Sherry Sontag;Christopher Drew Read online

  He had admitted as much to his mother when he wrote home, but her reply had yet to reach him as he stood in his cramped wardroom, shoulders back to make the most of his less than imposing frame. He was alone with this hulking enlisted man, this sailor turned spy, the kind of man who would still be declaring that he was "tougher than shit" when he reached his seventies.

  Red Austin handed over his orders. The captain scanned them and tensed as he read that Cochino, his sub, was about to become an experimental spy boat.

  Benitez was stunned. Cochino's mission was already complex enough. She had been scheduled to embark on a training run designed to change the very nature of submarine warfare. Classic World War II fleet submarines could dive beneath the waves only long enough to attack surface ships and avoid counterattack before needing to surface themselves. But since the war ended, Cochino and a few other boats had been dramatically altered. They now sported new, largely untested equipment, including a snorkel pipe that was supposed to let them take in fresh air, run the diesel engines, and shoot out engine exhaust without having to surface. That would allow the boats to spend much of their time underwater, rendering them effectively invisible and making it possible for them to go after other subs as well as surface ships.

  Benitez had been expecting to take his submarine out and test her new equipment, train his crew, and learn how to run her as a true underwater vehicle. But Austin's orders were adding another dimension to Benitez's mission, transforming it from one of just war games and sea trials into an operation in an unproven realm of submarine intelligence. Furthermore, all this was to take place in the frigid Barents Sea inside the Arctic Circle, near the waters around Murmansk where the Soviet Union kept its Northern Fleet.

  Worse, the cables and antennas for Austin's crude eavesdropping gear had to pass directly through the sub's pressure hull. That meant drilling holes in the very steel that held the ocean back.

  Benitez took one look at the plans to drill through the sub's hull, what he considered the sub's "last resort" protective shell, and became clearly upset. What happened next is a story that Austin would tell and retell.

  "Drill holes in the pressure hull?" Benitez said loud enough to get the attention of his executive officer and chief of the boat who came running. Drill holes without direct orders from the Navy's Bureau of Ships, which was supposed to oversee all submarine construction and modifications?

  "You got anything from BUSHIPS?" he demanded.

  "No sir, this is what they gave me," Austin replied. In a hapless gesture at conciliation, he added, "They're going to be small holes."

  Austin waited for a reply. There was none. Instead Benitez turned and left the room. He was going to call London. He was going to take this to his command. At the very least, he was not going to stay and argue with Austin.

  There was already little room for error in these fragile and cramped diesel boats, where fuel oil permeated the air and electrical generators had a disturbing tendency to arc. There had always been countless possibilities for disaster. Sometimes mere survival took heroic effort. That was especially true during World War II, but at least then Benitez and the others had faced a known enemy in the more familiar waters of the Pacific. Now he might have to face violent storms at the outer edge of nowhere. And on top of all of that, he was being asked to make a direct, from-the-sea grab for Soviet secrets, risk his boat and seventy-eight men on a spy mission before anyone was certain the sub could survive the ocean itself.

  Benitez was back quickly, not quite contrite, but admittedly stuck. 'The orders had withstood his aristocratic ire. His first priority was now Austin's spy mission.

  It was with this rocky start that submariners and spies began forging a relationship that would come to define the cold war under the world's oceans and seas. And from their battles would come new missions that would ultimately make these stealthy crafts the most crucial and richly symbolic of the era.

