Silent Hunter

by Charles D. Taylor

  He slipped on the access switch and punched in his code. Caesar responded with a cheery, “HOW MAY I HELP YOU, CAPTAIN SNOW?” across the screen. Snow queried sailing status. The details appeared on the screen without hesitation. There were now 296 feet of water under the keel and their current course was gradually bringing them into deeper water. Checking the time, he knew the watch was preparing for scheduled satellite communications.

  When the comm officer reported transmission complete, Snow saw no point in remaining on the surface. They could submerge to a depth safe enough to avoid creating any surface disturbance that might alert curious satellites, and for that matter, the increasing concentration of surface ice would mask their presence anyway. It was time for Imperator’s final disappearing act. He punched in the power data to effect their dive, then authenticated his order. The computer responded almost immediately, “CAPTAIN SNOW, DO YOU WISH TO OVERRIDE THE CONTROL ROOM?” Of course not, he realized. That would require an emergency order. Now why the hell did he go ahead and do that? There wasn’t the slightest reason to upset the watch at this stage. Lifting the sound-powered phone from the wall box, he called the control room and gave his orders to the diving officer. The computer, he was told, had already projected the increased frequency and density of floe ice over the next twelve hours, and the OOD requested permission to set the upward-looking sonar. That unit was set at a specific depth before entering a solid ice area when ship’s depth was equal to the distance to the surface as determined by the sonar. Upon entering an ice area, the sonar recorded changes between the submarine’s actual depth and the distance to the surface alone. It was vitally important for Imperator to be at perfect trim since even the slightest deviation from zero trim would result in inaccurate measurement of ice thickness. A mark that showed a perfect distance to the surface according to the presetting would identify a polynya, a hole in the ice. It was vital to maintain a constant chart of surface ice and polynyas in case the submarine was required to surface through the ice for any reason.

  As Snow silently wondered what else Caesar had been doing in his spare time, the watch officer reported that repairs had been made to a valve seal in one of the forward ballast pumps, a heat detector had been malfunctioning in the magazine next to the number three Tomahawk missile launcher, umbilical readings had reported a low battery on one of the Apache helicopters stored in the forward hangar room, and a radiation detector had malfunctioned in a compartment adjacent to the main reactor. None of the incidents had been noted by the crew before Caesar reported them to the engineering office.

  It was eerie. Snow muttered to himself, how an electronic marvel could grate on one’s nerves. There was no malice involved—Caesar was incapable of humanity. Yet the fact that Snow was increasingly irritated by this electronic nonentity bothered him. He found himself longing for the old-fashioned comfort of a submarine dependent on the men who sailed her. Malfunctions in those days were reported to the captain at once and details were constantly relayed to him on what repairs were underway, and again when they were complete. Imperator had been designed to alleviate that factor. If Snow desired a status report on his command, he could call it up on the computer. The report would be far more accurate and timely than those called back to a captain in his old-fashioned control room by a technician or engineering officer up to his armpits in grease.

  There was neither the smell of the old diesel subs nor the efficient quiet hum of the nuclear boats of only ten years before. Sound silencing had become such an art in the construction of Imperator that she functioned with the soundless hush of space. The only noises were human, and they seemed to intrude on the efficiency of the wonder that was Caesar, the heart and soul of Imperator.

  As Snow’s fingers ran over the keys on the terminal before him, he realized from conversations with Carol Petersen that there was a limited capability for human psychological response programmed into Caesar. She had assured him it was designed to interpret certain mental problems that might crop up among the crew, similar to implanting a set of medical symptoms in a computer’s memory bank. The system could then respond with a diagnosis of the correct ailment.

  What, then, would Caesar say about Hal Snow? How would he respond to a man with two failed marriages who often went months without knowing where his offspring were? The navy determined that Snow was fine for their purposes. His record from the day he was commissioned until the day he resigned was nothing but professional. He had always been able to set aside his personal life in favor of professional demands—and the life of a submarine officer was rigorous and demanding. The psychological testing he’d undergone before commanding a ballistic-missile submarine was no different. Hal Snow was in total command of his submarines, able to make life-or-death decisions in every possible situation navy psychologists could imagine without displaying the slightest inconsistencies. You were perfect, Snow, he remarked silently to himself.

