The new baby, their surprise, was born when Andy was on shore duty in Washington. Their next sailboat, a handsome twenty-six footer, was purchased when he went out to Pearl Harbor to command a new submarine. Reed simply had We Eight painted across the transom. He was sure anything other than that might bring back luck. But that name lasted only through part of their first weekend on the water. When they returned to the dock that Sunday morning, the stem had been repainted with the old Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, and crossed out and an exclamation point next to the Eight! And there was no way they would ever be allowed to change that name with the attention they attracted as the eight Reeds came down the pier that Sunday morning for a day of sailing.
When Andy Reed approached the quarterdeck of his new command that Monday morning, there was little doubt who the painters had been. Above the ornately carved shield of the submarine Cavalla was a second, handpainted sign We One Hundred Twenty-Eight.
That had been seven years before. Back then, Andy Reed had been considered flag material and every sailor he knew looked forward to it. The selection board reached way down to give him his first star. But promotion to flag rank had taken him away from the squadron he commanded and he’d seen too many desks until this mission.
Now, as he fell asleep, his last thought was of the We One Hundred Twenty-Eight sign that hung over the mantle in his house. The We Eight had been tied up much too long at its berth on the Potomac. As he slept, there were no thoughts of torpedoes or other weapons of war. Andy Reed never worried about the future.
Traveling on the surface, Imperator was on an advanced stage of alert. Earlier in the evening there had been a near-collision with a surface object that had never been identified. Even Carol Petersen, who had been taking some air on the bridge, had been unable to see it, and Caesar had reported nothing. It was only in the final seconds that something activated his sensors for evasive action.
Now, an hour before midnight, Imperator’s radar printed an airborne contact whose takeoff had been reported earlier by satellite. From an airbase well inside Siberia, the Soviet Badger had climbed to forty thousand feet as it headed east toward the Bering Strait. This particular aircraft, though armed with air-to-surface missiles, was fitted for electronic intelligence. It was a reconnaissance flight, preliminary to any attack.
U.S. satellite recon maintained a steady picture once it was evident the Badger would soon enter air space affecting Imperator. A target designation link for the submarine was automatically fed into Caesar’s system. At a range of four hundred miles, the Badger began a slow descent, circling to the west and then the south of Imperator.
At three hundred miles, the aircraft’s active electronic devices went silent. She turned purely to intelligence gathering, a myriad of detectors silently reaching out in the night to analyze the slightest electronic radiation from Imperator, A half hour before midnight, Andy Reed requested that Snow radiate signals from a brand new unit — nothing steady, just enough to attract attention, to lure the curious closer.
The Badger turned toward Imperator and descended below five thousand feet, seeking the bait of new, highly classified equipment. This was akin to dangling raw meat. Snow activated his laser system as the Badger was drawn into the kill radius. There was never a warning, no indication to the Soviet air crew that they had come under fire. No explosion — nor any shock — occurred as Caesar carefully pinpointed the Badger with a ten-second irradiation.
The Badger’s listening equipment noted the event with a high-pitched squeal a millisecond before the unit ceased to operate. Piercing noise deafened the operators, as the deadly sound penetrated through the radio headphones of the pilot and copilot. All equipment ceased functioning — navigation, radar, communications, targeting devices for weapons systems. In less than five seconds, the pilot understood he was under attack of some kind. Yet he was unable to either defend himself or return fire. The last Siberian base lost contact with him as he fought to regain control.
The Badger turned sharply west, climbing once again as it did so. No better than a fish out of water, it flew through the inky night with no idea of true height, direction, or speed. Finding a large enough airfield in Siberia would be the luck of the draw, and approaching any military installation without preliminary identification would be hazardous. Parachuting into the cold Bering Sea was also an unacceptable alternative, since there was no chance of survival. There was no way they could respond to queries from the lazy and often bored radar installations as they closed the Siberian perimeter, but they had become a fresh contact for their nervous countrymen.
Forty-five minutes after the laser attack, the Badger became the target of a missile from a friendly station. The air crew had little idea of their location, and there was no indication of their fate until the starboard wing tank erupted with the detonation. Imperator had brought down her first aircraft. Three more times within the next hour, other Badgers attempted to close them. One even fired a cruise missile. All of the aircraft met the same fate as the first. The missile dropped harmlessly out of control into the Bering Sea.
Hal Snow stared at the bland, sand-colored bulkhead in his stateroom, contemplating the Badgers’ demise but finding little to concern himself with, since they would have done the same to him. He was pleased with his lethal craft, more so now that they had departed the fishbowl and Imperator was proving herself. As he’d watched her take shape over the past year he also understood that there was always time to get out — to return to a safer, saner life. But he wouldn’t. Whenever the thought crossed his mind, it was met in an instant by a singular desire to be the commanding officer of the greatest warship afloat. He was willing to acknowledge that they understood his ego at least as well as he did. Yet now, facing increasing danger.
he felt the need to talk with someone. It wasn’t fear by any means, just the need to talk.
Realizing sleep was impossible, Snow headed for the wardroom. It was empty and the coffee was old and thick and stale. Then he saw a cup with lipstick around the rim perched on the pantry shelf. The stewards often cleaned up stray cups before midnight, so perhaps Carol Petersen had just been there. She’d made the effort to communicate with him earlier in the day… why not? Snow had yet to understand that he was desperately in need of a friend.
“I’ll bet that’s you, Captain,” she responded to his soft knock. “Come on in.”
It never occurred to Snow to question how she knew it was he. “I’m not disturbing you, am I?” She was sitting at a writing desk folded out of the bulkhead, a blank sheet of paper before her, “Writing a letter home?” he asked when she shook her head to the first question.
“I was thinking about it. You can see how far I’ve gotten.”
“To your parents?”
“Just my mother. Dad died five years ago. She’s all alone now. The rest of the kids are just like me — strung out around the world and no better at writing letters.” Snow was lowering himself into the chair beside her desk, but he stood up again. “Really, I’d be happy to leave if—”