Voyage of the Devilfish

Admiral Richard Donchez stared at the Flag Plot room’s North Atlantic electronic wall chart, at the mass of red X’s blinking on and off, as they cleared Great Britain and headed to the west Atlantic. Just offshore, Donchez felt certain. The neighboring chart, the western Atlantic, showed blue X’s moving away from the coastline. His fast-attack submarines headed out into a zone-defense of the coast. With some luck, his ships should be able to confront… or intercept… the Russian boats as they pulled up at America’s east coast. Except the Rules of Engagement said that no offensive action could be taken until one of the enemy ships did something — no fair hitting unless the other guy hits first. Donchez shook his head as he crouched over a table with the CIA photographic intelligence of the OMEGA submarine surfaced at the icecap, the detail fine enough to see the rungs of the handholds going up the side of the sail to the bridge. It was more than an implicit revenge sanction now, he thought, in the context of officially making Pacino’s mission one of getting a probing sonar profile of the guts of the new OMEGA. Before the Russian deployment, he had let Patch’s son believe his mission was also a belated payback for Stingray. But now… Novskoyy and the OMEGA had to have something to do with the Russian deployment. And Novskoyy must have anticipated some sort of counterdeployment, he might even be expecting a U.S. attack sub to visit him. This was turning into a potential general skirmish…

Donchez handed back the intelligence-update message to the radioman and stepped back to look at the plots. One thousand miles northeast of Norfolk, one blue X was all alone. Black block letters beside the X read USS DEVILFISH SSN-666 SUBMERGED TRANSIT. Donchez tried to visualize Pacino and the Devilfish. Would it be better to tell Pacino the OMEGA was surfaced now and later tell him about the major deployment? No doubt there was enough turmoil in Mikey’s mind with the implicit and explicit mandates. It would be best to wait at least until evening for further developments before giving the Devilfish a mission update. Soon, though, he would have to tell Pacino that the OMEGA might be expecting him, even gunning for him. Three hours later Donchez was joined in Flag Plot by Admiral Casper “Bobby” McGee. Donchez pointed his cigar at the advancing blinking red X’s on the chart, now approaching the middle of the Atlantic.

“The red X’s are the Russian attack submarines,” he said. “The blue ones off the U.S. continental shelf are mine.” McGee stared at the wall chart. As Commander in Chief U.S. Atlantic Fleet, CINCLANTFLEET, he was Donchez’s boss. He was slightly shorter than Donchez, heavyset with bushy gray eyebrows and jowls. He looked like a caricature of an authoritarian southern traffic-court judge, and hailing from Waycross, Georgia, even sounded the part. Appearances were deceiving; anyone who mistook his folksiness for ignorance could find themselves up against a ruthless intelligence. Still, he was not a submariner.

“Why them red ones flashin’?” he asked Donchez.

“The flashing means their position is only approximate. We have a position within five hundred square miles from SOSUS, sometimes within one hundred square miles. The position is good enough for you and me to see the progress but not good enough for us to… shoot at him. I know those red ones are there, plus or minus an inch or two on that chart, but I can’t sink them—”

“Who’s talkin’ about sinkin’ ‘em? Maybe I missed something but a couple of red X’s on a chart… it’s still an exercise.”

“Looks kind of threatening for an exercise. Admiral. This isn’t like the surface navy. We can’t see these guys. Sending them out like this in an instant and sending them south can’t exactly be interpreted as a peaceful gesture. Sir, the track projections take them right to our east coast. Their ETA is two days from now—”

“So they come. What are they gonna do, shoot red flares at us? Their guns ain’t loaded anymore, they destroyed the cruise missiles this very week. We got confirmation—” Donchez frowned. “I didn’t expect this sort of reaction from you, sir.” It wasn’t like McGee, who had once been an avid hawk. Sign of the times… “I was also surprised,” McGee said, “when the White House called to say they had information that this was happening. Which means the White House knew about it before we did. The Russians, it seems, gave the President a call and told him not to sweat this, that it’s just an exercise.”

“But, sir, why did it take so long for word of this socalled exercise-notification to get down to my level?” Translation: Why, Admiral, didn’t you tell me this before?

“Sorry about that, Dick. After the missiles were destroyed it just didn’t seem like such a big deal. Pentagon figures they got bored with the Arctic Ocean and headed for some tropical weather. Who can blame’em?”