“Damn it! I knew I shouldn’t be so efficient. Next time I promise to be as incompetent as my peers.” Both men laughed, but it was short-lived.
“So, Admiral Komeyev, to what do I owe the honor of this call?”
“Bad news, I’m afraid. You see Nikolai, my intelligence staff believe the lost American submarine lies on the ocean floor just outside your doorstep, and that an American spy submarine will likely be coming to pay you a visit.”
Gorokhov drew a sharp breath; he didn’t believe what he had just heard. Stammering, he replied. “Yo… you’re joking, right? Please tell me you’re joking, sir?”
“I wish I were. There isn’t a lot to go on, but the Jimmy Carter pulled into the Groton sub base a couple of days ago, and the only thing that makes any sense is that she came to look for their lost submarine. Unfortunately, the defensive minefield around your construction project is the most likely cause for the loss of USS Toledo.”
“Dear God, that’s incredible! How did the Americans find out so quickly? The minefield was to be a defense against a preemptive attack. It was intentionally placed just inside the twelve-mile limit for that reason.”
“We don’t think they have a clear idea as to what is going on, Nikolai, at least not yet, but we have to prepare for the worst. I’m sending two attack submarines, Vepr and Kazan, to patrol off your defensive zone. What is the status of your fixed hydroacoustic sensor field?”
“They just finished the calibration of the last Sever modules yesterday,” grumbled Gorokhov. “We finally have a fully operational system monitoring the northern and southern approaches to the strait.”
“That’s good, Nikolai. Now, listen. Our two boats will be leaving within a day or two and should be in your area a few days later, so I think you’ll be well covered. Drill your Sever system operators hard, Admiral. They have got to be on their toes if the Carter does come north. She’s a Seawolf-class submarine, and I don’t think I have to tell you what a bitch of a time we’ll have in finding her.”
Gorokhov found himself nodding; he was well aware of the capabilities of America’s fourth-generation attack submarines. “I will begin additional training as soon as we’re done with this phone call. Is there anything else, sir?”
“Yes, Nikolai,” sighed Komeyev. “I’m briefing the president and the minister of defense in one hour; the president is going to ask what we are doing to speed up construction. I know what you’ve said before, what I need to know now is, are there any tricks up your sleeve that you or your project engineer haven’t already used?”
“I’m sorry, Admiral Komeyev, but we are moving as fast as we can. The cabling has been laid to the launchers and we’ve just started installing the electronics modules. We are on schedule, but I’m working my divers as hard as I can right now. If nothing else goes wrong, and the weather holds, we can start receiving the Drakon torpedoes for loading later this month. That’s a little ahead of schedule, but we can’t afford to have any problems, at all, from here on out. And you know as well as I just how unlikely that is.”
“I understand,” Komeyev replied. “Just do the best you can, and I’ll do what I can to keep President Fedorin off your backside. Good luck, Nikolai.”
“Thank you, sir, now if you’ll excuse me.”
The click came without a formal farewell, but Komeyev knew his friend was probably screaming orders to his staff at this very moment. Well, he’d alerted the Project Drakon commander; now all Komeyev had to do was figure out how he was going to deal with the dragon in Moscow.
“Pentagon officials have confirmed that the First Guards Tank Army, which entered Belarus a little over a week ago, has not deployed into their new bases as previously announced, but continued moving, right up to the border of Latvia and Lithuania. In addition, the Sixth Army in St. Petersburg has begun moving units southwest toward the border with Estonia.” Christine Laird paused to take a deep breath, as well as collect her thoughts. Within a matter of two weeks, the European border with Russia had been transformed into a powder keg, with both Russian and NATO officials now seriously talking about the possibility of armed conflict.
“Russian Federation President Ivan Fedorin has claimed the troop movements are precautionary and defensive in nature, to protect Russian citizens from unprovoked attack by NATO forces now building up in the Baltic States. Fedorin’s rhetoric has been especially acerbic since the collision of a Russian fighter with an Estonian F-16 on June twenty-fourth. In his latest speech to the State Duma given yesterday, Fedorin accused the Estonians of attacking a Russian Federation aircraft, in Russian airspace, a hostile act on the verge of war.
“The North Atlantic Council, the principal decision-making body in NATO, has vehemently denied this accusation, pointing to the fact that the Russian pilot was safely recovered from waters of Lake Peipus nearly ten kilometers on the Estonian side of the border. These latest troop movements within the Western Military District, when combined with rumors of similar redeployments in both the Southern and Central Military Districts, all point to a Russian military that is mobilizing en masse.
“President Lowell Hardy has offered, on numerous occasions, to meet directly with President Fedorin to try and resolve the issues that concern the Russian Federation. Fedorin, however, has blatantly refused to meet with Hardy, stating that he can’t work with a man that ‘murdered’ seventy-three Russian seamen on the submarine Gepard back in 2005 when Hardy was the commanding officer of the USS Memphis.
“Until President Hardy issues an apology for his actions, and pays compensation to the families, Fedorin will not even consider meeting with the American leader.”
7
DISCOVERY
The data Jimmy Carter’s crew brought back had been a revelation, critically important to many people, but taking them in several different directions.
Navy officialdom was occupied with deciding how much to tell Toledo’s families, without telling them too much. The civilian leadership was trying to figure out what Toledo’s loss told them about what was happening on Bolshevik Island. And James Perry’s job was to answer the pressing question of why the Russians were going to such great lengths to build a shore installation for a weapon that needed to be launched at sea.
In strategic terms, the Status-6 was slow, even slower than a manned bomber, and about as non-covert as a weapon could be. Its only strength was its virtual invulnerability once it was launched. That made it an excellent retaliatory or second-wave weapon. Whatever the strength of America’s ballistic missile defenses, now or in the future, they couldn’t touch a torpedo that swam at a hundred knots a thousand meters deep.
But putting it in a fixed launch site offered few advantages, and took away its greatest strength. Because Perry didn’t believe the Russians were blindingly stupid, he was determined to find out why they thought this basing concept was necessary.
The photos Carter had brought back provided a vital clue. One of the shots showed a section of pipe, more accurately a large cylinder, being handled by a crane. A junior analyst who worked for him, and who should have known better, had stated in a report that the tube’s size was “consistent with a Status-6 torpedo.” This was supported by a hatch on one end that could be used to load a weapon, and “different pipe fittings and connections that could be part of the launch mechanism.”