"Get that arm looked at," Morris ordered.

"Oh, fuck the arm, skipper! You need me." The man was right. Morris went back topside with Clarke behind him.

On reaching the bridge, Morris dialed up engineering. The noise on the phone answered his first question.

The engineer spoke over the hiss of escaping steam. "Shock damage, Captain. We got some ruptured steam pipes on the number one boiler. I think number two will still work, but I've popped the safeties on both just in case. The diesel generators are on line. I got some hurt men here. I'm sending them out. I-okay, okay. We just did a check of number two boiler. A few minor leaks, but we can fix 'em quick. Otherwise everything looks pretty tight. I can have it back on line in fifteen minutes."

"We need it." Morris hung up.

Pharris lay dead in the water. With the safety valves opened, steam vented onto the massive stack structure, giving off a dreadful rasping sound that seemed like the ship's own cry of pain. The frigate's sleek clipper bow had been replaced by a flat face of torn metal and hanging wires. The water around the ship was foul with oil from ruptured fuel tanks. For the first time Morris noticed that the ship was down by the stern; when he stood straight, the ship was misaligned. He knew he had to wait for another damage-control report. As with an accident victim, the prognosis depended on the work of surgeons, and they could not be rushed or disturbed. He lifted the phone to CIC.

"Combat, Bridge. What's the status of that submarine contact?"

"Gallery's helo dropped on it, but the torp ran dry without hitting anything. Looks like he ran northeast, but we haven't had anything for about five minutes. There's an Orion in the area now."

"Tell them to check inside of us. This character isn't going to run away unless he has to. He might be running in, not out. Tell the screen commander."

"Aye, Cap'n."

He hadn't hung the phone up when it buzzed.

"Captain speaking."

"She'll float, sir," the damage-control officer said at once. "We're patching the bulkhead now. It won't be tight, but the pumps can handle the leakage. Unless something else goes bad on us, we'll get her home. They sending the tug out to us?"

"Yes."

"If we get a tow, sir, it better be sternfirst. I don't want to think about trying to run this one into a seaway."

"Right." Morris looked at Clarke. "Get a gang of men aft. We'll be taking the tow at the stem, rig it up. Have them launch the whaleboat to look for survivors. I saw at least one man in the water. And get a sling on that arm."

"You got it, Cap'n." Clarke moved aft.

Morris went to CIC and found a working radio.

"X-Ray Alfa, this is Pharris," Morris called to the screen commander.

"State your condition."

"We took one hit forward, the bow is gone all the way to the ASROC launcher. We cannot maneuver. I can keep her afloat unless we hit some bad weather. Both boilers currently down, but we should have power back in less than ten minutes. We have casualties, but I don't know how many or how bad yet.

"Commodore, we got hit by a nuke boat, probably a Victor. Unless I miss my guess, he's headed your way."

"We lost him, but he was heading out," the Commodore said.

"Start looking inside, sir," Morris urged. "This fellow got to knifefighting range and pulled a beautiful number on us. This one isn't going to run away for long, he's too damned good for that."

The Commodore thought that one over briefly. "Okay, I'll keep that in mind. Gallery's en route to you. What other assistance do you need?"

"You need Gallery more than we do. Just send us the tug," Morris answered. He knew that the submarine wouldn't be coming back to finish the kill. He'd accomplished that part of his mission. Next, he'd try to kill some merchants.

"Roger that. Let me know if you need anything else. Good luck, Ed."

"Thank you, sir. Out."

Morris ordered his helo to drop a double ring of sonobuoys around his ship just in case. Then the Sea Sprite found three men in the water, one of them dead. The whaleboat recovered them, allowing the helo to rejoin the convoy. It was assigned to Gallery, which took Pharris's station as the convoy angled south.

Below, welders worked their gear in waist-deep saltwater as they struggled to seal off the breaks in the frigate's watertight bulkheads. The task lasted nine hours, then the pumps drained the water from the flooded compartments.

Before they had finished, the fleet tug Papago pulled alongside the frigate's square stem. Chief Clarke supervised as a stout towing wire was passed across and secured. An hour later, the tug was pulling the frigate on an easterly course at four knots, backwards to protect the damaged bow. Morris ordered his towed-array sonar to be strung over the bow, trailing it out behind to give them some small defense capability. Several extra lookouts were posted to watch for periscopes. It would be a slow, dangerous trip back home.

28 - Breakthroughs

STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

"Be careful, Pasha."

"As always, Comrade General." Alekseyev smiled. "Come, Captain."

Sergetov fell in behind his superior. Unlike during their previous frontline outing, both men wore protective body armor. The General carried only a sidearm to go along with his map case, but the captain was now officially a bodyguard in addition to a staff officer and had a small Czech submachine gun slung over his shoulder. He was a different man today, the captain saw. On Alekseyev's first trip to the front, he'd been tentative, almost hesitant in manner-it hadn't occurred to the younger man that, as senior as Alekseyev was, he had never seen combat before and had approached this gravest of contests with the same sort of apprehension as a new private. No longer. He had smelled the smoke. Now he knew how things worked or didn't work. The change was remarkable. His father was right, Sergetov thought, he was a man to be reckoned with. They were joined in their helicopter by an Air Force colonel. The Mi-24 lifted off in darkness, its fighter escort overhead.

LAMMERSDORF, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

Not many people appreciated the importance of the videocassette recorder. A useful convenience for the home, to be sure, but not until a captain in the Royal Dutch Air Force had demonstrated a bright idea two years before had its battlefield utility been proven in secret exercises first in Germany, then in the Western United States.

NATO radar surveillance aircraft NATO radar surveillance aircraft kept their customary positions high over the Rhein. The E-3A Sentry aircraft, better known as AWACS, and the smaller, lesser-known TR-1, flew their missions in boring circles or straight lines far behind the fighting front. They had similar but different functions. The AWACS was mainly concerned with air traffic. The TR-1, an upgraded version of the venerable U-2, looked for vehicles on the ground. Initially the TR-1 had been something of a failure. Because it tracked too many targets, many of them immobile radar reflectors set everywhere by the Soviets, the NATO commanders had been deluged with information that was too disordered to use. Then came the VCR. All the data relayed from the aircraft was recorded on videotape anyway since it was a convenient medium for data storage, but the VCRs built into the NATO system possessed only a few operating features. The Dutch captain thought to bring his personal machine into his office, and demonstrated how by using fast forward and fast reverse, the radar data could be used to show not only where things were going, but also where they had come from Computer support made the task easier by eliminating items that moved no more than once every two hours-thus erasing the Russian radar lures-and there it was, a brand-new intelligence tool.