by Larry Bond
Concern flashed through Patterson, and she saw it in the others’ expressions. “They wouldn’t dare.”
“They’ve violated the incidents at sea agreement,” Baker observed. “I wonder what else they’d be willing to do.”
“This is the first time an American sub has operated openly that far north. As touchy as they are, Seawolf’s mere presence would anger them. Imagine how they must feel after the collision with Severodvinsk. And as far as they are concerned we sank their submarine. And even though it was an accident, they’re bound to be more paranoid than usual.”
Patterson studied her copy. “Washington’s asking for my recommendations.” She sounded a little amused.
Baker replied, “You are the mission commander, ma’am.” He smiled, but his tone was serious. “You don’t make ‘recommendations.’”
“My feelings exactly, Captain. Please take Churchill into the exclusion zone and rendezvous with Seawolf. So far the Russians have threatened an unarmed helicopter and a damaged submarine. Let’s even up the odds and see if that improves their behavior.”
Baker stood and started to leave, but stopped at the door. “Speed, ma’am?”
“As fast as you can get us there.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.” He was smiling as he left.
Silas looked worried, but Patterson didn’t give him a chance to speak. “Get our team in the wardroom right away. We’re going to need to put together messages to State, SUBGRU Two, Wright, Seawolf, and especially the Russians.”
The deck surged forward as Churchill increased her speed; they felt the deck vibration as all four gas turbines slammed their power into the two shafts.
“They may not want to talk to Seawolf, but we’ll make them talk to us.”
She looked at Lindstrom. “Besides, you’re supposed to be the advance man for Marine Diving and Salvage. You can’t do any good fifty miles from Severodvinsk.”
21. TURN AWAY
9 October 2008
1030/10:30 AM
USS Seawolf
Jerry and Shimko were both in control when they received the message. Captain Rudel was still topside, so Jerry volunteered to take it up to him. The fresh air helped settle his queasy stomach.
The bridge was roomier with only Hayes, the lookout, and the captain. “Message from USS Churchill, Skipper. They’re coming to join us.”
Rudel smiled broadly. “It will be nice to see a friendly face.” The message stated Churchill’s intentions and ETA, in a little over two and a half hours.
“They’re going to ignore the Russians’ exclusion zone,” Jerry observed.
“I’ll still be glad for the company. Particularly given the Russians’ behavior as of late,” Rudel answered. There was a hint of relief in his tone.
The lookout called down, “Sir, air contact to the southwest, just above the horizon.”
Hayes and Rudel instantly turned their glasses in that direction. Jerry had to wait, then borrowed the pair that Hayes was using. He’d anticipated more fighters, but this was worse: two Kamov antisubmarine helicopters.
“Ka-27 Helixes,” Rudel announced as Jerry got his first look, and of course he was right. These helicopters carried their ordnance externally, but they were still too far away for Jerry to see whether or not they were armed.
Rudel didn’t wait to find out. “Sound General Quarters.” Hayes passed the order below, and soon thereafter the BONG, BONG, BONG of the general alarm reverberated from the access trunk. As Jerry handed him back his binoculars and stepped toward the open hatch, Rudel told him, “Tell the XO I’m staying up here.”
“Aye, sir.” Jerry couldn’t see the point in the captain staying topside, but there was little precedent for where the captain of a surfaced nuclear sub should be during General Quarters.
Jerry ran into the organized chaos of the control room and passed the captain’s message on. The XO nodded, although he didn’t look comfortable with Rudel’s decision. Wordlessly, he pointed to the plotting table by the fire-control displays, Jerry’s GQ station.
Shimko took station near the useless periscopes. These helicopters were harbingers of the approaching Russian surface task force, a group that contained some pretty significant firepower. Their radar was down, as was the ESM system, and all the bow arrays were useless. They could still use the wide-aperture array on flanks, but they had to steer a beam manually. That was it. They were almost blind.
Jerry tried to imagine what Seawolf could see or do. She could fire a torpedo while surfaced, since the tubes were still functional, but you couldn’t torpedo a helicopter. Besides, they didn’t want to shoot at anybody. This was supposed to be a rescue mission, not a wartime patrol.
