William Spence was a cook’s helper aboard HMS Peregrine— not yet a chef, but determined to become one. Cooking was the thing he loved to do best because he’d seldom seen people happier than when they were enjoying a good meal. His parents, Richard Spence, an industrial chemist for a large heavy industrial adhesive company in London, and Anne Spence, a retired grammar school teacher, lived in one of the upper-middle-class green belt housing estates near Oxshott in the south of England — forty minutes by train from Waterloo. Young William had never intended to join the navy — certainly it had not been his father’s intention for him. But with the middle class increasingly distrustful of the secular state schools, demand and fees for private schools had gone up dramatically. Richard and Anne Spence had scraped and saved early in their marriage so that their two eldest children could go to private school. For Rosemary, now thirty, it had been the school best equipped to get her into teacher’s training college, and for Georgina, now twenty-five, the school best suited to win her entry, via scholarship, to the markedly secular but reasonably prestigious LSE, the London School of Economics and Political Science.
William, on the other hand, had not been “planned,” and when Anne in her early forties had found she was pregnant, there had been a frightful row between her and Richard, but one conducted in the absence of the two girls. Anne finally decided not to abort, but now Richard, on the verge of his sixties, when both he and Anne had anticipated early retirement, was faced with paying the bills for William to be at a private school. It meant delayed retirement for Richard for at least another five years. Resentment of his predicament, however, had long ago given way to a love for his son that he had not thought possible, and certainly the kind he had achingly missed with his father.
Then one day shortly after his eighteenth birthday, William announced he didn’t want to go to university — he wanted to be a cook.
“A chef!” corrected Richard in astonishment. Even then William could see his father was at once disappointed and relieved. Relieved because, erroneously, Richard Spence expected it would cost less money to train his son in the culinary arts, and disappointed because the Spences had always been of professional stock — solicitors, doctors, even the odd barrister. No criminal briefs, of course, mainly mercantile law. It was one of these relatives who, before the war broke out, had advised Richard of a “solicitous compromise” which he believed would satisfy both Richard’s desire to see his son in a respectable profession, rather than merely a trade, and William’s choice. Richard demurred, however, on the subject of a child of his being in, well — manual work.
“Being a chef’s not like being in a trade these days, Richard,” William’s great-uncle had advised in High Church tone. “More of a guild, I should think. Point is, if you want both, he’ll have to don uniform. Have to pass the entry exam, of course, but he’ll get his O levels.”
“Shortly,” Richard assured him. “What do you mean by uniform?”
“Not a bad arrangement at all,” the uncle had continued.
“And they’re desperate these days. No offense, Richard. But they do want volunteers if they can get them. William seems bright enough. I see no reason why after a while he couldn’t apply for officer training school. Rather rushing them through these days, I should think, with all this talk of trouble brewing in Europe.” The uncle had looked satisfiedly into his dry sherry. “Yes, I should think it would suit him admirably. End up with a commission and—” he sipped the sherry “—I shouldn’t be surprised if he was running a large hotel in years to come. Could do worse.”
“I suppose,” began Richard, “if he wanted—”
“Richard, old boy, once he gets his one stripe, he’s way ahead of other applicants for any hostelry business. Officer, cordon bleu, and all that. Doesn’t do any harm, Richard. I do think that given his rather limited aspirations, it would be best for him.”
Richard was coming around, slowly. “Any of the services will do, I expect?” asked Richard.
The uncle came as near as he ever had to swallowing sherry without savoring it first. “Certainly not. I strongly suggest the senior service.”
“The air force,” said Richard.
“Don’t be fey, Richard. The navy, of course.”
“I wasn’t trying to be fey.”
“Then your ignorance on these matters is lamentable.”
“But I’ve never thought of William as a sailor. Anne won’t go for it,” Richard had said. “I can tell you that now. All this business about the possibility of war breaking out…”
“War? Richard, old man, you’ve been watching too many of those dreadful ‘Insight’ programs. Either that or reading the Mirror.” The uncle took his brolly and hat from the front stand, using the unfurled umbrella as a pointer. “You send him to the navy, mark my words.”
