Twenty miles off the North Russian coast, USS Narwhal hovered beneath the surface of a slate-gray sea. The quietest submarine in the U.S. fleet, she was a specialized intelligence-gathering platform that spent more time on the Soviet coast than did some ships in the Russian Navy Her three thin ESM antennae were raised, as was a million-dollar search periscope. Technicians aboard listened in on low-power radio conversations between aircraft as they formed up. Three uniformed intelligence specialists and a civilian from the National Security Agency evaluated the strength of the raid and decided that it was large enough to risk a warning broadcast. An additional mast was raised and aimed at a communications satellite twenty-four thousand miles away. The burst transmission lasted less than a fifteenth of a second.

USS NIMITZ

The message was automatically relayed to four separate communications stations, and within thirty seconds was at SACLANT headquarters. Five minutes after that, Toland had the yellow message form in his hand. He walked immediately to Admiral Baker, and handed the message over: 0418Z REALTIME SENDS WARNING AIR RAID TAKE OFF 0400 HEADING WEST FROM KOLA ESTIMATE FIVE REGIMENT PLUS.

Baker checked his watch. "Fast work. CAG?"

The air group commander looked at the form and walked to a phone. "Shoot off the plus-fives, recall the patrol aircraft when they get to station, and set up two more Tomcats and a Hummer on plus-five. I want the returning aircraft turned around immediately. Reserve one catapult for tankers." He came back. "With your permission, sir, I propose to put another pair of F-14s and another Hummer up in an hour, and put all the fighters on plus-five. At 0600, the rest of the fighters go up, with tankers in support. We'll meet them with everything we have about two hundred miles out and kick their ass."

"Very well. Comments?"

Svenson looked pensively at the master plot. Circles were already being drawn for the farthest possible advance of the Soviet bombers.

"The Brits get the same warning?"

"Yes, sir," Toland answered. "Norwegians, too. With luck, one or the other might make contact with the raid and nibble at it some, maybe put a trailer with them."

"Nice idea, but don't count on it. If I was running the attack, I'd come way west and turn south right over Iceland." Svenson looked back at the plot. "You think Realtime would have broadcast a warning for BearDs?"

"My information, sir, is that they are allowed to broadcast only for three regiments or more. Ten or twenty Bears wouldn't be enough. They might not even notice."

"So right now we probably have a herd of Bears out there, not emitting anything, just flying around listening for our radar signals."

Toland nodded agreement. The battle group was a circle of ships with a radius of thirty miles, the carriers and troop ships in the center surrounded by nine missile-armed escorts and six more specialized antisubmarine ships. None of the ships had a radar transmitter working. Instead they got all their electronic information from the two circling E-2C air surveillance aircraft, known colloquially as Hummers, whose radars swept a circle over four hundred miles across.

The drama being played out was more complex than the most intricate game. More than a dozen variable factors could interact, with their permutations running into the thousands. Radar detection range depended on altitude and consequent distance to the horizon that neither eyes nor radar can see past. An aircraft could avoid, or at least delay, detection by skimming the waves. But this carried severe penalties in fuel consumption and range.

They bad to locate the battle group without being detected by it first. The Russians knew where the carrier group was, but it would move in the four hours required for the bombers to get there. Their missiles needed precise information if they were to home in on the raid's primary target, the two American and one French carrier, or the mission was a wasted effort.

Putting the group's fighters on station to intercept the incoming raid depended on expert prognostication of its direction and speed. Their job: to locate and engage the bombers before they could find the carriers.

For both sides, the fundamental choice was whether or not to radiate, to use their radar transmitters. Either choice carried benefits and dangers, and there was no "best" solution to the problem. Nearly every American ship carried powerful air-search radars that could locate the raid two hundred or more miles away. But those radar signals could be detected at an even greater range, generating a return signal, that would potentially allow the Soviets to circle the formation, pinpoint it, then converge in from all points of the compass.

The game was hide and seek, played over a million square miles of ocean. The losers died.

NORTH ATLANTIC