by Cliff Happy
Brodie looked through the Rig for Dive Status book to make certain all compartments had been checked and reported their readiness to submerge. Brodie then glanced at Ryan Walcott. “Ryan, do you have a solid position fix?”
“Aye, Captain,” the navigation officer replied. “We’ve passed through the Tsushima Straits and are entering the Sea of Japan.”
Brodie turned back toward the control center where COB was standing by expecting to dive the boat at any moment as he’d been for several hours. Brodie pulled down a microphone. “Sonar this is Brodie, any contacts?”
Kristen watched, sensing there was a reason for Brodie’s sudden seriousness. Certainly he was not concerned about being attacked. The Seawolf had been on the surface for half the day and would have been photographed by several spy satellites, plus numerous small boats including what Chief Miller reported as a Russian surveillance ship in the area. All would have seen the submarine riding on the surface.
“A Russkie picked us up when we came out of Sasebo and has been keeping us in radar range ever since,” Miller reported.
“What’s a Russian doing out here?” Graves asked Brodie.
Brodie hung up the microphone and whispered to his friend with an amused smile, “I guess the news that the Cold War was over was a bit premature.” Brodie raised the scope and did a quick turn in preparation for submerging the ship, then snapped the handles up and spoke to Terry, who was on duty in the control room, “Officer of the deck, submerge the ship.”
Terry responded as he turned to COB, “Submerge the ship, aye, sir.” Terry then addressed COB, “Diving officer, submerge the ship.”
COB depressed the microphone button on the 1MC. “Dive, dive, dive,” he announced and then sounded the dive alarm, followed by another announcement, “Dive, dive.” COB’s hands were already running over the ballast control panel and Kristen heard the ballast tanks opening forward and knew they were also opening aft as well.
Seawater rushed into the main ballast tanks, making the boat heavier at the same time Brodie fed instructions to Terry, “Ten degrees down angle on all planes. Diving officer make your depth six-zero feet.” His commands were immediately echoed as he again pulled the microphone down from the overhead. “Sonar, this is Brodie, report all new contacts.”
There was a short pause before Miller reported three more submerged contacts, “They are all at a pretty good distance, Captain. We should be able to lose them no sweat.”
Brodie returned the microphone to the overhead and thus far he’d not even glanced her way once. But she felt she was clearly missing something. They’d stayed on the surface long enough to be noticed by anyone with even a passing interest in where they were heading, and he hadn’t seemed to care in the least. But now, the possibility they were being followed had become his main concern.
None of it really made sense to her, but she trusted him implicitly and knew he had a reason. Their lengthy stay on the surface had not been so the two of them could watch the sun go down, she was sure of it. He’d kept the Seawolf exposed on the surface with a specific purpose in mind. Brodie checked with the radio room who reported multiple search radars on the surface.
“How many?” Brodie asked. “What’s their bearing and wavelength.”
The information was reported and Kristen watched Brodie and Ryan Walcott plot the bearings on a chart. Meanwhile, COB made some fine adjustments to the trim tanks, making the boat perfectly level prior to diving any further. At the same time, Graves focused on having each compartment checked for any unexpected trouble before they risked going deeper.
Kristen waited calmly out of the way, watching, learning, and admiring the way Brodie managed everything in the control room with apparent ease, processing the mass of information coming from the boat’s sensors and his officers. Again he called the sound room, “Sonar, this is Brodie. I need an oceanographic report.” Kristen knew this meant he wanted a report on the water around the boat including thermoclines, increasing or decreasing salinity levels, and ocean currents at various depths.
“Skipper, we’ve got a thermocline at four hundred feet and another at six hundred, over,” Miller reported.
Kristen could feel the unease growing in the control room. Just a few minutes earlier everyone had simply been puzzled about the reason for staying on the surface for so long. Now everyone realized their captain knew something none of them were yet privy to.