Richard was right — Anne didn’t like it — but he told her it was most likely that, unless the unthinkable happened, William would be posted to a shore establishment. In any case, if there was a flare-up, with modern weapons it would be like the Falklands so many years ago — over very quickly.
Eleven months to the day, William Spence was Leading Seaman Spence, cook’s helper, aboard the destroyer escort HMS Peregrine. After a very rushed, rather peremptory training drill ashore, he now found himself aboard one of the latest DD escorts, his job one of the least glamorous, most important jobs in war: to prepare food for convoy under attack, to guarantee, no matter what the conditions, that everyone in the ship’s company got his NATO-required three thousand calories a day.
For all the destroyer’s modern technology, hot meals were, as the cook quickly explained, ill-advised at most and “sheer bloody impossible” in the maelstrom of an engagement: hot stoves, soup tubs spilling despite their gimbals mountings, steaming coffee and tea that would burn, and ovens that unattended could cause a fire — as lethal as any missile. Yet if morale was to be kept up, food was fundamental, providing the high-sugar, high-adrenaline level necessary for any kind of sustained battle.
William Spence had heard but seen little of R-1’s action against the trawlers. Apart from the bridge-wing lookouts, no one was permitted on ship’s decks, the 115-millimeter gun and the Australian IKARA SUBROCS going off along with the Limbo depth-charge mortar unloading its deadly ordnance off the stern of the seven-thousand-ton ship. The Bristol-class destroyer, her twin funnels astern behind the rotary bar radar her telltale markings, had fired her 115-millimeter at two of the trawlers, but her angle in the close pack of the convoy prevented her from launching torpedoes. After the sinking of the Russian-manned trawlers, the men who did not have their stations overlooking the well deck and so had not see the carnage of broken bodies adrift in the icy waters of the Atlantic were the only ones who were hungry. But the cook, a chief petty officer, assured William Spence that later that night, when the others’ shock of seeing their first “dead men” wore off, they would be ravenous— especially if the big fish came.
William Spence didn’t get the connection.
“Torpedo attack,” explained the cook. “Night’s still the worst time — fancy radar or no. And if that happens, it’ll be bloody mayhem, laddie. Ship darkened. CIC dimmed — so you make sure you’ve piles of boxed sandwiches, and keep those thermos cups bunched, ready to go in the elastic basket. We go into search or evasive pattern, this tub’ll be swinging from starboard to port, port to starboard so fast, it’ll make your head spin. And it’ll last hours. And no onions or garlic. Old man’ll go spare— can’t abide ‘em.”
“Hardly haute cuisine, Chief,” said Spence. The cook had seen many a recruit come and go, but there was something more likable about Spence than most — perhaps it was his unabashed naïveté, an eagerness that assumed the best in everyone he met, and the cherubic face that was in stark contrast with the salt-leathered scowls he got at times in the mess. Not all of them, like Johnson, who was peeling spuds for the freezer, were volunteers like Spence.
“And that Yank bloke we have aboard,” said the cook. “NATO liaison fella. No Marmite for him. They don’t understand it.”
“Can’t say I’m mad about it myself,” smiled Spence.
“Ah,” said Johnson, “puts hair on your chest. Right, Chiefie? Iron in the old pecker,” said Johnson. “Cock stiffener.”
Spence blushed. The cook said nothing — they were sending him choirboys, they were, all keen and woefully inexperienced in the ways of the world — but unlike some of his ilk, the chief cook aboard HMS Peregrine took no delight in watching the transition from recruit to leading seaman.
“Never mind him,” said the cook, pushing the big thirty-two-once jar of black beef extract spread toward Spence. “Just don’t put it on till you’ve made all the other sandwiches. Most crew don’t like it when it’s been sitting around too—”
“Action stations!”
