Admiral Olsen uncoiled his long frame from the sofa and poured coffee for the others. “He means that, Mike. He’ll be there and he’ll have the chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in tow and they’ll be loaded for bear. Or for Mike Brannon.”
“I’ll face that problem if and when it comes,” Brannon said. He sipped at his coffee. “Bob, you’re the ranking expert on the Soviet mind. What do you think they’ll do when they know they’ve lost one of their submarines?”
“They could begin a nuclear war,” Wilson said slowly. “But I’d rule that out. When you hit back at them you sent a message they understand. You’re playing hard ball in the Big Leagues and they understand that, they do it all the time. I don’t think they’ll do anything. If it’s any use to you, Admiral, I’d be willing to testify that it’s my opinion that if you hadn’t taken the action you did the Soviets would have gone a hell of a lot farther in their next try.”
“Thank you,” Brannon said. He turned toward Admiral Benson. “I expect to be kept fully informed of any information you get, anything.” He stood up and walked around in front of his desk.
“Will do, sir,” Admiral Benson said. “My God, that must have been something, that action! Submarines fighting submarines underwater! I know a lot about combat in the air, one on one with the other guy, but submarines and underwater where no one can see anything, that’s something I can’t even imagine. Two SUBROC missiles, you said? What happens when those things go off near a submarine?”
“Ideally,” Mike Brannon’s words came slowly, “you try to land one missile on each beam of the submarine. The explosions are simultaneous. The target is completely destroyed. Nothing is left.” He stared at the rug on the floor of his office. “A lot of men die, that’s what happens.” He walked to the door and Admiral Benson and Bob Wilson left his office.
Igor Shevenko stopped at the door of his office and turned as Stefan Lubutkin came out of his office with an envelope in his hand.
“Genuine?” Shevenko asked.
“Yes, Comrade. I had a friend get these from a naval supply depot. Without a requisition, of course, a friend doing a favor for a friend.” Shevenko nodded and put the envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket. He left the KGB building and walked a block and got into a limousine that slowed and moved in to the curb for him. He settled in the rear seat beside Leonid Plotovsky.
“I am sorry to have insisted on privacy, Comrade,” Shevenko said. “I took the liberty last night of having one of my experts look at your car while it was parked. He found these.” He reached in his pocket and handed the envelope to Plotovsky, who opened it and let two tiny electronic devices spill out into his seamed, clawlike hand.
“Electronic bugs, Comrade,” Shevenko said softly. “Manufactured, I am afraid, by the electronics division of our Navy.”
“Zurahv! “ The old man spat out the word.
“I don’t know, sir,” Shevenko said. “I could find out, perhaps. But that is not the real reason I asked to meet you privately.” He took a deep breath as Plotovsky put the electronic bugs back in the envelope.
“What is the reason for wanting to meet this way?”
“I have been given information that I do not doubt, sir.” Shevenko quickly and concisely detailed the retaliation that the Americans had taken against the Soviet submarine.
Plotovsky turned his lizardlike eyes on Shevenko. “How long will it be before Zurahv knows he has lost a submarine?”
“I would say within three days, sir. It is not too unusual for one of our submarines to fail to report its daily position. It is quite unusual if one goes for two days without reporting its position. One other factor. Our submarine was checking to see if the Americans had put down sonar buoys around the wreckage of their submarine. Admiral Zurahv is anxious to get that report. When it fails to come he will know something is wrong.”
“But you came to me first,” Plotovsky said in a soft voice. “You have the position, the authority to ask for a hearing before the Politburo where you could put this on the table for everyone to consider. Why didn’t you?”
“You led the minority vote to oppose the test of the new torpedo, sir. You are the logical one to prevent Admiral Zurahv’s genie from escaping from the bottle, Comrade.”
“You talk in riddles,” the old man said irritably. “Bottles and genies. Educating you in the West might have been a mistake, Igor.”
“I trust not, sir. I know the American mind. It tends to relate crises to sports, that is, in American football a favorite offensive play is to fake a smash into the line and then throw a long pass. They even call such a pass a bomb.”
“I don’t know anything about American football and I don’t want to,” Plotovsky grunted. “Put it in terms I am familiar with.”
“Chess,” Shevenko said with a slight smile. “We have taken out one of their bishops. They have retaliated by exposing their queen to take a knight in return but if we move for their queen we risk an exchange of all the major pieces. The board will be dominated by pawns.”
“I understand,” Plotovsky said. “Keep in touch with me. I’ll take you back near to your office.”
Vice Admiral Brannon stood in front of the chart on his office wall. Admiral Olsen stood beside him, holding a pad and pen.
“I want a Quiet Alert,” Brannon said. He put his finger on the area between the northern tip of Norway and Bear Island, in the Barents Sea. “If the Soviets come out of Polyarnyy with their missile subs they have to come through here.” His finger moved across the chart to the areas between Britain and Greenland and between Greenland and Iceland.
“If any of them are already west of Bear Island they’ve got to move down through this area to get to the Atlantic. We’ve got the passes covered with the SOSUS arrays and passive mines. Same over on the east coast, the Sea of Okhotsk. If they move I want to know it. I want all attack submarines at sea. Deploy them in Quiet Alert positions to intercept anything that manages to get through the passive mine defenses.” He walked over to his desk and sat down.
“I don’t think they’ll move anything by sea,” Olsen said. “If they’re going to attack they’d do it with land-based missiles. They have to figure that if they move by sea we’ll react as we did to the sinking of the Sharkfin.” He stopped as Brannon’s phone buzzer sounded. Brannon picked up the telephone and listened. He put down the phone and turned to Olsen.
“Admiral Benson. He says they have reports of wide scale Chinese actions against Soviet units along their borders.”
“Which means?” Olsen said.
“It probably means that Peking is reading our radio traffic. Benson says there’s no reason for these flare-ups along the border. The border’s been quiet for months. He thinks they know what’s happened.”
“Works in our favor, doesn’t it?” Olsen said. “The Soviets might think twice about taking on us and the Chinese at the same time.”
“Or they might welcome the chance,” Brannon said.
CHAPTER 11
By any normal standard Captain Herman Steel was neither a social nor a sociable man. His life revolved around his work. His quarters in the BOQ, the Bachelor Officer’s Quarters, were small, sparsely furnished and in every sense an extension of his office in the Pentagon. Engineering texts were stacked neatly in piles on the one table in the small living room and on the table beside the metal military style cot that served as his bed. The kitchen in the quarters was small and the refrigerator and cupboards held only the foods the Captain used for his morning meal, which consisted of milk, two eggs, wheat germ and a banana whipped into a liquid concoction in an ancient electric mixer. Lunch was almost always taken at his desk, a double handful of nuts and dried fruits from a supply his Chief Yeoman kept in a drawer in his desk. Dinner was eaten at the BOQ Mess where out of long custom the stewards brought him either chicken or fish and two vegetables. He drank only water, milk, or fruit juices. Those officers who took tables near him at the evening meal refrained from smoking rather than risk his abrasive denunciation of tobacco and those who used it.