Authors: Joe Poyer
He turned to survey the bridge quickly, noting each station manned with all of the ship's electronic and visual eyes and ears tuned outward to register the slightest alteration in the storm or the condition of the sea. Radar units quested ceaselessly to pinpoint the most insignificant object revealed by an instant's break in wave or cloud that might turn out to be the conning tower of a submarine or rocket-loaded fighter bomber. For all intents and. purposes, the Barents Sea, edging the northern coasts of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as well as Norway and Finland, was enemy water. The panel above the ECM—electronic countermeasures—console was lit a bright red, indicating that the highly secret sonar, radar, and infrared jamming devices were in full operation. Any contact with a Soviet vessel—or that of any nationality—would be a matter of pure, blind luck in these seas, but Larkin was not one to trust luck any more than he trusted the sea.
"Helmsman, course and speed," he called out. Folsom glanced at him for a moment, then went back to staring out the ports.
"026° at sixteen knots sir."
Larkin considered a moment. "Sixteen knots against these head-winds, not bad. Let's cut her back to ten. I don't want to carry any more pressure on that bow patch-up than we absolutely have to have."
Folsom nodded agreement and called out the changed speed, then ordered communications to make the proper correction in the rendezvous location and time and get it off. As he finished talking, the screen door swung open with a bang and a furshrouded figure stumbled in, followed by the banshee shriek of the wind. A howled chorus of "shut the door" rose from the bridge crew as they swung around as one man from their consoles to glare at the snow-covered apparition. The hatch was jerked from the man's grip by the wind and thudded back against the stops, then just as perversely swung the other way and slammed shut, abruptly ending the noise. Lieutenant Commander Joel Bridges leaned wearily against the hatch and stripped the Arctic mask from his face with a great deal of care. The mask and his nylon all-weather gear were coated with an inch of solid ice. Bridges worked the zipper on the parka loose and pulled it down. The parka then fell away of its own volition and the ice coating dumped onto the deck plates in thick chunks.
Bridges stood swaying among the ruins of his parka, his face flushed in the sudden ninety-degree temperature change. His expression, as circulation began returning to his legs and anus, was almost comical.
"It's colder than a bitch kitty out there!"
"Now, now, that's no way to talk in the presence of your ranking officers, is it, Lieutenant?" Folsom asked innocently.
Bridges delivered a muffled comment, glaring from the corner of his eyes as he stumbled around in a wobbly circle looking for the coffee. Larkin chuckled and poured coffee for him. "I take it that it is cold. Anyone else out there?"
"No, sir, I sent them in about twenty minutes ago."
"Good, there is no need to stand watch outside tonight. You can't see anything anyway."
"Amen. Your eyeballs freeze." Bridges took the coffee and stumbled over to the second officer's console and pulled himself up into the high seat and began massaging his legs. Twenty minutes passed slowly, twenty minutes in which the ship fought the angry seas while Larkin calmly continued to study the weather reports and maps displayed by his console. Only the intenseness of his concentration betrayed his worry. Larkin turned sharply at the buzz of the intercom. Folsom picked up the handset.
"Communications is ready. Shall I have them pipe it up here, sir?" Larkin nodded. He lit a cigarette and made himself comfortable at his console, then picked up the handset and pressed the button that cut in the secrecy circuits and slipped the ear-plug wire around his ear. Immediately he heard the operator two decks below begin his "ident" call on the ultratight FM scrambled frequency.
"Got him, sir."
"Beatle to Target One : . . I read your signal . . . five by five .. . stand by . . . for transmission."
The characteristically drowsy voice of the reconnaissance pilot came through on the FM
channel clearly in spite of the storm and havoc raging in the intervening twenty thousand feet between ship and aircraft. Larkin pressed a third tab and glanced around quickly to make sure the banks of tapes were all running, and then took a long drag at his cigarette.
"Clear, go ahead."
