She’@ losing all her air. Same range and bearing, but she’s going down now. Straight down”
“Oh, Christ” Keyser swore again, ripping the headphone! off. He hit the comms switch. “Dean, surface the boat. Emergency practices”
“Aye, Skipper.
A billion points of light sparkled on the deep blue of the Mediterranean as the Motor Vessel Stephos raced east into the rising sun. She was a French-built hydrofoil, and when she rose up out of the water on full plane she was a sight to see. Capable of speeds approaching fifty knots, at this moment she was doing nearly that, leaving behind a creamy but curiously flat wakeshe was beautiful, her lines sleek, her hull and superstructure all white except for the huge red crosses on her port and starboard sides. Her expansive forward deck, however, was cluttered with what appeared to be big crates, all marked LEBANESE RELIEF ORGANIZATION. In actuality, the crates were a sham; they served to hide the Tomahawk missile securely cradled to her hastily assembled launching rack.
“Within ten minutes” Kurshin had been assured by KGB Captain Ivan Akhminovich Grechko, who skippered the Stephos. “We can have the crates stripped away, the missile raised and fired”
“You have done a fine job” Kurshin said. Kurshin, Grechko, and Makayev had gone below to the captain’s cabin where they sat around a low coffee table on which was spread a chart depicting the entire eastern Mediterranean from Greece to Israel. Grechko stabbed a blunt finger on the chart at a point fifty miles north of Crete. They were just passing the eastern end of the island.
“We’ll make the Carpathos Strait just south of Rhodes within the next ninety minutes. Puts us out in the open Med for the run to the north side of Cyprus” Kurshin had been intently studying the chart. He looked up. Grechko and Makayev were watching him. “What time”
“We should be around the island Cape Andreas late this afternoon, and in position off the Syrian coast before nightfall”
Kurshin thought about it a moment. “We’ll reduce speed later today, perhaps around noon” he said. “But I’ll leave that up to you. The point is I don’t want to close with the coast before nightfall”
“That makes sense” Grechko nodded his agreement. “And then what, Comrade Colonel” Makayev asked. “We launch the missile, scuttle this boat, and take the auxiliary to the coast just north of Jeble where we’ll be picked up and flown immediately to Tbilisi”
“Why Georgia” Grechko asked.
“There isn’t much there except for peasants, factory workers, and old women. “Because we’re going to have to be hidden”
“For how long”
“I don’t know. Perhaps for a long time” “Because of the target” Makayev asked. “Yes, Niki, because of the target”
“Where” Kurshin sat back. He decided that it was going to be a pleasure killing this bastard. “What if I said Tel Aviv” The color drained from Makayev’s face, but Grechko was grinning. “That would teach those Jews a lesson” the KGB captain grunted. He was a roughshod man, with absolutely no class. He was ex-navy, though, and knew what he was doing here. “But you can’t be serious, Comrade Colonel” Kurshin had kept his eyes on Makayev. He shook his head. “We are not going to hit a civilian target”
He sat forward again and drew the chart a little closer.
“Here” he said, pointing. “En Gedi”
“What is there” Makayev asked.
“Israel’s stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Their only nuclear weapons” Makayev licked his lips. “They’d be deep underground. Beyond the damaging power of that missile, I think”
“You’re correct. But the nuclear blast will contaminate the surface for a lot of years to come, rendering their weapons inaccessible. Grechko was grinning again, his face like a death’s head. “Destroyed by an American weapon. That is rich” “But there’s more, isn’t there” Makayev said. “What do you mean” Kurshin asked. “There are some politics involved “
“You are a naval officer, Captain Makayev. Let’s just keep it at that, shall we”
“I don’t like this”
“I don’t care” Kurshin said coldly. “What time do we launch” Grechko asked softly. “Midnight. We’ll set it and the scuttling charges on a timer, giving us enough time to get clear. The missile will launch, and within sixty seconds the charges in the hull will blow and the Stephos will go to the bottom” Along with all but one of her crew, Kurshin thought.
Two miles west of the city of lrdkiion, on Crete’s north coast, the US. Navy’s SOSUS control center was housed in a low cement-block building, adjacent to a small paved airstrip.
Normally only a dozen men were stationed at the tiny station, but that number had more than tripled with the arrival of the CINCMED, Admiral Delugio, and his staff. An hour ago, McGarvey and an intensely worried Trotter had flown down from Rome. They stood now, facing the admiral, his intelligence officer, Malcolm Ainslie, and Frank Newman, the lieutenant the Pentagon had sent out, across the situation table.
“That’s it, thendelugio said heavily. The flash message from the Baton Rouge had just been relayed through Gaeta. He passed it across the table to McGarvey. “God only knows what happened out there, but it looks as if your job is done”
“Are they sure it’s the Indianapolis” McGarvey asked as he quickly scanned the message. But then he had the answer. “Yes” Delugio said.
300638ZJUL TOP SECRET FM: USS BATON ROUGE TO: COMSUBMED
A. INDIANAPOLIS BROKE UP BELOW 2500 FEET AT 0449 Z THIS DATE. LAT. 35–40.1 N, LON. 22–11.8 E.
B. SONAR DETECTED LOS ANGELES-CLASS FOOTPRINT DIVING ON A COURSE OF 183.
C. SONAR DETECTED NUMEROUS SOUNDS OF HULL COMPRESSION FAILURE.
D. DEBRIS ON SURFACE DEFINITELY CAME FROM USS INDIANAPOLIS.
DESCRIPTIONS AND SERIAL NUMBERS TO FOLLOW TEXT.
E. IT IS BELIEVED THAT ALL HANDS WERE LOST.
McGarvey looked up from his reading. “She was headin south? Any possibility the Baton Rouge was wrong”
“No” Delugio said. “But at least you were correct in one thing, McGarvey. The Indianapolis was definitely not heading for the Black Sea” “Nor Israel” Ainslie said. “Admiral, how long before we can have the Pigeon On station” Lieutenant Newman asked.
“Two days before we’ll know anything. But it doesn’t matter now The politics are for the president to sort out. But the crew of the Indianapolis are all dead”
“There were only six of them” McGarvey said. “Plus Kurshin”
“It’s the proof Washington needed. And with that small a crew it’s no wonder they lost control of the boat” Delugio shook his head. “The bastards. At least they lost”
“I wonder ” McGarvey muttered half under his breath as he studied the map board that formed the surface of the situation table. The others were talking, but their words flowed around him.
The Indianapolis had been tracked by the SOSUS network as she emerged from the Malta Channel about forty hours ago, and then she had disappeared. It had given her plenty of time to pass Crete and come very near Israel, though from what he had been told about the ship’s nuclear missiles they could have been fired from nearly anywhere in the Mediterranean. The Tomahawk had a range of more than seventeen hundred nautical miles. From the spot where she had been hijacked off the coast of Italy to En Gedi was barely twelve hundred miles. Kurshin would have had plans for his escape once the missile was fired. It had taken them this time to get ready But the Indianapolis had been heading south, not east, and she had been diving. A mistake on the Russian crew’s part? Or, as the admiral suggested, had the boat simply gotten away from them?