Apache and Cobra gunships flying NOE — nap of the earth — missions following the contours of the taiga ahead of Freeman’s armored column were so close to the treetops, it was regarded as inevitable that some would be lost to wind sheer. The gunships skimmed the up and down of air currents over the white, rolling sea of forest. A sudden unexpected drop of a few feet, and the trees would reach up and take you down. But none were lost — at least not on the way in, the pilots long used to such tactics in western Europe, the steady stream of information needed to assist in NOE fed back from the twenty-five-inch-diameter combination thermal imaging sensor, laser, TV, and boresight system through a.1-inch-diameter tube to video displays in the cockpit. Each pilot, in symbiotic relationship with the cyclic control column, was ready to touch-alter forward, backward blade, pitch, and yaw controls in response to the main computer display.
The cockpit of the lead chopper of the thirty sharp-nosed, 140-mile-per-hour AH-1S Cobras was suddenly invaded by a loud buzzing noise and flashing red light. The rate of climb had fallen precipitously in a downdraft; the craft’s pod load of eight TOW, or tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided, antitank missiles, and two pods of nineteen 2.75-inch rockets for softer targets — should infantry be sighted — were abnormally buffeted. In addition there was the weight of the universal-swivel, turret-mounted, thirty-millimeter machine gun and its ammunition belt under the nose with which to contend. The pilot instantly altered the pitch, the rotors responding quickly in the colder Siberian air, giving more lift than in the warmer climes of western Europe and Southeast Asia.
Still, it was hair-raising flying, heartbeat and blade beat alarmingly out of synch at times, the first tanks in sight either T-72s or 80s; it was difficult to tell because of the camouflage netting. Adding to his anxiety, the pilot was already depressed after having received the news that morning that his brother in the navy had been killed, sucked overboard by the enormous vacuum created when the Missouri had fired one of its salvoes against the Kommandorsky Islands.
But in the split second of sighting the target a half mile away and racing toward him, the pilot forgot all the questions he wanted answered about his brother’s death — such as why the hell he was out on deck when the guns were fired? He felt the adrenaline taking over as he shot off a TOW missile equipped with the latest warhead, upgraded to penetrate — he hoped — the layered reactive armor of the Siberian tanks, the armor that could explode an incoming round, diffusing its impact.
The Cobras, now joined by Apaches, made a force of sixty choppers in all. They swarmed over the taiga that erupted beneath them with streaks of orange light, pale against the snow but thunderous in their explosions. Shrapnel screamed as camouflaged “cold”—therefore not infrared-detectable — antiaircraft quads of rapid machine-gun fire opened up. For all their sophistication and versatility in the air — an aspect constantly celebrated by Hollywood — the truth, as every chopper pilot knew, was that his craft, flying at plus or minus 150 miles per hour, was a slow combatant in the modern world of high-subsonic and supersonic warfare, and low to the trees they were terribly vulnerable.
The Siberian quads continued to unleash a terrible and concentrated fire by means of the single most important an-antihelicopter defense of modern warfare: the Soviet-developed high-velocity AIRDEM, or air defense mines. The weapon was really misnamed as it was not, strictly speaking, an antiaircraft mine at all, having no effect on faster, fixed-wing aircraft. Rather it was specifically an antihelicopter weapon. But misnamed or not, the Siberian radar-and-heat-sensor-equipped mines exploded in V-shaped cones of shrapnel four hundred feet high and over a hundred yards in diameter.
The mine, triggered either by the approaching rotor slap or engine heat, proved devastating to the U.S. helicopter strike force, knocking out fifteen of the sixty choppers, three of these lost in midair collisions as a direct result of confusion and equipment gone awry in an air whistling with fuselage-smashing metal bits.
At first the younger reporters assigned to Second Army’s media pool back in Khabarovsk had difficulty understanding the seriousness of what had happened. To their inexperienced eyes, while fifteen downed out of sixty was bad news, it still left forty-five choppers fully operational. But older hands pointed out that if Freeman had lost 25 percent of all his choppers in one action, very soon he’d have none left. And as serious as the loss of 180 million dollars of sophisticated technology was, the loss of thirty pilots was far more serious.
The remaining forty-five U.S. choppers did not flinch, despite the losses. Most of their pilots were veterans of NOE flying in Europe and Iraq, and they exhibited all the deftness that was required in hugging rolling terrain at treetop level.
The instant a target was spotted, the chopper would dip down in the nearest fold, hovering, its mast sight extended high above the rotors, the sight’s small TV, invisible to the enemy, providing a clear video of the enemy tank or gun position. Then, with the target fix gained within seconds, the chopper would pop up, fire, pop down, wait for the explosion, and move on. The Apaches had an advantage over the Cobras as the latter, because of logistical priorities, had been assigned TOW missiles whose 447-pound electronic firing control box was much heavier man the Hellfire antitank control box used aboard the Apaches. The difference in control-box weight allowed the heavier Apaches to carry much more ordnance than the smaller, ten-thousand-pound Cobras.
