Silent Hunter

by Charles D. Taylor

  The captain turned to the political officer, who nodded his agreement, though he never stopped glaring at the navigating officer. “Very well . . . one ping.”

  “Thank you, sir.” The navigating officer gave the order and the forward-looking sonar was activated for one ping. The result was a solid mass across the scope.

  “Two hundred yards . . . dead ahead . . . recommend—” began the navigating officer.

  “All stop,” the captain ordered.

  “Recommend all back, sir. There appears to be a major ridge close on the bow.”

  “All back one-third,” the captain responded. “Give me a new course,” he growled quietly.

  “I. . . I’m not sure, Captain. It covered the scope. Recommend coming right about ninety degrees . . . but we must then activate the sonar again . . . just once,” he stammered, “to make sure . . .” He was unused to this type of badgering and assumed that it was caused by the political officer. The navigating officer was never hesitant working directly with the captain.

  The captain gave the necessary orders, followed by a final warning to the navigating officer: “Just once . . . just to make sure. The next time I prefer to go deeper rather than use sonar. I don’t want to broadcast our position to the Americans.”

  The sonar made one final ping. A clear track lay ahead. The navigating officer recommended a revised course toward the target and was relieved that he had another ten minutes before he was required to interrupt the captain and the political officer again.

  The captain called into the sonar room, “Nothing more on that contact?”

  “No, Captain,” the sonar officer reported. They had picked up enough sporadically on tape to identify the contact as a Los Angeles-class submarine. There had been other sounds, an alarm of some kind in the interior of the contact—maybe for an exercise but that was foolish in these waters unless it was an emergency. Then the contact had apparently reversed course. That was followed by sounds of surfacing a short time later. The operations officer had discussed the events with the captain, both men coming to the same conclusion. It was quite probable an exercise had been conducted in which the American was required to find a polynya and surface. Since there was no reason for patrolling this particular area, they assumed it would resume its course toward Lands End on Prince Patrick Island. They laid off its projected path on the chart.

  The captain turned to his operations officer. “Where should he be now?”

  “Almost thirty points off the starboard bow. Captain, perhaps twenty kilometers distant.”

  The political officer looked at the captain with apprehension. Neither one could imagine why nothing more had been heard, especially at that range, unless somehow they had been heard . . .

  A hush of anticipation spread through each space in Olympia. This crew had destroyed a Soviet submarine just days before in the Pacific, yet they also knew their limitations. They had almost been sunk themselves and the realization was sobering. There was no direct order, nothing passed by word of mouth, that silenced them. Rather, it was a return of excitement and terror coupled with mature understanding after their first experience. And there was that feeling common among submariners that allowed no room for a mistake. Another few yards on that last Soviet torpedo, and they might all be dead now! Luck certainly wouldn’t visit them twice.

  “Got ’em!” The chief sonarman seemed to whisper the contact report under his breath. “Port bow . . .”

  The captain moved the short distance into the sonar room, leaning over the chief’s shoulder. “What have you got, Chief?”

  “Ice did it.” His voice was still a whisper. “Got ’em twice. Once when they were boxed in by a pressure ridge. They turned . . . clear sailing . . . if we’d been closer they might have picked us up.”

  “Any range?” Now the captain’s voice had become a whisper to match the chief’s.

  “Hard to say, sir. I know it’s one of their forward-looking sonars . . . heard ’em before . . . don’t quite know their range . . . maybe twenty thousand yards. . . maybe a bit more . . . no less.”

  “No machinery noise, Chief?”

  “Quiet as hell, Captain. Must know we’re out here.” He looked up to catch the captain’s eye. “They’re getting better, sir. When they get this quiet, they’re hunting.”

  The captain stroked his chin for a moment before looking down at the chief “Would he pick us up if I took her up another four or five knots?”

  The chief nodded without hesitation. “Like I said, sir, he’s probably hunting. If he knows roughly where we are, he’ll be listening right around our bearing.” He spread his hands, and shrugged. “Hell, Captain, there’s nothing else out here but us . . . no sea life . . . nothing. Anything that makes a sound is going to be us as far as he’s concerned.” The captain clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s what I figured.” He turned back as he was leaving the darkened room. “I promise I’ll stay just as quiet.”

  Olympia’s captain went directly to the weapons control coordinator. “I want you to prepare for an attack now. They tell me in there”—he jerked his head in the direction of sonar—“that the other guy knows where we are, but he’s not about to give us another chance to hear him, either. Do everything you have to do now—warm up two torpedoes, flood the tubes slowly, open the doors . . . and see if you can get sonar to help you. That ice upstairs is making some noise. Wait until we’ve got a growler if you can, especially when you open the muzzle doors. Let’s try to keep all that racket to ourselves.”

  Then the captain moved over to the plotting table, beckoning the executive officer with him. A quartermaster was already making a paper overlay with the approximate position of the Soviet submarine in relation to the lighted bug representing Olympia. The two men studied the relative position of their vessels, the XO waiting for the captain to speak.

  “He heard us first. Maybe he got enough to get some sort of course before we went completely silent.” He nodded to the quartermaster. “Why don’t you lay off a projected course for us for about fifty or sixty minutes . . . same speed as now,” he added.

