Cold Choices jm-2

by Larry Bond

  It had been different when he joined the fleet. Families were expected to sacrifice along with their servicemen, and to do so in silence. Discussing operational details or flaws or problems in training or materiel revealed valuable information. An enemy, especially one with the resources of the USA or NATO, could exploit those flaws. The Navy had actually released the official report of the Kursk investigation to the families. Normally such a document would have been highly classified, and now there were copies of it on the Internet!

  The defense minister had virtually ordered him to meet with the families. “Say whatever will make them happy. Remember to blame the Americans. This crisis is their fault.”

  Olga Sadilenko, the spokesperson for the group, was a hard case. The mother of Severodvinsk’s reactor officer, she was articulate and unimpressed by busts, flags, paintings or admirals. Her questions were maddeningly simple.

  “Have you confirmed the Americans’ information?”

  “If you mean the location they provided, no, we haven’t. A Navy spokesman has suggested that the Americans may have deliberately given us incorrect information,” Kokurin answered.

  “But that makes no sense,” the woman responded. “Why admit your involvement and then lead the searcher to the wrong place? What did the ships find there?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Sadilenko, I’m not at liberty to say. There have been indications that the American is deliberately interfering with the search.”

  “How is he doing this?” Sadilenko demanded. “Why have your ships not driven him from the area?”

  “That information is classified.”

  Kokurin had tried to sound final, but Sadilenko wasn’t deterred. “Why classify it? The Americans obviously know, our Navy knows, and”—she paused to look at her notes—”Captain-Lieutenant Rvanin made the accusation public yesterday morning.”

  She looked straight at Kokurin. “If the Americans’ actions are harming our progress, shouldn’t we share our evidence with the world? Make them explain themselves?”

  “I’m sorry, madam, I cannot explain further.”

  Sadilenko looked unhappy, and the women broke into sudden discussion, everyone seeming to talk at the same time. It trailed off with Sadilenko nodding. She turned back to Kokurin.

  “Did the search forces at least include the Americans’ information in their plan?”

  “I’m sorry, that is classified.”

  “Do you know where the American submarine is?”

  “That is also classified.”

  “Have you attempted to communicate with the American submarine?”

  “No, we have not. There is no way to know if the Americans will tell us the truth.”

  “You can learn much from a man’s lies,” Sadilenko countered, quoting an old proverb.

  Kokurin paused, but decided to ignore the accusation.”Severodvinsk is a Russian Federation Navy submarine that was engaged in routine operations when it was lost. The Navy is searching for it now with every means at its disposal. We want our men back as much as you want them back, and we have the added task of finding the cause of the accident and bringing to account those responsible.”

  One of the women, young with a face puffy from crying, stood up in back. “My friend says her husband is still in port. Her youngest is sick and he called to see if the baby was better. But he can’t do that unless he’s in port, can he?”

  “He shouldn’t have called at all. He violated regulations. What is your friend’s name?”

  “I won’t tell you. This isn’t like the old days. You can’t arrest anyone for that. She has a family.”

  Sadilenko asked, “How can they be searching if they’re still in port? Is the storm keeping them there? The Navy spokesman said two days ago that the storm wasn’t interfering with the rescue.”

  Kokurin felt impatience rising. He wasn’t used to being argued with. They were only women, unused to naval discipline and prone to emotion. But enough was enough.

  Kokurin stood. “Fleet movements are highly classified.” He tried to look directly at the young woman, but the others leaned toward her protectively. “Your friend’s husband serves on one ship, whichever ship it is. There are many ships involved in the search, and we do not tell anyone outside the chain of command the location of our warships.”

  Sadilenko ignored Kokurin’s hint that it was time to leave. “We would like to have a liaison assigned to the search and rescue force. He is the father-in-law of one of the missing officers, and a retired submariner. He could monitor the rescue effort and send regular updates to us here.”

