Echo Class

by David E. Meadows

  “Control room, Skipper. Keep just enough revolutions on the shaft to keep us steady. I want to be under way without making way.”

  “Aye, sir,” came the acknowledgment from below.

  “And get our embarkation party topside. The K-56 nearly has its boat in the water and we don’t have our sailors topside!”

  As if responding to Bocharkov’s command, sailors poured up through the aft escape hatch. He lifted his binoculars again and focused on the Spetsnaz. Maybe all submarines had the Special Forces on them now. Maybe they had special orders to protect against a defection or, worse, a Soviet commander who decided the time to fight the Americans was on his mission. Many, such as him, knew it was only a matter of time before the growing strength of the Soviet Navy rivaled, then passed the world giant. Giants did not appreciate being surpassed.

  “Captain Bocharkov!” a bullhorn called from across the gap.

  He dropped the binoculars, squinted as he raised his hands to shield his eyes, and looked at the conning tower of the other boat. He smiled when he recognized his comrade from Grechko Naval Academy and now neighbor in Kamchatka.

  Captain Second Rank Fedor Gerasimovich stood on the bridge of the K-56. Gerasimovich raised his hand and waved when he saw Bocharkov looking in his direction.

  Bocharkov waved before leaning down to the tube. “Have someone bring me the bullhorn.” He looked over at Gerasimovich and raised his hand with his index finger extended.

  “I understand, comrade. While you wait for your bullhorn, let me introduce Lieutenant Dolinski—Uri Dolinski.”

  The Spetsnaz officer on the main deck dropped his hands, came to attention, and saluted Bocharkov. Bocharkov returned the salute.

  “He is transferring from me to you, my friend. He is the technical expert assigned for this strange mission no one will tell me about.” The bullhorn squeaked like fingers down a chalkboard, causing everyone to wince. A couple of the sailors covered their ears.

  From the hatch came Ignatova, a bullhorn tucked under his arm.

  Bocharkov took it from him. “Any more news on the contact?”

  Ignatova shook his head as he stood. “Same strength as passed along earlier, Captain. EW reports no radar of electronic intelligence contacts.”

  Electronic intelligence was the new buzzword of the fleet. Taken from the American publication Proceedings, it had quickly spread throughout the Soviet Navy. As much as they knew the Americans were the enemy, there was also a slight tinge of envy over their navy.

  Envy of their strength, and their ability to sail anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice, to have such allies who offered port facilities anywhere in the world.

  “What’s that?” Ignatova asked, nodding at the K-56.

  From the bridge on the conning tower of the K-56, metal waterproof boxes were being handed down the narrow ladder from sailor to sailor. When the first one reached the deck, the sailors there set it at the feet of the Spetsnaz, who pulled a small notebook from his back pocket and checked something in it against the writing on the box.

  “The Spetsnaz is Lieutenant Uri Dolinski. He is transferring from the K-56—”

  “I am also transferring equipment you will need for your mission, Comrade Captain!” The bullhorn voice from the K-56 interrupted. “Only about seven thousand tons of it,” Gerasimovich said, jokingly. “No, no, not that much, just five boxes. Should not be enough to change the trim of the K-122.”

  Bocharkov lifted the bullhorn. “Fedor, it is good to see you, comrade. I trust you have had a good voyage, and when you return to Kamchatka, please tell my wife and the wives of the other crew members of the K-122 that we are all well and are looking forward to our return.”

  “I will do that.” Gerasimovich dropped the bullhorn, leaned over the bridge, and said something to Dolinski. The Spetsnaz officer saluted the captain second rank and then said something to the sailors. Soon the working party were moving the five boxes toward the deployed inflatable raft.

  “I think the American is coming this way,” Bocharkov said softly to Ignatova.

  Ignatova glanced at him. “Sonar seems to think he is searching the area where we were sighted by the American reconnaissance aircraft, Captain.”

  Bocharkov nodded. “If the American captain is a novice, then that is what he is doing. If not, then he is headed this way.”

  “We will detect his radar before he detects us.”

