our ASW school, when I was taking the advanced course. Set back our relations by at least a hundred years."

"Is the Fox and Fence put back together yet?" O'Malley asked. "Skipper, there was this pub about half a mile from the place, and one night Doug and me-"

"I am trying to forget that night, Jerr-O. Susan gave me hell about it for weeks." He led them aft and got himself a drink. "Marvelous job with that Victor last night! Captain Morris, I understand you did very well with your previous command."

"Killed a Charlie and picked up two assists."

"We stumbled across an Echo on our last convoy. Old boat, but she had a good driver. Took us six hours. But a pair of diesel submarines, probably Tangos, got inside and killed five ships and an escort. Diomede may have gotten one of them. We're not sure."

"Was the Echo coming after you?" Morris asked.

"Possibly", Perrin answered. "it does appear that Ivan's going after the escorts quite deliberately. We had two missiles shot at us by the last Backfire raid. One ran into our chaff cloud, and fortunately our Sea Wolf intercepted the other. Unfortunately, the one that exploded behind us amputated our towed array and we're down to just our 2016 sonar."

"So you've been assigned to ride shotgun on us then?"

"It would seem so."

The captains lapsed into shoptalk, which was the whole point of the dinner in any case. O'Malley found the English helicopter pilot while the tables were set, and they started the same thing while the American played the piano. Somewhere in the Royal Navy was a directive: when dealing with American naval officers, get them over early, get a drink in them first, then talk business.

Dinner was excellent, though the Americans, judgment was somewhat affected by the liquid refreshments. O'Malley listened closely as his captain described the loss of Pharris, the tactics employed by the Russians, and how he had failed to counter them properly. It was like listening to a man relate the death of his child.

"Under the circumstances, hard to see what you could have done differently," Doug Perrin sympathized. "Victor is a capable opponent, and he must have timed your coming off the sprint very carefully."

Morris shook his head. "No, we came off sprint well away from him, and that blew his solution right out the window. If I'd done things better, those men wouldn't be dead. I was the captain. It was my fault."

Perrin said, "I've been there in the submarine, you know. He has the advantage because he's already been tracking you." He flashed O'Malley a look.

Dinner ended at eight. The escort commanders would meet the following afternoon, and the convoy would sail at sundown. O'Malley and Morris left together, but the pilot stopped at the brow.

"Forgot my hat. I'll be back in a minute." He hurried back to the wardroom. Captain Perrin was still there.

"Doug, I need an opinion."

"He shouldn't go back out in his current state. Sorry, Jerry, but that's how I see things."

"You're right. There's one thing I can try." O'Malley made a small purchase and rejoined Morris two minutes later.

"Captain, any particular reason you have to head right back to the ship?" he asked quietly. "Something I need to talk about and I don't want to do it aboard. It's a personal thing. Okay?" The pilot looked very embarrassed.

"How about we take a little walk?" Morris agreed. The two officers walked east. O'Malley looked up and down the street, and found a waterfront bar with sailors going in and out. He steered Morris into it and they found a booth in the back.

"Two glasses", O'Malley told the barmaid. He unzipped the leg pocket of his flight suit and withdrew a bottle of Black Bush Irish whiskey.

"You want to drink here, you buy it here." O'Malley handed her two twenty-dollar bills.

"Two glasses and ice." His voice did not brook argument. "And leave us alone." Service was quick.

"I checked my logbook this afternoon," O'Malley said after tossing off half his first drink. "Four thousand three hundred sixty hours of stick time. Counting last night, three hundred eleven hours of combat time."

"Vietnam. You said you were there." Morris sipped at his own.

"Last day, last tour. Search-and-rescue mission for an A-7 pilot shot down twenty miles south of Haiphong." He had never even told his wife this story. "Saw a flash, made the mistake of ignoring it. Thought it was a reflection off a window or a stream or something. Kept going. Turned out it was probably a reflection of a gunsight, maybe a pair of binoculars. One minute later some hundred-millimeter flak goes off around us. Helo just comes apart. I get her down, we're on fire. Look left-copilot's torn apart, his brains are in my lap. My crew chief, a third-class named Ricky, he's in the back. I look. Both his legs are torn off. I think he was still alive then, but there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it-couldn't even get to him the way things were-and there's three people heading towards us. I just ran away. Maybe they didn't see me. Maybe they didn't care-hell, I don't know. Another helo found me twelve hours later." He poured himself another drink and topped off the one for Morris. "Don't make me drink alone."

"I've had enough."

"No, you haven't. And neither have I. It took me a year to get over that. You don't have a year. All you got's tonight. You gotta talk about it, Captain. I know. Think it's bad now? It gets worse."

