“I arranged for her passport, Anton,” he said. “She is an old lady. She could do no harm. I have nothing against the Jews. I fought beside Jews in the Revolution. They were good men, good fighters. Our Communist theorists think they know everything. They don’t. But I do. Almost everything. That is one of the advantages of age, Simonov, what you don’t know you know how to find out. That’s all. My thanks for your good work.” He lowered his head and hawked and spat into the cuspidor that stood beside his chair.
He sat quietly for a few moments after Simonov had left and then he carefully turned over the pictures and sorted through them, looking at each picture with care.
“The naval defender of the Soviet Union!” he rasped. “What a farce!”
Vice Admiral Brannon’s Chief Yeoman came into the Admiral’s office and closed the door behind him.
“Permission to speak off the record, in confidence, sir?”
“Of course, Chief, what’s on your mind?”
“I had lunch today with a chief I served with when he was first class. I got him his hat. He told me, his exact words, sir, were, quote a certain four-striper is out to hang Mike Brannon’s ass unquote.”
“Nothing very new in that, Chief. That certain captain has been after my ass ever since I was assigned to this billet.”
“I know that, sir, but that captain hasn’t been using his big guns. Now he’s loading up for a broadside, sir.”
“What’s the caliber of his broadside guns, Chief?”
“Pretty heavy, sir. This chief told me that it’s a congressman. A powerful congressman. Powerful enough to already have run a check on your private and official life sir. His caliber is big enough so that he went into the FBI’s secret files to try and find something against you. That came up a blank so now, this chief tells me, they’re gonna get at you through Admiral McCarty of the Joint Chiefs. They figure he can find a way to push you into retirement, sir.”
“Interesting,” Mike Brannon said. “I owe you my thanks, Chief. Both of us know that carrying tales is never good duty.”
“I don’t consider this to be tale-carrying,” the Chief Yeoman said. “You shoot square with all hands, Admiral. This other chief and me, we hate to see someone playing dirty games to get at you, sir.”
“You’ve paid me a compliment, Chief,” Brannon said with a grin. “And I’ll accept it. And I thank you for the scuttlebutt.”
“Sir,” the Chief Yeoman said in a strained voice, “sir, it isn’t scuttlebutt! It’s the straight poop!”
“I’ll treat it as such,” Brannon said.
CHAPTER 16
The Soviet ballistic missile submarine cruised steadily at 15 knots, running at 200 feet below the surface of the Atlantic. The crew was relaxed, a patrol station off Washington, D.C., even in winter, was better than the previous patrol area, which had been conducted under the ice near the North Pole. That had been almost seven weeks of complete discomfort, the ship wrapped in a numbing cold that the ship’s heaters could never dispel, the crew swathed in sweaters, heavy boots and gloves day and night. The Atlantic in the Washington latitude would be chilly but not as cold as the far North. The great winter storms that often raged off the American coast were of no consequence to the submarine. It could submerge below the storm action and wait until the weather front had passed.
Captain Malenkov stood in the Command Center of his submarine and studied the chart his Navigator had placed on the work table. He nodded approval of the course line and the ETA on station. The chart showed that the patrol area would be 350 miles east of the American coast line, just east of the sharp drop where the Continental Shelf descended into an area noted on the chart as the Hatteras Abyssal Plain. The water in the patrol area was deep, almost 2,000 fathoms. Farther to the west, over the Continental Shelf, the chart showed depths of 12 to 24 fathoms. He turned his face upward as the loudspeaker rasped.
“Contact! Sonar reports fast screws bearing two three zero degrees. Contact is below our depth.”
Captain Malenkov turned to his Navigator. “We have a visitor, Alexy. Our information was that the Americans didn’t have any of their submarines out here. Like all our intelligence, it was apparently wrong.” He stared at the chart.
“We’ll stay on course, maintain speed. He will probably nose around like a dog at a garbage heap and then go away.”
“Contact is making very fast turns,” the loudspeaker rasped. “Contact is changing course to our stern.”
“Range on the contact, get his distance and give me a triangulation on his depth,” Captain Malenkov ordered.
“Range is two thousand yards. Target’s speed is approximately forty knots. Target is definitely coming around our stern. Depth is three hundred feet.”
The Soviet Captain watched as his Navigator swiftly drew in the plot on the chart. He snapped his head around to stare at the Navigator as the clangor of the other submarine’s sonar beams echoed through his ship.
“He’s letting us know he’s there,” Malenkov grunted. “He must be hitting us with his full decibel range. What the hell is he up to?”
“Target is now bearing one eight zero and moving to our starboard. . Target is now changing course to run up our starboard side. It’s very hard to get accurate bearings, sir. He’s ranging on us with everything he’s got.”
“To hell with him,” Captain Malenkov grunted. “Let him play his game. Let him make all the noise he wants. This is the open sea. We have a right to be here.”
“And a duty,” his Navigator murmured. He drew in a line on the chart to show the position of the other submarine. He looked at his Commanding Officer.
“Two can play at this game, Comrade. We could range on him.”
“Let’s do that,” Captain Malenkov said. He picked up the telephone. “Sonar Room, I want full decibel ranging on the target. Let’s find out which of us is the noisier.”
Aboard the Orca Captain Reinauer and his XO studied the computer video screens in the Control Room. “He’s locked in on him,” he said to Eckert. “Look at the rate he’s closing at, he must be doing thirty knots or better. Looks like he’s going to sweep around his stern.” He turned his head as the loudspeaker on the port bulkhead began to rattle and then blare.
“He’s hitting him with all the power in his sonar transmitters,” Ecker said. “Those Russians must think they’re inside a boiler factory, all that noise hitting them.”
Captain Reinauer studied the screen closely. “We’ve lost Devilfish on the passive. He must be around on the Russian’s starboard side.” He touched the helmsman on his shoulder.
“Six hundred feet. Let’s do it quickly. I want to be able to hear both of them.”
The Orca slanted downward sharply until it was well below the other submarines. The two white dots on the video screens now showed clearly.
“Looks like he’s only about five hundred yards off the Russian’s beam,” Eckert said. The loudspeakers began to scream and Captain Reinauer, annoyance showing on his face, reached for the telephone. He stopped as the loudspeakers went suddenly quiet and the voice of the Sonar Chief on watch came over the speakers.
“Both targets are hitting each other with full decibel range, Control. I’ll turn down the volume so it won’t ruin your ears. They’re making so much noise out there I don’t think they can hear anything at all, Control.”
“Affirmative,” Captain Reinauer said into the telephone. “I want one quick echo range on the nearest target, that’s a Russian submarine.”
“Will do,” the loudspeaker said. Reinauer waited.
“Range to the nearest target is two zero zero zero yards, Control.”