Free First Salvo by Charles D. Taylor Page A

desperately to be able to dump the hydrofoil at just the right time. That was highly preferable to hearing the final roar of MiGs diving on them.
    Cobb’s destination was the Crimea. Attached by a narrow spit of land to Mother Russia, it jutted out into the Black Sea. The Crimea contained the historic cities of Sevastopol, home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet; Yalta, where Stalin twisted the arms of Churchill and Roosevelt in 1945; and Simferopol, training center for the terrorists who had so exacerbated the current Greek-Turkish conflict. The Crimea was also the location of General Keradin’s summer dacha, where the head of the Strategic Rocket Forces and his deputies were meeting that weekend. It was a strategy session, Cobb knew, just like those in Washington. However, DNI had explained to him personally that this was the final conference, the one that would decide at what stage they would launch and what the initial targets would be—if the Red Army did not own Western Europe within forty-eight hours after D-Day.
    Lassiter and Cobb had worked together before. Neither one needed to speak until something important had to be said. Finally, Cobb broke the silence. “Where you going after this?”
    Lassiter shrugged. “Depends if I still have this boat under my feet.” He brushed away the hair streaming over his face. “You know what the Russians are planning with this little war they engineered here?”
    “Sure. They want to clean out the Bosporus and Dardanelles—the choke points. Then they can come and go as they please over the next few days.” The boat heeled to the side as one of her foils slid down a long swell. Cobb steadied himself with one hand on the railing. “It’s all a matter of choke points, I was told. Keep ’em in their holes and we’ve at least got a chance.”
    “There’s a hell of a lot of them already out in the Med.”
    “What they got out there so far we can handle,” Cobb said. “I saw the intelligence reports and some satellite photos. They sent a carrier through the other day. There’re still a lot of destroyers and cruisers in here, and just about all of the subs. The Montreux Convention doesn’t allow their subs to pass through the Turkish straits. I suppose they’re saving some of them to open the choke points and keep them open.”
    “Makes sense,” Lassiter mused. “You know, Hank, I sure do love these little boats; turn on a dime, lots of power for your nickel.”
    “Sounds like fun. I wish you had a few more.” He paused and contemplated the idea. “Perhaps I could hang around for an extra day or two.”
    “We might locate a few more by tomorrow night.” Lassiter beamed.
    They lapsed into silence. After a while, Cobb went below to change into his next outfit. When he came up again, Lassiter clapped his hands in amusement. Cobb was dressed like a Crimean peasant, the clothes authentic right down to the grape stains that a vineyard worker would have on his work clothes during harvest season. Keradin’s dacha was also a working winery, and Washington had decided such an outfit provided the only means for someone to get close to the general.

WENDELL NELSON
    John Hancock rolled gently in the Mediterranean swell. The hum of her engineering plant came infrequently to Nelson’s ears. It was a sound that had so assimilated itself into his makeup over the years that he was already attuned to the ship he’d taken over just a few hours before.
    It had been a quick and simple change of command. Nelson was escorted to the captain’s cabin as soon as he’d stepped from the helo on Hancock ’s fantail. Her CO went over the classified material in the captain’s safe, then offered a rundown on the department heads and the condition of the ship. As soon as they finished, the captain called the executive officer and told him to make final preparations. There was little time for niceties.
    Five minutes later, those members of the crew not on watch assembled on the fantail.