Jack Ryan 5 - The Cardinal of the Kremlin (66 page)

“Over here,
Clark
, move your ass!” he screamed across the water, swinging the light left and right. The next thirty seconds seemed to last into the following month. Then it was there.

“Help the ladies,” the man said. He held the raft against the submarine's sail with his motor.
Dallas
was still moving, had to be to maintain this precarious depth, not quite surfaced, not quite dived. The first one felt and moved like a young girl, the skipper thought as he brought her aboard. The second one was wet and shivering.
Clark
waited a moment, setting a small box atop the motor. Mancuso wondered how it stayed balanced there until he realized that it was either magnetic or glued somehow.

“Down the ladder,” Mancuso told the ladies.

Clark
scrambled aboard and said something—probably the same thing—in Russian. To Mancuso he spoke in English. “Five minutes before it blows.”

The women were already halfway down.
Clark
went behind them, and finally Mancuso, with a last look at the raft. The last thing he saw was the harbor patrol boat, now heading directly toward him. He dropped down and pulled the hatch behind himself. Then he punched the intercom button. “Take her down and move the boat!”

The bottom hatch opened underneath them all, and he heard the executive officer. “Make your depth ninety feet, all ahead two-thirds, left full rudder!”

A petty officer met the ladies at the bottom of the bridge tube. The astonishment on his face would have been funny at any other time.
Clark
took them by the arm and led them forward to his stateroom. Mancuso went aft.

“I have the conn,” he announced.

“Captain has the conn,” the XO agreed. “ESM says they got some VHF radio traffic, close in, probably the Grisha talking to the other one.”

“Helm, come to new course three-five-zero. Let's get her under the ice. They probably know we're here—well, they know something's here. 'Gator, how's the chart look?”

“We'll have to turn soon,” the navigator warned. “Shoal water in eight thousand yards. Recommend come to new course two-nine-one.” Mancuso ordered the change at once.

“Depth now eight-five feet, leveling out,” the diving officer said. “Speed eighteen knots.” A small bark of sound announced the destruction of the raft and its motor.

“Okay, people, now all we have to do is leave,” Mancuso told his
Attack
Center
crew. A high-pitched snap of sound told them that this would not be easy.

“
Conn
, sonar, we're being pinged. That's a Grisha death-ray,” Jones said, using the slang term for the Russian set. “Might have us.”

“Under the ice now,” the navigator said.

“Range to target?”

“Just under four thousand yards,” the weapons officer replied. “Set for tubes two and four.”

The problem was, they couldn't shoot.
Dallas
was inside Russian territorial waters, and even if the Grisha shot at them, shooting back wasn't self-defense, but an act of war. Mancuso looked at the chart. He had thirty feet of water under his keel, and a bare twenty over his sail—minus the thickness of the ice . . .

“Marko?” the Captain asked.

“They will request instructions first,” Ramius judged. “The more time they, have, the better chance they will shoot.”

“Okay. All ahead full,” Mancuso ordered. At thirty knots he'd be in international waters in ten minutes.

“Grisha is passing abeam on the portside,” Jones said. Mancuso went forward to the sonar room.

“What's happening?” the Captain asked.

“The high-frequency stuff works pretty good in the ice. He's searchlighting back and forth. He knows something's here, but not exactly where yet.”

Mancuso lifted a phone. “Five-inch room, launch two noisemakers.”

A pair of bubble-making decoys was ejected from the port-side of the submarine.

“Good, Mancuso,” Ramius observed. “His sonar will fix on those. He cannot maneuver well with the ice.”

“We'll know for sure in the next minute.” Just as he said it, the submarine was rocked by explosions aft. A very feminine scream echoed through the forward portion of the submarine.

“All ahead flank!” the Captain called aft.

“The decoys,” Ramius said. “Surprising that he fired so quickly . . .”

“Loosing sonar performance, skipper,” Jones said as the screen went blank with flow noise. Mancuso and Ramius went aft. The navigator had their course track marked on the chart.

“Uh-oh, we have to transit this place right here where the ice stops. How much you want to bet he knows it?” Mancuso looked up. They were still being pinged, and he still couldn't shoot back. And that Grisha might get lucky.

