He decided that the Russians were on some sort of fishing expedition. His job was to show them that the fish in these waters were dangerous.
The oversized tractor-trailer crept at two miles per hour into the cargo bay of the C-5A Galaxy transport under the watchful eyes of the aircraft’s loadmaster, two flight officers, and six naval officers. Oddly, only the latter, none of whom wore aviator’s wings, were fully versed in the procedure. The vehicle’s center of gravity was precisely marked, and they watched the mark approach a particular number engraved on the cargo bay floor. The work had to be done exactly. Any mistake could fatally impair the aircraft’s trim and imperil the lives of the flight crew and passengers.
“Okay, freeze it right there,” the senior officer called. The driver was only too glad to stop. He left the keys in the ignition, set all the brakes, and put the truck in gear before getting out. Someone else would drive it out of the aircraft on the other side of the country. The loadmaster and six airmen immediately went to work, snaking steel cables to eyebolts on the truck and trailer to secure the heavy load. Shifting cargo was something else an aircraft rarely survived, and the C-5A did not have ejection seats.
The loadmaster saw to it that his ground crewmen were properly at work before walking over to the pilot. He was a twenty-five-year sergeant who loved the C-5s despite their blemished history.
“Cap’n, what the hell is this thing?”
“It’s called a DSRV, Sarge, deep submergence rescue vehicle.”
“Says Avalon on the back, sir,” the sergeant pointed out.
“Yeah, so it has a name. It’s a sort of a lifeboat for submarines. Goes down to get the crew out if something screws up.”
“Oh.” The sergeant considered that. He’d flown tanks, helicopters, general cargo, once a whole battalion of troops on his — he thought of the aircraft as his — Galaxy before. This was the first time he had ever flown a ship. If it had a name, he reasoned, it was a ship. Damn, the Galaxy could do anything! “Where we takin’ it, sir?”
“Norfolk Naval Air Station, and I’ve never been there either.” The pilot watched the securing process closely. Already a dozen cables were attached. When a dozen more were in place, they’d put tension on the cables to prevent the minutest shift. “We figure a trip of five hours, forty minutes, all on internal fuel. We got the jet stream on our side today. Weather’s supposed to be okay until we hit the coast. We lay over for a day, then come back Monday morning.”
“Your boys work pretty fast,” said the senior naval officer, Lieutenant Ames, coming over.
“Yes, Lieutenant, another twenty minutes.” The pilot checked his watch. “We ought to be taking off on the hour.”
“No hurry, Captain. If this thing shifts in flight, I guess it would ruin our whole day. Where do I send my people?”
“Upper deck forward. There’s room for fifteen or so just aft of the flight deck.” Lieutenant Ames knew this but didn’t say so. He’d flown with his DSRV across the Atlantic several times and across the Pacific once, every time on a different C-5.
“May I ask what the big deal is?” the pilot inquired.
“I don’t know,” Ames said. “They want me and my baby in Norfolk.”
“You really take that little bitty thing underwater, sir?” the loadmaster asked.
“That’s what they pay me for. I’ve had her down to forty-eight hundred feet, almost a mile.” Ames regarded his vessel with affection.
“A mile under water, sir? Jesus — uh, pardon me, sir, but I mean, isn’t that a little hairy — the water pressure, I mean?”
“Not really. I’ve been down to twenty thousand aboard Trieste. It’s really pretty interesting down there. You see all kinds of strange fish.” Though a fully qualified submariner, Ames’ first love was research. He had a degree in oceanography and had commanded or served in all of the navy’s deep-submergence vehicles except the nuclear-powered NR-1. “Of course, the water pressure would do bad things to you if anything went wrong, but it would be so fast you’d never know it. If you fellows want a check ride, I could probably arrange it. It’s a different world down there.”
“That’s okay, sir.” The sergeant went back to swearing at his men.
“You weren’t serious,” the pilot observed.
“Why not? It’s no big deal. We take civilians down all the time, and believe me, it’s a lot less hairy than riding this damned white whale during a midair refueling.”
“Uh-huh,” the pilot noted dubiously. He’d done hundreds of those. It was entirely routine, and he was surprised that anyone would find it dangerous. You had to be careful, of course, but, hell, you had to be careful driving every morning. He was sure that an accident on this pocket submarine wouldn’t leave enough of a man to make a decent meal for a shrimp. It takes all kinds, he decided. “You don’t go to sea by yourself in that, do you?”
“No, ordinarily we work off a submarine rescue ship, Pigeon or Ortolan. We can also operate off a regular submarine. That gadget you see there on the trailer is our mating collar. We can nest on the back of a sub at the after escape trunk, and the sub takes us where we need to go.”
“Does this have to do with the flap on the East Coast?”
“That’s a good bet, but nobody’s said anything official to us. The papers say the Russians have lost a sub. If so, we might go down to look at her, maybe rescue any survivors. We can take off twenty or twenty-five men at a time, and our mating collar is designed to fit Russian subs as well as our own.”
“Same size?”
“Close enough.” Ames cocked an eyebrow. “We plan for all kinds of contingencies.”
“Interesting.”
The YAK-36 Forger had left the Kiev half an hour before, guided first by gyro compass and now by the ESM pod on the fighter’s stubby rudder fin. Senior Lieutenant Viktor Shavrov’s mission was not an easy one. He was to approach the American E-3A Sentry radar surveillance aircraft, one of which had been shadowing his fleet for three days now. The AWACS (airborne warning and control system) aircraft had been careful to circle well beyond SAM range, but had stayed close enough to maintain constant coverage of the Soviet fleet, reporting every maneuver and radio transmission to their command base. It was like having a burglar watching one’s apartment and being unable to do anything about it.
Shavrov’s mission was to do something about it. He couldn’t shoot, of course. His orders from Admiral Stralbo on the Kirov had been explicit about that. But he was carrying a pair of Atoll heat-seeking missiles which he would be sure to show the imperialists. He and his admiral expected that this would teach them a lesson: the Soviet Navy did not like having imperialist snoopers about, and accidents had been known to happen. It was a mission worthy of the effort it took.
This effort was considerable. To avoid detection by the airborne radar Shavrov had to fly as low and slow as his fighter could operate, a bare twenty meters above the rough Atlantic; this way he would get lost in the sea return. His speed was two hundred knots. This made for excellent fuel economy, though his mission was at the ragged edge of his fuel load. It also made for very rough flying as his fighter bounced through the roiled air at the wave tops. There was a low-hanging mist that cut visibility to a few kilometers. So much the better, he thought. The nature of the mission had chosen him, rather than the other way around. He was one of the few Soviet pilots experienced in low-level flying. Shavrov had not become a sailor-pilot by himself. He’d started flying attack helicopters for frontal aviation in Afghanistan, graduating to fixed-wing aircraft after a year’s bloody apprenticeship. Shavrov was an expert in nap-of-the-earth flying, having learned it by necessity, hunting the bandits and counterrevolutionaries that hid in the towering mountains like hydrophobic rats. This skill had made him attractive to the fleet, which had transferred him to sea duty without his having had much say in the matter. After a few months he had no complaints, his perqs and extra pay being more attractive than his former frontal aviation base on the Chinese border. Being one of the few hundred carrier-qualified Soviet airmen had softened the blow of missing his chance to fly the new MiG-27, though with luck, if the new full-sized carrier were ever finished, he’d have the chance to fly the naval version of that wonderful bird. Shavrov could wait for that, and with a few successful missions like this one he might have his squadron command.