  Already it was clear that the United States had a dangerous new adversary and that the world was very different from the one that existed when Benitez had last emerged from the sea. Then, a nation inflated with victory had been transfixed by the image of a sailor grabbing a girl for an exuberant kiss in the middle of Times Square. Now, as Benitez prepared to return to the depths, people across the United States were terrified of the means of that victory. They had sat in stunned silence in theaters, watching newsreels of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, crying at the sight of women and children horribly burned, women and children who once were only the enemy, faceless monsters who deserved nobody's tears. People who once cheered the bomb saw it as a looming horror that could, any day now, be aimed at their own homes. There were reports that the Soviet Union, the ally turned enemy, was racing to build its own atomic bomb. And there seemed no doubt that the Soviets were out to make a grab for world dominance. The Chinese Communists had just driven Chiang Kai-shek from China. A Communist takeover had occurred in Czechoslovakia. The Soviets had instituted the Berlin Blockade. And Winston Churchill had declared that an Iron Curtain had fallen over Eastern Europe. It seemed that at any moment there could be a Communist takeover within the United States. How else could the nation read the headlines pouring out of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, especially the sensational charges that a former State Department official, Alger Hiss, had spied for the Soviets?

  This was the atmosphere of mistrust that gave birth to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and plunged its agents into an immediate duel with Soviet spies. This was the era of fear that inspired the West to once again join forces, now as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). And all of this was the inspiration for the blind man's challenge, the call for submariners in windowless cylinders to dive deep into a new role that would help the nation fend off this menace. The Soviets had always used their subs, most of them small and antiquated, for coastal defense. But in dividing up Nazi war booty, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union had each come into a few experimental German U-boats, highly advanced subs with snorkels and new sophisticated types of sonar. This technology promised to make submarines more lethal than ever and raised fears that the Soviets would change their coastal strategy and design subs for the high seas. What Benitez and the other commanders wanted most was time to learn, time to practice, time to transform their submarines into the "hunter-killers" needed to meet the flood of Soviet subs that might one day head for U.S. shores.

  Patterned after the Nazi technology, Cochino's snorkel promised to enable her to stay underwater for days or weeks, hiding tons of bulk that stretched as long as a football field while showing only a target about as wide as a suburban garbage can. She could even stay hidden while she ran her diesel engines to recharge her batteries, her sole source of power when she needed to run silent with her engines off. Thanks to the Germans, Cochino had batteries with greater capacity than any of the classic World War II fleet subs.

  Cochino also was outfitted with a new passive sonar system: she could listen, and therefore "see," underwater without making much sound herself. World War II submarines used mainly "active" sonar, which sent out audible pings and relied on the echoing sound waves to create a picture of the surrounding waters by detecting targets and measuring distances. The result was a lot like shining a flashlight. Submarines could see what was out there, but they lit themselves up in the process. Passive sonar systems scan the entire spectrum of sound, never sending out telltale tones, and this silent sight promised to provide the crucial edge in any undersea dogfight.

  The U.S. Navy was also preparing for the ultimate in undersea oneupmanship. An obscure engineer, Hyman G. Rickover, was developing a plan for nuclear-powered submarines that would be able to stay underwater indefinitely without ever having to snorkel, raising the stakes in the undersea war once again. But for now, nuclear propulsion was little more than a concept, and Cochino and subs like her were the best the Navy had. In a new program, aptly named "Operation Kayo," the Navy was readying Cochino and other World Wa
r II fleet boats to deliver a knockout punch should war come.

  There was one hitch in the submarine force's plans: the nation's spies saw more immediate threats and wanted to use subs to counter them. There was still no evidence that the Soviet Navy was building snorkel subs, and the CIA and the Office of Naval Intelligence thought the submariners had plenty of time to prepare for undersea dogfights that were still far in the future. More worrisome, in the opinion of senior intelligence officers, were other bits of inherited German technology: the unpiloted V-1 "buzz bomb," a mini-airplane on autopilot with a bomb on hoard, and the V-2, the first rocket to pass the speed of sound. These German designs, also seized by the Allies, were the forerunners to the cruise missile and the ballistic missile, bombs with their own rocket engines to propel them. The United States was already fashioning experimental "Loon" missiles that could be fired from specially configured boats, the first crude missile subs. The Soviets also were showing signs that they were developing their own infant missiles. Reports were already coming in from defectors that the Soviets were conducting test launches from land and from old submarines stationed in the Murmansk area.

