running the ships was about fifty, more than double that in any American naval vessel. How would those grandfathers take the stress of combat operations? Morris wondered. They were quite well paid--some of the senior seamen made as much as he did--but would their comfortable, union-negotiated salaries devalue in the face of missiles and torpedoes? He had to erase the thought from his mind. These old men with kids in high school and college were his flock. He was the shepherd, and there were wolves hiding under the gray surface of the Atlantic.
Not a large flock. He had seen the figures only a year ago: the total number of privately owned cargo ships in operation under the American flag was 170 and averaged about eighteen thousand tons apiece. Of those, a mere 103 were routinely engaged in overseas trade. The supplemental National Defense Reserve Fleet consisted of only 172 cargo ships. To call the situation a disgrace was to describe gang rape as a mild social deviation.
They couldn't allow even one to be lost.
Morris wandered over to the bridge radarscope and looked down into the rubber eyeshicld to watch the aircraft lifting out of Dover. Each blip contained three to five hundred men. What would happen when they ran out of shells?
"Another merchie, skipper." The officer of the dock pointed to a dot on the horizon. "She's a Dutch container boat. I expect she's inbound for military cargo."
Morris grunted. "We need all the help we can get."
SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA
"It's definite, sir," the colonel said. "That's a Soviet ASAT-bird, seventy-three nautical miles behind one of ours."
The colonel had ordered his satellite to turn in space and point its cameras at its new companion. The light wasn't all that good, but the shape of the Soviet killer satellite was unmistakable: a cylinder nearly a hundred feet long, with a rocket motor at one end and a radar seeker antenna at the other.
"What's your recommendation, Colonel?"
"Sir, I am requesting unlimited authority to maneuver my birds at will. As soon as anything with a red star on it gets within fifty miles, I'm going to do a series of delta-V maneuvers to screw up their intercept solution."
"That will cost you a lot of fuel, son," CINC-NORAD warned.
"What we have here, General, is a binary solution set." The colonel responded like a true mathematician. "Choice one, we maneuver the birds and risk the fuel loss. Choice two, we don't maneuver the birds and risk having them taken out. Once they close to fifty miles, they can achieve intercept and negate our bird in as little as five minutes. Maybe faster. Five minutes is only the best we've observed them to do. Sir, you have my recommendation." The colonel had a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Illinois, but that was not where he'd learned to back generals into corners.
"Okay. This one goes to Washington, but I'll forward your recommendation with my endorsement."
USS NIMITZ
"Admiral, we've just had a disturbing report from the Barents Sea." Toland read the dispatch from CINCLANTFLT.
"How many more subs can they throw at us now?"
"Perhaps as many as thirty additional boats, Admiral."
"Thirty?" Baker hadn't liked anything he'd been told for a week now. He especially didn't like this.
The Nimitz battle group, in company with Sarotoga and the French carrier Foch, was escorting a marine amphibious unit, called a MAU, to reinforce the ground defenses on Iceland. A three-day run. If the war started soon after they made their delivery, their next mission would be to support the GIUK barrier defense plan, the critically important link that covered the ocean between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom. Carrier Task Force 21 was a powerful force. But would it be powerful enough? Doctrine required a four-carrier group to fight and survive up here, but the fleet had not yet been fully assembled. Toland was getting reports on frantic diplomatic activity aimed at averting the war that appeared about to start, much as everyone hoped it wouldn't. How would the Soviets react to four or more carriers in the Norwegian Sea? It seemed that no one in Washington wanted to find out, but Toland was wondering if it would matter at all. As it was, Iceland had approved the reinforcements they were escorting only twelve hours before, and this NATO outpost needed immediate reinforcement.
USS CHICAGO
McCafferty was thirty miles north of the entrance to the Kola Fjord. The crew was relatively happy to be here after a tense sixteen-hour run from Cape Svyatoy. Though the Barents