by Cliff Happy
Chapter Twenty One
USS Seawolf, The Gulf of Oman
Kristen paused at the hatchway leading into the control room before reporting to the sonar shack. The Seawolf had recently gone to ultra-quiet as they began their stealth approach to the Strait of Hormuz in hopes of reaching the area of the Iranian minefield undetected. Kristen knew of no one on board—except for maybe Ski—who was looking for a fight. Everyone else was hoping they’d be able to slip through undetected, but she wasn’t betting on it.
Kristen looked around the control room, hoping to see Brodie before she reported to the sonar shack. She had no deep foreboding of doom or any apprehension of their impending fate. Instead, she just wanted to see him. It was foolish perhaps, and her rational side chastised her for such emotional foolhardiness, but she was finished with ignoring her heart’s desires for the sake of her career. She’d spent years alone and wouldn’t be satisfied returning to that self-imposed isolation.
She saw COB, Graves, Andy Stahl, Ryan Walcott, and the rest of the control room crew at their stations, and the tracking parties looked busy already. But she saw no sign of Brodie. Disappointed, she lingered for a moment and was about to turn back toward the sonar shack when the door to the sound room opened and Brodie appeared, stepping into the passageway. She’d hoped to just see him briefly but now nearly ran into him.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said automatically as she stepped aside.
“Are the drones ready to go?” he asked as he paused in the passageway, facing her.
He was as flawless as ever, his crooked nose and undisciplined hair drawing her in irresistibly. Tensions were running high on board, yet he looked relaxed and confident. For herself, prior to seeing him, she’d felt calm and ready for what was to come, but now—in front of him—she was tongue tied.
“Yes, sir,” she managed. “I was just about to…” she motioned toward the sonar shack door on the other side of him.
“Yes, of course,” he answered but didn’t move aside. “Did you manage to get any rest?”
It was a foolish question. Kristen had managed a quick shower after preparing the drones and had just made it to the sonar shack. “I’m as rested as anyone else.”
He lingered thoughtfully.
“How far are we from the Strait?” she asked, not quite ready to part.
“We’re in the approaches with Oman maybe thirty miles to the port side and the Islamic Republic off the starboard bow,” he said. “I guess you’d better get in there,” he suggested and stepped aside.
“I guess I better had,” she replied wishing there wasn’t a vast chasm between them filled with protocol and regulations that prevented her from saying to him everything she’d told him a thousand times in her dreams.
“Good hunting, Lieutenant,” he said formally as he opened the door.
“You too, Captain.”
Kristen stepped into the sonar shack and once inside paused, she took several deep, cleansing breaths, exhaling slowly each time, physically trying to purge her thoughts of him. She would need to be on top of her game. The entire crew was counting on the sonar operators to help guide them safely through the expected line of patrol craft guarding the approaches to the Strait, and they deserved her at her very best and not preoccupied by quixotic thoughts.
Senior Chief Miller, an unlit cigarette in his mouth, stood behind the classification stack where Greenberg was working. Hicks was on the broadband and Martinez on the narrowband. Goodman was at the far end on the spectrum analyzer, and Fabrini stood beside Miller. Five other sonar operators were jammed into the claustrophobic space behind them, anxious to lend a hand.
Miller looked at her, sweat dripping from his brow, his ill-fitting uniform already stained with sweat. He mopped his brow with his ever-present rag and nudged Petty Officer Fabrini, who turned and saw her. Fabrini nodded a quiet greeting and in turn nudged Goodman, who looked up from his station. Upon seeing her, Goodman exhaled thankfully and without hesitation removed his headphones and stood, emptying the seat for her, looking somewhat relieved to have her take over. “We were beginning to think you weren’t going to make it, Lieutenant,” Goodman said. “We’ve been trying to lock down a contact for the last hour.”
The room was literally filled with flesh. The men between her and the spectrum analyzer pressed themselves back against the rear bulkhead, sucking in their guts to make room for Kristen to pass. Among the small group of sonar operators on the Seawolf, her reputation was now well established, and every man among them wanted her listening and searching for the threats lurking in the waters around them. Thoughts about her not being welcome because she was a woman were long forgotten. She was one of them now.
Kristen squeezed past everyone and took a seat. She buckled her seatbelt, forcing herself to relax and then pulled on her headphones. Her hands moved expertly over the controls as she moved through the various contacts. There were at least a dozen large surface contacts, but they were all making ten to fifteen knots and had already been classified as civilian ships fleeing the fight everyone knew was coming. They were tracking three other surface contacts, however, two of which had been classified as small patrol craft and another, larger surface contact, was still far away and had yet to be classified, but the men in the shack were leaning toward it being an Iranian frigate.
“Any submerged contacts yet?” Kristen asked, knowing the Iranian frigate would stand no chance against the Seawolf. They could dispatch the vessel at their leisure.
“Not yet,” Fabrini whispered. “But they’re out there.”
Kristen went through a full sweep in all directions, searching various wavelengths and becoming familiar with the sounds in the steadily narrowing waterway leading to the Strait. She didn’t worry about the surface contact, which was child’s play for the Seawolf, but instead searched the depths, knowing they weren’t the only hunters in these waters.
