"Yes, sir." Dobrynin felt sick. He showed nothing, however, in his face. Strelbitski was standing close by his side, and the eyes of every man in the communications compartment were on him. "Of course. It will be done according to your orders."
"Excellent." Karelin's voice nearly purred. "I am counting on you, Comrade Captain. Do not let me down."
"The order decodes as "Sink the Typhoon, sir."
Montgomery nodded. It was as he'd feared. "God in heaven."
"There's more."
"What is it, son?"
"It says, 'Radio intercept indicates Typhoon will launch on own city about 1530 hours local time. Prompt action necessary to prevent Russian conflict going nuclear." It's signed 'Scott,' Captain."
"I concur, sir," a second communications chief said. The message had been decoded, as required, by two different men in the communications suite.
It was now being presented to the Captain and the XO.
Montgomery looked at Harris expectantly. "Bob?"
"Authenticated, Captain."
"I concur. Well, if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says so, we'd better get on with it. God damn, but that's fast action for Washington, though. They must be shook to have acted that fast on this thing. Okay.
Reel in the cable. Let's clear for action."
"Aye, aye, Captain."
Backing out of the communications shack, Montgomery strode forward to his accustomed place in Galveston's control room/attack center. "Mr. Harris, what is our weapons status, please?"
"Tubes one through four loaded and ready to shoot, Captain. ADCAP Mark 48s, primed, hot and ready."
"Very well. Bring us onto a heading of zero-zero-five. Make depth one hundred feet. Bring us ahead slow."
"Come to bearing zero-zero-five, make depth one hundred feet, ahead slow, aye, sir."
"Weapons officer!"
"Yes, sir."
"I'll have the bow doors open, Mr. Villiers. But quietly.
Crank 'em open by hand."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Montgomery felt the deck tilt beneath his feet as Galveston swung around in a great, slow circle, then began descending once again into her element.
For most of his adult life, Richard Montgomery had trained for this moment, had dreamed about it, wondering whether he would be able to meet the test if and when the time finally came. He was an attack boat skipper, and one of the best. The Los Angeles attack submarine had been designed to handle many missions, but her most important, the one she'd been built for above all others, was to track and kill Russian boomers. In a nuclear war between East and West, America's survival might well depend on whether a few men like Dick Montgomery could take down monsters such as that Typhoon out there under the ice before they could target New York or Washington from their Arctic bastions.
As the threat of global nuclear holocaust had receded, Montgomery had assumed that his particular skills and training in tracking Russian PLARBs would never be called into play.
Submarines had been employed in numerous military actions through the last decade, from the Gulf War to the scrape last year with the Russians off Norway, but he'd thought the old game of stalking their boomers was over.
Evidently, he was wrong.
Would the Russians really launch on one of their own cities?
Washington seemed to think so, and it was not part of his job to question his boss's orders. Not long ago, a cruise missile from the Galveston had helped sink the Indian carrier Viraat, part of an action fought to stop the Indo-Pakistani war from going nuclear. The Gal's skipper then had been Gerry Hawkins. What had he thought of his orders at the time?
There were 150 men aboard the Typhoon out there, as opposed to thousands aboard the Viraat. Their deaths might save tens of thousands, even millions of lives if that PLARB could be killed before it loosed its deadly arrow.
But submariners share a special bond, no matter what flag they sail under. The shared experience of patrolling, month upon month, in the cold and unyielding night of the oceans where the slightest mistake can expose the entire crew to the implacable wrath of the submariner's real and constant enemy, the sea, somehow bypasses national boundaries, alien cultures, and even politics.
But not loyalties. Never loyalties. The submariner's devotion is to his boat, his shipmates, and his captain; the captain's devotions are to his boat, his men, and to the trust invested in him by the government he serves.
There was no question of disobeying those orders.
"Bow doors are open by hand, Captain," the weapons officer announced.
"We are ready to fire."
"Very well. Stand by." He took his place at the search periscope.
"Let's take her in nice and smooth, gentlemen.
Under the ice."
"Admiral Tarrant, sir? This just came out of decoding."
Tarrant accepted the flimsy from the communications officer, scanning it quickly. It was from Admiral Scott, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a few terse lines, it described Krasilnikov's radio broadcast, explained that the Russians were expected to launch a nuclear missile into their own homeland at or about 1530 hours, and said that the U.S.S. Galveston had been ordered to intercept and sink the Russian sub before it could launch.
Tarrant glanced at his watch. Less than thirty minutes. This was bad, very bad.
"Says here this broadcast from Moscow took place half an hour ago. Why the hell didn't we pick it up?"
"We got something, Admiral," the communications officer replied.
"Recorded it. Intelligence's got it now, but it might take a while to translate."
"God damn. The world could blow up around our ears while we're trying to translate a damned radio program. Okay." He picked up a nearby telephone handset and punched in a number.
"CIC", a voice answered. "Officer of the Watch Wilkins speaking."
"This is Admiral Tarrant. What's our current defense posture?"
"Alert state three, Admiral."
"Come to full alert. Pass the word to the rest of the battle force."
"Yes, sir. Uh… what is it, Admiral? An attack?"
"Son, we're just about to shove a stick square into the middle of a hornets' nest. Inside of thirty minutes, they're gonna be coming at us all out, and they're going to be looking for blood."
"Control room, Sonar."
"Captain here. Go ahead."
"Ice-breaking noises now at zero-one-eight. No target motion.
Range now within forty thousand yards."
"Very well. Helm, come right to zero-one-eight. Increase speed to ten knots."
"Steering right to zero-one-eight, increase speed to ten knots, aye, sir."
"Bring us up to two hundred feet."
"Coming to two hundred feet, aye, sir."
Montgomery did some fast calculations in his head. Extreme range for a Mark 48 Advanced Capability torpedo running at its top speed setting of fifty-five knots was seventeen and a half nautical miles, thirty-five thousand yards. That would give it a running time of just under nineteen minutes. He glanced at the clock on the attack center bulkhead. Damn! If he launched right now, it would still be a squeaker.
To delay longer would mean the torpedoes could not arrive until after the 1530 hours deadline. Would the Russian boomer launch anyway as soon as it heard the sound of the approaching ADCAP? That depended on its orders. It was equally possible the Russians would break off their missile run in order to maneuver. As long as they didn't fire that damned nuke…
"Weapons officer!"
"Weapons, aye."
"Fire one."