Ian Slater - WW III

“Hey, man,” said Thelman. “ ‘Tain’t a Dear John.”

David wasn’t so sure.

Across the world, an ocean and continent away, the mood in the control room of the USS Roosevelt was as tense as First Officer Peter Zeldman could remember it. What would “Bing,” Robert Brentwood, do? They were going up to a hundred feet for the third attempt to receive a burst message.

“Five hundred — four fifty — four hundred — three fifty…”

Robert Brentwood stood on the raised periscope island, both hands behind him on the guard rail, legs crossed, looking with quiet confidence across at the sonar, a lot of fresh sea noise coming in, but nothing that stood out in the clutter.

“One hundred, sir.”

“Very well. Roll out VLF aerial sixteen fifty.”

“VLF to sixteen fifty.”

They watched the VLF registering on the stern monitor relay screen as a white trace as the aerial, ready to receive anything on the three-to-thirty kilohertz band, extruded from Roosevelt’s stern pod, the long wire rising on buoys until it lay extended approximately eighteen to twenty feet below the surface of the sea.

“Begin the count,” ordered Brentwood.

“Five minutes and counting… four minutes thirty seconds…”

At ten seconds to go, the tense mood in control and throughout the sub had changed to a palpable gloom. Brentwood and his crew knew that in five or six hours they would be no more than sixty to eighty miles out of Holy Loch and would have to go up for a burst message. If none was received then, they would have to stay out with the assumption that the war had gone nuclear and that the Roosevelt, on Brentwood’s authority alone, would launch its six eight-warhead-tipped MX missiles aft of the sail at its preselected forty-eight targets in the Soviet Union.

“Wind her in,” said Brentwood calmly.

“Sir,” proffered Zeldman, “should we try HF?”

“Negative.”

Brentwood had already figured that one out; using the high-frequency aerial would mean taking the sub up farther so it could literally poke its stick HF aerial above the surface, the chance of receiving messages being much greater but more dangerous, as one penetration of the sea-air interface by the aerial could be recognized by Soviet satellite intelligence, if not intercepted by another Soviet sub. “Sticking your head out the front door” is what the crew called it, whereas with VLF you stayed submerged, not letting the enemy know where you were — the only potential giveaway a noisy VLF reel retraction or any other noise on the sub that might be picked up by the Russian subs or by their SOSUS networks. For this reason no radios were allowed without headphone attachments, and the cook could not even chop onions during silent running.

“Take her down to one thousand,” ordered Robert Brentwood.

“One thousand, sir.”

“Carry on, Ex. Resume zigzag.”

“Resume zigzag. Yes, sir.”

Brentwood asked the electronics officer if the failure to receive a VLF burst message could have anything to do with their own VLF aerial.

“I’ve checked it out, sir. It’s fine.”

Brentwood thanked him and quietly, calmly, addressed the whole watch, not using the PA system so as not to risk the slightest hull reverberation; the sound of the aerial retraction was risk enough.

“Right, you all know the situation,” Brentwood began. “Next attempt to receive burst message verification will be our last. If we do not receive any — if it has been a case of land farm knockout — we should be close enough to the Scottish coast on the final BMV station to elicit TACAMO recognition signals. But if not, then we must assume the Soviets have taken out both Holy Loch and Wisconsin transmitters and possibly the floating dry dock in the Loch itself. If we do not receive TACAMO, we will proceed north — get as close to Kola Peninsula as we can— and unload. Any questions?”

In the red glow, a blue denim sleeve, looking darker than it was, rose. It was one of the operators on planes control. “Turbulence during aerial layout indicates bad weather topside, Skipper. TACAMO aircraft might be grounded — or being jammed.”

“Believe we would have picked up jamming,” said Brentwood, turning to Sonar for confirmation. “That right?”

“Yes, sir. No jamming apparent.”

“All right,” continued Brentwood, “we’ll be close enough in so that even a relatively weak TACAMO signal or farm transmission should reach us. We might risk a quick HF exposure. But if we do not receive any signal, then our course of action is set.”

“Yes, sir,” said the planesman, but his face told Robert Brentwood he wasn’t happy.

No one was.

The salt night wind was stiff in his face, the smell of monsoon rain approaching, a peculiarly clean smell that he’d never experienced before, as Douglas Freeman started to berate himself, talking as if he were dressing down a besieged prizefighter between rounds. “Well — you saying God’s on their side. That’s as self-pitying a piece of shit as I’ve heard in a long time, Freeman. You need a good kick in the ass.” He gripped the railing, which narrowed sharply at the bow, the sea splitting open beneath him. “God helps those,” he told himself, “who help themselves, General!”

When he reached Banks’s cabin, his aide saw the sparkling impishness of a child in the general’s eyes. “Banks. God helps those who help themselves!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Al,” said the general, a mood of such excitement coming over him that the tenor of his voice grew more stentorian by the moment as he invited his aide out on the deck. The sea was becoming rougher all the time, but Freeman seemed oblivious to all around him as, leaning into the wind, he recalled what he termed “the fields of honor — Agincourt, the first English conquest of Normandy in the early fourteen hundreds, Waterloo, Gettysburg, the Somme, Normandy, Stirling’s brilliance with the long-range desert group, the eccentricity of Wingate, Patton, Heinz Guderian, Liddell Hart, Lawrence, Napoleon, Mount-batten.” He mentioned Mountbatten and Burma several times, and each war, he told Banks, was different, though the terror just the same. “Worst mistake you can make, Al,” he told Banks, “is to seduce yourself with history. Technology changes everything. Only the men are the same, and with new technology, even they change. You realize in the first two hours of the Arab-Israeli tank battles in Sinai, over ten percent were disabled. Men have never before been under such strain — not even in trench warfare. The sheer hitting power, mobility, means there’s nowhere to hide. No time for respite. You have to fight or die. Come with me, I’ve got something to show you.”

Captain Al Banks listened to the general’s plan carefully before he spoke. After hearing it, he thought that either General Freeman had a screw loose or was some kind of genius.

“You seem to know a lot about Pyongyang, General.”

“Yes I do,” said Freeman, in no mood for false modesty. “Blindfolded, I could take you through Pyongyang.” He paused. “You think I’m nuts?”

“General, I just hope you’re right.”

Freeman was grimacing as a huge cloud of spray enveloped the ship. “So do I, Al. So do I.”

“Sonar contact!” Roosevelt’s operator said. “Good bubbles, sir,” by which he meant the cavitation of the unidentified ship’s prop was very definite on the sound graph.

“Trawler?” suggested Brentwood as he grabbed the extra set of earphones.

There was no reply from the operator.

“Closing?” asked Brentwood