The First Team

20

Deep down in the quiet dark waters of the northernmost Bering Sea the U.S.S. Ramon Magsaysay moved forward at reduced speed. For several hours an invisible but persistent tension had been slowly building throughout the whole ship; there was not a man on board who had not felt it in the air. At sixty-five degrees north latitude the speed had been cut for the sake of greater quiet. All of the ship’s acute sensing devices were operating, but there was no sweep of radar, no pinging of sonar. All detection was passive. To the best of her ability she was hiding, for immediately before her was the narrow passage of the Bering Strait.

Inside the submarine only the navigator’s chart and the readouts from the inertial platform and other positioning devices gave any visible clues to her position. On the con, the nerve center from which the ship was controlled and operated, the captain stood waiting, listening to every report given and reading the faces of the instruments that supplied continuous vital data. All contact with the outside world was indirect and appeared largely in the form of numbers. Human senses as such had little to go on; there was nothing to see apart from the largely unchanging interior of the submarine, no way physically to sense the climatic cold of northern Alaska or to draw even one lungful of the Arctic air. The Seward Peninsula lay off to the right, but it was a textbook fact only — detached and remote. Yet the knowledge that it was there gave rise to the awareness of danger, and Walter Wagner, who was on the con by special permission of the captain, could feel it like a living thing.

He knew, as did every other man on board, that the enemy would be waiting for them with everything that he had been able to muster and position in the time available. And Magsaysay was strictly on her own; if anything happened to her there would be no escaping into the frigid water, where human survival time would be a matter of brief minutes. And if the ship sustained damage and could not maneuver, there would be no rescue party to recover the men trapped inside her hull.

The captain interrupted his thoughts. “We may have a break here, Walt. It’s been abnormally cold even for this region this fall, and there is at least some ice in the strait. If it’s thick enough, it may impede surface traffic.”

“That would complicate things for aircraft too, I imagine,” Wagner said.

“True. Against us is the fact that they know our speed and when to expect us. Any attack subs that they’ve been able to get into position will be faster and more maneuverable then we are — they don’t have missile bays to contend with.”

“Will they be nukes?”

The captain shook his head. “Impossible to say: it depends on their deployment just before we broke loose — what they had available that they could get here ahead of us. Perhaps nothing.”

Wagner did not allow himself to fix on that hope for a moment; it was wishful thinking and little else. The enemy was noted for his tenacity of purpose, he would be up there somewhere if all he had was rowboats.

“And we can’t use SUBROC when there’s an ice cover,” Wagner noted.

“Right. I’m keeping them in the tubes because in open water they give us a major advantage.”

A crewman arrived with fresh coffee. With the brew there was a plate of freshly baked sweet rolls; the captain bit into one mechanically while he kept his attention focused on the readouts that surrounded him. In his own compartment the navigator was silently at work, continuously updating the position of the ship from the inertial platform data.

Wagner did not have to ask when contact with a possible enemy force would be made; the tight, controlled atmosphere within the submarine answered that question before it could be born. The men went about their work quietly, waiting for the sensing devices to give warning as the ship moved steadily and silently forward. Each minute that passed brought the crucial strait a quarter of a mile closer, and also the Arctic Circle, beyond which the Magsay-say would be once more in open water and free of its narrow constrictions.

He reached for a sweet roll; his hand was still in the air when over the one M.C. intercom a single word broke the quiet. “Contact.”

The exec was closest and he responded. “What is it?”

“Submarine, sir,” sonar responded. “She’s echo-ranging.”

“Range and bearing?”

“Not yet, sir, too far away.”

The captain took the one M.C. “This is the captain speaking. We have a submarine contact at maximum range. All hands man battle stations.” He turned to the exec. “Rig for silent running. Depth three hundred; get in as close to shore as you can.”

“Ay, sir.”

With that single terse response the whole atmosphere changed; Wagner saw and felt it. The watchful waiting was over; the hopes of getting through unchallenged had gone. The ship was in a combat situation now and swiftly preparing for action. From the elevated platform of the con he saw men hurrying to their appointed stations — Magsaysay was preparing for action.

He looked at the captain, and saw that he remained very much as he had been — quiet, in unquestioned command, and unshaken. His ship and his crew were his immediate prime concern, but the whole immediate future welfare of his country was on his shoulders also. If Magsaysay did not get through, then Operation Low Blow with all of its intensive planning, effort, and dedication was over.

“Can I help?” he asked.

“Chief Summers is in charge of damage control; if he needs help you could make a hand there.”

“Gladly. Shall I go now?”

“You might as well wait here for the present.”

