“You see, Comrade Lieutenant, the threads on the pipe actually go up onto the valve casing. Why is this permitted?”
“The threads are on the outside of the pipe, Comrade. The valve itself bears the pressure. The fitting which is screwed on is merely a directional spigot. The nature of the union does not compromise the pressure loop.”
“Correct. A screw fitting is not strong enough for the plant’s total pressure.” Melekhin worked the fitting all the way off with his hands. It was perfectly machined, the threads still bright from the original engine work. “And there is the sabotage.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Someone thought this one over very carefully, Comrade Lieutenant.” Melekhin’s voice was half admiration, half rage. “At normal operating pressure, cruising speed, that is, the system is pressurized to eight kilograms per square centimeter, correct?”
“Yes, Comrade, and at full power the pressure is ninety percent higher.” Svyadov knew all this by heart.
“But we rarely go to full power. What we have here is a dead-end section of the steam loop. Now, here a small hole has been drilled, not even a millimeter. Look.” Melekhin bent over to examine it himself. Svyadov was happy to keep his distance. “Not even a millimeter. The saboteur took the fitting off, drilled the hole, and put it back. The tiny hole permits a minuscule amount of steam to escape, but only very slowly. The steam cannot go up, because the fitting sits against this flange. Look at this machine work! It is perfect, you see, perfect! The steam, therefore, cannot escape upward. It can only force its way down the threads around and around, ultimately escaping inside the spout. Just enough. Just enough to contaminate this compartment by a tiny amount.” Melekhin looked up. “Someone was a very clever man. Clever enough to know exactly how this system works. When we reduced power to check for the leak before, there was not enough pressure remaining in the loop to force the steam down the threads, and we could not find the leak. There is only enough pressure at normal power levels—but if you suspect a leak, you power-down the system. And if we had gone to maximum power, who can say what might have happened?” Melekhin shook his head in admiration. “Someone was very, very clever. I hope I meet him. Oh, I hope I meet this clever man. For when I do, I will take a pair of large steel pliers—,” Melekhin’s voice lowered to a whisper, “—and I will crush his balls! Get me the small electric welding set, Comrade. I can fix this myself in a few minutes.”
Captain First Rank Melekhin was as good as his word. He wouldn’t let anyone near the job. It was his plant, and his responsibility. Svyadov was just as happy for that. A tiny bead of stainless steel was worked into the fault, and Melekhin filed it down with jeweler’s tools to protect the threads. Then he brushed rubber-based sealant onto the threads and worked the fitting back into place. The whole procedure took twenty-eight minutes by Svyadov’s watch. As they had told him in Leningrad, Melekhin was the best engineer in submarines.
“A static pressure test, eight kilograms,” he ordered the assistant engineer officer.
The reactor was reactivated. Five minutes later the pressure went all the way to normal power. Melekhin held a counter under the spout for ten minutes—and got nothing, even on the number two setting. He walked to the phone to tell the captain the leak was fixed.
Melekhin had the enlisted men let back into the compartment to return the tools to their places.
“You see how it is done, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, Comrade. Was that one leak sufficient to cause all of our contamination?”
“Obviously.”
Svyadov wondered about this. The reactor spaces were nothing but a collection of pipes and fittings, and this bit of sabotage could not have taken long. What if other such time bombs were hidden in the system?
“Perhaps you worry too much, Comrade,” Melekhin said. “Yes, I have considered this. When we get to Cuba, I will have a full-power static test made to check the whole system, but for the moment I do not think this is a good idea. We will continue the two-hour watch cycle. There is the possibility that one of our own crewmen is the saboteur. If so, I will not have people in these spaces long enough to commit more mischief. You will watch the crew closely.”
THE TWELFTH DAY
TUESDAY, 14 DECEMBER
The Dallas
“Crazy Ivan!” Jones shouted loudly enough to be heard in the attack center. “Turning to starboard!”
“Skipper!” Thompson repeated the warning.
“All stop!” Mancuso ordered quickly. “Rig ship for ultraquiet!”
