Sherry Sontag;Christopher Drew (4 page)

Cochino also was outfitted with a new passive sonar system: she could listen, and therefore "see," underwater without making much sound herself. World War II submarines used mainly "active" sonar, which sent out audible pings and relied on the echoing sound waves to create a picture of the surrounding waters by detecting targets and measuring distances. The result was a lot like shining a flashlight. Submarines could see what was out there, but they lit themselves up in the process. Passive sonar systems scan the entire spectrum of sound, never sending out telltale tones, and this silent sight promised to provide the crucial edge in any undersea dogfight.

The U.S. Navy was also preparing for the ultimate in undersea oneupmanship. An obscure engineer, Hyman G. Rickover, was developing a plan for nuclear-powered submarines that would be able to stay underwater indefinitely without ever having to snorkel, raising the stakes in the undersea war once again. But for now, nuclear propulsion was little more than a concept, and Cochino and subs like her were the best the Navy had. In a new program, aptly named "Operation Kayo," the Navy was readying Cochino and other World War II fleet boats to deliver a knockout punch should war come.

There was one hitch in the submarine force's plans: the nation's spies saw more immediate threats and wanted to use subs to counter them. There was still no evidence that the Soviet Navy was building snorkel subs, and the CIA and the Office of Naval Intelligence thought the submariners had plenty of time to prepare for undersea dogfights that were still far in the future. More worrisome, in the opinion of senior intelligence officers, were other bits of inherited German technology: the unpiloted V-1 "buzz bomb," a mini-airplane on autopilot with a bomb on hoard, and the V-2, the first rocket to pass the speed of sound. These German designs, also seized by the Allies, were the forerunners to the cruise missile and the ballistic missile, bombs with their own rocket engines to propel them. The United States was already fashioning experimental "Loon" missiles that could be fired from specially configured boats, the first crude missile subs. The Soviets also were showing signs that they were developing their own infant missiles. Reports were already coming in from defectors that the Soviets were conducting test launches from land and from old submarines stationed in the Murmansk area.

In addition, the Air Force was sending planes armed with filters designed to capture radioactive particles near Soviet territory to gauge whether the Soviets were testing atomic weapons. That was the ultimate fear, that the buzz bombs would be given nuclear warheads, that they would lead to atomic missiles.

Much of this was still conjecture. What little information the intelligence agencies had about the Soviet Navy was coming from Britain's Royal Navy, which had worked closely with the Soviets during World War II. Communications between Soviet ships and their bases were also being intercepted by U.S.-operated eavesdropping stations in Europe and Alaska. All of this spying on a former ally was so sensitive that messengers carried reports on the intercepted Soviet communications to top admirals in locked briefcases. Any efforts to get closer, to learn more, needed to be kept a deep secret.

It was that need for stealth that, more than anything, convinced intelligence officials that submarines could be the next logical step in the creation of an eavesdropping network that would circle the Soviet Union. The effort was already tinder way. In 1948 the Navy had sent two fleet boats, the USS Sea Dog (SS-401) and the USS Black fin (SS322), into the Bering Sea to see whether they could intercept Soviet radio communications and count how quickly propeller blades turned on Soviet destroyers and merchant ships-a first step toward learning to identify them through passive sonar. But intelligence officials suspected that the new snorkel subs, like Cochino, could do even more. They could stay hidden off the Soviet coast and watch and monitor. Perhaps they could even find out firsthand how far along the Soviets were in developing the dangerous missile technology. With her snorkel, Cochino could sneak in as close as she dared. Only her periscope, antennas, and snorkel would ever have to broach into the open air. She was, in short, the perfect spy vehicle.

In fact, Cochino had been destined from the start for a different fight. She had been the last submarine commissioned during the war, sent to sea two weeks after the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb. Now she and the USS Tusk (SS-426) had been remade with those snorkels and other advances, and turned into what the Navy called "GUPPYs," an acronym that stood for Greater Underwater Propulsion Power. The acronym fit far better than anyone would have liked-as hunter-killers, these subs were rank beginners, learning to swim all over again. In fact, when scientists checked the boats a few months before this trip, they had discovered that their crews and construction personnel knew so little about the passive sonar systems that crucial hydrophones had not even been hooked up. So the boats had been sent to Londonderry to practice with the British, who had gotten much further in mastering the new sonar.