Reports began to come in quickly: the torpedoes were readied; the ship was headed toward the shallower water where she might more easily escape detection. The exec called sonar on the M.C. “Anything more?” he asked.

“She’s still some distance away, sir, and echo-ranging at random intervals. I haven’t got her pinpointed yet.”

The captain nodded but said nothing; at fifteen knots his ship moved forward, a powerful steel phantom in the water, but not one designed primarily for underwater combat. In all probability her opponent was.

The almost intense quiet inside the submarine continued. As minute passed minute she inched steadily closer to the strait itself — and that was progress she had to make if she was eventually to reach the Beaufort Sea and the relative freedom of the vast, ice-coated Arctic waters.

It was fiercely real, every moment of it, yet it was surrounded with the aura of an illusion. For all that was actually visible the ship could have been maneuvering somewhere off the coast of Australia.

In the sonar room the operator listened with his eyes closed, intent on capturing any sound that would convey a scrap of additional information about the unseen submarine somewhere out in the waters just south of the strait. His trained ears discounted the ocean noises that came through, the evidence of the restless sea that surrounded the ship and through which she was moving. He heard another ping, faint but definite; he concentrated on the sound he had just heard and decided that it had been a minute fraction louder. The enemy was drawing closer.

The Magsaysay was moving nearer to the Seward Peninsula and the Cape of the Prince of Wales that marked its extremity; that meant that the hostile had to be somewhere in the semicircle between one hundred and eighty and three hundred and sixty degrees. A bearing slightly to the right of true north was also a possibility; that would put it directly in the strait itself where maneuvering room would be at a minimum. There, if she was an attack type, which was almost certain, and a nuke to boot, it would be a tough go.

Another ping came through the operator’s headset, and immediately after that a second one, loud and clear. The sonarman responded almost instantly; he drew a quick breath and reported. “He has contact.” The silent stealth of the Magsaysay had been penetrated; her position was known.

The captain had been expecting that, moment by moment, and he was prepared. ‘^All stop,” he ordered.

Two or three seconds later the screw went dead in the water. The submarine coasted forward gently, then, as her control surfaces began to lose effect, she began to drift downward. The depth gauge began a slow climb, an emotionless mechanical indication that the ship was settling toward the bottom. Within the hull there was an intense quiet, an awareness that the battle had been joined and that the odds for the moment were in favor of the enemy.

Sonar reported again over the M.C. “Torpedo in the water.”

The captain did not speak or move; he waited silently for the next report.

It came within a few inert, suspenseful seconds. “Two units in the water, bearing three ten degrees, bearing drift slightly right.”

The meager information gave the attack party its first opportunity for action; the data were quickly set up in the fire control system. That done, the urgency of waiting returned.

Sonar came on again. “First unit drawing rapidly to the right.” In the forward end of the ship Chief Summers listened and knew that that would be a miss. Out of two shots one almost certainly would have to be a miss; it was the other one which counted now.

“Second unit zero bearing rate, coming straight in.”

That was what Summers had feared; the incoming shot was aimed right down Mag say say’s throat. The captain feared it, too, because he could do nothing in the few seconds that remained. He had one hope and all that he could do to help it was to pray. Underneath him his ship continued to sink slowly toward the bottom.

Then the silence inside the hull was broken from the outside; from bare audibility an insistent whine grew rapidly, ballooning in intensity with terrifying urgency. Summers and his shipmates had all faced death before; they faced it now a second away.

The deadly noise swept the length of the ship as it skimmed overhead, faded, and was gone.

“Active sonar,” the captain directed; after a few seconds he gave another order. “All back full.”

The unexpected command was obeyed immediately without question; within seconds the power being applied could be felt throughout the length of the hull. As the propeller cavitated the sonar pings went out; the inertia of the ship was great and the backward acceleration was very slow.

“Contact,” sonar reported. “Range four eight hundred yards, bearing three zero eight.”

“All stop,” the captain ordered.

Wagner could not follow his logic; he had expected some kind of evasive action and the reverse maneuver had him baffled. But he trusted the captain implicitly; if he had ordered full astern, there was a reason behind it.

“Range four eight hundred yards, bearing three one zero.” As rapidly as the information was supplied it was fed into the fire control system.

“All ahead full.”

“All ahead full,” the phone talker repeated. At that moment Walter Wagner understood one thing: that the captain was stirring up the water behind the ship, doing so deliberately. He deducted correctly that this was to confuse the enemy sonar briefly and to make it harder to read the ship’s position accurately.

“Resume course.”

“Ay, sir.”

