Майкл Ридпат - Launch Code

Just like everyone else.

The captain handed the mic to Robinson who repeated the message word for word. The crew would only follow launch orders if they had been given by both the captain and the XO, his second-in-command.

Immediately a loud bong, bong, bong reverberated through the boat. The general alarm. The submarine became alive with quiet, controlled movement, as more sailors squeezed into the already crowded control room.

This was the nerve centre of the boat. The captain stood on a raised metal platform beside the ship’s two periscopes, the ‘conn’. In front of him stood the diving officer overseeing a large ballast control panel and two young sailors gripping control columns with which they adjusted the submarine’s attitude and direction. To the left and right of the room were panels of lamps, switches, buttons and monitors, and a small navigation plotting station with stools and a chart stand. The overhead was a mess of pipes, tubes, wires, microphones and intercom handsets. To the men quietly busying themselves, each wire, each lamp, each switch was familiar, as was its role in the smooth operation of the submarine. Everyone was wearing blue ‘poopy-suit’ coveralls: khaki belts for officers and chiefs, blue for sailors.

‘Can you believe this, Bill?’ Lars muttered quietly.

‘No.’ Part of him couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe what the order meant. But what did it mean?

‘Did you catch that target package?’ Lars whispered. ‘That was East Berlin. Moscow, Leningrad and East Berlin. That doesn’t make any sense. Why East Berlin? That’s gonna flatten West Berlin too.’

‘Yeah, I saw that.’

‘Well? Why? What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Bill. Part of him was trying not to think about it. To follow protocols precisely. To do what he was supposed to do.

‘It’s the exact same target package we were given in that drill three weeks ago.’

‘Yeah, I recognized it,’ said Guth.

Bill and Lars were more than shipmates, they were friends. They had graduated in the same class from the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and had both joined the Blue Crew of the Alexander Hamilton on the same day.

They had talked about this, about the order to launch nuclear weapons, many times.

Lars stepped forward. ‘Captain?’ Lars was the same height as his commanding officer, but slighter. Usually the captain appeared calm and relaxed in the most stressful of situations, but now the tension showed in his clenched jaw and hunched shoulders.

His sharp eyes darted to the junior officer. ‘Yes, Lieutenant da Silva?’

Lars swallowed. ‘The target package makes no sense, sir. Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin. It will destroy West Berlin. All those US troops stationed there. The civilian population.’

Bill was shocked at what Lars had said. It wasn’t up to a junior officer to question launch orders. That was not part of the protocol.

The captain’s eyes narrowed. Bill could feel the tension rising in the control room.

The captain paused. Paused rather than hesitated. He was taking Lars’s comment seriously.

‘The target package may not make sense to us, Lieutenant da Silva. But it is a properly formatted order. Our duty is to obey it, not to discuss it.’

Lars persevered. ‘And it’s the same target package we received three weeks ago.’

‘It is,’ said Driscoll.

‘Isn’t it possible that this could be a repeat of that exercise EAM sent in error?’

If this had been an exercise, Driscoll would have dismissed Lars from the control room with a crushing reprimand. And Bill knew that’s what the rule book said he should do.

But this wasn’t an exercise. Commander Driscoll was listening. And thinking. Double-checking his own assumptions.

The whole control room was listening too.

‘The exercise target package may have been selected because the NMCC knew it was likely to be used. And now they want us to use it.’

‘But why?’ said Da Silva. ‘Why East Berlin?’

‘We don’t know. But we’re not supposed to know. XO?’

He turned to Lieutenant Commander Robinson. Unlike Bill or Lars, the XO had to agree with the launch orders, or nothing would happen.

Robinson was taller than his captain, balding, with intense dark eyes under thick eyebrows. This was his first patrol on the Alexander Hamilton , but already the junior officers and the crew respected him. As did Commander Driscoll.

‘It is a properly formatted order, sir. And, as I explained before, in my opinion the likelihood of a Soviet first strike in the current situation is high.’

Robinson had come straight from a desk job at the Pentagon, where he had seen things that had troubled him. Things that he had passed on to the captain and the other officers in the wardroom the night before.

‘Very well. I have listened to your concern, Lieutenant da Silva, but we have a valid order, which we will execute.’ The captain grabbed a mic. ‘Weapons, conn. Shift target package to SLBM three-six-one-five-five-slash-four. This is the captain.’

Driscoll handed the mic to Robinson. ‘Shift target package to SLBM three-six-one-five-five-slash-four. This is the XO.’

‘But, sir.’ Lars moved closer to the captain. ‘We should go to periscope depth and check the EAM. What if it is an error, sir?’

The captain’s eyes focused on the junior officer, burning with authority through the lenses of his spectacles. ‘Lieutenant da Silva, you know that’s against all operating procedures. And for very good reason. Now get back to your post.’

There were Soviet fast-attack submarines in the Norwegian Sea, constantly on the lookout for American and British boomers. It was a fruitless task, because the only real way the Soviet submarines could find the Americans was by listening for them, and since vessels like the Alexander Hamilton glided slowly and silently hundreds of feet below the surface, the Russians never heard anything.

While submerged at patrol depth, the Hamilton could only receive radio communications, not transmit. To request confirmation of the Emergency Action Message, the Hamilton would have to rise to periscope depth and announce to Soviet listening stations exactly where she was. If indeed a nuclear war was breaking out, then any nearby Soviet attack submarine would swoop on the Hamilton and torpedo her before she had a chance to launch her birds. Which was why operating procedures forbade the course of action Lars was suggesting.

Lars stood his ground, struggling to control his agitation. ‘Captain. We must check that message. If the message is an error and we launch those three missiles, the Soviets will retaliate and there will be a full-blown nuclear war. Our country will be obliterated. The world will be obliterated.’

Driscoll’s response was rapid and firm. ‘Lieutenant da Silva. You will not question my orders. Either you go back to your post right now, or I will have you relieved. Do I make myself clear?’

Lars blinked. ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ He turned away.

Bill, too, turned, to make his way down to his post in the missile control centre. The captain called after him. ‘Lieutenant Guth!’

Bill stopped at the compartment exit, and Driscoll moved over to him, speaking in a low tone. ‘Lieutenant Guth, unlock the small-arms locker and fetch me a sidearm. I have a feeling I may need it.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

As assistant weapons officer, Bill was one of two men who had keys to the small-arms locker. The other was the chief of the boat, the master chief petty officer who was at that moment the diving officer, directing the submarine’s manoeuvres.

Bill’s brain was tumbling as he made his way aft to the locker. Lars had a point.