  The two men watched as the line for their course was laid out with a straight edge. Then the quartermaster used a compass to mark their distance every ten minutes. “He’s probably doing this right now himself,” the captain muttered. “Trying to figure what I’m up to.” He stroked his chin.

  “I’d take odds he was going to try to come right up our butt,” the XO commented.

  “Good bet . . . I wouldn’t take it,” was the answer. The captain tapped his finger on the thin overlaying paper. The Soviets’ course would eventually intersect their own on the port quarter. “He’s got to be under six knots, probably no less than four . . . give him five. Lay out a course for him to intercept us at that speed.” When the two lines intersected, the captain wondered aloud, “What’s the perfect range for those torpedoes he’s shooting? Maybe six or eight thousand yards?”

  “For a sure shot.” The XO had picked up the compass and was drawing a half circle behind Olympia’s projected position representing about eight thousand yards.

  “Yeah,” the captain murmured. Then he smiled. “He’ll want to make sure his first shot’s his best . . . cause he knows we’ll be firing right after we hear the tiniest sound.” The quartermaster had anticipated the next step. As the two officers watched, he laid out the progress of each submarine in five-minute segments until the Soviet boat was just a hair’s breadth from the eight-thousand-yard half circle. He checked his watch to ensure his times were correct, then wrote the time projected for the other boat to reach that semicircle. “About thirty-eight minutes from now, Captain.”

  “Great! Good work, son. That’s exactly what I wanted. You read my mind.” He offered the thumb’s up sign as he stood up straight. “What the hell do I need a computer for if I’ve got quartermasters? Now you just keep rechecking what you’ve got there son, and if sonar picks up anything you mark it right away and let me know if he’s off that track o
f yours at all.”

  “No problem, Captain. We’ll get him.” The quartermaster had never looked up. His eyes were glued to the track he’d laid out for the captain.

  The weapons control coordinator looked up as the captain returned. “Torpedoes are warmed up, sir. Do I have enough time to wait for a little noise outside before I finish the rest?”

  The captain nodded. “You will be firing in approximately thirty-five minutes . . . unless sonar picks up something and tells us different. I’d estimate your target will be at about eighty-five hundred yards, still hovering just below the ice. Give him a speed of about five knots. He’s going to be coming right down the throat because I’m going to turn around a few minutes before and wait for him.”

  The fire control coordinator’s eyes lit up. “He’ll be figuring to come up behind us, hiding in the baffles, won’t he?” The baffles, directly astern, were the only area where a submarine could be considered deaf.

  The captain nodded with a smile. “Sounds like a perfect shot for us, doesn’t it?” After a pause, he added, “Nothing ever is. I want to fire two torpedoes . . . and I hope to hell the wire holds on at least one of them because he’s going to be moving faster than hell as soon as they leave the tubes. You may have to feed some steer into those fish, you know.”

  The fire control coordinator nodded. They’d rehearsed the same sequence innumerable times.

  “Well . . . the sooner the better,” the captain concluded. “It all sounds too easy to me. If you don’t have enough outside noise in the next twenty minutes to complete your sequence, then get it all ready anyway. We’ll just have to take our chances.” He smiled, adding mostly to himself. “Of course, they won’t be too good if he fires first.”

  Novgorod’s captain expressed his displeasure. “They’re not that quiet, damn you.” One of the sonarmen clapped his hands over the earpieces to shield the noise the captain was making. The pressure of listening for an elusive microsecond of sound at a time like this was overwhelming. Men had been known to have a nervous breakdown, even in fleet exercises, when another submarine was running an attack on them.

  The political officer touched the captain’s sleeve tentatively, after noting the sonar officer’s eyebrows raise in despair. “We can’t do anything to help them. They’re trying very hard,” he offered. The tension had gripped even him in the last moments. The knowledge that another submarine was waiting for the slightest hint of their position, anything that would justify firing a torpedo, had overcome the confidence he had been exuding up to that moment. His armpits had inexplicably grown cold. Perhaps it was the fuzzy picture of two dark submarines that clouded his mind. They were vague forms suspended like puppets in a liquid environment—each one seeking the other, each intending to shoot and run before the other might grasp the opportunity.

  The half smile the captain had managed as he entered the control room turned brittle as he saw the navigating officer bent over his chart table. “They must have heard us ping. That pressure ridge . . . that damned pressure ridge may have given us away.” Others in the control room turned at his outburst, only to find him suddenly silent, appearing moody, thinking. All that single ping could provide the American with was a rough bearing, and confirmation that Novgorod was operating close to the ice. There was nothing he wanted to alter yet. No point in changing depth. The ice provided too fine a background screen to mask them from a torpedo.

  The more he considered his options, the more he realized there really were very few. They each had a reasonable idea of where the other was, and neither would take a chance of revealing his actual position. They could each stop and hover in place until the other made a mistake and gave his location away. But there was no time for that . . . and the American submarine was quieter than his own—he had to admit that. No, he’d much rather attack. That was his strength. . . and he was in the best position.