No mean schemer himself, Wagner understood that one almost immediately: the enemy would expect evasive action since in all probability he was already reloaded and ready to fire again. At that game Magsaysay would be at a serious disadvantage, but by resuming her course she might be doing the one thing he would not expect. In addition there was the advantage that the ship was under way in the direction she most wanted to go.

“Range four six hundred yards, bearing three one three.”

“Shoot one.”

“Ay, sir. Shoot one.”

“Shoot two.”

“Shoot two.”

“All stop.”

“All stop, sir.”

Once more the submarine fell silent except for the torpedo room forward, where fresh rounds were being loaded into the tubes. The men doing that knew that a countershot was a near certainty, but they had no time to dwell on it. While two fresh torpedoes were being moved into position the ship began to settle once more; she had limited forward speed to dissipate this time and the control surfaces lost their effectiveness very quickly. On the con the exec watched the face of a clock, keeping track of the parade of the seconds.

Sonar reported once more. “Torpedoes departing, range three five hundred yards.”

“Passive sonar,” the captain said.

“Passive sonar, sir.”

Silently the ship drifted deeper into the water; the depth gauge needle moved very slowly, sterile of any emotion, performing its mechanical function as it had been designed to do.

“Hit!”

The captain remained motionless, waiting for the added word he was expecting. It came almost at once. “Incoming torpedoes, two units.” It made no difference then if the reported hit was valid or not; the enemy submarine had put two shots into the water and regardless of what had happened to the launching vehicle, they were independently on their way.

“One unit bearing left.”

That was good news, but the shots were sure to be spread — automatically, one would have to miss.

A knot of steel-clad seconds was measured off by the clock.

“Number two unit bearing slightly right.”

The tension did not ease. In those tight moments Walter Wagner wondered if the enemy commander had directed his shots that way anticipating evasive action and if Magsaysay’s captain had outwitted him by maintaining a straight course very briefly instead.

“First unit passed.” That was the expected news. Silence became rigid in the submarine as the second sound-seeking torpedo, which could be equipped with a proximity fuse and possibly a magnetic anomaly detection system, grew louder in the sonar.

The sound of the torpedo propeller could be heard as it passed by, slightly above and only a little to the right.

“All ahead full.”

“All ahead full.”

Once more Magsaysay began very slowly to gain headway in the water, her control surfaces gradually taking hold and aligning her on course. On the con the captain began to walk back and forth. Being careful to keep out of the way, Wagner studied him and was relieved to discover that he was human after all. For there was a fine mist of perspiration on the captain’s forehead, not from fear, but from the weight of responsibility that was his and that he had to bear.

The exec went to the M.C. “Sonar, do you have anything?”

“Negative, sir. Do you wish me to go active?”

The exec looked at the captain, who shook his head.

“How good was the hit?” the exec asked.

“Definite, sir, I’ll swear to it.”

“Carry on.”

“Ay, sir.”

It was silent again after that. For the first time since he had been on board the submarine, Walter Wagner felt closed in. Claustrophobia did not disturb him, but he wanted almost desperately to see what was going on; he felt like a blind man who must depend on his ears alone to tell him what is happening. There was a multitude of possibilities: the submarine that had attacked them might be playing possum; the hit could have been fatal or, as far as he knew, minor. There might be many other potential attackers in position, and Magsaysay was not an attack-type submarine — she carried only a very limited torpedo load. In fact she had a mixed load which included some SUBROC missiles, highly useful in certain situations, but cutting down her available torpedoes still more. And there was the element of battle luck with which he was all too familiar: in any kind of conflict situation luck could have a lot to do with it — such as setting a well-aimed torpedo slightly too shallow. The breaks of the game worked according to the law of averages. The breaks had all been good so far; a bad one was due any time.

Gradually Magsaysay began to pick up speed, overcoming her inertia and the strong tendency of the propeller to cavitate in the water. When a full half hour had passed and there was no sign of any further activity Wagner assumed that they were somewhere in the Bering Strait, but the frustrating inability to see anything but the inside of the submarine denied him the sharp sense of reality. Minute by minute, as the ship moved onward, he gave thanks that another half mile had been covered; had he been running things from the enemy’s side he would have had some surprises prepared; the waters could have been mined by aircraft.

“Why don’t you go and get some chow?” the captain asked him.

That was as polite a dismissal as he had ever heard. “Good idea,” he answered and climbed down from the con onto the main deck. In the wardroom he discovered that he had been hungry without knowing it. By common consent no one had referred to food when the ship had been running without any provisions; now that there was plenty once more he still seemed to feel the discomfort of those days before the Dolly had been found ready and waiting.

