D. M. Ulmer 01 - Silent Battleground

by D. M. Ulmer

  Dave’s face brightened in one of his trademark squinty grins. “Lay the cables on the bottom. Don’t believe I’ll call the county electrical inspector. Chalk that project up as another success by the flyboys. I don’t know where they got the people and power lines to do that job.”

  “You probably don’t wanna know.”

  Dave asked, “What’s happening with the Torpedo Range stuff?” referring to a torpedo proofing facility based to the north of them on the Washington Coast normally used to test anti-submarine torpedoes.

  Dutch reasoned the sudden abundance of Soviet targets provided a much better test bed so he converted the network of range hydrophones to serve as a submarine warning system for the new base. “Going real well … already using the stuff from the range seabed. This, plus all their spares makes a pretty good network out to about a hundred miles.”

  “That oughta give us plenty of warning.”

  “Yeah, but that’s only part of the problem. Once we spot ’em, there’s nothing we can do. We don’t have the resources to keep an airplane on station full time and the flyboys say we’re talking at least forty minutes from a cold start ashore. That’s too long.”

  Dave asked, “No way of getting a weapon on the target?”

  “You got it, but at least it’ll give us early warning. As soon as the breakwater goes in, we’ve got some Vulcan-Phalanx anti-missile guns to sit atop of it.”

  “You figure the Soviets will attack with sub-launched land attack missiles?”

  “Wouldn’t we? We’ve learned the hard way they’re not as dumb as we figured. They took great pains to knock out our sub-bases in the first strike. It’s logical they’ll come after any temporaries we set up. Cable will be our biggest problem.”

  “Turn Eric’s flyboys loose. If there’s any cable available, they’ll find it and get it here.”

  “Good idea, Dave. But we’ve dumped on ’em so much, I hesitate to add to the burden.”

  “It appears to me like they thrive on it. Put it to ’em this way. Right now they’re agonizing over how they’re gonna run electric lines on the bottom between the shore and here. And you need a hundred miles of cable for that damn array of yours. Tell ’em if they get your cable, you’ll lay their power lines.”

  Dutch smiled. He had already begun to convert an aging tugboat into a cable layer.

  Changing the subject, Dave continued. “Ya know, Dutch, we’re really putting together a helluva base for that half-assed boss of yours. When do you figure his nibs will put in an appearance?”

  “As soon as you make him a place to sleep and install a telephone.”

  Dave’s grin broadened. He nodded toward the breakwater. “Here it is. Would you look at what’s poking its nose around the point?”

  “Where the hell did you come up with that … and I don’t want to know how much it cost.”

  One hundred and thirty-two feet of the most palatial yacht either of them had ever seen slipped easily into the harbor and proceeded to the barge cluster. COMSUBRON 3 floating headquarters had arrived.

  Quartermaster Henri calmly activated five clicks on the 1MC and called the crew to battle stations. He had practiced this enough so the real thing went off smoothly.

  Brent followed his captain to the Attack Center.

  Bostwick demanded, “What’ve we got, Jack?”

  “Diesel boat making high speed on the battery. No bearing change, getting louder.”

  Brent considered his predicament for only an instant then jumped in anyway. “Sonar, Conn, we need an ident.”

  The captain glared at Brent and Jack Olsen glared back at the captain. The young officer had proven Bostwick wrong, but the situation appeared perilous so he yielded to Brent’s actions.

  Gary Hansen’s voice crackled over the 21MC, “Got a make, Conn. Tango.” Hansen used the NATO designation for the Soviet Navy’s top diesel-electric submarine.

  Brent exclaimed, “He’s close then! Damn close! No time for a range, Captain, recommend an ADCAP right down the bearing line.”

  Bostwick ordered, “Get it ready!”

  Taking his station behind the ACC, Brent ordered over the sound powered phones “Make ready tubes one and two in all respects. Quickly!”

  The ACC operator repeated the order, followed by “Aye, sir,” and then fumbled with a switch.

  “Steady, just like we always practiced.”