  Then why the hell am I tempted to talk to Caesar about the things I’m aware of that no navy shrink is ever going to learn? Was it because he’d decided to come back for one more round? That was the mistake of boxers . . . race car drivers . . . test pilots . . . to have to prove it to themselves one more time—the old ego trip.

  Or was it Carol Petersen? Why was a man his age so concerned about what that woman thought? No one could ever convince him that a woman had a place on a submarine, yet there had been moments when he felt like a high school jock showing off for some girl in the stands. So while he was considering having this very personal conversation with good old Caesar, he was also worried that Caesar’s mistress might get wind of the fact that he, Hal Snow, was plumbing the psychological depths of a computer. What kind of stable mind was that?

  He snapped off the terminal abruptly. While the glow faded from the screen, he was able to convince himself there were better things to do than challenge Caesar to a mental duel. The results could be disconcerting. One thing that computer couldn’t do was go on a tour of the forward weapons systems with his weapons officer. Snow hadn’t inspected that section of Imperator since they got underway, It was a good excuse to keep his mind busy, and it was even better to have his officers see him involved in their department.

  But the effect Carol Petersen seemed to have on him remained in the forefront of his mind that day.

  Abe Danilov’s plan for arriving on station at least twenty-four hours before Imperator cleared the Bering Strait was based on sound reasoning. He knew listening devices would have been deployed, and that they would be heavily monitored before the American submarine ever entered the shallow Chukchi Sea. Creeping stealthily closer the previous day, Danilov managed to arrive unnoticed.

  Seratov and Smolensk waited patiently for their quarry, and Novgorod had departed after the exercises on the third day to assume station between four and five hundred miles to the east. There she could silently patrol the deeper waters off the entrance to the Northwest Passage. Danilov was positive that Imperator’s chosen path would be under the North Pole, but he was covering every alternative. Once Admiral Reed determined that his best choice was a course due north under the ice, then Danilov and his two submarines would be waiting. Novgorod would then swing in behind them and contact the additional hunter/killer forces dispatched the previous day.

  “Sergoff,” he called as he passed by the wardroom, “come with me.” The chief of staff reacted with unconcealed pleasure to the broad smile on Danilov’s face. The admiral had been brooding again, and this always troubled Sergoff. The best he could expect would be a change of heart, for Danilov reminded him these days of a rubber ball perpetually bouncing from one mood to another. The radiance he now recognized on the admiral’s face appeared to be more than a simple change of moods.

  In the control room, an ebullient Danilov continued, “Sergoff, I’ve spent far too much time picking on you about your work on the charts. I apologize. In front of everyone here.” His hand swept about the small compartment. “I apologize for my impatience.” Waving for
Sergoff to join him, he bent over the chart table. “I need your effort now more than ever. It’s time to locate Imperator. Sergoff looked into Danilov’s face. The broad smile was still evident. “What may I do, Admiral?” he inquired cautiously.

  “You’ve plotted Imperator’s position each time we have been able to receive satellite confirmation?”

  “Yes, sir.” Sergoff’s index finger stabbed at the neat notations he’d made on the larger chart.

  “You have a fairly accurate concept of her speed of advance depending on her position, depth of water . . . that sort of thing?”

  Sergoff nodded. “It’s sketchy. But more could be done . . . to analyze her progress. . . determine any patterns, I suppose.”

  “Exactly. That’s exactly what I mean.” Danilov’s expression remained animated. “It’s foolish to sit here waiting to identify a certain sound through that madhouse noise, as you call it, that Admiral Reed has created for us. You’ve laid out a prospective track for Imperator.” Danilov ran his finger across the course Sergoff had carefully penciled onto the chart. “So, we know where she was earlier today until she ran into deeper water.” Seratov had sent up a radio buoy through a polynya to receive message traffic a few hours before.