Also, in addition to potential enemies, the HMS Audacious was somewhere nearby. As was standard operating procedure for American and British boats, there’d been no attempt made for the two boats to coordinate their effort. Both the Americans and the British considered their fast-attack boats to be lone hunters, and their submarine warfare doctrine didn’t lend itself to hunting in packs as some navies did. But Kristen knew she would need to be extra careful about any classification until she could guarantee it wasn’t the Audacious, since a MK48 torpedo wouldn’t be so discriminating.
For three hours Kristen and the other sonar operators worked diligently, searching the water around them. A tremendous number of competing manmade sounds reached them through the waves. The Persian Gulf was a busy place with ships, drilling platforms, and construction equipment anchored to the sea floor and on barges all along the coastlines. All of this machinery radiated noise into the water, and these sound waves were picked up by the Seawolf’s elaborate sensory equipment. But these noises also caused “clutter” and could mask a more ominous noise such as a torpedo tube flooding or a propeller chopping through the sea.
So Kristen had to exert all of her energy into filtering out these other noises as she searched the sea around them. With the depth of the water growing ever shallower, the mile long towed sonar array was retracted to prevent it dragging along the bottom, and now the area behind the Seawolf was vulnerable even more than usual. Making matters worse, the channel narrowed as it became shallower, so the room to maneuver decreased, making it more difficult for the Seawolf to change course and clear her baffles.
To her left, the men were coming closer to identifying a faint contact. She could feel the anxiety growing when the boat went to general quarters as more and more contacts were identified. In the back of her mind she could see the tracking parties already working the contacts, preparing possible firing solutions. But she could not spend precious seconds thinking about anything other than what she was hearing. She’d been fooled several times already by some of the manmade transients around them but had failed to pick up any real threat s
o far.
Her fingertips moved gently over the controls, her eyes closed as she slowly swept the area, trying to tune out everything else around her as the men to her left classified a recent contact as a fast-attack submarine. They were still working the range to this potential threat when, as she was running her search sweep across the waves, her finger paused as she heard another faint sound ahead of them. Like the previous contact, it was weak and hidden in the clutter of noises coming out of the Gulf.
“I’ve got one, Chief,” she whispered. “Bearing zero-two-three. Possible submerged contact.” Kristen immediately narrowed her search and made a few fine adjustments. She heard Miller notify the control room while the men on the stacks began processing her new contact. She wanted to stay with this one, but Miller wanted her to keep searching. Meanwhile the computer recognized the telltale noise signature of the previous contact and designated it Akula Four.
The Seawolf changed course slightly to the west in hopes of slipping silently between the two contacts while Kristen continued to work, feeling the sweat on her forehead and lower back. The captain, despite his orders allowing him to engage targets at will, was trying to get past the two submarines undetected in hopes of avoiding battle. Their orders were to find the Borei before she could launch, and if he could do so without firing on anyone else, that was what he intended to do.
As the Seawolf turned westward, Kristen shifted her search to the port side passive hull arrays, wanting to check as much of their baffles as possible in hopes of hearing anyone lurking behind the Seawolf. The others provided information on the Akula and the—as of yet—undetermined second submerged contact designated Sierra Six.
She found nothing at all trailing them but knew this didn’t mean no one was there; it only meant she hadn’t heard them. She turned her sweep back around, moving through the entire search fan of the Seawolf’s acoustical suite.
“Transients!” she heard Martinez announce in an excited whisper. “Sounds like a hatch slamming on contact Sierra Six, classify contact as definite submerged submarine.” At almost the same time they came up with range data on the first contact.
Miller reported everything to the control room as he received it. “Range to Akula Four, eleven thousand yards, course and speed undetermined,” he reported, suggesting the Akula, operating on a very low power level, might be hovering near the bottom and waiting to ambush someone. “Transients from Sierra Six. Verify contact as submerged contact now bearing zero-five-eight.”
Kristen knew the information they were feeding the control room was being used to create and update firing solutions that would then be fed into the weapons loaded in the eight torpedo tubes. It was almost surreal, like some high stakes video game. Except the weapons were real and the results deadly.
Kristen handed off the second contact to the other three for classification while she resumed searching for other potential threats. Other sonar crews were jammed into the room and multiple other operators were wearing headphones and offering advice, and all the noise was becoming a distraction. She tried to tune the men out but some were even arguing with one another over the proper classification of the latest contact, and it finally reached a point she turned in her chair to face them. “Shh!” Kristen ordered, putting a finger to her lips.
“Sorry, Miss,” Miller said, his hand playing with a lighter for his cigarette but having thus far managed to resist lighting it so as not to disturb her.
Kristen saw the others quiet down, properly cowed, and she turned back to her display. Almost immediately she heard something new. “Surface contact,” she whispered. “Bearing zero-three-six, twin screws turning at about eight knots. It’s faint and sounds far off.”
Miller reported the surface contact to the control room as she and the others continued searching. They also managed to classify the new submerged contact as a Kilo class diesel electric submarine.