Brodie finally glanced at Kristen, his expression hard; the same uncompromising mask he always wore in the control center. He tapped his right ear with his hand and then pointed her toward the sonar shack. Kristen understood what he wanted and moved forward. As she did so, Brodie ordered the towed array reeled out.
Throughout the boat, men were going on about their daily routine, unaware that something ominous was at hand. She reached the sound room and quietly entered.
“Good evening, Lieutenant,” Miller welcomed her curiously. “What can I do for you?” He mopped his sweaty brow, his skin clammy and perhaps a little paler than usual.
“The captain would like me to have a listen, Senior Chief,” she answered easily, aware that the sonar shack was still an enlisted man’s domain, and she would always be an interloper. But to her surprise, Miller didn’t offer any sign of displeasure at having her arrive in his kingdom. Instead, he winced slightly at some indigestion then snapped his fingers at the sailor manning the spectrum analyzer.
“Step aside, Anderson,” he ordered. “Let the lady have a seat.”
Kristen slipped past the Chief, noticing the food stains on his belly and smelling the chilidog-flavored belch he let out. She wrinkled her nose slightly as she took a seat at the spectrum analyzer. She made some adjustments to the equipment, having no idea what Brodie was looking for or expected her to hear. She then heard his voice over the 1MC, “Rig the ship for ultra-quiet.”
The current sonar watch team hadn’t worked with her before, but they were just as curious about what was going on as she was. Then the submarine began to dive slowly as they reduced speed. Normally the boat’s quiet speed was twenty knots, but Brodie ordered a speed reduction to five knots. At such a speed the Seawolf was quieter than the natural ocean sounds around her. But it also caused the towed sonar array to angle down sharply, sinking significantly lower than the Seawolf.
They leveled off at three hundred and fifty feet. At that depth, the lengthy towed array actually dipped below the thermocline at four hundred feet, and she realized this was his plan all along. He wanted to know what was happening beneath them. The thermocline below reflected noise energy and could potentially hide a submarine trailing them. Of course, why Brodie suspected a submarine might be following them she had no idea.
Kristen refined her search, focusing her entire system on the towed array as the Seawolf leveled off. She had to wait a few minutes for the lengthy towed array, now trailing them by nearly a mile, to sink below the thermocline. Kristen closed her eyes, concentrating, clearing her mind of every distraction and focused all of her significant mental energy on the sound in her headphones.
Chief Miller grimaced slightly and pounded his chest lightly to get out another burp. Kristen glanced over her shoulder and held a finger to her lips, “Shh!”
Several other sonarmen cringed, expecting Miller to reply with an angry retort to the “Nub.” Instead, he offered an apologetic hand wave. “Sorry,” he whispered.
Kristen listened intently, her fingertips gently moving the joystick to focus on a different bearing, sweeping ever so gently back and forth across the Seawolf’s baffles. Kristen felt the eyes of Miller on her, and she could sense his bulk standing just behind her. She ignored him, focusing her attention on her scan.
“Submerged contact, bearing one-eight-seven,” she announced abruptly as she heard what she took to be cooling pump noises. She glanced at Miller, half expecting him to argue, but instead, he immediately reported the contact to the bridge.
“Con, sonar. Submerged contact on the towed array,
bearing one-eight-seven. Designate contact as Sierra Nine, over.”
The other sonar operators turned their attention to the bearing she’d reported. Kristen made a few fine adjustments and reported, “He’s below the thermocline. Faint plant noises…”
Miller checked the printer, expecting it to spit out a contact report at any moment, but it stayed silent as the other operators searched. One of the other operators nodded his head, hearing the noise. “I got something on the same bearing, definitely a submerged contact in our baffles, Chief.”
Kristen realized none of this could possibly be coincidental. Brodie had known they were being followed. The question she couldn’t answer was why he’d allowed their tail to stick around this long. He could’ve submerged hours earlier and shaken off the trailing submarine then. She leaned forward, as if willing the hydrophones to give her more information, then turned and reported, “Sierra Nine has seven blades, classify target as Akula fast-attack boat.”
