Seawolf End Game

by Cliff Happy

  The Aselsan decoy was launched from tube seven. Once it was clear, Kristen heard the Kilo submarine as it too detected an approaching torpedo. “Kilo Nine has increased speed and is turning away,” Kristen reported.

  “He hasn’t a chance,” Fabrini said cryptically.

  He was right, and Kristen knew it. On her pitifully weak batteries, the Kilo submarine could move at maybe fifteen knots which, when compared to the fifty-five knot ADCAP boring in on her, meant the Kilo was only prolonging her life, not saving it. But as Kristen listened to the MK-48 closing in on the fleeing Kilo, she heard an ominous roar from the direction of the Akula.

  “Akula Nine is firing,” Martinez reported before she could.

  Kristen concentrated, trying to block out the multiple noise signatures she heard so she could focus on the new sound. She then heard the telltale signature of surging bubbles and what sounded like a roaring screw churning through the water. “Torpedo in the water. Bearing zero-zero-five” she reported and then added, “Bearing constant!” This meant the torpedo the Akula had fired was coming right at them. “It sounds like a Shkval rocket torpedo. Speed undetermined, but she’s coming right at us.”

  “Rocket torpedo inbound,” Miller barked into the microphone above his head in case Brodie in the control room hadn’t heard Kristen. “Bearing zero-zero-five! Bearing constant!”

  Kristen suddenly felt herself pressed forward in the seat as the Seawolf increased speed to commence high-speed maneuvering. She reached for her seatbelt, realizing she’d forgotten to fasten it as those around her reached for handholds to help keep their balance.

  The Tomahawk missile targeting the Alvand class frigate had cleared the water, cast off its casing, and ignited its turbojet motor before lowering back down to barely fifteen feet above the surface where it accelerated to near the speed of sound. The frigate picked up the inbound missile breaking the surface on its radar, but the radar operators barely had time to lean forward in their seats before the automatic alarm claxon sounded. Despite its effective range of nearly three hundred miles, the Tomahawk had appeared barely ten miles away. The Iranian crew manning the frigate was hardly well trained. They were accustomed to only mine laying and coastal patrolling. They’d never been involved in any realistic war games, and other than shouting to the bridge a warning about the inbound missile, the crew didn’t respond by turning on the limited jamming equipment they had on board to try and fool the Tomahawk.

  It wouldn’t have helped.

  The missile had acquired the frigate as soon as it leveled off above the waves. Its own radar locked on to the massive radar signature created by the frigate.

  The general alarm claxon sounded throughout the frigate. One level-headed seaman thought to fire a chaff canister, filling the air with thousands of tiny pieces of aluminum foil in a vain attempt to confuse the missile’s radar. But they never had a chance. The Tomahawk’s active radar was state of the art. Even the chaff cloud appearing in front of the missile as it closed in on its prey didn’t distract the mindless machine as it suddenly streaked skyward.

  A seaman on the deck of the frigate saw the missile arc upward and cheered in glee, assuming the missile had been distracted by the chaff cloud. But then the Tomahawk, having reached its programmed apogee, turned back downward to complete its “top down” attack on the helpless frigate. The missile slammed through the center of the ship and passed downward through multiple decks before the thousand pound explosive warhead detonated. The entire midsection of the tiny frigate was torn apart by the blast, immediately followed by a fireball as the remaining fuel in the missile ignited while its motor continued on through the frigate. In less than a second, the frigate had broken in half and was sinking.

  “Tomahawk impact on the Alvand,” Martinez reported as the Seawolf continued to increase speed, heeling over slightly.

  Kristen focused on the Akula, considering it the greatest threat. The sound of the charging Shkval rocket torpedo roared in her ears as it raced toward them at nearly two hundred miles an hour. But she could also hear the Aselsan decoy charging at over thirty knots away from the Seawolf as the submarine turned away from the trajectory of the incoming Russian torpedo.

  The water around them was filled with competing sounds as both Kilos launched countermeasures and began running from the single MK 48 ADCAP torpedoes assigned to each of them. Each torpedo had acquired its target and had gone active with internal sonar. The result of all the activity in the vicinity was that Kristen was having a hard time focusing on the Akula which was much quieter than everything now racing around the Seawolf.

