Threat vector

by Michael Dimercurio

  "Pavel. I'm sorry I can't talk to you five, but transmitting from where you are now would not be advisable. I gave Novskoyy this disk in case you decided the mission smelled fishy. I told him that you almost certainly would. My submarine commanders are men, not monsters. They, particularly you, Pavel, would not take kindly to instructions to commit war crimes such as sinking hospital ships or unarmed cruise ships, especially if those orders came from outside the normal chain of command. So here I am, trying to tell you your orders. All I can do is explain your mission, Pavel. I can't carry it out for you.

  "As you know, President Dolovietz has hired some of the most brilliant consultants in Europe, or the world for that matter, in da Vinci consulting. Among their talents is the ability to intercept com-

  munications. E-mails. Video uplinks. Phone calls. You saw what they did to your house. Well, they did not confine their work to monitoring Ukrainian security. They have spent considerable resources attempting on behalf of the Ukraine to eavesdrop on the U.S. military and the U.S. government, on communications concerning Ukrainian security.

  "You might as well know what they found out. In a moment I will roll the tape that da Vinci intercepted. It is a bit too detailed to be a forgery. Watch these excerpts and I will continue my address to you at the end."

  The disk image changed. The hull of the American SSNX submarine Devilfish appeared in the background. A dark-haired woman in a khaki uniform walked across the gangway. The view shifted to the inside, where the dark-haired woman, obviously the captain of the submarine, spoke to the men in the control room. Subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen to translate her words. A chronometer rolling with the date and time showed that the video had been taken six weeks before. The scene shifted, the camera view, from the fin of the sub, depicting a helicopter. A dark-haired man was lowered to the hull and pulled inside. The video clip then rushed from scene to scene—the tactical brief with the officers, the run southward to intercept the mock Ukrainian surface fleet, the rendezvous with the fleet and the submarine captain's attack, the appearance of the mock Severodvinsk submarine and its sinking, and the outrunning of the Severodvinsk's torpedo. The clip ended after

  the final scene of the video conference between the sub captain and his commanding admirals.

  Grachev and Svyatoslov exchanged looks. The first officer's face had turned white. Kolov's face came back on the display.

  "Pavel, I'm back. As you can see, the Americans have plans for the battle fleet headed to the South Atlantic as well as the Severodvinsk escort submarine, which would have been you.

  "Your mission today is to sink the cruise ship carrying the brains of the U.S. Navy so that they can't plan an attack on our fleet, and then to withdraw farther into the Atlantic and sink anyone who comes looking for you, until it is safe to come back home, all to safeguard the fleet operation in the South Atlantic. It is certainly not palatable to contemplate sinking an unarmed cruise ship. I too would have my doubts. But know this—these are the men who would kill Ukrainians, by the tens of thousands, without a blink. What did the American sub commander say—'These orders come to me from the President of the United States?' Something about how he swore an oath of obedience. Well, Pavel, so did you. And so did I. I urge you to follow your orders, Pavel."

  "And now comes the hardest part of this little speech, Pavel. It is this. If you decide not to follow these orders, you won't be returning from this mission. You are already dead, so the sinking of the submarine Vepr will not be newsworthy. I have something to show you."

  Kolov held up his handheld computer, the video zooming in to see the image, an Internet newsfile,

  dated August 1, 2018—a week and a half in the future. The headline was vepr crew rescued, under it a subtitle reading, "Unidentified crew-members picked up by tramp steamer, treated in a hospital in Greece, sub commander awakens from coma and tells tale."

  "This is how we planned to bring you back to the Ukraine, to avoid giving your families heart attacks when you walk into your houses. You got out of the control compartment after all, but suffered exposure waiting on the surface, until a rust-bucket freighter picked you up, but the language barrier and the state of your health kept the Greek crew from repatriating you until you could be treated in Athens. You fly home to a hero's welcome."

  Kolov let that sink in, then frowned. "But if you do not accept the mission, Novskoyy has orders to sink the ship. The self-destruct charges in the ballast tanks have been changed from molecular explosives to plasma. There will be nothing left of Vepr bigger than your pinky finger if they detonate. This mission is so sensitive, and compromise of it could so thoroughly embarrass the Ukraine, that this could be no other way."

