Seawolf Mask of Command

by Cliff Happy

  Terry nodded. “We’re heading back out into the Sea of Japan to rendezvous with a medivac bird from the Abraham Lincoln.”

  “Lieutenant Cheng?” Kristen asked, feeling a little guilty. She hadn’t yet gone to sickbay to check on him.

  “Yeah,” Terry replied. “I guess the Blade is getting soft. Not long after the drones left the tubes, he ordered us back out to international waters where we might be able to get Cheng to a real hospital.”

  Kristen knew this was a tactical error. The Seawolf had managed to sneak through the North Korean anti-submarine patrols. Now they would have to fight their way back out, only to turn around and come back through the gauntlet a third time.

  She walked with Terry as far as the sonar shack where she left him and entered to find Fabrini standing behind the class stack listening intently. He saw her and motioned for her to come in. “Hey, Lieutenant,” he greeted her as he removed one side of the headphones. “Would you mind taking the spectrum analyzer?”

  “Has someone been smoking in here?” she asked abruptly as she picked up the lingering stench of tobacco.

  “Uh….” Fabrini hesitated, not wanting to play the rat, “well I uh…”

  “Forget it,” she replied easily and slipped by the others to make her way back to the spectrum analyzer. She spent the first few minutes getting acquainted with the various contacts they were tracking, including the sounds of the Abraham Lincoln battle group cruising northward at ten knots nearly one hundred nautical miles to the east. There were also distant North Korean patrol boats to the north and west, but they were far enough away to be no threat.

  “Where’s the Tral class corvette?” she asked Fabrini, not seeing it in the sonar log any more.

  “He moved off to the northeast at the beginning of the last watch. They lost contact about three hours ago,” Fabrini replied.

  She was thankful for something to help take her mind off what had happened earlier in Brodie’s cabin. Operating a sonar station required her complete concentration and didn’t allow room for thoughts of anything else. She glanced around her station, noticing crushed cigarette butts on the deck and empty soda cans strewn about. The last few teams of sonar operators had been dealing with the challenging and, at moments, frightening journey into North Korean waters. The debris was a mute testament to the strain they’d been under.

  “We have a thermocline below us at five hundred fifty feet,” Fabrini whispered as he leaned over her. “We’ve been picking up an intermittent contact off to the northeast. It’s probably nothing, but every now and then we get a mechanical noise.”

  “Do you think the control room could dip below the thermocline so we can take a look at what might be down there?” she asked Fabrini, knowing something could be hiding under the layer a few hundred yards away, and the Seawolf might never hear it.

  Fabrini relayed the request, and a moment later Kristen heard Graves’ voice, “Sonar, con. Coming down, now.”

  “Con, sonar. Roger that,” Fabrini answered dutifully.

  Kristen stayed on her display, searching the waters around the Seawolf, focusing on her work and nothing else. They dropped below the thermocline and settled at a depth of six hundred feet continuing on their course as the mile-long towed array, dragging far behind them, slowly followed them down a few minutes later.

  As the hydrophone array came below the thermocline, Kristen heard a sudden noise. Instantly, she began adjusting her dials. “Passive sonar contact,” she reported automatically. “On the towed array. Bearing one-seven-zero,” she told Fabrini.

  “Con, sonar. Possible submerged contact on towed array. Recommend course change forty-five degrees to port to establish second bearing,” Fabrini requested. A course change would allow them a second bearing that could be used to triangulate the contact’s position.

  Kristen tuned out everything else as she listened.

  The XO suddenly appeared in the door. He had to bend down slightly as he stepped in to avoid the low overhead. “What is it, Fabrini?” he asked.

  Fabrini briefed him on the new contact.

  “We can’t be pausing to smell the roses,” Graves reminded everyone. “We’ve got a shipmate clinging to life, and we need to get him to the rendezvous. So unless you know for a fact this isn’t some school of feeding shrimp or a couple of whales getting busy, we need to hold our course.”

  Kristen reached up and flipped on the speaker for her station and removed her headphones. “Sir,” she told him. “I know I’m new at this, but it doesn’t sound like a biological.”