It was in Londonderry that Austin caught up with Cochino. Also on board was a civilian sonar expert, Robert W. Philo, who was working as a consultant. The hunter-killer exercises were considered so important that the leader of Operation Kayo, Commodore Roy S. Benson, had come along and would end up on Tusk, commanded by Robert K. Worthington.

Like Benitez, Worthington had taken command just days before they were all to leave for this trip, and like Benitez, Worthington and Benson were skeptical of their new trek into espionage. Benson believed that, at best, it was a side mission, one that wasn't nearly as important as training in the art of true underwater warfare. Red Austin thought he knew better. But then again, this spy stuff seemed to he his calling.

"I got to have something spooky to do," Austin liked to say. "It's just the way I am."

But if all of this was second nature to Austin, it wasn't to others. His special equipment was to be installed in a shipyard in Portsmouth, England, where even the yard workers were somewhat befuddled by the new gear.

"Shit, this is just a piece of spaghetti," an inpatient Austin fumed, holding onto a piece of coaxial cable that the workers just couldn't seem to install correctly. "Plain old coax, half-inch. And it looks to me like you ought to be able to get plans to do this thing. Why can't you just go by the plans?"

Austin was itching to get started. A tiny cubicle was being set up for him and his spy gear on the same deck as the control room, close to the radio room. He was ready to run the coaxial cable into what he called his "black box." Actually colored good old Navy gray, the box was one of a kind, built to capture the radio signals that the Soviets would have to use to send telemetry instructions to any missiles they were trying to test. Standing but two and a half feet tall, the box was designed to record signals on slivers of wire tape, and it was probably the most sensitive and secret device on Cochino.

The line from that box would run up through the hull and connect to new "ears" placed on the side of the sub's sail, the large steel piece that created the shark fin on the submarine's otherwise smooth hull. These special antennas really did look like ears. They were little wire C's sprouting about a foot from the sail, one on each side. With these extra wires added to Cochino's array of the usual antennas, the sub had the look of a B-movie alien creature.

Everything was finally installed by mid-August, and Cochino set out from Portsmouth accompanied by Tusk and two standard fleet boats, the USS Toro (SS-422) and the USS Corsair (SS-4,35). They were operating under strict radio silence, on what the Navy called a "simulated war patrol." No one onshore was supposed to know where they were. When they left England, they were to disappear.

Within hours of their departure, the seals around Austin's cables gave way, giving Austin an unwelcome shower inside his cubicle. He managed, with a bit of tightening and some fiddling, to get his system working again. But if the seals failed again, he would have to clamp off his cables, and his part of the mission would he over.

By now, the crew knew that this mission was going to be different, just as most knew that their newest crew member was not what he seemed. Red Austin might have worn a radioman's sparks on his uniform but he really worked for the Naval Security Group, the fabled cryptological service that had intercepted and decoded crucial Japa nese Navy communications during World War II. That much was secret, but even the crew realized that no common radioman would ever consult this closely with the captain.

Still, submariners are submariners, and the most popular on board are always going to be the guys with the best sea stories. That was especially true on Cochino, where about one-third of the crew had been through the war. Austin brought war stories from his cruiser days, and he played a mean game of acey-deucey, a sailors' take on backgammon that had been carried to sea for more than a century. Besides, it was hard not to become fast friends when everyone was "hot-bunking"-grabbing sleep when other guys woke up, moving on to make space for the next shift, time-share submarine style. The crew was divided into three groups operating according to three different time zones. One group lived by Eastern Standard Time, another by Honolulu time, and another by Indian Ocean time. There were three sets of sonar operators, of weapons techs, of cooks, of radio operators, of men for whatever job needed to be done.

