Robert Brentwood and the chief of the boat collided outside Roosevelt’s galley, the smoke so thick, they couldn’t see more than a few inches in front of them. But the fire was out, and a six-inch coil suction hose was rigged to the hatches to vent the smoke.
“Am I glad to see—” the chief began, but couldn’t continue, his coughing going into a dry retch.
“Come on, Chief,” said Brentwood. “Let’s get topside with everyone else.”
As the chief and his fire-fighting party emerged from the forward hatch, there was a smattering of clapping on the deck and the sound of several sailors being violently seasick in the heavy swells that were slopping over the Roosevelt’s deck. The moment his gas mask was off, Brentwood looked skyward and at the whitish silver of horizon between the sea and cumulonimbus that was piling up like bruised ice cream, heading farther away from them in the direction of the Bay of Biscay. “Officer of the deck.”
“Sir?” responded Zeldman.
“Soon as we clear this smoke, get everyone below. I’m going down to assess damage. Chief says our automatic scrubbers have had it, but we can break out crystals — run a few days on those. Even at three and a half knots, we should get to Holy Loch in another seven days. I think the water supply will—”
At the same time as the Roosevelt’s lookouts spotted them, Brentwood also saw the long line of more than thirty ships southeast of them, the sub’s surface radar not having picked them up because its circuit, like that for the passive underwater sonar receivers, had been shut down due to the fire. Once they got under way, the consoles would be operational.
Brentwood felt strangely calm yet vulnerable, the rolling deck twenty-five feet below him more than ever looking like some great whale pushed back and forth by the gray swells. On the other hand, there was the disadvantage that the sub’s position was almost certainly known now by satellite bounce-off, for even without infrared, their smoke trail had now spiraled thousands of feet above the Celtic Sea. It was an “unenviable situation,” as his father would have said wryly. Knowing that now he would almost certainly come under attack, Brentwood decided to rule out any thoughts of reaching home port at Holy Loch.
“We’ll set course for Falmouth,” he instructed Zeldman. “Even with our present drag-ass three and a half knots, we should make it in plus or minus fifty-five hours — a hell of a lot sooner than if we tried Holy Loch now we’ve been spotted.”
“Maybe no one’s picked us up yet,” said Zeldman.
“Right, Pete. And elephants fly.”
“Well,” said Zeldman, indicating the line of ships on the horizon, “we’ve received no fire from them.”
“Which is why we know they’re ours. They’re not the ones I’m worried about, Pete. It’s what we haven’t seen that concerns me.”
The lookout was reporting two Sheffield-class British destroyers in the horizon line, confirming Brentwood’s hunch.
“Very well,” responded Brentwood, and for a moment, seeing as their smoke was undoubtedly being picked up above cloud level by satellite, Brentwood elected to use the above-water high-frequency antenna for a quick transmit to SACLANT — Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic — via ACCHAN — Allied Commander Channel — to arrange for a tow as soon as possible to reduce their transit time to Falmouth.
For a moment it struck Brentwood that it was possible the war had ended between the time Roosevelt had been attacked by the Yumashev and now. The reply from SACLANT, decoded in seconds, immediately disabused him of any such notion. A tow could not be sent for at least four days, and Roosevelt was instructed by SACLANT, via sat bounce from Norfolk, Virginia, that she was to maintain her position and provide a defensive umbrella in the area for the convoy — now only seventeen hours from the port of Brest in the Bay of Biscay.
The war message stressed the DB pocket was so critically short of supplies that several squadrons of NATO’s Thunderbolts were waiting at Brest, unable to fly effective missions against the Russian armor because of the lack of thirty-millimeter depleted uranium ammunition. The message ended, “Imperative you give max assist to convoy. Convoy notified.”
“I thought,” said Zeldman, “the Royal Navy would have the Channel approaches bottled up.”
“Obviously not, old boy,” said Brentwood in a bad imitation of an upper-class English accent.
“Course,” added Zeldman, “the Russians will have come out from Kola, around the top.”
“Captain?” It was the chief. “We have three casualties aft. Lost ‘em in the smoke coming out.”
“All right, Chief. Take the tags, have a deck party put them by the hatches. Then back quick as you can.”
