“True. Besides, we made a ninety-degree course change right after he left, remember. So if we were going directly away from him one time, we couldn’t have been the other.”
“That’s right. Did we log the bearing we picked him up on?”
“Sure. At least, the quartermaster’s supposed to. Why?”
“Buck, could you have your plotters assemble every scrap of info they’ve got on that sub, and plot it? See if we can figure out what direction he departed in, and what direction he came back from. And see if your code lets us ask Keith the bearing and distance of the spot where he was rammed, and even the estimated location of the position those planes seemed to be operating around.”
“Glad to. But what good will that do us now?”
“You never know, old friend. But the more you find out about your enemies, the more you’re apt to luck into something you can use. And I don’t mind telling you one thing, very confidentially. Down deep, I’m scared. This whole situation stinks. If our friend yonder decides to play it rough, there’s damned little we can do. We’re on steady course, speed and depth, and he knows exactly what those are.”
“Not depth, exactly.”
“Don’t kid yourself! We’d have had it figured out by now, and you can bet he has, too!”
“But what can he do? What could they be wanting?”
“For one thing, they’d love a sample copy of our latest model Polaris missile submarine. They’d give a lot for that.”
“Keith would never surrender his ship.”
“Agreed. But what if he got into absolutely desperate straits, and only the Russians knew where he was, or could help him. They claim he shot down one of their aircraft, remember! What if the price of saving the lives of his whole crew was for Washington to order him to surrender and let the Russians cut a hole in the ice to get them out?”
“Couldn’t Keith be the last man out and open the vents behind him?”
“With the whole crew hostage? By that time Washington would be running the show, not him.”
“What if a whole bunch of airborne troops landed at just the right time …”
“And at just the right place, which wouldn’t be at all where we thought they were, ready for a mini-war in the snow and to sacrifice about as many men as they’d likely rescue … no sir, Buck, the Soviets had us over a barrel when there was only the Cushing here, and they knew it. At least, they thought so. It would have been so easy just to wait. They could even have had that sub checking the Cushing every once in a while. Keith was mighty smart to move her the way he did, even though he didn’t get far. Not many skippers would have thought of that. But they probably knew exactly where he was anyway, all the time. Maybe he’d have been smartest if he’d simply hovered at maximum submergence, letting himself drift wherever the deep currents took him. They’d have had to come looking for him by echo-ranging, then, and at least that would have warned him. With luck, they might not have been able to find him.”
“So, the Manta …”
“Exactly. We’re the fly in that ointment. They don’t need us or even want us. It’s the Cushing, a brand-new missile sub, that they want. But we’re the motive power that’s snaking the prize out from under their nose.”
“You think we’re the target?”
“If they decide to play real rough, we are. On two counts. One, we’re the motive power. Two, if we disappear, their hardball diplomacy is actually strengthened.”
“Then”—Buck had lowered his voice to a whisper—“you do think the collision with the Cushing wasn’t an accident! But how could they do something that risky deliberately? Their sub could just as well have been the one sunk.”
“She hit him from aft, and Keith thinks she was on a nearly parallel course. Also, she was running silent. Otherwise, he’d have heard her. If they’d have had any advance warning he was on his way, it might not have been too hard to fix one of their nukes with some kind of steel girderlike protection, or even some sort of projecting ram to stick up against a revolving propeller. We have a pretty tough ice suit built into the Manta, you know. At least, you were bragging to me about it. Why couldn’t the Soviets do the same thing, but skewed slightly?”
“It still sounds farfetched to me. Even if such a sub could wreck Keith’s propeller, he couldn’t be sure of getting the emergency propulsion motor too.”
“He did, though. Didn’t he? Did a really superb job. Got them both at once. I’m guessing that was fortuitous. Most likely the scheme was to disable the main propeller as though it were an accident, as though the Cushing had hit some hard ice. And then, while she was creeping home on the EPM, they’d have plenty of time to clip that off somehow.”
“If all your guessing is close to right, that Russian sub skipper must be a pretty doggone experienced one. And pretty doggone tough, too. If his mission was to disable Keith by ramming him with his own sub, he still was taking a hell of a chance that he might have been the one disabled.”
“We took a lot of chances a few years ago too, Buck. Ramming is not an unknown naval tactic, especially if your ship’s built for it.”
“They must know an awful lot about our subs, how they’re built and all that,” said Buck pensively.
“Don’t you think they do?”
“I suppose so. But they couldn’t have had that sub just hanging around up here waiting for someone maybe to show up. They must have known Keith was coming. Pretty far in advance.”
“Not possible?”
“He didn’t even know himself until a few weeks before!”
“Sure. I didn’t either, till a week or so before he did. But the thing had been planned a long time. They could have been watching construction of the Cushing. She’s the only missile sub built with an ice suit, you know. She’s the only one we could have sent. When did you find out her sailplanes could be elevated to ninety degrees?”
“Quite a while ago. It was all over Electric Boat because there were so many design changes needed.” Rich said nothing, and after a short pause Buck muttered, half to himself, “I see what you mean. The Cushing was the boat for them to watch.”
“Ship. That’s your line.”
“Ship.”
The sonar room was almost silent. Buck and Rich had unconsciously squeezed their heads tightly together in their darkened corner, above and to the side of the sonar console. The tiny compartment, the ship, the orderly quiet of the men at action stations, the tension of readiness for immediate emergency — all had temporarily fallen away from their consciousness. At the same time they were at the spot where the crisis would be first recognized, ready to take instant action even prior to the startled report from the sonarman.
Schultz, wedded to his precious sonar set, was unconscious of the low-voiced conversation two feet above his head. His head half-covered with huge, sound-insulated, sponge-rubber-covered earphones, reaching from behind his eyes to the curve of his neck behind his ears, concentration upon the information conveyed to him by the electronic instrument in front of him was total. He had already decided to call attention to the slightest deviation in the Russian submarine’s movements simply by striking out with his left hand. He would not have to distract his own attention by speaking. He would hit something, someone, and bring them over to him. More, as a man at the top of his profession, wise in the down-to-earth practicality of submariners, with perhaps his own life and those of all others aboard depending upon him, he knew this was exactly what his superiors would have expected. His own instructions to the operator of the sonic JT set, sitting on a stool with a similar set of earphones in the forward torpedo room, were to stand on no protocol or ceremony, to report anything he heard, or thought he heard, instantly via the special speaker circuit between the two stations.