  Kokurin was horrified at the thought. Let an outsider watch their operations? He’d rather blow a hole in the side of the flagship. It didn’t matter that the man they suggested was a retired naval officer. In fact, dealing with a civilian would be easier. A former Navy man might see and understand too much. It was a tailor-made security breach.

  “Absolutely not. It’s against regulations to have a civilian, even a retired naval officer, on a ship during possible combat operations.”

  “Then he could work here, at headquarters.”

  “No. He would see too much classified information.”

  “But he’s been cleared.”

  Kokurin paced behind his desk. “That was while he was in active service. He can tell you that his clearances were taken away when he retired.”

  “But you can give them back.”

  “Impossible. He’d have to be investigated all over again, and that takes time. The rules are quite clear on this matter.”

  Frustrated, Sadilenko commented, “It’s sad, Admiral. We are leaving here with no new information. I am disappointed that the commander of the Northern Fleet knows so little about our loved ones.”

  Another accusation, but Kokurin refused to be drawn out.

  “Blame the Americans, who have admitted their role in causing this crisis. The Navy is doing everything it can. As sailors’ mothers and wives, your role is hard, but there is little to do but wait.” Kokurin tried to sound paternal. It might not have worked, but at least they were finally leaving.

  The women filed out, grumbling. Once the door was shut, Kokurin let out a whoosh of air and slumped with fatigue. That was over, thank goodness. He was still coming to grips with Severodvinsk’s loss himself, and he found the mere mention of it created a storm of emotions.

  Grief, certainly, if they were dead, but did he dare hope they were alive? All of them? And anger at Petrov. He’d congratulated the boy how many days ago? Was this his fault? He was bright, an able commander, but certainly inexperienced. Could they have picked the wrong man to be captain?

  They’d given Petrov Russia’s newest boat, the best in the fleet. Could it be a materiel failure? Subs were designed to resist that, but others had succumbed over the years and Severodvinsk had spent an insane amount of time on the building ways. What did her loss mean for the Navy, and its future? He didn’t know how he was supposed to feel.

  Finally, he pushed the questions back into the shadows. Nothing would be resolved soon. Endurance was the only answer. He turned back to his desk and to next year’s budget submission.

  * * *

  Outside the headquarters building, the women sheltered in a corner. Olga Sadilenko listened to their complaints and protests for a few minutes, making sure everyone had a chance to speak. When there was a lull, she was ready. “I didn’t expect that walrus to tell us anything. Who are we to them? Nothing? We give them our sons, our husbands, but they don’t believe they owe us a thing.”

  A cold wind eddied into the corner where they stood, as if to confirm her statement. “Yelena.” She turned to the young woman who had asked Kokurin about the phone call. “I’m proud of you for standing up to the admiral like that. Can you do more?”

  The young woman nodded, her unhappy expression carved from stone.

  “You and your friends call as many other families as you can. Find out which ships are still in port, or when they left. Get me what you
can by noon tomorrow.”

  “Galina, do you have the notes?”

  A middle-aged woman held up a stenographer’s pad. “I’ll have these typed up by this evening.” Her face started to fall. “With my Yuri gone, there’s little to do.”

  A young woman reached out to hug her. “Then come and type them up with me. I’m alone, too. And when you’re done, I’ll add them to our web page.”

  The older woman dabbed at her eyes, “Thank you, Irina.”

  Sadilenko added, “And make sure everyone gives Irina a photo and information of your family member. Include as much biographical information as you want.”

  Irina, a pale woman with straw-colored hair, nodded emphatically. “There’s plenty of room on the server, and it takes no time to add the text and images. We need photos of every crewman, and also photos from parties and other gatherings while Severodvinsk was under construction.”

  As the group acknowledged their instructions, Sadilenko added one more task. “Nadya, make a list of every news organization you can find on the Internet — from every country in the world, if you can. As soon as Irina’s page is ready, I want to send them the link. They have to be hungry for news about our submarine. We’ll give them what we have.” She smiled grimly. “And we’ll tell them why we don’t have any more.”