“Deck party to put casualties by the hatches. Aye, sir.” The chief didn’t hesitate. It might seem to others a cruel decision, but Roosevelt’s job was to fight, and she needed all tubes free for firing to help make up for her lack of speed and helm response time.
Zeldman was on constant lookout as the deck party heaved the body bags up through the hatches and laid them on the deck. They were in what the NATO sub captains called “Sarancha Gulch,” Saranchas being the fast, small missile boats operating from “Milch Cow” auxiliary mother ships. Highly maneuverable and bristling with surface-to-surface sixty-mile-range N-9 missiles and surface-to-air N-4 missiles, the boats were perfectly suited for this kind of last-minute attack around the Bay of Biscay and the other western approaches before the convoys reached Brest, or the relative safety of Land’s End, Falmouth, and the Channel.
As Zeldman came down the ladder into Control, he heard the hatch close behind him, a seaman beginning the holy litany of the dive. “Officer of the deck — last man down. Hatch secured.”
Zeldman took up his position as officer of the deck. “Last man down. Hatch secured, aye. Captain, the ship is rigged for dive, current depth one ten fathoms. Checks with the chart. Request permission to submerge the ship.”
“Very well, officer of the deck,” said Brentwood. “Submerge the ship.”
“Submerge the ship, aye, sir.” Zeldman turned to the diving console. “Diving officer, submerge the ship.”
“Submerge the ship, aye, sir. Dive — two blasts on the dive alarm. Dive, dive.” The wheezing sound of the alarm followed, loud enough for the crew in Control to hear but not powerful enough to resonate through the hull. A seaman shut all the main ballast tanks. “All vents are shut.”
“Vents shut, aye.”
A seaman was reading off the depth. “Fifty… fifty-two…fifty-four…”
One of the chiefs watching the angle of dive, trim, and speed reported, “Officer of the deck, conditions normal on the dive.”
“Very well, diving officer,” confirmed Zeldman, turning to Brentwood. “Captain, at one-thirty feet, trim satisfactory.”
“Very well,” answered Brentwood. “Steer four hundred feet ahead standard.”
Zeldman turned to the helmsman. “Helm all ahead standard. Diving officer, make the depth four hundred feet.”
They were just flattening out at 390 when Brentwood heard, “Sonar contact! Possible hostile surface warship, bearing two seven eight! Range, fifty-three miles.”
Brentwood turned calmly to the attack island. “Very well. Man battle stations.”
“Man battle stations, aye, sir,” repeated a seaman, pressing the yellow button, a pulsing F sharp slurring to G sounding throughout the ship.
Brentwood turned to the diving officer. “Diving officer, periscope depth.”
“Periscope depth, aye, sir.”
Brentwood’s hand reached up, taking the mike from its cradle without even looking. “This is the captain. I have the con. Commander Zeldman retains the deck.”
Beneath the purplish blue light over the sonar consoles, the operator advised, “Range fifty-two point six miles. Classified surface hostile by nature of sound.”
“Up scope,” ordered Brentwood. “Ahead two-thirds.”
“Scope’s breaking,” said one of the watchmen. “Scope’s clear.”
Brentwood’s hands flicked down the scope’s arms and, eyes to the cups, he moved around with the scope. On the Compac screen Zeldman could see the dot, moving so fast at forty knots, it had to be a hydrofoil.
Brentwood stopped moving the scope. “Bearing. Mark! Range. Mark! Down scope.” Above the soft whine of the retracting periscope Brentwood reported, “I hold one visual contact. Range?”
“Forty-four point five miles,” came the reply, placing the hostile forty-four miles northwest of Roosevelt, the convoy ten miles to the southeast. The sub was between them.
But Brentwood had a problem. To fire a cruise missile with its nuclear warhead was out of the question unless he wanted to start a nuclear war, and yet the sub’s state-of-the-art Mark-48 torpedoes had a maximum range of twenty-eight miles. With the hostile still over forty miles away, he would have to wait. To make matters worse, it was unlikely that the convoy had seen the hostile — their sonar not as good as the sub’s, their radar not picking up the hostile, which, because of its small size, would be lost in sea clutter.
“Range every thousand yards,” ordered Brentwood.
“Range every thousand yards, aye, sir. Range ninety-one thousand yards.”