  “She was right here, give or take a few kilometers.” Though Danilov’s smile seemed to animate his entire face, Sergoff remained serious. He understood exactly what Danilov was coming to, but he would let the admiral announce it.

  “Lay out her likely position every thirty minutes on the chart. Sonar will concentrate on a sector in the probable location you indicate. Sooner or later they have to pick her up. The noisemakers must keep drifting.” There were pronounced underwater currents sweeping from the north down toward the Alaskan coast, then west into the Chukchi Sea. They would carry the drifting noisemakers with them. Logically, they should pass across any bearing that sonar was keying on. With that sort of movement, it seemed probable to Danilov that sound from Imperator would eventually have to be isolated since it would not be moving with the current.

  Painstakingly, Captain Sergoff studied Imperator’s progress over the past few days. There was a pattern. It would be impossible to determine whether it was the result of Captain Snow’s systematic planning, or Admiral Reed’s, or even the consortium that controlled them both. Nevertheless, a pattern existed, and he laid out prospective positions for the American submarine every thirty minutes.

  From these, Danilov provided a probable bearing from Seratov for his sonarmen. They were to concentrate on a three-degree sector. The arc would widen considerably by the time it crossed Imperator’s likely track. As Danilov had predicted, the movement of the noisemakers followed the current from east to west. Computer assistance was required in most instances to confirm this motion. The next job was even more demanding—to isolate and track a sound beyond the noisemakers.

  It was the old needle-in-the-haystack problem, except this time the only sense they could employ was auditory.

  They were blindly groping for a sound they had never heard before. What encouraged the sonarmen on Seratov more than anything else was the fact that Admiral Danilov remained beside them. He listened just as intently as each one of his men, conversing with them on occasion whenever the possibility of an alien sound attracted their attention.

  With only a few hours remaining on the fifth day, the most junior of Danilov’s sonarmen was the one to identify a vague sound that pierced through the torrent generated by the noisemakers. It was distant but steady. Fed into the computer, it was identified as a propulsor system. Nothing in their vast audio collection of identifiable submarines compared to it.

  Over the next fifteen minutes there was an increase in pitch detected only by the computer. It was possible the contact could be drawing closer to the Soviet boat, which remained stationary. Sergoff found the general direction coincided with his projected track of Imperator.

  “Sergoff, search the sectors to either side of that for her screen, Then X want you to run everything we have heard back through the computer. Make a separate recording for a radio beacon and release it when you have an opening above us. We don’t have a great deal to go on, but I want to make sure that it’s relayed to Novgorod when she sends up a listening buoy.” Then he turned to the man standing patiently behind him. “Captain Lozak, now all we have to do is find her escorts. What would you do if you knew we were waiting out here?”

  Until now, Seratov’s captain, Stevan Lozak, had been a mere figurehead aboard his own command. Danilov’s presence overwhelmed everyone around him, and Sergoff remained the admiral’s right hand. Lozak, having sailed with Danilov before, was accustomed to the situation and content to accept his position until he was invited to participate.

  Lozak was a superb mariner. Before he had been given command of Seratov, he had worked in the tactical research section of the Leninsky Komsomol. This prestigious school of submarine warfare in Leningrad was charged with developing original antisubmarine tactics for the emerging breed of high-speed attack submarines designed to protect Russia’s ballistic-missile force. Lozak had cataloged American submarine tactics, collating them into data for computer projections, the objective of which was to teach Soviet captains what to anticipate from their opposite number in actual combat. He had taken his work one step further by actually devising tactics to meet whatever the Americans might do. After reading about Lozak’s work, there was no doubt in Abe Danilov’s mind who would command his next flagship.