Kristen had once again tuned out every other sound around her, trying to focus her every thought, every ounce of her concentration into finding and discriminating the significant noises from the millions of insignificant ones.
Miller left the squawk box on so he could communicate with the control room instantly as he received updated information. The result was they now had another distraction since they could hear everything happening in the control room. They were silently slipping between the two opposing submarines and within two thousand yards of the Kilo. So close in fact, that if the Kilo were to fire, the Seawolf would have no time to react. Kristen assumed the Kilo was an Iranian boat, but the Akula might very well be Russian, in which case it would be armed with the revolutionary Shkval rocket torpedo. The Shkval used super-cavitation technology to create an air pocket around the torpedo as it passed through the water, eliminating the usual drag and allowing the unguided torpedo to race through the water at two hundred miles per hour. They were now less than seven thousand yards from the Akula and a rocket torpedo would close the distance in seconds.
Kristen heard Brodie’s voice in the control room ordering a course change to the north as they cleared the Kilo and Akula, leaving them behind. He was taking a huge gamble in leaving these two potential threats in his wake, and as they passed through the cordon undetected, they would lose the two contacts in their baffles and have no idea what they were doing.
Kristen removed her glasses for a moment and rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying to address the growing mental fatigue she feared was beginning to impact her ability to concentrate.
“Do you need a break, Lieutenant?” Fabrini asked her.
Kristen did. She needed to take the headphones off and stand up for a few minutes to stretch, but she refused the offer and went back to work, forcing herself to concentrate, blocking out everything else. She moved her joystick, slowly sweeping the area, listening on multiple passive arrays as the Seawolf, now in less than two hundred feet of water, continued toward the Strait and the protective minefield. She was sweeping the area to the east of the Seawolf, using the three starboard side hull-mounted passive arrays when she heard another faint sound.
Kristen closed her eyes and leaned forward slightly, willing the distant ghost of a sound to come in clearer. Without conscious thought, her fingertips moved over the controls, making fine adjustments.
“Submerged contact!” she whispered harshly. “Close! Nothing but plant noise. Bearing zero-four-one,” she reported and Miller passed it on as Fabrini got the other three operators working to identify the new contact, but then Kristen added, “It’s the Audacious.”
“Are you certain?” Miller asked trying to hide his skepticism. The Audacious was nearly as silent as the Seawolf.
But she didn’t answer. Instead, she raised a hand and motioned for silence. “There’s another submerged contact on almost the same bearing,” she reported. “Faint…” she hesitated, trying to discern the symphony of sounds she was hearing.
“It’s another Akula on her retractable pump-jets.” she offered. “Bearing is zero-four-three.”
“Jesus,” Fabrini whispered anxiously. “It’s a fucking convention in here.”
Kristen focused on the new Akula, knowing it was the biggest threat. This particular one was moving in near silence on a pair of retractable pump-jets capable of moving the Akula at three knots. But Fabrini was right. There were now four submarines within a thirty-five square mile box around the Seawolf. The oceanography of the Strait was to blame. The land masses to the north, east, and west were closing in, forcing all seaborne craft into a tighter and tighter channel, and the submarines, naturally searching for deep water to hide in, were congregating in the deepest part of the channel.
Kristen listened closely to the sounds of the Audacious and the second Akula. She could barely tell them apart as the two signatures blended into one. “They have to be right on top of one another,” Kristen said to Miller as the squawk box came alive.
He was about to reply when they each heard Brodie’s voice over the squawk box, “Chief, have Lieutena
nt Whitaker report to the control room.”
Kristen unbuckled her seatbelt and stood on stiff legs. There was no room to stretch in the cramped space, so she immediately began working her way out. As she stepped out of the sonar shack, she was struck with the cool air in the passageway and felt a chill tingle down her spine. Her coveralls were soaked in sweat, and she hadn’t noticed how oppressive the air in sonar had become with all of the warm bodies in it.
Kristen stepped into the control room and didn’t see Brodie at first. She’d expected him to be on the periscope platform, but she saw only the XO there. Behind him, Ryan Walcott and the navigation team were working on maintaining a fix on the Seawolf’s exact position. On the starboard side of the control room, Andrew Stahl was supervising the tracking parties, each updating their firing solutions on the various contacts. She looked to the right and then saw Brodie, standing by the helmsman.
“Sir?”
He turned on her, his expression still showing the steady calm it always did in the control room, but she could see beads of sweat on his forehead. “How is it out there?” he asked referring to the sea around them.
“Crowded,” she admitted in reply and then asked, “You needed to see me, sir?”
“We’re loading the LMRS drones in a few moments, and I thought you might like to supervise the process.”
It made sense. She was the only person on board with any real experience with the two drones and Kristen would need to make certain they were properly deployed. “Aye, sir,” she responded curtly, keeping her thoughts and actions professional. They were in the belly of the beast, and none of them could afford to get distracted.
“We’re a few minutes from their release point. You’d better get forward,” he suggested without so much as a hint of emotion in his voice. He was almost machine like at the moment, his outward demeanor showing no evidence that the Seawolf and all aboard were in mortal danger.