After he had finished his meal he wandered to the small stateroom which had been assigned to him and the commander of the Hunters Point shipyard. He found his colleague there trying to pass the time with a book on submarine operations and tactics. He put it down gladly when Wagner appeared and welcomed the opportunity to talk.

They were still so engaged when Magsaysay first pushed her nose into the beginning waters of the Chukchi Sea. Fifty-eight minutes later, intently at work at his station, the navigator reached with his dividers once more and plotted her position one half nautical mile north of the Arctic Circle. Now there were only vast waters ahead and the shrouding cover of the great ice cap.

Feodor Zalinsky was thoroughly worried because it was already midmorning and his interpreter had not yet reported for work. He had been informed, of course, that the man Hewlitt had been seen being kidnapped on the street, but that was not what caused him concern. He was particularly afraid that Rostovitch had him.

If that were the case, then that meant that the position and authority he presently held were being challenged. Previously, not even Colonel Rostovitch would have dared to interfere with members of his personal staff without at least advising him first. But if Rostovitch did not have Hewlitt, then who did? Zalinsky could not answer that question and it haunted him.

He picked up a phone. “Get me Colonel Rostovitch,” he said.

As soon as the connection was made he was on the firmer ground of his own language. The conversation was brief; the colonel, who was in his usual biting mood, denied any knowledge whatsoever of Hewlitt’s whereabouts. This in itself was bad news, since the chances were better than ninety per cent that he was lying. Zalinsky hung up and then considered carefully what he ought to do next. Rostovitch technically reported to him as the head of the occupying authority, but in real fact the ferociously ambitious colonel headed his own organization and reported back directly to the premier himself.

Zalinsky was most concerned over his own position and its protection. The question before him was a simple one: had Rostovitch picked up his interpreter and if so why? Hewlitt himself was a minor pawn in this kind of a power play and what happened to him was incidental. At the same time he had recognized a certain ability in the man and even Rostovitch might find him troublesome for a short while.

He was still pondering the matter when the silence of the Oval Office was broken by a brief tap on the door. Before he could respond it was swung open and he was startled to see Hewlitt himself standing there. The surprise of his arrival was compounded by his appearance: he was unshaven and his hair appeared to have been given little or no attention. His clothes looked as if he had slept in them and his tie was crumpled and limp.

“I am glad to see you,” Zalinsky said in his own language. “Are you all right?”

Hewlitt came into the room, almost an incongruous figure in the vaulted dignity of the White House office. “Yes, I’m all right,” he answered. “Please excuse my appearance; I came here in a hurry because it was urgent.”

“Evidently.”

Hewlitt stood before him, disheveled but nonetheless fully in control of himself. “Mr. Zalinsky,” he said, “you’d better stop whatever you’re doing and listen to me; I have something very important to tell you.”

Senator Solomon Fitzhugh stepped through the doorway into the VIP suite and displayed his membership card to the young lady at the desk. “Good morning, senator,” she greeted him. “Nice to have you with us again. Your flight will be departing on time for a wonder.”

“I believe you have my ticket,” Fitzhugh said.

“Yes, right here, sir.” She produced it. “You should have a nice flight; the weather’s good all the way and it’s quite pleasant in Chicago this morning.”

“Thank you.”

“You aren’t leaving us are you, sir?”

He did not like the question, but he answered it courteously. “For a little while. Congress isn’t meeting at the moment and I’m allowing myself a short vacation. I have a small place in Upper Michigan where I can get some rest.”

The girl handed him his ticket. “Have a good time, senator, if that’s the thing to say right now. Anyhow, good luck.”

“Thank you,” he acknowledged.

A little more than an hour later he was airborne and headed westward from Washington. He sat alone, paying no attention whatever to the attractive woman two rows behind him, who was apparently totally concerned with her own affairs.

At Chicago he was transferred to the Butler ramp where he boarded a twin-engined private aircraft which bore no markings other than its registration number. His departure was quite private, so there was no notice taken by the general public when the lady who had been on the airliner boarded also. Two planes took off shortly after that, one of them headed for Upper Michigan, the other pointed toward Colorado. Both had high-altitude capability and were soon out of sight of all but the air traffic controllers, who had a great many pips to watch on their radarscopes.

“It is fantastic,” Zalinsky said. “Furthermore, it is very difficult for me to believe even a word of it.”

Hewlitt had expected that. “That is up to you,” he continued in Zalinsky’s language, “but it happened just as I have reported it to you and I haven’t added a thing. There is no need to.”

Zalinsky spread his hands. “But it is impossible; when you had everything, an immense military establishment, vast resources of nuclear weapons, millions of men under arms, you were defeated almost by default. Now you have almost nothing and now it is that you choose to put up a fight. Against impossible odds.” He shook his head.