It was not only the Siberian AIRDEMs that plagued the Apache/Cobra strike force but the mobile remote-controlled ZSU-23 sixty-five-round-per-minute AA quads that had already gained a reputation in the air defense of Ratmanov Island.
At Chichatka it wasn’t Freeman in the lead M-1 A-1 who realized what had happened but one of the model-airplane-sized Pioneer UAVs — unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicles-launched from the column’s midsection.
Heading into the cacophony of fire, snow-laden trees shattering and splitting on either side of it, snow, fire, and dirt sweeping across the road from the AIRDEMs’ explosions, Freeman’s tank in the first four-tank platoon was a thousand yards from the summit of the hill before Chichatka Station. Sitting higher, behind the gunner, who was encased by solid steel beneath the base of the 120-millimeter cannon, Freeman moved his right thumb and depressed the M-1 A-1 cupola’s traverse and laying control, his eyes flicking over the nine observation periscopes he had available to him, ready in an instant to go to “override” control should he glimpse the hull or any other part of an enemy tank or its camouflage net.
On either side of the road, fire breaks ran through the taiga, but as yet he saw neither tank tracks, though these would have been covered by the recent snowfall, nor any other sign of troop concentrations. Though he could see nothing of the enemy, Freeman, like the loader on his left and the gunner and driver in front of him, was sweating with concentration, the sour odor filling the tank. And despite the fact that the Abrams’ superb torsion-bar suspension made it the smoothest tank ride in the world, allowing the gun to traverse and remain stabilized regardless of the degree of buck and yaw even at full speed over rough ground, the fact was that a tank was still a tank, not a convertible.
The sheer volume of noise within the tank — an echo chamber for the fifteen-hundred-horsepower gas turbine, the nerve-rasping whine of the turret moving, and the heavy thumping of tread-compressed clumps of snow thrown up against the tank’s belly, all combined together with the four men’s intercom phone — added to the tension made worse by the knowledge that snow seeping back was reducing the infrared and laser-ranging sight capability.
Like every other tank commander, Freeman knew he would have only a split second to get a bead through the sighting scope. The “watch” was split between Freeman, taking the front 180-degree traverse, the loader, responsible for left flank to rear, and the gunner, right flank to rear. All the while Freeman was ready to plug into the intertank Bradley infantry fighting vehicle and armored personnel carrier radio network in the event that any of the tank crews spotted infantry that, he suspected, even now could be moving through the trees on either flank, waiting until enough tanks had passed before launching antitank rockets against the American armor.
A rock hit the glacis, the front-sloped armor, and Freeman saw the loader start. Mindful of the beating he’d taken on the Never-Skovorodino Road, Freeman wondered for a second whether it might have been better to wait for the self-propelled, eleven-mile-range, 155-millimeter howitzers and seventeen-mile-range M-110 A-2 artillery. But everything was a judgment call, and by the time the Never-Skovorodino road behind him would be cleared of the burned-out hulks caused by the Siberian cruise missile attack, and so clear enough for the howitzers to pass through, the Siberian armor would have time to position itself.
“Dolly Patton, three o’clock!” shouted the gunner, and in the half second it took Freeman to spot the outline of the busty armor of what looked to be a four-hundred-millimeter-thick T-72 turret, the gunner, having seen the target hidden down a firebreak on the right flank, had already got off a HESH — high-explosive squash head — round, the cold, clean air in the tank immediately replaced by a gush of hot, acrid-smelling smoke, the rush of the air conditioners’ antigas overpressure system automatically cutting in. Freeman immediately spotted another angular shape, its hull down but just visible above a snow berm about a thousand meters down the road. Going to override he got the fix and, hearing the roar of a gunship overhead, squeezed the trigger, sending off another HESH round at over a thousand meters a second to the target, and saw another M-1 tank right aft of him firing. He fired again; the muffled “crump” he heard, octane exploding. The first target already burned fiercely, nothing visible but a wall of orange flame licking into the white-green forest on either side of the firebreak, snow from previously heavily laden branches sliding to the ground like sugar.
In 2.3 minutes Freeman’s M-1 A-1 fired ten rounds. At this rate he knew they’d be out of ammunition in just under ten minutes. It was well within the M-1 ‘s rate of fire, the midbarrel fume extractor capable of handling the rapid passage of the fifty-six-pound HEAT round down the smooth bore, but it also meant the logistics of resupply quickly loomed as a major consideration.
