Instantly the weapons officer ordered the launch of an antisubmarine torpedo down the same bearing in the hope that it would disturb the attacking submarine. If the Russian"s torpedoes were wire-guided, he"d have to cut the wires free to maneuver the sub clear of the American return shot.
Morris raced up the ladder to the bridge. Somehow the submarine had broken contact and maneuvered into firing position. The frigate changed course and speed in an attempt to ruin the submarine"s fire-control solution.
"I see one!" the XO said, pointing over the bow. The Soviet torpedo left a visible white trail on the surface. Morris noted it, something he had not expected. The frigate turned rapidly.
"Bridge, I show two torpedoes, bearing constant three-five-zero and decreasing range," the tactical action officer said rapidly. "Both are pinging at us. The Nixie is operating."
Morris lifted a phone. "Report the situation to the escort commander."
"Done, skipper. Two more helos are heading this way."
Pharris was now doing twenty knots and accelerating, turning her stern to the torpedoes. Her helicopter was now aft of the beam, frantically making runs with its magnetic anomaly detector, trying to locate the Soviet sub.
The torpedo"s wake crossed past the frigate"s bow as Morris"s s.h.i.+p kept her helm over. There was an explosion aft. White water leaped a hundred feet into the air as the first Russian "fish" collided with the nixie torpedo decoy. But they had only one nixie deployed. There was another torpedo out there.
"Left full rudder!" Morris told the quartermaster. "Combat, what about the contact?" The frigate was now doing twenty-five knots.
"Not sure, sir. The son.o.buoys have our torp but nothing else."
"We"re gonna take a hit," the XO said. He pointed to a white trail on the water, less than two hundred yards away. It must have missed the frigate on its first try, then turned for another. Homing torpedoes kept looking until they ran out of fuel.
There was nothing Morris could do. The torpedo was approaching on his port bow. If he turned right, it would only give the fish a larger target. Below him the ASROC launcher swung left toward the probable location of the submarine, but without an order to fire, all the operator could do was train it out. The white wake kept getting closer. Morris leaned over the rail, staring at it with mute rage as it extended like a finger toward his bow. It couldn"t possibly miss now.
"That"s not real smart, Cap"n." Bosun Clarke"s hand grabbed Morris"s shoulder and yanked him down to the deck. He was just grabbing for the executive officer when it hit.
The impact lifted Morris a foot off the steel deck. He didn"t hear the explosion, but an instant after he had bounced off the steel a second time, he was deluged with a sheet of white water that washed him against a stanchion. His first thought was that he"d been thrown overboard. He rose to see his executive officer-headless, slumped against the pilothouse door. The bridge wing was torn apart, the stout metal s.h.i.+elding ripped by fragments. The pilothouse windows were gone. What he saw next was worse.
The torpedo had struck the frigate just aft of the bow-mounted sonar. Already the bow had collapsed, the keel sundered by the explosion. The foc"s"l was awash, and the horrible groaning of metal told him that the bow was being ripped off his s.h.i.+p. Morris staggered into the bridge and yanked the annunciator handle to All Stop, failing to notice that the engineers had already stopped engines. The s.h.i.+p"s momentum pushed her forward. As Morris watched, the bow twisted to starboard, ten degrees off true, and the forward gunmount became awash, its crew trying to head aft. Below the mount were other men. Morris knew that they were dead, hoped that they had died instantly, and were not drowning, trapped in a sinking steel cage. His men. How many had their battle stations forward of the ASROC launcher?
Then the bow tore away. A hundred feet of the s.h.i.+p left the remainder to the accompaniment of screeching metal. It turned as he watched, colliding with the afterpart of the s.h.i.+p as it rotated in the water like a small berg. There was movement at an exposed watertight door. He saw a man try to get free, and succeed, the figure jumping into the water and swimming away from the wallowing bow.
The bridge crew was alive, all cut by flying gla.s.s but at their posts. Chief Clarke took a quick look at the pilothouse, then ran below to a.s.sist with damage control. The damage-control parties were already racing forward with fire hoses and welding gear, and at damage-control central the men examined the trouble board to see how severe the flooding was. Morris lifted a sound-powered phone and twisted the dial to this compartment.
"Damage-control report!"
"Flooding aft to frame thirty-six, but I think she"ll float-for a little while anyway. No fires. Waiting for reports now."
Morris switched settings on the phone. "Combat, radio the screen commander that we"ve taken a hit and need a.s.sistance."