High-frequency chatter sounded briefly over the handset. The tape reels spun madly and the bridge echoed to the tortured squeal of the telemetry. The guard stood looking straight ahead impassively. Folsom sat on his stool at the executive officer's console and tried to appear disinterested in the little drama being played out at the next console. He did not succeed any more than did the eight other officers and enlisted men on the bridge. Only Larkin knew who was aloft or why. Only the captain of the rendezvous vessel was entrusted with the knowledge of the trite but very true phrase—supersecret mission—so secret that the entire project did not possess a code name. The identification label was changed with every mission flown. Tonight the mysterious pilot and aircraft were known as Target. Two weeks ago in the Indian Ocean the name had been Phoebus. Larkin became aware of a faint hissing noise filling the background as the pilot began to speak. For Cod's sake, he thought, not again. The last rendezvous had taken three hours while the communications section had struggled to maintain contact. For three hours Larkin had steamed a zigzag pattern around a fixed point while the aircraft had flown long, looping orbits around a rotating imaginary point and the ionosphere had wreaked havoc with the radio transmission. For three hours Larkin had sweated blood, knowing that even the vastness of the southern Indian Ocean was not big enough to hide both an aircraft and a large battle cruiser from hostile submarines or roving ASW patrols. Now he was praying that they would not experience similar trouble only 170 miles off the coast of the Soviet Union.
But after a few moments the hissing began to fade and the pilot's voice came through again, slow and measured but clear:
`Transmission complete . . . fuel load . . . low . . . proceeding to refueling . . . point . . . at minus . . . thirty-five minutes .. . everything in clear . . . working like a charm ... no . . . trouble from . . . Reds . . . ECM gear . . . working ... perfectly." Larkin hunched forward and spoke directly into the handset. "It looks as though you won'
t be completing this sweep . . . or returning to base for a while," he said.
"We have new orders for you in supplembntary transmission coming up. I have been instructed to tell you by voice that you are to review them after''—he stressed the word—
"refueling. We will remain on station here, waiting for you to report in. The mission should he completed by i800 hours tomorrow. You will rendezvous with us tomorrow night, same location."
Larkin paused and unconsciously lowered his voice. "I have also been instructed to add that this mission is of the highest importance to East-West relations and must be completed at all costs, short - of detection."
"I . . . understand .. ."
Larkin did too, only too well in fact. What he would pass along, locked into the tapes, was an almost impossible task. "Stand by for transmission." Larkin keyed the tape decks to transmit to the circling aircraft.
Teleman sat thinking while the encoder clicked out the receipt of the transmission from the ship. He too understood only too .well what Larkin's verbal instructions meant. And he was rather puzzled. This certainly did not sound like a routine patrol, the last of this watch before returning to base. Never before had he flown a mission pattern that in any way brought him in range of enemy rockets or aircraft. Heretofore all missions over hostile territory—which was anywhere in the world, including the United States—had been flown at altitudes above eighty thousand feet. He glanced out the slit beside his head and banked the aircraft a few degrees to see the storm below. Darkness was only an hour away, but the setting sun shed enough light on the cloud cover to highlight the intensity of the storm, even from twenty thousand feet. The storm, seen from above, resembled a devilish badlands: long, twisting canyons and arroyos of saw-edged cloud. The depths of the canyons were filled with hell's own blackness, contrasting sharply with the evil red of the peaks and ridges. The late afternoon sunlight filtered suddenly as he passed beneath a thick blanket of high-flying ice crystals. The sun dipped below the rim of the storm and immediately its light turned a somber gray, deathly solid in its low intensity. In spite of himself, Teleman shivered involuntarily.
"Looks . . . awfully rough . . . down there . . . you be able to hold . . . through that stuff?"
"I don't anticipate any real trouble," Larkin replied. "So far it's nothing we can't handle." Inwardly though, Larkin was worried. Although the RFK was new and built to more exacting specifications than any other ship
m history, she had been damaged' a week previously. Steaming slowly out of Newport, Rhode Island, Naval Base she had collided with a destroyer in a freak accident. In the heavy fog the destroyer had come off second best, but her sharply raked bow had gashed a hole in the RFK's port bow, slashing through several structural. members. An emergency patch had been rigged at the almost deserted Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Naval Yards by a skeleton crew and the bow section shored up with temporary braces. This mission was too important to delay and there had been no other ship with the required equipment anywhere-within steaming range.
