Scorpion in the Sea

by P. T. Deutermann

  The Captain hoped and prayed to Allah that the Deyo or one of her kind was not up there somewhere operating under radar and acoustic silence. The Deyo was a professional sub killer, equipped with an air bubble belt around the submerged portion of her hull. The belt breathed a curtain of small air bubbles down the entire length of the ship’s hull, effectively masking all machinery noises coming from within the destroyer. Her screws had a similar system, which meant that submarines listening for the familiar chopping sounds of high power propellers would hear only the hiss of the ambient sea. The Deyo was entirely capable of looming out of the darkness and spearing the Al Akrab with a brace of screaming antisubmarine homing torpedoes.

  But the Captain had to weigh the likelihood of the initial detection: there had been some interaction with the American Navy, but every indication was that they had never been actually detected. Even when they had fired the decoy, which had been a near desperate measure, the old destroyer had turned away and gone back into port. Unless the Americans had actually concluded that there was something out here, the lack of the initial cues would keep the Al Akrab safe. The ocean was simply too big.

  He glanced at his watch. It would be a long night, even if it all went perfectly. He gestured for more tea. One of the sailors scrambled to bring him some. He looked up at the Musaid.

  “Well, Musaid. Are we safe?” he asked softly.

  The hum of instruments, rumble of the diesels aft, and the hiss of the ventilation augmenter were the only other sounds. The boat was actually rolling slightly in response to the waves above. The Musaid’s face crinkled in a wry smile.

  “Safe, Effendi? When were we ever safe?”

  The Captain nodded. Here they were, hovering scant feet below the surface, radiating diesel engine noise, two masts exposed, and not fifty miles away from a major American naval base, and doing all this in an ancient Russian submarine that had more parts and pieces from her sister ships than original parts. A real sub-killer had been in their area only a few hours ago, and might have come back for all they knew. The Captain reflected on the Americans and their technology. It was all so unfair.

  “The Americans,” he muttered. “They’re everywhere. They dominate the world. Even the Russians fear them, their technology, their designs to make the whole world over in their image. The kings of Carthage must have felt the same way about Rome.”

  “And today Carthage is a large open field, with lumps of marble here and there on ground still poisoned with Roman salt,” said the Musaid. “I have seen it. I have often wondered if that is our fate, too. For all the advisors and equipment we have bought over the past ten years, the Americans came from the sea in one night and struck with impunity. They can do it anytime they want to. We are never safe.”

  “Well,” observed the Captain, finishing his tea. “Two can play at a game, as the British say. This time it is we who shall come from the sea. I am convinced that they do not even dream we could do this, come this far, and wait patiently for our target like a scorpion in the sand. They call us rag-heads, did you know that? Rag-heads. Think of it.”

  The Musaid snorted.

  “The Americans have a need to call other people names; it soothes their consciences when they exercise dominion. It is a trait they took from the British—wogs, gyppies, and now, rag-heads. Oppression of lesser people offends their Christian values; but it is no crime to kill a wog. It is the nature of imperialism to reduce its victims to names.”

  The Captain smiled, his eyes glinting.

  “Which will make this mission so very satisfying; I wonder if they will be able to admit that it was a rag-head that put torpedoes into their aircraft carrier.”

  “I worry about that decoy, Effendi,” said the Musaid, changing the subject.

  The Captain looked at him sharply, and then away.

  “I too worry about that decoy, Musaid.”

  He looked around the control room to see if anyone was listening to them, but the watch remained intent on keeping depth control.

  “I am convinced that we had to do something, but I wish that encounter had never begun. If there is any connection between the killer destroyer Deyo today and that decoy, we may soon be the quarry instead of being the hunters.”

  “The key is to have the carrier return home soon,” mused the Musaid. “The longer we stay here, the more chances we take. We need to do this thing soon.” The Captain nodded.

  “We can do nothing about that, Musaid. Inshallah. That remains in God’s hands.” He heaved himself upright. “But depth control remains in our hands. Watch officer!” he called. “You are half a meter low. Pay attention!”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  USS Deyo, northern Jacksonville operating areas, Tuesday, 29 April; 0145

  Sonarman Third Class Francis McGonagle was trying hard to stay awake. It was always the same on a midwatch: the agony of getting up at 2330, the zombie-like walk through the messdecks for some coffee or, occasionally, hot soup, the climb through darkened passageways to the Combat Information Center, and then the turnover in sonar control, where he and his teammate, Petty Officer Paul Barney, went through the motions of assuming the watch, checking the display equipment, adjusting their console chairs and the ambient lights, and then, finally, having burned up a grand total of twenty minutes of their four hour midwatch, came the realization that they had another three and half hours to go. Another cup of coffee to keep the heart turning over; five more minutes used up.

  “God, I hate this shit,” muttered Barney, blinking his eyes in the blue light of the CIC.

  As usual the air conditioning worked especially well at one in the morning; both men wore jackets over their dungarees to ward off the chill. Barney sat the active sonar console, which contained three large black and white video screens and four panels of control equipment. The active console was side by side with the passive array console, where McGonagle sat, rubbing his eyes for the tenth time in the past ten minutes.