“Ninety-one-thousand yards,” confirmed Brentwood. The hostile would have to close to at least forty-five thousand before he could fire. At its present speed, this would be in 14.7 minutes. However, it was now that Robert Brentwood showed why he had been chosen as the skipper of the USS Roosevelt. “Officer of the deck, confirm MOSS tube number.”
“MOSS in tube number two, sir.”
“Very well. Angle on the bow,” said Brentwood. “Port four point five.”
“Check,” came the confirmation.
“Range?” asked Brentwood.
“Ninety thousand yards.”
“Ninety thousand yards,” repeated Brentwood. “Firing point procedures. Master four five. Tube one.”
“Firing point procedures, aye, sir. Master four five. Tube one, aye… solution ready… weapons ready… ship ready.”
“Final bearing and shoot — master four five.”
The sonar operator announced the Roosevelt was now bearing three four nine. “Speed four.”
“Up scope!” ordered Brentwood. “Bearing, mark! Down scope.”
The firing control officer responded, “Stand by — shoot.”
“Fire,” said the shooter, pushing the lever forward.
The firing control officer watched the screen, the torpedo running, monitored. The tension in Control was palpable. No one spoke except for the sonar operator reading off the range, watching intently to see if the hostile would go for the bait of the MOSS — mobile submarine simulator — its sound disk having been altered, according to Brentwood’s orders, to duplicate the new sound signature of the Roosevelt following the Yumashev’s depth charge attack that had bent its prop.
The hostile vector was unchanged, the sonar operator now confirming its signature as that of a Sarancha hydrofoil-armament one thirty-millimeter multibarrel close-in gun, four surface-to-surface Siren antiship missiles, two surface-to-air N-4 missiles. Then suddenly its radar dot seemed to blur, as it changed course, heading to intercept the MOSS. It went to a small dot, then shuddered on the screen, the sonar operator announcing, “Hostile has fired surface-to-surface. Trajectory two seven four.”
The Siren was streaking toward the convoy.
Several hundred miles to the north, James G. Wilkins, having been arrested and brought to London for trial, now found himself standing in the dock in London’s Old Bailey, looking ashen-faced before a jury as he heard the verdict of “guilty.” He was convicted of fraud — the money he was stashing at home being “kickbacks” from several shipping companies whose “marine loss” claims, as the magistrate pointed out, “were assessed by Mr. Wilkins as being substantially higher than in fact they were.” The difference between the claim paid by the government to the shipping companies and the actual value of the goods lost had been split by what his lordship described as a “mutually convenient agreement between the defendant and various members of the mercantile establishment.”
Rosemary Spence was there out of some vague sense of responsibility toward young Graham Wilkins, who, although he had clearly charged his stepfather out of malice, and had been wrong about any spying, had nevertheless enabled the government to arrest and convict a war profiteer and to make an example of him.
The magistrate sent him “down” for three years and three on probation and commended Inspector Logan of the Oxshott, Surrey, Constabulary. Mrs. Wilkins looked relieved.
“More fun with the milkman now,” Melrose told Logan as they walked out of the central courts.
“I suppose so,” said Logan. “Can’t say I envy him. She seems a hard woman.”
“The son’s the hard one,” put in Perkins. “Didn’t even blink when the beak sentenced his old man.”
“Stepfather, though,” Logan corrected him. “Not his real pater.”
“Still,” put in Melrose, “you’d think he’d show some emotion. The schoolteacher — the Spence woman — she was more upset than anyone.”
“Well,” said Logan, “she’s the type. Worrywart. See it a mile away. Cool outside, but underneath — quite churned up, I expect.”
“Probably worried about her boyfriend,” commented Perkins. “Engaged to some Yank, I believe. Navy type.”
“Ah!” said Logan, as if that made everything clear. “Well then, that explains it. Separation and all. Bad days for the navy. Dicey business on the water. How about you, Melrose — you a sailor?”
“No, sir.” Actually, Melrose had done some sailing in his youth, but he was so shocked from Logan getting his name right at last, he didn’t really think about the question.
“You and I won’t be needed then,” said Logan knowingly.
Perkins glanced across at Melrose and shrugged.
“Ostend,” continued Logan. “That’s where we’ll be pulling them off this time. Nearest port to the pocket.”
