“Say no more. That broad,” Snow added hastily, “can do whatever you say she can and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
“Don’t bring her up again,” Reed concluded. From the outset, he anticipated Snow’s contempt for a woman on a submarine. He was no different than any other submariner, maybe a little more explicit now that it was a fact of life. Carol Petersen was responsible for the design of Imperator’s computer. She had named it Caesar (“What better name for the machine that controls Imperator, soon to be the emperor of the seas?”). But no matter what her qualifications were — even mother of the computer — no submariner accepted the idea of a woman at sea with them. Most of the crew were navy types. They ran the reactor, controlled the weapons systems, and stood the watches. The only civilians were systems specialists, like Carol Petersen, who so far had been treated with disdain.
Later that day, as they went through the stacks of work orders they’d been numbering one to ten in importance, Snow looked up, his eyes as clear and positive as ever, and stated, “I’ll bet we’ll go under the ice right away, Andy. No time to get the feel of her before someone tries to sink us. I want to be so ready…” Then his voice drifted off.
Reed knew how much Snow had grown to love that monster of a ship. That was another reason they’d given him permission to talk Hal Snow into coming back. Not only was there no submariner out there with the know-how to take on this job — the best had been promoted and were anchored to desks — none of them could handle a ship and a crew quite like Snow. If he was a lousy administrator stuck in his rank forever, he was the optimal commanding officer. Some of the brass hated to take him back in after they’d passed him over for promotion and driven him out, but he was the one man for the job. None of them could disagree. The navy worked in strange ways in peacetime.
As Reed and Snow determined how they would prepare Imperator for sea, senior flag officers in a room not too far away from their own struggled with another problem. They were now rescheduling assignments for attack submarines in New London and Norfolk and Charleston on the East Coast and San Diego and Pearl Harbor on the West Coast based on direct orders from the White House to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
While some of the submarines would remain on assignments in other parts of the world, many would be directed to arctic waters — some as decoys, but most of them to counter the threat of Soviet ballistic-missile submarines lurking under the ice. It was considered by the White House to be a valid response to a valid threat from the Kremlin.
The orders were issued at the highest threshold of security, based purely on a need-to-know basis. Even Admiral Reed had yet to be included in these plans. Unfortunately, there was limited knowledge of the sophisticated Soviet intelligence network within the naval communications system. Penetration by the KGB had taken a generation of operatives, but it was superb. Before many of the squadron commanders reported their units ready for sea, this shift in strategy was already being analyzed in the Kremlin. They also were aware the mystery submarine was preparing for sea and intuitively they assumed it would be directed to Europe’s Northern Flank.
Abe Danilov knew more about submarines than any other admiral in the Soviet Navy. He also was considered without a doubt the expert on American submarine strategy and tactics. No decisions were made without first briefing Danilov and probing his mind for a response. He understood challenges and he knew when there was a bluff.
‘They’re not bluffing this time. They’ve no choice. The weakest segment in their defense system is to the north, over Canada. With our SSBNs sitting up there under the ice, they see a significant threat.” He turned to face Admiral Chernavin, his immediate superior. “If I was in their position, I would do exactly as they have done. They’ve no choice,” he repeated again, his dark brows knit together so that curly, maverick white hairs projected at odd angles above his eyes.
The discussion continued through the morning. Options were considered, some tabled, some dropped, until they finally came back to what Chernavin knew they should have done much, much earlier. “What would you suggest, Admiral Danilov?”
The heavy eyebrows shot up. He’d been getting progressively more tired as the useless discussion continued and he knew eventually they would ask him. “You’ve already come up with much of the answer. You said yourself,” he said, indicating his chief of staff, Captain First Rank Sergoff, “that there are only two doors to the Arctic for the Americans. Nothing can go through the Bering Strait without being tracked. Since you can’t sink them, pick them up one by one and follow them as they enter the Arctic Ocean.” He shrugged. “Simple enough.” Then he looked at Chernavin again, raising his dramatic eyebrows. “The North Atlantic is a different matter, eh?”
Admiral Danilov’s heavy features presented a menacing appearance at times like this. He was taller than many submariners of his era, but was still under six feet. He’d entered the service when no man over six feet was accepted on those small diesel boats. Because he had little neck to speak of, his head appeared too large for his body. Danilov was husky — wide shoulders, heavy but not fat trunk, and arms that seemed to strain at his uniform seams. His powerful, stubby fingers were a lie to the rest of his body, for they were as nimble and quick as any quartermaster laying a course on a chart. Danilov’s face was full and square, and many said he looked enough like Brezhnev to have been his brother. That in itself was enough to contribute to his reputation. But beneath this gruff, bearlike aspect was a superb tactical mind.
Admiral Chernavin waited silently for the other to continue. He was familiar with the dramatics and knew Danilov loved the audience. Let him enjoy it now.
“You can’t very well stop them from going up through the Labrador Sea or the Denmark Strait or the Norwegian Sea now, can you? That would be the devil’s own time.” He chuckled. He drew a deep breath and waited until all eyes seemed to be fixed on his own. “I guess you should tell them they can’t go up there.” He enjoyed the silence that greeted his response. “Since we don’t have the ability to stop them any other way, I think that’s by far the best idea.”
“Can you tell us how we ought to go about that?” Admiral Chernavin asked, amused by his own response, for he knew of no other answer either. Unlike most of the others around the table, he knew that Danilov was not only deadly serious, but was absolutely correct.
“That’s for the politicians to figure out, Vladimir. I’m a submariner and I think I’ll keep it that way. I’d much rather retire and go live in my dacha than be a politician and die of a heart attack too young.”
Another younger admiral, one who was not a submariner and had designs on someday becoming a politician, inquired, “How would you convince them that they ought to listen to a suggestion so wild?”
“By making a deal with them. They love deals.” Danilov would much rather have them make a deal for the time being. He had no desire to go to sea in the near future. His wife was seriously ill and he wanted to be at her side.
It was Admiral Chernavin’s responsibility to carry Danilov’s suggestion to the Kremlin and explain that it was the only solution that the best naval minds had been able to develop. He hadn’t the least idea what kind of deal could be made but, as Danilov had explained, that was up to the politicians. The Soviet Navy had strong feelings that the evolving crisis had been created by the politicians.