"Done, sir. Gallery"s heading out this way. Looks like the sub got away. They"re still searching for her. We have some shock damage here. All the radars are down. Bow sonar is out. ASROC is out. The tail is still working, though, and the Mark-32 mounts still work. Wait-screen commander"s sending us a tug, sir."
"Okay, you have the conn. I"m going below to look at the damage." You have the conn, Morris thought. How do you conn a s.h.i.+p that ain"t moving? A minute later he was at a bulkhead, watching men trying to sh.o.r.e it up with lumber.
"This one"s fairly solid, sir, the next one forward"s leaking like a d.a.m.n sieve, no way we"ll patch it all. When the bow let go, it must have twisted everything loose." The officer grabbed a seaman by the shoulder. "Go to the after D/C locker and get more four-by-fours!"
"Will this one hold?"
"I don"t know. Clarke is checking the bottom out now. We"ll have to weld in some patches and stiffeners. Give me about ten minutes and I"ll tell you if she"ll float or not."
Clarke appeared. He was breathing heavily. "The bulkhead"s sprung at the tank tops, and there"s a small crack, too. Leaking pretty good. The pumps are on, and just about keeping even. I think we can sh.o.r.e it up, but we have to hustle."
The damage-control officer led the welders below at once. Two men appeared with a portable pump. Morris ordered them below.
"How many men missing?" Morris asked Chief Clarke. He was holding his arm strangely.
"All the guys made it out of the five-inch mount, but I haven"t seen anybody from belowdecks. s.h.i.+t, I think I broke something myself." Clarke looked at his right arm and shook his head angrily. "I don"t think many guys made it outa the bow, sir. The watertight doors are twisted some, they gotta be jammed tight."
"Get that arm looked at," Morris ordered.
"Oh, f.u.c.k the arm, skipper! You need me." The man was right. Morris went back topside with Clarke behind him.
On reaching the bridge, Morris dialed up engineering. The noise on the phone answered his first question.
The engineer spoke over the hiss of escaping steam. "Shock damage, Captain. We got some ruptured steam pipes on the number one boiler. I think number two will still work, but I"ve popped the safeties on both just in case. The diesel generators are on line. I got some hurt men here. I"m sending them out. I-okay, okay. We just did a check of number two boiler. A few minor leaks, but we can fix "em quick. Otherwise everything looks pretty tight. I can have it back on line in fifteen minutes."
"We need it." Morris hung up.
Pharris lay dead in the water. With the safety valves opened, steam vented onto the ma.s.sive stack structure, giving off a dreadful rasping sound that seemed like the s.h.i.+p"s own cry of pain. The frigate"s sleek clipper bow had been replaced by a flat face of torn metal and hanging wires. The water around the s.h.i.+p was foul with oil from ruptured fuel tanks. For the first time Morris noticed that the s.h.i.+p was down by the stern; when he stood straight, the s.h.i.+p was misaligned. He knew he had to wait for another damage-control report. As with an accident victim, the prognosis depended on the work of surgeons, and they could not be rushed or disturbed. He lifted the phone to CIC.
"Combat, Bridge. What"s the status of that submarine contact?"
"Gallery"s helo dropped on it, but the torp ran dry without hitting anything. Looks like he ran northeast, but we haven"t had anything for about five minutes. There"s an Orion in the area now."
"Tell them to check inside of us. This character isn"t going to run away unless he has to. He might be running in, not out. Tell the screen commander."
"Aye, Cap"n."
He hadn"t hung the phone up when it buzzed.
"Captain speaking."
"She"ll float, sir," the damage-control officer said at once. "We"re patching the bulkhead now. It won"t be tight, but the pumps can handle the leakage. Unless something else goes bad on us, we"ll get her home. They sending the tug out to us?"
"Yes."
"If we get a tow, sir, it better be sternfirst. I don"t want to think about trying to run this one into a seaway."
"Right." Morris looked at Clarke. "Get a gang of men aft. We"ll be taking the tow at the stern, rig it up. Have them launch the whaleboat to look for survivors. I saw at least one man in the water. And get a sling on that arm."
"You got it, Cap"n." Clarke moved aft.
Morris went to CIC and found a working radio.
"X-Ray Alfa, this is Pharris," Morris called to the screen commander.
"State your condition."
"We took one hit forward, the bow is gone all the way to the ASROC launcher. We cannot maneuver. I can keep her afloat unless we hit some bad weather. Both boilers currently down, but we should have power back in less than ten minutes. We have casualties, but I don"t know how many or how bad yet.
"Commodore, we got hit by a nuke boat, probably a Victor. Unless I miss my guess, he"s headed your way."
"We lost him, but he was heading out," the Commodore said.