  “Yeah, I hear that,” said McGonagle. “This coffee ain’t working, Man.”

  “Well, at least you have something to do,” said Barney. “I’m shut down.”

  McGonagle grunted. Recording the passive displays on surface diesel engines was not his idea of modern antisubmarine warfare. The night orders, passed on to them by the 20—24 watchstanders, were short and explicit: keep the active sonar in standby, and conduct a passive search in the acoustic frequency bands where marine diesel engines emitted. The night orders did not say what they were looking for, only that they were to cover the entire internal combustion engine frequency band, and record everything, from 2300 until 0600. The previous watch had focused the passive array into the correct frequency bands, and now there was nothing to do but watch the displays and ensure that recorders did not run out of paper.

  Sonar control in the Deyo was located in one module of the Combat Information Center, which was four times the size of the CIC in Goldsborough. The CIC in Deyo was compartmentalized into modules, with sonar control and the ASW weapons control center located on the port side of the CIC, which itself was only one deck down from the bridge. At general quarters there would have been twelve men in the sonar section alone, but for an independent steaming situation, there were only two watchstanders. One could have managed with the big, active sonar shut down; there were two to ensure that they both stayed awake.

  The active and the passive displays were all synthesized digital video which looked nothing like the older displays in Goldsborough. In place of the expanding ring of light that Goldsborough’s sonarmen studied, Deyo’s active sonar equipment produced what were called waterfall displays, dozens of parallel light lines streaming down a gray screen display that looked very much like a computer graphics depiction of a waterfall. The sonarmen were trained to pick out changes in the gradations and character of the lines which indicated the presence of a return echo. The passive displays were also waterfall screens, but the screen remained blank until the sensitive passive detection array computers actuall
y picked up a sound in the underwater environment, and began drawing a line down the screen. Each line represented both a discrete frequency of sound and a bearing, or direction from which the sound was emanating.

  Deyo’s sonarmen were trained to recognize certain frequencies, such as the unique line emitted by all Soviet Navy electrical equipment. Or the equally characteristic line generated by the Soviets’ older, six bladed submarine propellers. Unlike Goldsborough, Deyo’s main sonar armament was the passive array, which capitalized on the same principle that passive electronic warfare used: a signal could be heard well beyond the range at which that signal could tell its originator anything. Goldsborough’s sonar had to push a sound wave out into the water, and then wait for that wave, which was dissipating in power with every spherical meter it travelled from the sonar dome, to hit a contact, bounce off, and return to the sonar receiver. Since the return wave also dissipated with every meter it travelled back from the contact towards the ship, the initial hit had to be pretty strong to complete the cycle. Deyo, on the other hand, listened for the tiny sounds emitted into the water by a submarine’s own machinery or propellers. These sounds ranged in frequency from the very low frequency sound of a propeller beating in the water to the very high frequency, and inaudible to the human ear, squeal of a worn out bearing in a submarine’s pump. These sounds only had to go one way, dissipating in power as they went, of course, but detectable thereby at ranges many times that of active sonar. The target had to cooperate for this system to work, which meant that it had to make noise. Modern, nuclear submarines, with their steam plants and pumps and turbines, were ideal candidates for passive tracking. Diesel-electric submarines, running on DC motors powered by silent batteries, made almost no sound at all. Unless they ran their diesel engines.

  “Well, we’ve got at least two of these suckers out there,” said McGonagle, looking up at his waterfall, yawning again.

  There was a group of squiggly lines trailing down the paper on the recorder. The screen showed that the sounds being picked up were all similar in frequency, differing only in their bearing from the Deyo.

  “Looks like they’re all to the south of us, and pretty close in bearing,” observed Barney.

  “Yeah that’s probably the Mayport fishing fleet; one guy finds a school of fish or shrimp, and the others drift over to where he’s working and pretty soon you got a gaggle of ’em. There’s no way we’re going to break out individual contacts when they bunch up like that.”

  “You ever go over to Mayport and get a bushel of shrimp and boil ’em up in the backyard? They’re cheap as hell that way.”

  “Naw, I hate shrimp. I guess I’m allergic or something. Shellfish tear me up inside, Man.”

  “That’s too bad; makes for a good excuse to drink a pony of beer.”

  “I don’t need any excuses to drink beer; wouldn’t mind one right now.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” said Barney. “Look at all that shit, would you—”

  Barney slid his chair over on its tracks to study the passive display. The lines were more numerous now, drawing over one another now, creating a black smear on the recorder’s paper trace, and a confusing jumble of light lines on the video displays.

  “I’m gonna have to expand this display,” McGonagle complained.

  He made some adjustments, and shifted the frequency scale, which had the effect of separating each line being displayed into a quarter-inch of vertical space. Several new lines began to draw even as he opened up the display.

  “Look, there’s another one,” he pointed. “A lot bigger engine, too. Maybe there’s a merch coming out of the St. Johns, and we’re seeing it on the same bearing.”

  “What bearing is that?”

  “From us, 170 to the centroid of the sound sources.” Barney flipped down an intercom switch.

  “Surface, sonar, gimme a bearing to the mouth of the St. Johns.”

