Voyage of the Devilfish

“That thought occurred to us also,” Dretzski said, and considered that they would know soon enough what Novskoyy had been up to, that his plan was falling apart… better for Ivan Ivanovich Dretzski if they heard it from him, as if he himself had been the hero who uncovered the conspiracy. He would not be popular but at least he should escape being imprisoned. “Just after our last meeting,” he continued, “I ordered an FED team to check the disposal sites of the SSN-X-27 missiles that had supposedly been dismantled by the U.N.—”

“And?” the President demanded.

“We found, sir, that the warheads destroyed, the presumably plutonium nuclear warheads, were not plutonium. They were clay, doped with alpha and gamma and neutron radiation sources. The solid rocket fuel turned out to be clay also, with special granules and coloring so it looked to be the real thing. The team leader personally put a match to some of the rocket fuel. It should have exploded and killed him. Instead… The word from the inspection team, unfortunately, just reached us moments ago, as the missile was launched.”

“So where did the warshots go?” Admiral Barisov put in.

“Aboard the Northern Fleet’s attack submarines. And they are, as we speak, cruising at hold positions less than two-hundred kilometers off the American Atlantic coast.”

“Does this mean what I think it does?” the President said, face not only tense but growing red.

“It means, sir, that Admiral Alexi Novskoyy’s fleet is armed with warshot SSN-X-27 nuclear land-attack cruise missiles, armed for an attack on the eastern United States…” The President’s mouth opened and shut several times, and for a moment Dretzski wondered if he was having a heart attack. After a moment, he seemed to get hold of himself, at least to demand recommendations. Dretzski was ready. “Sir, I suggest getting on the hotline to the American President. Tell him you were deceived, which is the truth. Tell him what Novskoyy has. Suggest his navy blow the Northern Fleet to the bottom of the sea for all our sakes. I recommend you do not send our aircraft or ships in that direction — it would just seem an added threat. I would also, sir, recommend a radio message to the fleet telling them that Novskoyy has made himself an international criminal and that they are to reject any plan for hostilities, surface and head home.” The President, without a word, motioned to Fasimov and Admiral Barisov to follow him and hurried out of the room, apparently headed for the Communication Center. They don’t always shoot the messenger, Dretzski thought.

BARENTS SEA

TEN NAUTICAL MILES OFF SEVEROMORSK NAVAL COMPLEX

USS ALLENTOWN

Commander Henry Duckett looked at the OPREP-3 message from COMSUBLANT ordering Allentown to prepare to fire, then handed it to the OOD, who read it and looked up in astonishment.

“Man silent battle stations,” Duckett said, wondering if this were for real and trying to suppress the thought.

OOD Lieutenant William Mills stepped to the firing panel and called up the firing-and-targeting-mode menu for launch-tube number one, paged down to tube two and on down the list to the last three tubes — ten, eleven and twelve. Ten miles off a major Russian naval base was the firing position. After the first missile a radar was bound to find them, a destroyer or cruiser bound to come and depth charge them into scrap metal. Mills thought. It seemed Allentown had just become a new word for expendable.

CHAPTER 19

SUNDAY, 19 DECEMBER, 0931 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA

OCEANA NAVAL AIR STATION

Lieutenant Commander Todd Nikels fastened both latches of his oxygen mask to his flight helmet. The weapon-loading team had just completed the Mongoose missile-loadout. There had been only time to load two of the air-to-air heatseekers — both missiles were aboard, one below each wing of the F-14 supersonic fighter. Nikels waved to the Weapons Officer and keyed up the throttles. His engines had been idling during the loadout in violation of navy ordinance-loading procedures but this was an emergency.

“Oceana Tower, this is Valley Forge,” Nikels said into his radio set. ‘Taxiing to zero eight now. Request takeoff clearance and a vector to the northwest.”

“Valley Forge, roger, cleared for takeoff runway zero eight, climbout on three two five.” Nikels was almost reckless with the big jet fighter as he turned the taxiway corner. He had never taxied the aircraft this fast before, but he understood he had only minutes, maybe seconds.