To Kill the Potemkin

by Mark Joseph

  At first Fogarty had been impressed by the enormous power and fabulous mystique of the nuclear sub. Nautilus and the ships that followed her had conquered the great ocean and opened a new frontier. He very much wanted to be part of it.

  At an early age he had learned to distinguish the different types of submarines. First, there were the SSNs, fast attack subs, hunter-killers like Nautilus and Barracuda. Then there were the FBMs, the Fleet Ballistic Missile subs, the city-killers that had captured the public's imagination after the first one, the USS George Washington, was launched in 1960.

  The missile subs had frightened him. The idea of a ship that by itself could destroy a civilization drove a wedge of doubt into his adolescent mind. It seemed crazy to him that such a wonderful device could be turned to such a terrible purpose. Though he never wavered from his ambition to join the Submarine Service, he grew increasingly haunted by dark visions of nuclear war with the Russians. In the end World War Three would be resolved by submarines. If and when the war occurred, the primary function of attack submarines like Barracuda would be to find and sink enemy missile subs. If they succeeded and sank the enemy "boomers" before they could fire their missiles, at least something might be preserved. In effect the SSN was a defensive weapon, an anti-ballistic missile system. Fogarty wanted very much to believe that serving on such a ship was a decent if not noble endeavor, but a little corner of his mind remained unconvinced. When he was old enough to enlist, he argued with himself. In the years he had spent studying submarines and naval warfare he had developed an understanding of the consequences of nuclear war, in particular nuclear war at sea. He realized that if the American and Soviet navies started sinking each other's ships with nuclear torpedoes, rockets, depth charges and mines, they also could very likely kill all marine life and thereby doom life on earth.

  Such questions bothered Fogarty, but in the end he realized there was only one place to find the answers. Besides, no matter what, nothing was going to keep him off a sub.

  Boot camp, sub school, sonar school, and here he was, breathing air-conditioned air, listening to Muzak and sitting watches with the great Sorensen himself. In sonar school the scuttlebutt had been that Sorensen was the only American enlisted man whose name was known to the Russians. He doubted that, but who could be sure? In any case he didn't have to deal with Sorensen the legend but Sorensen the taskmaster, who had no intention of making Fogarty's life easy.

  Leave your mind behind.

  * * *

  In the maneuvering room Master Chief Alexander Wong, the head nuc, and the three men on watch were discussing the high-paying civilian jobs waiting for them when they got out of the navy. Surrounded by the maze of instrumentation that accompanied controlled nuclear fission, the nucs—nuclear engineers who had completed a course at one of the navy's nuclear power schools—figured they had it made.

  When the captain walked in, though, they stopped talking and stared at their displays. Springfield stood for several minutes in silence, hands on hips, watching the engineers. Without warning he reached over Wong's shoulder to the main control panel and flipped a bright red switch. The control rods dropped into the reactor vessel and the reactor scrammed. The neutron chain reaction came to a complete stop.

  With no chain reaction, no more heat was created in the reactor. If the engineers continued to use the residual heat to make steam the reactor would cool too quickly and crack, spewing radioactive material all over the compartment.

  The reactor control team responded instantly.

  "Close main steam feed," ordered Wong.

  The technician sitting at the steam panel spun a wheel and the steam supply to the engine room was cut off. With no steam, no power was delivered to the turbines. The ship was now without main propulsion power. As the prop stopped turning, the ship lost way and began to sink. The trim was off and the ship slowly sank at an angle, stern down.

  Wong grabbed the intercom. "This is a drill, this is a drill. Reactor scram, reactor scram. All hands to damage-control stations. All hands to damage-control stations. This is a drill. This is a drill."

  * * *

  Sorensen felt a shudder run through the ship and was out the door and past Barnes before alarms began sounding in every compartment.

  In the torpedo room the alarm burst in on Lopez and his ritual. Leaving the fly untouched, the scorpion retreated to a corner of its cage. "Son of a bitch," Lopez said, "what is it this time?"

  In the mess Strother Martin had Paul Newman trapped inside a church. "What we have here is a failure to—" and the film stopped dead.