  The Spetsnaz officer slid into the raft, where four sailors had already taken position. The boxes were carefully transferred from the main deck to the raft.

  Bocharkov grunted. He glanced down at the bullhorn to make sure it was off. “How long have we had the American warship on sonar?”

  “Nearly an hour.”

  “And has the bearing shifted significantly? One moment it is zero-four-zero, then the next a few degrees more, and now we have it bearing zero-three-five.”

  “But we detected it when it was moving at such a speed it could not possibly have detected our noise.”

  Bocharkov turned and studied Ignatova’s face for moment, hoping his XO was joking, which would have been out of context for the serious officer. He believed those without humor lacked the intellectual flexibility to examine different perspectives of a complex situation. But then, of course, he was the captain and he could believe anything he wanted while on board the K-122, because whatever the captain believed became gospel for the crew. He sighed. With the exception of the zampolit. Party-political officers always believed everyone but themselves was bordering on a traitorous act.

  The rubber raft pushed away from K-56; the put-put sound of the small engine rode the wind toward the K-122. The wave action was picking up a little, Bocharkov realized. Yesterday, when they were conducting the missile firing exercise, the waves barely lapped the sides. Now not even the faint wake behind the raft was discernible.

  “It could have detected us before it increased speed, XO. It could have been following us without us knowing it, then for some reason increased speed, giving us an opportunity to know it was there.”

  “You are probably right, Captain,” Ignatova responded, as he should to Bocharkov’s statement.

  “But you do not believe that idea, do you?” Before Ignatova could answer, Bocharkov set the bullhorn down on the deck and raised his binoculars to focus on the small raft headed his way. “There are many reasons ships at sea have to increase speed. Everything from avoiding other ships in the area to zooming after a contact so it can have better signal strength.”

  “Aye, Captain, you are probably right, but if I may offer a counterargument.”

  “You may.”

  “Maybe we picked up the warship as it was speeding to our last known location and slowing down when it reached it.”

  “Then we would have a spectacular sonar, XO. We would have picked up the warship over a hundred kilometers from here.”

  He dropped his binoculars and leaned over the aft portion of the bridge where the raft was making its approach.

  “XO, after we are submerged, I want to meet with our Spetsnaz officers. I think there is more here than they are telling us.”

  “They are Spetsnaz, sir. There is always more to whatever they are doing than they tell those who do not wear the black. Fact is, I don’t think they like telling each other what they are doing. One-way trips are their fantasy.”

  Bocharkov shook his head. “Hope you are wrong, Vladmiri. If it is a one-way trip, inside Subic Bay is not where they would want it to end.”

  Chief Starshina Trush, his face hidden by the heavy Cossack beard and hair, was shouting at the sailors on the stern, giving orders about casting lines. Before one of the sailors could toss a line to the raft, the chief had jerked it away and tossed it underhanded to one of the sailors on the raft. A few seconds later the raft was tight against the hull and the sailors were awkwardly moving the heavy boxes on board, to the profanity of Chief Starshina Trush.

  Bocharkov grunted. “Get the lieutenant and his boxes
aboard and down below. I want to get off the surface as soon as possible, XO. I dislike intensely being on the surface in daylight.”

  “CONTACT bearing three three five relative,” cried the sound-powered phone talker on the bridge. On board ships there were two types of bearings. One was the normal compass bearing based on true north; the other was the relative bearing, which considered the bow as always pointing zero-zero-zero.

  MacDonald stepped quickly into the bridge even as he looked toward the bow. “Who, where?” he shouted.

  “Topside signal bridge watch reports two low contacts in the water off our port bow, Skipper.”

  MacDonald grabbed his binoculars. “Make sure Combat knows,” he ordered, jerking his finger at Goldstein as he stepped back onto the port bridge wing.

  “They know.”

  Dale had them, he told himself. Dead ahead practically. Two Soviet submarines. Had to be them. Nothing else in this direction. Oliver, I could kiss you, you ugly sonarman son of a bitch. Just let them be our Echos. Of course, they could be fishing vessels out of the Philippines.