Rudel’s voice came over the intercom a moment later. “Control, bridge. This is the Captain. I have the deck and the conn.” The watch section acknowledged the relinquishing of command from Mr. Hayes to the captain, but not without an odd look. A couple of minutes later, both Hayes and the lookout came in to control and repeated Rudel’s intention to stay topside. Confused, Will Hayes shrugged his shoulders. Shimko nodded silently. Jerry could see the XO was even less of a happy camper now. Hayes then sat at one of the blank fire-control consoles, his General Quarters station.
“Control, bridge. Both Helixes are armed.” Rudel’s voice described their movements. “One’s coming straight in. The other’s pacing us a hundred yards to port.”
Jerry and the others could only wait. Seawolf was out of her natural element, and defenseless. Without her electronic sensors, the watchstanders in control had to rely on Rudel’s running commentary of the events up on deck.
“The first is passing directly over us. They’re loaded with four depth charges.” That was bad. Russian air-dropped antisubmarine torpedoes only work against submerged subs, but a Helix could set a depth charge to detonate at shallow depth, say thirty feet. Dropped at close range, it would shatter Seawolf’s hull.
“They’re not responding to my hails on the bridge-to-bridge radio.” Rudel then added, “The helicopter to port is lowering its dipping sonar.”
Most antisubmarine helicopters either carried a small sonar at the end of a cable or dropped expendable sonobuoys. Ka-27 Helix helicopters could carry sonobuoys along with the dipping sonar, but only at the expense of ordnance. To hunt for a sub, a Helix driver would be directed to a likely spot where the crew would then lower the sonar “ball” into the water, and listen. If they didn’t hear the sub, they could actively search, or ping, for it by transmitting an intense burst of acoustic energy and then listen for the echo. The main advantage of a dipping sonar was that it could change its search depth by raising or lowering the array. This negated a submarine’s ability to hide from a shallow sensor by ducking below the thermocline.
While nuclear subs are fast and maneuverable compared to other warships, helicopters can run rings around them. They needed a cue from some other sensor on where to start looking, but if they found you, it was hell to get away.
“Conn, sonar, Lamb Tail sonar on the WLR-9, bearing zero four seven. Signal strength is off the scale.” The intercept repeater in control beeped away angrily, alerting the occupants to the presence of a threat emitter.
“Well of course,” Jerry muttered cynically. “It’s three hundred feet off our port beam.” “Lamb Tail” was the NATO designation for the dipping sonar on the Ka-27 Helix. The Russian name for it was “VGS-3, Ros-V,” which was probably easier to say in Russian.
Unlike Severodvinsk’s brutal lashing, the helicopter’s sonar set operated at a higher frequency, but was still within the range of human hearing. The eerily tinny pings hammered away, providing the Helix with precise range and bearing information. But they knew exactly where Seawolf was, unless they were blind and stupid. Why lower the ball and ping?
Alberto Constantino, still functioning as the contact coordinator, passed the bearing data up to Rudel. The captain answered with “Control, bridge. Concur, bearing matches. The other one’s doing lazy eights half a
mile out in front of us.”
Jerry stared at the meager plot before him, as if it could reveal the Russians’ intentions. One to the front, one to the side, using its dipping sonar.
“Conn, sonar. The pinging’s stopped.”
Constantino acknowledged sonar’s report and passed it up to the bridge, then looked around, unhappy at the enforced idleness. There was nothing they could do. They were surfaced, running at five knots, steering a box pattern around a downed Russian sub. And there were Russian ASW helicopters overhead, with unknown intentions.
Rudel reported, “It looks like the dipper’s shifting positions. He’s moving to keep position off our port beam.”
Jerry fidgeted with a pencil over the mostly blank sheet of paper laid over the plotting table. This game was completely one-sided. Not only did the Russians own the ball, they owned the ballpark as well.
“Two minutes to the next turn, new course will be to the left to zero four five.” QM2 Dunn’s report was routine. Seawolf’s track was a square centered on Severodvinsk. Three miles on a side, it was designed to keep Seawolf close to the downed sub.
