Red Phoenix (76 page)

ABOARD
ALEKSANDR OGARKOV

“Comrade Captain, we have a passive sonar contact. Faint screw beats bearing three five one.”

Captain Kulakov was also staring at a sonar display. The new contact’s
postion did not correlate with the location of any of the Soviet attack subs fanning out from Petropavlovsk. It had to be an intruder, an American.

And with sonar conditions this poor, the American submarine had to be close. Too close. The American might already have one of the Red Navy’s precious ballistic missile subs in his sights. “Fire control party, prepare to fire a spread on my order.”

Kulakov didn’t plan to wait for a full fire control solution, intending instead to launch several torpedoes centered on the American sub’s location as soon as his tracking party had a rough idea of its heading.

He smiled grimly. The American subs were excellent. And that was why only the newest and best submarines, like his Akula-class boat, were assigned to this work.
Ogarkov
and its counterparts had sortied with the surface ships, then taken up positions to screen the ballistic missile submarines as they left port.

For once, Kulakov’s orders from Fleet Command made sense. He was to protect the deploying subs from sneak attacks, like the kind the Americans had made on
Dribinov.
His orders made it clear that there would be no more surprises. This intruder would be stopped.

“Sir, screw beats now bear three five three.”

“Very well.” Kulakov tensed. They had their bearing rate. “Stand by to fire.”

ABOARD USS
DRUM

The talker had a new report. “Skipper, passive sonar contact bearing one seven two. Screw beats.”

Manriquez called softly to Ed Baum. “Stop everything you’re doing and start a plot on this contact.”

“Sonar evaluates contact as possible submarine at creep speed, high bearing rate.”

That last bit of information galvanized the control room crew. A rapidly changing bearing at slow speed meant the new contact was very close.

Manriquez took a shallow breath and released it. “Boomer, come right. Put the contact on our beam. As soon as we can determine his course, we’ll head for his baffles and try to slip away—”

“Sonar reports transients! Torpedoes inbound!

Shit. “Launch a decoy! Right hard rudder, all ahead flank! Take her deep!” Manriquez paused for one microsecond, then said, “Fire one and two with a four-degree spread, and make them active homers.”

He felt the boat start to heel over as she built up speed and started to turn. He regretted having to fire, but his mission was to survive and report.
Shooting at the other side was a good way to start a war, but he suspected that one was already under way.

ABOARD
ALEKSANDR OGARKOV

“Captain, the American has returned fire! Two torpedoes inbound.”

Kulakov felt his heart flutter and then pump faster. “Emergency speed! Turn on the active sonar and track the American. Release a decoy!”

ABOARD USS
DRUM

“Captain, the Russian’s gone active. Two of the torpedoes have a high bearing rate, the other two are still closing.”

Manriquez swore under his breath and started snapping out maneuvering orders. This was going to be a damned tight squeeze. They’d dodged two of the incoming torps, but the others were going to be tougher.

OFF THE SOVIET NORTH PACIFIC COAST

The two combatants maneuvered, dodging and turning at high speed as each tried to evade the weapons heading toward them. The Mark 48 torpedoes were faster than their Soviet counterparts, so that even though they were fired later, they reached the Soviet sub first.

Fired without correction for the target’s course and speed,
Drum’s
shots depended on the small active homer built into the nose of each torpedo to find and attack the target.

One Mark 48 had been fired to either side of the
Ogarkov’s
estimated position, so that whichever direction it turned, at least one would be in a position to see the Soviet sub.

In the end, both saw him and attacked. Detection range in the noisy water conditions off Petropavlovsk was so short that both torpedoes’ powerful sonars illuminated the Akula-class sub at point-blank range.

One struck amidships, the other aft—in the engine compartment.
Ogarkov’s
double-hull construction could not survive two hits. In addition to the salt water pouring through the two tears in the hull, the double shock wrecked equipment throughout the ship and threw men across compartments into steel bulkheads. With so much flooding there was no hope of saving the boat. Powerless, without any control at all,
Ogarkov
tumbled downward on its long journey toward the ocean floor.