  “Shkval now at one hundred ninety knots, range two thousand yards and closing,” Kristen reported. “Bearing constant. Akula Nine now passing through thirty-five knots and on a course due south.”

  The racing Russian rocket torpedo was coming in hard, its goal not so much to hit and sink the Seawolf, but to force them to commence radical maneuvering to evade the torpedo and thus break the wire links with the multiple torpedoes the Seawolf currently had in the water. This had been the main reason the Russians had designed the revolutionary Shkval in the first place. It was a defensive weapon intended to force the Americans to commence high-speed maneuvering.

  But Brodie wasn’t playing by those rules. The Seawolf was maneuvering, but was turning slowly toward the two Kilo submarines and not so radically the guidance cables might be cut.

  “Shkval now one thousand yards. Bearing three-zero-five,” she reported, hearing the torpedo’s bearing change slightly, but there was no way to tell if it would miss them. Kristen heard the collision alarm sound and managed to pull her headphones off as the torpedo, racing in like a bullet through the water, closed in. Over the speaker above her head, she could hear the torpedo as it past just astern of the Seawolf.

  She cringed, bracing herself for the blast.

  The torpedo missed the Seawolf, but its proximity fuse initiated detonation just as the torpedo was passing astern of the submarine. Just how close it was she couldn’t be certain, but she felt the entire submarine shudder under the blast. All of their systems momentarily went off line as the submarine was forced downward by the stern. Kristen was flung forward but caught herself. Martinez wasn’t so lucky. His head crashed into the display in front of him. He fell back, slumping in his chair with blood pouring from his head as the submarine shuddered violently.

  Kristen turned her attention away from the badly injured Martinez, knowing she had to focus on her task. She had no way of knowing how badly the Seawolf was damaged, but her system was coming back on line, and the Akula was still out there somewhere and possibly firing at them again. At first, all she could hear was the Seawolf’s hull still vibrating from the blast, but then she heard another explosion, this one more distant.

  “He’s all fucked up!” someone near her shouted, drowning out the noise in her headphones.

  “Get him out of there!” someone else yelled.

  “I think he’s dead,” another shouted nearly in panic.

  “Shut up, dammit!” Kristen barked reflexively as she glared at them. She then saw Chief Miller. He was leaning against the rear bulkhead and looked to be in pain. She didn’t know if he was injured but realized that pandemonium had come to the sonar shack. “Fabrini,” she ordered sharply, “get everyone back to their stations and get Martinez to sickbay!”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Fabrini replied and quickly got everyone calmed down.

  Kristen returned to listening as the others were silenced and put back to work. Kristen hazarded a worried glance at Chief Miller. He was still leaning against the bulkhead. “Senior Chief,” she called out, “are you hurt?”

  He waved a hand at her in reply. “I’m okay,” he stammered. “I just had the wind knocked out of me.”

  Kristen couldn’t worry about him and turned back to her console, trying to ignore the blood-stained stack next to her.

  “Detonation!” Goodman shouted loud enough to be heard through the bulkhead as anothe
r MK-48 struck home.

  Kristen heard the second detonation signaling the second Kilo had been hit. She knew it was unlikely that either submarine would survive a direct hit from a MK-48, and she turned her entire attention to the Akula. It was still the greatest threat, and they needed to find it before it reacquired the Seawolf. “The port side array is down,” she reported receiving nothing from one of the side aperture sonar receivers.

  “I’ve already got techs on it,” Fabrini assured her, letting her know he was aware of it. “Where’s that Akula?”

  “I’m looking for it, but the water is filled with transients from the two Kilos struggling to reach the surface,” she informed him.

  “The frigate’s going down,” Hicks reported.

  She knew she should be scared. The Seawolf could very well be sinking. But instead, she felt only a burning desire to find the Akula. They rebooted several systems in the sonar shack, and as they came on line she picked up their remaining MK 48 torpedo now about nine thousand yards away. Kristen realized immediately the torpedo had lost the Akula and was running a search pattern. “I’ve lost Akula Nine. Mk 48 torpedo bearing is three-four-five, bearing is changing. Torpedo has gone active and is searching for a target.”