  He waited for a minute while the surface plotter in the adjacent module ran the bearing, and then said, “Sonar, aye, thanks.”

  “That ain’t the St. Johns, Man—river bears 195.”

  McGonagle squirmed in his chair. All the coffee was beginning to accumulate. He watched the lines drawing down the plot, beginning to merge again as the sound sources overlapped. He shook his head.

  “I can’t see anything useful in all that shit,” he said. He took off his intercom headset.

  “I gotta go take a piss. We’ll let the recorder run; the Chief can make out of that whatever he wants. I don’t even know why we’re doing this shit.”

  “You know how it is, Man; the officers gotta pretend we’re out here for some reason other than boring holes in the water.”

  “Right. Well, tell ‘em we found the fishing fleet for ’em.”

  “Roger that.”

  McGonagle took off his intercom earphones and departed for the head. Barney watched the waterfall displays, and studied the last set of lines to begin drawing. Deeper tones in that stream, with some heavy harmonics in the low frequency bands. Bigger engine, he thought. Much bigger than the Jimmie V1271’s they usually heard out here. He stood up out of his chair and flipped back along the paper trace coming out of the recorder. There. It had started up right there, after the other two began to draw. Maybe a harmonic set adding from the sound lines of the first two. Naw. Too big. He extracted a red pen from his shirt pocket, and made a little tick mark next to the timeline on the left side of the paper trace. McGonagle would probably laugh at him, but he’d mark it anyway. That way if something came up, he could always say he did in fact see it. They had, after all, said to record any variations in the normal sound patterns. This one was fading in and out of the other two sound groups, like a deeper bass note thrumming in and out of an audience’s audible consciousness. He rolled the paper trace back up to the current drawing, and sat back down to watch the maze of light lines squiggling down the video display like the streams from a leaking paint can cover. It was going to be a long freaking watch.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  USS Goldsborough, pierside, Mayport Naval Station, Wednesday, 30 April; 0900

  “OK, Gents, let’s hit it,” said Mike, breaking up the morning engineering staff meeting.

  The Chief Engineer, his machinist mate and boiler Chiefs, the ship repair superintendent, and the ship’s department heads rose from their chairs and filed out, refilling paper cups of coffee on the way. Mike and the Exec remained seated at the head of the wardroom table while the officers and chiefs left. They had been meeting for almost an hour, as they did every morning during the week of repairs in the main propulsion plant. Mike got up and brought the stainless steel coffee pot over to the table and refilled both their cups, put the pot back on the warmer, and sat down again, rocking back in his armchair at the head of the table. The sound of a pneumatic chipping hammer could be heard chattering up forward on the forecastle.

  “Well, XO, they gonna fix these main feed pumps or was this all smoke and mirrors?”

  Ben Farmer reviewed his notes.

  “An awful lot of wishful thinking going on,” he said. “They’re going through all the correct repair procedures and motions, but I haven’t heard anybody say they’ve found the problem in each pump and that they know for a fact what’s wrong and how to fix it. This is just a quick and dirty overhaul.”

  “Which is better than nothing, I suppose,” Mike said. “I’m almost surprised they’re doing it, given that Goldy’s going out next year.”

  “I think that’s because they’re never sure about decommissioning—remember Vietnam, when all those old cans from Willy Willy Twice were extended in ‘67 for six months to go on the gunline? They were still all there in ’73.”

  “Yeah, I suppose,” said Mike. “But this has to be costing megabucks—new twelve hundred pound steam seals, new regulating admission valves, all that level one welding to get access to all this shit, the X-rays after the welds, and then they’re not positive they know what’s wrong with the goddamn pumps!”r />
  “I think it’s a case of age, Cap’n: those hummers’ve been turning and burning for twenty three years. That’s main steam: 1275 psi and 980 degrees, pumping water at 1500 psi into a steaming boiler for two dozen years.”

  “Yeah, I reckon. Well, what else we got going on?”

  “We have the preparations for the next 3M inspection, which I’m guessing is coming up pretty soon. Chief Taggard from Squadron has been nosing around the Chiefs’ Mess, which usually means a ‘surprise’ 3M inspection is inbound. The Chiefs all have the word, but we’ll need an all-officers meeting on it. And then there’s a medical assist team coming Friday for a sanitation inspection, and that will be followed by the TyCom medical officer’s ‘surprise’ inspection within the next thirty days. And then—”

  “OK, OK—!” Mike threw up his hands in surrender. “That’s enough inspections and assist visits for one day. Christ! I wonder how the 10,000 ships we had in World War II ever managed to win the war without all these staff assist visits and inspections.”

  Mike blew on his coffee, as if that might improve the taste. The Navy had been buying progressively cheaper coffee over the past few years; some of it was genuinely awful.

  “I think it’s what miners call overburden,” said the Exec. “In those days they had one Admiral and his staff for every 200 ships in the Navy. Today we have one Admiral and his staff for every three ships. With no war on, we have to justify the existence of all those brass hats, which is where I think all these ‘command attention’ programs come from.”

  Mike sighed. The constant stream of rudder orders from the high command on how to run every aspect of a command’s daily life was the bane of every Commanding Officer’s existence, ashore and afloat.