Table Of ContentTo the memory of J. Andrew Keith,
author, comrade-at-arms, brother, friend
Contents
Prologue
Descending…. 1
1
Commander James Edward Travers pressed the
headset against his ear,… 4
2
Commander Mike Chase leaned in what he trusted
was a… 18
3
“Working late, I see.” 32
4
Randall was getting a distinctly bad feeling about
this situation. 48
5
“Time to get the hell out of Dodge,” Randall said… 62
6
Frank Gordon pulled his Skylark to a stop in the… 76
7
The eerie shrill of a boatswain’s pipe ululated
through the… 91
8
It had taken almost three hours to get the kid… 108
9
“Easy there…easy!” 125
10
After a day and a half of stress and, at… 141
11
My God, it’s him. It really is him…. 157
12
Commander Frank Gordon, captain of the USS
Pittsburgh, looked over… 173
13
“Man, O’Brien,” Archie Douglas said, setting his
tray down opposite… 190
14
“Michman Antonov!! Stand ready by the ballast
lever!” Unless he… 207
15
“Three minutes, ladies!” Randall called out,
bellowing to be heard… 225
16
“Jesus Christ, kid, what happened to you?” 242
17
Gordon stared overhead as a second ping rang
through the… 258
18
“Up scope.” 274
19
To say that it was dark was the grossest
understatement. 291
20
Randall jerked upright, groping for a mask rapidly
filling with… 307
21
Clang…clang-clang…clang… 322
22
“I don’t think we’re going to work our way in… 337
23
“Torpedo is arming itself!” Rodriguez’s voice
called over the intercom. 351
24
“Captain? Sonar. Navigational request.” 365
25
“Damage-control parties lay forward to the torpedo
room!” Latham bellowed… 380
26
“Time to impact, ten seconds,” Latham announced. 396
Epilogue
She was gone. 409
About the Author
Other Books by H. Jay Riker
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
Thursday, 25 June 1987
Sea of Okhotsk
Between Kamchatka and the Soviet Far East
0435 hours local time
Descending....
Two hundred miles above the horsetail wisps of cirrus
cloud decorating the rich cobalt of the approaching Siberian
dawn, an American KH-12 reconnaissance satellite sailed
southeast into the sudden, golden glare of the rising sun as it
exploded above the purple-hazed curve of the Earth’s hori
zon. Crossing the coast between the tiny fishing villages of
Ul’ya and Mys Enken, the robot spy raced to greet the dis
tant sunrise above dark waters still lost in night.
The satellite had originally been scheduled for a routine
photo recon pass over the great port of Vladivostok, a thou
sand miles to the southwest, but hours earlier, a specially
coded transmission with the electronic authorization of the
National Reconnaissance Office itself had directed the
satellite to use some of its dwindling stores of onboard fuel
to shift its orbit farther north, in order to let it peer down on
1
2 THE SILENT SERVICE
the drama unfolding in the predawn darkness below.
East, dawn touched the snow-locked peaks of the Sredin
nyy Khrebet, the mountain spine of Poluostrov Kamchatka,
a dazzling embrace of gold and ice silver. South, the long
and ragged finger of Sakhalin pointed at Hokkaido, north
ernmost of Japan’s home islands, just visible as a dark blur
on the horizon. Ahead, southeast, like pearls on a string, the
long-contested Kuril’skiy Ostrova, the Kuril islands,
stretched across 650 miles of sea, from Mys Lopatka at
Kamchatka’s extreme southern tip all the way to the slender
Nemuro Strait along Hokkaido’s northeast coast.
Digital infrared cameras that could pierce even overcast
skies peered down, searching the night-clad seas west of the
Kurils. The resolving power of those electronic eyes on the
KH-12—“KH” stood, appropriately enough, for “key-
hole”—was highly classified, but was well under half a me
ter at orbital ranges. They could not, as was popularly
supposed, read the newspaper headlines over the shoulder of
a man in a Moscow street, but they had no trouble at all
picking out the principle players in a rapidly unfolding
drama on the surface far below....
Descending farther. Beneath the chill near-emptiness of
low orbit, beneath the sun-gilt twists of the cirrus clouds and
deep within the thin envelope of aira far beneath the satellite’s
keel, four aircraft, hounds to the surface-bound hunters be
low. Two Chaika ASW flying boats—they were known as
“Mails” in the West—and a pair of IL-38 “May” subhunters
were dropping patterns of sonobuoys, blunt white canisters
drifting into the sea beneath small parachutes. As each
splashed home, it began sending out piercing chirps of
sound, seeking, seeking, seeking through the black waters
beneath...a nd transmitting the results to the listening air
craft above.
Descending farther still. Beneath the probing aircraft, a
dozen surface vessels converged on the same patch of
sound-blasted ocean. Warships, lean and knife-prowed all,
they ranged in size from the tiny Pauk class corvettes Kom-