The cook’s voice was drowned out as the sound of the alarm and men running, grabbing life jackets, asbestos balaclavas, and gloves, thumped quickly through the guided missile destroyer. In an instant the high whine of abrupt start-stop electric motors could be heard bringing weapons into line with radar guidance. Peregrine heeled sharply to starboard at thirty knots, the flare of her bows lost in a gossamer of spray, phosphorescent with plankton. William Spence could hear the sudden dump! dump! dump! of the 155-millimeter — and then the hard-running-faucet sound of the IKARA torpedo-missile, Peregrine turning so violently to port that coffee spat out of the hot twin Silex pots that had been shoved hard against their metal guards.
“A sub,” said Johnson, either very brave or feigning indifference.
“Yes,” said the cook, “a sub, and you’d better get on with it. Soon as you’ve finished with that lot, you can put them in the freezer, give Spence here a hand with the sandwiches.” Johnson was getting mad as he was forced to hold hard on to the sink as the ship rose, bucked hard astarboard, and fell through a belly-wrenching slide into a deep trough. “Only the British bloody navy would have you peeling potatoes. On the Yank boats…”
“Ships,” corrected Spence good-naturedly, more in the way one might help a friend rather than criticize.
“Quite right, lad,” said the chef. “Ship.”
“Ship, shit, what’s the difference? We aren’t sailors. I didn’t join up to peel—”
The Peregrine now bashed its way through a wave, the heavy spray like fine rain above them, the second escort a lump against moon-tinted sea a quarter mile to port.
“ ‘S’-pattern,” said Spence.
But the chef was looking at Johnson, handing him back the scraper he’d dropped in the heavy, sharp roll. “That’s where you’re wrong, Johnson. We are sailors. Without food, lad, this ship can’t function.” He handed Johnson another potato. “All right then?”
Johnson grunted.
“Besides,” continued the cook, “if you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined.”
“I didn’t,” said Johnson, his tone turning surly. “It was either this or a year in the nick.”
“What for?” asked the cook. Spence was amazed; he’d never actually seen a real live criminal before, let alone worked next to one.
“I found some silver,” said Johnson defiantly.
“Where?” asked the cook.
“In a house. Where else?”
“What’s done is done,” said the cook, unscrewing a peanut butter jar, face going red. “Just so long as we don’t have any silver missing around here. Because—” continued the cook, handing the jar to Spence, “if we find anything missing, we’ll cut your bloody twinkie off. Like one of them ayatollahs. Right, Spence?”
Spence didn’t know what to say.
“Well it doesn’t matter anyway, does it?” Johnson continued, unrepentant, swinging the french fry cutter toward him. “I mean we’re all for Davy Jones.” He saw Spence’s alarm and smiled. “Yeah, that’s right, mate. Food for the fucking fishes, we are. What flamin’ chance ‘ave we got next to one of them Russian subs? You answer me that.” The ship was slowing down, the bell signaling end-of-action and standby stations.
“See?” said Johnson, waving his peeler in the general direction of the combat information center in the heart of the ship. “They don’t know what’s fucking going on.”
“Probably just a drill,” said the cook.
Johnson tossed another potato into the bucket. “You know how many miles we’ve got to go yet?” he asked them ominously.
“Next couple of days,” said William, “the Americans will take over. Midway point.”
“Oh,” said Johnson. “I see. Once the Yanks take over, we’ll be all right. Don’t you know we’ll be taking their convoy back?”
Spence didn’t reply — Johnson seemed so jaded about everything that no matter what you said, he’d pick fault with it.
“You married, Spence?” asked Johnson.
“No, I’m not actually.”
“Well, actually,” said Johnson, “it’s just as well. No widow.” The cook shifted off the safety sleeve on the automatic meat slicer, then swung it around, Johnson’s grooved face distorted in its shining surface.
“Stow it!” said the cook. He was the boss of the galley and preferred informal rules, despite the British navy’s long tradition of tar and feathers, but when yobbos like Johnson started upsetting people unnecessarily, then he was prepared to pull rank. For a second Johnson said nothing, and in the uneasy silence the cook thought of his wife and two children, teenagers, in Portsmouth — and ruminated on the fact of how things had changed. Oh, there’d always been the shipboard whiners like Johnson as long as he’d been in the navy, but he couldn’t have imagined a rating daring to speak with such a defeatist streak in him since the first day out. Fortunately, for every Johnson out there, he hoped — believed — there were two or three Spences, otherwise it was going to be a long, grumpy business in Peregrine’s crew’s mess.