"Start looking inside, sir," Morris urged. "This fellow got to knife-fighting range and pulled a beautiful number on us. This one isn"t going to run away for long, he"s too d.a.m.ned good for that."
The Commodore thought that one over briefly. "Okay, I"ll keep that in mind. Gallery"s en route to you. What other a.s.sistance do you need?"
"You need Gallery more than we do. Just send us the tug," Morris answered. He knew that the submarine wouldn"t be coming back to finish the kill. He"d accomplished that part of his mission. Next, he"d try to kill some merchants.
"Roger that. Let me know if you need anything else. Good luck, Ed."
"Thank you, sir. Out."
Morris ordered his helo to drop a double ring of son.o.buoys around his s.h.i.+p just in case. Then the Sea Sprite found three men in the water, one of them dead. The whaleboat recovered them, allowing the helo to rejoin the convoy. It was a.s.signed to Gallery, which took Pharris"s station as the convoy angled south.
Below, welders worked their gear in waist-deep salt.w.a.ter as they struggled to seal off the breaks in the frigate"s watertight bulkheads. The task lasted nine hours, then the pumps drained the water from the flooded compartments.
Before they had finished, the fleet tug Papago pulled alongside the frigate"s square stern. Chief Clarke supervised as a stout towing wire was pa.s.sed across and secured. An hour later, the tug was pulling the frigate on an easterly course at four knots, backwards to protect the damaged bow. Morris ordered his towed-array sonar to be strung over the bow, trailing it out behind to give them some small defense capability. Several extra lookouts were posted to watch for periscopes. It would be a slow, dangerous trip back home.
28.
Breakthroughs
STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.
"Be careful, Pasha."
"As always, Comrade General." Alekseyev smiled. "Come, Captain."
Sergetov fell in behind his superior. Unlike during their previous front-line outing, both men wore protective body armor. The General carried only a sidearm to go along with his map case, but the captain was now officially a bodyguard in addition to a staff officer and had a small Czech submachine gun slung over his shoulder. He was a different man today, the captain saw. On Alekseyev"s first trip to the front, he"d been tentative, almost hesitant in manner-it hadn"t occurred to the younger man that, as senior as Alekseyev was, he had never seen combat before and had approached this gravest of contests with the same sort of apprehension as a new private. No longer. He had smelled the smoke. Now he knew how things worked or didn"t work. The change was remarkable. His father was right, Sergetov thought, he was a man to be reckoned with. They were joined in their helicopter by an Air Force colonel. The Mi-24 lifted off in darkness, its fighter escort overhead.
LAMMERSDORF, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY.
Not many people appreciated the importance of the videoca.s.sette recorder. A useful convenience for the home, to be sure, but not until a captain in the Royal Dutch Air Force had demonstrated a bright idea two years before had its battlefield utility been proven in secret exercises first in Germany, then in the Western United States.
NATO radar surveillance aircraft kept their customary positions high over the Rhein. The E-3A Sentry aircraft, better known as AWACS, and the smaller, lesser-known TR-1, flew their missions in boring circles or straight lines far behind the fighting front. They had similar but different functions. The AWACS was mainly concerned with air traffic. The TR-1, an upgraded version of the venerable U-2, looked for vehicles on the ground. Initially the TR-1 had been something of a failure. Because it tracked too many targets, many of them immobile radar reflectors set everywhere by the Soviets, the NATO commanders had been deluged with information that was too disordered to use. Then came the VCR. All the data relayed from the aircraft was recorded on videotape anyway since it was a convenient medium for data storage, but the VCRs built into the NATO system possessed only a few operating features. The Dutch captain thought to bring his personal machine into his office, and demonstrated how by using fast forward and fast reverse, the radar data could be used to show not only where things were going, but also where they had come from. Computer support made the task easier by eliminating items that moved no more than once every two hours-thus erasing the Russian radar lures-and there it was, a brand-new intelligence tool.
With several copies made of each tape, a staff of over a hundred intelligence and traffic-control experts examined the data round the clock. Some engaged in straight tactical intelligence. Others looked for patterns. A large number of trucks moving at night to and from front-line units could only mean shuttle runs to fuel and ammunition dumps. A number of vehicles breaking away from a divisional convoy and deploying in line parallel to the front meant artillery preparing for an attack. The real trick, they had learned, was to get the data to the forward commanders quickly enough so they could make use of it.