  Graves listened to the sound coming over the speaker. Fabrini listened too and shook his head, “Damn, that sounds distant.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” Graves added.

  Kristen pulled her headphones back on and made a few more fine adjustments. She paused, closing her eyes as she listened closely. The computer automatically filtered out normal background noises but was never able to remove it all, and Kristen was doing her best to act like another filter, removing everything else. Then she heard it again. “Sir, I’m hearing cooling pump noises on the same bearing. Classify contact Sierra Seven as a nuclear submarine running in quiet mode.”

  Fabrini glanced at her skeptically. The computer had reported nothing. He took a second set of headphones and plugged them into an auxiliary jack on her panel, so he could hear exactly what she was listening to. The XO was growing anxious and pulled the ship’s phone from the overhead but paused and looked at Fabrini before calling Brodie. “Fabrini?” he asked, wanting confirmation that this wasn’t some wild-goose chase.

  Fabrini was leaning over Kristen as she barely brushed the fine adjustment knob. “There is definitely something there, XO. But I can’t make it out.” He paused and shook his head in frustration. “It might be plant noises….” His tone of voice made it clear he wasn’t certain though.

  “Dammit,” Graves replied and dialed the captain’s cabin.

  A few seconds passed while Kristen heard Graves brief Brodie. After a short conversation, the XO hung up the phone and ordered a forty-five degree turn as Kristen had suggested. “I hope this isn’t a waste of time,” he whispered to Fabrini.

  The door opened and Brodie appeared a few seconds later. “Whatcha got, Jason?”

  “Nothing firm yet. The spectrum analyzer picked up a faint contact. It might be a sub, but we aren’t certain,” Graves reported.

  “What’s the computer say?” Brodie asked.

  “Zip, Skipper,” Fabrini answered.

  Kristen could almost hear the doubt in their voices.

  “Looks like the back of a taxi cab in here, Fabrini,” Brodie muttered. “Did you give the maid the day off?” Brodie picked up a cup of coffee that had been left behind by the previous watch. He drank it right down.

  “Ma’am, the towed array should be straightened out by now,” Fabrini whispered to her.

  Kristen nodded as she slowly checked the bearings where she felt the contact might be but heard nothing. She spun the dial one hundred eighty degrees in the other direction and began fine tuning, checking multiple bearings. “Got him! Contact Sierra Seven. New bearing two-three-five!” She turned and looked up at Fabrini and Brodie. Both were now behind her. “Definite plant noises.”

  The other sonar operators glanced at one another questioningly, but they each just shrugged their shoulders at one another. They’d heard nothing. Fabrini pulled his own headphones back on to listen for himself. But, after a few seconds, he shook his head. “I don’t have it.”

  Kristen glanced at the XO, who looked dubious about the contact. She then looked at Brodie. He was listening to the speaker and not looking at her. He said nothing, nor did he consult anyone. Instead, Brodie reached up and took down the microphone to the control room.

  “Con, this is the captain. Ten degree left rudder, new course…” he paused to glance at a red plasma tactical display. “New course, two-seven-zero. Slow to one third.”

  Kristen realized he was taking her w
ord for it and was turning the Seawolf nearly back into its wake to check the rear where she’d heard the faint contact. Despite what had happened between them and everyone else’s doubt, he trusted her. She’d feared he might not believe her. The others surely didn’t.

  “Get Chief Miller up here,” Brodie said softly to the XO.

  “Aye, sir.”

  The Seawolf slowed and executed a gentle turn to port to bring the submarines most powerful sonar system, the bowed mounted array, to bear on the contact. Kristen lost the sound as soon as they began the turn but kept adjusting her system trying to reacquire it, using the complex sonar array suite like a massive sound vacuum to literally suck in trillions of bits of sound from the water surrounding them. Five minutes later, a tired, and very grouchy looking, Senior Chief Miller arrived.

  “Sorry to wake you, Senior Chief, but we might have a tail,” Brodie informed him as Miller struggled to squeeze his bulk through the confined space to where Kristen was seated.

  “What’s the computer saying?” Miller asked as he scratched himself.