So far no M-1s had been hit, to Freeman’s knowledge, though in the confusion of battle, including the noise of choppers overhead, no one would really know what had happened until after. His M-1 still advancing, the low hum of the computers making constant adjustments for barrel bend, wind drift, and outside temperature audible between the heavy thumps of other M-1s firing, Freeman broke into the intertank radio circuit, ordering any tank with more than thirty of its fifty rounds expended to withdraw for rearming. Tanks further back were told to go to battle speed and to close the gap wherever the more open ground around Chichatka Station would allow. Freeman hated ordering any kind of withdrawal of tanks who still had ten rounds, but he was suspicious now because of the apparent absence of infantry.
The forests beyond the clear area were ideal for infantry antitank positions; he didn’t want to be the man who led his armor into a trap. But he already had.
For the gunships it had been an unmitigated disaster, and Freeman’s realization that, albeit unwittingly, he’d delivered his air cavalry into the snare of quads and AIRDEM mines set by Yesov came via a radio message from his G-2. It was short and blunt and immediately explained to the gunner in Freeman’s tank and in many other M-1s how it was that Freeman’s armor had been so successful so far, the only casualty being a bad eject of a spent shell that seriously burned a loader. The message sent in plain language from Freeman’s G-2, its conclusion verified by the unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, was: “Enemy tanks fake.”
Worse was to come. With his choppers withdrawing, his tank crews knowing they’d been had, even if the helicopters had taken out some of the remote control quads in the forest, Freeman, the recon pics now rushed to him by dispatch rider, stood there in the cupola looking at the blowups. The caption over them bore the euphemistic title: “Simulated armored vehicles. French made.” The hastily typed G-2 report added the French manufacturer’s name, Lancelin-Barracuda, misspelled with a single “r.”
The fake tanks that had deceived the aerial reconnaissance were of fiberglass/plywood construction, their hollow interior containing a ten-gallon drum of gasoline, a four-cubic-foot box of junk metal — ample supplies of this available from the many disbanded old steam engines along the Trans-Siberian — and a clear-burning, Japanese-made kerosene lamp. The lamp produced the heat source for IF sensors aboard either the UAV reconnaissance craft or helicopters, such as those that had been flown by the thirty American helicopter pilots who were now dead. G-2 also informed Freeman that a Pentagon file matchup just received indicated that the cost to the Siberians of just one T-80 equalled the purchase price of at least sixty fake tanks. To add insult to injury, it was less subtly pointed out that C in C Second Army should also “be advised” that Allied intelligence “has known for some time that ZSU-23 quads could be tripped by the pulse of approaching aircraft engines,” which would “clearly explain the lack of troops.”
HEAVY CASUALTIES IN SECOND ARMY was the headline of The New York Times. The La Roche paper, in funereal tones that belied its brutally flippant headline, FREEMAN FOILED AGAIN, suggested it was time “to ask serious questions about General Freeman’s leadership.” This time there was not even a reference to the Pyongyang raid or the breakout of the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket and only an ambivalent reference to the “heavily won” victory on Ratmanov. Dick Norton and everyone else in Second Army now knew that Freeman had not swept a double header; what he had instead was a double humiliation. How Yesov must be laughing in Novosibirsk.
No one but Norton had the courage, when Freeman returned through the pall,of still-burning helicopters, to tell Freeman the news of his wife’s death. And at this moment, on the worst day of his life, General Douglas Freeman was also informed by the E-3A Sentry advance warning reconnaissance that another Siberian cruise missile offensive was on its way from Baikal. Freeman wanted to be alone with his grief for the one person who had shared his innermost ambitions and fears and all the joys and disappointments of their life together. And so did many others who had seen their closest friends literally torn asunder. But mourning was a luxury no war indulged, and the stars he wore on his collar dictated unequivocally that he give all his attention to, and husband whatever energy he had for, the welfare of his men in Second Army’s most perilous hours.
Though Second Army moved forward through Chichatka, its pace was sullen, the air of defeat heavy as skunk cabbage. On one level the problem was as simple as it was critical; the U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles had reached Baikal and taken out their designated targets, but more Siberian cruise missiles kept coming. Of course the launch sites had to be fake — only convincing enough, like the fake T-80s, in heat emission, size, and shape, to sucker the Americans into wasting precious cruise missiles of their own in the same way Freeman had lost fifteen of his prime antitank weapons in the downed Apaches and Cobras. It was evident now, G-2 had told him, that the Siberians must be using mobile sites, somehow covering their tracks, which the satellites weren’t picking up.
“Maybe they’re dragging a bush behind them,” said a junior officer jokingly. But no one was laughing, especially not the commander of the marine expeditionary force, who had lost another fifty-six men and forty-three wounded to the latest Siberian cruise attack.