ABOARD USS
DRUM

Drum’s
sonar operator heard the explosion, but he was too busy tracking the weapons headed toward them to report it. “Captain, those two torps have locked onto us!”

Manriquez glanced quickly at the scope over his shoulder; the strobes were getting wider and stronger. Jesus.

Ten seconds passed. Wait for it. Fifteen seconds. Now. “Launch two more decoys.”

Shot out of the sub’s signal ejector, the decoys hovered in the water and emitted sonar signals designed to confuse the guidance systems of the Soviet torpedoes. One was seduced by the decoys, turned toward them, and exploded. The other was too close and it hit the American submarine forward, just under the sail.

Manriquez, Adams, Baum, and everyone else in the control room were thrown to the deck and plunged into darkness, while one deck below, water shot in through a two-foot tear in
Drum’s
hull.

“Blow everything!” Manriquez shouted, trying desperately to counter the tons of weight being added to the hull as compartments flooded. It wasn’t enough.

Too heavy to maintain even neutral buoyancy, air bubbling from its vents and from the gash in its hull, the American sub followed its Soviet opponent down to the bottom.

KING’S BAY, GEORGIA

Rear Admiral John Fogarty focused his night-vision glasses and watched as the long, dark shapes glided silently past his station and out to sea. Two
Ohio
-class ballistic missile submarines were under way—each nearly twice the length of a football field and larger than a World War II-era heavy cruiser. White foam churned by their massive propellers glistened momentarily in the moonlight and then vanished as if it had never been.

He tracked the SSBNs until they could no longer be seen and then heaved a small sigh of relief. The most dangerous moments for any ballistic missile sub were always in port. Anchored beside a supporting sub tender, the
Ohios
were nothing more than sitting ducks. But once they were at sea, the huge boats were so quiet that the Soviets could never seriously hope to find them. A significant percentage of America’s nuclear deterrent was now effectively invulnerable.

Fogarty turned to the lieutenant waiting with him. “Dave, get a signal off to COMSUBLANT immediately. Tell him the boomers are away.” Then he walked back to his office, past an empty anchorage.

WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The display map glowed with color-coded lights and symbols marking the position and alert status of every major Soviet military unit around the world. The symbols along the Soviet Pacific coast glowed bright red.

The President looked grim, an expression matched by every other man and woman around the table. “Are we sure that
Drum
was attacked, Admiral?”

“Very sure, sir. Our long-range acoustic sensors were tracking a large number of ships leaving Petropavlovsk, along with every other port on the Pacific coast. During the deployment, they detected two explosions, which they plotted inside Drum’s patrol area.”

Admiral Simpson frowned. “Since then she’s missed two communications periods and does not acknowledge her call. She was certainly attacked by the Russians, and barring a miracle, was sunk.”

“Does that tell us anything about Soviet intentions?”

Simpson shook his head. “No, sir.” He moved to the display map. “They’ve put every interceptor and SAM battery in the Far East on full alert. All surface ships and submarines in port are sortieing…”

“Toward our forces?”

“No, Mr. President. At least not yet. They’re deploying into what might be defensive positions.” White lines appeared on the map as he spoke.

“That’s good news at any rate.”

Simpson looked troubled. “I wish I could agree, sir. But the fact is, all of these are the very same actions the Soviets would take if they were contemplating additional attacks. Their exact plans are still unclear.”

“Damn.” The President closed his eyes and started rubbing his temples, trying to massage away the tension headache building there. No one spoke until he opened his eyes again. “What about your end of things, Fran?”

The head of the National Security Agency shrugged her shoulders. “Again, nothing conclusive, Mr. President. We’re picking up a lot of traffic from Vladivostok to Moscow and back again. All high-priority FLASH-type stuff, naturally. There’s also been a marked increase in signals to the other major military commands—Soviet Forces, East Germany, the Northern Fleet, the Black Sea Fleet, and so on.”

“But no change in their alert status?”

“Not yet, sir.” The NSA boss toyed with her pen. “At least not as far as we can tell. We’re scheduling some additional satellite passes throughout the rest of today and tomorrow to try and pick up more data.”