  Kolov swallowed, a sad look coming to his face.

  "I know you, Pavel, and I know what you are thinking. You want to find a way out of this. You have been confronted with the reality of this world, that morality is not always the rule of the day, that sometimes we do things we are not proud of, that we labor on through a world of unfairness. And I know if you were here you'd storm into my office

  and drop a letter on my desk. I wish it were that simple.

  "You have my apologies for putting you in this miserable situation, Pavel. I wish it could be any other way. We were going to task the Tigr with this mission instead of your Vepr, but you are the best, Pavel. Only you will have the guts and the brains to come home from this mission. So do your work and come home, Pavel." Kolov waved the computer. "The headlines await you."

  The video clip ended abruptly. Grachev stared at the screen, knowing that Svyatoslov was staring at him. Grachev frowned at Svyatoslov and said, "I'm not stupid. I know when I'm boxed in."

  ships get underway from a spot on the pier north of her submarine. The destroyers had done impressive back-full/ahead-flank maneuvers. One second they were tied up to the piers with their flags hanging slack. The next they burst into motion, both ships sounding loud and long blasts on their horns while pulling simultaneously backward into the channel. Even their surface search radar dishes rotated together in perfect synchronization as the ships maneuvered ahead and turned together. They shrank in the distance, growing dark gray in the hazels they neared the turning point. They left behind the Elizabeth River Channel of Norfolk Harbor and entered Thimble Shoals Channel on the long approach to the gap in the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

  As they moved out of sight, the Rickover made its pier departure maneuver, and if the destroyer underway had been impressive, the mobilization of the Rickover was positively thrilling. An ear-shattering blast from the ship's horn resounded across the water. The massive ship with its symmetrical tall pyramidal superstructure backed astern into the channel with astonishing acceleration. The flags flew toward the bow from the wind of its rearward passage, and when the vessel was a ship length into the channel, the sound of it vibrating was heard over the water, the ship drawing to a halt as sudden as its backward motion. It sat there suspended in the channel for a bare instant, then rushed ahead, its bow pointed directly at the concrete pier it had just left. In what seemed certain catastrophe, the ship neared the razor-sharp pier, but then in the

  final moment responded to the rudder. The bow came around, the amidships portion of the cruiser sliding by the concrete pier and leaving it behind. It accelerated ahead of its white boiling wake. The flags now blew straight out from their masts toward the stern as the ship grew distant, then majestically rotated to show its full elegant profile and sailed beyond view.

  Petri sighed, knowing the departure of the Devilfish would have none of the fanfare and glamour of the surface ship underway. As she turned, she saw the two tugboats tied up at the submarine's bow and stern, there to pull her away from the pier gently. The ship was barely able to maneuver close to the pier, which would rip open her fiberglass nose cone. Petri had been the executive officer of a cruiser of the same class as the Admiral Hyman Rickover, and she realized she missed the thrill of a back-full/ahead-flank underway. If she had stayed
with the surface force, she would be a captain now, a commanding officer. Not just an acting captain, but a real captain.

  She turned to look at the hull of the Devilfish, her nostalgia and envy for the cruiser vaporizing. In an odd way, this ship had a way of pulling feelings from deep inside her, making her much more attached to it than she had ever been to any of her previous ships. She might not be Devilfish's permanent captain, but she couldn't love the ship any more than she did. The hull was a deep black, the surface of her shiny from the sharklike foam skin covering the steel, an anechoic coating, to absorb rather than reflect the pings of active sonar and

  trapping noise from the inside of the ship, making the ship a stealth vessel, at least to the kind of sensors still prevalent in most of the combat navies of the world. Her conning tower, her sail, was much different from the vertical fins of the other submarines at the pier. Devilfish's was a teardrop, the same kind of sail that the Russians had built in decades past, the fin leaning far forward, streamlined over every surface. Otherwise, the hull was an unremarkably shaped fat cigar, the width of her so great that the skin where she penetrated the water was gently sloped. The nose surface curved into the water forward, the stern curving more slowly into the black murky water of the slip aft. There was a stretch of water, then the rudder towering out of the water, seemingly unconnected to the rest of the sub. On top of the tall rudder was an oblong teardrop-shaped pod resembling a wing tank on an airplane, housing several sonar systems. Less than 10 percent of the ship was visible from the surface, her bowplanes and tail section lurking underwater, out of view.