Freeman, Norton, and the G-2 colonel were poring over the latest satellite reconnaissance pictures of the Baikal area, the colonel having circled the four Ushkanyi Islands jutting up like pimples in the photograph. Next to the satellite pics he put four tatty amateur photographs of the islands, slightly out of focus, the islands looking like tiny white stones encrusted by the ice. “What are these splotches?” asked Freeman in as desultory a tone as Norton had ever heard. The general was putting on his long white camouflage winter coat, preparing to go for one of his walks, and Norton couldn’t blame him. It was bad enough to lose a game without having to suffer replays in the dugout.
“Splotches?” said the colonel. “Well, most of it, I think, is overexposure — especially on these amateur shots we were sent. Some of it, of course, is varying thicknesses in the ice.” He tapped the amateur photographs, brought to them by one of the Buryat underground who’d nearly got shot by a jittery marine and who “claimed,” the colonel said suspiciously, that he’d gotten them from some Jewish underground.
Freeman grunted, picked up his helmet, and, as he always did before he went out, checked that his belt revolver was fully loaded, ready to go.
“Want the to come along, General?” asked Norton.
“No. Thanks all the same, Dick.” He forced a grin, trying to belie his mood to the others. “Have to nut a few things out,” he said, and was gone, flurries of snow bursting in unceremoniously just before the door closed. Outside the wind was moaning through the taiga.
“Some congressmen,” said one of the G-2 officers, “are pressing for his recall.”
“Where the hell are they coming from?” asked Norton, refusing to be drawn into any speculation about Freeman’s fitness for command. But his interjection was taken by the others as one that any duty-bound aide would have to make when his superior had his back against the wall. But if they thought that Freeman was venturing out alone to lick his wounds, they were wrong. As the general moved along the edge of the road, trucks rolling by him in the darkness, the drivers wearing infrared goggles and guided by MPs stamping their feet in the bitter cold as they kept a convoy of Second Army inching along wherever the road’s shoulder was too narrow, Freeman asked himself one question: Would he have replaced any commander who had experienced the defeats he had in the last few days? The answer was an unequivocal yes—if the commander had had sound intelligence about a possible sucker ploy. And “No,” if he hadn’t had reliable information of what the Siberians were up to.
For the remainder of his walk, hands behind his back, head down against the bitter cold, Freeman thought of his index files, of all the notes he’d made about all the possible campaigns he might be called upon to fight, just as Schwarzkopf had predicted and readied himself for a desert war. He recalled the history of the Russias, of the Transbaikal, which he had read as assiduously as the chronicles of Sherman and Grant; and he thought, too, of Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers on that unforgettable day in ‘91 when, before the game against Toronto, Ryan confessed to his coach, “My back hurts, my heel hurts, and I’ve been pounding Advil all day. I don’t feel good. I feel old today. Watch me.” They had watched him, and after he performed the miracle, he proclaimed, “I never had command of all three pitches like I did tonight… It was my most overpowering no-hitter.”
“By God,” Freeman told himself, “watch me, you bastards!” He walked for another half hour and on the way back to the G-2 hut availed himself of the MEF’s satellite hookup, ordering a call to the Pentagon on scrambler after which, without a word, he put down the phone and made his way back to the G-2.
In the intelligence hut the colonel in charge was alarmed when he saw Freeman, the ice crust on the general’s eyebrows making him appear particularly despondent and grim. The colonel rose, forcing a smile, being as cheery as you could be with a man who had just lost his wife and who was now in the blackest hole of his career.
“Coffee, sir?” asked a corporal.
“Potemkin!” said Freeman. Norton, who’d been hunched over a pile of SITREPS that chronicled the disastrous day’s action, pushed himself away from the fold-up desk and walked over to where the general, snowflakes now melting and dripping from his coat, was taking off his gloves, rubbing his hands vigorously, and nodding his thanks. He took the coffee, gratefully cupping it with both hands, letting the steam clear his sinuses. “Sibir. Know what it means, Colonel?” he asked the intelligence chief without taking his eyes off the laid-out satellite photos. “Sleeping land,” Freeman answered for him. “That’s what we’ve been doing. Goddamn sleepwalking. Well, I’ve had enough!” Other officers in the hut stopped what they were doing and watched him. “Potemkin,” repeated Freeman. “Prince in the time of Catherine the Great. Whenever he heard she was leaving the Winter Palace to have a look-see among her subjects, Potemkin would have fake villages built all along her route, neat facades, so she wouldn’t know what the real situation was.” He looked around at the assembled officers. “Fake tanks, gentlemen. Fake launch sites — all of ‘em.”
“But,” responded the intelligence colonel, “those cruise missiles they fired were real—”
“Yes, but not from there.” Freeman was using the monocle to circle the lake. “Not around Baikal. Or from the islands— too obvious. In it.”
It was said so calmly, matter-of-factly, yet almost casually, that for a second no one saw it, and when they did there were a few unsettling looks among the intelligence group. It wasn’t the first commander some of them had seen crack up. One of the junior officers laughed — perhaps it was the general’s idea of light relief.
