dry.”
“Tell me about Sierra-Eleven,” Ricks ordered.
“Direct-path contact. He's below the layer, range unknown.”
“Environmental conditions?”
“Flat calm on the roof, a moderate layer at about one hundred feet. We have good isothermal water around us. Sonar conditions are excellent.”
“First read on Sierra-Eleven is over ten thousand yards.” It was Ensign Shaw on the tracking party.
“Conn, Sonar, we evaluate contact Sierra-Eleven is a definite 688-class, US fast-attack. I can guestimate speed at about fourteen-fifteen knots, sir.”
“Whoa!” Claggett observed to Ricks. “We picked up a Los Angeles at IO-K plus! That's gonna piss somebody off…”
“Sonar, Conn, I want data, not guesses,” Ricks said.
“Cap’n, he did well to pick that contact out of the background,” Claggett said very quietly. Summer in the Gulf of Alaska meant fishing boats and baleen whales, both in large numbers, making noises and cluttering up sonar displays. “That's one hell of a good sonarman in there.”
“We pay him to be good, X. We don't award medals for doing an adequate job. I want a playback later to see if there might have been a sniff earlier that he missed.”
Anybody can find something on playback, Claggett thought to himself.
“Conn, Sonar, I'm getting a very faint blade-count… seems to indicate fourteen knots, plus or minus one, sir.”
“Very well. That's better, Sonar.”
“Uh, Captain… may be a little closer than ten thousand… not much, but a little. Track is firming up… best estimate now nine-five hundred yards, course roughly three-zero-five,” Shaw reported next, waiting for the sky to fall.
“So he's not over ten thousand yards off now?”
“No, sir, looks like nine-five hundred.”
“Let me know when you change your mind again,” Ricks replied. “Drop speed to four knots.”
“Reduce speed four knots, aye,” the OOD acknowledged.
“Let him get ahead of us?” Claggett asked.
“Yep.” The Captain nodded.
“We have a firing solution,” the weapons officer said. The XO checked his watch. It didn't get much better than this.
“Very well. Glad to hear it,” Ricks replied.
“Speed is now four knots.”
“Okay, we have him. Sierra-Eleven is at bearing two-zero-one, range nine-one hundred yards, course three- zero-zero, speed fifteen.”
“Dead meat,” Claggett said. Of course, he's making it easy by going this fast.
“True enough. This will look good on the patrol report.'
“That's tricky,” Ryan observed. “I don't like the way this is going.”
“Neither do I,” Bunker agreed. “I recommend weapons release to the TR battlegroup.”
“I agree, and will so advise the President.” Ryan placed the call. Under the rules for this game, the President was supposed to be on Air Force One, somewhere over the Pacific, returning from an unspecified country on the Pacific Rim. The President's decision-making role was being played by a committee elsewhere in the Pentagon. Jack made his recommendation and waited for the reply.
“Only in self-defense, Dennis.”
“Bullshit,” Bunker said quietly. “He listens to me.”
Jack grinned. “I agree, but not this time. No offensive action, you may act only to defend the ships in the group.”
The SecDef turned to the action officer: “Forward that to Theodore Roosevelt. Tell them I expect full combat air patrols. Anything over two hundred miles I want reported to me. Under two hundred, the battlegroup commander is free to act at discretion. For submarines, the bubble radius is fifty — five-zero — miles. Inside that, prosecute to kill.”
“That's creative,' Jack said.
“We have that attack on Valley Forge.” The best estimate at the moment was that it had been a surprise missile attack from a Soviet submarine. It appeared that some units of the Russian fleet were acting independently, or at least under orders not emanating from Moscow. Then things got worse.
“H OTLINE message. There has just been a ground-force attack on a Strategic Rocket Regiment… SS-18 base in Central Asia.”
“Launch all the ready bombers right now! Jack, tell the President that I just gave the order.”
“Comm-link failure,” the wall speaker said. “Radio contact with Air Force One has been interrupted.”
“Tell me more!” Jack demanded.
“That's all we have, sir.”
“Where's the Vice President now?” Ryan asked.
“He's aboard Kneecap Alternate, six hundred miles south of Bermuda. Kneecap Prime is four hundred miles ahead of Air Force One, preparing to land in Alaska for the transfer.”
“Close enough to Russia that an intercept is possible… but not likely… have to be a one-way mission,” Bunker thought aloud. “Unless they strayed over a Soviet warship with SAMs… Vice President is temporarily in charge.”
“Sir, I—”
“That's my call to make, Jack. The President is either out of the loop or has had his comm links compromised. SecDef says that the Vice President is in charge until the comm links are reestablished and validated by codeword authentication. Forces are now at D EF C ON — O NE on my authority.'
One thing about Dennis Bunker, Ryan thought, the man never stopped being a fighter jock. He makes decisions and sticks to them. He was usually right, too, as he was here.
Ryan's file was a thick one. Almost five inches, Goodley saw in the privacy of his seventh-floor cubbyhole. Half an inch of that was background and security-clearance forms. The academic record was fairly impressive, especially his doctoral work in history at Georgetown University. Georgetown wasn't Harvard, of course, but it was a fairly respectable institution, Goodley told himself. His first Agency job had been as part of Admiral James Greer's Junior Varsity program, and his first report, “Agents and Agencies,” had dealt with terrorism. Odd coincidence, Goodley thought, given what had happened later.
The documents on Ryan's encounter in London occupied thirty double-space pages, mainly police-report summaries and a few news photos. Goodley started making notes. Cowboy, he wrote first of all. Running into things like that. The academic shook his head. Twenty minutes later, he read over the executive summary of Ryan's second CIA report, the one which confidently predicted that the terrorists would probably never operate in America — delivered days before the attack on his family.
Guessed wrong there, didn't you, Ryan? Goodley chuckled to himself. As bright as they said he was, he made mistakes like everyone else…
He'd made a few while working in England, too. He hadn't predicted Chernenko’s succession of Andropov, though he had predicted Narmonov was the coming man well in advance of nearly everyone, except Kantrowitz up at Princeton, who'd been the first to see star quality in Andrey Il’ych. Goodley reminded himself that he'd been an undergraduate then, bedding that girl at Wellesley, Debra Frost… wonder what ever happened to her…?
“Son of a bitch…” Ben whispered a few minutes later. “Son of a bitch.”
Red October, a Soviet ballistic missile submarine… defected. Ryan was one of the first to suspect it… Ryan, an analyst at London Station had… run the operation at sea! Killed a Russian sailor. That was the cowboy part again. Couldn't just arrest the guy, had to shoot him down like something in a movie…
Goddamn! A Russian ballistic-missile defected… and they kept it quiet… oh, the boat was later sunk in deep water.
Back to London after that for a few more months before rotating home to be Greer's special assistant and heir-apparent. Some interesting work with the arms-control people…