  Lozak responded now without hesitation. “I’m sure Admiral Reed realizes we are waiting somewhere in this vicinity. He’s thoughtful, cautious almost to a fault until he is certain of his quarry. I expect he will keep his boats spread out. They’ll stay within communication range but he’s going to maintain a screen to the north of Imperator. He’ll want to sanitize her path.” He looked thoughtfully at Danilov. “I’d say there was every chance they could sweep this area in the next six hours.”

  “Would you care to presume where they might be now?” Danilov’s smile had faded, but his eyes remained bright and alert. The action was about to start and he was enjoying himself.

  Lozak signaled to the quartermaster to get out another chart of the area. “Bring it into the wardroom,” he ordered as he beckoned Danilov to join him. The dining table in the wardroom provided the only other unencumbered, flat surface they could use.

  When the chart was spread out, the comers secured with salt and pepper shakers, Lozak used a red pencil to show Danilov what he anticipated. “These arctic waters will continue colder and more saline, and I think sound propagation will remain excellent. That’s good or bad depending on who is the hunter or the hunted at any given moment. I’d like to have some sound velocity profiles to be sure, but if I were Admiral Reed I’d separate my submarines by about seventy-five miles.” He made three imaginary points on the chart. Using a set of dividers, he traced the imaginary path toward the pole of two screening submarines going well beyond Seratov’s current position. Then he swung the path of the one closest to the land in an arc until it became a straight line paralleling Imperator two hundred miles to the east.

  Danilov nodded and murmured, “You’re right . . . yes, that seems logical. I’d probably do the same.”

  It would be likely that one of the submarines would stay to the east, lying in wait for an enemy hovering close to land. Any competent submariner would assume two screening submarines would flush out anything to the north. That third American submarine could easily be near Novgorod.

  “Exactly,” Lozak said. “And look how close one of those heading toward us comes to our current position. We couldn’t exactly throw stones at each other. But, nevertheless,” he said, chuckling, “I bet one will be in range of our torpedoes within that six hours I mentioned. A rocket could drop one right on top of the American.”

  “You think I should stay in position.” Danilov’s response was a statement to himself rather than a question to Lozak.

  “Let the rabbit come to you,�
�� Lozak concluded.

  Danilov picked up the sound-powered phone and called the control room. “Sergoff, when you are finished, commence a passive search fifteen degrees either side of Imperator’s projected course. Tell the men to be patient. They’ll locate a target in due time.”

  Andy Reed was taking advantage of Houston’s wardroom with her captain’s permission. None of the officers had ever been involved in actual combat, never known of a shot fired in anger other than the wistful tale of a navy fighter pilot reminiscing about Vietnam days. So, he’d asked the cooks to bake a few pies to enhance this meeting.

  This was Reed’s opportunity, in this case perhaps the final one, to impress upon his people the critical phase they were approaching. “How many of you have been playing with the odds for tomorrow?” He paused between bites to blow his nose. His cold was persistent and irritating.

  There was a pause at the wardroom table. A few forks remained poised in midair as they considered Reed’s strange question. No one wanted to be the first to answer—if they understood what he was looking for, Finally, his eyes locked on a lieutenant (j.g.) near the end of the table and he held the young man’s stare until there was no choice but to respond.

  “I’m not sure how to answer that, sir,” the lieutenant offered as his fork slowly lowered to his plate.

  “By this time tomorrow. Imperator should be well under the ice.” Very calmly he covered another bite of pie with ice cream, balanced it on his fork, then added, “To get to that position, there will be some submarines on the bottom, either ours or theirs.” Not a soul around the table had touched his plate from the moment he asked his question. Reed savored the next bite with a pleasant smile as he finally added, “At this stage, the game becomes deadly. Those first two subs were more on an intelligence mission than anything else. . . at least initially they were. Now Danilov has one objective in mind. He’s going to try to sink Imperator, but to get to her, he’s got to get through us first. The odds tend to be in his ballpark to start with. He’s the hunter: we’re the hunted. He’s waiting for us; we’re coming toward him. What are the odds? Who gets the first shot or, rather, who takes the first hit?”