“Ah, yes,” put in a major. “Only one problem with that, sir.” The officer was astounded that no one saw the objection; it was so obvious.
“The ice,” said Freeman, anticipating him, still looking at the photographs. “These photographs. Something bothered the about them earlier this evening.” The monocle was moving from one of the satellite photos to the amateur pictures reportedly taken by a member of the Jewish underground.”How thick is the ice on the lake?”
“Two to four feet,” shrugged the colonel.
“Exactly!” said Freeman. “And why is that?”
One of the junior officers toward the back turned to whisper to his colleague, “Because it’s friggin’ winter.”
Freeman surprised and alarmed the young lieutenant by having overheard the remark. As the general turned, the monocle caught a glint of light, giving him an unbalanced, even mad look even as he concurred. “Precisely, Lieutenant. Winter. But why does the ice cover vary? That’s the question.”
The monocle popped out into Von Freeman’s hand, and he garnered the men in closer. “Look here!” The monocle was tapping the photos again. “These amateur shots which you got from the Jewish underground. Fuzzy, bit out of focus.” And then he turned to the K-14 satellite pictures. These were much sharper, but they had one thing in common — apart from being in black and white. The monocle moved from the southwestern end near Port Baikal to the far north of the 390-mile-long lake. “Some of the ice is whiter-looking than the rest. The amateur shots, taken from the southern shore, show the same thing.” The officers crowding around the table saw the splotchy effect easily enough. “You said, Colonel,” continued Freeman, “that the ice thickness varies from two to four feet.”
“Yes, sir.” The colonel saw the general’s point. “That would explain why some areas are whiter, more dense, than others.”
“But why?” Freeman asked, and again answered his own question. “Spring water escaping from fissures in the bottom of the lake. Happens in all lakes, gentlemen. I’m something of an authority on ice.”
“Jesus!” the junior lieutenant said, but this time he spoke so softly that Freeman didn’t hear it.
“Met boys call it upwelling,” continued Freeman. “Common enough. Same thing happens at sea. Springs bubble up and spread out. Reflects the light differently.” Freeman let them wait. He wasn’t the most flamboyant general in the U.S. army for nothing. Substance, yes, but he knew the value of style. And this is where the training, the reading — the Patton-like attention to detail — paid off. “Subs,” he said. “They’re using subs, gentlemen. Lake is more than twice the size of the Grand Canyon. And deeper, over six thousand feet. They’ve been doing a Potemkin on us, gentlemen. Fake launch sites like fake tanks. We’ve been firing off cruise missiles at over a million bucks a pop for sweet fuck all. They’re imitating the nerpa!”
Norton thought it was the name of a ship.
“Seal!” explained Freeman. “I remember it because it was mentioned in the chronicles of Genghis Khan.” Freeman’s monocle slid southeast of Baikal.”Genghis Khan was born here. Ruled from Vladivostok to Moscow.” Freeman was shaking his head in admiration. “Magnificent son of a bitch. Then his descendants were swept out by the Cossacks. Cossack cavalry was like our M-1s — went through ‘em like crap through a goose. But even then the Mongols — they thought Baikal was holy — knew about the nerpa. Only freshwater seal in the world.”
The G-2 was looking across at Norton, visibly alarmed, the general’s rambling, seemingly unconnected soliloquy a symptom of crackup. But the G-2 officer was mistaken, and Norton knew they were in the midst of a Freeman brainstorm.
“For the life of me,” said Freeman, “while I was out there tonight walking I couldn’t understand why that damn seal was on my mind.” He turned to Norton. “Like the rivers, Dick. Kept at me. Soon as I heard our Tomahawks had hit their marks but the missiles kept coming. There was only one answer. Missiles were there but they weren’t. Submarines. But how could they transport something as big as a submarine to Baikal? And there’s no shipbuilding on Baikal. Nothing. Anyway you need an enormous infrastructure.” Freeman looked about his audience. “The nerpa seal, gentlemen.” The monocle in his right hand was tapping his temple. “The seal. Has to breathe. Spends its winter in the water using a dozen or so air holes — has to keep them open so he picks the thin ice. That’s how the subs do it, gentlemen. Pop up through the thin ice, fire, and go back down.” There was a stunned silence of admiration broken by Freeman. “Problem is, gentlemen, what to do?”
“Hit the ice?” said the junior lieutenant eagerly. “With our cruise missiles. Or have our subs launch ICBMs — conventional warheads.”
Freeman shook his head. “Thinking in the right direction, son, but you’re missing a few things. No good hitting the ice. Warhead explodes, expends all its energy on impact. Remember how far Baikal is from the coast, from here. We’ve been dropping them by air. From our subs — even one close to the coast— a cruise missile, travelling at five hundred miles per hour, even if it could reach the lake from the coast, which it can’t, would take hours. By that time their sub would be long gone from its firing position.”