  “Nothing, Senior Chief,” Fabrini answered. “She picked up something faint on the towed array. We changed course, and she picked it up again. But no one else has been able to verify what she heard.” Fabrini’s tone wasn’t quite questioning, but it wasn’t sounding very enthusiastic about the possibility Kristen was right either.

  Kristen smelled Miller’s cigarette breath and the three days of unwashed body as he stepped up behind her. “What is it, Lieutenant?” he asked, grabbing the extra headphones.

  Just a few hours earlier, she’d been covered in gore and shaking like a leaf from stress. Now she feared everyone thought she was losing her mind or—what for her was far worse—seeking attention. But she was certain about what she’d heard. “I heard reactor coolant pumps,” she told him. “The sound of the rushing water was distinct, Senior Chief.”

  “Then why didn’t the computer pick it up, let alone anyone else?” Miller asked bluntly.

  He listened to the headphones for a good solid minute as Kristen made more adjustments on the massive bow array, but the sound had disappeared. The Chief took off the headphones and hung them back up. “Our baffles are clear, Skipper,” he concluded, a bit annoyed at having been dragged off the couch in the goat locker because of a Nub.

  “Thanks, Senior Chief,” Brodie replied with a yawn.

  Kristen turned in her chair to face Brodie. She was absolutely certain about what she’d heard. She needed him to believe that this wasn’t some stupid, drama-queen attempt to get attention. “Sir, I wasn’t imagining it,” she told him with certainty. “It was hard to isolate, and it was faint, but I know what I heard. It is there.”

  Brodie nodded thoughtfully as a skeptical Chief Miller glanced back at her. “It’s all right, Lieutenant. When I’ve been tired enough, I’ve heard all kinds of stuff. Hell, I even heard a Siren’s song begging me to come for a swim once,” Miller said dismissively.

  Kristen turned back to her screen as the Chief made his way out of the sonar shack. They didn’t believe her. But more importantly, Brodie didn’t. He ordered a course correction back to their base course. Tired and now angry, she turned back toward him. “Captain, I wasn’t imagining it. There was someone following us.”

  “Then where did he go, Lieutenant?” Miller asked pointedly as he stood in the open hatchway.

  Kristen looked down at the deck, seeing crushed cigarette butts littering it and then looked up. “He heard us turning to clear our baffles, and he jumped up above the thermocline,” she offered.

  Fabrini’s face showed the clear disbelief he was feeling. Miller just shook his head with a hint of exasperation. “Good night, Skipper,” Miller said and turned to leave.

  Kristen was looking at Brodie, his face concealed in partial shadow, but she could feel the grey eyes piercing into her soul. For what seemed like several minutes—but was only a brief second—they stared at one another. Then Brodie keyed the microphone to the control room. “Belay my last, con,” he ordered. “All stop. Bring her up above the thermal, nice and quiet.”

  Kristen turned back to her display. She’d been afraid he wouldn’t believe her. She needed him to trust her. The rest could ignore her. The rest could laugh and snicker behind her back, but not him. She could not bear his ridicule. Not anymore.

  The Seawolf rose gently, slipping above the thermocline. Chief Miller, out of curiosity, stuck around, his body half in and out of the sonar shack. “Hey, Fabrini, fifty bucks it’s nothing,” he whispered to the Petty Officer.

  Fabrini rubbed the growing beard on his face and glanced at Kristen. She gave him a look of certainty. “You’re on,” Fabrini whispered, taking the bet.

  As the Seawolf rose above the thermocline, her massive bow array was the first part to peek above the cold layer of water acting like a large soundproof blanket above them. All of the sonar techs were watching their green waterfall displays when, suddenly, all three stacks began chirping simultaneously as the waterfall displays came alive with a thick green line indicating something directly ahead of the Seawolf.

  “Sonar contact! Bearing dead ahead,” the three sonar operators called out simultaneously.

  Brodie reacted instantly and keyed the microphone linking the sonar shack to the control room. “Con, thirty degrees to starboard. Thirty degree down angle on the bow planes, get us back below the thermocline!” He tossed Fabrini the microphone and bulled his way past Chief Miller as he exited the sonar shack and headed for the control room.