  Severomorsk Naval Base

  Mikhail Rudnitskiy

  Captain Second Rank Yefim Gradev stood back a fair distance. Even in this obscene weather, sparks flew about wildly, and the language the petty officers were using would certainly be grounds for disciplinary action, if he could actually hear them. They’d rigged a makeshift canvas shelter as a windbreak, but the men welding were sandwiched between fire and ice.

  Gradev was captain of Mikhail Rudnitskiy, one of the two submarine rescue vessels assigned to the Northern Fleet. An alert like this was something they planned and trained for, but dreaded at the same time. Nobody wanted submariners to be in danger. Sailors’ lives were at stake, and his ship, neglected and undermanned, was a weak reed.

  He’d hardly slept since the alert two days ago. There would have been much to do, even if they were in perfect order. But maintenance had been deferred, supply requests denied. Suddenly they had priority, but the supply system was slow to respond, and repairs took time.

  Their sister ship, Georgi Titov, was down with a bad turbine, and Gradev had been given permission to raid her for supplies and spare parts and even crewmen. He knew the entire rescue depended on this one ship.

  They needed at least one of the fifty-ton cranes working. The foundations were fatigued, and the only way to strengthen them in time was unsafe, unauthorized and uncomfortable for the men welding the supports in place.

  But it would last until Severodvinsk was found. Combined with the motors they’d cannibalized from Titov, the portside crane would be back.

  “Captain, we need you to look at AS-34.” Alex Radimov, Rudnitskiy’s starpom, intruded on his thoughts.

  “What, are the supports still giving us trouble?”

  “No, sir, that work is proceeding. It’s the batteries again.”

  Shaking his head, Gradev turned and headed for the forward hold. Rudnitskiy was a timber-carrier design adapted to carry two rescue submersibles in what had been cargo holds. Originally, the after hold had carried a larger rescue vehicle, AS-36 Bester, but that vessel had been taken out of service years ago. With AS-26 out of commission owing to a main thruster motor failure, there was only one rescue sub available, and any problem with AS-34 Priz was a potential showstopper.

  She sat in the roofed-over hold, out of the weather, but still surrounded by a storm of activity. Sparks bathed her sides as sailors expanded and reinforced the cradle that held the vessel. Nobody had ever imagined Rudnitskiy venturing out in such heavy weather, and Gradev had ordered extra battens fitted to brace the rescue sub in place. The thought of her breaking loose in seven-meter seas invoked several nightmares.

  From the deck of the hold, AS-34 didn’t feel like a “minisub.” It towered over Gradev, with its 13.5-meter-long white-and-orange-banded cylindrical hull taking up half of the storage bay. From afar she resembled a traditional submarine, but she seemed a bit odd, misshapen. The miniature sail that protected the main hatch from the sea was out of proportion to her hull, and her diminutive ducted propulsor aft could only make about three knots at full power.

  But she wasn’t built for speed. Rudnitskiy was supposed to lower AS-34 into the water as close to a downed sub as possible. Priz would then use high-frequency sonar to find the victim, maneuver over it and lock on to one of the emergency escape hatches. The trapped submariners could then climb into AS-34 for a ride to the surface. She could hold twenty passengers on each trip.

  When she was working. One of the engineers climbed out of the access hatch and threw a tool away in disgust. It clanged loudly on the deck.

  Gradev looked at his starpom. “The batteries?”

  Radimov nodded. “The batteries. Remember how they wouldn’t hold a charge, and we found those grounds and thought fixing them would solve the problem?” He nodded toward the cursing crewman. “Turov chased down the last of the shorts late last night, and the batteries still won’t hold a full charge. We’ve been running three different generators on them all night. They should glow in the dark.”

  Priz’s main thruster motor was a power hog, even though she wasn’t supposed to leave the vicinity of the mother ship, they still had to maneuver to properly land and then mate with an escape hatch. Add to that power for the maneuvering thrusters, sonar, the interior lights, heat and atmosphere control; the energy requirements were far outstripping the batteries’ capacity. With a fresh charge before each trip, the batteries were theoretically supposed to be sufficient for almost six or seven hours.