  In addition, the Air Force was sending planes armed with filters designed to capture radioactive particles near Soviet territory to gauge whether the Soviets were testing atomic weapons. That was the ultimate fear, that the buzz bombs would be given nuclear warheads, that they would lead to atomic missiles.

  Much of this was still conjecture. What little information the intelligence agencies had about the Soviet Navy was coming from Britain's Royal Navy, which had worked closely with the Soviets during World War II. Communications between Soviet ships and their bases were also being intercepted by U.S.-operated eavesdropping stations in Europe and Alaska. All of this spying on a former ally was so sensitive that messengers carried reports on the intercepted Soviet communications to top admirals in locked briefcases. Any efforts to get closer, to learn more, needed to be kept a deep secret.

  It was that need for stealth that, more than anything, convinced intelligence officials that submarines could be the next logical step in the creation of an eavesdropping network that would circle the Soviet Union. The effort was already tinder way. In 1948 the Navy had sent two fleet boats, the USS Sea Dog (SS-401) and the USS Black fin (SS322), into the Bering Sea to see whether they could intercept Soviet radio communications and count how quickly propeller blades turned on Soviet destroyers and merchant ships-a first step toward learning to identify them through passive sonar. But intelligence officials suspected that the new snorkel subs, like Cochino, could do even more. They could stay hidden off the Soviet coast and watch and monitor. Perhaps they could even find out firsthand how far along the Soviets were in developing the dangerous missile technology. With her snorkel, Cochino could sneak in as close as she dared. Only her periscope, antennas, and snorkel would ever have to broach into the open air. She was, in short, the perfect spy vehicle.

  In fact, Cochino had been destined from the start for a different fight. She had been the last submarine commissioned during the war, sent to sea two weeks after the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb. Now she and the USS Tusk (SS-426) had been remade with those snorkels and other advances, and turned into what the Navy called "GUPPYs," an acronym that stood for Greater Underwater Propulsion Power. The acronym fit far better than anyone would have liked-as hunter-killers, these subs were rank beginners, learning to swim all over again. In fact, when scientists checked the boats a few months before this trip, they had discovered that their crews and construction personnel knew so little about the passive sonar systems that crucial hydrophones had not even been hooked up. So the boats had been sent to Londonderry to practice with the British, who had gotten much further in mastering the new sonar.

  It was in Londonderry that Austin caught up with Cochino. Also on board was a civilian sonar expert, Robert W. Philo, who was working as a consultant. The hunter-killer exercises were considered so important that the leader of Operation Kayo, Commodore Roy S. Benson, had come along and would end up on Tusk, commanded by Robert K. Worthington.

  Like Benitez, Worthington had taken command just days before they were all to leave for this trip, and like Benitez, Worthington and Benson were skeptical of their new trek into espionage. Benson believed that, at best, it was a side mission, one that wasn't nearly as important as training in the art of true underwater warfare. Red Austin thought he knew better. But then again, this spy stuff seemed to he his calling.

  "I got to have something spooky to do," Austin liked to say. "It's just the way I am."

  But if all of this was second nature to Austin, it wasn't to others. His special equipment was to be installed in a shipyard in Portsmouth, England, where even the yard workers were somewhat befuddled by the new gear.

  "Shit, this is just a piece of spaghetti," an inpatient Austin fumed, holding onto a piece of coaxial cable that the workers just couldn't seem to install correctly. "Plain old coax, half-inch. And it looks to me like you ought to be able to get plans to do this thing. Why can't you just go by the plans?"

  Austin was itching to get started. A tiny cubicle was being set up for him and his spy gear on the same deck as the control room, close to the radio room. He was ready to run the coaxial cable into what he called his "black box." Actually colored good old Navy gray, the box was one of a kind, built to capture the radio signals that the Soviets would have to use to send telemetry instructions to any missiles they were trying to test. Standing but two and a half feet tall, the box was designed to record signals on slivers of wire tape, and it was probably the most sensitive and secret device on Cochino.

