D. M. Ulmer 01 - Silent Battleground

by D. M. Ulmer

  The captain’s comment about his father made Vasiliy furious, but he masked his feelings. No one hated his father more than he, but the Zampolit Poplavich held this over his head.

  “I understand, Comrade Captain, and I thank you. I will exercise greater care.”

  Vasiliy sought revenge against those ultimately responsible for his continuous anger, the Americans. Find and kill a 688. He knew only those fortunate enough to find them before being found would harvest these fine ripe plums. The 688 peacetime exercises had shown this many times over.

  Killing the first 688 delivers a crushing blow to fading American hopes. This attack submarine is vaunted as the finest warship in the world. When it too falls to the Soviet juggernaut, all will be lost and the paper walls that protect my father will collapse.

  Vasiliy planned to play a major role in this Soviet victory.

  Aboard Denver, the quartermaster reported to the conning officer, Dan Patrick, “Sounding two thousand fathoms.”

  This depth matched the charted one and verified their position sixty miles east of La Perouse Strait, the last narrow passage before reaching their target area. Once clear of the Strait and in the Sea of Japan, they again become the needle in a haystack. Noise from the minesweeper masked their passage through the waters where implanted Soviet listening systems searched for them.

  Dan reported via the 21MC, “Wardroom, Conn, pass to the captain we’ve crossed the two thousand fathom curve, three hundred fifty miles to the hunting ground. Add to that, I don’t think we need Ivan any longer.”

  Bostwick replied over the 21MC, “Captain, aye, Conn.”

  Brent, seated with the captain and the others in the wardroom for the evening meal, smiled. Another Mad Maddock scheme has paid off.

  The captain instructed, “Dan, we’ll wait till after dark and torch her. This’ll give us the option of surfacing and doing the job manually if our remote doesn’t work.”

  “Conn, aye, Captain,” Dan replied. “For Mr. Maddock, it’s warm and cozy in the Attack Center.”

  Brent’s signal he had the next watch.

  Bostwick’s response, “He’s right here and has the word.”

  The seas rolled gently under a solid overcast, hence spotting Denver from the air would be highly improbable, and she held at periscope depth. Noise from the chugging diesel powered minesweeper masked all sounds from Denver but did the same for other contacts in the area. Periodic periscope sweeps ensured their path clear of surface contacts.

  Dan filled the high power optics with the hapless minesweeper. He thought of her grisly cargo of deceased Soviet crewmen. They had fought bravely, but the advantage of surprise permitted the Denver raiders to prevail. The Soviet crewmen had been laid to dignified rest in their bunks. Jack Olsen then read a short memorial service for the dead of both sides over the 1MC before Denver submerged.

  How sad, Dan thought. Hours before, alive and the hated enemy, but now harmless corpses. They deserved and got reverence from fellow human beings.

  “Down scope,” Dan ordered.

  The 21MC blurted a message, “Conn, Sonar, contact two-eight-zero, drawing right, closing, no ident.”

  “Surface or submerged, Sonar?”

  “Can’t tell. Never heard anything like this. Maybe a helo?”

  “I’ll check it. Up number two for a look around.”

  The quartermaster reported, “Two coming up,” as the shaft hissed from the well.

  “Put me on zero-nine-zero,” Dan said. This bearing relative to the ships head coincided with the target’s reported position. “Bearing, mark,” then Dan yanked his head from beneath the yoke as the scope lowered. “Captain, Conn, helo inbound. Two-eight-zero true. Sonar, contact confirmed with visual.”

  Jack Olsen responded, “Captain’s on the way, Conn.”

  Dan gave the order to the ordnance crew standing by in the radio shack. “Radio, Conn, prepare the charge for firing.”

  On his arrival, the captain demanded, “Chopper got us, Dan?”

  “No, sir. He’s heading straight for the minesweeper.”

  “Charge ready?”

  “Checking, sir. No grounds as of thirty minutes ago.”

  “Fire the charge as soon as it’s ready.”

  “Aye, sir, but if we wait till the chopper crew boards the sweep, we’ll kill two birds with one stone.”

  Bostwick snapped, “Can the tactics shit, Dan. Just do as I say.”