Only the CO, his executive officer (XO), Lieutenant Commander Richard M. Wright, Austin, and his assistant lived across those time zones. Austin didn't mind his triple-duty load, not when he got a chance to eat some of the three breakfasts, three lunches, and three dinners served on board everyday. The man loved food, even Spam, and he saw no reason to quarrel with powdered eggs.

It was after one of Austin's first or second lunches or dinners that Benitez grabbed the spook for duty in the conning tower, a cramped space a ladder's distance above the sub's control room, the place from which the commander or other officer in charge directed the sub.

"Man the number 2 periscope, Austin," the captain directed. It was a post where he could keep Austin busy and involved. It was also, Austin was certain, a post from which Benitez knew he could keep a wary eye on him.

Soon, the two fleet boats that had accompanied Cochino and Tusk broke off and headed toward the edge of the Arctic ice pack northeast of Greenland for exercises in those frigid waters. Cochino and Tusk continued on, heading much closer to the Soviet Union.

They spent their first few hours chugging up through the Norwegian Sea north of the Arctic Circle. Both subs had faucetlike spigots in their torpedo rooms to take in water for temperature and salinity tests, and both were charting the sea bottom. By Saturday, August 20, 1949, the boats were in the Barents. Now they too split up, Tusk to go off and conduct sonar tests, and Cochino to head toward a spot about 12 miles off the northern tip of Norway to begin Austin's mission. From here on out, Benitez would order the course changes requested by Austin, zigging the sub this way and zagging that way as the spook tried to hone in on Soviet signals.

Austin tried not to let on, but he was worried. If he was to capture any signals, those special ear-shaped antennas would have to be raised above the waves. That meant that the sub would have to "plane up"-travel shallower than even snorkel depth-and expose part of her sail. This time of year, this far north, the sky was bright even at night, and the crew would have to be careful to avoid detection by the surface ships and fishing trawlers that dotted these waters. The long day also increased the danger of being spotted if Cochino had to surface.

"Too much daylight," Austin fretted. "This bodes evil. No place to hide." Benitez was logging similar concerns. "The night as such has disappeared," he wrote. "The best we can hope for is about two hours of semidarkness. There can be no surface running here during wartime."

Austin swept for electronic signals as Cochino passed by the northeastern edge of Norway. Now the sub was about 125-150 miles away from Murmansk, too far away to see land, but close enough, he hoped, to intercept Soviet missile telemetry. This was about as close as Benitez wanted to go.

On a map, Murmansk sits on what looks like the base of the thumb of a land mass shaped like an inverted glove, its fingers defined by Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The thumb is the Soviet Kola Peninsula, home to the operating bases of Vayenga (later called Severomorsk) and Polyarnyy. These were among the Soviets' most important northern ports because they could be used year-roundkept warm enough to be free of ice by a branch of the Gulf Stream. Polyarnyy was a submarine base, as well as home to the subterranean headquarters for the commander-in-chief of the Northern Fleet. Secreted beneath brick-and-stone administrative buildings were the Soviet code rooms and communications centers.

Austin was looking for telemetry signals coming from these bases or from ships nearby. Because missile telernetries were usually broadcast in the highest ranges, intelligence officials had set Austin's black box to capture the higher frequency bands of a launch in progress. If something were happening, he should he able to hear it. Or so he hoped. This spy mission was as much a guessing game as anything else. There was no way to know whether the Soviets had planned any launches at all. All Austin could do was spin the dials in his cubicle and listen for any activity. He also had taken to wandering into the radio room and tuning into Russian voice communications. Austin didn't speak Russian, and neither did the radiomen. But Austin could pick out the Cyrillic alphabet in Morse code, one of those tricks he had learned to fill the tedium during his days on surface ships. Now, as he sat clacking out Russian on Cochino's manual typewriter, he imagined he could actually understand what he was typing. In his mind, one Soviet ship was making a daily report, telling its command how much rice was on board, that the fruit had all been eaten. Another was reporting the day's sick list.