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Bartolomeo Mancuso was the son of a barber who closed his shop in Cicero, Illinois, every fall to hunt deer on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Bart had accompanied his father on these hunts, shot his first deer at the age of twelve and every year thereafter until entering the Naval Academy. He had never bothered after that. Since becoming an officer on nuclear submarines he had learned a much more diverting game. Now he hunted people.
Two hours later an alarm bell went off on the ELF radio in the sub’s communications room. Like all nuclear submarines, the Dallas was trailing a lengthy wire antenna attuned to the extremely low-frequency transmitter in the central United States. The channel had a frustratingly narrow data band width. Unlike a TV channel, which transmitted thousands of bits of data per frame, thirty frames per second, the ELF radio passed on data slowly, about one character every thirty seconds. The duty radioman waited patiently while the information was recorded on tape. When the message was finished, he ran the tape at high speed and transcribed the message, handing it to the communications officer who was waiting with his code book.
The signal was actually not a code but a ‘one-time-pad’ cipher. A book, published every six months and distributed to every nuclear submarine, was filled with randomly generated transpositions for each letter of the signal. Each scrambled three-letter group in this book corresponded to a pre-selected word or phrase in another book. Deciphering the message by hand took under three minutes, and when that was completed it was carried to the captain in the attack centre.
NHG JPR YTR
FROM COMSUBLANT TO LANTSUBS AT SEA STANDBY
OPY TBD QEQ GER
POSSIBLE MAJOR REDEPLOYMENT ORDER LARGE-SCALE
MAL ASF NME
UNEXPECTED REDFLEET OPERATION IN PROGRESS
TYQ ORV
NATURE UNKNOWN NEXT ELF MESSAGE
HWZ
COMMUNICATE SSIX
COMSUBLANT – commander of the Submarine Force in the Atlantic – was Mancuso’s big boss, Vice Admiral Vincent Gallery. The old man was evidently contemplating a reshuffling of his entire force, no minor affair. The next wake-up signal, AAA – encrypted, of course – would alert them to go to periscope-antenna depth to get more detailed instructions from SSIX, the submarine satellite information exchange, a geosynchronous communications satellite used exclusively by submarines.
The tactical situation was becoming clearer, though its strategic implications were beyond his ability to judge. The ten-mile move eastward had given them adequate range information for their initial three contacts and another Alfa which had turned up a few minutes later. The first of the contacts, Vic 6, was now within torpedo range. A Mark 48 was locked in on her, and there was no way that her skipper could know the Dallas was here. Vic 6 was a deer in his sights – but it wasn’t hunting season.
Though not much faster than the Victors and Charlies, and ten knots slower than the smaller Alfas, the Dallas and her sisters could move almost silently at nearly twenty knots. This was a triumph of engineering and design, the product of decades of work. But moving without being detected was useful only if the hunter could at the same time detect his quarry. Sonars lost effectiveness as their carrier platform increased speed. The Dallas’ BQQ-5 retained twenty percent effectiveness at twenty knots, nothing to cheer about. Submarines running at high speed from one point to another were blind and unable to harm anyone. As a result, the operating pattern of an attack submarine was much like that of a combat infantryman. With a rifleman it was called dash-and-cover; with a sub, sprint-and-drift. After detecting a target, a sub would race to a more advantageous position, stop to reacquire her prey, then dash again until a firing position had been achieved. The sub’s quarry would be moving too, and if the submarine could gain position in front of it, she had then only to lie in wait like a great hunting cat to strike.
The submariner’s trade required more than skill. It required instinct, and an artist’s touch; monomaniacal confidence, and the aggressiveness of a professional boxer. Mancuso had all of these things. He had spent fifteen years learning his craft, watching a generation of commanders as a junior officer, listening carefully at the frequent round-table discussions which made submarining a very human profession, its lessons passed on by verbal tradition. Time on shore had been spent training in a variety of computerized simulators, attending seminars, comparing notes and ideas with his peers. Aboard surface ships and ASW aircraft he learned how the ‘enemy’ – the surface sailors – played his own hunting game.
Submariners lived by a simple motto: there are two kinds of ships, submarines … and targets. What would Dallas be hunting? Mancuso wondered. Russian subs? Well, if that was the game and the Russians kept racing around like this, it ought to be easy enough. He and the Swiftsure had just bested a team of NATO ASW experts, men whose countries depended on their ability to keep the sea-lanes open. His boat and his crew were performing as well as any man could ask. In Jones he had one of the ten best sonar operators in the fleet. Mancuso was ready, whatever the game might be. As on the opening day of the hunting season, outside considerations were dwindling away. He was becoming a weapon.
