Sherry Sontag;Christopher Drew (7 page)

That was it. That was all the rest of the crew needed. If Wright could make it in his condition, they could too. One by one, they skittered across, the wounded first. They timed it, waiting as one boat was picked up by the waves, then the other, waiting for that short moment when the boats were level. Nobody cued them. They didn't need masterminding from the bridge now. Each man picked his own moment to rush across.

No more than two or three men would get over before the plank would drop and again need to he pulled in place. Miraculously, no one had fallen. When about one-third of the crew had made it to the Tusk, the waves pulled the subs apart so far that several of the lines between them parted. Tusk made her way back, but it was clear the remaining lines would not last long. It seemed that the rest of the men made their way across the narrow plank in a matter of seconds-all except Benitez, who still stood on Cochino's deck.

Benson called across to Benitez. "Are you abandoning ship?"

"Hell no," Benitez yelled back, "I'm not abandoning ship." He wanted Tusk to stand by and take him in tow. He believed he could still save his boat. It was about 1:45 A.M. on Friday. Cochino was listing to starboard. The rear torpedo-room hatch was underwater. And the sub began to take an up angle, leaning back toward the sea.

As the angle became more pronounced, Benitez watched tensely, waiting to see whether the sub would stabilize again. A few more degrees and she would be lost.

"Now!" men shouted to him from Tusk's deck. "Now!" they called out again. They saw it before he did, saw that he had no choice.

Benitez stood there, as Cochino's stern slipped down, as the sea encroached further and further onto the deck. "Well, this is it," he said to himself. Then he called over to Benson, called out the worst words any captain had to speak: "Abandoning ship."

He made it across the plank bare seconds before the wood shattered.

Worthington was already calling out the orders that would take Tusk clear of the sinking sub as Benitez began urging his men below. Then he went to the bridge to watch Cochino's final dive.

His sub was listing about 15 degrees to starboard. Water was now past her sail. She stood, almost straight up in the air, as if taking one last look at the sky before leaning back and slipping gently below the waves.

Cochino sank in 950 feet of water about 100 nautical miles off the coast of Norway. It was fifteen hours since the fire began. Benitez watched until she was gone. He didn't say a word, not then, not for nearly an hour after. It was only when he began to speak that Benson and Worthington told him that Philo and six Tusk crewmen were dead, their bodies lost.

Six hours later, Tusk pulled into Hammerfest. Some of the men were taken to the hospital. The others were given a choice. They could fly home to New London, Connecticut, or they could ride back, the rescued and the rescuers, both crews crowded aboard Tusk. Every man who could travel went home on Tusk.

Cochino's loss made headlines in the United States-and in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Navy newspaper Red Fleet published an article accusing the United States of undertaking "suspicious training" near Soviet waters and of sending Cochino near Murmansk to spy.

For its part, the U.S. Navy had gone public with the disaster, acknowledging, in effect, that its men and its fragile boats were not yet any match for the treacherous northern seas. Austin's spy gambit had failed, but the Navy had no intention of disclosing that, or even that a spook had been on board at all. When asked to comment on Soviet claims that Cochino had been near Murmansk, officers gave the same answer that the Navy would offer to other such questions for decades to come: "No comment."

Despite the tragedy, and the initial reluctance of some commanders and admirals, there was no question that the Navy would continue to send subs to monitor the development of the Soviet atomic threat. Just nine days after Cochino was lost, an Air Force reconnaissance plane picked up evidence that the Soviets had detonated a nuclear device. The other side had the bomb. The anticipated threat that had inspired the submarine spy mission in the first place was now real.

   The USS Gudgeon (SS-567) pulled into Yokosuka, Japan, on Sunday, July 21, 1957. This was the final stop, the place where submarine crews coming from Pearl Harbor and San Diego could make preparations to sneak close to Soviet shores. This is where they would return after their missions, to celebrate, to relax, to prepare to go out again. Yokosuka had become spy sub central in the Pacific.