  Brent figured a junior officer commanded the Tango on minefield patrol. He showed inexperience by racing in for the kill. Destruction of an American submarine would likely net him an Order of Lenin and command of a newer ship, a Victor III, an Alfa or if lucky, an Akula.

  Calling for computer-generated torpedo presets on the MK 81 console, Brent read the display, made two adjustments and ordered them entered.

  After what seemed an eternity, though only a minute had passed, the torpedo room watch reported, “One and two ready with the doors open.”

  “Recommend shoot, Captain,” said Brent, fresh from a dressing down for doing just that.

  The captain found his voice. “Gyro angle and range.”

  “No time, sir. It’s now or never. He might be inside minimum enable range already.”

  Bostwick hesitated.

  Brent ordered, “Fire one!”

  Denver gave her customary shudder as the torpedo left the launcher. The wailing, high-pitched sound of an accelerating ADCAP could be heard clearly through the ship’s pressure hull.

  The captain ordered, “Fire two, Brent.”

  “Aye, sir. Fire two in a minute-thirty seconds.”

  Brent gritted his teeth at having to correct the Captain, but construed lack of a reply from Bostwick to be his assent.

  Bostwick asked, “This course good for the wire?”

  Brent thought, Wire’s not a factor with the target this close. He let it pass. “Good heading, Captain,” he responded.

  Apprehension shown in Hansen’s voice as he announced, “Conn, Sonar. Torpedo running down the bearing line.”

  “Want to check fire on two, Captain. If this guy’s close and we get him with one, number two might not see him and start looking for us. I’ve got Doppler Enable out,” a feature that accommodated attack against a motionless target.

  The captain ordered, “Check fire tube two.”

  Brent said, “Henri, give me a mark at one-plus-sixty seconds.”

  The steady Henri repeated, “Mark at one-plus-sixty in fifteen—”

  An ear-splitting explosion obscured the rest of Henri’s sentence.

  So much for the eager bastard’s Order of Lenin, Brent thought.

  Silence for a second after the explosion then a chorus of cheers resonated throughout Denver. They had finally drawn Soviet blood.

  Capitalizing on the moment, Brent turned to the captain and extended his hand. “Congratulations, sir. You got the son of a bitch.”

  Bostwick hesitated an instant then with some uncertainty, he took Brent’s hand, shook it and smiled. “Why thank you, Brent.”

  The others joined in expressions of congratulations with flurries of handshakes and back pats.

  Brent ordered the torpedo room over the 21MC, “Close the outer door on two, drain down and secure.” But being the eternal skeptic, he directed sonar to monitor the target. “He might still be dangerous, Sonar. Report everything. Listen for launcher sounds or running torpedoes.”

  Hansen responded, “Aye, sir. There’s too much reverberation from the explosion but not enough to blank a torpedo. We don’t hear any.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t.”

  Hansen reported, “New noises from the target sir. It’s a groaning sound. Like—” He stopped in mid-sentence deciding not to make the analogy to Utah’s demise. “I think she’s gone, sir.”

  An air of sobriety replaced the excitement in the Attack Center. The enemy submarine yielded to the common foe of all submariners, the relentless ocean depths. The ocean crashed in and drove the hapless Tango ever downward. Tremendous pressure crus
hed the hull like an eggshell and snuffed out the lives of her crew.

  The tactical margin between the victor and vanquished is extremely narrow.

  Dave Zane relayed the message from Eric Danis that Denver had survived.

  Bea threw her arms about her father and began to sob.

  He comforted his daughter. “Why ole Brent’s likely conducting patrols in the Pacific and having a fine time.”

  “Oh, Daddy, I’m so … so grateful. God, I’m so grateful. I thought the worst.”

  “Hell, Bea,” he said, releasing her and smiling into her eyes as he had done throughout her life, “nothing them damn Sovies got measures up to a 688. Brent will be back before you know it and likely with a couple of Red scalps in his belt.”

  Bea recomposed herself. “Thanks, Dad, but I’m still worried. Be sure to tell Eric how much I appreciate the message.”