  The line from that box would run up through the hull and connect to new "ears" placed on the side of the sub's sail, the large steel piece that created the shark fin on the submarine's otherwise smooth hull. These special antennas really did look like ears. They were little wire C's sprouting about a foot from the sail, one on each side. With these extra wires added to Cochino's array of the usual antennas, the sub had the look of a B-movie alien creature.

  Everything was finally installed by mid-August, and Cochino set out from Portsmouth accompanied by Tusk and two standard fleet boats, the USS Toro (SS-422) and the USS Corsair (SS-4,35). They were operating under strict radio silence, on what the Navy called a "simulated war patrol." No one onshore was supposed to know where they were. When they left England, they were to disappear.

  Within hours of their departure, the seals around Austin's cables gave way, giving Austin an unwelcome shower inside his cubicle. He managed, with a bit of tightening and some fiddling, to get his system working again. But if the seals failed again, he would have to clamp off his cables, and his part of the mission would he over.

  By now, the crew knew that this mission was going to be different, just as most knew that their newest crew member was not what he seemed. Red Austin might have worn a radioman's sparks on his uniform but he really worked for the Naval Security Group, the fabled cryptological service that had intercepted and decoded crucial Japa nese Navy communications during World War II. That much was secret, but even the crew realized that no common radioman would ever consult this closely with the captain.

  Still, submariners are submariners, and the most popular on board are always going to be the guys with the best sea stories. That was especially true on Cochino, where about one-third of the crew had been through the war. Austin brought war stories from his cruiser days, and he played a mean game of acey-deucey, a sailors' take on backgammon that had been carried to sea for more than a century. Besides, it was hard not to become fast friends when everyone was "hot-bunking"-grabbing sleep when other guys woke up, moving on to make space for the next shift, time-share submarine style. The crew was divided into three groups operating according to three different time zones. One group lived by Eastern Standard Time, another by Honolulu time, and another by Indian Ocean time. There were three sets of sonar operators, of weapons techs, of cooks, of radio operators, of men for
whatever job needed to be done.

  Only the CO, his executive officer (XO), Lieutenant Commander Richard M. Wright, Austin, and his assistant lived across those time zones. Austin didn't mind his triple-duty load, not when he got a chance to eat some of the three breakfasts, three lunches, and three dinners served on board everyday. The man loved food, even Spam, and he saw no reason to quarrel with powdered eggs.

  It was after one of Austin's first or second lunches or dinners that Benitez grabbed the spook for duty in the conning tower, a cramped space a ladder's distance above the sub's control room, the place from which the commander or other officer in charge directed the sub.

  "Man the number 2 periscope, Austin," the captain directed. It was a post where he could keep Austin busy and involved. It was also, Austin was certain, a post from which Benitez knew he could keep a wary eye on him.

  Soon, the two fleet boats that had accompanied Cochino and Tusk broke off and headed toward the edge of the Arctic ice pack northeast of Greenland for exercises in those frigid waters. Cochino and Tusk continued on, heading much closer to the Soviet Union.

  They spent their first few hours chugging up through the Norwegian Sea north of the Arctic Circle. Both subs had faucetlike spigots in their torpedo rooms to take in water for temperature and salinity tests, and both were charting the sea bottom. By Saturday, August 20, 1949, the boats were in the Barents. Now they too split up, Tusk to go off and conduct sonar tests, and Cochino to head toward a spot about 12 miles off the northern tip of Norway to begin Austin's mission. From here on out, Benitez would order the course changes requested by Austin, zigging the sub this way and zagging that way as the spook tried to hone in on Soviet signals.

  Austin tried not to let on, but he was worried. If he was to capture any signals, those special ear-shaped antennas would have to be raised above the waves. That meant that the sub would have to "plane up"-travel shallower than even snorkel depth-and expose part of her sail. This time of year, this far north, the sky was bright even at night, and the crew would have to be careful to avoid detection by the surface ships and fishing trawlers that dotted these waters. The long day also increased the danger of being spotted if Cochino had to surface.