It wasn’t only Johnson that he wondered about. With NATO there were foreigners you had to cater to — a Yank or two at the table — usually one would like his meat rare — and a sprinkling of Scandinavians, all blond and looking as if they had just been skiing. And there were Dutch hippies who smoked a lot—”not always tobacco, mate”—and had everybody wondering whether, when push came to shove, they’d be up to it. “Democratic disease, “ the chef had explained to young Spence. And the Krauts, of course, always liked the British ships best. More beer rations. Spence was too friendly, too young really, to be on a ship with all these other blokes — and always asking questions — what wine was best with this and that, and the cook telling him no wine was any bloody good on ship because everything ended up getting sloshed and corked anyway.
“Wait till the war’s over, laddie,” the cook had finally told him. “Get this lot down pat and next thing you’ll find yourself on some shore establishment doing the hors d’oeuvres for the admiral’s party.” But William Spence had a theory — that if he could learn to make dishes for everyone, for “all the sixteen nationalities in NATO” coming from all kinds of different backgrounds, then he’d have a head start when he was demobbed. He had told the cook that he’d started a list of what wines did travel best — now, that surely had to be of use if you were going into the cruise trade after the war.
Sometimes Spence’s zeal just plain wore the cook down, but he tried not to dampen the kid’s enthusiasm. He’d seen too many go the other way. Maybe the kid had a point about the wines as nowadays they were trying all new bottling techniques anyway. In any case, the cook knew the boy had the “gift” of all great chefs. Organization. Being the cook of HMS Peregrine, one of Britain’s star hi-tech destroyers, the chief petty officer had seen hundreds come and go through his charge, and he’d known many of them who could cook meals that you’d never forget. But he hadn’t met many who could do that and who also possessed the ability to pace themselves, never to have one dish rushing in the wake of another, or too far apart, but just to appear naturally, and always, but always, at the right temperature. That’s where art came in.
“Now, when you’ve finished with those spuds, Johnson,” said the cook, “I want you to put this vitamin C on them before you start the next lot.”
“Stops them going brown,” said William. “The vitamin C.”
“I fucking know that,” said Johnson. He sprinkled the vitamin C around and tied the heavy plastic bag with double twist. “Good as dead!” he said. “Subs. That’s what we need. This surface shit is a crock—”
“We’ve got subs,” said Spence before the chef could tell Johnson to shut up.
“Nine,” said Johnson. “Jesus Christ, the Russians have hundreds.”
“So have the Americans,” answered William.
“Right!” joined in the cook.
“You know—” said Johnson, his hand grabbing the cold stove rail as Peregrine climbed up out of a trough.
“Know what?” asked William Spence, feeling a little seasick in the closed-off and overheated air that was being recycled through the galley.
“Moscow’s only got to move all their crap down the road. Yanks have to move their shit across the whole friggin’ Atlantic.”
“You should be in comedy, Johnson,” said the cook nonchalantly. “You’ve missed your vocation, laddie. We ought to send you round to the hospitals, we ought. They could do with a cheery bastard like you.”
“Haven’t you heard of rollover?” asked Spence challengingly.
“Oh ‘cor. Spare me, will you? Rollover.”
“Yes,” said William Spence. “We roll over them. Just push through.”
Johnson finished peeling the potato, stared at it for a moment, and let it crash to the bottom of the bucket. “Rollover Beethoven. You sound like one of those fucking admirals. They do the rolling, we do the over.”
“What would you do then?”
“I’d leave it up to the Yanks and the Russians. Their war, not ours.”
“But we’re part of NATO,” said Spence.
“Listen, mate — in this world it’s everyone for himself. NATO, TATO, who gives a shit?” He was using the peeler as a pointer. “You don’t look after Number One, sweetheart, nobody will.”