  Forward of the sail a large hatch was latched open. Two hatches were open aft of the sail. The lines were singled up to the deck cleats, the long gantry holding the shore-power cables reaching over the stern. The cables were now disconnected, the cable gantry slowly withdrawing toward the pier. Petri walked to the end of the pier, studying the current and water level. On the deck of the submarine, two officers dressed like her in short-sleeved khakis climbed from the hatch aft of the sail, then walked toward her over the gangway. The

  stiff one, Acting Executive Officer Paul Mander-son, so far had seemed to be the strong, silent type. If he had objections to working for a female captain—an acting captain at that—he kept them to himself. Manderson and the other officer, Dietz, were talking to each other in tones Petri couldn't hear. They came up to her and saluted. She returned the salute. Manderson spoke first.

  "Afternoon, ma'am. The ship is ready in all respects to get underway. All department heads have signed off on the pre-underway checklist. No major discrepancies."

  Except we're missing our captain, she thought.

  "Very well, XO," she said in a clipped voice. She turned to Artificial Intelligence Officer Bryan Dietz. "Officer of the Deck, your report?"

  "Yes, Captain," Dietz said quietly. "The reactor is in the power range with a normal full-power lineup running two slow-speed reactor circulation pumps port, two starboard. Propulsion is on the main motor, spinning the propulsion turbine generators with power shunted to the idle resistor bank, ready to answer all bells. Cyclops battlecontrol system is nominal with neural network online and self-checks in continuous mode. Torpedo room is secure with all weapons in cold shutdown, all tubes rigged for Defcon three. Navigation fix is onboard from the GPS NavSat, confirmed on commercial channels. Ship's inertial navigation is nominal and tracking. The security scuba swim is complete and signed off, no suspicious or unusual objects detected on the hull. Maneuvering watch is stationed. All lines are singled up. We've received this mes-

  sage from Unified Submarine Command granting permission to get underway." Dietz handed Petri his WritePad computer for her signature. "Tugs are tied up fore and aft, forward unit bow to bow and aft unit bow to beam. Track is laid out of Norfolk. PIM is loaded into Cyclops." Dietz took a breath. "Request to raise and lower masts as necessary. Request to rotate and radiate on the radar. Request to remove the gangway. And request permission to get underway, ma'am."

  Petri wrote her name in the WritePad's signature block. He voice was deep and authoritative:

  "Officer of the Deck, raise and lower masts as necessary. Rotate and radiate." She lifted an eyebrow. "Wait on removing the gangway and getting underway, OfPsa'deck, until we're all aboard, if you don't mind."

  "Raise and lower, rotate and radiate, Offsa'-deck, aye." Dietz snapped to attention, whipped Petri a salute, and spun on his heel to the ship, Manderson following.

  Petri looked around at the pier one last time, then climbed onto the gangway and across the black water of the slip to the hull of the ship, her black combat boots squishing softly into the sharkskin coating.

  "Devilfish, arriving!" rang out over the pier, the announcement that the commanding officer had come aboard. She felt a momentary pang at missing Kelly McKee, but swallowed hard and walked to the sail, where a temporary chain ladder hung from the bridge cockpit.

  "Captain to the bridge!" she yelled, climbing the

  rungs carefully to the top of the sail. Over the bridge coaming she could see Dietz wearing a khaki jacket and binoculars, his petty officer lookout behind him along with another petty officer phone talker. Petri climbed over the coaming, noticing that the men kept their eyes averted as she hoisted her long legs over the bulkhead. She stood on the grating leading below to the forward compartment upper level, then stepped the four steps up the flying bridge, which was just three temporary stainless-steel handrails bolted to the top of the sail. From here Petri was twelve meters above the water of the slip, a tall crow's-nest vantage point overlooking the harbor. To the right, on the other side of the cruiser berths, the cruise ship could be seen getting ready to depart. The Princess Dragon would proceed down the channel with Devilfish bringing up the rear.

