In Washington certain hawks favored sending a carrier battle group into the Norwegian Sea immediately. That would show the Russians how much the U.S. regarded such threats. The final decision was reached without consulting many of the doves, who would opt to trust the Soviet withdrawal agreement and in return would stay to the south of the Arctic Circle for the time being. The doves might have had more influence if American intelligence hadn’t been able to trace a withdrawn Soviet tank battalion back to a railroad siding no more than twenty miles south of Murmansk. Since that city was less than a hundred miles from the Norwegian border, it was less than a two-hour trip by high speed tank. In the final analysis, testing the Soviets was necessary, but wiser heads agreed that the sacrifice should be minimal.
Moscow’s decision was no easier. Would the destruction of a single ship, when it crossed that invisible line, justify the chances of retaliation? They could not back down, nor could they stand tall before the world for what most likely would amount to an assassination of a small ship. The debate within the Kremlin consumed no less time than that in Washington. When Soviet intelligence intercepted orders directing an American marine amphibious unit to a point near the Aleutian Islands for transfer, concern increased. Though the orders made little sense, the security surrounding the directive was in conjunction with the orders issued to U.S. submarines destined for the Arctic. The message was also limited to exactly the same high-level individuals in the U.S. involved with that mysterious submarine.
They had no choice but to sink any American ship that crossed that line.
Carol Petersen climbed up through the aft hatch onto Imperator’s deck. She paused for a moment, looking down the vast expanse of rounded black hull before crossing the gangway to the dock with a tired smile on her face. For a woman whom none of the crew would speak to, she still smiled a great deal. Carol decided soon after reporting that it would accomplish nothing to be equally rude. Instead, she had a cheery greeting for everyone and became a favorite among the yard workers. She managed to make coveralls look neat and appealing with her efficient, short brown hair, brown eyes, and high cheekbones; and there was always a trace of makeup, even at the end of a long day. When she smiled, her eyes sparkled.
But she was tired now. The engineers had been conducting manual and visual checks in the after engine spaces and three times she had to override the computer’s emergency alarm. She continued to run headlong into invisible lines she couldn’t cross and rules that wouldn’t bend where she was concerned. Now she learned to her dismay that naval engineers maintained an inbred distrust for safety checks other than their own. There was no possible way she could convince them that the master computer, Caesar, was as closely in touch with their machinery as they were — for twenty-four tireless hours a day and with an unerring capability of reporting the tiniest flaw, one unnoticeable to a man, within milliseconds.
She would be going to sea in this behemoth and she relished the idea, especially since she was breaking another tradition. She could accept the shunning now, as long as the men would eventually come to realize one inevitable fact. That neither Imperator nor Snow nor the crew could get along without her.
In the weeks that followed, the final events careened irretrievably into place. A small guided-missile frigate in the reserve force was dispatched toward the Arctic Circle. Admiral Andy Reed designated the rendezvous point for the screening group of submarines that would eventually join Imperator. She possessed the firepower of a carrier battle group and was capable of landing marines on the north coast of Norway if that became a necessity.
Admiral Abe Danilov, much to his dismay, received final orders that would send him away from his Anna. He would take command of a hunter/killer group of attack submarines in Polyarnyy. It was a foregone conclusion that the American submarine preparing to depart the Washington coast would transit the Arctic Ocean for Europe’s Northern Flank, and Danilov was considered the best man to intercept it. Before his departure, he was called into the office of the commander in chief of the Soviet Navy. His old friend reviewed the behind-the-scenes negotiations of the past few weeks, emphasizing their futility. Now, the preservation of the Arctic as a Soviet domain for their ballistic-missile force appeared to rest on Abe Danilov’s shoulders.
Fahrion rolled sharply to starboard, her bow plunging deep into the Atlantic. Green water swept back over the deck of the little guided missile frigate, swirling about her launcher before the high sharp angles of her bow reappeared. The ship shuddered, rising against tons of water gullying back on either side of the deckhouse. Heavy spray leaped to the pilothouse windows. The miserable, freezing lookouts, drenched within seconds of stepping out to the open bridge, ducked heads as the water lashed about them.
“Combat has a bearing on that contact, Captain.” The voice of the officer of the deck — the OOD — was steady. “That type of signal belongs on those big Russian bombers, but they’re jamming us like hell.”
“No other signals yet?” the captain inquired casually. He had told his officers that their training mission had been altered by Washington, that they had been designated for a special mission that could be hazardous. But he could tell them nothing beyond that. The original Soviet warning concerning the frigate’s voyage had been delivered verbally to the White House by the Soviet ambassador—Fahrion must reverse course. There had been no public dissemination of the threat in either Washington or Moscow. The Kremlin would not announce that they were about to annihilate a sacrificial cow in international waters any more than Washington would admit that the ship’s fate might already have been sealed without opening it up for debate on Capitol Hill. Soviet resolve had to be tested. Both sides were well aware of that. The threat had not been an idle one. Its impact on superpower strategy could be immense.
“Nothing yet, Captain. Should they be searching any particular band?”
The captain had looked it up the night before in the privacy of his sea cabin. “J-band. Just tell them to search J-band for now.”
When the OOD relayed the request to combat, he overheard a voice in the background mutter that J-band was missile-homing radar. But he said nothing to the captain. The watch standers held on tightly as Fahrion rolled heavily from side to side, continuing to dig her bow deep into the trough before shaking the water off like a puppy.
For the captain, each minute grew more agonizing as he awaited the inevitable. Everything that he could possibly do to protect his ship had been done in drills the previous day. There was little defense available to these ships, but he’d promised himself that everything in his power would be attempted to get his crew and himself home safely to their families. This cruise had begun innocently enough as an annual two weeks at sea, a training period for reservists. There had been no bands or parades as they pulled away from the pier at Newport. Though a training cruise was odd this time of year, most of them had been doing this for years and it was an enjoyable change from civilian life.
“Captain.” A voice from combat echoed out of the speaker above his head. “We have contact with a J-band radar… it’s steady.” There was a pause. “Captain, it appears to be a homing device… but the book says what we have seems to be a Soviet missile. I’m checking the book again.”