“Perhaps you should have gone to jail instead,” said Spence— the first time the cook had heard Spence angry.
“Now, that,” rejoined Johnson, “is the first bright idea you’ve had, Sunshine.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because, ducky—” Johnson savagely extracted a rotten spot from the potato “—I didn’t know some silly bastard’d start shoving — did I?” He moved the bucket of potatoes over toward the sink. “Well, now I know and I’m telling you, mate — any friggin’ thing hits this ship and I’m first off — Beaufort raft and all.”
The cook heard the buzz on the bridge-to-mess intercom, and as he picked it up, wondered whether he should put Johnson on report. “Right, yes, sir. Right away, sir.” He clipped the phone back on its cradle. “Sandwiches and coffee to the bridge. Corned beef and lettuce for the old man. No pickles.” He paused before giving Spence the plastic tray, checking that all the indents for cups, plates, and so forth were spotlessly clean. “Sub pack ahead of us.”
“How far?” asked Spence, trying not to sound frightened.
“A ways off yet,” said the cook, “but it’ll be a long night ahead of us, boys.”
“What did I bloody tell you?” said Johnson. “I thought our mob were supposed to knock ‘em off up near fuckin’ Greenland with all the super-duper mines we planted down there. Christ— now we’re in for it.”
During the trawlers’ mine attack on R-1 and R-1’s defense, ocean noise was such that it shook the fine instrumentation of sonar buoys and towed arrays for thousands of miles. By sheer chance it provided a noise cover that seemed heaven-sent by the Soviet sub pack approaching the GIUK choke points in two groups. The first group was heading for the Greenland-Iceland Gap, close in to the extended ice sheet, using it as added protection against which ASROC and other antisubmarine warfare missiles could not penetrate other than by blowing themselves up. The second group of seventy subs, using the static and a heavy sea for cover, was going for the Faeroe-Iceland Gap. NATO’s mines in both the narrow Greenland-Iceland Gap and the Iceland-Faeroe Gap had been beaten by the Soviet subs, who, with the help of the Walker spy ring secrets, had found out how to best “baffle”—or alter — their noise signatures-similar to altering sounds from a car.
But once through the ice-free Iceland-Faeroe Gap, the submarines were detected through “thermal patching,” the Soviets’ COMONES — computer-controlled emission systems — not being nearly as sophisticated as the Americans’. Here the Russians’ luck ran out and there was a terrible slaughter.
“Prigotovitsya vsplyt!”—”Prepare for surfacing!” was one of the oft-repeated phrases that morning of the NATO attack on the Russian Northern Fleet.
Protected by F-IIIAs — Ravens — from Upper Haywood and the Norwegian bases, NATO’s Nimrods came out of Scotland’s Kinross Air Station, with searchwater radar and aerial-release depth bombs. The American Lockheed search-and-attack Vikings, with infrared sensors, magnetic anomaly detectors, and homing torpedoes, closed with thirty F-15 Sea Eagles out of Keflavik. The attack spread out from the shallow 190-mile-wide gap to Wyville Thomas Ridge two hundred miles south, where the water depth increased to two thousand meters. It was the “high,” as one of the Viking pilots put it, of all their years in NATO, as one Soviet captain after another ordered, “Prepare to surface.” Nineteen subs, eleven nuclear and four diesel-electrics, were outright kills, and four forced to the surface, white smoke pouring out of them high into the pristine air, their crews having no alternative but to ditch into the ice-cold Arctic waters. Some managed to get rafts inflated in time to drag themselves, half-frozen, aboard, but it was the first time since World War II that the Russian navy, at least its submarine branch, had come under such attack and proved so wanting. The American Vikings’ under-wing ECM — electronic countermeasures— worked superbly well, not only in jamming the Russians’ “snoop tray” radars but also in feeding the submarine force and its Russian battle group false over-the-horizon echoes. This caused two of the Soviet ASW helo carriers to fire Cruise missiles at empty air, and one of the Tango-class subs to send back an advisory “burst” message that was picked up by two of the Vikings. Thus identified, the submarine never stood a chance as a Mark 46 torpedo streaked through the water at twenty-five meters a second, its explosion rupturing two of the Tango’s forward watertight compartments, torpedo room, and crew’s mess, the sub driving nose-first to the bottom, its implosion registered by a Sea King helo from HMAS Invincible.