“You think it’s that bad?” inquired Melrose.
“Yes I do, I’m afraid. That’s one thing I’ll say about old Professor Knowlton. He faces facts.”
“Professor Knowlton!” laughed Melrose. “Isn’t he the old bloke who keeps on about hair dryers? Conserving electricity on the home front, et cetera?”
“That ‘old bloke,’ as you so impudently call him, Constable, knows what he’s about. Mark my words.” Logan dropped his voice, looked around, and continued, “Just between you, me, and the gatepost, I can tell you all about that hair dryer business.”
“Oh—?” said Melrose, winking at Perkins.
“Yes,” said Logan. “Harriers!” He said it as if the word alone would explain all.
“Harriers?” said Perkins, willing to go along as he eyed two young beauties emerging from Barclay’s Bank.
“Yes. Going to be the RAF’s last defense, the way the Russians are knocking out our airstrips. You know how they put the wings on Harriers?”
“Stitch ‘em on, I should think,” answered Perkins.
“Don’t be bloody clever,” said Logan. “They’re made of carbon wafer, special epoxies, among other things. Stuck together. Found the same thing with the new models as with the original Harriers. The drying, I mean. Has to be done by hand, you see. It’s a craft — just can’t stamp them out like ruddy milk bottles.”
‘‘ You ‘re joking,” said Perkins.
“I most certainly am not. Without enough hair dryers, we don’t have enough Harriers. They’re more important to us than the Spitfire was in the last show.”
“Crikey,” said Melrose, “so the old blighter isn’t so potty after all?”
Logan eyed him irritably. “Just because you get to retiring age, Melroad, your brain doesn’t stop working.”
“Of course not — sorry, Inspector.”
Logan slowed as he neared the entrance to the tube station. “At the risk of sounding immodest, Melroad, you’ll note that this old ‘bloke’—” he pointed to himself “—wasn’t so dim that he couldn’t crack this Wilkins case.”
“No,” conceded Melrose. “You’re right there, sir.”
“Tooraloo,” said Logan heartily, heading down into the Temple underground station.
Melrose touched his cap in farewell, smiling and muttering to Perkins, “No, you silly old twit — you just nick villains instead of spies. Minor detail. I think I’ll get my name tattooed on my forehead. Think he’ll remember then?”
Perkins shook his head. “Doubt it, Melroad.”
The air raid sirens were starting up again, and people were running for the shelters. At the beginning of the war, they’d affected a traditional British calm and disdain for any panic, but this time it was very different — the rockets so fast, you had absolutely no idea where they would hit. “A bit like the old V-2s,” Logan had told him. “Only much worse.”
“Hang on!” Melrose called out to a couple of callow youths, almost running an elderly woman down in their eagerness to get below. Suddenly the underground sign vibrated, the railing below it shaking; people were falling, and in the distance, above the Mall, there was a high spume of brick and sandstone, now falling in a deafening hail.
“Bit close to the palace,” commented Perkins as they hurried, without trying to appear as such, into the shelter outside Blackfriars Station. “What do you think?”
“I think it was the palace.”
“Bloody ‘ell! They should have left London — like they were told.”
“What — and leave everyone else to take the shit while they’re nice and comfy up in Windsor? Not bloody likely. I’m no monarchist, mate, but that’s one thing I’ll say about old Charles. He’s no coward.”
Heading for Oxshott, the train Rosemary was on stopped near Wimbledon during the rocket attack. The engineers had found that the Soviet pilots always favored a moving train, assuming that because it was moving, it was carrying vitally needed supplies to try to stem the impending catastrophe in northern Germany. But Rosemary believed that the feet that the enemy pilots went after moving passenger or goods trains had less to do with strategic considerations than the fact that a moving target was more exciting to kill. The mere thought that Robert was at the center of such hazard at sea overwhelmed her, and when the conductor asked for her ticket and she discovered she’d lost it, she burst into tears. What made it even more terrible was that in that moment, she was sure she felt their baby move, which she knew was impossible so early in her pregnancy.
“Up scope,” ordered Brentwood. “Ahead one-third.”
“Scope’s breaking. Scope’s clear.”
