Sherry Sontag;Christopher Drew Read Online Free PDF Page A

radiomen. But Austin could pick out the Cyrillic alphabet in Morse code, one of those tricks he had learned to fill the tedium during his days on surface ships. Now, as he sat clacking out Russian on Cochino's manual typewriter, he imagined he could actually understand what he was typing. In his mind, one Soviet ship was making a daily report, telling its command how much rice was on board, that the fruit had all been eaten. Another was reporting the day's sick list.

Three days passed, and Austin had still collected only a few Soviet voice transmissions. Benitez decided to make one more nighttime pass to give Austin a chance to find more. Austin would have been willing to sit for weeks. He was itching to nab the grail, to record some Soviet missile telemetry.
It was on this last evening that something began to come through. It didn't sound like a launch, but Austin had also been told to look out for equipment tests. Maybe that's what was going on. Maybe the Russians were tuning up their gear, getting ready for a show. He asked Benitez to order a turn, to try to position Cochino for a clearer signal. Even after that, Austin was still not sure what he was hearing, or even whether it was coming from land or from sea. This wasn't voice, that much he knew.
For a moment the frequencies seemed about right for a weapons test. But there wasn't nearly enough coming through-in fact, not anywhere near the wash of sound that would have signaled the telemetry from a missile test. Intelligence officials back home might have imagined that the Soviets were engaged in endless launchings, readying to take their missiles to sea. But if that were the case, the Soviets had taken a break just as Cochino came near. Austin's spy mission was a failure, at least so far. He was scheduled to get another try later, but for now, Cochino was going back to her initial mission. She was going to play hide-and-seek with Tusk so the two subs could learn like any young predators how to become hunters and killers.

By now, even Benitez was disappointed as he turned Cochino from the area. For all of the trouble Austin's orders had caused, the commander would have liked to have been able to go back and say, "Ah, we got something," to log in his patrol report that "we intercepted this or we intercepted that." Still, as he began ordering course, west and north, he was glad to be getting on to what he considered his primary mission. In fact, he was feeling quite light-hearted. It was Wednesday, August 24, a day before Cochino's fourth birthday, and Benitez had called for an early celebration.
The cooks were at work, preparing a large birthday cake and a steak dinner that even Austin had to agree was better than Spam. There were songs, jokes, and prerecorded birthday wishes set down that morning by some of the men eating in the mess. Later, Benitez would log, "It was a happy ship, and in the wardroom we expressed the wish that the next birthday would find us all together on board Cochino."
Early the next morning, Cochino spotted Tusk off her starboard beam. By 10:30 A.M. that Thursday, Cochino began moving ahead at snorkel depth. It was her turn to hide. Tusk had already moved away to perform the submarine version of counting to ten.
It was a gloomy day, misty and gray with rough seas. The radio room had earlier picked up a forecast of polar storms, and the winds had been blowing for hours. The waves rocked Cochino, and the planesmen struggled to maintain steady depth, as the crewmen braced themselves, grabbing chart tables and overhead pipes. Others lunged to catch sliding coffee cups and tools. The forward engine room got on the squawk box and told Benitez that water was pouring into the sub through the snorkel, which should have been automatically capped watertight by a valve designed to slam shut as soon as its sensors got wet.
Benitez sent Wright, his XO, back to investigate as the engines cut off for lack of air. Just about two minutes later, there was a muffled