“Radio—Mancuso, let me speak on radio!” Ramius said.

“We don't do things that way—” Mancuso said. American doctrine was to evade, never to let them be sure there was a submarine there at all.

“I know that. But we are not American submarine, Captain Mancuso, we are Soviet submarine,” Ramius suggested. Bart Mancuso nodded. He'd never played this card before.

“Take her to antenna depth!”

A radio technician dialed in the Soviet guard frequency, and the slender VHF antenna was raised as soon as the submarine cleared the ice. The periscope went up, too.

“There he is. Angle on the bow, zero. Down ”scope!"

“Radar contact bearing two-eight-one,” the speaker proclaimed.

The Captain of the Grisha was coming off a week's patrolling on the
Baltic Sea
, six hours late, and had been looking forward to four days off. Then first came a radio transmission from the Talinn harbor police about a strange craft seen leaving the docks, followed by something from the KGB, then a small explosion near the harbor police boat, next several sonar contacts. The twenty-nine-year-old senior lieutenant with all of three months in command had made his estimate of the situation and fired at what his sonar operator called a positive submarine contact. Now he was wondering if he'd made a mistake, and how ghastly it might be. All he knew was that he had not the smallest idea what was happening, but if he were chasing a submarine, it would be heading west.

And now he had a radar contact forward. The speaker for the guard radio frequency started chattering.

“Cease fire, you idiot!” a metallic voice screamed at him three times.

“Identify!” the Grisna's commander replied.

“This is
Novosibirsk
Komsomolets!
What the hell do you think you're doing firing live ammunition in a practice exercise! You identify!”

The young officer stared at his microphone and swore. Novosibirsk
Komsomolets was a special-ops boat based at Kronshtadt, always playing Spetznaz games . . .

“This is Krepkiy.”

“Thank you. We will discuss this episode the day after tomorrow. Out!”

The Captain looked around at the bridge crew. “What exercise . . . ?”

“Too bad,” Marko said as he replaced the microphone. “He reacted well. Now he will take several minutes to call his base, and . . .”

“And that's all we need. And they still don't know what happened.” Mancuso turned. “ 'Gator, shortest way out?”

“Recommend two-seven-five, distance is eleven thousand yards.”

At thirty-four knots, the remaining distance was covered quickly. Ten minutes later the submarine was back in international waters. The anticlimax was remarkable for all those in the control room. Mancuso changed course for deeper water and ordered speed reduced to one-third, then went back to sonar.

“That should be that,” he announced.

“Sir, what was this all about?” Jones asked.

“Well, I don't know that I can tell you.”

“What's her name?” From his seat Jones could see into the passageway.

“I don't even know that myself. But I'll find out. ”Mancuso went across the passageway and knocked on the door of
Clark
's stateroom.

“Who is it?”

“Guess,” Mancuso said.
Clark
opened the door. The Captain saw a young woman in presentable clothes, but wet feet. Then an older woman appeared from the head. She was dressed in the khaki shirt and pants of
Dallas
' chief engineer, though she carried her own things, which were wet. These she handed to Mancuso with a phrase of Russian.

“She wants you to have them cleaned, skipper,”
Clark
translated, and started laughing. “These are our new guests. Mrs. Gerasimov, and her daughter, Katryn.”

“What's so special about them?” Mancuso asked.

“My father is head of KGB!” Katryn said.

The Captain managed not to drop the clothes.

“We got company,” the copilot said. They were coming in from the right side, the strobe lights of what had to be a pair of fighter planes. “Closing fast.”

“Twenty minutes to the coast,” the navigator reported. The pilot had long since spotted it.

“Shit!” the pilot snapped. The fighters missed his aircraft by less than two hundred yards of vertical separation, little more in horizontal. A moment later, the VC-137 bounced through their wake turbulence.

“Engure Control, this is U.S. Air Force flight niner-seven-one. We just had a near miss. What the hell is going on down there?”

“Let me speak to the Soviet officer!” the voice answered. It didn't sound like a controller.