  Moving to the plot laid down by his navigating officer, the captain studied the assumed position of the American in relation to his own. He was approaching the American from the port quarter. He should be difficult to hear at that angle. It wasn’t a matter of chasing after the American. They were converging if the plot was reasonably correct. There was only one answer: prepare three torpedoes. It would be wiser to waste one. Fire the first before they were really in position. No need to have a target solution. Just fire the damn thing. The American would hear it. Then he would either have to fire his own without preparation, or commence evasion immediately. Either way, the captain would be ready to fire at the first sound the other made with his two remaining torpedoes. It might not take two, but two were a much better precaution.

  He moved about the control room giving orders in preparation. The navigating officer worked furiously at his figures to determine the optimum time for firing the initial torpedo.

  Olympia’s quartermaster called out softly, “Recommend coming left in thirty seconds, Captain.”

  “Thank you.” The captain, his measured voice matching the others in the control room, moved over beside the diving officer for the third time in as many minutes. “Don’t do any trimming, but try to grab a bit of an up angle as we come about. I’m going to slow down at the same time—can’t take a chance on any sound.” Not moments, before, he’d explained the same process to the engineer. He wanted his ship as quiet as possible, yet he expected them to accelerate like a horse coming out of the starting gate as soon as their last torpedo was in the water. Absolute silence wasn’t entirely possible. Steam flow in the turbines and engine noise could be picked up even at this speed in close quarters.

  “Make it a slow turn,” he added to the sailor on the helm. “We’ve got the time.”

  “Recommend coming about now, Captain.”

  “Come left to course three one zero . . . easy now,” he added to the helmsman.

  “Coming to course three one zero, sir . . . very gently.” In the background, the captain could hear the diving officer coaching the planesman. Checking the engine revolution indicator, he saw that they were slowing gradually, exactly as the engineer had explained they would. There really had been no need to rehearse the process once the captain described his plan. Each man who listened to him repeat himself understood his intent exactly. Olympia had to have the first shot!

  “Passing north, sir.”

  “She’s risen about sixty feet, Captain . . . about all I can get out of her. Our speed’s too slow . . .” The diving officer paused for a moment. “Two hundred forty feet between us and the ice.”

  “Making turns for two knots, sir.”

  The weapons control coordinator had reported ready before they began the turn. The torpedoes had been warmed, the tubes flooded and pressure equalized, muzzle doors opened—each completed as the ice above provided masking sound. All the presets had been entered according to the captain’s wishes: target course, speed, range, aspect, optimum depth. Olympia was ready to fire once she steadied on her new course.

  “My course is three one three, Captain. I’ve lost steerage way . . . no forward motion.”

  “Zero bubble, sir . . . we’re steady.”

  “Dead in the water, sir.”

  “The ship is ready, sir.”

  “The weapon is ready, sir.”

  “Solution ready.”

  “Shoot on generated bearings.”

  No sonarman ever misunderstood the sound of a water slug, not the sudden, powerful burst used to eject a torpedo. Even before its propellers started, he cried out, “Torpedo in the water . . . dead ahead.”

  “Range?”

  There was a hesitation. “About five kilometers . . . maybe a little farther. I have screw beats now.” Novgorod’s captain had exercised almost exactly the same preparations as his enemy. His first torpedo was ready to fire. The presets were a bit off, but not too far if they could change it with the wire guidance. He had to force the American to dive before he could get off an additional shot. “Fire!” he shouted.

  “Our torpedo is running, sir
,” sonar reported.

  “The American torpedo . . . range?”

  “The range seems to be about—” He never bothered to finish his analysis. The captain didn’t really care at that moment. “Probably close to four kilometers.”

  “He was closer than we thought. What speed?”

  “I have nothing on him . . . dead in the water . . . our torpedoes seem to be head on to each other.”

  “No evasion yet?”

  “Nothing, Captain.”

  Novgorod’s captain turned to his fire control officer. “Do you have the solution for the second torpedo?”

  “Almost complete, sir.”

  “Standby to fire.” The captain called to his executive officer. “Noisemakers! Tell engineering to prepare for evasive action.”

  No more than thirty seconds had elapsed. During that time, the political officer had not moved from his position, nor had he uttered a word.

  “Firing point procedures!”

  “Solution ready,” Olympia’s fire control coordinator responded.

  “Noisemaker in the water, Captain,” another reported.

  “Very well.” The presets had been inserted as soon as sonar pinpointed the Soviet water slug. There had been little to alter. Novgorod had been very close to the quartermaster’s projected position.

  The captain called over to the chief of the watch, “We’re going to go deep right under him. Make all the noise you want with the trim pump as long as we go down like a rock.”

  “Their torpedo is still searching, Captain. I think it started out too deep.”

  “Shoot!” he called out. He felt the jolt of the water slug through his feet.

  “I have a second torpedo in the water from the Russian!”

  The captain waited. He couldn’t go deep as quickly as he hoped. The wire attached to the torpedo should remain until they were sure it was running correctly. This was the consummate moment when seconds became hours . . . the waiting. . . knowing another torpedo was actively searching for you. His hands gripped the shiny railing beside the periscope as he sorted out the reports from each sector of his ship.