“No one rammed your ship, Captain. It was the whales. They don’t like Russian ships, Captain. They ram every Soviet ship they see. Very dangerous animals, those whales. Your commercial fishermen kill lots of their relatives and they want revenge. We tried to save you from the whales by making a lot of noise with our sonar gear but we didn’t have much luck.”
“You are insane! “ Captain Malenkov roared into his bullhorn. “If I am interfered with again I will retaliate.”
“You mean you have harpoons aboard and a harpooner?” Captain Reinauer replied. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, sir. A cornered pod of whales can be very dangerous. You could lose your ship, Captain.”
Melenkov turned to his Navigator. “There’s something very wrong here and these fools know what is going on and we don’t. So we’ll play their game and see what happens.” He raised the bullhorn.
“We appreciate your concern for us, Captain. Do you have any suggestions about how we should handle these whales?”
“He’s getting cute,” Reinauer muttered to Eckert. “So we’ll get cute.” He cleared his throat and raised his bullhorn.
“I’d suggest you stay on the surface and ask for instructions from your headquarters, Captain. We’ll submerge and try to herd the whales away from you.”
“Very good of you,” Malenkov answered. “Are you acting as fellow submariners or do you have orders to help us in this situation?”
“We are acting under orders, Captain. I strongly suggest you stay on the surface and contact your headquarters. We’ll go down and look for the whales.”
Captain Malenkov saw Reinauer’s head disappear and then the submarines on either side of his ship began to slowly descend. He watched until the two submarines had disappeared. “Get me a sonar report on what they are doing,” he snapped.
“Sonar reports contacts on either beam, sir,” the loudspeaker on the bridge rasped. “Both contacts appear to be moving very slowly away from us. Depth of both contacts is now one hundred feet.”
“Are we going to dive?” his Navigator asked.
“Dive? And be rammed or worse? Don’t be a fool. There’s something going on here that we know nothing about. I am not going to risk this ship. We stay on the surface and make a full report to Polyarnyy and wait for instructions. While we wait I want a man over the side in shallow-water diving gear to make an inspection of our bottom, up forward, where they rammed us.” He stood in the ship’s sail, his pale blue eyes scanning the empty sea.
“I will say one thing for those people,” he said, “they must be superb seamen to be able to hit us as they did without losing their own ship.”
“Or lucky,” his Navigator said. “Madmen are often lucky, our own folklore teaches us that.”
“Not lucky,” Captain Malenkov said. “Seamen of the highest order. And clever. If we submerge we will be attacked. No ballistic missile submarine can fight off two attack submarines. Up here, on the surface, we are safe. At least for a while. Until Polyarnyy tells us what to do.”
“Up here on the surface we are no longer a ballistic missile submarine,” his Navigator said. “We cannot fire our missiles while we are on the surface.”
“That’s what I meant when I said they were clever,” Captain Malenkov said. “That’s why I suspect something very serious is going on politically. They have frustrated us for the moment. Polyarnyy must be informed at once. Perhaps others of our fleet have been frustrated in the same manner.”
“Do you suspect we might be close to war, Comrade Captain?”
“Yes,” Captain Malenkov said. “I’m going below and draft the message. You have the bridge and the watch. I want a constant sonar watch kept and I want the positions of both those submarines charted at all times.” He dropped through the hatch and climbed down the ladders to the Command Center, thinking about the message he had to send. The Command at Polyarnyy would not be pleased with the way his ship’s nuclear missile effectiveness had been so neatly neutralized. He pulled a pad of paper across the work table and took a pen out of his pocket. What was to be would be. He began to write.
CHAPTER 17
“What’s the tactical situation?” Mike Brannon asked. John Olsen walked over to the big chart that covered almost all of one wall of Vice Admiral Brannon’s office.
“The Russians have four nuclear missile submarines in the Atlantic. Here, here, here, and here. All of them are being covered by two or more of our attack submarines. They’ve got six of their missile subs out in the Pacific. Three of them near Pearl, one off Alaska and two near the West Coast. Each of those subs is covered by two attack submarines. The skippers of all our attack ships have let the Russians know they’re there, that they’re riding herd on them. We’ve got our own missile submarines in attack position. If they start anything we can incinerate damned near the whole of the Soviet Union.”
Brannon walked back to his desk. “How about the passive mine arrays?”
“We’re covering them with two submarines at each line of listening devices and mines. If they try to come out without notifying us we can blow them away. We’ve sent messages to the Soviet Admiralty notifying them that we’re holding submerged exercises in those areas and to notify us, as per international custom, if they intend to send any submarines through those areas.”
“They won’t believe that for a moment.”
“Maybe not, but they probably know what we’re talking about.” Olsen lowered his lean length into the cushions of one of the two sofas in the office and nodded his thanks for the cup of coffee Mike Brannon had put on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
“Joan gave me some scuttlebutt last night,” he said, his voice carefully noncommittal. “She was at the weekly bridge party for junior officers’ wives yesterday. Said one of the wives let it slip that Admiral McCarty is after your scalp. And mine. You hear anything about that?”
“Yes,” Brannon said. “I got the word last evening from the Chief Yeoman. He told me about it.”
“What gives?” Olsen asked.
“Our friend Captain Herman Steel is feeling his oats. He’s enlisted old Representative Walter Wendell on his side. Wendell wants a new carrier built in the shipyard in his district. Captain Steel’s testimony before Appropriations could help. Steel’s been responsible for giving Wendell more damned Navy stuff than you can shake a stick at.”
“So Wendell’s paying back the IOU?”
“That’s the way it works around here,” Brannon said. “The Chief told me that Wendell had already run a check on my personal life and my military record and couldn’t find anything to hit me with. He’s even run a check on J. Edgar’s private files. They can’t find anything to use as a lever to force me into retirement so they’re trying to get Admiral McCarty to do their work for them.”
Olsen let out a low whistle. “Heavy guns, Mike. If the Joint Chiefs of Staff tell you to turn in your hat you turn in your hat. Or do you?”
“No, I don’t,” Brannon snapped. “Two people can play at Steel’s little game. He’s got the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee on his side. I’ve got a couple of guns on my side.”
“You wouldn’t care to tell me the caliber of the guns? Seeing as how if you get forced out I’ll probably be carrying your seabag and mine?”
“Moise Goldman,” Brannon said.
“The President’s advisor?” Olsen’s voice was incredulous. “He’s supposed to be untouchable, he’s the, what do you call it, the President’s ‘Eminence grise’?”
“The false Cardinal? I guess so,” Brannon said. “He’s got more power than a chairman of a congressional committee if it comes down to a fire fight. Or the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”