  Dave took the opportunity to probe for what future she saw for Brent. He knew of her bruising from the disastrous affair and couched his words in terms easy for her to evade.

  Looking away and scratching behind his left ear, a gesture that signaled meaning beyond his spoken words, he asked, “What’s in store for Brent after Denver? His tour must be just about up by now.”

  Her father’s giveaway quirk betrayed his intention to exploit her good mood and she responded, “Brent and me … where do we go from here, you mean?”

  Crinkling his face into a squint-eyed grin, he said, “Well, seeing as you brought it up, the thought did enter my mind.”

  “I’m very fond of him, Dad. And I believe he feels the same way about me. He’s a sensitive man and a good catch. We’ve made no plans, but he discusses the future often. It’s always in terms of us. He wants children.”

  Dave exclaimed, “Damn it, you know my dream is to bring a grandson up here! How long do I have wait?”

  “Till you stop being so cantankerous. From my seat, that could take awhile.”

  “Okay, okay. I get the message. What else is coming down with Brent?”

  “Before the war started, we planned for me to join him for a month in San Diego. Brent expects orders and would take some leave before the next duty station. He wants to know if it’s okay by me for him to request the east coast.”

  “Asked? That’s the kind of question a naval officer asks his wife, not his girlfriend. Likely that’s another damn thing that’s changed since my day. How do you feel about this?”

  “Would I marry him? I’m not ready to say that. We’ve got some distance to run. You know he has an ex-wife and a son.”

  “Didn’t his wife remarry? You’ve got no competition there, Bea.”

  Dave’s hopes for Brent and his daughter showed clearly.

  “Can’t you see there is, Dad? I can’t compete with a ghost, and sometimes, that’s how his ex comes across to me.”

  Chapter 9

  Captain Bostwick entered the Denver wardroom, where his officers had assembled for a war conference. The ship meandered along at one-third speed, all unnecessary machinery secured to reduce radiated noise. This all but eliminated the probability Denver would be detected and improved her own ability to detect enemy ships.

  The captain smiled a greeting. “First, let me say how proud I am about the way you’ve handled things.”

  Brent tried unsuccessfully to capture Bostwick’s eye. The young officer sought reassurance that his conduct during the Tango kill vindicated him in the eyes of his commanding officer. He also felt that the captain’s apparent surge of self-confidence might evaporate in the next crisis.

  The captain said, “We’ve given our countrymen something to cheer about … God knows, they need it.”

  Brent liked what he heard, but not the implied message. He felt the captain had unusual ideas on what comprised success. They had failed in their mission to screen Utah and crossed the entire Pacific Ocean with little to show for their efforts, only a diesel-electric submarine.

  Bostwick went on, “We’ve been hit, but not hard and have a fair understanding of the damage. Fortunately, we had no personnel casualties. Now, I want to review the facts and identify available options.”

  Jack Olsen spoke. “The engineer thinks we can fix it.”

  Raising his eyebrows Bostwick asked, “Fix it? We’re banged up outside the hull. We can’t make that repair submerged.”

  Nodding toward the operations officer, Jack said, “Dan.”

  “We can do it on the surface, Captain.”

  An astounded Bostwick questioned, “On the surface? In the middle of the Pacific with enemy control of the air?”

  His tone hung like a pail of ice water about to be doused on the plan.

  Dan spread out one of the charts obtained by Quartermaster Henri on the eve of their departure from Bremerton. “Not in the open sea, sir.” He pointed to their present position. “We’re a hundred twenty-five miles southeast of this small cluster of islands in the Kuril chain. We can approach submerged, then anchor on the leeward side of one of them.”

  His impatience blatantly apparent, Bostwick demanded, “And then what?”

  Dan made his voice steadier than his conviction. “Surface after dark, anchor, and conduct the repair.”

  The captain countered, “Are you out of your mind? The soundings on this chart alone are not reliable. How good are they?”

  “My guess is not very good at all. But we have a Fathometer.”

  “What about the mine field?”

  The captain clearly wanted no part of the idea.

