by Joe Buff
Through hooded eyes Nyurba looked the commodore over one last time. Soon enough, he knew, Fuller would find out for himself what his orders were in total. Nyurba had known his squadron’s purpose for most of a year, though he’d beseeched the Lord that this mission never be put into effect. He expected that when they all went over to Carter in Challenger’s minisub for a major briefing and planning session, and the commodore opened his inner orders pouch when he got there, he’d be appalled.
As well he should be. What Fuller was being asked to do was truly appalling, but Nyurba had been told that it was the least of all the evils left for America to choose between. And at one point, Captain Jeffrey Fuller, United States Navy, would have to personally pull off the biggest, most important bluff ever conceived in military history.
The mere idea of it sent shivers up Nyurba’s spine, and Nyurba was a very hard man.
A messenger knocked and entered the wardroom. “Commodore, the Captain’s respects, and he requests your presence in Control.”
“Da, spasiba,” Fuller responded. Yes, thank you. He glanced at Nyurba. “Pazhalsta.” Excuse me.
“Nichevo,” Nyurba said. No problem.
“Sir?” The skinny, pimply complexioned young messenger was confused.
“Sorry,” Fuller said, reverting to English. “I’ll be right there.”
The messenger left.
The round of betting wasn’t finished. Fuller placed his cards facedown, and stood. Nyurba saw him covetously eye the big pile of toothpicks in the middle of the table—the pot.
“A shame. I had a full house. Jacks high.”
“Let me see that.” Nyurba reached across the table. He turned over the cards. “Liar. You got crap.”
“But I had you thinking.” Fuller smirked, then left the wardroom.
Nyurba viewed Fuller with a mix of admiration and pity.
He knew that together they’d soon pull the tail of the dragon of Armageddon as hard as anyone could. The odds were discouraging that many or any of the squadron’s men would return from the land phase of the mission alive.
It will be a major miracle if Commodore Fuller succeeds at all the things his strike group must achieve like clockwork from here forward. If he fails, his name will be cursed for centuries by whatever is left of the human race.
From what Nyurba had seen and heard the past few days, he believed that Jeffrey Fuller was the right man to attempt what seemed forbiddingly impossible. Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, and the President of the United States above him, had chosen well.
Chapter 7
Jeffrey, Bell, and the sonar officer, Finch, stood side by side in the aisle behind sonar supervisor Senior Chief O’Hanlon’s seat. Contact would be made with Jimmy Carter, and identities verified, using a secure undersea digital acoustic link. This system sent verbal or text messages in code, in a frequency band around one thousand kilohertz—fifty times above the range of human hearing. Each transmission’s frequency jumped thousands of times per second, and the beam could be tightly focused toward the intended recipient, making it almost impossible for an enemy sonar to notice, even at close range.
“You think we’ll hear Carter hailing us before we detect her broadband or tonals?” Bell asked Finch and O’Hanlon.
Lieutenant (j.g.) Allan Finch was in his mid-twenties, short and thin, with a serious personality. A naval officer generalist assigned to sonar only for now, he was sensible enough to know that on matters of real-world operations, Senior Chief O’Hanlon—with ten years’ more experience and a permanent rating as sonar tech—could run rings around him.
“Let’s hope so, Skipper,” O’Hanlon replied. “Arctic acoustic conditions are way too tricky this time of year. The nominal range of our comms is about the same as the maximum range of our ADCAPS.” Around thirty miles. “Getting Carter on the phone would ease my mind about a friendly fire embarrassment.”
Two hours later, close to the rendezvous point, Bell went to silent battle stations as a precaution. Jeffrey sat at his borrowed console in the rear of the control room. Making the meeting with Carter even trickier was that a gale had blown in from the west, with winds that Sonar estimated as topping thirty knots. They got this figure by analyzing wave action in the larger polynyas under which Challenger passed every five or six miles. Bell ordered the sonar speakers turned on.
Background noise rose substantially with the storm. Sleet and freezing rain pelted the polynyas, causing hissing and drumming sounds. The wind made the summer ice cap, which averaged less than ten feet thick, bend and flex due to forces that ranged from sea swells carrying their up-and-down energy far under the edge of the ice, to the wind itself pressing against ice ridges that stuck up from the cap. The prevailing surface current, from the opposite direction, east, gained purchase against many downward bummocks, straining the ice even more.
The cap moaned and creaked continually. Sometimes, nearby or in the distance, it would emit a sudden loud crack, echoing off bummocks everywhere like rolling thunder, as multiple stresses fractured the cap and two adjacent sections either relentlessly squeezed together, piling up and fracturing more, or separated, making a lead of brand-new open water. Challenger’s sensors indicated that, with this gale, colder air was moving in, polynyas were freezing to slush, and the water temperature at shallow depth was dropping. Sonar conditions deteriorated.
“Sir,” O’Hanlon called out, “intermittent contact on broadband, man-made, bearing is roughly zero-nine-zero, range ten thousand or twenty thousand yards.” East, five or ten miles.
“That’s near the rendezvous point,” Sessions told Bell.
“Any acoustic link contact, XO?”
