Columbia was many thousands of miles from home, and as a Black Ops submarine, very few people knew where they were. The CO wanted no mistakes, no hitches, and no carelessness. They accessed the satellite regularly, and it obligingly provided them with precise daily positions of K-9 and K-10, and the small but powerful Russian armada that guarded them.
In the early evening of September 1, Big Bird photographed the Kilos, moving slowly through the ice floes, still on the surface with the Typhoon and the escorts. They were west of Vrangelya Island, which sits midway between the permanent ice shelf and the endless frozen coastline of Siberia bang on longitude 180 degrees. SUBLANT estimated they would cross latitude 70 degrees around midnight on September 3 and come through the Bering Strait around 1400. Like Boomer they then expected all nine of the ships to then swing hard to starboard into the Bay of Anadyrskij, staying close to the shore all the way.
Boomer pondered his position and decided to head to the southwest and select his spot farther down the coastline. There were simply too many imponderables at the mouth of the bay, such as which way would the Kilos go, and would they stay on the surface? He studied the charts with Mike Krause. They agreed to cross the bay and then continue southwest for 230 miles, just short of the East Siberian headland of Ol’utorsky, where they would set up their patrol.
Boomer was sure this was the best place, about thirty miles northeast of the headland. “If they’re running inshore, we’ll be waiting…if they swing suddenly offshore, the satellites will see them change course, and I can cornerflag to the south…where I’ll still be waiting.”
All through September 2 the Kilos moved carefully forward at eight knots over the icy shoals of the southern Chukchi Sea. Moving within the cover of the escorting destroyers, and behind the crushing weight of the giant icebreaker, they crossed the Arctic Circle and shortly afterward rounded the great jutting square peninsula of northeast Siberia.
K-9 and K-10 entered the Bering Strait at midday on September 3 and changed course to 225 as they followed the Siberian coastline. When Big Bird photographed the stretch of ocean where they should have been at 1900 the pictures arrived in Fort Meade showing just the four escorts, the replenishment ship, and the icebreaker. There was no sign of the three submarines. Both Kilos and the Typhoon must have dived somewhere west of St. Lawrence Island, probably just on the Russian side of the dividing line.
It was 0430 in the morning on America’s East Coast, and the Fort Meade duty officer, Lieutenant John Harrison, looked at the satellite shots with considerable alarm. Losing both K-9 and K-10 at this stage of the game was a three-alarmer. He stood helplessly, holding the telephone, willing Admiral Morris to answer the damn thing. But he never did, not in the middle of the night, and he didn’t now. Lieutenant Harrison handed over control of the busy twenty-four-hours-a-day Intelligence operation, and bolted for the door.
He arrived at the bedside of the slumbering Director of National Security in four minutes, turned on every light, and proceeded to shake the Admiral into life. As ever the boss growled his way toward consciousness with a mixture of indignation and wry good humor.
“This better be important, Lieutenant,” he rasped. “Really important, right?”
“Yessir.”
“Well, speak up, for Christ’s sake. What the hell’s going on?”
“According to the latest satellite pictures, sir, we just lost both K-9 and K-10. They’ve either dived, or made a bolt for it. Either way, sir, it’s not perfect. The escorts are still there, but there’s no sign of any submarines.”
“Jesus Christ! Gimme three minutes. Have the car right outside the door.”
By 0530 Admiral Arnold Morgan had joined Admiral Morris in Fort Meade and they were both staring at the satellite pictures. “These escorts are still making some kind of pattern,” said the NSA. “I suppose it is possible the submarines are still in position…just running under the surface.”
“Yessir. That is possible. But it’s hard to make that assumption, just in case they have made a break for it. I was calculating just before you came. It’s a little more than four thousand miles from the Bering Strait down to Shanghai, where I presume they are headed. If they refueled the Kilos from that tanker south of the Strait, they could make an eight-knot underwater run, and they’d be there in nineteen days…they’d only have to snorkel a dozen times, and the chances of us catching them there, in that huge expanse of the Pacific that surrounds Japan…well, they are close to zero in my view.”
“Fuck it,” said Arnold Morgan.