  Jack Olsen had arrived and exerted his newly discovered leverage. “Dunno, Captain. Sounds like a good idea to me. We’ll know if the copter goes into the ASW mode ’cause he’ll have to dunk an active sonar and we’ll hear that.”

  Bostwick hesitated. “Think so, Jack? Okay, let’s give it a shot. I have the Conn. Give me a hand here, Dan. Up scope for a look at the helo,” the captain ordered.

  Dan demanded via the 21MC, “Bearing, Sonar.”

  A voice from the Sonar shack responded, “Three-zero-zero true, drawing right, Conn.”

  With the scope out of the well, Bostwick pressed his eye into the optic. “Put me on the bearing,” he ordered.

  Swinging the scope around, Dan called out the numbers when it reached the bearing. “One-one-zero relative!”

  “Bearing, mark,” Bostwick said then signaled to lower the scope. “Not doing any ASW. He’s high-tailing it directly to the sweeper. Charges ready?”

  Dan acknowledged they were ready for firing from the ordnance crew. “Checked and ready. No grounds, Captain. It ought to go.”

  “It better. We only get one chance.”

  “Another look, Captain?”

  “Nothing to see. Have Sonar advise us when the helo bearings merge with the sweeper’s.”

  By that time, Brent reached the Attack Center, he was elated to find Bostwick’s on again, off again self-confidence restored. The captain was in control and performing superbly.

  The sonarman reported, “Conn, Sonar, helo in the baffles, lost in the minesweeper noise.”

  “Conn, aye, Sonar,” Dan said then asked, “Another look, Captain?”

  Bostwick ordered, “Up two.” He knelt at the well and pushed his eye against the lower optics as soon as they cleared. Dan snapped the handles into position and horsed the shaft to the Captain’s ordered bearing.

  An instant later, the captain signaled, “Dip scope.”

  The shaft stopped hissing when the upper optics submerged a few feet below the waves.

  The captain briefed the Attack Center crew, “Chopper’s circling the sweeper. Sea state is a low three but solid overcast with enough whitecaps to make us too hard to spot. I’ll take look around a minute from now. Give me a mark, quartermaster.”

  The quartermaster replied, “Mark in a minute, Captain.”

  Brent noted how quickly the crew rallied to self-confidence shown by their leader. Bostwick again demonstrated when once committed, he performed well. The scope had been in the air less than a second, yet the captain had gleaned all he needed to generate a plan.

  If only the captain could set aside his blind ambition to make flag rank, Brent thought, believing this to impede planning and most likely accounted for the rift between Bostwick and him.

  Bostwick said, “I figure the helo will put a man aboard when they don’t see anyone on deck. That’s when we’ll let ’em have it.”

  The quartermaster exclaimed, “Your sixty mark, Captain!”

  The captain acknowledged the mark and said, “Okay, Dan. A three sixty in low power. We’ll dip then do sixty-degree increments in high. Stagger the intervals and drop the scope in three seconds whether I’m done or not. Got all that?”

  Dan replied, “Got it, Captain.”

  “Look around, up number two.”

  The scope hissed from the well, the captain at the eyepiece and rotating before the upper stops engaged. Snap went the handle signal and the scope quickly lowered.

  With a steady voice the captain said, “Okay, Dan, up scope for the sixties. On the bow first, high power.”<
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  Dan stood on the opposite side of the scope, placed his left hand over the captain’s right and rolled the optics to high power. “You’re in high, Captain,” he said.

  Bostwick blurted the words most feared in the Attack Center. “Oh shit!” followed quickly by, “Dip scope!” He went on, “More company. Top hamper of several warships. Mark this bearing, quartermaster.”

  “How many?” Dan asked

  “At least three, Dan. Maybe more. Between ten and fifteen degrees off the bow moving northeast, I’d say. Fifteen thousand and beyond. Bad part is they’re probably talking to the helo and he’s gotta be pretty dumb not to suspect and report something. Okay, let’s go back to the sweep. Up scope.”

  The huge shaft snapped again up into the stops, with the captain’s eye in place. “Hot damn!” he exclaimed. “Fire the charge!” He left the scope up and waited.