CIA HEADQUARTERS
It was 4.45 in the morning, and Ryan was dozing fitfully in the back of a CIA Chevy taking him from the Marriott to Langley. He’d been over for what? twenty hours? About that, enough time to see his boss, see Skip, get the presents for Sally, and check the house. The house looked to be in good shape. He had rented it to an instructor at the Naval Academy. He could have gotten five times the rent from someone else, but he didn’t want any wild parties in his home. The officer was a Bible-thumper from Kansas, and made an acceptable custodian.
Five and a half hours of sleep in the past – thirty? Something like that; he was too tired to look at his watch. It wasn’t fair. Sleeplessness murders judgement. But it made little sense telling himself that, and telling the admiral would make less.
He was in Greer’s office five minutes later.
‘Sorry to have to wake you up, Jack.’
‘Oh, that’s all right, sir,’ Ryan returned the lie. ‘What’s up?’
‘Come on over and grab some coffee. It’s going to be a long day.’
Ryan dropped his topcoat on the sofa and walked over to pour a mug of navy brew. He decided against Coffee Mate or sugar. Better to endure it naked and get the caffeine full force.
‘Any place I can shave around here, sir?’
‘Head’s behind the door, over in the corner.’ Greer handed him a yellow sheet torn from a telex machine. ‘Look at this.’
TOP SECRET
102200Z*****38976
NSA SIGINT BULLETIN REDNAV OPS
MESSAGE FOLLOWS
AT 083145Z NSA MONITOR STATIONS [DELETED] [DELETED] AND [DELETED] RECORDED AN ELF BROADCAST FROM REDFLEET ELF FACILITY SEMIPOLIPINSK XX MESSAGE DURATION 10 MINUTES XX 6 ELEMENTS XX
ELF SIGNAL IS EVALUATED AS ‘PREP’ BROADCAST TO REDFLEET SUBMARINES AT SEA XX
AT 090000Z AN ‘ALL SHIPS’ BROADCAST WAS MADE BY REDFLEET HEADQUARTERS CENTRAL COMMO STATION TULA AND SATELLITES THREE AND FIVE XX BANDS USED: HF VHF UHF XX MESSAGE DURATION 39 SECONDS WITH 2 REPEATS IDENTICAL CONTENT MADE AT 091000Z AND 092000Z XX 475 5-ELEMENT CIPHER GROUPS XX
SIGNAL COVERAGE AS FOLLOWS: NORTHERN FLEET AREA BALTIC FLEET AREA AND MED SQUADRON AREA XX NOTE FAR EAST FLEET NOT REPEAT NOT AFFECTED BY THIS BROADCAST XX
NUMEROUS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT SIGNALS EMANATED FROM
ADDRESSES IN AREAS CITED ABOVE XX ORIGIN AND TRAFFIC ANALYSIS TO FOLLOW XX NOT COMPLETED AT THIS TIME XX
BEGINNING AT 100000Z NSA MONITOR STATION [DELETED] [DELETED] AND [DELETED] RECORDED INCREASED HF AND VHF TRAFFIC AT REDFLEET BASES POLYARNYY SEVEROMORSK PECHENGA TALLINN KRONSTADT AND EASTERN MED AREA XX ADDITIONAL HF AND VHF TRAFFIC FROM REDFLEET ASSETS AT SEA XX AMPLIFICATION TO FOLLOW XX
EVALUATION: A MAJOR UNPLANNED REDFLEET OPERATION HAS BEEN ORDERED WITH FLEET ASSETS REPORTING AVAILABILITY AND STATUS XX
END BULLETIN
NSA SENDS
102215Z BREAKBREAK
Ryan looked at his watch. ‘Fast work by the boys at NSA, and fast work by our duty watch officers, getting everybody up.’ He drained his mug and went over for a refill. ‘What’s the word on signal traffic analysis?’
‘Here.’ Greer handed him a second telex sheet.
Ryan scanned it. ‘That’s a lot of ships. Must be nearly everything they have at sea. Not much on the ones in port, though.’
‘Landline,’ Greer observed. ‘The ones in port can phone fleet ops, Moscow. By the way, that is every ship they have at sea in the Western Hemisphere. Every damned one. Any ideas?’
‘Let’s see, we have that increased activity in the Barents Sea. Looks like a medium-sized ASW exercise. Maybe they’re expanding it. Doesn’t explain the increased activity in the Baltic and Med, though. Do they have a war game laid on?’