This base at the tip of Tokyo Bay was marked by a mix of espionage and debauchery, tension and release. It had been a Japanese Navy port and was later taken over by the Allies. Here, an enlisted man could get drunker than hell and here officers had created a "submarine sanctuary" in a walk-up flat decked out with a bar, a few bunks, and images of bare women writhing on black velvet.

It had been nearly eight years since the Cochino tragedy, and submarines had become central to the cold war intelligence effort. They had proven their worth once and for all during the Korean War, when snorkeling diesel subs were sent into the Sea of ,Japan to stand watch against any Soviet efforts to intervene. Ever since, even the submarine force's most die-hard warriors had recognized the value of hanging right off the enemy's coast, watching his comings and goings. Unless war broke out, surveillance would be the submariners' primary mission, their reason for being, the best way to gather detail about the Soviet naval buildup that was now unfolding in full force.

Spy subs already had brought back news that Soviet shipyards were churning out new long-range subs, including more than 250 Whiskeyand Zulu-class boats equipped with snorkels. The Soviet high command had made clear that it was preparing to challenge the U.S. Navy on the high seas using the submarine as the principal weapon. The Sovi ets were still learning how to operate their subs; for example, one of the first 30-day test runs on a Whiskey left her crew so ravaged by noxious gases that their hands and legs were swollen to twice their normal size. Despite these problems, the Soviets continued to move ahead. Indeed, the United States had received reports, albeit unconfirmed, that the Soviet Navy was modifying some of its Zulus to carry missiles, possibly with atomic warheads.

That was enough to convince even the most traditional admirals that there was more to this idea of submarine spying than feeding a bunch of egghead analysts stashed away within the bowels of Naval Intelligence and the still-mysterious CIA. Realizing they could use submarines to steal intelligence that was vitally important to the submarine force itself, the admirals leading the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets had taken control of this business of submarine spying, running the show, making the assignments. At their orders, subs were lurking underwater, periscopes peeking above the waves, watching through all but the iciest months of the year as the Soviets put their newest boats through their paces. This was also a great way for submariners to maintain readiness for battle, not just in war games with friendly forces but by driving up into Soviet waters and facing the adversary.

The top priority of any spy sub captain was what the Navy called "indications and warning." Captains were supposed to forget about caution, forget about radio silence, and flash a message home from the Barents or the Sea of Japan if they picked up any sign that the Soviet Navy was mobilizing, perhaps preparing to attack. U.S. spy subs also were now using much more sophisticated versions of Austin's "ears" to scan for Soviet missile tests. And submarines, antennas at the ready, were routinely picking up the chatter that told the U.S. Navy how many Soviet ships and subs were ready for sea and what their tactics might be in wartime.

Increasingly, fleet admirals consulted with Naval Intelligence, becoming partners in espionage. Intelligence officers invited other Navy men to train alongside them, noting in one invitation that they were engaging in the world's "second-oldest profession," one with "even fewer morals than the first."

Most top government officials were given little if any indication of the risks the sub force was taking, or of what a strange game of machismo was being played. While President Dwight D. Eisenhower had only hesitantly approved U-2 spy flights high over Russia, fearful of aggravating Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, many submarine captains believed it was their job-and forget the niceties of international law-to drive straight into Soviet territorial waters. Fleet commanders graded the captains on how long they kept their "eyes and ears" up out of the water. The more daring the attempt, the higher the grade. This had become a contest of sorts, a test of bravado for the captains, their crews, and their craft. And for most of the captains, these days of unfettered risk would forever mark the high point of their careers. To he sure there was stress and lots of it. Some veteran commanders lost twenty pounds running these long western Pacific deployments-"Westpacs," in the trade. Nobody could tell ahead of time who would be able to take the pressure and who wouldn't.