In the scope’s circle Brentwood could see an orange speckle, one of the convoy’s screen destroyers afire, its crew abandoning ship. He swung the scope about and saw the Sarancha. At its full speed of sixty knots, its hull clear out of the water, foil-borne, the boat was obscured by a cocoon of spray, in weaving pattern, closing on the convoy. Behind it were three more.
Well, thought Brentwood, Mark-48s can weave, too. “Angle on the bow,” he said, “port, point four zero.”
“Check,” came the confirmation.
“Range?” asked Brentwood.
“Forty thousand yards.”
“Very well,” replied Brentwood. “Firing point procedures. Master four zero. Tube three.”
“Firing point procedures. Master four zero. Tube three, aye… solution ready… weapons ready… ship ready.”
“Final bearing and shoot — master four zero.”
A seaman announced, “Bearing three four one. Speed six.”
“Up scope,” ordered Brentwood. “Bearing, mark! Down scope.”
The firing control officer responded, “Stand by — shoot.”
“Fire,” came the confirmation as the shooter pushed the lever forward.
The firing control officer watched the screen, and confirmed the torpedo was running and being monitored. Roosevelt repeated the procedure three more times. One after another, the dots of the Saranchas on the screen swelled, then vanished. Because of Roosevelt’s interception, only five transports in forty were lost, the remainder safely reaching Brest.
As the gray dawn fog swirled about the Aleutians, scurrying over the spindrift like the cape of some primeval beast about to devour the islands, the fighting on Adak was confused and bloody.
Because of the natural amphitheater on the northern part of Adak Island formed by Mount Moffett and Mount Adagdak, only four hundred of the two thousand civilians and military personnel escaped injury. Those not killed outright by the blockbuster bombs used to destroy the runway, which filled the air with everything from auto- to fist-sized concrete fragments traveling at hundreds of miles an hour, fell victim to the cluster “Bee” bombs, which opened up midfall, releasing hundreds of smaller bombs, each in turn filled with thousands of razor-sharp steel darts. Filling the air with their distinctive buzzing sound like a swarm of bees, the darts sometimes would kill outright but more often than not inflicted terrible wounds. Kiril Marchenko, and others in the STAVKA responsible for efficient defense spending, favored the Bee bombs for such missions, for casualties in the field required many more support troops to transport and care for them than did corpses. And the Americans were notoriously obsessive about getting their wounded out to the nearest MASH field hospitals — all of which meant fewer troops who could actually man the front.
At first, the rugged terrain surrounding the base favored the survivors, for it was taking time for the Russian paratroopers to descend from the hillsides through the deep snow. But soon the terrain would work against the shell-shocked survivors of the Adak raid because their only means of escape was either eastward, through the six-mile valley between the mountains to Shagak Bay, or Kulak Bay immediately behind them to the west.
Only 63 of the 115-man marine company assigned to airstrip guard duty were still alive at dawn, and these moved out to intercept the paratroopers, but though the marines were superbly equipped, they had had no cause to be issued white battle coveralls. These weren’t the drill for guarding the runway at night, when the only danger had seemed to be sabotage from the sea — white coveralls on the darkened runway being perfect targets — and those they had in stock had gone up in flames in the bombing anyway.
As the sixty-three marines moved out east from Kulak’s C-shaped bay, the fighting was not yet at close hand. Indeed, most of the small-arms fire that the Adak CO had heard shortly after the bombing attack had fallen off during the night as the paratroops were presumably trying to form into a coherent force before attacking what was left of the base. Nevertheless, sniping had continued from the foggy mountainsides, and more than a dozen marines and civilians fell to this sporadic but deadly fire. In an attempt to use the thick, gray fog that was rolling down the sides of the mountains to their advantage, the sixty-three marines moved out a quarter mile west of the base to form a semicircular perimeter.
Meanwhile the CO of Adak was trying to assemble the civilian survivors as best he could down by the shore of Kulak Bay and to find enough boats that were still seaworthy enough to take them out beyond Sitkin Sound, through Asuksak Pass, and on to Atka Station a hundred miles to the east. Many of the women who had rushed out from the burning huts clad in no more than night attire were in the early throes of hypothermia, which only added to the commanding officer’s problems. As if this weren’t enough, Atka could not be raised on the radio by the communications officer, as the microwave repeaters on the island had been destroyed in the raid, along with the sea-to-shore SOSUS connections.
