"Supposedly we have proof that it's all a put-up job, but we don't need to know what that evidence is. The problem is that a lot of countries are buying this charade, at least publicly."
"Yeah, I love that. I want you to refine your estimate of the threat from Soviet subs and aircraft on a continuous basis. I want information about the smallest change in what they have at sea the moment you get it."
"What's the sounding?" McCafferty asked quietly.
"Fifty feet under the keel," the navigator answered at once. "We're still well outside Russian territorial waters, but we start approaching real shoals in twenty miles, skipper." It was the eighth time in half an hour that he had commented on what lay ahead.
McCafferty nodded, not wanting to speak, not wanting to make any unnecessary sound at all. The tension hung in the attack center of the Chicago like the cigarette smoke that the ventilators would not entirely remove. Looking around, he caught his crewmen furtively disclosing their states of mind with a raised eyebrow or a slightly shaken head.
The navigator was the most nervous of all. There were all sorts of good reasons not to be here. Chicago might or might not have been in Soviet territorial water, itself a legal question of no small complexity. To the northeast was Cape Kanin; to the northwest, Cape Svyatoy. The Soviets claimed the entire region as an "historic bay," while the United States chose to recognize the international twenty-four-mile closure rule. Everyone aboard knew that the Russians were more likely to shoot today than request a decision under the International Law of the Sea Convention. Would the Russians find them?
They were in a bare thirty fathoms of water-and, like the great pelagic sharks, nuclear attack submarines are creatures of the deep, not the shallows. The tactical plot showed bearings to three Soviet patrol craft, two Grisha-class frigates and a Poti-class corvette, all specialized antisubmarine ships. All were miles away, but they were still a very real threat.
The only good news was a storm overhead. The twenty-knot surface wind and sheets of falling rain made noise that interfered with sonar performance-but that included their own sonar, and sonar was their only safe means for getting information.
Then there were the imponderables. What sensing devices did the Soviets have in these waters? Might the water be clear enough that a circling helicopter or ASW aircraft could see them? Might there be a Tango-class diesel boat out there, moving slowly on her quiet, battery-powered electric motors? The only way they'd learn the answer to any of those questions was the metallic whine of a torpedo's high-speed propellers or the simple explosion of a falling depth-bomb. McCafferty considered all these things, and weighed the dangers against the priority of his Flash directive from COMSUBLANT:
Determine at once the operating areas of REDFLT SSBNs.
That sort of language gave him little leeway.
"How tight is the inertial fix?" McCafferty asked as casually as he could.
"Plus or minus two hundred yards." The navigator didn't even look up.
The captain grunted, knowing what the navigator was thinking. They should have gotten a NAVSTAR satellite fix a few hours ago, but the risk of detection was too high in an area crawling with Soviet surface craft. Two hundred yards, plus or minus, was fine accuracy by any rational standard-but not while submerged in shallow water off a hostile coast. How accurate were his charts? Were there unmarked wrecks out there? Even if his navigational data were completely accurate, quarters would be so tight in another few miles that a goof of two hundred yards could ground them, damaging the submarine... and making noise. The captain shrugged to himself. The Chicago was the best platform in the world for this mission. He'd done this sort of thing before, and he couldn't worry about everything at the same time. McCafferty took a few steps forward and leaned into the sonar compartment.
"How's our friend doing?"
"Continuing as before, skipper. No changes at all in the target's radiated noise level. Just toolin' right along at fifteen knots, dead ahead, no more than two thousand yards off. Pleasure cruise, like," the sonar chief concluded with no small irony.
Pleasure cruise. The Soviets were sortieing their ballistic missile submarines at intervals of one sub every four hours. Already a majority of them were at sea. They had never done that before. And all seemed to be heading east-not north and northeast as they usually did to cruise in the Barents or Kara seas, or most recently under the arctic ice cap itself. SACLANT had learned that piece of information from Norwegian P-3 aircraft patrolling Checkpoint Charlie, the spot fifty miles offshore where Soviet submarines always submerged. Chicago, the nearest sub to the area, had been sent to investigate.