  Dan quickly ordered, “Radio, Conn, fire the charge!”

  One, two, three passing seconds seemed like an eternity, then the rumble of an explosion shook Denver’s hull.

  Bostwick cried out, “Got ’em both, now let’s go deep and get the hell out of here.”

  Dan offered, “Maybe we got ’em before the chopper contacted anybody, Captain.”

  The captain replied grimly, “And maybe we didn’t.”

  Eric Danis had changed to his work khakis, ready to leave his plush quarters on the yacht, when a knock on the stateroom door interrupted his departure. “Come in,” he said.

  Dave Zane thrust in his head, a squint-eyed grin spread over his round face. “Best we could do on such short notice, Commodore.”

  “I need to know two things, Dave. One, am I going to have to put up with that commodore bullshit from you? And two, how much did it cost and how much trouble did you get me in with this damn yacht?”

  No one could hold a grin as long as Dave Zane. “Commodore, I’ll take ’em one at a time. One, just as long as I have to put up with this captain bullshit; and two, nothing. The owner’s scared to death to take this thing to sea with a full-fledged war going on and nobody wants to buy it for the same reason. He’s so damn happy to get out from under moorage payments. We got it for nothing.”

  Danis indulged himself a laugh. “You mean we’re mooring it here and not charging him anything?”

  “You can’t expect me to think of everything. I’m an engineer, not a bean counter.”

  “Seriously, she’s a beauty, Dave, and I thank you for it. But on the matter of titles, I’m afraid we got another one of our famous Mexican standoffs.”

  “Half a victory’s not all that bad,” Dave replied then changing the subject, “I’m sure you’ve got Eve in tow. How is she and where are you staying?”

  “Thanks for asking, Dave. Eve’s great. We moved into the thirty-second place since we got married. A small house in Grays Harbor. How she does it and maintains that steady attitude, I’ll never know.”

  “Face it, Eric. You chose well. At least there’s some good in all this. Maybe now I’ll get you out to the Digs. And having Eve along is a bonus. Bea’ll be glad to see her. They got a lot of catching up to do. I’d say at least eight years worth. This weekend, or whenever you can.”

  “I’ll check with her. This weekend’s likely a good time to give her a break from setting up.”

  “Good. That place of ours cries out for company.”

  “How do things go here, Dave? Gerry Carter tells me you’re a magician. I hear you want to start fixing propulsion reduction gears. That’d be a helluva coup if you could pull it off.”

  “Need to bend a few rules.”

  Danis asked, “When did that ever stop you?”

  “Glad to hear you say that. I’ve got a fix on some parts. Took the bull by the horns this morning and got them moving in this direction. We got no one who’s ever done that before. But Carter’s found a guy and I’m gonna talk to him this afternoon.”

  “Fine, Dave. Keep moving on this one. I won’t second guess you, but keep me informed. I need to know what lies to tell when the higher ups start asking questions.”

  “You bet, Eric. But now tell me, what’s happening to us? The whole damn country, I mean. Are we gonna win?”

  He invited his old friend to be seated. “Dave, we got the age-old problem. Politicos got elected in peacetime. War changes everything and they don’t know how to handle it. They can’t grasp the notion that winning the war is more important than getting re-elected.”

  “Lucky we had Roosevelt. He could handle both sides of the coin. Coming into office at the onset of the Great Depression made him tough and inventive, tools he needed for dealing with the war. But are you saying there’s a chance we’ll put our tail between our legs?”

  “Frankly, yes. It’s not at all like the last one. Back then wide oceans kept the bad guys far enough away for us to train men and crank out equipment. We had no complex manufacturing or training issues. Not so today. Ocean widths are no longer a factor. Everything’s harder and takes more time. And we can’t replace losses in a few months like we did after Pearl Harbor.

  “Our biggest job right now is to signal the government that we can come back. We need a big victory, like Midway. Submarines are all we got left so it’ll be with them or nothing. Otherwise, a growing faction in Washington sees merit in knuckling under … and there are a lot of influential writers pushing this.”