Gudgeon shoved off from Yokosuka for her turn at the Soviets with Norman G. "Buzz" Bessac at the helm. Already he had led Gudgeon, undetected, on a reconnaissance mission beneath a group of Soviet ships operating in icy northern waters. Now, he was leading his sub straight into enemy territory, his first command in these dangerous waters. But the thirty-four-year-old lieutenant commander was here in the first place, was on submarines at all, because he craved adventure. In the year and a half since he had taken over Gudgeon, he had convinced his crew that he was one of those "go to hell and back" captains, a man who wanted his sub to make her mark among the lumbering propeller planes, the U-2 jets, and the landlocked listening stations that were keeping an eye on the Soviets from all angles.

In that, he had a lot in common with the spooks on board his boat. They had their pick of assignments, these men who were the Navy's chief snoops and eavesdroppers. They could have ridden Navy spy planes and been home every night in time for dinner, sleeping with their wives instead of dozing cheek to toe with a half-dozen men and a torpedo or two. But for the spooks, just about everything about submarines seemed to signal importance and drama. They sneaked aboard with uniforms, like those of Cochino's Austin, altered to hear radiomen's sparks instead of their own insignias, the telltale lightning rods and quills. Their written orders said only that they were to report to the "USS Classified."

It was the spooks' job to monitor the enemy, to bring home the intelligence, to give warning if a sub was detected by Soviet ships and coastal installations that were starting to scan the oceans with radar and sonar. Soviet patrol boats had already given chase after several U.S. subs. These were, after all, the years leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a time when the Soviet propaganda machine found fodder even in the fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel," churning out a version in which the children of hardworking collective farmers were enslaved by a fat capitalist in a plutocratic residence in the evil West. And Soviet "pen pals" were writing Americans with offers to exchange pictures of "beautiful cathedrals" for scenes of North American coastlines-perhaps including ports and harbors. As the men of the Gudgeon prepared to embark, few of them doubted that they were fighters in an undeclared war. Several American spy planes had been shot down, and Gudgeon's crew could only guess what the Soviets would do if they ever cornered an American submarine.

Gudgeon was one of the Navy's newest subs, one of the first diesel boats designed from the start with a snorkel and electronic eavesdropping equipment. From its fabled old shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, Electric Boat Company had already finished the Navy's first two nuclear-powered subs, the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) and the USS Seawolf (.SSN- 575), but Hyman Rickover, now an admiral, wasn't at all sure that he wanted to send his boats directly into the path of the Soviet Navy. He easily wielded enough power to keep them home.

Rickover was already a master at power politics. Born in the Jewish pale of Makow, Poland, about 50 miles north of Warsaw, his family used congressional connections to get him into the Naval Academy. When he first began working on early experiments with nuclear power, he pushed the Navy to begin building nuclear subs by first getting himself appointed to a top staff job at the Atomic Energy Commission. He was so brash that the Navy twice denied him a promotion to rear admiral, but Rickover called upon a friend in Congress and got that as well.

Now he was employing his nuclear subs as public relations starsthe Navy budget seemed to get another boost every time another congressman got a nuclear-propelled ride. Indeed, Nautilus was preparing for the ultimate in showmanship: the Navy was trying to mark her as the first submarine to slip under the Arctic ice and reach the North Pole.

So it was the diesels that were doing all of the spying work, Gudgeon among them as she steamed north toward Vladivostok, the Soviets' largest naval base in the Pacific. She neared her station for this special operation, or "spec op," in early August, carrying three or four spooks, some already hard at work listening for any signs that their approach had been detected.

Extra eavesdropping equipment was crammed wherever it could fit. One communications tech, trained in Russian, scanned ship-to-shore transmissions for any Soviet cries of "submarine spotted." Another spook began working the electronic countermeasures, listening for radar sweeps that could pick up Gudgeon and signal her need to dive. If he could, he would record a blast of that radar so that U.S. intelligence could look for ways to lain Soviet radar sweeps in the future. A sonar specialist stood ready to help record the "sound signatures" of any passing Soviet subs and ships. Those unique fingerprints of propeller and machinery noises might later help U.S. forces identify Soviet ships and subs at sea.