‘Nope. They just finished CRIMSON STORM a month ago.’
Ryan nodded. ‘Yeah, they usually take a couple of months to evaluate that much data – and who’d want to play games up there at this time of the year? The weather’s supposed to be a bitch. Have they ever run a major game in December?’
‘Not a big one, but most of these acknowledgements are from submarines, son, and subs don’t care a whole lot about the weather.’
‘Well, given some other preconditions, you might call this ominous. No idea what the signal said, eh?’
‘No. They’re using computer-based ciphers, same as us. If the spooks at the NSA can read them, they’re not telling me about it.’ In theory the National Security Agency came under the titular control of the director of Central Intelligence. In fact it was a law unto itself. ‘That’s what traffic analysis is all about. Jack. You try to guess intentions by who’s talking to whom.’
‘Yes, sir, but when everybody’s talking to everybody –’
‘Yeah.’
‘Anything else on alert? Their army? Voyska PVO?’ Ryan referred to the Soviet air defence network.
‘Nope, just the fleet. Subs, ships, and naval aviation.’
Ryan stretched. ‘That makes it sound like an exercise, sir. We’ll want a little more data on what they’re doing, though. Have you talked to Admiral Davenport?’
‘That’s the next step. Haven’t had time. I’ve only been in long enough to shave myself and turn the coffee on.’ Greer sat down and set his phone receiver in the desk speaker before punching in the numbers.
‘Vice Admiral Davenport.’ The voice was curt.
‘Morning, Charlie, James here. Did you get that NSA-976?’
‘Sure did, but that’s not what got me up. Our SOSUS net went berserk a few hours ago.’
‘Oh?’ Greer looked at the phone, then at Ryan.
‘Yeah, nearly every sub they have at sea just put the pedal to the metal, and all at about the same time.’
‘Doing what exactly, Charlie?’ Greer prompted.
‘We’re still figuring that out. It looks like a lot of boats are heading into the North Atlantic. Their units in the Norwegian Sea are racing southwest. Three from the western Med are heading that way, too, but we haven’t got a clear picture yet. We need a few more hours.’
‘What do they have operating off our coast, sir?’ Ryan asked.
‘They woke you up, Ryan? Good. Two old Novembers. One’s a raven conversion doing an ELINT job off the cape. The other one’s sitting off King’s Bay making a damned nuisance of itself.’
Ryan smiled to himself. An American or allied ship was a she; the Russians used the male pronoun for a ship; and the intelligence community usually referred to a Soviet ship as it.
There’s a Yankee boat,’ Davenport went on, ‘a thousand miles south of Iceland, and the initial report is that it’s heading north. Probably wrong. Reciprocal bearing, transcription error, something like that. We’re checking. Must be a goof, because it was heading south earlier.’
Ryan looked up. ‘What about their other missile boats?’
‘Their Deltas and Typhoons are in the Barents Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, as usual. No news on them. Oh, we have attack boats up there, of course, but Gallery doesn’t want them to break radio silence, and he’s right. So all we have at the moment is the report on the stray Yankee.’
‘What are we doing, Charlie?’ Greer asked.
‘Gallery has a general alert out to his boats. They’re standing by in case we need to redeploy. NORAD has gone to a slightly increased alert status, they tell me.’ Davenport referred to the North American Aerospace Defense Command. ‘CINCLANT and CINCPAC fleet staffs are up and running around in circles, like you’d expect. Some extra P-3s are working out of Iceland. Nothing much else at the moment. First we have to figure out what they’re up to.’
‘Okay, keep me posted.’
‘Roger, if we hear anything I’ll let you know, and I trust –’
‘We will.’ Greer killed the phone. He shook a finger at Ryan. ‘Don’t you go to sleep on me, Jack.’
‘On top of this stuff?’ Ryan waved his mug.
‘You’re not concerned, I see.’
‘Sir, there’s nothing to be concerned about yet. It’s what, one in the afternoon over there now? Probably some admiral, maybe old Sergey himself, decided to toss a drill at his boys. He wasn’t supposed to be all that pleased with how CRIMSON STORM worked out, and maybe he decided to rattle a few cages – ours included, of course. Hell, their army and air force aren’t involved, and it’s for damned sure that if they were planning anything nasty the other services would know about it. We’ll have to keep an eye on this, but so far I don’t see anything to –’ Ryan almost said lose sleep over ‘– sweat about.’
‘How old were you at Pearl Harbor?’
