Peter Sasgen - War Plan Red

“Turning right—going after the decoys.”

Zakayev exhaled.

“Maybe that’s all he—” Litvanov said, only to be contradicted.

“Another torpedo! Active sonar! Port bow! Very close!”

“A bearing! Give me a bearing!” Litvanov exploded.

“One-one-two, Kapitan. Steady rate.”

“Bastard,” Litvanov hissed. “He’s not giving up.” He lurched forward. “Fire two decoys!” He spun toward the depth repeater and saw 110 meters. They were running out of water. “Level her out at one- twenty.”

“Kapitan, I’ve lost the first torpedo.”

“Never mind that one, where’s the other one—?”

A thunderclap and the K-363 leaped sideways. Litvanov collided with the main blow manifold and crashed to the deck on his back. Zakayev went down, too, but not before he saw a sheet of insulation fly off the hull on the port side of the CCP and shatter on deck. A moment later the CCP went black.

Zakayev, dazed, looked up and saw blue haze hanging in the air, smelled burning insulation, and heard the pop and fizz of a live cable arcing inside an electrical cabinet. The emergency battle lamps had cycled on.

He saw smoke. No, CO2 A sailor crunching over debris played a fire extinguisher over a sparking panel of gauges. Another sailor slammed tripped circuit breakers back into their seats with the heel of his hand. Somewhere, rushing water filled a void. Were they sinking? He didn't think so. His cammies and skin were dotted with bits of cork hull insulation and flakes of paint knocked off bulkheads and equipment

“Report damage!” Litvanov, standing, rubbing his backside, bellowed into the SC1.

Zakayev scrambled to his feet and brushed himself off. The pistol in his waistband had gouged his groin, but he ignored it. He pushed past sailors working to restore order and make repairs. He staggered forward, out of the CCP, into the narrow, smoky passageway in Compartment Three off which were the officers’ state rooms. He made way for two sailors rushing aft with tools. He heard someone shout. Then it was quiet.

The lights flickered, went out, then came on again. The acrid smell of smoldering rubber and phenolic resin stung Zakayev’s nostrils. He wiped his eyes and coughed into a fist. For a moment he thought he had gone too far but then realized he was facing the door to his state room.

He slid the door open on its track and stepped inside. A blade of light from the passageway knifed into the darkened room. He felt around on the bunk, still warm but empty. Heart hammering in his chest, Zakayev fumbled for the light switch over the small desk. He was terrified. And he had the memory. He saw his children in the garden in Grozny, their little bodies bled white, shredded by bullets from Russian PKMs. His wife, Irina, raped, beaten to death with rifle butts, her face unrecognizable. And he saw the girl scrabbling over the rubble in Grozny, clutching the album in one hand, reaching for his with the other. She had been crying, tears streaking her dirty cheeks.

Zakayev dropped to his knees. She was lying on her back, head tilted awkwardly to one side, an arm thrown back in a casual gesture. Like the day he had coaxed her out of the ruins in Grozny, she had been crying; miniature diamonds still clung to her long eyelashes and downy cheeks. But her dead eyes looking up at him saw nothing. A berry of dark red blood had pooled at the corner of her mouth. He wiped the blood away with a fingertip and put it on his tongue. He had always called her devushka— girl—even though her name was Irina.

The explosion had rattled the K-480 stem to stern and sent the sonar traces dancing off the monitors. They had watched torpedoes chasing decoys—four straight lines on the monitors—until the lines merged into one and then heard the explosion like rolling thunder and felt the bump from the shock wave.

“What do you think?” Abakov asked. “Did they nail her?”

“No breakup noises,” Scott said. “That May we saw hanging around the impact area will call in help. It’s going to be hot upstairs.”

“What do we do now?” Alex said. She’d gotten a second wind and had cheered when the torpedo detonated, thinking it had hit the K-363. Now she was subdued.

“What we don't do is try to send any messages. They'll pick up our burst. Plus, that May has a MAD stinger like our P-3Cs and can find us. And she probably has plenty of torpedoes left. And active and passive sonobuoys: Those babies are hard to avoid; they pick up everything. The one thing in our favor might be that the Russians don't know we’re here. So if they do pick us up, it may confuse them and give us a chance to break away.”

“But Zakayev and Litvanov know we’re here,” Alex said.

“Right. And they’re caught in a vise between us to the southeast and the Russians to the north. We can try to squeeze the K-363 into a box and, if the Russians don't interfere, finish them.”

“By interfere,” Alex said, “you mean if the Russians don't attack us too.”

“I don’t want to fight both sides,” Scott said.

“And I don’t want to get sunk by the Russian Navy,” Alex said.

Scott marked the position of the torpedo detonation on the chart. An ESM sweep confirmed that the May was flying over it in ever-widening circles hunting for her prey. Only a seemingly impenetrable wall of rain prevented Scott from getting a good look at the May when, on one of her passes over the target area, she hove into view for a moment over the horizon.

“The K-363 is somewhere east of the May’s flight circle. He needs deep water so he's not going to head west toward Gotland, where it’s shallow, not now. We’re going to ease due east and see what’s what. If we’re lucky, we'll pick him up maybe… here.” He stabbed the chart with a point on a pair of dividers.

Karl Radford sat stuck in traffic on Memorial Bridge. He could see cars backed up all the way to the exit ramp to Jefferson Davis Highway and beyond.

Grishkov. He’d barely been able to contain himself. There had been an attack, maybe a kill, but even so, it would take pressure off the president and that’s what Friedman wanted. Suddenly no one seemed to care about Scott, Alex Thorne, the Russian investigator Abakov, the crew of that Akula. Expendable. Ellsworth said Scott was a survivor. Maybe he’d prove it yet.

Radford checked his watch, then lifted his secure phone, waited a beat, and said. “Are we cleared through to St. Petersburg?”

“Stand by, sir.”

The familiar tone, then Friedman. “Morning, Karl. The President’s running late. What do you have?”

“Not much. We confirm what Grishkov said, that a Russian plane attacked a sub off Gotland, can’t confirm they killed it. We have nothing on thermal imagery other than the torpedo warhead’s detonation. Weather is giving us trouble with satellite coverage.”

“Go on.”

“We’ve also confirmed a report that a Russian plane, an Il-38 May like the one that attacked the sub, crashed off Saaremaa, Estonia. The Russians have diverted several ships to search for survivors.”

“How many planes does that leave for ASW patrol?”

“Only two Mays. The Be-12s are worthless for ASW, obsolete as hell. So arc the choppers. Their range is too short and they haven’t the loiter time necessary for searching.”

“And how many patrol craft?”

“Three Grishas. Three others are off searching for any survivors of that plane crash.”

“Grishkov told you this?”

“He knows we can tell what’s what. They have nothing to gain by denying it.”

“How sure are they that it was the K-363 that they attacked?”

“I would say reasonably.”

“What about Scott. Where’s he?”

“Haven’t heard from him.”

After a lengthy silence Friedman said, “What are the chances the Russkies nailed Zakayev?”