  In the forward crew quarters Pisaro stood in the hatch. "This is a drill. Off your asses and hit the deck."

  Sleepy sailors stumbled out of their bunks and into their shoes. Like firemen, many slept in their clothes, ready for such a moment. Fogarty delayed long enough to zip up his jumpsuit. Pisaro swatted him on the butt as he rushed out.

  The passageway was jammed. The new seamen collided with one another in the hatches and banged into hard steel at the turns. Grunts and howls of pain rattled around in the dim light.

  Fogarty was dizzy. More than anything on the ship, the reactor terrified him. Every minute aboard he knew he was being irradiated. Yet now he was rushing through the ship because the reactor was shut down.

  Throughout the ship, damage-control teams put on asbestos suits and checked fire extinguishers. Everything loose was fastened down. Everything already fastened down was double-checked.

  In the galley Stanley was indignant. The cook could not have explained the physics of a reactor scram, but he knew that with no power to his stove his sauce was ruined. He slopped the brown fluid into a plastic bag and swore in Tagalog.

  Sorensen moved rapidly through the ship on bare feet, one step ahead of the confusion. In the control room Lt. Hoek still had the conn. As Sorensen passed through he noticed the blissful look on the young officer's face as he gave the commands to recover from the scram.

  "Engineering, rig for battery power."

  "Batteries on line and ready to go."

  "Very well, switch to batteries."

  "Batteries engaged."

  "Very well. Blow forward trim tanks."

  A sailor spun a valve and compressed air was forced into the tanks, expelling the water into the sea. The rate of descent slackened.

  "Blow after tanks. Slowly, very slowly. Let's not spill the coffee."

  Willie Joe was on duty in the sonar room when Sorensen burst in. The screens were clear. There was nothing around them but ocean, nine thousand feet of it under the keel.

  "Okay, go," Sorensen said. Willie Joe quickly changed into a white asbestos suit and hurried to his damage-control station.

  Fogarty came in, eyes red and swollen. Sorensen frowned.

  "You have to get in here quicker than that, Fogarty. Much quicker."

  "The passageway was blocked."

  "No excuses. If people are in your way, jump over them, run through them. I don't care, just get in here."

  "Aye aye."

  The ship was still going down. Fogarty stared at the digital fathometer: six hundred fifty, seven hundred, seven hundred fifty feet. His face remained impassive. The sea didn't frighten him.

  Sorensen liked his nerve.

  At eight hundred feet the ship leveled off and stopped. The sea was quiet.

  "Tell me what you hear," Sorensen said.

  "The Atlantic Ocean," Fogarty replied. "The turbogenerator," he added quickly.

  "That's all?"

  Sorensen punched a button and the overhead loudspeakers came on. An intermittent scratching sound came from the sea.

  "What's that?" Sorensen asked.

  Fogarty listened. "I don't know."

  "Turtles," Sorensen said cheerfully. "Fishing at one hundred fifty feet. Unusual for them to be so far north, but it sounds like they've struck it rich."

  Still in shorts and wearing sunglasses in the darkened room, Sorensen scrunched up his face and contorted his voice, trying
to reproduce turtle noises. He glanced up to make sure a tape was rolling.

  "Attention all hands," Hoek's voice came through the intercom. "Prepare for slow speed."

  Fogarty stared at the screen and fiddled with his film badge.

  The ship began to move, making just enough way to maneuver. The turtle sounds faded. A moment later weird beeps and hoots came through the speakers.

  "Right whales," Sorensen said, and began to hoot and beep himself. Every few seconds his fingers reached for the keyboard as he altered the combination of arrays, filters and enhancers, playing the sea like a vast water organ.

  Fascinated, Fogarty asked, "What are you doing?"

  Sorensen only tweeked and buzzed a little louder.

  A minute later the whales went silent.

  Fogarty said, "You turned the whales up, Sorensen. In sonar school they told us to filter them out."

  Sorensen grinned. "I like whales." He flashed a smile. "Ever watch Star Trek?"

  "A couple times. So?"

