"As quickly as you can. By that time we should have at least one more submarine to assist you. They'll stay roughly twelve hours ahead of your estimate speed of advance, eliminating any opposition they find. Once you reach the icepack, you're on your own. Our chaps will be there only as long as it takes to reach the pack. After that they have other duties to perform. We expect that Ivan's ASW groups will come after you-no surprise there, is it? We'll try to maintain pressure south of Bear Island to tie down as many as we can, but speed will be your best defense in this case."
The skipper of USS Boston nodded. He could run faster than the Russians could hunt.
"Further questions?" asked Commander, Submarines, Eastern Atlantic. "Good luck, then. We'll give you all the support we can."
McCafferty leafed through his briefing papers to check for the firing orders, then tucked the ops orders into his back pocket. Operation Doolittle. He and Simms left together. Their submarines were at the same quay. It was a short, quiet drive. They arrived to see Tomahawk missiles being loaded, in Chicago's case into the twelve vertical tubes installed forward of the pressure hull in the submarine's bow. Boston was an older boat and had had to offload some of her torpedoes to make room for them. No submarine captain is ever happy offloading torpedoes.
"Don't worry, I'll back you up," McCafferty said.
"You do that. Looks like they're almost finished. Be nice to have one more beer, wouldn't it?" Simms chuckled.
"See you when we get back." Simms and McCafferty shook hands. A minute later both were below, seeing to the final arrangements for going back to sea.
The Sikorsky Sea King helicopter was a tight fit on the frigate's helo deck, but for casualties the rules were always bent. The ten worst cases, all scald/burns and broken limbs, were loaded aboard after the helo was refueled, and Morris watched it lift off for the beach. The captain of what was left of USS Pharris put his cap back on and lit another cigarette. He still didn't know what had gone wrong with that Victor-class. Somehow the Russian skipper had teleported himself from one place to another.
"We killed three o' the bastards, sir," Chief Clarke appeared at Morris's side. "Maybe this one just got lucky."
"Reading minds, Chief?"
"Beg pardon, sir. You wanted me to report on some things. The pumps have just about dried things out. I'd say we're leaking ten gallons an hour at the crack on the lower starboard corner, hardly worth talking about. The bulkhead's holding, and we got people keeping an eye on it. Same story with the tow cable. Those tugboat guys know their stuff. The engineer reports both boilers are fully repaired, number two still on line. The Prairie Masker is operating. The Sea Sparrow is working again in case we need that, but the radars're still down."
Morris nodded. "Thank you, Chief. How are the men?"
"Busy. Kinda quiet. Mad."
That's one advantage they have over me, Morris thought. They're busy.
"If you'll pardon me saying so, skipper, you look awful tired," Clarke said. The bosun was worried about his captain, but had already said more than he was supposed to.
"We'll all get a good rest soon enough."
"We show one bird lifting off," the watch officer told North American Aerospace Defense Command. "Coming out of Baikonur Kosmodrome on a heading of one-five-five, indicating a probable orbital inclination of sixty-five degrees. Signature characteristics say it's either an SS-11 ICBM or an F-1-type space booster."
"Only one?"
"Correct, one bird only."
A lot of U.S. Air Force officers had suddenly become very tense. The missile was on a heading that would take it directly over the central United States in forty to fifty minutes. The rocket in question could be many things. The Russian SS-9 missile, like many American counterparts, was obsolete and had been adapted as a satellite booster rocket. Unlike its American counterparts, it had been originally designed as a fractional-orbital-bombardment system: FOBS, a missile that could put a 25-megaton nuclear warhead into a flight path mimicking that of a harmless satellite.
"Booster-engine cutoff-okay, we show separation and second-stage ignition," the colonel said on the phone. The Russians would freak if they knew how good our cameras are, he thought. "Flight path continues as before."
Already NORAD had flashed a warning to Washington. If this was a nuclear strike, National Command Authority was ready to react. So many current scenarios began with a large warhead exploded at orbital height over the target country, causing massive electromagnetic damage to communications systems. The SS-9 FOBS system was tailor-made for that sort of thing.
"Second-stage cutoff... and there's third-stage ignition. Do you copy our position fix, NORAD?"