  The Seawolf slowed and turned away from the two Kilo submarines. The transients coming from the two boats were disturbing. Kristen, who picked up some of it, could hear the straining submarines struggling to reach the surface. But as she heard the metallic noises and rushing water, she also heard what sounded like metal pounding on metal and the unmistakable sound of men shouting.

  “Both Kilos are hit,” Goodman reported grimly, “and are attempting to blow tanks,”

  “Stay on the Akula,” Miller ordered with little more than a gasp. “She may fire another torpedo.” The strain in his voice was unmistakable.

  Kristen turned her head toward Miller and saw him leaning heavily against the back of one of the sonar operator’s chairs. He looked terrible, with sweat pouring off his face. “Senior Chief?” she asked with concern.

  “I’m okay.” He was struggling just to breathe.

  Kristen wanted to order him to report to sickbay, but she knew he wouldn’t go—no one in his position would. They were in the middle of a fight, and she was certain that no one with an ounce of self-respect would pull himself out of it willingly.

  The Seawolf slowed to below ten knots, and Kristen turned her attention back to the water around them. But other than the two dying Kilos, which were fighting a losing battle to surface, and the Alvand frigate breaking up, she heard nothing.

  The Akula, as well as the Audacious, had gone silent. The remaining MK 48 continued to circle, checking the various depths it had been programmed to, but apparently finding nothing. Kristen wiped her brow and adjusted her glasses, then ran a systems check on her spectrum analyzer. She needed to make certain it wasn’t damaged. They’d severely mangled the forces guarding the Strait in a brief but brutal exchange of torpedoes, but they hadn’t come off unscathed, and there were other submarines out there still looking for them.

  On the port side, the aft AN/BQG-5 wide aperture flank array was no longer operating and the midship array was sending a host of error messages. These two arrays were only part of the submarine’s sonar suite and although they would be missed, the Seawolf would hardly be defenseless. Techs arrived as she completed her systems check, and they went to work on the damaged stack Martinez’s head had gone through.

  Kristen resumed her methodical search, trying not to think about how badly they might be wounded. Fortunately the torpedo hadn’t hit the hull, but the weapon detonated close enough to cause the entire boat to shudder and potentially damage critical systems all over the submarine. Beside her, the other three sonar operators had run systems checks on their own stacks, and it was discovered the narrowband stack wasn’t operating properly. They shut it down and restarted it, but after another systems check, they received the same error messages indicating an internal processor malfunction.

  Kristen did her best to ignore the commotion in the sonar shack as well as the grisly sounds of the two Kilo submarines and the Alvand frigate settling to the bottom. She could still hear crewmen in both submarines pounding on the inside of the stricken boats as well as the sounds of men shouting. It was something she’d never expected to hear and was certain she would live the rest of her life remembering. No one had to tell her the trapped men had virtually no chance of rescue.

  Of course, she knew the same fate awaited the Seawolf if they didn’t find the Akula somewhere out ahead of them. There could be no doubt the Akula was looking for them, too, and victory would come to the swift. They moved in a general southerly direction, zigzagging back and forth to expose their good starboard side arrays to multiple directions in hopes of finding something.

  “Transients! Transients!” Kristen nearly came out of her seat as she picked up the sudden sound of the torpedo. “High speed screw! Torpedo in the water bearing one-zero-five!” She’d heard nothing at all a moment earlier, and then, without any warning, she heard the whirling of a torpedo racing through the water.

  “Sonar, con,” she heard an incredibly calm Sean Brodie’s voice over the squawk box. “Can you classify the torpedo?”

  How anyone could sound so calm in the middle of this she had no idea, but she did as he asked and focused on the torpedo noise emanating through the water. The torpedo was heading in their general direction, but not directly at them. Kristen then recognized the torpedo. “Con, sonar. Classify torpedo as Spearfish at nearly eighty knots,” she reported. “Its current track will take it well astern of us,” she explained briefly wondering why the Audacious would fire a torpedo in the Seawolf’s general direction.