“Christ!” The President’s irritation was clear and easy to understand. It was also somewhat unfair. Tens of billions of dollars had been invested in America’s electronic intelligence-gathering capabilities, but no photo-recon
or SIGINT satellite could pry into the minds of enemy leaders or divine their hidden intentions.

“Have you talked to the General Secretary yet, Mr. President?”

The President’s angry snort could be heard across the room. “Hell, no. I tried calling the man direct when this whole thing first blew up. The General Secretary is, quote, unavailable for the time being, end quote.”

Simpson frowned. “So either they’re as confused over there as we are, or they’re all busy scurrying for the fallout shelters.”

“Yeah.” The President shoved his chair back and stood up, feeling a sudden desire to pace. He stalked to the front of the room and stood facing the display map. Europe caught his eye. “Maybe we should start shipping troops and equipment to NATO now—while we’ve still got time. At least we’d be ready if the Russians decide to escalate this thing further.”

“I’m afraid that activating Reforger is impossible at the moment, Mr. President.” General Carpenter, the Air Force Chief of Staff, looked embarrassed. Reforger was a plan for moving American troops and equipment to Europe. Rapidly reinforcing NATO was one means of deterring the Soviets from an attack there. “We don’t have the sea- or airlift available.”

Blake Fowler nodded to himself. The Military Airlift Command and Military Sealift Command were already stretched to the limit just supporting McLaren’s troops in South Korea. Three weeks of almost nonstop operations were taking a dangerous toll on the flight crews and their planes. Three C-141s and a C-5 had already been lost because of inadequate maintenance or crew fatigue—the Starlifters somewhere over the Pacific and the Galaxy in a fiery crash in California. There were enough planes to keep the war in Korea going or to reinforce Germany. But not to do both.

The President just stared at the map without speaking. Then he turned. “If the Soviets do escalate, can NATO hold without the Reforger forces?”

“Probably not, sir.” Simpson shook his head slowly. “Not with just conventional weapons.”

The men and women crowding the Situation Room fell silent. Without enough conventional forces, NATO would have to use tactical nuclear weapons to stop a Soviet armored onslaught across the West German border. And nobody in the room really believed it was possible to step halfway across the nuclear threshold. Five-kiloton bombs dropped on armored columns would inevitably be answered by five-hundred kiloton ICBM warheads landing on cities.

Fowler saw the President’s shoulders sag. None of the options were particularly palatable. Either push McLaren’s planned offensive forward and
risk leaving Europe defenseless, or rush reinforcements to NATO while accepting a bloody stalemate in South Korea.

At last the President spoke. “Well, I’ll be damned if I’m going to pull the rug out from under our boys in South Korea. We’ll have to gamble that the Soviets aren’t ready to expand this thing.” He turned to Simpson. “In the meantime, Admiral, I’d like to give them something to think about. Now, we’ve already deployed our missile submarines. What’re my other choices?”

The admiral had come prepared for that question, but his answers weren’t very reassuring. Nobody felt comfortable playing with nuclear fire.

UN FORCES HEADQUARTERS, SOUTH OF TAEJON

The stars were out, crystalline against the infinitely black night sky.

McLaren stood quietly, waiting and watching. The burning tip of his cigar glowed brighter momentarily and then faded as he breathed out.

“General?”

He turned. Hansen had come outside, backlit by the lamps inside the command tent.

“We’ve just gotten the final signals, General. All units are in position and ready for your orders.”

“Any word from Washington?”

“Yes, sir.” Hansen held his notepad up to the light. “It’s from the President. Just this: ‘Proceed as planned. Our prayers go with you. Good luck and Godspeed.” The captain grinned.

McLaren nodded and took the cigar out of his mouth. “Right.” He checked his watch. “Okay, Doug. Signal all commands to execute Thunderbolt at oh five hundred hours.”

Hansen saluted and reentered the tent.

McLaren drew on his cigar again and stayed where he was. Unseen in the darkness, he crossed his fingers.

THE KREMLIN, R.S.F.S.R.