  “They know, sir,” Goldstein repeated quietly to the hatchway.

  “Very well, Sam. Tell them to keep piping up the contact information.”

  MacDonald lifted the glasses, focusing them as he scanned the horizon. There was nothing there. Where were the low-riders? He could not see anything, but then the signal bridge was another twenty to twenty-five feet higher. They had a higher height-of-eye. It also meant the Dale had to be about fifteen nautical miles from the contacts. Let them be our Soviet submarines. Only on the ocean could one truly tell the earth was round, and no matter where you sailed, the horizon was always fifteen nautical miles away.

  He let out a deep breath. Decisions, decisions, decisions. What he decided now would determine how Dale would chase these submarines once they spotted him and submerged. Submerging was a given. Submarines fought submerged, and once spotted, both would blow their ballasts—Sonar would hear them doing that—and they would drop like rocks into the abyss below. If warriors of the sea could earn points for “gotchas,” then Dale would earn a bunch. . . .

  What the hell are you doing? he asked himself. You’re acting like some junior officer about to lose his virginity after a long night of heavy dancing. Stop it, Danny, he told himself. This is just one more antisubmarine warfare operation and regardless of whether the contacts are fishing vessels or Soviet Echo submarines, Dale will follow protocol. Lord, just let them be those Soviet sons of bitches.

  The XO, Joe Tucker, stepped onto the bridge wing. MacDonald lowered his glasses for a second.

  “Has to be the submarines,” Tucker offered, raising his binoculars in tandem with MacDonald.

  “I have my fingers crossed.”

  “Nothing else out in this direction according to Sonar.” Tucker dropped his binoculars. “What now, Skipper?”

  MacDonald dropped his glasses, letting them hang from the strap around his neck. “This is the tricky part, Joe Tucker,” he said.

  “What have you done before in a situation like this?”

  MacDonald smiled, then laughed slightly. “Funny you should ask, XO. I don’t think any American destroyer has ever sneaked up on two surfaced Soviet submarines.”

  “I don’t expect they’ll be surfaced once they see us.”

  “They have to know we are here. Or at least have a line of bearing on us,” MacDonald opined softly. “This close, if their sonar team is worth a damn, they would have picked up our prop noise long ago.”

  Tucker shook his head slightly. “We’re a pretty quiet ship.”

  “We are a surface ship putting noise in the water. Noise is a signature a good sonar team can interpret with ease. If they have picked us up—let’s assume they have—then what are they thinking?”

  “They are thinking we are after them?”

  MacDonald nodded. “That’s what you and I would think. But who knows what Crazy Ivan thinks. Maybe he gets his ‘gotchas’ from some other misguided tactic.”

  “Such as the closer we get before he pulls the plug the more points he gets?” Joe Tucker shook his head. “Kind of a crazy way to play the game.”

  “Yeah. His sonar team might believe they are picking up our noise from hundreds of miles away.”

  “I don’t think they’re as dumb as we would like to believe.”

  “I don’t either, but when I was in Combat earlier, we still did not know if our contacts were twenty miles from us or a hundred. All we knew was which direction the noise was coming from. We have been on this base course of two-two-zero for over twelve hours. If they have a reciprocal contact on us, then they have to figure we are in pursuit.”

  MacDonald raised his glasses and looked in the direction of the contacts. From the bridge came another report of them lying motionless on a left-stern-to-left-bow angle.

  “Why are they surfaced?” MacDonald lowered his binoculars.

  “Skipper,” Goldstein said from the hatchway. “Combat reports Snoop Tray radar still active.”

  “Don’t know why they haven’t picked us up yet?” Joe Tucker asked.

  “They will shortly,” MacDonald replied sharply. “So, XO, what do you recommend?”

  “I recommend we come up to full speed, flip on the radar, put on face paint, run up the Jolly Roger, and see how close we can get to them.” He shrugged. “We aren’t going to sneak up on them, so the faster we go, the closer we’ll get before they slam their foot on the gas and head for the deep.” The XO braced both hands on the above-waist-high metal railing. “No reason to try to sneak up on them. Even the piss-poor Snoop Tray is going to hit us after we get about half our ship up over the horizon where it can paint us.” Joe Tucker leaned forward and looked at the sea beneath the Dale. “The slight seas might be disrupting their video return a little, but any second now that Soviet piece-of-shit radar is going to detect us.”