As dawn broke over the shimmering warm air of Chesapeake Bay, one solitary US Marine helicopter could be seen out over the Cape Charles lighthouse, clattering its way south, losing height as it swooped down toward the Norfolk Navy yards. It would land seven minutes after a similar chopper had arrived from Washington bearing the CNO. The time was 0715.
“Morning, Arnie,” said Admiral Joe Mulligan and Admiral Dixon in harmony. And the CNO added, “I hear we’re in deepest crap — again.”
“Well, deepest crap is certainly a possibility, though not yet a certainty,” replied Admiral Morgan. “It’s just that we can’t see K-9 and K-10. But that doesn’t mean the fuckers are not still there.”
“Can I see the pictures?”
“Sure. Take a look. If you follow the pattern you can see the escorts are still on duty.”
“Right. Sure looks like it. Where’s Columbia right now?”
“Latest satellite signal says Boomer was heading southwest. He correctly determined an attack at the mouth of the big bay was too complicated, and he is now on his way to a patrol position in 60.15N 171.30E — about thirty miles northeast of Ol’utorsky. It’s quite deep water, fairly well inshore there. Columbia’s team is assessing the Russians will hug the coast, staying inside Russian waters.”
“He does of course need help from us,” said Admiral Dixon. “Just in case he has to cornerflag it to the south if the convoy makes a run offshore. Personally I’m happy he’s way south, gives us more options, and more time. He was planning a fast run to Ol’utorsky, and all being well he’s there right now.”
“When do we get a new satellite fix?” asked the CNO.
“Not for another eighteen hours,” replied Admiral Morgan. “By which time the escorts should be a hundred and sixty miles farther on…either almost across the mouth of Anadyrskij Bay, or deep in it, right down at the western end.”
“I guess that next picture is critical,” said Joe Mulligan.
“Absolutely,” said John Dixon. “I think if they are all down the bay, we should assume the submarines are still with them. If they are on their way down the coast, that makes it marginally less likely. However, if they are holding the escort pattern, that would still look to me as if the Kilos have not strayed far from daddy. Particularly so if they are still making nine knots — nice and comfortable for the brand-new submarines to snorkel.”
Admiral Morgan was thoughtful. “Isn’t it a bitch?” he wondered aloud. “Everything we hate about that fucking little submarine, the sheer difficulty of finding them, is right here to haunt us. As soon as the little bastard dives. If ever there was a goddamned commercial to highlight the danger of that bastard in the Chinese Navy…goddamnit we’re looking at it right here.”
“I guess that’s true,” said Admiral Mulligan. “Meanwhile, we better alert Columbia to the situation. Lay out the options as best we can and advise them to try and keep some kind of a sonar watch not only on the coastline but also out to the east, though I doubt he’ll have much luck in those waters. The place is just too fucking big, right?”
“It is for one submarine, sir,” replied Admiral Dixon. “Unless we can pick ’em up, and provide some hard facts.”
“Okay, gentlemen. I guess that’s it. All we can do is watch and wait.”
By 0400 on September 4, Boomer had sucked the bad news off the satellite. There was little he could do — he was now four hundred miles southwest of the escort’s last known positi
on, and no one yet knew which course they would make on this mammoth journey around the world to China.
The Commanding Officer of Columbia could only listen and wait. And hope.
At 1900 that same day, the all-seeing space camera in Big Bird passed silently overhead twenty thousand miles above the lonely waters at the southeast corner of the Siberian Bay of Anadyrskij. The evening was clear, the quality of the pictures was excellent, and the content encouraging. Admirals George Morris and Arnold Morgan, sipping black coffee in Fort Meade at 0230, made their deductions from the photographs of the Russian ships.
Big Bird had snapped them right off Cape Navarin — the three destroyers, Admiral Chabanenko, Admiral Levchenko and Admiral Kharlamov, and the ASW frigate Nepristupny. They were in a crescent formation inside the fifty-meter-depth contour, against the shoreline. The icebreaker Ural was out in front, and the giant replenishment ship brought up the rear. The key was that the convoy did not appear to have swung to the west around the bay but had proceeded straight across, making some 210 miles in twenty-four hours, which meant they were still making less than nine knots, which in turn meant that K-9 and K-10 were most probably still there. Dived and snorkeling, but there. Otherwise the convoy would have been making fifteen knots or more for home, clear of the ice and the Kilos. There was still no sign of the twenty-one-thousand-ton Typhoon, which meant it had probably left to pursue its own special business.