“Negative, sir.” Sending messages back and forth to Carter, composed by Jeffrey or Bell, would be part of Sessions’s job.
O’Hanlon frowned. “What we’re hearing doesn’t make sense.”
“Explain,” Bell said. Finch moved in and peered over O’Hanlon’s shoulder, then moved down the aisle and looked at the different sonarmen’s screens.
“Broadband signal intensity is stronger than it should be,” O’Hanlon said. “Carter is supposed to hold her position, while we approach.”
“Maybe she’s running late,” Jeffrey said.
“If I didn’t know better,” O’Hanlon responded, “I’d say there were two distinct broadband signatures, overlaid.”
The ice gave off another loud crack, and again the noise reverberated like thunder.
“Sir, that was a torpedo warhead detonating.”
“What?”
“We’re getting . . . Rapid bearing rates on both broadband signatures, not consistent with any known under-ice sound propagation effects! . . . Assess signatures are a sub-on-sub dogfight!” Bearing rate meant the contact was turning through the water compared to Challenger’s steady course.
There was another sudden loud noise. This time, cued in, Jeffrey could tell that it had a rumbling, throaty quality, very unlike the natural sounds from the ice cap.
“Loud explosion bearing zero nine zero!” a sonarman called. “Range approximately fifteen thousand yards. Assess as a high-explosive torpedo warhead detonating!”
“This shouldn’t be happening,” Bell said. He hesitated, for only a moment. “Sonar, can you estimate the speed at which those submarines are moving?”
“Not yet,” Finch reported, “but from the intense broadband we’re getting they have to be doing flank speed.” All out, as fast as a vessel could go.
“Contact on acoustic intercept!” a different sonarman called. Acoustic intercept was used to warn of another submarine’s sonar going active. “Assess as melee pinging by one of the vessels involved in combat!” Melee pinging was used to find the adversary and get an accurate target range while both subs made wild maneuvers.
“Identify active sonar system,” Sessions ordered in his role as fire control coordinator.
“Impossible, sir,” Finch told him after O’Hanlon shook his head. “System frequency unknow
n due to unknown target speed and Doppler shift.”
“Very well, Sonar,” Sessions said. “Captain, we need a more reliable acoustic path to understand what’s going on.”
“Concur,” Bell said. “If they’re doing flank speed their passive sonars will be almost deaf from flow noise. . . . So . . . Chief of the Watch, rig ship for deep submergence.”
“Deep submergence, aye.”
“Helm, make your course zero nine zero. Ahead full, make turns for thirty-five knots. Thirty degrees down-bubble, make your depth eight thousand feet.”
Patel acknowledged, far more self-confident now.
Challenger’s bow nosed steeply down, so steeply that Jeffrey’s seat tilted back uncomfortably as he sat facing toward the stern. His inner ears’ sense of balance told him that straight up meant not the overhead but the top screen of his console.
“Nav,” Bell ordered, bracing himself against his console as it and he tilted forward, “tell me when we’ve covered five nautical miles along the bottom.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.” Meltzer was gripping a handhold on the overhead, standing sideways with his legs splayed wide, as the deck beneath his feet turned into a hillside.
Challenger went deeper and deeper. “Hull popping,” O’Hanlon called out. With Challenger’s ceramic-composite hull, it sounded more like a crunch. The ship was being squeezed inward by the pressure of the ocean, but this was what she’d been designed to do: achieve total waterspace dominance by seizing the low ground near the ocean floor and then exploit her tactical superiority.
She began to level off. “Sir,” Patel reported, “my depth is eight thousand feet.” The outside pressure was more than three and a half thousand pounds per square inch—almost two hundred fifty times atmospheric pressure at sea level.
“Sir,” Meltzer called out, “own ship has moved five miles.”
“Very well, Nav. Helm, all stop.”
“All stop, aye, sir. . . . Maneuvering answers, all stop.”
“Helm, back full until our way comes off.” Challenger still had considerable momentum; she’d halt much faster this way.
“Sonar and Fire Control Coordinator, tell me what’s happening up there.”
“Insufficient data,” Sessions responded.
“Request put ship on heading due north,” Finch said, “to present starboard wide-aperture array for optimal analysis.”
“Helm, on auxiliary maneuvering thrusters, rotate your heading to due north.”
Patel acknowledged and worked a joystick.
The wide-aperture arrays, one along each side of the ship, consisted of three widely spaced rectangular hydrophone complexes attached to the hull. Because they were big in two dimensions, and were held rigidly in three dimensions by the stiffness of Challenger’s hull, they could perform extremely detailed analyses of sounds to either side of the ship, in signal processing modes not possible with even the latest towed arrays.
“My heading is due north, sir.”
“V’r’well, Helm,” Bell said.
Sonarmen and fire-control technicians conferred and worked their keyboards. A tactical plot began to form on Sessions’s main console screen, repeated on other displays around Control.
“Two ships in combat, Captain,” Sessions stated. “Both appear to have flank speed of approximately twenty-five knots.”