“But,” cut in the colonel, “General, you just finished saying you can’t transport a submarine to a lake. And their very length-”
“Midgets,” said Freeman. “That’s all I can think of. It has to be.” He turned to Norton. “Dick — young David Brentwood?”
“SAS?”
“Yes. His brother. Crackerjack sub skipper—”
“Pacific Fleet, sir.”
“Yes. Where the hell is he?”
“Haven’t got a clue, General.”
“Find out. Immediately. I need expert advice. And Dick?”
“Sir?”
“David Brentwood. Where’s he?”
Norton shrugged. “Far as I know, he’s still on Ratmanov. Or at one of the Alaskan—”
“Get him, too. No reason why we can’t make this a family affair.”
“Sir,” proffered Norton, “if it’s information about midget subs, I suggest we save time and call the Pentagon. They’ll—”
“No, no. I’ve already done that,” said Freeman, his irritability rising in direct proportion to his excitement, the men around him watching with the awe of beginning violinists realizing they were watching a maestro conducting and composing at the same time. “I’ve already got the information on that.” He seemed grumpy that Norton hadn’t made the connection. “Goddamn it! Nerpa’s a small seal, you see. Only four and a half feet long. A midget.
“Most likely candidate, the Pentagon says,” Freeman announced, “is this thing. A GST — standing for gaseous storage in a toroidal hull.” He flattened a crumpled fax. The GST was an ugly thing to look at.
“Designed,” Freeman informed his listeners, “by some Italian joker called Guinio Santi.”
The picture of the sub looked like what the Pentagon and others had described as a “Michelin tire man lying on his side.” This was before the outer, more streamlined hull, was added on. It made the GST look like a huge egg, the multiple bicycle-tube ring effect under the superstructure created by three-inch-diameter piping that, wound around and around the hull, allowed engineers to overcome the problems of making a simple, relatively cheap, nonnuclear, quiet submarine. This also meant it was a much less detectable submarine. Because of the wraparound piping, the GST, unlike the other nonnuclear subs, did not have to come up for air so often and risk disclosing its position either by showing a snorkel or by creating thermal patching, which put regular nuclear and diesel-electric subs in danger from aerial and satellite surveillance.
And so, ironically, its plans stolen from the Italian designer by Chernko’s agents, the fat, egg-shaped GST, using a constantly reusable, nonnuclear chemical-exchange-powered engine — originally scheduled by its manufacturer, the Kuznetsky Metallurgical Kombinat, or KMK works in Novokuznetsk, 180 miles southeast of Novosibirsk, to create chaos among the Allied blue water fleets — was now, following the loss of Vladivostok and other Siberian naval bases on the coast, being used not in the Pacific or Atlantic but in the inland Sea of Baikal.
But if this much was known about the midget sub, it took Captain Robert Brentwood, USN, after a gruelling ten-hour flight by chopper and jet to Hokkaido and Second Army HQ, to fully explain to Freeman and the rest of the officers in G-2 exactly why the toroidal hull was so dangerous. With a total displacement of only 250 tons against the Soviet-made Alfa’s 4,200 tons and the U.S. Sea Wolfs 10,000 tons, the toroidal-shaped hull would occupy less than 6 percent of regular attack-size submarines. Only fifty feet long, it was designed specifically to defeat the superior sound-detection technology of the United States and her allies, its exhaust gases being constantly stored and scrubbed rather than being expelled into the water. With a burst speed of twenty-five knots submerged, faster than most full-size diesel-electric subs, and a cruising speed of plus or minus fifteen knots, it could range 230 miles without coming to the surface. Except, as Brentwood pointed out, to fire its missiles. And even these would be fired subsurface, after its “pic” and/or small float-drum charges had blown a hole in the thinner ice.
“It’s a formidable weapon,” conceded Brentwood. “Compared to our subs, a GST of this type would look like a speck of fly dirt. The Iraqis were being trained for midget subs in Poland, but when the Gulf war came Hussein never got a chance to use them. Couldn’t get them through the embargo.”
“Why the hell didn’t we go for it?” asked Freeman.
“Because,” said Brentwood, with elegant simplicity, “we thought we had the best.”
“How big a crew?” Freeman asked.
“Six to eight, sir,” replied Brentwood. “Essentially same controls as for any submarine. Long shifts. Probably twelve hours on, twelve off, three to four men each shift. Minimum would be captain, engineer, electronics warfare officer, and CPO or enlisted man on the rudder control. General, asked Brentwood, “do we have any wreckage of the cruise missiles used against Second Army? Any that didn’t go off?”
“They all went off,” said Freeman grimly. “Why?”
