“Missiles away, sir.” Reiss said.
The two SUBROC missiles surged upward through the water and shot through the surface of the sea into the air. The rocket motors ignited with loud bangs and the missiles began racing above the surface of the sea in a shallow arc at just under the speed of sound. Nineteen miles from the Orca the rocket motor mounts that fastened the rockets to the nuclear warheads separated in a series of small explosions and dropped toward the sea. The warheads continued on in the shallow arc for another mile and then splashed into the sea and began to spiral downward.
The sonar operators aboard the Soviet submarine heard the two missiles hit the water on either side of their ship, heard the turbulence as the missiles corkscrewed down through the water. In the ship’s Command Center the slamming sound of the missiles hitting the water echoed throughout the compartment and the display screen suddenly showed two white blips, one on each side of the submarine.
“Deep! Take me deep!” Captain Kovitz screamed. “Forty-five degree down angle! Full power!” The Soviet submarine tilted sharply downward and in the few seconds of life that he knew he had left Captain Kovitz stared at his Navigator.
The mass of hydrogen atoms in each of the SUBROC missile warheads fused and the warheads exploded with a burst of energy equal to the energy of the atomic bomb that had exploded in the air above Hiroshima. The Soviet submarine, caught between the two bursting warheads, disintegrated. A cloud of fragments of what had once been an attack submarine and the 110 men who had manned it, drifted slowly downward. The metal and plastic fragments in the cloud were indistinguishable from the tiny fragments of unincinerated bone that sank into the dark depths of the sea. Caught by a slow and vagrant current a part of the cloud of particles moved in the direction of the dead hull of the U.S.S. Sharkfin.
“Sonar reports it cannot find the target,” the loudspeaker said.
“Very well,” Reinauer said. “Continue to search.” He gripped the edge of the table he stood against, wondering if the Russian captain had known that the missiles had been fired at him, whether he had realized that his life was over. He shook his head, suddenly conscious of fatigue.
“Sonar reports no target. Devilfish wants to talk, sir.”
“Tell him to go ahead,” Reinauer said.
“Devilfish says tallyho and well done and expects credit for assistance,” the sonar operator reported.
“Tell him he deserves all the credit we can give him,” Reinauer said. He turned to Eckert.
“Secure from General Quarters. Put me back on our regular station. Depth four hundred feet. I want to see you in my cabin as soon as you get things squared away.”
Eckert walked into the Captain’s cabin and dropped into a chair. “God, I feel tired,” he said. “Like I’d been put through a wringer. After we fired I felt like I wanted to throw up.”
“Don’t think about it,” Reinauer said harshly. “Think about the fact that the target we hit sank the Sharkfin with all hands and from what the message said the Sharkfin never had a chance. Think about that!”
“Sorry,” Eckert said. “Should have kept my big mouth shut.”
“Forget it,” Reinauer said. “I’ll draft a message to ComSubLant. The SOSUS array must have picked up those explosions and he’ll be sweating his balls off until he finds out it was our missiles.”
“He’d better sweat about something else, Skipper,” Eckert said. “The people in the sonar gang aren’t buying that crap about the target being an electronic gadget. They know it was another submarine.”
Vice Admiral Mike Brannon’s face showed the exhaustion he felt as he paced the length of his office. John Olsen dozed quietly on a sofa, his short collar open. The telephone rang loudly in the stillness and Olsen came bolt upright on the couch as Brannon leaped for the phone. Olsen saw the relief flood over his face as Brannon carefully put the telephone back in its cradle.
“Good news?” Olsen said quietly.
“That was John Fencer in Operations,” Brannon said. “He just ran a message from Orca through the decoders. Orca and Devilfish trapped that murdering bastard. Orca fired two, one on each beam of the target. The target disappeared. Orca will send more information later.” He stretched his arms over his head, his big shoulder muscles creaking.
“So what comes next?” John Olsen said. He turned as a soft knock sounded at the door and the Chief Yeoman came in with a tray holding a carafe of coffee and some sandwiches. Commander John Fencer followed the Chief into Brannon’s office.
“Figured you’d be hungry about now,” the Chief said. “The Commander here sure as hell is. He told me so. I drew night rations.” He put the tray down on a coffee table.
“You been here all night?” Olsen asked as he reached for the coffee carafe.
“Here and in Operations,” the Chief Yeoman said. “When the Boss works, I work, sir.” He looked at Admiral Brannon. “Hell of an operation, sir. Like the old days.”
“Yes,” Mike Brannon said. “Keep it under your hat, Chief. As long as you’re here, stand by in your office.” He turned to Commander Fencer as the Chief closed the door behind him.
“I appreciate your taking care of the decoding. When you called me a couple of hours or so ago and said you had evidence on the SOSUS of a tremendous explosion, well, time passed damned slowly after that. Help yourself to chow and coffee.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” Fencer said. He picked up a bologna sandwich and nodded his thanks as John Olsen filled a coffee cup for him.
“I don’t know how far away the combat scene was, Admiral,” Fencer said, “but the SOSUS array picked up the explosions. They’re pretty damned sensitive.”
Brannon nodded and reached for his telephone. He buzzed the Chief’s office outside of his door. “Please call Admiral Benson at once. He’ll be asleep but get him up if you have to send a courier over to his house. I want to talk to him. Right now.”
Admiral Benson called within ten minutes. Mike Brannon filled him in on the information that had come from Reinauer in the Orca and hung up the phone.
“Benson will call Bob Wilson and get him on the horn right away to his contact in Israel. In a few hours they should know about this in Moscow.”
“And then the shit will hit the fan,” Olsen said.
Igor Shevenko put down his telephone and stared at the wall on the far side of his office where a long shred of paint had peeled away and was swaying in the hot air rising from the radiator beneath it. Wilson had not been bluffing, he thought. The American admirals had retaliated. He put his powerful hands on the sides of his head and squeezed. Admiral Zurahv would be in his office. He reached for the telephone and started to dial the number and then stopped.
“No,” he whispered to himself. “No. The wolves will be among the sheep soon enough when Kovitz fails to report on the sonar buoys. I’ve got a day, maybe a day and a half before the word will be out.” He reached for the phone again and dialed the private number of Leonid Plotovsky. Maybe Plotovsky could get through the privacy the doctors had thrown up around Brezhnev’s hospital room. The man was reportedly on the mend. He waited as the telephone began to ring on the other end.