“As you wish, Pasha. But be careful. By the way, the doctor tells me the cut on your hand was from a shell fragment. You are entitled to a decoration.”
“For this?” Alekseyev looked at his bandaged hand. “I’ve cut myself worse than this shaving. No medal for this, it would be an insult to our troops.”
ICELAND
They were climbing down a rocky slope when the helicopter appeared two miles west of them. It was low, about three hundred feet over the ridge line, and moving slowly toward them. The Marines immediately fell to the ground and crawled to places where they might hide in shadows. Edwards took a few steps to Vigdis and pulled her down also. She was wearing a white patterned sweater that was all too easy to spot. The lieutenant stripped off his field jacket and draped it around her, holding her head down as he wrapped the hood over her blond hair.
“Don’t move at all. They’re looking for us.” Edwards kept his own head up briefly to see where his men were. Smith waved for him to get down. Edwards did so, keeping his eyes open so that he could look sideways at the chopper. It was another Hind. He could see rocket pods hanging from stubby wings on either side of the airframe. Both the doors to the passenger compartment were open, revealing a squad of infantrymen, weapons at the ready, looking down. “Oh, shit.”
The noise from its turboshaft engines increased as the Hind came closer, and the massive five-bladed main rotor beat at the air, stirring up the volcanic dust that coated everything on the plateau they had just left. Edwards’s hand tightened on the M-16’s pistol grip, and he thumbed off the safety. The helicopter was coming almost sideways, its rocket pods pointed at the flatlands behind the Marines. Edwards could make out the machine guns in the Hind’s nose, some kind of rotary gun like the American mini-gun that spat out four thousand rounds per minute. They wouldn’t have a chance in hell against that.
“Turn, you son of a bitch,” Mike said under his breath.
“What is it doing?” Vigdis asked.
“Just relax. Don’t move at all.” Oh, God, don’t let them see us now...
“There! Look there at one o’clock,” the gunner said from the front seat of the helicopter.
“So this mission isn’t a waste after all,” the pilot replied. “Go ahead.”
The gunner centered his sights and armed the machine gun, setting his selector for a five-shot burst. His target was agreeably still as he depressed the trigger.
“Got him!”
Edwards jumped at the sound. Vigdis didn’t move at all. The lieutenant moved his rifle slightly, bringing it to bear on the chopper—which moved south, dropping below the ridgeline. He saw three heads come up. What had they shot at? The engine sounds changed as the helicopter landed, not far away.
The gunner had hit the buck with three bullets, with little damage to the edible tissue. There was just enough in the eighty-pound animal to feed the squad and the helicopter crew. The paratroop sergeant slit the deer’s throat with his combat knife, then set to remove the viscera. The local deer were nothing like the animals his father hunted in Siberia, but for the first time in three weeks he’d have some fresh meat. That was sufficient to make this boring mission worthwhile. The carcass was loaded into the Hind. Two minutes later it circled up to cruise altitude and flew back to Keflavik.
They watched it depart, the stuttering rotor sound diminishing on the breeze.
“What was that all about?” Edwards asked his sergeant.
“Beats the hell out of me, skipper. I think we better boogie on outa here. They were sure as hell looking for something, and I’ll betcha it’s us. Let’s keep to places with some kind of cover.”
“You got it, Jim. Lead off.” Edwards walked back to Vigdis.
“Is safe now?”
“They’ve gone. Why don’t you keep that jacket on. It makes you harder to spot.”
It was two sizes too large for Edwards, and looked like a tent on Vigdis’s diminutive frame. She held her arms out straight in an effort to get her hands out of the sleeves, and for the first time since he met her, Vigdis Agustdottir smiled.
USS
PHARRIS
“All ahead one-third,” the executive officer ordered.
“All ahead one-third, aye,” the quartermaster of the watch responded, moving the annunciator handle up from the Ahead Full setting. A moment later the inside pointer changed also. “Engine room answers all ahead one-third.”
“Very well.”
Pharris
slowed, coming off a twenty-five-knot sprint to commence another drift maneuver, and allowing her towed-array sonar to listen for hostile submarines. Morris was in his bridge chair, going over messages from shore. He rubbed his eyes and lit up another Pall Mall.