“A fucking Akula?” Miller asked in disbelief and checked the printer. Thus far the computer had been unable to do much more than verify the trailing contact. “Are you certain?”
Kristen turned back to her console and nodded. “Yes, I’m certain.” She bristled slightly at the realization he still doubted her. But a moment later the computer finally finished classifying the target, and she heard the printer come to life.
A few seconds later, after the computer had verified her conclusion, he reported the contact to the control room. “Con sonar, classify Sierra Nine as Akula III Russian fast-attack boat, range about two thousand yards. Contact is below the thermocline.”
“Con, sonar,” Kristen heard Brodie. “Keep your ears open, we’re coming around. Let me know what he does.”
“Aye, Skipper,” Miller replied and leaned over her. “Stay on him, Lieutenant,” he whispered.
Kristen wrinkled her nose at the pong of chilidogs and cigarettes, but she put her disdain aside as the Seawolf began a slow turn to starboard. The faint sound was intermittent now as the towed array swung around slowly. Just how Brodie knew there would be an Akula stalking them, Kristen could only guess, but this was clearly no coincidence.
The Akula III was the latest and deadliest Russian fast-attack boat with a thick double hull even a MK-48 ADCAP would have a hard time penetrating. The CIA had reported the sale of three Akula IIs to India a year earlier. But she’d seen recent reports that the Russians, even though the submarines had been built for the Indian Navy, pulled out of the deal at the last minute. Since then, the CIA had released no new information Kristen was aware of indicating where the three submarines had ended up.
Kristen lost the Russian, then picked him up a minute later and nodded her head in confirmation of the earlier report. “He’s definitely an Akula,” she reported confidently. “Classic plant noises.”
The three sonar operators looked at one another as if she might be joking, and one asked, “Just what is a ‘classic’ Akula plant noise, Miss?”
Kristen answered without looking over at them. “Starting with their Akula II boats, the Russians started using a 190 Megawatt OK-650B pressurized reactor with liquid metal instead of water to transfer the reactor heat to the steam turbines. The liquid metal allows for extreme reactor temperatures, although it’s a bit unstable by our standards. Anyway, this increased heat requires powerful cooling pumps.” She glanced over at them briefly, finishing the lesson. “The water being pushed by those pumps was the loud flushing sound we heard.”
One of the sonar men leaned next to his companion beside him and whispered softly so no one would hear him, “Did she just make that up?”
The other man shrugged his shoulders, not certain.
They were both rewarded with gentle slaps on the back of their heads by Miller. “Get back to work you two,” he snapped. He then reported to Brodie that the Akula III following them had not detected the Seawolf’s turn.
“Just the same, keep your ears on,” Brodie ordered. “I’m taking her down, Chief.”
The Seawolf was now moving south in the same direction they’d come from, and for the next two hours Brodie conducted a methodical sensor search of the entire area around the submarine, making certain they weren’t being followed. The boat moved through the depths, changing course constantly and following a straight and level course only long enough for the towed array to straighten out, the sonar shack to search the area, before repeating the entire evolution over again. Finally, after a lengthy detailed search, Brodie was satisfied, and the Seawolf settled on a course due south, away from the Sea of Japan where everyone had assumed they were heading.
The boat stayed on ultra-quiet operational status, and all off duty officers were summoned to the wardroom. Kristen, with a splitting headache after over two hours of supreme concentration, gave up her seat and slipped out of the sonar shack. She headed for the wardroom and ran into Charles Horner along the way. “What’s going on, Charlie?” Kristen whispered as they took a down ladder to the lower deck. As the communications officer, he saw virtually everything sent electronically to the Seawolf, so he always knew what was going on.
But not this time.
He shook his head. “I don’t have a clue. The captain was called to the communications center on Sasebo for three different classified teleconferences yesterday, and it was after those he came back with our sailing orders.”