At Lammersdorf, a Belgian lieutenant was just finis.h.i.+ng up a tape that was six hours old, and his report was sent by land line to the forward NATO commanders. At least three divisions had been moved north and south on Autobahn-7, he reported. The Soviets would attack at Bad Salzdetfurth in strength, sooner than expected. Immediately, reserve units from the Belgian, German, and American armies were rushed forward, and allied air units alerted for a major land action. Fighting in this sector had been vicious enough already. The German forces covering the area south of Hannover were at less than 50-percent strength, and the battle that had not yet begun was already a race, as both sides tried to get reserves to the point of attack before the other.
HOLLE, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY.
"Thirty minutes," Alekseyev told Sergetov. Four motor-rifle divisions were on line, covering a front of less than twenty kilometers. Behind them a tank division waited to exploit the first breach in German lines. The objective was the town of Alfeld on the Leine River. The town commanded two roads being used by NATO to shuttle units and supplies north and south, and its capture would open a breach in the NATO lines, allowing the Soviet operational/maneuver groups to burst into NATO"s rear.
"Comrade General, how are things progressing in your opinion?" the captain asked quietly.
"Ask me in a few hours," the General answered. The river valley to his rear was yet another wasteland of men and arms. They were only thirty kilometers from the border-and the Red Army"s tanks had been expected to reach Holle in only two days. Alekseyev frowned, wondering what staff genius had come up with that timetable. Again the human factor had been overlooked. The morale and fighting spirit of the Germans was like nothing he had ever seen. He remembered his father"s stories of the battles across the Ukraine and Poland, but he had never quite believed them. He believed them now. The Germans contested every lump of dirt in their country like wolves defending their cubs, retreating only when they were forced to, counterattacking at every opportunity, draining the blood from the advancing Russian units as they brought every weapon they had to bear.
Soviet doctrine had predicted heavy losses. The battle of movement could be achieved only by costly frontal a.s.sault which first had to blast a hole in the front lines-but the NATO armies were denying that hole to the Soviets. Their sophisticated weapons, firing from safe, prepared positions, were ripping through each attack wave. Their aircraft attacks in the Soviet rear sapped the strength of units before they could be committed to decisive battle and played hob with artillery support despite the most careful deceptive measures.
The Red Army was moving forward, Alekseyev reminded himself, and NATO was paying its own price. Their reserves were also being thinned out. The German forces were not using their mobility as Alekseyev would have, too often tying themselves to geographic locations instead of fighting the Soviet forces on the move. Of course, the General thought, they didn"t have very much terrain to trade for time. He checked his watch.
A sheet of flame rose from the forests below him as Russian artillery began its preparatory bombardment. Next came the multiple-rocket launchers, and the morning sky was alight with streaks of fire. Alekseyev turned his binoculars downrange. In a few seconds he saw the orange-white explosions of the rounds as they impacted on NATO lines. He was too far from the fighting front to see any detail, but an area that had to be many kilometers across, lit up like the neon signs so popular in the West. There was a roar overhead, and the General saw the leading elements of the ground-attack fighters racing to the front.
"Thank you, Comrade General," Alekseyev breathed. He counted at least thirty Sukhoi and MiG fighter-bombers, all hugging the ground as they headed toward the battle line. His face crinkled into a determined smile as he walked into the command bunker.
"The lead elements are moving now," a colonel announced. On a table made of rough planks laid across sawhorses, grease pencil marks were made on the tactical maps. Red arrows began their march toward a series of blue lines. The plotters were all lieutenants, and each wore a telephone headset linked to a specific regimental headquarters. The officers connected to reserve units stood away from the table, puffing on their cigarettes as they watched the march of the arrows. Behind them the commander of 8th Guards Army stood quietly, watching his plan of attack unfold.
"Meeting moderate resistance. Enemy artillery and tank fire is being encountered," a lieutenant said.
Explosions rocked the command bunker. Two kilometers away, a flight of German Phantoms had just torn into a battalion of mobile guns.
"Enemy fighters overhead," the air defense officer said belatedly. A few eyes looked apprehensively up at the log ceiling of the bunker. Alekseyev"s didn"t join them. A NATO smart-bomb would kill them all in a blink. Much as he enjoyed his post as deputy commander of the theater, he wished himself back to the days when he had commanded a fighting division. Here he was only an observer, and he felt the need to have the reins in his own two hands.
"Artillery reports heavy counterbattery fire and air attacks. Our missiles are engaging enemy aircraft in the 57th Motor-Rifle Division"s rear area," the air defense officer went on. "Heavy air activity over the front."
"Our fighters are engaging NATO aircraft," the Frontal Aviation officer reported. He looked up angrily. "Friendly SAMs are shooting down our fighters!"