  “You know, Eric, I figured that might be the case. Damn it, the issue’s no different than what we had during the American Revolution. A lot of people saw the easier road of giving up, but thank God, enough troops with spine forced the issue. Sure, it’d be easier to fold to the Reds, like the candy-ass peace crowd touts with their intellectual bullshit. The same group that bitched so much about the Gulag Archipelago detentions will end up there if they win and Soviet history repeats itself.”

  “Simply put, Dave, we need a hell of a victory. The Soviets know this and will avoid a showdown.”

  “Maybe they’ll do something dumb.”

  “So far, we have the monopoly on that. The Soviets are not fools. They know what makes pabulum for our special interest groups and play the Simon-pure logic of their intentions through our own media. And it’s damn effective.”

  “Hopefully, we got enough hard-asses left that won’t sit still for that.”

  “I hope you’re right, Dave. President Dempsey’s no FDR, but he appears to be his own man. He got the job as a compromise candidate in the last election, but the war snapped some backbone into him. He’s trying to rid himself of bureaucratic deadwood. We gotta give him something to cheer about before the next election or he’ll get dumped.”

  “In that case, you better put this on and get your commodore butt out there and find out what goes on in this here submarine fixing operation,” said Dave as he handed his friend a freshly painted white hard hat with a naval officer’s device on the front over the letters, COMSUBRON 3. “This’ll give ’em plenty of warning you’re comin’.”

  “Thanks, Dave,” said Danis setting the hat on his head at a jaunty angle. “Now let’s go have a look at Zane’s Pitstop.”

  Brent completed his post watch check of the ship and stopped in the wardroom to play a tape and have a cup of coffee. He found Dan Patrick there listening to the sound track of Dirty Dancing, a Brent favorite. It surprised Brent because Dan had the reputation of being Denver’s number one sack rat. He planned to hear a classic, a part of his continuing effort to cultivate a taste for it, one of Bea’s passions. So far, he’d warmed up only to Rachmaninoff’s Symphony Number Two because part of it sounded like Barry Manilow’s, All By Myself.

  Smiling at his friend, Brent said, “Wonder of wonders. The Patrick machine’s alive, well, functioning after midnight and before breakfast. I’ll call the quartermaster and have him log this historic event.”

  Dan grinned as the tape rendered Hungry Eyes. “Shush, no talking in church. Damn that tune turns me on. Did you watch Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey do this scene in the movie?
Or had you fallen asleep by then?”

  “Missed the flick. We’re divided up into doers and watchers. I fall into the former category.”

  “Maybe so, Brent, but in my book, just watching them is enough doing for me. Anything new on the watch?”

  “No. We’re barreling ass toward the op-area. The engineers did a great job on the patch. No indication on the noise level monitor all the way to full speed. It sure is a relief to be back in deepwater. We need it for acoustic advantage if we expect to find anybody and I sure as hell hope that’s why we came out here.”

  “Ah, mad … mad is the warrior. Pardon me if I reject this opportunity and continue to indulge in prewar decadence.”

  Brent wondered, Is Dan right? Am I really so wrapped around the tactics axle I can’t do anything else? Brent tried to make conversation by asking, “What do you plan to do when it’s over, Dan? The war, I mean.”

  “Guess that depends on who wins.”

  “Us, of course. If we don’t, what the hell does it matter anyway?”

  “See how easy it is to fish you in, Brent. Why don’t you back off a fathom or two? Maybe some problems would go away if you opened up a bit. But first, let me answer your question. I really don’t know. I’ve given the Navy a fair shot but really don’t think it’s my bag. The law has appeal and maybe politics. How about you?”

  “Looks like it will be something other than the Navy. The pasting I’ll get from Bostwick will put those lights out.”

  Dan used a comforting tone knowing how much Brent loved the Navy. “Might not be all that bad. Maybe Bostwick’s all bark and no bite. The patrol’s been successful enough for the Captain to blow his horn. To complete the picture, he’s gotta drag us along with him. I hear Woody’s nominated for a Navy Cross.”

  Brent asked, “What about the others?”

  “Silver Stars for Henri and Barnes and Bronze Stars for the others, including posthumous awards for the casualties. Can’t believe anything short of a Silver for you with all you’ve done.” Dan did not believe this but felt it would sit well with his friend. “The Navy means a great deal to you, doesn’t it, Brent?”