Still, he seemed far too inclined to view only the worst-case situation. Would he have been as adamant if the Russian colonel had contacted Mike Hennessy instead of her? She doubted it. Maybe somebody should point out the possibility that this particular glass might be half-full, not half-empty. “What if Soloviev isn’t setting a trap? What if he does have vital information to give us? Look, Alex, you say yourself that there’s something big happening inside the Russian government. Have any of your sources been able to tell you what’s up?”
He shook his head reluctantly.
“Then isn’t it worth taking some risks to find out more?”
Banich shook his head again, vehemently this time. “No, it’s not. I don’t care what the payoff seems to be. I don’t make sucker bets.”
She turned to Kutner. “So that’s it? We just walk away from a man who could give us access to Kaminov’s inner circle? Can we really afford to pass up a chance like this?”
The station chief didn’t answer her right away. Instead he studied the crumpled note in front of him one more time. When he looked up, he was looking at Banich, not at her. He grimaced. “I’m afraid Miss McKenna could be right, Alex. This may be one sucker bet we have to make.”
CHAPTER 26
Time on Target
Four delta-winged Mirage 2000s screamed north over the rolling, windswept Lambourn Downs, flying so low they nearly merged with the shadows rippling over long, green grass. Below them, strings of racehorses out for early morning schooling panicked, broke free from their stable lads, and scattered in a frenzied gallop — spraying across the barren landscape like pellets from a shotgun.
The pilot of the lead Mirage eased back on his stick, pulling his jet up as the ground ahead rose steadily toward a line of low chalk hills stretching east and west. One hundred meters. Two hundred. Three hundred.
Abruptly the landscape dropped away below them, falling into a wide, settled valley dotted with small villages and fields — the Vale of the White Horse.
As he dove for the valley floor, a series of low, bass beeps sounded again in the lead pilot’s headphones. The sounds signaled an airborne search radar hunting for them. Either the Americans or the British had an AWACS plane orbiting over southern England. He checked the radar signal strength. High. Too high. They’d been detected.
He shook his head. The AWACS was too late. The four French warplanes were just twenty kilometers and ninety seconds from their target. He rocked the Mirage from side to side as a signal to the others and accelerated.
CNN’s viewers were being treated to live pictures of a massive military operation in progress. Huge U.S. Air Force C-5As, looking more like sections of gigantic pipeline than anything flyable, lumbered over the concrete tarmac. In the distance, other transports, C-141s and C-17s with their ramps extended, loaded trucks, missile launchers, and pallet after pallet of supplies. More colorful civilian airliners were intermixed with the green-painted military planes, pressed into service to carry troops. Long files of infantrymen shuffled forward to board the passenger aircraft, bowed down under rucksacks, weapons, and gear weighing up to 120 pounds.
With its three-thousand-meter long main runway, the RAF base at Brize Norton was an important center for the airlift pouring men, equipment, and supplies into Poland.
The reporter’s khaki pants, shirt, and bulky flak jacket gave him a martial air that fitted his surroundings. He had to shout into his mike to make himself heard over howling jet engines and rumbling machinery. “The British 1st Armored is only one of — ”
A sudden, high-pitched wail stopped him in midsentence, rising and falling in a steady rhythm.
“What’s that noise?” Alarm flashed across the reporter’s face as he recognized the base air raid siren. Still looking into the camera, he stammered, “Is this some kind of drill?” He turned to his left and repeated the question.
The view shifted, showing an ashen-faced RAF lieutenant motioning frantically toward the ground. “Take cover! Take cover!”
Explosions drowned out the siren.
The camera image jarred, then tumbled to lie on its side, showing a cluster of buildings — aircraft hangars and living quarters. A mike picked up shocked voices in the background. “Are you all right?… Jesus, look at that! Where’s the camera?”
The image spun and shook, then steadied on a transformed scene. A pall of smoke hung over the flight line, fed by masses of flames below it. The fires dwarfed everything in sight — solid sheets of flame that towered over the trucks and men scrambling to control them.
Shaking again, the CNN cameraman panned left, then right, unable to capture the scope of this disaster in a single frame. The long, ordered lines of soldiers were gone, replaced by screaming clumps of wounded men and silent heaps of those who were dead. Secondary explosions threw mangled pieces of aircraft into the air as balls of orange-red flame mushroomed in the mass of wreckage.
The German submarine commanded by Captain Theodor Ritter lay bottomed on the Thames Estuary, practically hugging an old wreck left over from the last war. She was just forty kilometers east of London.
German submarines have never had names. This one was no exception. She was simply called U-32, the “U” standing for Unterseeboot, undersea boat. She was small, only one-fifth the size of a Los Angeles-class nuclear sub. Unlike America’s SSNs, Germany’s U-boats didn’t need a cruising range measured in tens of thousands of miles. They were built for coastal operations, close to their home ports.
As a Type 212 boat, U-32 was also brand-new, and new technology gave her an edge over the enemy. Instead of a large, expensive nuclear reactor, she carried an “air-independent” propulsion plant. When their electric batteries ran low, older conventional submarines had to snorkel — drawing air from the surface for their diesel engines. But snorkeling makes noise, and making noise during wartime is a sure and certain way for a submarine to get itself killed.
U-32 and the other boats in her class didn’t have to snorkel. Instead, a tank of liquid oxygen supplied an advanced engine, which replaced the diesel. That meant they could charge their batteries while submerged, and then proceed silently on electric motors. The combination of ultraquiet propulsion, a small, nonmagnetic hull shaped to help scatter sonar echoes, and a first-rate sonar and fire control system made U-32 and her sisters deadly opponents.
Slipping this far through the Combined Forces ASW patrols had been difficult, but the German sub wasn’t looking for a fight.
U-32’s submerged mobility, almost as good as a nuclear boat’s, had let her sidestep or backtrack if she found herself near a prowling adversary. Her skipper and crew knew there would be time to deal with isolated enemy destroyers or frigates on the way out.
Besides, the war was almost three weeks old now. Patterns had begun to emerge in the way the Americans and British patrolled — patterns that could be exploited.
So now U-32 lay motionless in the mud. With her motors and even her air recirculation pumps shut down, she would be almost impossible to hear on passive sonar. Even normal active sonars couldn’t find her this close to the bottom — the mud and sediments blurred sound waves bouncing off it.