“Bridge,” called the urgent voice of a lookout. “Periscope feather on the port bow! Halfway to the horizon, port bow!” Morris snatched his binoculars from the holder and had them to his eyes in an instant. He didn’t see anything.
“Battle stations!” ordered the XO. The alarm gong went off a second later and weary men ran again to their posts. Morris looped his binoculars around his neck and ran down the ladder to his battle station in CIC.
The sonar loosed a dozen ranging pings to port as Morris took his position in CIC. Nothing. The helo lifted off as the frigate maneuvered north, allowing her towed-array sonar to track on the possible contact.
“Passive sonar contact, evaluate as possible submarine bearing zero-one-three,” announced the towed-array operator. “Steam noises, sounds like a possible nuke.”
“I got nothing there,” said the active-sonar operator.
Morris and his ASW officer examined the water-conditions board. There was a layer at two hundred feet. The passive sonar was below it, and could well be hearing a submarine that the active pings could not reach. The lookout might have seen anything from a spouting whale—this was the mating season for humpbacks—to a streak of foam . . . or the feathery wake left by a periscope. If it was a submarine, he had plenty of time to duck under the layer. The target was too close to be bottom-bounced and too far for the sonar to blast directly through the layer.
“Less than five miles,” ASW said. “More than two. If this is a sub, we’re up against a good one.”
“Great. Get the helo on him right now!” Morris examined the plot. The submarine could have heard his frigate as it sprinted at twenty-five knots. Now, at reduced speed, and with Prairie/Masker operating,
Pharris
would be very hard to detect . . . so the sub’s fire-control solution had probably just gone out the window. But Morris didn’t have one either, and the submarine was perilously close. An urgent contact report was radioed to the screen commander twenty miles away.
The Sea Sprite dropped a pattern of sonobuoys. Minutes passed.
“I got a weak signal on number six and a medium on number four,” the sonobuoy petty officer said. Morris watched the plot. That made the contact less than three miles off.
“Drop some pingers,” he ordered. Behind him the ship’s weapons officer ordered the arming of the ASROC and torpedo launchers. Three miles off, the helicopter turned and swept across the target area, dropping three CASS buoys this time, which sent out active, nondirectional pings.
“Contact, a strong contact on buoy nine. Classify as possible submarine.”
“I got him, bearing zero-one-five—this one’s a sub, classify as positive submarine contact,” said the towed-array man. “He just increased power. Some cavitation sounds. Single-screw submarine, maybe a Victor-class, bearing changing rapidly left-to-right.”
The active sonar still didn’t have him despite continuous maximum-power pings down the correct line of bearing. The submarine was definitely under the layer.
Morris wanted to maneuver but decided against it. A radical turn would cause his towed-array sonar to curve, rendering it useless for several minutes. Then he would have to depend on sonobuoys alone, and Morris trusted his towed sonar more than the buoys.
“Bearing to contact is now zero-one-five and steady . . . noise level is down somewhat.” The operator pointed at his screen. Morris was surprised. The contact bearing had been changing rapidly and was now steadied down?
The helicopter made yet another pass. A new sonobuoy registered the contact, but the MAD gear didn’t confirm the presence of a submarine and the contact was fading. The noise level continued to drop. Morris watched the relative position of the contact pass aft. What the hell was this character doing?
“Periscope, starboard bow!” the talker reported.
“Wrong place, sir . . . unless we’re looking at a noisemaker,” the operator said.
The ASW officer had the active sonar change bearing and the results were immediate.
“Contact bearing three-four-five, range fifteen hundred yards!” A bright pip glowed on the sonar scope.
“All ahead flank!” Morris yelled. Somehow the submarine had evaded the towed sonar, then popped up atop the layer and run up his periscope. That could only mean one thing. “Right full rudder.”
“Hydrophone effects—torpedoes inbound, bearing three-five-one!”
Instantly the weapons officer ordered the launch of an antisubmarine torpedo down the same bearing in the hope that it would disturb the attacking submarine. If the Russian’s torpedoes were wire-guided, he’d have to cut the wires free to maneuver the sub clear of the American return shot.