“You little babies,” said Admiral Morgan. “That speed’s exactly right. Nine knots, two hundred and ten miles exactly. Those cunning pricks must have dived, just in case we were out there waiting for ’em. The other great news is the Typhoon seems to have beat it.”
George Morris packed up the pictures. Arnold Morgan decided to snatch three hours of sleep at his home in nearby Montpelier, and then track on down to Norfolk in the chopper. His chauffeur, Charlie, would wait for him throughout the rest of the night until the Admiral and the package were delivered safely into the Marine helicopter that waited on the Fort Meade pad.
The following day, the three Admirals met again in the Black Ops Cell at SUBLANT. In the opinion of Admiral Dixon, the convoy would stay more or less in place all the way to Petropavlovsk, the big Russian naval base that lies right on the northern Pacific, seven hundred miles southwest of Ol’utorsky toward the end of the Kamchatka Peninsula.
“With that settled,” he said, “we’ll have a reasonable chance. The water off Ol’utorsky comes up from two hundred meters to the beach within twelve miles of the shore. That means Columbia can lie in wait outside of the limit of Russian water and fire from fourteen miles out, straight inshore, straight at the Kilos.”
The three Admirals drafted their “appreciation” of the situation accordingly, stressing that the Kilos were most certainly there but that the Typhoon had almost certainly left. The signal concluded with the following sentence:
“Provided you are able to POSIDENT Kilos, you are free to attack at will.”
Boomer, who now knew the time frame of the satellite pass, ordered Columbia to periscope depth at 0430 on September 5. He sucked down the signal from SUBLANT, and then presented his own appreciation of the situation. He informed the Navy Chiefs he would like to receive one more fix from the satellite this evening, with the Kilos at 60.40N 173.30E, northeast of his patrol spot, sixty miles short of the headland. His signal required no further reply, and Columbia slid swiftly back beneath the calm but chill Pacific waves. To wait.
He took up his position fourteen miles due east of the Siberian shore, a mile outside the two-hundred-meter depth line. Seven miles farther inshore was the fifty-meter line, and he fully expected the Russians to steam down here, just landward of that line, with the two big ships, the three destroyers, and the frigate forming their crescent, presumably around the two submerged Kilos, six miles offshore. So far as he and Mike Krause could tell there was much in their favor. They had deep water to seaward, which would enable them to evade attack if necessary. It would also allow them adequate sonar performance, even though they were looking “uphill,” toward the noisier shoreline.
Boomer accessed the satellite at 2030 and received confirmation from SUBLANT that the convoy was proceeding as anticipated at the critical nine knots. Big Bird photographed them at 1900, in position 60.40N 173.30E, which put them a little more than sixteen miles to his northeast.
Even as he lowered the mast, the sonar room, deep in the control center of Columbia, picked up the first signals of their approach. The Combat Systems Officer, Lieutenant Commander Jerry Curran, was in attendance, and his sonar chief mentioned that whatever was happening out there sounded a lot like World War III. Lieutenant Commander Curran himself was observing what was a most terrible racket, loud active sonar transmissions, massive cavitation, and many propellers as the Russians came steaming into range.
“Captain…Sonar…could you come in, sir?”
Boomer was there in seconds, and he too was temporarily mystified by the unearthly noise roaring through the water, causing a complete whiteout of the underwater picture. “There’s no pattern to it,” said the sonar chief. “It’s just chaotic, so loud and uneven it’s obscuring all engine lines…just a total mess…we’ve got shaft rates, and blade rates all over the place…can’t make a lick of goddamned sense out of any of it.”
Lieutenant Commander Curran was thoughtful. The tall, bespectacled Connecticut native was an expert on these systems, and he had a master’s degree in electronics and computer sciences from Fordham. A world-class bridge player, he recognized a truly brutal finesse when he saw one. And the dizzying white lines on his screens represented exactly that. “They know we’re out here, and they’re putting up a sound barrier between us and the Kilos,” he said slowly.
