"No, sir. This dude's playing it awful cool, sir."
You poor brave bastard, O'Malley thought to himself. The smoke float atop the contact was about burned out. He dropped another. After rechecking his tactical display he moved to a position one thousand yards east of the contact, hovered fifty feet above the surface and deployed the dipping sonar.
"There he is," the petty officer reported. "Bearing two-six-eight."
"Hatchet, Hammer. We're ready for your VECTAC. Take your steer from Romeo."
Control of the British helicopter's course came now from Reuben James's radar, which steered it onto a precise northerly course. O'Malley watched the Lynx approach, checking to make sure the wind wasn't driving him off his own position.
"You will drop your charges one at a time, on my mark. Stand by, Hatchet."
"Standing by." The British pilot armed his depth charges and came forward at ninety knots. O'Malley lined up the blinking lights with the smoke float.
"Charge one-Mark-mark! Charge two-Mark-mark! Get clear!"
The Lynx pilot needed no encouragement. Scarcely had the second depth charge fallen free when the helo leaped upward and raced northeast. Simultaneously, O'Malley yanked up on his collective control to bring his delicate sonar transducer out of the water.
There was an odd flash of light from the bottom, then another. The surface of the sea turned to foam that leaped into the starry sky. O'Malley closed in and switched on his landing lights. The surface was churned with mud, and... oil? Just like in the movies, he thought, and dropped another sonobuoy into the water.
The bottom reverberated with the rumbles from the depth charges, but the system fiItered them out and locked in on the higher frequency sounds. They heard escaping air and rushing water. Someone aboard the submarine might have hit the ballast controls in a vain attempt to blow the submarine to the surface. Then there was something else, like water dropped on a hot plate. It was a moment before O'Malley had it figured out.
"What's that, skipper?" Willy asked over the intercom. "I never heard that before."
"The reactor vessel's ruptured. You're hearing a runaway nuclear reactor." God, what a mess that'll be this close into shore! he thought. No more diving on the Doria for a few years... O'Malley switched to the radio circuit. "Hatchet, this is Hammer. I copy collapse noises. We score that one as a kill. Do you claim the kill, over?"
"Our fox, Hammer. Thanks for the steer in."
O'Malley laughed. "Roger that, Hatchet. If you want the kill, you also get to file the environmental-impact statement. Out."
Aboard the Lynx, pilot and copilot exchanged a look. "What the devil is that?"
The two helicopters returned in loose formation and made a pass over both the British and American frigates to celebrate their kill. It was the second for Battleaxe, and Reuben James would now paint half a submarine on the side of her pilothouse. The ships recovered their helicopters and turned west for New York.
MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.
Mikhail Sergetov embraced his son in the Russian way, with passion and kisses to welcome him back from the front. The Politburo member took his son's arm and led him to his chauffeured Zil for the drive into Moscow.
"You've been hurt, Vanya."
"I cut my hand on some glass." Ivan shrugged it off. His father offered him a small glass of vodka, which he took. "I haven't had a drink in two weeks."
"Oh?"
"The General does not permit it in his command post," Ivan explained.
"Is he as good an officer as I thought?"
"Perhaps a better one. I've seen him in command at the front. He is a truly gifted leader."
"Then why haven't we conquered Germany?"
Ivan Mikhailovich Sergetov had grown up while his father had climbed the Party ladder nearly to the top, and he had often seen him switch in a moment from affable host to abrasive Party apparatchik. This was the first time it had ever happened to him, however.
"NATO was far readier than we had been led to expect, father. They were waiting for us to come, and their first mission of the war-before we had even crossed the border in force-came as a rude shock." Ivan explained the effects of Operation Dreamland.
"We were not told it was that bad. Are you sure?"
"I've seen some of the bridges. Those same aircraft raided a dummy command post outside Stendal. The bombs were falling before we knew they were there. If their intelligence had been better, I might not be here."
"So it's their air power?"
"That's a major part of it. I've seen their ground-attack fighters cut through a tank column like a harvester through a wheatfield. It's horrible."
"But our missiles?"
"Our missile troops practice once or twice a year, firing at target drones that plod along in a straight line up where everyone can see them. The NATO fighters fly between the trees. If the antiaircraft missiles on either side worked as well as their makers said, every airplane in the world would have been shot down twice over by now. But the worst thing of all are their antitank missiles-you know, just like ours, and these missiles work all too well." The younger man gestured with his hands. "Three men in a wheeled vehicle. One driver, one loader, one gunner. They hide behind a tree at a turn in the road and wait. Our column comes into view and they fire from a range of-say two kilometers. They're trained to go for the command tank-the one with the radio antenna up. As often as not the first warning we have is when the first weapon hits. They fire one more and kill another tank, then race away before we can call down artillery fire. Five minutes later, from another spot, it happens again.
"It's eating us up," the young man said, echoing the words of his commander.
"You say we are losing?"
"No. I say that we are not winning," Ivan said. "But for us that is the same thing." He continued with the message from his commander and saw his father settle into the leather seat of the car.
"I knew it. I warned them, Vanya. The fools!" Ivan gestured with his head to the driver. His father smiled and made a dismissive gesture. Vitaly had served Sergetov for years. His daughter was now a doctor because of the Minister's patronage, his son safe in the university while most of the young men in the country were under arms. "Oil expenditures are twenty-five percent above predictions. That is, twenty-five percent above my ministerial predictions. They are forty percent above the Defense Ministry's predictions. It never occurred to anyone that NATO aircraft would be able to find our hidden petroleum storage facilities. My people are reevaluating national reserves even now. I am to receive the interim report this afternoon if it's ready on time. Look around, Vanya. See for yourself."
There were hardly any vehicles in view, not even trucks. Never a lively city, now Moscow was grim even to Russian eyes. People hurried along half-empty streets, not looking around, not looking up. So many men were gone, Ivan realized. So many of them would never return. As usual his father read his thoughts.
"How bad are casualties?"
"Dreadful. Far over estimates. I do not have exact numbers-my posting is intelligence, not administration-but losses are very bad."
"This is all a mistake, Vanya," the Minister said quietly. But the Party is always right. How many years did you believe that?
"Nothing can be done about that now, father. We also need information on NATO's supplies. The data that gets to us at the front is over-processed, shall we say. We need better data to make our own estimates."