Kristen knew it was useless to speculate, but one thing was certain—their purpose for staying on the surface for so long was to make everyone who might be keeping tabs on the Seawolf believe she was heading back to resume monitoring the Korean crisis. But for those now looking for the Seawolf in the Sea of Japan, they would be disappointed. They’d already passed back through the Tsushima Straits and were entering the East China Sea, moving further and further away from the crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
Kristen entered the wardroom and found that everyone else was just as puzzled as she. Before leaving port, they were told they were returning to the Sea of Japan. But now it was clear this had been disinformation for whatever spies were working against the Americans in Sasebo. Kristen came in, thanking Terry for holding her seat for her, and sat down as Gibbs entered with some hot coffee and tea.
The conversation around the table was devoted to speculation about where they were going. The reigning theory was the south coast of Hainan Island where the Chinese Navy had their underground submarine base. The US Navy had kept the comings and goings of the base under constant surveillance with at least one fast-attack boat always off the coast. Kristen preferred not to speculate, having never guessed the entire time she’d been on the sail with Brodie that it had all been part of an elaborate ruse.
The door opened and Brodie came in with the XO right behind him. Brodie was unusually abrupt and all business. There was no pleasant hello or any of his usual repartee. Instead, Graves clicked on the overhead projector while Brodie connected a laptop computer to the video port for the projector and interactive screen. Gibbs stepped out discreetly, apparently wise enough to know that whatever was about to be discussed was more information than he wanted. Kristen felt a sudden increase in the tension around the table as Brodie sat down and started the briefing with a large satellite image of the Sea of Japan and the Korean Peninsula.
“Okay, let’s get down to it,” Brodie began. “Currently in Japan or in the waters around Korea, there are three carrier battle groups, seven fast-attack boats, three guided missile boats, and two marine amphibious readiness groups.” So far he’d said nothing they didn’t already know. “This represents the greatest concentration of US Naval power anywhere in the world as of this moment. To achieve this massing of combat power, we’ve stripped forces from other theaters, sending carriers from the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf to reinforce the Pacific Fleet.”
Brodie then gestured toward Kristen, but there was no hint of a smile or the slightest familiarity in his voice or eyes. “Thanks to our own Lieutenant Whitaker, the National Command Auth
ority is now convinced this recent atomic saber rattling by the North Koreans has nothing to do with national pride or a desire to reunite the two Koreas. But is in fact a ploy to secure permanent energy concessions from the Russian Federation.” The map changed to a greater map of Asia, centered on Russia.
“It’s believed this entire façade was orchestrated by our Russian friends in order to draw our attention, as well as our carrier battle groups, away from somewhere else and force us to do exactly what we have done, leave the rest of our vital interests stripped of their normal naval support.” Brodie paused for a moment, letting everyone consider this possibility.
“Now, the information Lieutenant Whitaker was able to provide after her brief time with the late Dr. Dar-Hyun Choi, was corroborated by a CI working for the CIA in Kaliningrad. The CI has since been arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service, which is the latest name for our old friends the KGB…”
“Excuse me, sir?” Martin interrupted.
“Yes, Mister Martin?”
“What’s a CI?” Martin asked nervously.
“Confidential Informant.”
Brodie advanced to another image. It was a satellite photograph of a naval base. “For those of you youngsters who missed the Cold War, this is the Russian base at Polyarny, near Murmansk on the Barents Sea.” He directed their attention to several slender images of submarines tied up alongside the piers. “This image was taken a year ago and shows the majority of their submarine forces tied up and rusting alongside the wharf. It gives us a pretty good image of the various subs the Russians have built over the last thirty years.” Brodie then used his finger to direct their attention toward several different types of Soviet Era submarines. “We’ve got a smattering of about everything they ever built here. There are some old Echoes, Deltas, a handful of Oscar guided missile boats, as well as some old Sierra flight Ones and Twos.”