“Those destroyers’ blades turn at a hundred revs a minute going forward. But we’re not hearing blades going fast-forward, we’re hearing ’em in reverse as well…making sixty revolutions the other way. That’s what’s causing the incredible cavitation. Those Russian helmsmen are driving one propeller forward, and one in reverse…using a ton of gas…but they don’t care…they’ve got a ton of gas.”
“If that’s right, it sure works,” said the sonar chief. “I never saw a wall of sound like this before.”
“That’s just what it is,” said Boomer. “A wall, starting with the icebreaker, which is still out in front, and running back in a four-ship curve to seaward with the replenishment ship bringing up the rear, seven miles from the lead ship. That’s their formation…has been all the way down this coast. The Kilos are most probably behind that wall, maybe a mile inshore. We can’t see them and we sure as hell cannot hear them. Basically, our weapons have absolutely no chance. We don’t know where the targets are, we don’t even know whether the targets are there at all…never mind getting a POSIDENT, and standing a chance of hitting it. And I’ll tell you something else — if they’ve thought about us this carefully, they’ve got decoys towed behind all four of the escorts, helping with the noise.”
Columbia was now patrolling six miles to seaward of the nearest Russian escort ship, which happened to be the frigate. “We should assume they are all on active sonar,” said Lieutenant Commander Curran, “which means we could be detected. If we come to PD, they could pick us up on radar. I assume they would attack us instantly if they see or hear us.”
“Very likely. FUCK IT,” snapped Boomer out loud, neither enjoying the reversal of roles, nor sharing his tumbling thoughts with his crew. “It’s supposed to be us hunting them, not the other way around…but the fact is I can’t draw a bead on them. Isn’t this an unholy bitch? And what the fuck am I going to do about it?
“Okay, team, I’m gonna withdraw out into deep water for the moment. We can continue to head southwest. We’re not going to lose them with that racket going on — they can probably hear the bastards in Shanghai. But I need some time to think. No sense hanging around here, that’s for sure. We can’t get off a shot, and we got a reasonable chance of getting shot ourselv
es…still, I want to go to PD very briefly, and take a look, see what’s out there. For all we know the Kilos are on the surface, then we’re gone.”
Columbia angled her way slowly to PD, raising her periscope and ESM mast when she was ready. They both broke through long Pacific swells, and down below Boomer stared at the horizon to the west. Seven miles off his starboard bow he could clearly see the two high masts on the Type II Udaloy destroyer, the Admiral Chabanenko. He could also see the two destroyers, the Type Ones. The shape of the big two-palm-frond antennae spread stark above the Chabanenko’s bridge was unmistakable.
Almost immediately the urgent voice of the ESM mast operator was heard: “Captain — ESM — I have at least eight different radars — you have danger-level racket on three of them — track 2405, 2406, and 2407.”
Commander Dunning, like all submarine CO’s, reacted with an instant persecution complex, detesting the thought of being seen by the highly effective Russian radars. “Down all masts,” he ordered. “Five down — three hundred feet — make your speed eight knots — left standard rudder — steer 180—I’m clearing the datum.”
Columbia angled down and away as she speeded up, heading east for deeper water. Boomer Dunning had seen enough. Furthermore, the warning from the ESM operator meant that the American Black Ops submarine was very much expected.
052120SEPT. 60.40N 173.30E. On board the nine-thousand-ton Russian destroyer Admiral Chabanenko.
Radar room, operator three: “Sir, I have a disappearing contact…three sweeps only…computer gives it automatic track number 0416.”
Officer of the Watch to Captain: “Sir, we had a disappearing radar contact…three sweeps only…bearing 155…range six miles off our port bow.”
Captain to Officer of the Watch: “Possible US SSN, eh? No surprise. But also no danger. He can’t hear the submarines, and he sure as hell can’t see them. He’s powerless, just as we planned. Even a crazy fucking American cowboy wouldn’t shoot torpedoes at Russian surface warships in Russian waters. The submarines? He knows nothing!”
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