One of the mothers, whose children, oddly enough, were contentedly playing amid the ruins of the base, approached the commanding officer, asking him what she could do. The CO paused, not knowing what to tell her and, for want of anything helpful to say, directed her toward the MASH tent down by the bay’s edge, where dozens of casualties still lay awaiting attention from the overworked staff, many of whom were also injured.
“It’ll be a hell of a squash,” the communications officer reported to the CO after the woman had left. “I’ve done a quick check on the waterfront. Most of the fishing boats are holed.”
“We’ll just have to do the best we can. By now the boys on the Salt Lake City will sure as hell know we’ve been hit. Their combat patrols should keep those bastards busy. If we can hold out till they come, we should be all right.”
The communications officer didn’t say anything but thought maybe the CO should go down and join the line outside the MASH tent. Hell, even if the Salt Lake City sent every fighter they had, there was nowhere on Adak they could land now with the runway destroyed. Anyway, every marine left on the island — there wouldn’t be enough boats for them — would be a hostage. If the Tomcats bombed, they’d kill as many marines as Russians.
Suddenly the valley was filled with the staccato echoes of machine-gun fire — firefights breaking out as the marines engaged the Russian paratroopers. But the Russians had the overwhelming advantage in that the dark camouflage of the American marines’ uniforms, so ideal in the summer months on the wild, windswept islands, was disastrous for them now.
In a desperate defense, the marines began to dig in, but the SPETS had planned the operation with great detail, and soon a telltale shuffling sound in the air above them gave them only seconds warning of a murderous heavy mortar attack from the mountainsides.
Spumes of dirty snow leapt high in the air, and the screams of the wounded could be heard above the muffled thumps of a fire so concentrated that it was evident to the commanding officer as well as the hysterical civilians in the ruins of the base that they would soon be either killed or taken prisoner. A mortar bomb, exploding barely twenty yards from the MASH tent, sent a hail of shrapnel, killing two small children, one of the bomb’s fins slicing through the tent and decapitating a surgeon who had been in the final stages of suturing a stomach wound.
As a hospital corpsman and two others carried the doctor outside, the Wave in charge of nurses called out brusquely, “Brentwood, finish that suture, then lend a hand here.”
So busy she didn’t have time to be afraid, Lana moved quickly to take over the surgeon’s task, using the suture gun to finish up, then, turning the patient over to the junior nurses for postop, she turned to the next casualty in line.
“This one’s in a coma, Lieutenant,” said the corporal. “Some facial lacerations. X-ray shows a sprained wrist, but can’t find anything else. I’ve taped the wrist.”
Lana knew there wasn’t much she could do for the man, his face bloodied and dirty with gravel rash, his cheeks swollen. They could come out of a coma within twenty-four hours or stay in it forever. “Next one,” she called out to the medical corpsman. Quickly glancing at her watch and grabbing the admission sheet, she jotted down, “0814—superficial lacerations. Coma.”
The corporal reached for the dog tags from beneath the man’s flying suit. “Shirer—” he said. “Frank J.”
Lana suddenly felt immobile, aware only of his face, trying to see if it was him or merely the same name.
“All right, everyone,” boomed a chief petty officer. “Down to the wharf. We’ve got to get these wounded loaded fast as possible. We’re pushing off.”
“Load ‘em on what?” someone shouted.
“Whatever floats. We’ll do the best we can. Women and kids first, then the wounded. Let’s move!”
“Where the hell are we going, for God’s sake?” a frightened orderly asked.
“Anywhere,” said the petty officer, throwing open the flap of the tent. “One of the other islands nearby. All I know is the CO wants everybody down there on the double.”
“Watch that IV!” called out the head nurse, a saline pouch swinging wildly on its stand.
“Is he dead?” Lana heard someone say. “Lieutenant Brentwood! Did you hear me?”
“What — yes. Sorry, Major. No, he’s in a coma.”
“Then get him out with the oth—”
The MASH tent shook violently, and outside, Lana could hear the screams of wounded and children and return fire from the few marines who were left, and a shattering, ringing noise as the Russian heavy mortars, finding the range, began pounding the beach. Now she could see white figures moving in the gray fog through the smoking black remnants of the base. Russian paratroopers.