“Like bloody Clapham Junction,” said one Nimrod bombadier after the fourth sub had gone down. Neither the Turkish nor Greek NATO radar operators, two nationalities that normally would never share the same console, had heard of the British Rail choke point in London that was notorious for terrible train crashes. But both Turk and Greek operators knew what he meant. Carnage. It was on a scale predicted by only a few of the sonar experts who, in the not-so-cold war, had gone hunting, “pinging” the Russians until they withdrew in confusion because of inferior sonar.
The public relations assistant to CINCHAN — Commander in Chief Channel Forces in Northwood, U.K. — handed Admiral Newsome the information in a jubilant mood. “It’s all coming home to roost, sir.”
“What is?”
“Soviets’ deficiencies. We knew their sonar was bad, but-well, no matter how many SSNs they have, subs aren’t much use to them if they don’t know precisely where we are.”
The admiral knew this and he also knew the other Soviet deficiencies: inferior repair facilities and not nearly the same number of overseas bases or coastal listening stations as the Americans had. The admiral also knew that the NATO forces had been lucky; the absence of large numbers of Russian fighters due to Soviet “surge” tactics now being used on Germany’s central front had allowed the British Nimrods and American Vikings to go about their sub killing unmolested, the Russians having concluded, correctly, that if they won Western Europe quickly enough, the NATO sea lines would be rendered useless. Consequently, the admiral did not share his aide’s mood of exhilaration.
“We can both see and detect one another’s battle groups from four hundred miles away,” the assistant was explaining to a member of the press, admitted only on the understanding that all details of the battle would then be quashed. The admiral’s assistant was explaining to the newspaperman that while both the Soviets and Americans at times did have comparable early-warning radar on their fixed-wing planes and helicopters, the American carriers were so potent in terms of air cover that they could search four times the area as their Soviet counterparts “in any given time frame.”
It was an enormous advantage. And it now became clear to CINCHAN, in Northwood, and ACNE — Allied Commander Northern Europe — in Kolsas, Norway, why in the prewar years the Soviets developed an obsession with shadowing any Allied ship they could, often using their fishing trawlers. It had been an attempt to make up for their lack of bases on the continental shelves, which the Americans possessed. The Soviets had been shadowing the NATO ships in those years not just for information about size and armament but really operating as seaborne early-warning stations in the event of war.
“Yes,” conceded the admiral, looking over at the chart of the North Atlantic. “They’ve taken a drubbing, all right, but that doesn’t preclude a trap. They know they have inferior search capabilities. Question is, gentlemen, what do they have in mind to compensate for it? What are they up to?” He reached over the broad map of the North Atlantic, his hand brushing the 170-mile-wide Iceland-Faeroe Gap. Had the Russians feinted here on the western flank while using the unusually extended summer ice sheet as a roof to slip their best subs through the Greenland-Iceland Gap to the west? NATO’s bombs and torpedoes couldn’t penetrate the ice, other than by blowing holes in it, which pack ice quickly refilled. “Using one choke point to take punishment, one to slip their right flank past us, dividing our force.”
“Rather a bad mauling for a trap, I should think,” suggested Newsome’s PR assistant, a commander who, rumor had it, had risen very quickly because he’d married another admiral’s daughter. The commander glanced at the tally sheet. Of the eleven nuclear subs sunk, nine were Alfa II-class nuclear attack boats out of Leningrad’s Sudomekh yard. With titanium alloy hulls for deep water, a submerged speed of over forty knots, and fifteen thirty-mile homing torpedoes, the Alfa II was the “Rolls-Royce” of the Russian attack boats. The commander was telling the reporter that the Alfa could dive below the crush depth of most other subs, including many of the Americans’.