‘My father was nineteen, sir. He didn’t marry until after the war, and I wasn’t the first little Ryan.’ Jack smiled. Greer knew all this. ‘As I recall you weren’t all that old yourself.’
‘I was a seaman second on the old Texas.’ Greer had never made it into that war. Soon after it started he’d been accepted by the Naval Academy. By the time he had graduated from there and finished training at submarine school, the war was almost over. He reached the Japanese coast on his first cruise the day after the war ended. ‘But you know what I mean.’
‘Indeed I do, sir, and that’s why we have the CIA, DIA, NSA, and NRO, among others. If the Russkies can fool all of us, maybe we ought to read up on our Marx.’
‘All those subs heading into the Atlantic …’
‘I feel better with word that the Yankee is heading north. They’ve had enough time to make that a hard piece of data. Davenport probably doesn’t want to believe it without confirmation. If Ivan was looking to play hardball, that Yankee’d be heading south. The missiles on those old boats can’t reach very far. Sooo – we stay up and watch. Fortunately, sir, you make a decent cup of coffee.’
‘How does breakfast grab you?’
‘Might as well. If we can finish up on the Afghanistan stuff, maybe I can fly back tomorr – tonight.’
‘You still might. Maybe this way you’ll learn to sleep on the plane.’
Breakfast was sent up twenty minutes later. Both men were accustomed to big ones, and the food was surprisingly good. Ordinarily CIA cafeteria food was government-undistinguished, and Ryan wondered if the night crew, with fewer people to serve, might take the time to do their job right. Or maybe they had sent out for it. The two men sat around until Davenport phoned at quarter to seven.
‘It’s definite. All the boomers are heading towards port. We have good tracks on two Yankees, three Deltas, and a Typhoon. Memphis reported in when her Delta took off for home at twenty knots after being on station for five days, and then Gallery queried Queenfish. Same story – looks like they’re all headed for the barn. Also we just got some photos from a Big Bird pass over the fjord – for once it wasn’t covered with clouds – and we have a bunch of surface ships with bright infrared signatures, like they’re getting steam up.’
‘How about Red October?’ Ryan asked.
‘Nothing. Maybe our information was bad, and she didn’t sail. Wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘You don’t suppose they’ve lost her?’ Ryan wondered aloud.
Davenport had already thought of that. ‘That would explain the activity up north, but what about the Baltic and Med business?’
‘Two years ago we had that scare with Tullibee,’ Ryan pointed out. ‘And the CNO was so furious he threw an all-hands rescue drill on both oceans.’
‘Maybe,’ Davenport conceded. The blood in Norfolk was supposed to have been ankle deep after that fiasco. The USS Tullibee, a small one-of-a-kind attack sub, had long carried a reputation for bad luck. In this case it had spilled over onto a lot of others.
‘Anyway, it looks a whole lot less scary than it did two hours back. They wouldn’t be recalling their boomers if they were planning anything against us, would they?’ Ryan said.
‘I see that Ryan still has your crystal ball, James.’
‘That’s what I pay him for, Charlie.’
‘Still, it is odd,’ Ryan commented. ‘Why recall all of the missile boats? Have they ever done this before? What about the ones in the Pacific?’
‘Haven’t heard about those yet,’ Davenport replied. ‘I’ve asked CINCPAC for data, but they haven’t gotten back to me yet. On the other question, no, they’ve never recalled all their boomers at once, but they do occasionally reshuffle all their positions at once. That’s probably what this is. I said they’re heading towards port, not into it. We won’t know that for a couple of days.’
‘What if they’re afraid they’ve lost one?’ Ryan ventured.
‘No such luck,’ Davenport scoffed. ‘They haven’t lost a boomer since that Golf we lifted off Hawaii, back when you were in high school, Ryan. Ramius is too good a skipper to let that happen.’
So was Captain Smith of the Titanic, Ryan thought.
‘Thanks for the info, Charlie.’ Greer hung up. ‘Looks like you were right, Jack. Nothing to worry about yet. Let’s get that data on Afghanistan in here – and just for the hell of it, we’ll look at Charlie’s pictures of their Northern Fleet when we’re finished.’
Ten minutes later a messenger arrived with a cart from central files. Greer was the sort who liked to see the raw data himself. This suited Ryan. He’d known of a few analysts who had based their reports on selective data and been cut off at the knees for it by this man. The information on the cart was from a variety of sources, but to Ryan the most significant were tactical radio intercepts from listening posts on the Pakistani border, and, he gathered, from inside Afghanistan itself. The nature and tempo of Soviet operations did not indicate a backing off, as seemed to be suggested by a pair of recent articles in Red Star and some intelligence sources inside the Soviet Union. They spent three hours reviewing the data.