He took another pull on the drink. At least it was good stuff, O'Malley told himself He watched Morris sit there for five minutes, sipping at his drink and wondering if he should just go back to the ship. The proud captain. Like all captains, condemned to live alone, and this one was lonelier than most. He's afraid I'm right, O'Malley thought. He's afraid it will get worse. You poor bastard. If you only knew.

"Run through it" the pilot said quietly. "Analyze it one step at a time."

"You already did that for me."

"I have a big mouth. Has to be for my feet to fit in it. You do it in your sleep, Ed. Might as well do it when you're awake."

And, slowly, he did. O'Malley coached him through the sequence. Weather conditions, ship's course and speed. What sensors were operating. In an hour they were three quarters of the way down the bottle. Finally they got to the torpedoes. Morris's voice started to crack.

"There just wasn't anything else I could do! The Goddamned thing just came in. We only had one nixie out, and the first fish blew that the hell away. I tried to maneuver the ship, but-"

"But you were up against a homing torpedo. You can't outrun 'em and you can't outturn 'em."

"I'm not supposed to let-"

"Oh, horseshit!" The pilot refilled the glasses. "You think you're the first guy ever lost a 'can? Didn't you ever play ball, Ed? Hell, there's two sides, and both of 'em play to win. You expect those Russian sub skippers are just gonna sit there and say, 'Kill me, kill me'? You must be dumber 'n I thought."

"My men-"

"Some of them are dead, most of them aren't. I'm sorry some're dead. I'm sorry Ricky died. Kid wasn't even nineteen yet. But I didn't kill him, and you didn't kill your men. You saved your ship. You brought her back with most of the crew."

Morris drained his glass with one long pull. Jerry refilled it, not bothering with ice.

"It's my responsibility. Look, when I got back to Norfolk, I visited-I mean, I had to visit their families. I'm the captain. I gotta-there was this little girl, and… Jesus, O'Malley, what the hell do you say?" Morris demanded. He was sobbing, near tears, Jerry saw. Good.

"They don't put that in the book," O'Malley agreed. You think they would have learned by now.

"Pretty little girl. What do you tell the kids?" The tears started. It had taken nearly two hours.

"You tell the little girl that her daddy was a good man and he did his best, and you did your best, cause that's all we can do, Ed. You did everything right, but sometimes it just doesn't matter." It wasn't the first time O'Malley had had men cry on his shoulder. He remembered doing it himself What a miserable life this can be, he thought, that it can bring good men to this.

Morris recovered a few minutes later, and by the time they finished the bottle both men were as drunk as either ever got. O'Malley helped his captain up and walked him to the door.

"What's the matter, Navy, can't take it?" He was a merchant seaman standing alone at the bar. It was the wrong thing to say.

It was hard to tell from the baggy flight suit that O'Malley was a man of considerable strength. His left arm was wrapped around Morris. His right hand grabbed the other man by the throat and dragged him away from the bar.

"You got anything else to say about my friend, Dickweed?" O'Malley tightened his grip.

The reply came in a whisper. "All I meant was he has trouble with his liquor."

The pilot released him. "Good night."

Maneuvering the captain back to the ship was difficult, partly because O'Malley was also drunk but mainly because Morris was on the point of passing out. That had been part of the plan, too, but the Hammer had cut his timing a little close. The brow looked awfully steep from the pier.

"What seems to be the problem?"

"Good evening, Master Chief."

"Good evening, Commander. You got the captain with you?"

"Sure could use a hand, too."

"You're not kidding." The chief came down the gangway. Together they got the captain aboard. The really hard part was the ladder up to his stateroom. For this another sailor was summoned.

"Damn," the youngster observed. "The old man really knows how to tie one on!"

"Takes a real sailorman to know how to get blasted," the master chief agreed. The three of them got him up the ladder. O'Malley took it from there and landed Morris on his bunk. The captain was sleeping soundly, and the flyer hoped the nightmare wouldn't come back. His still did.

"Well, Commander?"

"Yes, sir. I think it'll work. I see most of the assets are nearly in place."

"The original plan had a lesser chance of success. I'm sure it would have got their attention, of course, but this way we just might be able to damage the force severely."

Toland looked up at the map. "The timing is still tricky, but not very different from that attack we made on the tankers. I like it, sir. Sure would solve a few problems. What's the convoy situation?"

"There are eighty ships assembled in New York harbor. They sail in twenty-four hours. Heavy escort, carriers in support, even a new Aegis cruiser with the merchants. And the next step after that, of course-" Beattie went on.

"Yes, sir. And Doolittle is the key."

"Exactly. I want you back at Stornoway. I'll also be sending one of my air operations types to work with your chaps. We'll keep you informed of all developments. Remember that distribution for this is to be strictly limited to the personnel involved."

"Understood, sir."

"Off with you, then."