“Control, bridge. The helicopter’s dipping again,” Rudel reported. “Same relative position, to the northeast.”
“And directly in our path,” Jerry added. Constantino looked at the plot and nodded his understanding. “They’ve been watching us. They know where our next turn should be.”
“The helicopter in front of us just dropped something in the water, about one thousand yards away!”
The end of Rudel’s report was punctuated by a BOOM that came right through the hull, muffled but definite.
“That was not a signaling charge,” Constantino observed. Aircraft that operated near submarines often carried small explosive charges, the size of a hand grenade, designed to attract the attention of a submerged sub. They could also be used to simulate an attack.
This was no simulation. But they could have put it right next to Seawolf, if they’d wanted to. Jerry looked at Shimko and Hayes. Nobody in control said anything for a moment; then Constantino asked, “Where are they going to put the next one?”
The XO asked Jerry, “How far was that charge from Severodvinsk?”
Jerry barely glanced at the chart. “We’re at the corner of the box, so it’s a little over two miles.” Laying a ruler across their course, he reported, “The charge was fifty-five hundred yards, two and three quarters miles from Severodvinsk.”
“Time for the turn, sir,” Dunn reminded Jerry.
“Belay the turn,” Shimko ordered sharply. “I’m going up. This isn’t working. And the Skipper’s up there all by himself.” The XO was on the ladder to the first deck before he’d even finished his sentence.
Shimko had barely cleared the last step when another BOOM came through the hull, jerry tried to convince himself that his imagination made it seem closer, but Rudel’s voice on the intercom confirmed it. “Control, bridge. That one was only five hundred yards away, dead ahead! Hard right rudder! Come right to one eight zero!”
The helmsman acknowledged the command over the intercom as he threw the rudder yoke over all the way to the right. A moment later, Rudel ordered, “Continue coming right to three one five.” That put them back along their last leg, but in the opposite direction.
Jerry looked around control, with Rudel and the XO topside, and the engineer back in maneuvering, he was the senior officer present. The younger junior officers, Santana, Miller, and Norris, all looked at him with a mixture of shock, fear, and confusion. He tried to reassure them with a tight smile, but he knew this setup was all wrong.
Suddenly, the XO’s voice boomed from the intercom loudspeaker. “Navigator, lay to the bridge, on the double. And bring the satellite phone!” Dunn grabbed the phone and semi-threw it to Jerry as he rushed up the ladder well. He didn’t even bother to put on a parka as he started climbing up the access trunk as fast as he possibly could.
Uncharacteristically, Shimko had left the upper access hatch open. The only reason he’d do that was if his intention was to immediately bring the captain below. Jerry was near the top of the access trunk when he clearly heard Rudel’s voice. Given the circumstances, he seemed remarkably calm. “They’re still not responding on the radio, Marcus, but they know why we’re here. They can only go so far.”
“That last charge was only a quarter mile in front of us, Captain. What if they halve it again? And again?”
“They have their rules of engagement, just like we do.”
“What if they make a mistake? Did they take into account our stressed pressure hull? One miscalculation by a Russian caused this whole situation. We can’t rule out another.”
“I have to push this, XO.” Rudel’s voice was determined, stoic, almost obstinate. “I want them to look us right in the eye, and then blink. Petrov and his men are depending on us.”
“With all due respect, sir, the men on this boat are also depending on you.” Shimko’s intensity matched Rudel’s. He was respectful, but Jerry would never dream of talking to the skipper like that. “They’re using live ammunition, Captain. And they’ve made it clear they don’t want to talk to us. You’ve done everything that you can. We have to leave, sir.”
Uncomfortably aware that he was eavesdropping, Jerry shouted, “Permission to come up to the bridge.”
“Granted,” responded Rudel crisply. “Where’s the satellite phone?”
“Here, sir.” Jerry handed it to his captain, who passed it on to Shimko.
“XO, time to call the boss and issue a formal complaint.”
