“There he is,” rasped Boomer. “Release to auto-home.”
“Contact six hundred yards…closing.”
“MALFUNCTION, SIR — TORPEDO MALFUNCTION. LOST ACTIVE CONTACT.”
“TRY PASSIVE.”
“MALFUNCTION, SIR. Nothing coming back up the wire…it must have broken, sir.”
“Stand by three.”
“Captain…sonar…I have underwater telephone on the bearing.”
“Jesus, he must be talking to his fucking self.”
“Nossir. He’s talking to someone else.”
“You got the interpreter down there?”
“Yessir. He’s saying it’s between two submarines…we’re checking the call signs in the book right now, sir…they seem to be calling a third boat.”
“JESUS CHRIST!!”
“Captain…sonar. The third boat is not answering. Call signs work out…from an export hull…and a Russian boat…trying to reach another export hull.”
A chill shot through Boomer Dunning’s churning stomach. There could be but one answer. The Typhoon is still there. Unbelievably. Grotesquely, still there. And he, Commander Cale Dunning, had come within about thirty seconds of starting World War III by accident. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” said the CO of Columbia. “STAND DOWN THREE TUBE…we will not, repeat not, be firing.”
The picture in his mind was one of absolute clarity. He had assumed two Kilos were in the box, and he had hit one of them, and apparently gotten active contact on the other, just before he lost his second torpedo. Now the remaining Kilo was talking to the Typhoon, which had been there all the time, both of them trying to figure out what had happened to K-9…the Kilo that was just about arriving at the bottom of the Pacific. With all hands.
There was little doubt as far as Boomer was concerned. If there was a Russian submarine in attendance, it was clearly the Typhoon. “Can I risk firing again? Answer: NO. I have just been goddamned lucky not to have started World War III, by blowing up a Typhoon Class Russian nuclear, which was built specifically to fire inter-continental ballistic missiles. I plainly cannot knowingly take that risk.
“I am already in the deepest possible crap. I had no POSIDENT of the Kilos. Acoustic or visual. Let’s face it, I fired on the off chance. Right here is where I back off, and throw myself on the mercy of SUBLANT.”
Boomer ordered Columbia deep and fast, to clear the datum and head east, away from the impending chaos. He handed the ship to Lieutenant Commander Krause and retired to his cabin to prepare a signal to the Black Ops Intelligence Cell. It was around 1300 in Norfolk.
He wrote his signal carefully: “Kilo Group attacked north of Onekotan. Unable to obtain fire control solution on any submarines. Fired two Mk 48’s into center of two-mile square box formed by remaining four escorts. Torpedoes set for active pattern search. One explosion heard. Subsequent telephone traffic, underwater call-signs, strongly suggest one export hull sunk. Intercept also strongly suggests continued presence of Typhoon Class submarine in the group. Do NOT intend further attack. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.”
Boomer ordered Columbia to periscope depth and accessed the satellite. He transmitted his signal at 0630, Eastern Daylight Time. At 0647 Admiral Arnold Morgan, the President’s National Security Adviser, almost had a heart attack. At the time he was having a cup of coffee and a roast beef sandwich with the CNO, Joe Mulligan, in the Pentagon, and the craggy ex-Trident driver had calmly read the message to the NSA.
“What the hell does he mean, mea maxima culpa? What kinda bullshit’s that?”
“You ever been an altar boy?” asked the staunchly Irish Catholic head of the US Navy.
“A WHAT?”
“An altar boy — you know, a kid who assists the priest during the mass, rings the bells, lights the candles…holds the water during the consecration.”
“Hell no. In my part of Texas we played baseball on Sunday mornings. Mea catcher.”
“Arnie, I accept that my great office requires that I fraternize with those of a heathen persuasion, such as yourself. However I think you should know the routine of a God-fearing family such as mine. Each Sunday at the foot of the altar, another boy and I placed our hands upon our breasts, and prayed: “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…I have sinned, I have sinned, I have greatly sinned.”
“You mean Boomer’s admitting he overstepped the mark?”
“He sure is. And that’s the mark of a fine officer. A man big enough for his rank. And not threatened by the admission of a mistake.”
“NOT THREATENED? I’LL FUCKING THREATEN HIM. THAT BOY’S NOTHING SHORT OF A DUMBASS SONOFABITCH. WHAT IF HE’D HIT THE FUCKING TYPHOON?…Good morning, Mr. President, we just had a bit of bad luck in the Pacific. One of our best submarine commanders blew up and sank a big Russian nuclear submarine in Russian waters by mistake. The nuclear cloud from its twenty inter-continental ballistic missiles is in the process of wiping out most of the Orient…ain’t that a gas?”
Joe Mulligan chuckled at the brutal irony of Arnold Morgan’s words. “Steady, Arnie. In an operation like this, there’s a ton of risk, every step of the way. Why don’t we just think ourselves lucky? Boomer has removed one of the goddamned Kilos on a thirty-three percent chance of starting World War III. And he seems to have gotten away with it. That makes him a very lucky commander. But you need luck in the game we’ve asked him to play.”
“Christ, I know that. But our signals to Columbia never stopped stressing the fact that he MUST HAVE POSIDENT. Therefore his actions were in direct contravention of his orders. He not only did not have POSIDENT, he had no fucking IDENT whatsoever…POS…NEAR-POS, OR FUCK-ALL POS.”
Admiral Mulligan blew coffee down his nose, trying to stop laughing at the infuriated NSA. “Come on, Arnie, if we send off a blast to Columbia, which others may see, humiliating their commanding officer, we will do nothing except hurt the morale of his ship.
“Just remember what Commander Dunning has done. He’s actually sunk three of those Kilos. He’s made a trans-polar run under the North Pole, and he’s still operational. Undetected.”
“Don’t gimme his fucking life story, for Christ’s sake, Joe. I’m not talking about what he’s done. Any good nuclear submarine officer could have done the same. Right here, I’m talking about what he could have done. Like started a goddamned world war. Nothing serious. Because he is, apparently, unable to obey a simple order. Like GET POSIDENT. Nothing earth shattering. Just routine sense. He’s a dumbass sonofabitch.”
“What would you have said if his signal had claimed he did have POSIDENT on the Kilos?”
Admiral Morgan grappled for words, but for once in his life found none.
“Commander Dunning could have said that. And we would have been none the wiser. And if, as you are now implying, we give him a severe reprimand, he might also remind us that we kept telling him the Typhoon was gone. Oh, I know we can look at the small print and say we did not quite say that. But we did, and we advised him so several times. Let’s face it…none of us knew the Typhoon was still there. Never even suspected it. In my view the Commander behaved in an exemplary way, and to tell the truth, I’d probably have done the same.”