A thousand yards ahead of the Dallas, her contact had just begun a radical turn to the right. She had been doing so about every two hours since they had regained contact, though not regularly enough for the Dallas to settle into a comfortable pattern. Whoever is driving that boomer knows his business, Mancuso thought. The Soviet missile submarine was making a complete circle so her bow-mounted sonar could check for anyone hiding in her baffles.
Countering this maneuver was more than just tricky—it was dangerous, especially the way Mancuso did it. When the Red October changed course, her stern, like those of all ships, moved in the direction opposite the turn. She was a steel barrier directly in the Dallas’ path for as long as it took her to move through the first part of the turn, and the 7,000-ton attack submarine took a lot of space to stop.
The exact number of collisions that had occurred between Soviet and American submarines was a closely guarded secret; that there had been such collisions was not. One characteristically Russian tactic for forcing Americans to keep their distance was a stylized turn called the Crazy Ivan in the U.S. Navy.
The first few hours they had trailed this contact, Mancuso had been careful to keep his distance. He had learned that the submarine was not turning quickly. She was, rather, maneuvering in a leisurely manner, and seemed to ascend fifty to eighty feet as she turned, banking almost like an aircraft. He suspected that the Russian skipper was not using his full maneuverability—an intelligent thing for a captain to do, keeping some of his performance in reserve as a surprise. These facts allowed the Dallas to trail very closely indeed and gave Mancuso a chance to chop his speed and drift forward so that he barely avoided the Russian’s stern. He was getting good at it—a little too good, his officers were whispering. The last time they had not missed the Russian’s screws by more than a hundred fifty yards. The contact’s large turning circle was taking her completely around the Dallas as the latter sniffed at her prey’s trail.
Avoiding collision was the most dangerous part of the maneuver, but not the only part. The Dallas also had to remain invisible to her quarry’s passive sonar systems. For her to do so the engineers had to cut power in their S6G reactor to a tiny fraction of its total output. Fortunately the reactor was able to run on such low power without the use of a coolant pump, since coolant could be transferred by normal convection circulation. In addition, a strict silent ship routine was enforced. No activity on the Dallas that might generate noise was permitted, and the crew took it seriously enough that even ordinary conversations in the mess were muted.
“Speed coming down,” Lieutenant Goodman reported. Mancuso decided that the Dallas would not be part of a ramming this time and went aft to sonar.
“Target is still turning right,” Jones reported quietly. “Ought to be clear now. Distance to the stern, maybe two hundred yards, maybe a shade less…Yeah, we’re clear now, bearing is changing more rapidly. Speed and engine noises are constant. A slow turn to the right.” Jones caught the captain out of the corner of his eye and turned to hazard an observation. “Skipper, this guy is real confident in himself. I mean, real confident.”
“Explain,” Mancuso said, figuring he knew the answer.
“Cap’n, he’s not chopping speed the way we do, and we turn a lot sharper than this. It’s almost like—like he’s doing this out of habit, y’know? Like he’s in a hurry to get somewhere, and really doesn’t think anybody can track—wait…Yeah, okay, he’s just about rev
ersed course now, bearing off the starboard bow, say half a mile…Still doing the slow turn. He’ll go right around us again. Sir, if he knows anybody’s back here, he’s playing it awful cool. What do you think, Frenchie?”
Chief Sonarman Laval shook his head. “He don’t know we’re here.” The chief didn’t want to say anything else. He thought Mancuso’s close tailing was reckless. The man had balls, playing with a 688 like this, but one little screw-up and he’d find himself with a pail and shovel, on the beach.
“Passing down the starboard side. No pinging.” Jones took out his calculator and punched in some numbers. “Sir, this angular turn rate at this speed makes the range about a thousand yards. You suppose his funny drive system goofs up his rudders any?”
“Maybe.” Mancuso took a spare set of phones and plugged them in to listen.
The noise was the same. A swish, and every forty or fifty seconds an odd, low-frequency rumble. This close they could also hear the gurgling and throbbing of the reactor pump. There was a sharp sound, maybe a cook moving a pan on a metal grate. No silent ship drill on this boat. Mancuso smiled to himself. It was like being a cat burglar, hanging this close to an enemy submarine—no, not an enemy, not exactly—hearing everything. In better acoustical conditions they could have heard conversations. Not well enough to understand them, of course, but as if they were at a dinner party listening to the gabble of a dozen couples at once.