  “Of the thirty-two cells, less than half will hold a decent charge, about eighty percent. Of the rest, most are around fifty percent, and a few are as low as twenty-five percent — essentially useless.”

  Gradev absorbed the report, calculated the implications. “Three hours?”

  “At best, Captain,” Radimov answered. “We’ve still got those twelve new cells coming from storage, but there’s no guarantee they haven’t exceeded their service lives just sitting on the shelf. What will we tell Northern Fleet?”

  He didn’t even have to think about it. “Nothing,” Gradev answered. His starpom’s expression was filled with surprise and concern. Gradev knew exactly what was going through Radimov’s mind and he attempted to reassure him. “We’re still working on the problem. We may yet find a solution. AS-34’s endurance should improve once the new cells are installed.”

  Radimov was not convinced. “They don’t arrive until just before we sail. It takes hours to install a single cell, and we’ll be working in heavy weather.”

  “The work can still be done well before we reach Severodvinsk’s location, if they find it at all. And three hours is more than enough for one trip. Priz will just have to have her batteries recharged more often. And let’s see what we can do about improving the individual cells’ capacities, get them back up to their old levels.”

  The first officer looked confused. “They’re sealed units. We’re not supposed to tamper with their internal components.”

  “Unseal one of the bad ones. They stopped making those batteries ten years ago. If we can’t find a way for them to hold more power, this will be AS-34’s last cruise.”

  “And Northern Fleet doesn’t need to know this?” “We’ve had one visit by Vidchenko. We don’t need another.”

  8 October 2008

  0530/5:30 AM

  Petr Velikiy was the fourth and last unit of the Orlan-class, or Kirov-class, as they were known by NATO. A nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser, she was flagship of the Northern Fleet and would lead the rescue force.

  On the bridge, Rear Admiral Vidchenko sat in one of the flag chairs and fidgeted. Now that he’d given the order to sortie, there was little to do.

  T
he bridge was huge, especially for a submariner. A full fifteen meters across, the long row of windows in the front made Vidchenko think of a greenhouse more than a warship. The electronic consoles that displayed the ship’s functions didn’t begin to fill it up. Thinking of a submarine’s cramped central command post, Vidchenko had a sudden urge to play racquetball.

  There were several clusters of officers on the bridge. Captain First Rank Chicherin actually commanded “Petya.” It was a prestige appointment, and Chicherin was widely regarded as a climber. His competence as a commander would never really be an issue, not with two higher levels of command embarked.

  Chicherin was moving around a lot, trying to look busy while Rudnitskiy got underway. He kept going out onto the bridge wings, and staring at the rescue ship, as if that could speed its progress. Petr Velikiy would be next to leave.

  Rear Admiral Ivan Kurganov, Commander of the Forty-third Missile Ship Division, was in charge of the task group, and Vidchenko watched him quietly chat with several of his staff. There was little for Kurganov to do either, but he did nothing much better than Chicherin. He would let the captain run his ship, but as the center of the task group, it would only go where Kurganov ordered.

  Kurganov’s staff monitored the task group’s operations in flag plot, located in a separate space behind the bridge. Although Petr Velikiy was still tied up at the pier, for the admirals, the battle had already started. Escort vessels were searching the harbor for unwelcome observers. Western subs had lurked outside Russian bases many times before. Officers and crewmen in flag plot tracked the searchers’ progress as they scoured the water with their active sonar.

  The storm would make acoustic searches almost futile, but Vidchenko and Kurganov agreed that it was worth the time and effort. The storm would also prevent Western satellites from watching the group’s departure. The formation also departed under total emission control; no military radars or communications systems were transmitting. They would not give the Americans a free ride. Delaying news of their departure meant the Americans couldn’t predict when the task group would arrive in the search area. Vidchenko thought that was good.