"Taylor, Charles D. - Boomer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Taylor Charles D)

Charles D Taylor


Boomer

This book is dedicated to my mother, Ruth H. Taylor, whose support remains unending and the memory of my father, who said he was so proud that his son was the first author in the family.

"A strategic balance acceptable to the United States must be consistent with our national security objectives and supportive of America's basic defense strategy--deterrence of aggression. Above all, it must provide a stable deterrent by ensuring there are no circumstances under which the Soviet leadership might believe it could execute a successful first strike against the United States . . . deterrence can only be assured by convincing the Soviet leadership that the probable costs of their aggression will exceed any possible gains."
--from Soviet Military Power: An Assessment of the Threat, written and produced by the Department of Defense,1988.

"In the future, the U.S. SSN, designed for such long-range hunting, will find itself in a melee at close range, much like a knife fight in a dark alley."
--from Melee Warfare by Lt. Daniel F. Nylen, USN, Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, October 1987, pp. 57

"There is a great danger that you will solve political problems with military actions."
--Robert S. McNamara, former Secretary of Defense--personal comment on the 1962 Cuban crisis on Public TV





Acknowledgments

In addition to discussing this book with a number of people, both military and civilian, I have read many books and military and professional journals. In attempting to translate numerous pages of my notes, I may inadvertently have used someone's words or phrases in dialogue or in simplifying technical sections. I would like to both thank the authors for the impression they made on me and apologize if I have altered their original intent, For those interested in naval affairs, I can highly recommend the Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute, an organization I have been a proud member of for more than twenty years; their naval publishing program is without peer. The finest book available on the U.S. submarine force is Silent Chose published by Thomasson-Gram, Inc., with photos and tent by Steve and Yogi Kaufman, the latter a retired vice admiral.

I would like to thank Dan Mundy and Bill Stritzler for their suggestions, Lieutenant Commander lack Ward, USN, for coordinating one of my visits to New London, Bill McDonald for his never-ending interest in my books, Dominick Abel for managing the difficult role of agent and friend, Paul McCarthy for showing me how an editor's talents can make all the difference in the world, and my wife, Georgie, for her critical help as she survived yet another manuscript--and me. And special thanks to Nelson DeMille for allowing me to borrow a superb idea from his book, The Charm School, After I had completed the manuscript and turned Wayne Newell loose on the world, Nelson was kind enough to allow me even greater justification for such a heinous character, whom you will appreciate even more after reading Mr. DeMille's fascinating story.





PROLOGUE

Discovery

NEVADA NOW TWENTY-TOUR HOURS OVERDUE REPORTING

Impossible!

The odds of such . . . why, not even the Fates could be tempted in this manner!

Vice Admiral Mark Bennett stared blankly at the sheet of paper in his hand, no longer seeing the words. Instead, an image of Nevada--a blur at first, then a razor-sharp replica --swam before his eyes. He'd been aboard when she went on her initial sea trials. A fine submarine. . . a superb crew . . .

There was no reason to reread the message--he'd memorized those seven words instantly. Bennett was the single addressee--Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (DCNO), Undersea Warfare.

The originator, Rear Admiral Neil Arrow, was Commander Submarine Force, Pacific (COMSUBPAC). They were the closest of friends, classmates twenty-five years before at nuclear-power school, then six additional months at the same reactor. Arrow had sent the message under a security classification that he'd used only twice in his life, and both times to Bennett. For the second time that week Mark Bennett had been required to remove another onetime code from his safe, and once again he broke the BOOMER message himself: NEVADA NOW TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OVERDUE REPORTING.

These six words might not have been nearly so ominous if a similar report hadn't been received a little more than three days before, with equally frightening impact: ALASKA NOW TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OVERDUE REPORTING. And every four hours after that, following the rigid requirements defined for reporting such incidents, Arrow continued to confirm the fact that Alaska, a Trident ballistic-missile-firing submarine, was missing. Bennett had, of course, reported the situation to each individual in the chain of command with a critical need to know, ending with the President of the United States--eight men, no more. It was a relatively new procedure, secure, safe, and intended to reassure senior officers. But the loss of 192 strategic warheads, which each Trident carried, was hardly reassuring, Two boomers, two nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines (SSBN's), vital links in the strategic triad defending the United States, had now failed to respond to a critical one-time safety report from their stations at the scheduled time--Alaska for almost sixty-five hours now. It had been an experiment, designed to evaluate the security of a new Communications system. Under normal conditions there was no such thing as an SSBN violating security to send a message, not even a one-time-burst transmission. It simply wasn't necessary, not when stealth meant everything. Once an SSBN departed homeport and evaded her Soviet tails, she remained mute until returning home. She had to be in her assigned station because she hadn't said she wasn't. That's the way the system functioned. It was that simple.

Initially, Alaska's failure was considered an equipment casualty. Communications gear had gone down at critical times in the past and it would again. This new system was untested under mission conditions, and the state of the world was deemed copacetic enough to run this single, critical test. So Arrow had instituted the standard procedures to reestablish contact with Alaska with a short, extra-low-frequency (ELF) query. Nothing, No response. Both admirals concurred there could be any number of causes--that there was no reason to be concerned--but this second message . . .