Charles Taylor - Boomer

“Not a thing, Captain. Nothing anywhere.” There was absolutely nothing radiating any type of electronic signal that might be searching for Manchester.

Steel brought the periscope back to the bow, straining his eyes toward the horizon. “Nothing … not a goddamn thing,” he grumbled, waving an arm at Simonds. “XO, you take a look. Maybe you can see something I can’t.”

Simonds put his eyes to the periscope, swinging it to either side of the bow. “I doubt it, Captain. I was looking at the TV screen, and that didn’t show any more than you could see here.” The television-type screens located in various sections of the control room had relayed the exact image appearing on the periscope, but Simonds didn’t see the need to remind Steel of that.

The XO was a large, somewhat portly man for his age, who loved to eat and drink when he was ashore. His hoarse voice grabbed a man’s attention because he often sounded like he was barking. The glasses that so often slipped down his nose when he was looking directly at a man could be a source of amusement until his small, dark eyes met those of the man he was talking to. They helped to emphasize that he was serious almost all the time.

“Range to contact?”

“A little more than three miles.”

Steel turned to the OOD. “At two miles, I want you to turn to port and start circling clockwise. Let’s see if we can get a rise out of whatever it is.”

For the next hour Manchester held its distance, waiting for a change in the signal sonar had first picked up, searching the frequency spectrum with the ESM gear for any kind of electronic radiation that might indicate a trap, and staring through four-foot seas for any sign of their quarry.

Nothing.

“Prepare to surface,” Steel said as he returned to the control room from his fourth visit to sonar. He, too, had to agree that the signals seemed to be manmade. If there were anything out there waiting patiently to trap him, there had to be a man there also — and who was crazy enough to bob around out here in the middle of nowhere with the specific intent of attacking Manchester? He had to agree with Simonds that it made sense to first find out exactly what this mysterious “present” really was as he gave the order to surface.

Scampering up the ladder toward the top of the sail, Steel called back, “Stand by to dive until I say otherwise. And catch me before I hit the deck.” Ben Steel prided himself in clearing the ladder faster than any other C.O. in the fleet. The man came down from the top of the sail like a rock.

Manchester’ s captain, OOD, and a lookout emerged into a cool, gray day. Dark water surged against the black hull, washing across the deck with a brilliant contrast of white foam. The submarine rolled easily in the swell.

They were greeted by a vast, vacant nothingness as the three sets of binoculars swung across the horizon. There were no birds in the middle of the Pacific to greet an object that had not been there a moment before.

“Change course toward the contact,” Steel ordered, his binoculars fixed just a little ahead of the port beam. He tapped the lookout on the shoulder. “Keep your glasses right where mine are and—”

“I’ve got a light, Captain!” the lookout interrupted.

“Right.” Steel had seen the Bash an instant before. “I’ve got the same thing. Don’t bother trying to read it. Scan either side now to see if there’s anything else out there.” He pushed the button for control, “I need someone on that light off the bow.”

“We’ve already got it, sir. Wait one.”

While the signal light continued to blink back at them, the three men on the bridge, inherently suspicious of everything, scanned the horizon for any indication of life other than the blinking light.

“Come on,” Steel shouted into the speaker. “I need a reading.”

“Must be one of ours, sir,” Simonds’s voice answered.

“What do you mean?” The captain was impatient.

“Message is a bit rough. Basically it says — ’what’s keeping you?’“

“Exactly?”

“Negative, sir. That’s what makes us think it’s ours. Actual light says — ’what the fuck’s keeping you?’ He’s repeated it twice. The Russians don’t have a sense of humor like that.”

“I can see someone in a wetsuit, Captain.”

“Right, I’ve got him now. Christ, no raft, no nothing. Just a life vest … I think. Let’s get a rubber boat and crew on deck on the double,” Steel called down. “No telling how long he’s been out there.”

The OOD maneuvered Manchester within a hundred yards before two sailors cast off in the boat. When they came back alongside, three more men were there to haul the half-numb figure aboard and assist him down into the control room.

Twenty minutes later, even before the diving officer had leveled the boat at four hundred feet, Steel called his executive officer to his stateroom, where the Navy SEAL had delivered his message. “Plot this on the big chart, Peter, and bring us to a course to the center of that sector. Flank speed.” His face was grim as he studied the person who had delivered the message. The man had parachuted from a plane into the Pacific with not a sign of life for thousands of miles. He’d been in the water for more than eight hours.

There were other SEALs from his unit on the same lonely assignment, each hoping that a submarine would find them so they might deliver a message that could save the lives of 160 men aboard another boomer — and possibly maintain the thread that held the fragile American triad together.

It would have been next to impossible for the General Secretary to convene the entire Soviet Defense Council without the U.S. becoming aware of the matter even before the meeting was adjourned. There were too many individuals in Moscow willing to sell tidbits of apparently boring, useless information — such as the whereabouts of high-ranking officials on a given day. After all, what did it matter to the average person whether these men were in their offices or talking together in a large room? But it did make a difference to intelligence specialists. If too many of these powerful men were known to be attending a Kremlin meeting, then something vital had to be up. No one knew better than the General Secretary that it would be insanity to reveal anything like that to the United States at this stage.

Quite simply, the Russians were afraid that the Americans would assume any meeting of a number of members of the Defense Council would be an admission of culpability in the disappearance of the U.S. ballistic-missile submarines.

Truthfully, the few Russians involved had no idea at this stage whether Wayne Newell’s mission had met with success. The patrol sectors for Alaska and Nevada had been furnished. After that the plan’s success would be wholly dependent on Wayne Newell’s abilities. It was quite possible they would not know until the Americans gave it away themselves, if they were foolish enough to do so. There had been no method of confirmation established to report the sinkings, if and when they occurred, because that would violate the security of the system. It was deemed too easy by Kremlin experts for someone on Pasadena to become curious if any odd message was sent, and doubly so if it were intercepted. It would have to be American reaction that would confirm Newell’s success. There would be nothing if he failed.

So instead of the members of the STAVKA of the Soviet Supreme High Command gathering for a meeting that might be known about within hours in Washington, the General Secretary called upon only the Minister of Defense, the Chairman of the KGB, and the Chief of the Main Political Directorate. They often met during a given week, and there was nothing suspicious about their coming together on this day.