  “All ahead full! Emergency!” she heard Brodie snap briskly over the squawk box. “Cavitate, dammit, cavitate!” he added with a sudden edge in his voice, and Kristen now realized what was happening. Another submarine was behind the Seawolf. The Audacious had picked up the threat and had fired a torpedo to hopefully force the enemy stalking the unsuspecting Seawolf to maneuver.

  Kristen felt the Seawolf accelerate rapidly and turn sharply, the boat’s own noise monitoring alarm alerted them the Seawolf was cavitating. Then, as she gripped the console in front of her to hold on, she heard the second torpedo. It was coming from behind and had gone active. She hadn’t heard it earlier because it was coming out of their baffles, so they’d had no warning and were now running for their lives.

  “Torpedo directly astern,” she reported, hoping her voice didn’t sound as scared as she felt. “Range close and homing!”

  The collision alarm sounded again. She braced herself, tearing the headphones from her head while the Seawolf vibrated as her steam turbines were pushed past red line to increase speed. They were turning sharply now, making a huge amount of noise. Anyone within ten miles would hear their thundering pump-jet propulsor. But, as they turned, the tactical display lost the torpedo as it passed astern of them, going right through the countermeasures the Seawolf had deployed from the stern of the boat. Then, as if on a roller coaster, the Seawolf turned back the other way. They had no sooner started turning when Kristen heard, behind her, an alarm going off from the WLR-9 acoustic intercept box.

  There was yet another torpedo in the water. She pulled on her headphones in time to hear, racing in on them from the south, the rushing sound of a second Shkval rocket torpedo. She felt panic welling up in her as she called out the new contact, “Rocket torpedo bearing zero-two-seven. Bearing constant. Range nine thousand yards!” As if having another Shkval coming at them wasn’t enough, the torpedo they’d just dodged was making a turn to try and reacquire them.

  In response, the Seawolf kept turning and increasing speed as the Audacious’ torpedo detonated somewhere in the water astern of them. Kristen forced the rising fear within her back down, refusing to listen to her instincts to panic. Another Aselsan submarine decoy was launched and Kristen felt the massive acceleration suddenly cease.
The Seawolf slowed her turn as the bow angled down. Kristen had no idea where Brodie was going; there was little water beneath them to hide in, and the Russian rocket was racing in at over two hundred knots. She forced the fear from her thoughts, focusing on the direction from which the rocket had come, knowing the Akula had to be there.

  It was difficult to hear anything through the roaring Shkval torpedo between the Akula and the Seawolf. Around her, men who’d been calmly thinking they would make it into the Persian Gulf without firing a shot less than an hour earlier, were now sweating along with the rest of the crew while the Seawolf’s speed dropped off as she went quiet. Brodie was apparently hoping the rocket would either go for the Aselsan decoy or pass the Seawolf by and charge for the countermeasure spread they’d dropped in their wake.

  “One thousand yards,” Goodman whispered anxiously as the torpedo continued in on them. “Six hundred yards,” he reported a few moments later.

  “I think he’s got us,” Hicks whispered as he removed his headphones.

  Kristen removed her own headphones. The sound of the inbound torpedo was now quite clear over the loudspeaker. She and the others braced themselves as they felt the Seawolf, inexplicably, arch upward. The deck beneath them was suddenly angling upward at a bizarre slant, and Kristen was acutely aware of every sound and action around her. She glanced at Chief Miller. He was grimacing in pain as he clutched his chest; Fabrini was gripping an overhead pipe and looking grim. The other sonar operators were bracing themselves for impact.

  But the torpedo passed them by, and, a few moments later, a muffled explosion reached them. The blast wasn’t too far away but far enough not to cause the Seawolf to shake violently.

  “What happened?” Hicks asked in disbelief.

  “He brought us down low,” Fabrini said out loud. “The skipper brought us down near the bottom and then, at the last minute, blew the tanks and brought us back up. The Shkval was going too fast and couldn’t turn quick enough to follow us and slammed into the soft sand where it detonated.”