“Well, I’d guess they were using SS-21Ds — suB-1aunched, converted land-attack missiles. Twenty-one feet long, two-thousand-mile range. It’s so much like our Tomahawk, we call it the Tomahawski.”
The junior lieutenant thought it was amusing. Freeman didn’t. He was figuring that with each salvo fired on Second Army being a minimum of twenty missiles, there wasn’t just one GST out there that they had entrained to Port Baikal from wherever the hell they were making them — there were more. He put it to Brentwood.
“Once clear of the water,” said Brentwood, “missile’s jack-knife fins extend, reach Mach 1.2 in two minutes. And I’d say with ripple launch, General, and given their length, we’re looking at maybe four missiles apiece.”
“What’s this ripple launch?”
“Well, sir, you fire one missile from your starboard forward tube, the second, port aft, to counteract the rocking effect of the first missile. Then you fire port forward, then port aft.”
“How long would you say to launch?” Freeman put to him.
“Two minutes. Four minutes and they’re loafing.”
“Holy dooly!” said the young lieutenant, with a high whistle.
Freeman glowered at him then looked at Brentwood. “So how many subs do they have?”
“I think we’re looking at five, General. If I’m right about four missiles apiece. That we can’t be sure of. But if we’re talking twenty missiles a salvo, then that’s just about—”
“Yes, yes,” said Freeman impatiently.
“I should add, General, it depends on the thickness of the ice or if there’s an open space due to upwelling. They could probably launch in less time. Same thing happens when you’re in the polar ice. You can get wafer thickness or—”
“Yes, yes,” cut in Freeman, again impatiently, his mood reflecting his and G-2’s realization that if he could not take out the subs — and he couldn’t by air or missile attack because of the ice roof — he’d lose the war. “They have to be taken out,” he said, looking steadily at Brentwood, who felt his stomach roll over like an ice-encrusted ship, capsizing, top-heavy in the polar pack.
When Freeman outlined his plan, he didn’t make it an order but a request, adding, “Besides, your brother’s experienced in these matters. He’ll be a great help.” Freeman paused.”You’re the oldest, aren’t you?” Freeman made his question about Brentwood being the eldest sound like small talk at a cocktail party.
“Yes, sir,” said Brentwood evenly. “I’m the oldest.”
“I hope I don’t embarrass you, Captain, but damn, your father must be proud of you boys.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Brentwood parried.”I haven’t seen him in over a year. I’ve been at sea for so long—”
“Good! Good!” said Freeman, slapping Brentwood affectionately on the back as he steered him over to the map table. “And when this is over, we’ll see you two get special leave. Fair enough?”
Robert Brentwood looked across at General Freeman.”Fairest thing I’ve heard all day, General.”
“By God, Brentwood, that’s the spirit.” He turned to Norton. “I wish that old limey fart—” He paused. “What’s his name, Dick? At the White House?”
“Soames, sir. Brigadier Soames.”
“Yes, well I wish he was here. We’d show him American know-how. Eh, Dick?”
“General, that lake is heavily defended. Now that railhead at Port Baikal is bound to be heavily defended. Only place in the south where they could have slid a midget down slips direct from the rail tracks.”
“Defended by AA batteries, yes,” responded Freeman, “but they’re expecting fighters, bombers, Dick. Not a commando raid.”
Norton was confused. “But sir, the risk of a drop through all that AA—”
“Drop?” said Freeman, surprised. “Who the hell said anything about a drop?” He thrust his monocle at the map. “I’m not going to send brave men to drop on top of AA fire. You’ve got it ass backwards, Dick. We’ll fly them in. Can leave in the dark, but it’ll have to be a daylight raid, given our scanty intelligence on the layout of Port Baikal.” He was talking to Brentwood now. “Your brother’ll lead an SAS/Delta troop. Twelve men.” Without a pause he told Norton to make the preparations. “Now, Brentwood, you tell the what you need. I suggest seven more men from our navy base in Hokkaido to bring your strength to eight. Or do you want to pick your own outfit?”
“My own crew, sir.”
Freeman, his left hand pressed hard against his forehead like a sunshade, right hand with the monocle pumping time, was walking back and forth in the G-2 hut, giving orders left and right, including the minutiae of equipment needed by the small out mobile force. Norton and the G-2 officers took notes, looking like overworked waiters at a fast-food takeout.
“How long to get them here, Dick?”
“Took the ten hours,” said Brentwood, not quite yet believing that he was actually volunteering for the mission.
“Outstanding!” said Freeman. He looked at his watch to put the mission’s ETD on Zulu time. “Oh three hundred hours tomorrow.” Freeman was now talking to his logistics officer, Malcolm Wain. “Mal, I want you to oversee chopper preparation. Suggestions?”