“Does the depth make that much difference to a torpedo?” asked the reporter. “I thought those Mark-48s could get anything.”
“They can, old boy. Problem is, if you get deep enough, you’re much safer. At three thousand feet they can even beat our Caesar network.” He meant the North Atlantic section of the SOSUS network, and Admiral Newsome was getting tired of him. Perhaps he was promoted because he was married to an admiral’s daughter. God help us, thought Newsome, if he gets to flag rank.
The officer of the day walked in, and the PR commander gave him the tally sheet with the same bonhomie with which he’d been nattering away to the reporter. “Bloodied their nose a bit!”
The admiral was frowning, still looking worriedly at the GIUK Gap, eyes flitting back between the shallow shelf about Iceland and down toward the deeper Labrador and Newfoundland basins. A lot of water to hide in there.
The OOD looked down the score sheet, letting out a low whistle, joining the commander’s spirit of celebration. It was as if they’d both sunk the lot themselves. “Seventeen!” he said. “I say, Freddie. Well done!”
“Yes,” said the admiral, without looking up. “That only leaves a hundred and thirty-six.” The two commanders looked at each other abashedly as the admiral continued. “You mustn’t get caught up too much in the numbers, Freddie. Don’t want to damper your enthusiasm. I understand — it’s a good start. Eleven nuclear subs would mean crippling the U.K. fleet, or any other European power, for that matter. But remember the Russians lost twenty million in World War Two, a colossal number of tanks and ships — mainly given them by the Americans, of course. Point I’m making is, it’s a big country. An enormous country. It can absorb big losses. What we have to worry about is those blighters who got through here under the ice.” The admiral told the reporter he’d have to excuse them. When the reporter had gone, Newsome asked the OOD to tap in the intercept vectors, given the Soviet subs’ average rate of speed, forty-two knots for the SSNs, seventeen for the diesels. “Let’s have a vector first for the nuclear subs alone.”
“Nuclear subs…” The OOD entered the information into the computer. “East of the Labrador Sea — approaching the edge of the basin. Five hundred miles south of Greenland’s Kap Farvel.”
“English designations?” said Admiral Newsome. He was a stickler for the use of English in NATO — some horrible mistakes had been made because of similar-sounding names.
“Ah yes, sorry, sir. That’s five hundred miles southeast of Cape Farewell.”
“Yes… well, I just hope it won’t be farewell for our first convoy,” said the admiral. “Let’s have the vector for the diesels, will you?”
Behind him he could hear the array of computers and telexes as the NATO commands were feeding in not only results of the naval battle at the Iceland-Faeroe Gap but the SITREPs in Western Europe. Fourteen Soviet-Warsaw Pact divisions had broken through on the North German Plain and were now attacking the low countries into Belgium toward the channel ports. If they weren’t pushed back, where the hell would the NATO convoys from the United States dock? France still hadn’t come in.
“Diesel-electrics, fifty-five hours at least — unless they run on the surface. Unlike the nuclear boats, of course, they’d pick up a few knots on surface. Anywhere from two to five knots. That could put them ahead some.”
“I hardly think they’ll risk open running,” proffered the commander.
“I agree,” said Admiral Newsome. “They’ll keep the diesels for a return convoy, I suspect — if we have any bloody ports left in Europe by then.”
“Well, if they do, sir,” said Freddie, “I’d say they’re asking for trouble. Being diesels, they’ll need service boats, and we could pick them off like ducks.”
“They have snorkels,” the admiral reminded him.
“Of course, sir. I wasn’t thinking of the snorkels giving them away, but refueling’s another business. Then they really are sitting ducks. Sir.”
“Twenty thousand miles on one tank, Freddy. Those chaps can go a long way before they need to come up for refueling. What’s this Three Lib?” asked Newsome, pointing to the printout.
“Well, they’re too slow to hit Convoy R-1, sir — if that’s what you’re worried about?”
“Can’t do much about the R-1 now, Freddie. Too far south. Afraid it’s on its own.”