Jerry thought phoning home sounded like an excellent idea. But Shimko was far from convinced. “Sir, we don’t have time for this. They’ll drop another charge any minute now!”
As if on cue, Jerry watched as the Helix released another cylindrical object into the water. The explosion was closer and louder than the last one. He could feel the shock wave as it hit Seawolf’s hull.
“Damn it, XO! Make the call! That’s an order!” shouted Rudel.
Shimko was fuming, but did as he was told and started punching the buttons vigorously. Rudel then looked at Jerry and seemed surprised that he was still there. “Get below, mister!” he commanded.
“Aye, aye, sir,” replied Jerry.
As he dropped down into the hatch well, Jerry could hear the XO almost pleading with Rudel. “Captain, they are not going to stop this. We have to turn away and head west!”
“We’re responsible for Severodvinsk. I’m responsible for Severodvinsk shrieked Rudel. His voice trembled with pain, as if abandoning Petrov and his men was the same as betraying a close friend.
“And the Russians aren’t going to let you do anything about it. Sir, we have to change course to the west now, before they drop another charge.”The captain didn’t respond before Shimko added, “Group Two is on the line, sir.”
Jerry heard Rudel begin his report to SUBGRU Two; then the XO suddenly called down the trunk. “They’re dropping another charge close by. All hands brace!”
Rudel’s voice came over the intercom. “Hard left rudder! Course two seven zero.”
Jerry grabbed onto the ladder as he heard the chief of the watch pass the warning on the 1MC. The KA-BOOM and vibration that followed wasn’t as bad as he’d dreaded, but it filled his mind with images of the shoring giving way, of the forward compartment filling with seawater. Had the last-second turn-away helped to deflect the shock?
The slam of a hatch and an urgent “Down ladder!” caused Jerry to slide down the rest of the access trunk ladder, followed immediately by the XO and the captain. Shimko bolted for the ladder down to control and shouted, “Submerge the boat, take us to three hundred feet, steady on course two seven zero, speed seven knots.”
The watchstanders hesitated, confused as to who should be giving the orders, who they were supposed to listen to. The last they knew, the captain had the deck and the conn. Lieutenant Wolfe saw the confusion and jumped up to the conning station. “You heard the
XO. Chief of the Watch, over the 1MC ‘Dive, Dive.’ Diving officer, make your depth three hundred feet. Helmsman, all ahead one third.”
Jolted out of their inaction by Wolfe’s forceful presence, the men acknowledged their orders and began to follow through on the procedure to take Seawolf down.
As Shimko entered control he quickly pointed to Wolfe and announced, “The XO has the conn, Mr. Wolfe has the deck.” Without waiting for the control room watchstanders to respond, he twirled around and pointed at the damage control assistant. “Mr. Williams, check the hull and the shoring for the slightest sign of new damage. Report back here as soon as you’ve completed the inspection.”
A flurry of “Aye, aye, sir” echoed throughout control. Williams disappeared up the ladder, nearly running over a passive, despondent Rudel, who appeared to be muttering to himself.
With a pained and frustrated expression, Shimko looked over to Master Chief Hess, the battle stations diving officer. “COB, get the Skipper to his stateroom.” Then, pointing toward Constantino by the command displays, “Al, you’re my diving officer.”
“Yes, sir,” replied both men simultaneously as they exchanged places. Hess then gently grabbed Rudel and threw his arm over his shoulders. The captain seemed confused, dejected, weak. “C’mon, Skipper,” coaxed the COB. “You need a little rest.”
Once Hess had escorted Rudel out of control, Shimko turn to the chief of the watch and ordered, “Have Chief Gallant report to the CO’s stateroom on the double.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Chief McCord, as he picked up the phone and dialed sickbay.
Shimko paused a moment and took stock of the situation in control, allowing himself a deep breath or two. Satisfied that things were well in hand, he pressed the intercom switch. “Sonar, conn. Hear anything from our friends?”
“Conn, sonar. No, sir. If they’re dipping, they’re doing it passively.”
“I’m sure they are. They’ll have no trouble following us.” Shimko sounded resigned, but not discouraged.