“Passing aft and still circling. His turning radius must be a good thousand yards,” Mancuso observed.
“Yes, Cap’n, about that,” Jones agreed.
“He just can’t be using all his rudder, and you’re right, Jonesy, he is very damned casual about this. Hmph, the Russians are all supposed to be paranoid—not this boy.” So much the better, Mancuso thought.
If he were going to hear the Dallas it would be now, with the bow-mounted sonar pointed almost directly at them. Mancuso took off his headphones to listen to his boat. The Dallas was a tomb. The words Crazy Ivan had been passed, and within seconds his crew had responded. How do you reward a whole crew? Mancuso wondered. He knew he worked them hard, sometimes too hard—but damn! Did they deliver!
“Port beam,” Jones said. “Exactly abeam now, speed unchanged, traveling a little straighter, maybe, distance about eleven hundred, I think.” The sonarman took a handkerchief from his back pocket and used it to wipe his hands.
There’s tension all right, but you’d never know it listening to the kid, the captain thought. Everyone in his crew was acting like a professional.
“He’s passed us. On the port bow, and I think the turn has stopped. Betcha he’s settled back down on one-nine-zero.” Jones looked up with a grin. “We did it again, Skipper.”
“Okay. Good work, you men.” Mancuso went back to the attack center. Everyone was waiting expectantly. The Dallas was dead in the water, drifting slowly downward with her slight negative trim.
“Let’s get the engines turned back on. Build her up slowly to thirteen knots.” A few seconds later an almost imperceptible noise began as the reactor plant increased power. A moment after that the speed gauge twitched upward. The Dallas was moving again.
“Attention, this is the captain speaking,” Mancuso said into the sound-powered communications system. The electrically powered speakers were turned off, and his word would be relayed by watchstanders in all compartments. “They circled us again without picking us up. Well done, everybody. We can all breathe again.” He placed the handset back in its holder. “Mr. Goodman, let’s get back on her tail.”
“Aye, Skipper. Left five degrees rudder, helm.”
“Left five degrees rudder, aye.” The helmsman acknowledged the order, turning his wheel as he did so. Ten minutes later the Dallas was back astern of her contact.
A constant fire control solution was set up on the attack director. The Mark 48 torpedoes would barely have sufficient distance to arm themselves before striking the target in twenty-nine seconds.
Ministry of Defense, Moscow
“And how are you feeling, Misha?”
Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov looked up from a large pile of documents. He looked flushed and feverish still. Dmitri Ustinov, the defense minister, worried about his old friend. He should have stayed in the hospital another few days as the doctors had advised. But Misha had never been one to take advice, only orders.
“I feel good, Dmitri. Any time you walk out of a hospital you feel good—even if you are dead,” Filitov smiled.
“You still look sick,” Ustinov observed.
“Ah! At our age you always look sick. A drink, Comrade Defense Minister?” Filitov hoisted a bottle of Stolychnaya vodka from a desk drawer.
“You drink too much, my friend,” Ustinov chided.
“I do not drink enough. A bit more antifreeze and I would not have caught cold last week.” He poured two tumblers half full and held one out to his guest. “Here, Dmitri, it is cold outside.”
Both men tipped their glasses, took a gulp of the clear liquid, and expelled their breath with an explosive pah.
“I feel better already.” Filitov’s laugh was hoarse. “Tell me, what became of that Lithuanian renegade?”
“We’re not sure,” Ustinov said.
“Still? Can you tell me now what his letter said?”
Ustinov took another swallow before explaining. When he finished the story Filitov was leaning forward at his desk, shocked.
“Mother of God! And he has still not been found? How many heads?”
“Admiral Korov is dead. He was arrested by the KGB, of course, and died of a brain hemorrhage soon thereafter.”
“A nine-millimeter hemorrhage, I trust,” Filitov observed coldly. “How many times have I said it? What goddamned use is a navy? Can we use it against the Chinese? Or the NATO armies that threaten us—no! How many rubles does it cost to build and fuel those pretty barges for Gorshkov, and what do we get for it—nothing! Now he loses one submarine and the whole fucking fleet cannot find it. It is a good thing that Stalin is not alive.”