  "Well, think of me as Mr. Spock, the Vulcan, all right? I'm not human, Fogarty, I'm an alien. I'm weird. When we're on watch, just keep your eyes on the screen and your ears on the big phone. And watch out for them Klingons, boy. They bad dudes."

  Fogarty persisted. "In sonar school they called all marine noises signal interference. They said to filter them out."

  Sorensen took off his glasses. "Listen, Fogarty. Forget school. Forget the navy. Read the sign: Leave your mind behind. This is the real ocean. If you're going to be a good sonarman, you listen to everything and you think about everything you hear. Are you following me?"

  "I am."

  "All right. I'm going to keep you on the first watch until you qualify. If you're any good that will be in about thirty days, just before we get back to Norfolk. If you aren't, I'll keep you just to make your life miserable. We're in for the duration, Fogarty. We're watchmates... Tell me, Fogarty, how come you volunteered for subs?"

  "I quit school. I was going to be drafted, was at loose ends."

  "But why volunteer for subs? Why not the Coast Guard?"

  "I looked around. The Submarine Service had the best deal. Best food, best pay, most interesting working conditions—"

  "Don't feed me a line of shit."

  Fogarty shrugged. "Okay. I've wanted to get on one of these things since I was a little kid. That's the truth. I must have built fifty models of Nautilus when I was a kid."

  "So what? Every kid in America builds models."

  "Yeah"—Fogarty grinned—"but mine worked. Servos, radio control, watertight seals, the works."

  Sorensen nodded. "I see. I suppose you were first in your class in sub school, too."

  Fogarty shook his head. "No. Second."

  "Shame on you. Where'd you screw up?"

  Fogarty smiled. "Navigation. In the simulator I drove the sub right up onto the beach."

  "Yeah, navigation is a bitch. That's why I like computers. When we fuck up we can blame it on them."

  "That's what I told my instructor. He didn't buy it."

  "So you came out second out of how many?"

  "Four hundred."

  Sorensen raised his eyebrows.

  "Four hundred twenty-seven."

  "Ah ha! Okay, you're a genuine sub freak. How come?"

  "During the war my dad was a radioman on Yellowtail."

  "No shit?"

  "He's a very proud man. He always wanted my brother and me to join the Submarine Service."

  "So where's your brother now?"

  "He joined the Marines. It broke my dad's heart. He hates jarheads."

  Sorensen chuckled, "Oh, boy, a tough guy."

  Fogarty grinned. "What about you, Sorensen? Why are you here?"

  "Me? I'm a native. I was born here."

  "C'mon, tell me. Why did you join the navy?"

  "You want to hear the story of my life, kid?"

  "Yeah. Where's your home town?"

  "Oakland, California."

  "Home of the Raiders."

  "That's right. Also the home of Fast Eddie, the pool Shark in The Hustler, of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels, Reggie Jackson, Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, former home of Jack London, noted oyster pirate and liar, to mention a few illustrious citizens. Ever been there?"

  "No."

  "Well, it's California, but it ain't Hollywood." Sorensen swallowed a long draught of coffee. "I had no sense, no real education, although I read a lot. I got married when I was seventeen. There I was with no job, nothing but an old lady who thought life was driving up and down East Fourteenth Street showing off your new car. Her brain was lost in the wrong decade. I needed a job, so on my eighteenth birthday I walked into a navy recruiter's office and said, 'Man, I built my first sonar when I was twelve out of a microphone, a plastic bag and a tube of rubber cement.' He said, 'Son, sign on the dotted line.' I signed. I was fresh meat for the fleet."

  Sorensen paused to light a cigarette, and Fogarty asked, "Where's your wife?"

  "She divorced me when I reenlisted. She hated the navy. A few years ago, the night before the ship was leaving for a sixty-day cruise, she told me she'd be gone when I got back. I didn't blame her. She was looking at two months of lonely nights in crummy bars in another crummy navy town, getting hit on by horny sailors, horny civilians, horny WAVE dykes. She didn't have much use for submarines, either. I think she went back to California. She still gets a piece of my check."

