“I don’t care” Kurshin said coldly. “What time do we launch” Grechko asked softly. “Midnight. We’ll set it and the scuttling charges on a timer, giving us enough time to get clear. The missile will launch, and within sixty seconds the charges in the hull will blow and the Stephos will go to the bottom” Along with all but one of her crew, Kurshin thought.
Two miles west of the city of lrdkiion, on Crete’s north coast, the US. Navy’s SOSUS control center was housed in a low cement-block building, adjacent to a small paved airstrip.
Normally only a dozen men were stationed at the tiny station, but that number had more than tripled with the arrival of the CINCMED, Admiral Delugio, and his staff. An hour ago, McGarvey and an intensely worried Trotter had flown down from Rome. They stood now, facing the admiral, his intelligence officer, Malcolm Ainslie, and Frank Newman, the lieutenant the Pentagon had sent out, across the situation table.
“That’s it, thendelugio said heavily. The flash message from the Baton Rouge had just been relayed through Gaeta. He passed it across the table to McGarvey. “God only knows what happened out there, but it looks as if your job is done”
“Are they sure it’s the Indianapolis” McGarvey asked as he quickly scanned the message. But then he had the answer. “Yes” Delugio said.
300638ZJUL TOP SECRET FM: USS BATON ROUGE TO: COMSUBMED
A. INDIANAPOLIS BROKE UP BELOW 2500 FEET AT 0449 Z THIS DATE. LAT. 35–40.1 N, LON. 22–11.8 E.
B. SONAR DETECTED LOS ANGELES-CLASS FOOTPRINT DIVING ON A COURSE OF 183.
C. SONAR DETECTED NUMEROUS SOUNDS OF HULL COMPRESSION FAILURE.
D. DEBRIS ON SURFACE DEFINITELY CAME FROM USS INDIANAPOLIS.
DESCRIPTIONS AND SERIAL NUMBERS TO FOLLOW TEXT.
E. IT IS BELIEVED THAT ALL HANDS WERE LOST.
McGarvey looked up from his reading. “She was headin south? Any possibility the Baton Rouge was wrong”
“No” Delugio said. “But at least you were correct in one thing, McGarvey. The Indianapolis was definitely not heading for the Black Sea” “Nor Israel” Ainslie said. “Admiral, how long before we can have the Pigeon On station” Lieutenant Newman asked.
“Two days before we’ll know anything. But it doesn’t matter now The politics are for the president to sort out. But the crew of the Indianapolis are all dead”
“There were only six of them” McGarvey said. “Plus Kurshin”
“It’s the proof Washington needed. And with that small a crew it’s no wonder they lost control of the boat” Delugio shook his head. “The bastards. At least they lost”
“I wonder ” McGarvey muttered half under his breath as he studied the map board that formed the surface of the situation table. The others were talking, but their words flowed around him.
The Indianapolis had been tracked by the SOSUS network as she emerged from the Malta Channel about forty hours ago, and then she had disappeared. It had given her plenty of time to pass Crete and come very near Israel, though from what he had been told about the ship’s nuclear missiles they could have been fired from nearly anywhere in the Mediterranean. The Tomahawk had a range of more than seventeen hundred nautical miles. From the spot where she had been hijacked off the coast of Italy to En Gedi was barely twelve hundred miles. Kurshin would have had plans for his escape once the missile was fired. It had taken them this time to get ready But the Indianapolis had been heading south, not east, and she had been diving. A mistake on the Russian crew’s part? Or, as the admiral suggested, had the boat simply gotten away from them?
it’s not like driving a car. Running a boat of that size takes a well-trained, experienced crew” Lieutenant Newman had said.
Baranov was a man who left nothing to chance. And Kurshin was good. The very best. They were not stealing the boat, trying to get it into the Black Sea. They only wanted one of the missiles. The target was En Gedi.
He ran his finger north along the chart from the position where the Indianapolis went down, and suddenly it came to him.
Trotter had been watching him. “What is it, Kirk” McGarvey looked up” Kurshin is not on that submarine” he said. Delugio and the others were looking at him. “They killed the crew and took the boat here, to the Gulf of Lakonia or the Bay of Messini where they hid on the bottom for twelve hours or so”
“Why? What are you saying” Trotter asked. “Kurshin wanted one of the Tomahawk missiles. It’s my guess they shoved it out a torpedo hatch, set the submarine on a southerly course, with a down angle on her planes, and got out through an escape hatch, Is that possible” Admiral Delugio was nodding. “But why”
“Could a Tomahawk be launched from the deck of a surface ship”
“Yes ” Delugio started to say, but then he had it too. “Christ. They had a mother ship waiting for them. They’ll launch the missile and then get the hell out of there”
“Not off the Greek coast” Megarvey said. “They’re heading east”
“Where” Trotter asked. “Someplace where they have friends. They’re not out to commit suicide. They want to launch that missile … on En Gedi … and then have the chance to get away” McGarvey was studying the chart.
“Syria or Lebanon would be my guess” They can’t have
“That’s a long ways across open water. mad, et it yet” Ainslie said, his eyes bright.
Onight” McGarvey replied. “They’ll launch sometime after dark”
“Then we’ve got them” Ainslie blurted. “It’s not so easy to hide a missile that size. And they’ll need launching equipment. A ramp”
“It’ll be hidden. Have we any satellites watching this end of the Mediterranean”
“I don’t know” Delugio barked. “But we’ll damned well find out”
“We’re looking for any boat big enough to handle the missile, heading east” McGarvey said. “There’s a lot of traffic out there” the admiral said, “some of it Russian Navy”
“The missile won’t be aboard a Soviet ship. The Russian Navy has nothing to do with this. It’ll be a civilian ship. Something that moves fast, something that would not be challenged … something completely unrely”
“We don’t have the ships to check every vessel. Too much water out there, McGarvey” the admiral said. “Bring me the pictures. I’ll know it when I see it”
“I’ll talk to Murphy” Trotter said. “The Israelis will have to be notified”
“Yes” McGarvey said, again looking down at the chart. “The problem is going to be approaching that boat. If we get too close, he just may say the hell with it and launch the missile anyway”
“What the hell sort of a bastard is he” Delugio snarled. “I don’t know yet” McGarvey said. “But I’m learning. He looked up. “Get those pictures”
They had reached the western coast of Cyprus by early afternoon, and Captain Grechko had slowed the boat down, bringing her off her hydrofoils so that she operated as a conventional craft. In this mode she was capable of speeds around twenty knots, but they would still reach their launch position off the Syrian coast sometime around eleven, giving them plenty of time to set up for the shoot and get free. The motion aboard was not so comfortable now as it had been before. The Stephos tended to wallow at times in the heavy swells coming from the southwest across the entire fetch of the Mediterranean, but no one was complaining; in less than twelve hours they would be on their way home.
Kurshin had taken over the captain’s cabin and after their Ai meeting this morning he had managed to get several hours of deep dreamless sleep so that when he rose a few minutes after three he was fully rested. He stood in the middle of the room, his head cocked, listening to the sounds of the ship. Grechko had brought four KGB crewmen with him: an engineer, a loadmaster, and the two divers who had located the missile and had placed the collar around it. With Captain Makayev and his four-man crew, it made ten men aboard besides Kurshin. Except for Grechko and his engineer, the others were resting. It had been a long two days and nights. Kurshin picked up the phone and called the bridge.
Grechko answered. “How does it look, Ivan Akhminovich”
“We’ve got Cape Kormakiti off our starboard now, about fifteen kilometers”