Ustinov agreed. He was old enough to remember what happened then to anyone who reported results short of total success. “In any case, Padorin may have saved his skin. There is one extra element of control on the submarine.”
“Padorin!” Filitov took another gulp of his drink. “That eunuch! I’ve only met him, what, three times. A cold fish, even for a commissar. He never laughs, even when he drinks. Some Russian he is. Why is it, Dmitri, that Gorshkov keeps so many old farts like that around?”
Ustinov smiled into his drink. “The same reason I do, Misha.” Both men laughed.
“So, how will Comrade Padorin save our secrets and keep his skin? Invent a time machine?”
Ustinov explained to his old friend. There weren’t many men whom the defense minister could speak to and feel comfortable with. Filitov drew the pension of a full colonel of tanks and still wore the uniform proudly. He had faced combat for the first time on the fourth day of the Great Patriotic War, as the Fascist invaders were driving east. Lieutenant Filitov had met them southeast of Brest Litovsk with a troop of T-34/76 tanks. A good officer, he had survived his first encounter with Guderian’s panzers, retreated in good order, and fought a constant mobile action for days before being caught in the great encirclement at Minsk. He had fought his way out of that trap, and later another at Vyasma, and had commanded a battalion spearheading Zhukov’s counterblow from the suburbs of Moscow. In 1942 Filitov had taken part in the disastrous counter-offensive toward Kharkov but again escaped, this time on foot, leading the battered remains of his regiment from that dreadful cauldron on the Dnieper River. With another regiment later that year he had led the drive that shattered the Italian Army on the flank of Stalingrad and encircled the Germans. He’d been wounded twice in that campaign. Filitov had acquired the reputation of a commander who was both good and lucky. That luck had run out at Kursk, where he had battled the troopers of SS division Das Reich. Leading his men into a furious tank battle, Fili
tov and his vehicle had run straight into an ambush of eighty-eight-millimeter guns. That he had survived at all was a miracle. His chest still bore the scars from the burning tank, and his right arm was next to useless. This was enough to retire a charging tactical commander who had won the old star of the Hero of the Soviet Union no less than three times, and a dozen other decorations.
After months of being shuttled from one hospital to another, he had become a representative of the Red Army in the armament factories that had been moved to the Urals east of Moscow. The drive that made him a premiere combat soldier would come to serve the State even better behind the lines. A born organizer, Filitov learned to run roughshod over factory bosses to streamline production, and he cajoled design engineers to make the small but often crucial changes in their products that would save crews and win battles.
It was in these factories that Filitov and Ustinov first met, the scarred combat veteran and the gruff apparatchik detailed by Stalin to produce enough tools to drive the hated invaders back. After a few clashes, the young Ustinov came to recognize that Filitov was totally fearless and would not be bullied on a question involving quality control or fighting efficiency. In the midst of one disagreement, Filitov had practically dragged Ustinov into the turret of a tank and taken it through a combat training course to make his point. Ustinov was the sort who only had to be shown something once, and they soon became fast friends. He could not fail to admire the courage of a soldier who could say no to the people’s commissar of armaments. By mid-1944 Filitov was a permanent part of his staff, a special inspector—in short, a hatchet man. When there was a problem at a factory, Filitov saw that it was settled, quickly. The three gold stars and the crippling injuries were usually enough to persuade the factory bosses to mend their ways—and if not, Misha had the booming voice and vocabulary to make a sergeant major wince.
Never a high Party official, Filitov gave his boss valuable input from people in the field. He still worked closely with the tank design and production teams, often taking a prototype or randomly chosen production model through a test course with a team of picked veterans to see for himself how well things worked. Crippled arm or not, it was said that Filitov was among the best gunners in the Soviet Union. And he was a humble man. In 1965 Ustinov thought to surprise his friend with general’s stars and was somewhat angered by Filitov’s reaction—he had not earned them on the field of battle, and that was the only way a man could earn stars. A rather impolitic remark, as Ustinov wore the uniform of a marshal of the Soviet Union, earned for his Party work and industrial management, it nevertheless demonstrated that Filitov was a true New Soviet Man, proud of what he was and mindful of his limitations.