North Cape

"Target One, do you read me? Target One, do you read me?" The dials were softly illuminated and the power light was glowing red. His watch showed nearly thirty minutes past the time the ship should have come into radio range. The radio had both military and VHF-FM side bands. The VHF was for short-range lineof-sight work, not much more than fifteen miles. The military side band gave the transceiver a range of nearly two hundred miles. He used the VHF-FM band, hoping that the Soviets would not be monitoring within that range. Somewhere out there the ship should be standing less than five miles off the coast, waiting for his call.

"Target One, Target One, do you read me? Do you read me?" The small radio sputtered with a faint static composed of low rumblings overlain with a high-pitched hissing. Teleman wondered momentarily where the hissing was coming from. The transceiver employed transistors and printed circuitry, not vacuum tubes. Kneeling in the soft, powdery snow, Teleman tried again and again to raise the ship. In the nine hours since he had last had communication with the RFK innumerable things could have happened. Soviet aircraft or submarines could have found her… could have attacked… sent her to bottom… could have… hit seas too much… where hell was… damned ship… could not last… much.

Teleman had lost all feeling in his feet and hands and was forced to use his clenched fist to work the transmit switch. Over and over he repeated his monotonous call, his voice becoming weaker and weaker until he was barely whispering into the microphone. He huddled on his knees, back against a sheltering rock, drifting hypnotically with the falling snow, whispering over and over again his call signal as the snow began to cover him with a soft, warm blanket. The will to stay awake was gone. He no longer even thought about the importance of staying awake. After a while he became aware that he had stopped calling. The radio was there in front of him, half covered with snow. He wanted to move closer, check the settings, but somehow he could not. It was as if he were paralyzed.

Still kneeling, half bent over the radio, his mouth half open, he decided to rest a moment then try again. Almost without volition, his eyes closed and the warm softness of sleep began to infuse his body.

He pulled them open with a jerk, for a moment dear-headed and wide awake. The radio was spitting and crackling at him. He stared, then with an effort that, literally, almost killed him, reached out his frozen hand and pushed the receive switch. The answer drew his conscious mind back from the brink of the killing sleep and summoned his will and strength to go on a few minutes longer, drew it up from some dark recess of his body.

"Beatle, this is Target One, Beatle this is Target One, do you read me? Do you read me?" The voice on the other end of the tight radio beam could not conceal the anxiety beneath the calm exterior of the professional radio operator's voice.

"Target One?" he managed to croak, not knowing whether his voice was loud enough to be heard.

The radio operator's voice, almost lost in the storm of strange-sounding static, came over the tiny speaker again:

"Leave your transmitter on, we are getting a position fix." For a long time Teleman digested the message, trying to force his leaden mind to understand. Then he pushed the transmitter switch to position identification and a second transmitter built into the radio began sending out a tight VHF beam that the ship would ride in.

A voice that Teleman recognized as belonging to Larkin broke in. "We are standing off the coast about a mile from where you appear to be. Can you fire a flare to pinpoint your position?"

Teleman stared vacantly at the radio. Larkin tried again. "Can you fire a flare to pinpoint your position?"

The radio operator pressed his earphones to his head, then turned the gain up another notch.