at the consoles and the computers were linked electronically by satellite and landline to the SOSUS system.
Throughout the oceans of the world, and especially astride the passages that Soviet submarines had to cross to reach the open sea, the United States and other NATO countries had deployed gangs of highly sensitive sonar receptors. The hundreds of SOSUS sensors received and forwarded an unimaginably vast amount of information, and to help the system operators classify and analyze it a whole new family of computers had to be designed, the supercomputers. SOSUS served its purpose admirably well. Very little could cross a barrier without being detected. Even the ultraquiet American and British attack submarines were generally picked up. The sensors, lying on the bottom of the sea, were periodically updated; many now had their own signal processors to presort the data they forwarded, lightening the load on the central computers and enabling more rapid and accurate classification of targets.
Chief Franklin’s console received data from a string of sensors planted off the coast of Iceland. He was responsible for an area forty nautical miles across, and his sector overlapped the ones east and west so that, theoretically, three operators were constantly monitoring any segment of the barrier. If he got a contact, he would first notify his brother operators, then type a contact report into his computer terminal, which would in turn be displayed on the master control board in the control room at the back of the floor. The senior duty officer had the frequently exercised authority to prosecute a contact with a wide range of assets, from surface ships to antisubmarine aircraft. Two world wars had taught American and British officers the necessity of keeping their sea lines of communication — SLOCs — open.
Although this quiet, tomblike facility had never been shown to the public, and though it had none of the drama associated with military life, the men on duty here were among the most important in the service of their country. In a war, without them, whole nations might starve.
Franklin was leaning back in his swivel chair, puffing contemplatively on an old briar pipe. Around him the room was dead quiet. Even had it not been, his five-hundred-dollar headphones would have effectively sealed him off from the outside world. A twenty-six year chief, Franklin had served his entire career on destroyers and frigates. To him, submarines and submariners were the enemy, regardless of what flag they might fly or what uniform they might wear.
An eyebrow went up, and his nearly bald head cocked to one side. The pulls on the pipe grew irregular. His right hand reached forward to the control panel and switched off the signal processors so that he could get the sound without computerized interference. But it was no good. There was too much background noise. He switched the filters back on. Next he tried some changes in his azimuth controls. The SOSUS sensors were designed to give bearing checks through the selective use of individual receptors, which he could manipulate electronically, first getting one bearing, then using a neighboring gang to triangulate for a fix. The contact was very faint, but not too far from the line, he judged. Franklin queried his computer terminal. The USS
“Chief?” A voice came over his headphones. It was the senior duty officer.
“Yes, Commander?”
“Can you come back to control? I have something I want you to hear.”
“On the way, sir.” Franklin rose quietly. Commander Quentin was a former destroyer skipper on a limited duty after a winning battle with cancer. Almost a winning battle, Franklin corrected himself. Chemotherapy had killed the cancer — at the cost of nearly all his hair, and turning his skin into a sort of transparent parchment. Too bad, he thought, Quentin was a pretty good man.
The control room was elevated a few feet from the rest of the floor so that its occupants could see over the whole crew of duty operators and the main tactical display on the far wall. It was separated from the floor by glass, which allowed them to speak to one another without disturbing the operators. Franklin found Quentin at his command station, where he could tap into any console on the floor.
“Howdy, Commander.” Franklin noted that the officer was gaining some weight back. It was about time. “What do you have for me, sir?”
“On the Barents Sea net.” Quentin handed him a pair of phones. Franklin listened for several minutes, but he didn’t sit down. Like many people he had a gut suspicion that cancer was contagious.
“Damned if they ain’t pretty busy up there. I read a pair of
“There’s a
“Surfaced, Skipper?”
“Yep. They were lashing her pretty hard with active sonar, then a ’can queried her on a gertrude.”
“Uh-huh. Acquisition game, and the sub lost.”
“Maybe. Quentin rubbed his eyes. The man looked tired. He was pushing himself too hard, and his stamina wasn’t half what it should have been. “But the
“Oh.” Franklin pondered that for a moment. “They’re looking for another boat, then. The
“That’s what I thought — except she headed west, and the exercise area is northeast of the fjord. We lost her the other day on SOSUS.
“Cagey skipper,” Franklin decided. “Cut his plant all the way back and just drifting.”
“Yeah,” Quentin agreed. “I want you to move down to the North Cape barrier supervisory board and see if you can find her, Chief. She’ll still have her reactor working, and she’ll be making some noise. The operators we have on that sector are a little young. I’ll take one and switch him to your board for a while.”
“Right, Skipper,” Franklin nodded. That part of the team was still green, used to working on ships. SOSUS required more finesse. Quentin didn’t have to say that he expected Franklin to check in on the whole North Cape team’s boards and maybe drop a few small lessons as he listened in on their channels.
“Did you pick up on
“Yes, sir. Real faint, but I think I got her crossing my sector, headed northwest for Toll Booth. If we get an Orion down there, we might just get her locked in. Can we rattle their cage a little?”
Quentin chuckled. He didn’t much care for submarines either. “No, NIFTY DOLPHIN is over. Chief. We’ll just log it and let the skipper know when he comes back home. Nice work, though. You know her reputation. We’re not supposed to hear her at all.”
“That’ll be the day!” Franklin snorted.
“Let me know what you find, Deke.”
“Aye aye, Skipper. You take care of yourself, hear?”
THE FIFTH DAY
It was not the grandest office in the Kremlin, but it suited his needs. Admiral Yuri Ilych Padorin showed up for work at his customary seven o’clock after the drive from his six-room apartment in the Kutuzovskiy Prospekt. The large office windows overlooked the Kremlin walls; except for those he would have had a view of the Moscow River, now frozen solid. Padorin did not miss the view, though he had won his spurs commanding river gunboats forty years before, running supplies across the Volga into Stalingrad. Padorin was now the chief political officer of the Soviet Navy. His job was men, not ships.
On the way in he nodded curtly to his secretary, a man of forty. The yeoman leaped to his feet and followed his admiral into the inner office to help him off with his greatcoat. Padorin’s navy-blue jacket was ablaze with ribbons and the gold star medal of the most coveted award in the Soviet Military, Hero of the Soviet Union. He had won that in combat as a freckled boy of twenty, shuttling back and forth on the Volga. Those were good days, he told himself, dodging bombs from the German Stukas and the more random artillery fire with which the Fascists had
