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By Root 1383 0

would finish this patrol, refit, conduct another, refit again, then yet another patrol in February, which coincided with his deployment schedule after his overhaul. So, the next time he was back, he'd be up against the same captain, and this one had made a mistake. After a refit, Admiral Lunin would be quieter, and would have better sonar, and Dubinin was starting to wonder when he'd be able to play his game against the Americans Wouldn't it be nice, he thought. All the time he'd spent to get here, the wonderful years learning his trade in Northern Fleet under Marko Ramius. What a pity, for such a brilliant officer to have died in an accident. But duty at sea was dangerous, always had been, always would be. Marko had gotten his crew off before scuttling Dubinin shook his head. Today he might have gotten assistance from the Americans. Might? Would have, just as an American ship would get one from a Soviet. The changes in his country and the world made Dubinin feel much better about his job. It had always been a demanding game of skill, but its deadly purpose had changed. Oh, yes, the American missile submarines still had their rockets pointed at his country, and Soviet rockets were pointed at America, but perhaps they would be gone soon. Until they were, he'd continue to do his job, and it seemed ironic indeed that just as the Soviet Navy was on the threshold of becoming competitive - the Akula class was roughly equal with an early Los Angeles class in a mechanical sense - the need for it was diminishing. Like a friendly game of cards, perhaps? he asked himself. Not a bad simile

"Speed, Captain?"

Dubinin considered that. "Assume a range of twenty nautical miles and a target speed of five knots. We'll do seven knots, I think. That way we can remain very quiet and perhaps still catch him every two hours we'll turn to maximize the capacity of the sonar Yes, that is the plan." Next time, Yevgeniy, we'll have two new officer sonar operators to back you up, Dubinin reminded himself. The drawdown of the Soviet submarine force had released a lot of young officers who were now getting specialist training. The submarine's complement of officers would double, and even more than the new equipment, that would make a difference in his abilities to hunt.

"We blew it," Bunker said. "I blew it. I gave the president bad advice."

"You're not the only one." Ryan admitted, as he stretched. "But was that scenario realistic - I mean, really realistic?"

It turned out that the whole thing had been a ploy by a hard-pressed Soviet leader trying to get control over his military, and doing so by making it look as though some renegades had taken action.

"Not likely, but possible."

"All things are possible," Jack observed. "What do you suppose their war-games say about us?"

Bunker laughed. "Nothing good, I'm sure."

At the end, America had had to accept the loss of its cruiser, USS Valley Forge, in return for the Charlie-class submarine that USS Kidd's helicopter had found and sunk. That was not regarded as an even trade, rather like losing a rook to the other fellow's knight. Soviet forces had gone on alert in Eastern Germany, and the weaker NATO forces had been unsure of their ability to deal with them. As a result, the Soviets had won a concession on the troop-pullback schedule. Ryan thought the whole scenario contrived, but they often were, and the point in any case was to see how to manage an unlikely crisis. Here they had done badly, moving too rapidly in non-essential areas, and too slowly on the ones that mattered, but which had not been recognized in time.

The lesson, as always, was: Don't make mistakes. That was something known by any first-grader, of course, and all men made mistakes, but the difference between a first-grader and a senior official was that official mistakes carried far more weight. That fact was an entirely different lesson, and one often not learned.

CHAPTER 14

Revelation

"So, what have you found?"

"He's a most interesting man," Goodley replied. "He's done some things at CIA that