The sailor handed the captain a message form. THE SPECIAL JOB IS DONE, it read, and Morris noted that the man had taken the time to print it up on a standard message format so that no one would suspect what it meant. The Russians' accommodations were all bugged now. Morris dismissed his man with a nod and pocketed the form. His bosun had miraculously discovered two bottles of hard liquor-probably from the chiefs' quarters, but Morris knew better than to inquire-and these would find their way to the Russians tonight. He hoped the liquor would loosen tongues.
Morris didn't wave at the low-flying aircraft, but wanted to. The French Navy's patrol plane signaled that they were within range of land-based air cover. It would take a very brave Russian sub skipper to want to play games here, with a screen of French diesel subs a few miles north of the convoy lane and several ASW patrol aircraft forming a tricolored umbrella over the convoy.
The French had also sent out a helicopter to collect the Russian submariners. They were being flown to Brest for a full interrogation by NATO intelligence types. Morris didn't envy them the trip. They'd be held by the French, and he had no doubt that the French Navy was in an evil mood after the loss of one of its carriers. The tapes his crew had made of their conversations were also being sent. The Russians had talked among themselves, aided by the chiefs' liquor, and perhaps their whispered conversations had some value.
They were about to turn the convoy over to a mixed British-French escort force and take over a group of forty merchantmen bound for America. Morris stood on the bridge wing, turning every five minutes or so to look at the two half and one full silhouettes that the bosun had painted on both sides of the pilothouse-"No sense having some jerk on the wrong side of the ship missing them," the bosun had pointed out seriously. Their ASW tactics had worked fairly well. With Pharris as outlying sonar picket, and heavy support from the Orions, they had intercepted all but one of the inbound Russian subs. There had been a lot of skepticism on this point, but the tactic had worked, by God. But it had to work better still.
Morris knew that things would be getting harder. For the first trip the Soviets had been able to put no more than a fraction of their submarines into action against them. Those submarines were now forcing their way down the Denmark Strait. The NATO sub force trying to block the passage no longer had the SOSUS line to give them intercept vectors, nor Orions to pounce on the contacts that submarines could not reach. They would score kills, but would they score enough? How much larger would the threat be this week? Morris could see from their return route to the States that they were adding nearly five hundred miles to the passage by looping far to the south-partially because of the Backfires, but more now to dilute the submarine threat. Two threats to worry about. His ship was equipped to deal with only one.
They'd lost a third of the convoy, mainly to aircraft. Could they sustain that? He wondered how the merchant crews were holding up.
They had closed in on the convoy, and he could see the northernmost line of merchies. On the horizon a big container ship was blinking a light at them. Morris raised his glasses to read the signal.
THANKS FOR NOTHING NAVY. One question answered.
"So, there they are," McCafferty said.
The trace showed almost white on the screen, a thick spoke of broadband noise bearing three-two-nine. It could only be the Soviet task force heading for Bodo.
"How far out?" McCafferty asked.
"At least two CZs, skipper, maybe three. The signal just increased in intensity four minutes ago."
"Can you get a blade count on anything?"
"No, sir." The sonarman shook his head. "Just a lot of undifferentiated noise for the moment. We've tried to isolate a few discrete frequencies, but even that's all screwed up. Maybe later, but all we got now is a thundering herd."
McCafferty nodded. The third convergence zone was a good hundred miles off. At such ranges acoustical signals lost definition, to the point that their bearing to target was only a rough estimate. The Russian formation could be several degrees left or right of where they thought, and at this range that was a difference measured in miles. He went aft to Control.