Wain took the roll-rule and punched in the numbers on his calculator. “Five hundred miles with extra tanks — yes, sir. NOE flying. It’ll be risky, General. They’ll be under the radar screen of course, travelling that low, but there’s always the unexpected and—”
Freeman swung about from the map. “What the hell’s the matter with you? I picked you because you were a man with initiative. You can’t handle it, Mal, I’ll get someone who can.” There was silence in the G-2 hut, broken only by the steady hum of the computers.
“Yes, sir.”
“All right,” said Freeman. “Can you get them there?”
“Yes, sir. Four hours flying. Reach there by dawn. Return after dark. Two Cobras riding shotgun for two Super Sea Stallion choppers carrying the strike team. Six SAS/Delta troops, four of Brentwood’s crew and four collapsible Snowcat ‘Arrow’ vehicles in each Stallion. With a Stallion crew of three that makes thirteen men apiece. One chopper goes down, we still have one team — albeit a skeleton one — intact.”
“Anyone superstitious about thirteen?” asked Freeman. He gave no one an opportunity to answer. “I’m not.” He paused, hands on his hips, shaking his head and looking up at the man he’d chosen because he was reputedly the best of the finest in the service whose promise was “Venio non videor”—”! come unseen.” “By God, Brentwood, I envy you. I wish I was going with you, but I don’t know beans about driving a submersible.”
“Too bad, sir,” said Brentwood in as neutral a tone as he could manage. Norton coughed, turning away. The G-2 duty officer was handing Freeman an urgent decode. After reading the message, the general shook hands with Robert Brentwood. “You and Dick work out the fine-tuning here with Wain.” With that the general turned abruptly and walked over to the far corner of the hut where a terrain map had been spread out on one of the large folding tables.
Brentwood looked across at Norton, feeling as if he’d just been through a squall, suddenly realizing that the “fine-tuning” would have to include some way of getting back — after they’d got to Port Baikal and highjacked a GST. “Maybe,” he said to Dick Norton, “they’ll all be asleep.”
“It’s very sparsely populated,” said Norton. It was the only thing he could think of that might be remotely comforting.”Port Baikal — from the aerials — is just a bit of a village. I don’t think you’ll have trouble getting in there. Our chopper guys are the best in the world — flew special operations in the Iraqi desert.”
“Bit colder, I guess,” said Brentwood.
“Minus thirty. Good for the choppers, though. Gives ‘em more lift.”
“Great,” said Brentwood who, though facing the hazards of the deep every day of a submarine patrol, had always been of the mind, unlike his kid brother, that anything that flew was inherently unsafe. He was still watching the general who had now, it seemed, turned his attention to some other matter. The G-2 duty officer came up and gave Norton a copy of the decode.
“Sure would like to talk to him about some of those ‘finer details’ he mentioned,” said Robert Brentwood. “Like what the SAS/Delta boys’ll do if we make it to Port Baikal. They spend a few days hiking in the woods, waiting for us?”
“Oh,” said Norton, moving under the light to better read the message, “they’re trained to survive for days, even weeks, in—” He didn’t finish what he was going to say, falling silent, jaws clenched, realizing now why Freeman had abruptly ended the conversation with Brentwood to go to the maps. Norton showed the message to Brentwood. The Thirty-first “Stalingrad” Motorized Division, leading the Fifth Siberian Army, was only two hundred miles away. Robert Brentwood was a naval, not a military, tactician, but it was as obvious as the nose on his face that if he couldn’t kill the cruise threat from Baikal, Freeman wouldn’t stand a chance.
Two hours later, as they were going over the supplies needed, from every piece of winter clothing to the hand-held Magellan GPS — global positioning system — that gives a soldier his position within fifteen meters anywhere in the world, the young G-2 lieutenant came in with full kit for Brentwood, which included a small capsule called the “L” pill. “It’s optional,” explained the lieutenant with an apologetic smile. “We’ve had reports that in the Urals, when our boys from Ten Corps were cut off, well-”
“Siberians don’t take prisoners,” said Norton. “They figure looking after POWs is a drain on resources.”
There was an awkward silence, which Brentwood himself broke by a game attempt at humor.”I take it ‘L’ isn’t for love.”
“Lethal,” said the lieutenant. Norton said nothing. There was absolutely no point in telling Brentwood that the Siberians wouldn’t even waste a bullet on prisoners. In the Urals they’d used their rifle butts on a company of Ten Corps POWs. It saved ammunition — even if it took a little longer.
“You’d better get some sleep,” the lieutenant ingenuously suggested, then looked about conspiratorially. “I can get you a fifth of sake. Not as good as whiskey, but—”
“Sake’ll be fine. Thanks, Lieutenant.” Brentwood was a stickler for running a dry submarine and rarely drank, even when he was ashore. Last time he could remember having done so was having a beer with Rosemary on his last leave. But right now a fifth of anything would suit him just fine.