  * * *

  They continued at slow speed for two hours. Springfield stopped once to transmit a position report as part of the SOSUS deep submergence detection test.

  Sorensen assigned Fogarty the elaborate, time-consuming task of checking all the circuits that ran from the sonar room through cables to the torpedo room in the bow. The sonars were mounted on the hull all around the bow and Fogarty spent an hour inspecting the main panel in the torpedo room.

  Alone in the sonar room, Sorensen popped open his console and gazed at the maze of circuitry. Over the years he had modified it extensively, sometimes without authorization.

  On his trip to Japan he had acquired not one but two of the miniature tape recorders, one of which he now inserted into a disguised panel. A quick twist of a screwdriver, and Sorensen became a criminal.

  4

  Cowboys and Cossacks

  The Strait of Gibraltar forms one of the great bottlenecks in the world ocean. Historically, control of the Strait has meant control of the Mediterranean. Since the end of World War Two the U.S. Navy has considered "the sea in the middle of the earth" an American lake.

  Seven days after leaving Norfolk, Barracuda approached the Strait at slow speed.

  "All right," said the captain. "Send up the buoy."

  A jet of compressed air fired a capsule from the top of the sail toward the surface. A few seconds later a radio transmitter floated two hundred feet above the sub. Springfield beamed a position report to the naval station at Rota, Spain, and received an immediate reply.

  US NAVAL STATION ROTA: BARRACUDA SSN 593:

  SOSUS DEEP SUBMERGENCE DETECTION TEST

  SUCCESSFUL. FOLLOWED YOU ALL THE WAY ACROSS.

  PERMISSION GRANTED TO CLEAR STRAIT. NETTS.

  In the sonar room Sorensen listened to the sonic beacon fixed to the bottom of the Strait, which guided submerged ships through the deep channel. He locked on and the ship slowly passed into the Mediterranean.

  Presently they heard engine noise from another sub nearby. Before Sorensen could ask, Fogarty said, "British. HMS Valiant."

  "Very good, very good, indeed. Be glad we're not a Russian or he'd blow our ears out."

  "Full speed ahead," said the captain. "We're through."

  * * *

  Two days later Barracuda was 250 miles from Naples. Springfield and Pisaro studied the CRT in the navigation console, which displayed an electronic chart of the Tyrrhenian Sea between Sardinia and the Bay of Naples. A blip in the center of the screen represented the ship. A flickering digital read
out reported the changing longitude and latitude. The quartermaster sat quietly at the console, eyes following the blip, the only visible evidence of Barracuda's progress.

  Springfield had ordered a burst of flank speed. Driving Barracuda at forty-seven knots was like flying blind underwater. The noise rendered her listening sonars useless, and there was danger of colliding with another submerged vessel. Every fifty miles Springfield slowed the sub to a crawl and quieted all machinery to allow the sonar operators to "clear baffles." While the ship slowly turned 360 degrees, the sonarmen listened through the hydrophones, the passive sonars.

  Pisaro blew cigarette smoke away from the console. "We're almost at the edge," he said, waving smoke out of his eyes. "Five minutes."

  Springfield nodded and spoke into his microphone. "Control to engineering, prepare for slow speed. We're going to clear baffles."

  "Engineering to control. Prepare for slow speed, aye."

  Springfield glanced at the blank screen of the sonar repeater. Willie Joe had the repeater disassembled for Fogarty's edification.

  "How long, Willie Joe?"

  "Ten minutes. Captain."

  "All right," Springfield said to Pisaro. "There's supposed to be a storm up above. If we're going to hear anything, we'd better get Sorensen up here."

  "Aye aye, skipper." Pisaro spoke into the intercom. "Control to engineering. Listen, Chief. Send somebody aft to drag Sorensen's butt back into the real world. I want him in sonar in five minutes."

  "Engineering to control. Aye aye. The ace will be in place."

  * * *

  In the sonar room Sonarman Second Class Emile Davic sat at his operator's console, apparently watching the CRT screen. He was alone.

  Davic stared diligently at the screen, but there was little to see except the green fuzz of ambient noise—washed-out signals from the passive array.