Morris raced up the ladder to the bridge. Somehow the submarine had broken contact and maneuvered into firing position. The frigate changed course and speed in an attempt to ruin the submarine’s fire-control solution.
“I see one!” the XO said, pointing over the bow. The Soviet torpedo left a visible white trail on the surface. Morris noted it, something he had not expected. The frigate turned rapidly.
“Bridge, I show two torpedoes, bearing constant three-five-zero and decreasing range,” the tactical action officer said rapidly. “Both are pinging at us. The Nixie is operating.”
Morris lifted a phone. “Report the situation to the escort commander.”
“Done, skipper. Two more helos are heading this way.”
Pharris
was now doing twenty knots and accelerating, turning her stem to the torpedoes. Her helicopter was now aft of the beam, frantically making runs with its magnetic anomaly detector, trying to locate the Soviet sub.
The torpedo’s wake crossed past the frigate’s bow as Morris’s ship kept her helm over. There was an explosion aft. White water leaped a hundred feet into the air as the first Russian “fish” collided with the nixie torpedo decoy. But they had only one nixie deployed. There was another torpedo out there.
“Left full rudder!” Morris told the quartermaster. “Combat, what about the contact?” The frigate was now doing twenty-five knots.
“Not sure, sir. The sonobuoys have our torp but nothing else.”
“We’re gonna take a hit,” the XO said. He pointed to a white trail on the water, less than two hundred yards away. It must have missed the frigate on its first try, then turned for another. Homing torpedoes kept looking until they ran out of fuel.
There was nothing Morris could do. The torpedo was approaching on his port bow. If he turned right, it would only give the fish a larger target. Below him the ASROC launcher swung left toward the probable location of the submarine, but without an order to fire, all the operator could do was train it out. The white wake kept getting closer. Morris leaned over the rail, staring at it with mute rage as it extended like a finger toward his bow. It couldn’t possibly miss now.
“That’s not real smart, Cap’n.” Bosun Clarke’s hand grabbed Morris’s shoulder and yanked him down to the deck. He was just grabbing for the executive officer when it hit.
The impact lifted Morris a foot off the steel deck. He didn’t hear the explosion, but an instant after he had bounced off the steel a second time, he was deluged with a sheet of white water that washed him against a stanchion. His first thought was that he’d been thrown overboard. He rose to see his executive officer—headless, slumped against the pilothouse door. The bridge wing was torn apart, the stout metal shielding ripped by fragments. The pilothouse windows were gone. What he saw next was worse.
The torpedo had struck the frigate just aft of the bow-mounted sonar. Already the bow had collapsed, the keel sundered by the explosion. The foc’s’l was awash, and the horrible groaning of metal told him that the bow was being ripped off his ship. Morris staggered into the bridge and yanked the annunciator handle to All Stop, failing to notice that the engineers had already stopped engines. The ship’s momentum pushed her forward. As Morris watched, the bow twisted to starboard, ten degrees off true, and the forward gunmount became awash, its crew trying to head aft. Below the mount were other men. Morris knew that they were dead, hoped that they had died instantly, and were not drowning, trapped in a sinking steel cage. His men. How many had their battle stations forward of the ASROC launcher?
Then the bow tore away. A hundred feet of the ship left the remainder to the accompaniment of screeching metal. It turned as he watched, colliding with the afterpart of the ship as it rotated in the water like a small berg. There was movement at an exposed watertight door. He saw a man try to get free, and succeed, the figure jumping into the water and swimming away from the wallowing bow.
The bridge crew was alive, all cut by flying glass but at their posts. Chief Clarke took a quick look at the pilothouse, then ran below to assist with damage control. The damage-control parties were already racing forward with fire hoses and welding gear, and at damage-control central the men examined the trouble board to see how severe the flooding was. Morris lifted a sound-powered phone and twisted the dial to this compartment.
“Damage-control report!”
“Flooding aft to frame thirty-six, but I think she’ll float—for a little while anyway. No fires. Waiting for reports now.”