Now, the weather satellite information and photographs that had come in just prior to contact had shown the entire Arctic region as far east as Novaya Zemlya and west to Iceland in for the worst Arctic gale in years—worse in all appearances than the Great Storm of 1942. And now, the RFK, less than 170 miles from the Soviet coast and forty miles off Norway's North Cape, was also directly in the storm's track.
"We'll be here," he said: with considerably more confidence than he felt at the moment. The seas were increasing and the stabilizers were just about useless in the heavy waters. He noted that Folsom, bent over the console, had just ordered the RPM's on the engines stepped up to furnish stabilizing air around the hull.
"We are going to start quartering a fifty-mile circuit in fifteen minutes." Out of the corner of his eye he saw the white flicker of another wave break mast-high and come crashing down against the forward ports. "So we'll be here."
"Good . . ." The transmission garbled and quickly cleared. "Say again," Larkin requested.
"Good . . . take it . . . easy . . . down there . . . see you tomorrow."
"Right, clear." Larkin stubbed his cigarette out and got up from the console. He waved to the marine and ordered Folsom to stand down from security. He thought for a moment, leaning against the console, feeling again the crushing weight of responsibility come down over him just as it had the night the destroyer sheared through the bow, or that afternoon off the North Vietnamese coast. He took a deep breath and shook his head reluctantly, then beckoned Folsom to join him at the plotting table, and quickly explained that they would stay on station for another twenty-four hours. For the next ten minutes they discussed the advantages and disadvantages of various courses that would allow them to take the brunt of the storm in the easiest manner possible. Finally, they settled on a straight run to the northeast that would bring them abreast of the North Cape, some one hundred miles north by 1100
hours. Both were convinced that it would be better to ride
directly into the teeth of the gale now, before it unleashed its better than one-hundred-mile-an-hour winds, as it was expected to do late tomorrow. They Would then be able to run before the storm, arriving back on station at 1700 hours. This allowed a onehour lead time for any unexpected delays or heavier seas than Folsom picked up the maps and spread them out on the chart amble. He drew a fine line in red between their present position and the expected turn-around point north of the Cape.
He pointed with the pencil at the exposed position. "Actually it might be better to come farther west to bring us under the lee of the Cape." He waited expectantly for Larkin's answer.
Larkin shoved his cap back and rubbed his forehead. "Ordinarily, yes. But in this weather, I just don't trust these waters. They shoal too damned easily and the average depth runs less than ten fathoms. If we pick up any more ice, and it looks like we're going to, we'd be in big trouble. No, I think I'd prefer to make the turn in the open sea and take my chances with the wind and waves."
"You're the boss." Folsom nodded and bent over the table again, to -begin the intricate task of plotting a course that would take them into the teeth of eighty-to ninety-knot headwinds that had a tendency to quarter unexpectedly. Even with the latest in inertial gyroscopes aboard, he still had a tricky problem in navigation on 'his hands—to take them a total of 223 nautical miles in twenty-four hours and bring them back to a starting point less than half a mile wide, all with terrible winds and towering waves that would combine to push the battle cruiser in a myriad of directions during the voyage. Larkin nodded to himself and turned away, satisfied that the ship was in capable hands with Folsom at the helm. He went below for breakfast.
Teleman fell off to the north and west at a leisurely pace for the refueling point. Beneath him, the storm-filled Arctic Ocean gave way to the frozen wastes of the Great Ice Barrier, now at its farthest point of advance south in late March, well past the Norwegian outpost of Bear Island. Only the Great North Atlantic Drift, still retaining some of the slightly warmer waters of the Gulf Stream, kept the vast plateau of ice from moving farther south toward the European mainland. Crumpled and tom, the jagged edges of ice near the rim, twisted and warped by the pressure of billions of tons of slowly, insidiously moving ice from its vast interior, threw up blinding sheets of minute ice crystals that filled the frozen air to a height of twenty feet with fiery, needle-sharp spicules that screamed through the pressure ridges and hummocks, which carved them into tortured shapes. A frozen hell from insanity's worst imaginings.