  MacDonald nodded, his forehead wrinkling in concentration a few seconds before a broad grin spread beneath the pencil-thin mustache. “XO, let’s do it. Tell Sonar they are about to lose contact, but be prepared to reengage. Once they submerge . . .”

  “They’re together. They’ll remain together.” Joe Tucker leaned away from the railing.

  “I agree, XO.” MacDonald stuck his head back into the bridge area. “Lieutenant Goldstein, bring us up to ‘all ahead flank.’ Tell Combat to prepare a submarine contact report for release at my order.”

  “Has to be them.”

  “Just want to make sure before I fire off a message to Seventh Fleet and get all those P-3 airdales wetting their pants with excitement.”

  He wondered if the Dale would really be the first destroyer to catch two Soviet submarines on the surface in the middle of the ocean. Might be another folktale, but one thing for sure: He was going to be sure the contacts were submarines before he sent the message.

  “Skipper,” Goldstein said from the hatchway. “Signal bridge watch reports the two contacts as submarines.”

  MacDonald let out a deep breath. “Is he sure?”

  “I can ask him.”

  “Lieutenant, ask him to confirm the sighting and ask him to have the on-duty—”

  “I’ll go,” Joe Tucker said, turning to the nearby ladder and sprinting up it to the signal bridge directly above them.

  MacDonald watched the XO disappear across the deck. Less than a minute later Joe Tucker was leaning over the railing above him, a broad grin stretched from ear to ear. “You can release that message, Skipper. You got them!” Joe Tucker wet two fingers and dipped them as if scoring a dunk in basketball. “Dos puntos!”

  The Dale engines kicked in and MacDonald grabbed the railing. A smile spread across his face as the destroyer leaped forward, heading toward the surfaced submarines.

  “Officer of the deck! Activate the surface search radar!” No reason to try to hide now.

  DOWN below, Oliver threw his headset down on the small shelf below the sonar console. “Damn it!” he shout
ed, rubbing his ears. He looked at Lieutenant Junior Grade Burkeet. Burkeet fell into Chief Stalzer as the Dale leaped forward, the propellers churning up the ocean behind the destroyer as the four steam-driven engines sped toward twenty-two knots.

  “Sir, we are drowning out any passive noise from the contacts.”

  “Don’t need sonar right now, Petty Officer Oliver,” Chief Stalzer said. “We have them on visual.” He reached forward and slapped the sonar technician on the shoulder. “Good job for a short-timer.”

  CAPTAIN Second Rank Fedor Gerasimovich lifted his bullhorn. “Captain Bocharkov! Our radar reports a contact bearing zero-four-zero degrees heading our way. Range . . .” The bullhorn squeaked, the noise causing Gerasimovich to lift it away from his lips. It stopped almost immediately and he quickly lifted the bullhorn back. “I said, comrade, the contact is horizon distance—about twenty-five kilometers!”

  Bocharkov raised his glasses and trained them in the direction of the contact. He could see nothing. The voice tube whistled. He dropped his glasses and lifted the covering. “Go ahead.”

  “Sir, I have increased rotation on the American warship. He is increasing his speed.”

  “What is his bearing?”

  “We hold him at zero-three-five with slight bearing drift to the right.”

  “Do you think it is the Americans?” Ignatova asked, nodding toward the horizon where K-56 had reported the contact.

  Bocharkov grunted. He leaned over the railing. “Get that raft off my boat! And get those boxes belowdecks, Chief!”

  Chief Trush held his hand to his ear. “What?” he mouthed.

  Bocharkov lifted the bullhorn and repeated his instructions. Trush snapped a salute then scurried to carry them out. Trush’s bass voice was easily heard above the ocean noise as he screamed, shouted, and pushed the sailors to action.