“We’ve been over this ground before,” Hewlitt retorted. “As for the truth of what I have been telling you, you know that the submarine left San Francisco; practically everyone in the country does by now. And if you check, you will probably find that one attack-type submarine is missing from your navy.”

Zalinsky dropped into a brown study, his face heavily furrowed, his chin on his chest as he slumped back in his chair. He thought for some moments before he spoke again. “Let us say that it is all true — everything you have told me. You are then risking everything on one single submarine, a ship that can be found and sunk by the most powerful navy in the world.”

“Perhaps — but you haven’t done it yet.”

“Suppose that I believe that you were selected to be the messenger because you know me and can speak my language. I would like to believe it for your sake, but I do not. You are a member of this underground; it is not logical that they would trust you otherwise.”

“You can believe that if you want to, but I told you that we trust people more than you do; we are not as suspicious.”

“Colonel Rostovitch would not believe it, not for a moment.”

“I’m not talking to the colonel, I’m speaking to his superior — in position and I believe in intelligence also.”

Zalinsky stretched as he had a habit of doing. “It is not necessary that you flatter me if I am indeed as intelligent as you claim. What is now proposed?”

“That we continue as before while you communicate with the premier and inform him of the facts. Presumably he will want to make a decision.”

“That is all?”

“Substantially, yes. Except as I explained to you. No more people are to be shot.”

“It is blackmail.”

Hewlitt nodded. “That is part of the system. You will recall those words.”

Zalinsky seemed quite suddenly to be very tired. He did not look well, and Hewlitt recalled his previous request for a doctor.

“I will tell you someting,” Zalinsky said. “Never before in your life have you been as close to death as you are at this moment.”

“Every soldier must accept the risks of his profession.”

“But you are not a soldier. I have trusted you and you have betrayed me.”

“That is not true, Mr. Zalinsky,” Hewlitt answered. “I did not ask for this role — it was thrust upon me. You told me once that you did not expect loyalty and would not believe it if it were offered to you. I remind you of the terms: that this conversation is confidential between you and me, this is to give you reasonable time to consult your government and make such arrangements as you would like. You are the first and only one to know what you know now.”

Zalinsky thought some more. “Rostovitch will kill you.”

Hewlitt leaned forward and once again successfully ignored the gnawing tension which had gripped him from the moment he had come into the office. “Mr. Zalinsky, the people whom I talked to were not joking — they meant what they said. If anything happens to me, whether it’s Colonel Rostovitch or anyone else, that will be taken as a sign that the terms are not accepted. In that event the order will be given to the Magsaysay to fire. You know what that means! And if anything does take me out of the picture, then you will have to deal with someone else — the First Team will see to that.”

Zalinsky bestirred himself and some of the old fire came back into him; he leaned forward and quite suddenly was as cold-eyed and hard as Hewlitt had ever seen him. “And you claim that you do not know who the First Team is?”

Hewlitt shook his head, wishing that his stomach would remain still for just a moment. Then he forced his voice to remain level. ‘They didn’t tell me that, and you know yourself that they wouldn’t. I don’t know who they are, how many, or where — but I do know now that they exist.”

Zalinsky looked hard and long at him, appraisal and suspicion amalgamized into a hard alloy. “There are other things you do not know,” he said suddenly. He paused and the words sank into Hewlitt; he waited then for the sentence of death to be pronounced against him. “This submarine, we know all about it. About the high diver who has been one of your CIA agents for a long time. And the captain — he is a Jew.”

For a moment the tension relaxed; Hewlitt shook his head. “No,” he said.

Zalinsky thrust a hard cold look clean through him. “How do you know?”

“It came out in our conversation.”

Zalinsky banged a fist on top of the President’s desk. “He is a Jew, I was told so. We know.”

Hewlitt watched him intently, knowing that for that moment he held a higher card. “He couldn’t be, Mr. Zalinsky.”

A fierce light sprang into Zalinsky’s eyes. “Do you know who he is?”

“Yes.”

“What is his name?”

“Nakamura. Commander Ishiro Nakamura.”

As Zalinsky slowly sagged back into his chair Hewlitt stood up. He had had about all that he could endure and he had to make good his escape. But he held himself successfully in check so that his voice was his own when he turned at the door.

“By the way, Mr. Zalinsky,” he said, “I haven’t forgotten your request for a doctor. I’ll do the very best that I can, but there may be a problem — so many of the very good ones have been forced out of the hospitals recently. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to go home and clean up.”

Zalinsky raised an arm and waved him away.