‘I think Sir Basil is placing too much stock in political intelligence and too little in what our listening posts are getting in the field. It would not be unprecedented for the Soviets not to let their field commanders know what’s going on in Moscow, of course, but on the whole I do not see a clear picture,’ Ryan concluded.
The admiral looked at him. ‘I pay you for answers, Jack.’
‘Sir, the truth is that Moscow moved in there by mistake. We know that from both military and political intelligence reports. The tenor of the data is pretty clear. From where I sit, I don’t see that they know what they want to do. In a case like this the bureaucratic mind finds it most easy to do nothing. So, their field commanders are told to continue the mission, while the senior Party bosses fumble around looking for a solution and covering their asses for getting into the mess in the first place.’
‘Okay, so we know that we don’t know.’
‘Yes, sir. I don’t like it either, but saying anything else would be a lie.’
The admiral snorted. There was a lot of that at Langley, intelligence types giving answers when they didn’t even know the questions. Ryan was still new enough to the game that when he didn’t know, he said so. Greer wondered if that would change in time. He hoped not.
After lunch a package arrived by messenger from the National Reconnaissance Office. It contained the photographs taken earlier in the day on two successive passes by a KH-11 satellite. They’d be the last such photos for a while because of the restrictions imposed on orbital mechanics and the generally miserable weather on the Kola Peninsula. The first set of visible light shots taken an hour after the FLASH signal had gone out from Moscow showed the fleet at anchor or tied to the docks. On infrared a number of them were glowing brightly from internal heat, indicating that their boilers or gas-turbine engines were operating. The second set of photos had been taken on the next orbital pass at a very low angle.
Ryan scrutinized the blowups. ‘Wow! Kirov, Moskva, Kiev, three Karas, five Krestas, four Krivaks, eight Udaloys, and five Sovremennys.’
‘Search and rescue exercise, eh?’ Greer gave Ryan a hard look. ‘Look at the bottom here. Every fast oiler they have is following them out. That’s most of the striking force of the Northern Fleet right there, and if they need oilers, they figure to be out for a while.’
‘Davenport could have been more specific. But we still have their boomers heading back in. No amphibious ships in this photo, just combatants. Only the new ones, too, the ones with range and speed.’
‘And the best weapons.’
‘Yeah,’ Ryan nodded. ‘And all scrambled in a few hours. Sir, if they had this planned in advance, we’d have known about it. This must have been laid on today. Interesting.’
‘You’ve picked up the English habit of understatement, Jack.’ Greer stood up to stretch. ‘I want you to stay over an extra day.’
‘Okay sir.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Mind if I phone the wife? I don’t want her to drive out to the airport for a plane I’m not on.’
‘Sure, and after you’ve finished that, I want you to go down and see someone at DIA who used to work for me. See how much operational data they’re getting on this sortie. If this is a drill, we’ll know soon enough, and you can still take your Surfing Barbie home tomorrow.’
It was a Skiing Barbie, but Ryan didn’t say so.
THE SIXTH DAY
Wednesday, 8 December
CIA HEADQUARTERS
Ryan had been to the office of the director of central intelligence several times before to deliver briefings and occasional personal messages from Sir Basil Charleston to his highness, the DCI. It was larger than Greer’s, with a better view of the Potomac Valley, and appeared to have been decorated by a professional in a style compatible with the DCI’s origins. Arthur Moore was a former judge of the Texas State Supreme Court, and the room reflected his southwestern heritage. He and Admiral Greer were sitting on a sofa near the picture windows. Greer waved Ryan over and passed him a folder.
The folder was made of red plastic and had a snap closure. Its edges were bordered with white tape and the cover had a simple white paper label bearing the legends EYES ONLY Δ and WILLOW. Neither notation was unusual. A computer in the basement of the Langley headquarters selected random names at the touch of a key; this prevented a foreign agent from inferring anything from the name of an operation. Ryan opened the folder and looked first at the index sheet. Evidently there were only three copies of the WILLOW document, each initialled by its owner. This one was initialled by the DCI himself. A CIA document with only three copies was unusual enough that Ryan, whose highest clearance was NEBULA, had never encountered one. From the grave looks of Moore and Greer, he guessed that these were two of the Δ-cleared officers; the other, he assumed, was the deputy director of operations (DDO), another Texan named Robert Ritter.