  “I’ll be goddamned,” Miller swore in disbelief.

  Greenberg was on the classification stack and reported the contact, “A nuclear-powered submarine. I’ve got plant noises and …” he hesitated, not certain he was hearing it right.

  Kristen finished the report, “It’s a British Astute class SSN.” She then looked toward Greenberg and explained, “You were hearing the pump-jet propulsor.”

  “The Limey prick was following us,” Miller mumbled as he fished a cigarette out of his pocket. “I must be getting too old for this shit.”

  Kristen continued to listen, while the Seawolf dove back below the thermocline. She could barely hear the British submarine as it passed above the Seawolf, but then she heard something else. It was something unexpected. Something ominous.

  “New submerged contact, bearing three-two-five! I’m picking up transients close aboard.”

  “What the fuck?!” Miller asked before he could light his cigarette. He grabbed the extra headphones to listen as Fabrini reported the contact.

  Kristen glanced at Chief Miller as the Seawolf dove back into the black depths. The turn was so tight and the dive so steep that Kristen had to grab onto a pair of handholds to stay in her seat as the deck pitched beneath her. “It sounded like metal scraping,” she said to Miller.

  Miller listened for another moment then stood back up and grabbed the ship’s phone, “Con, sonar. We’ve got a diesel-electric submarine bearing three-two-five, and we’ve got metallic transients indicating torpedoes entering tubes.”

  Kristen froze momentarily, not understanding what was happening. But a moment later, she heard the general alarm sound. Almost immediately, she felt the Seawolf turn back the other way and accelerated.

  Following the blaring of the alarm claxon, she heard the Chief of the Watch’s voice calling all hands to their battle stations. Adrenaline shot through her veins and Kristen immediately began to get out of the seat, assuming Miller would want Greenberg or Fabrini on the spectrum analyzer. But the Chief put a restraining hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down into the seat.

  “Don’t you want someone else here?” she asked.

  “Shit no,” he told her. “Strap in and hold on,” Miller replied as he reached up and grabbed a pipe to steady himself while lighting the cigarette with the other hand. Kristen buckled her seatbelt and tightened it down as the Seawolf turned hard to port. They were leaning sideways in their chairs even with the seatbelts on a
s they continued to accelerate. The cold, visceral, gut-wrenching fear that a torpedo might already been in the water and heading for them gripped her abdomen, and, by the looks on the faces of everyone else in the shack, she was not alone in her fear.

  “Sonar, con,” she heard Brodie’s voice over the speaker, and, as suddenly as the fear had struck her, it faded. His voice was calm and methodical, without any hint of panic or concern. The type of calmness expected of a leader during a crisis. She briefly wondered if she could ever manage to feign such courage. She doubted it.

  “Bring in the towed array,” Brodie ordered. “I don’t want to lose it.”

  The Seawolf’s long towed-array cable was not intended to be part of submerged acrobatics, nor would it be useful if they passed twenty knots which they seemed to be heading to fast. She felt the sub vibrate slightly as they passed through sixteen knots.

  “Do you have anything more on the second contact?” Brodie asked.

  Kristen gripped the side of the panel to stop from falling sideways as they continued the sharp turn to port. She listened intently, trying to hear the diesel-electric boat again. They’d come full circle and returned to their original course. But they were now deep below the thermocline. Kristen could do the geometry in her head without even thinking about it, and she knew Brodie was bringing them up behind the diesel-electric boat—unless of course the submarine had heard them and had changed course, too.

  In the control room, Graves listened closely, waiting for a report.

  “What do you think it is, Skipper?” he asked Brodie who, despite his lack of sleep, was alert once again.

  “I think the Astute might have been the reason we were able to get back out of North Korean waters so easily. That Tral corvette left us to go chase someone else,” he explained.

  “You think the Brit heard all the commotion we made and realized we were in trouble, so they decided to draw some of the heat off of us?” Graves asked.

  “They certainly have the stones for it,” he replied bluntly. “I never met a British sub captain who wouldn’t run a hundred miles for a good fight.”