  Brent jumped in. “They’re probably MZ 26s, sir, moored at thirty-six meters. We can avoid that depth by running shallow. We have to anyway in order to make landfall at periscope depth.”

  “We’ve run checks, Captain. The noise threshold from the damage is acceptable at six knots. At five, we can be there in little more than twenty-four hours.”

  The captain’s arguments quickly diminished and he grasped for straws. “What about Magnetic Airborne Detection equipped aircraft?”

  “MAD range is a thousand feet, okay for localizing, but not for search. It’s even worse in shallow water. You would not believe how much junk sits on the bottom that will distract it.”

  Bostwick had to hear the plan out, though he searched his mind for reasons to disapprove.

  Next, the engineer spoke, “If we keep the hole above the waterline, the job should be fairly simple. We’ll burn off the jagged edges and then weld a piece of plating over the hole. Grinders will smooth it up. We’ll rig blankets around and over the worksite to keep the bad guys from spotting weld flashes.”

  Bostwick’s hostility to the idea became more open. “What about airborne radar?”

  Several officers showed understanding expressions for the captain’s point of view.

  Dan replied, “It’s useless once we’re close in. There’s so many other land targets, we’d never be picked out of the clutter.”

  The captain quizzed the chief engineer for more details on the repair plan and then retired to his stateroom for a private conference with Jack Olsen.

  Bostwick closed the door and gestured menacingly at his executive officer. “For chrissake, Jack, why the hell didn’t you nip this stupid idea in the bud before it came to me?”

  Jack hesitated, recognizing the Captain’s tone and knew the going would be rough. “I’m not sure it’s such a bad idea, sir.”

  “You’re right. It’s not a bad idea. It’s a shitty idea, and we’re not going through with it. Now dammit, Jack, we got our ticket home. A war wound, and in spite of it, we went on to kill an enemy. Nobody expects any more from us.”

  An overpowering personality had earned Bostwick a perfect track record for getting Olsen to knuckle under.

  Out of character, Olsen responded, “Captain, I disagree.”

  “Disagree?”

  Bostwick had never heard these words from his executive officer.

  “Yes, sir, the plan is sound. Risky, but sound. The way I see it, we collect a salary all our lives
not for what we do in peace but for what’s expected of us in war. We’re capable of doing much more than we have so far. We’ve got to do it, or we live a lie.”

  Olsen astounded even himself with the passion of his response.

  Denver’s captain bristled. “Dammit! Jack. Now I see it—first Maddock and now you. Well let me tell you, Buster, I’m in command of this ship and if you care about your future in this man’s Navy, get back in that wardroom and work up a plan for getting us back to the States.”

  “Are those your orders, Captain?”

  “You goddamn betcha.”

  “I’ll carry them out, sir.” Then Jack astounded himself again by saying, “But I will insist on including transcripts of this meeting and the wardroom meeting in our patrol report. It will describe in detail recommendations from the officers and your decision.”

  “That includes you?”

  “It does, Captain.”

  “You son of a bitch. You’d really do that?”

  Jack’s threat struck the captain at his most vulnerable spot. “I will, Captain. And, if I may, the remotest possibility of cowardice in the face of the enemy all but rules out your flag chances.”

  Bostwick snarled, “Get the hell out of here.”

  Jack Olsen knew he’d won one. About time, he thought.

  Eric and Eve Danis sat in the tiny backyard of their rented house in Ridgecrest, California. The town grew up in the Mojave Desert with the Naval Weapons Facility and housed the people and businesses that supported the activities there. A spectacular sunset concluded a clear day and now they conversed beneath a brilliant canopy of stars.

  “Eve,” Eric said, breaking the silence, “it’s downright embarrassing how I’m letting this desert grow on me.”

  Twenty-two years of marriage had brought them to near perfect harmony. They could sit for hours without talking and still derive great pleasure from just being with each other.

  “It would be embarrassing if it didn’t,” Eve replied. “I’ve always wondered how people who live out here could stand it. Now I know why they never want to leave.”