  "Officer of the Deck, remove the gangway," Petri commanded, accepting binoculars and a handheld VHF radio from the lookout. She put the binoculars to her eyes and looked northward to see the aircraft carrier piers, where the tugboats were swarming around the hull of the USS John Paul Jones. Jones would be putting to sea last, several hours after Devilfish steamed past. Once in unrestricted waters, with the carrier air group's F/A-18s, F-22s, and F-45s, the cruise ship with the brass embarked would be as secure as a baby in its mother's arms.

  A crane on the pier rumbled with diesel-engine growls as it pulled the gangway up and off the hull.

  THREAT VECTOR 277

  When it was gone, Petri could almost feel the pull of the sea on the deck beneath her boots.

  "Officer of the Deck," she said, feeling her heart pounding in excitement, "get underway."

  "Get underway, Officer of the Deck, aye, Captain." Dietz said it as if she'd asked him to pass the salt and he was simply handing it over. He hoisted a bullhorn to his mouth and announced to the deckhands, "Take in line one! Take in three! Take in four, five, and six!"

  Petri watched as the deckhands hustled over the deck, pulling the heavy Manila lines tossed over by the seamen from the tender ship working at the massive bollards on the pier. The lines were coiled on the deck and packed into line lockers, open cubbyholes in the hull with heavy hatches. Finally all lines but number two were aboard. The diesels of the tug engines came to life, their loud roaring making normal conversation impossible. Dietz looked at his watch, glanced at his WritePad computer's chart display, and hoisted the bullhorn again, one of his hands on a lever resembling the throttle of a steam engine.

  "Take in line two!" he commanded the deck. When the line was disconnected from the bollard, he turned to the lookout, who had climbed to the flying bridge next to Petri to hoist the flags on Dietz's command, and shouted, "Shift colors!" Devilfish was officially underway. The lookout up on top of the sail next to Petri hoisted the Stars and Stripes on a three-meter tall stainless-steel flagpole, the flag slack in the calm of the afternoon. Next to the American flag, the lookout raised the

  flag of the Unified Submarine Force, the pirate flag with the force's motto in Gothic script. A ha
lf second after ordering the flags raised, Dietz pulled the lever in the forward bulkhead of the cockpit, and the ship's horn emitted a painfully loud booming blast, the horn sounding for a full eight seconds. While the horn sounded, the ship drifted slightly away from the pier. The horn stopped, and Dietz said into a VHF radio, "Forward tug back one third. Aft tug back one third." The tugs' engines roared, pulling the eight-thousand-ton submarine away from the pier at dead slow. The black water of the slip gradually opened up between the hull and the pier.

  "Forward tug all stop. Aft tug all stop," Dietz called into the VHF radio, stopping the units now that the ship was off the pier. "Helm, all ahead one third, right full rudder," he said into the bridge communication box's microphone. The reply rang out loudly in the cramped cockpit: "All ahead one third, right full rudder, Bridge, Helm, aye, throttle to ahead one third, rpm rising to three zero. Ship is at ahead one third, my rudder is right full."

  Dietz replied casually, "Very well, Helm." The tug engines quieted back to idle as Devilfish moved slowly ahead, the water of the slip churning up slightly on either side of the fat black hull.

  "Bridge, Helm, rudder is right full, no course given."

  "Steady zero zero five," Dietz said. He leaned out over the cockpit coaming, making sure the rudder was turning right, then pulled his head back in and glanced down at his chart, then up at the seen-

  ery. The pier behind them began to rotate until the ship came around to the north. The deck vibrated underneath Petri's boots, a motion of pure power, a deeply satisfying sensation.

  "Are we missing anyone?" Pacino asked Paully White. They were hurrying down a passageway from his stateroom on the way to the continuation of the arrival party for the officers.