“I speak for this aircraft,” Colonel von Eich replied. “We are cruising on a heading of two-eight-six, flight level eleven thousand six hundred meters. We are on a correctly filed flight plan, in a designated air corridor, and we have electrical problems. We don't need to have some hardrock fighter jocks playing tag with us—this is an American aircraft with a diplomatic mission aboard. You want to start World War Three or something? Over!”

“Nine-seven-one, you are ordered to turn back!”

“Negative! We have electrical problems and cannot repeat cannot comply. This airplane is flying without lights, and those crazy MiG drivers damned near rammed us! Are you trying to kill us, over!”

“You have kidnapped a Soviet citizen and you must return to
Moscow
!”

“Repeat that last,” von Eich requested.

But the Captain couldn't. A fighter ground-intercept officer, he'd been rushed to Engure, the last air-traffic-control point within Soviet borders, quickly briefed by a local KGB officer, and told to force the American aircraft to turn back. He should not have said what he had just said in the clear.

“You must stop the aircraft!” the KGB General shouted.

“Simple, then. I order my MiGs to shoot it down!” the Captain replied in kind. “Do you give me the order, Comrade General?”

“I do not have the authority. You have to make it stop.”

“It cannot be done. We can shoot it down, but we cannot make it stop.”

“Do you wish to be shot?” the General asked.

“Where the hell is it now?” the Foxbat pilot asked his wingman. They'd only seen it once, and that for a single ghastly instant. They could track the intruder—except that it was leaving, and wasn't really an intruder, they both knew—on radar, and kill it with radar-guided missiles, but to close on the target in darkness . . . Even in the relatively clear night, the target was running without lights, and trying to find it meant running the risk of what American fighter pilots jokingly called a Fox-Four: midair collision, a quick and spectacular death for all involved.

“Hammer Lead, this is Toolbox. You are ordered to close on the target and force it to turn,” the controller said. “Target is now at your
twelve o'clock
and level, range three thousand meters.”

“I know that,” the pilot said to himself. He had the airliner on radar, but he did not have it visually, and his radar could not track precisely enough to warn him of an imminent collision. He also had to worry about the other MiG on his wing.

“Stay back,” he ordered his wingman. “I'll handle this alone.” He advanced his throttles slightly and moved the stick a hair to the right. The MiG-25 was heavy and sluggish, not a very maneuverable fighter. He had a pair of air-to-air missiles hanging from each wing, and all he had to do to stop this aircraft was . . . But instead of ordering him to do something he was trained to do, some jackass of a KGB officer was—

There.
He didn't so much see the aircraft, but saw something ahead disappear. Ah! He pulled back on the stick to gain a few hundred meters of altitude and . . . yes! He could pick the Boeing out against the sea. Slowly and carefully, he moved forward until he was abeam of the target and two hundred meters higher.

“I got lights on the right side,” the copilot said. “Fighter, but I don't know what kind.”

“If you were him, what would you do?” von Eich asked.

“Defect!” Or shoot us down . . .

Behind them in the jump seat, the Russian pilot, whose only job was to talk Russian in case of an emergency, was strapped down in his seat and had not the first idea what to do. He'd been cut out of the radio conversations and had only intercom now.
Moscow
wanted them to turn the aircraft back. He didn't know why, but—but what? he asked himself.

“Here he comes, sliding over toward us.”

As carefully as he could, the MiG pilot maneuvered his fighter to the left. He wanted to get over the Boeing's cockpit, from which position he could gently reduce altitude and force it downward. To do this required as much skid as he could muster, and the pilot could only pray that the American was equally adept. He positioned himself so that he could see . . . but—

The MiG-25 was designed as an interceptor, and the cockpit gave the pilot very restricted visibility. He could no longer see the airplane with which he was flying formation. He looked ahead. The shore was only a few kilometers away. Even if he were able to make the American reduce altitude, he'd be over the Baltic before it would matter to anyone. The pilot pulled back on his stick and climbed off to the right. Once clear, he reversed course.

“Toolbox, this is Hammer Lead,” he reported. “The American will not change course. I tried, but I will not collide with his airplane without orders.”

The controller had watched the two radar blips merge on his scope, and was now amazed that his heart hadn't stopped. What the hell was going on? This was an American plane. They couldn't force it to stop, and if there were an accident, who would be blamed for it? He made his decision.