Without remorse - Tom Clancy [244]
'Sounds good to me!' Kelly shouted back.
'Kick ass, Mr Clark!'
'See you in a few - and thanks!' Kelly shook hands with the two chiefs, then went to see Captain Franks. For comic effect he stood at attention and saluted. 'Permission to leave the ship, sir.'
Captain Franks returned it. 'Permission granted, sir.'
Then Kelly looked at all the rest. First in, last out. A half smile and a nod were sufficient gestures for the moment, and at this moment they took their courage from him.
The big Sikorsky rescue chopper lifted off a few feet. A crewman attached the sled to the bottom of the helo, and then it headed aft, out of the burble turbulence of Ogden's superstructure, flying off into the darkness without strobes and disappearing in a matter of seconds.
USS Skate was an old-fashioned submarine, modified and developed from the first nuclear boat, USS Nautilus. Her hull was shaped almost like that of a real ship rather than a whale, which made her relatively slow underwater, but her twin screws made for greater maneuverability, especially in shallow water. For years Skate had drawn the duty of inshore intelligence ship, creeping dose to the Vietnamese coast and raising whip antennas to snoop on radar and other electronic emissions. She'd also put more than one swimmer on the beach. That included Kelly, several years before, though there was not a single member of that crew still aboard to remember his face. He saw her on the surface, a black shape darker than the water that glistened with the waning quarter moon soon to be hidden by clouds. The helicopter pilot first of all set the sled on Skate's foredeck, where the sub's crew secured it in place. Then Kelly and his personal gear were lowered by hoist. A minute later he was in the sub's control room.
'Welcome aboard,' Commander Silvio Esteves said, anticipating his first swimmer mission. He was not yet through his first year in command.
'Thank you, sir. How long to the beach?'
'Six hours, more until we scope things out for you. Coffee? Food?'
'How about a bed, sir?'
'Spare bunk in the XO's cabin. We'll see you're not disturbed.' Which was a better deal than that accorded the technicians aboard from the National Security Agency.
Kelly headed forward to the last real rest he'd have for the next three days - if things went according to plan. He was asleep before the submarine dived back under the waters of the South China Sea.
'This is interesting,' the Major said. He dropped the translation on the desk of his immediate superior, another major, but this one was on the Lieutenant Colonel's list.
'I've heard about this place. GRU is running the operation - trying to, I mean. Our fraternal socialist allies are not cooperating very well. So the Americans know about it at last, eh?'
'Keep reading, Yuriy Petrovich,' the junior man suggested.
'Indeed!' He looked up. 'Who exactly is this cassius fellow?' Yuriy had seen the name before, attached to a large quantity of minor information that had come through various sources within the American left.
'Glazov did the final recruitment only a short time ago.' The Major explained on for a minute or so.
'Well, I'll take it to him, then. I'm surprised Georgiy Borissovish isn't running the case personally.'
'I think he will now, Yuriy.'
They knew something bad was about to happen. North Vietnam had a multitude of search radars arrayed along its coast. Their main purpose was to provide raid warning for incoming strikes from the aircraft carriers the Americans had sailing on what they called Yankee Station, and the North Vietnamese called something else. Frequently the search radars were jammed, but not this badly. This time the jammer was so powerful as to turn the Russian-made screen into a circular mass of pure white. The operators leaned in more closely, looking for particularly bright dots that might denote real targets amid the jamming noise.
'Ship,' a voice called into the operations center. 'Ship on the horizon.' It