Jeffrey was surprised. Slow by modern standards. Unless—
“Getting definite tonals,” O’Hanlon said. “Both ships nuclear-powered.” Sound was traveling directly down from the dogfight, immune to the confusing effects at shallower depth.
“What classes?” Bell demanded. Knowing this was essential. It would tell him who fought whom.
“Torpedoes in the water,” a sonarman called. “Engine noises indicate ADCAPs.” An electric-like screaming came over the sonar speakers. “Noisemakers and acoustic scramblers in the water!”
Hissing, gurgling, and undulating siren noises intensified—Jeffrey realized he’d been hearing them already, almost drowned out by the noise of twisting and turning submarines with their propulsion plants going at maximum power.
“Sonar, turning own-ship east,” Bell cued Finch and O’Hanlon. “Helm, make your course zero-nine-zero. Ahead one third, make turns for eighteen knots.” Bell wanted to sneak closer, get right underneath the other two subs.
Patel acknowledged, this time it seemed with true relish.
Bell ordered him to stop and rotate north again.
“One contact is an Amethyste-Two,” O’Hanlon stated. A modern, refurbished French sub, captured and crewed by Germans. The Amethystes were slow and small, but maneuverable and deadly.
She’s not supposed to be able to get here. So much for intel about the Allies’ North Atlantic anti-U-boat blockades.
“Two more torpedoes in the water. F-Seventeen Mod-Twos.” French-made, they could go forty knots, slow for an antisubmarine weapon, but more than adequate for a twenty-five-knot target.
The other submarine had to be American if it was firing Mark 48 ADCAPs. The latest version could go over sixty knots.
“Second submerged contact appears to be a newer Ohio-class SSBN. Possibly Nebraska or Wyoming.” The Ohio-class boomers were built for maximum stealth, not speed. They only carried a dozen torpedoes and decoys, for self-defense. Their main weapons were the strategic deterrence of two dozen ballistic missiles tipped with multiple hydrogen bombs.
Jeffrey told himself this didn’t make sense. All boomers were assigned specific patrol areas and transit routes, large but not infinite. Higher commanders would never send a boomer toward where two American fast-attacks were set to rendezvous.
There were more blasts, deafening to Jeffrey’s ears with this closer range and direct acoustic path, as torpedoes exploded against noisemakers or decoys or ice bummocks. The throb and whine and hiss of submarines trying to kill each other continued.
O’Hanlon said something to Finch while pointing at one of his displays. Finch studied it, and nodded. “Captain,” O’Hanlon called for Bell. “Am getting additional tonals, intermittent traces, weak, suggesting an S-Six-W reactor aboard the American sub. Not an S-Eight-G.”
“What?” Bell was incredulous.
“Confirmed! Conjecture American vessel is Seawolf class, emitting false tonals to disguise her identity!”
Jeffrey stood up. “How big is she?”
“Acoustic shadow profile against noise of ice cap suggests approximately four hundred fifty feet.”
Carter. It had to be. Seawolf was the same length as Challenger, about three hundred fifty feet. Real boomers were more like five hundred fifty feet. All three classes had the same beam—width—forty or forty-two feet.
“American submarine tentatively identified as USS Jimmy Carter,” Sessions announced.
“There’s nothing tentative about it,” Bell snapped.
“Harley’s been ambushed,” Jeffrey said. “He’s obeying his orders to not let Carter be detected. At least not detected as Carter.” There were two melee pings in fast succession, one much deeper in tone than the other.
“Active systems confirmed as one French, one probable Ohio class!” Even Harley’s sonar was mimicking a boomer.
In seconds, there were more torpedoes in the water, F-17s and ADCAPs screaming toward each other, their pitches shifting up and down from Doppler as their weapons techs steered them after moving targets—thus altering the speed at which they seemed to approach or move away from Challenger far below.
Both sides’ ROEs let them go tactical nuclear when more than two hundred miles from land. But the dueling subs were too close together for that in this melee—their own warheads would sink them right along with their opponent.
Bell turned to stare at Jeffrey. “If Harley limits himself to half his real flank speed, and acts like he only has four torpedo tubes instead of eight, and doesn’t dive deeper than an Ohio can, he’s terribly handicapped.”
“I know. What are the chances the Amethyste-Two might get off a r
eport if we put a Mark Eighty-eight up her ass?”
The ultra-heavyweight Mark 88 fish were custom-made for Challenger, able to function as deep as the parent ship’s crush depth. With a diameter of twenty-six and a half inches, to entirely fill her extra-wide torpedo tubes, they came in both high-explosive and tactical atomic versions; twenty-one-inch-diameter ADCAPs could carry either type of warhead but would implode at about three thousand feet.
The noise of submarines got louder than ever, as the tactical plot showed each vessel spawning a twin.
“Assess both contacts have launched decoys!” a sonarman yelled. F-17s and ADCAPS continued to scream.
The ocean was shattered by more torpedo detonations. Echoes and reverb pounded and roared. Jeffrey heard broken-off bummocks grinding against the underside of the ice, as buoyant shards were tousled by the newly made turbulence. The thin ice cap itself was blown sky-high in chunks; the heavy pieces showered back down, smashing and splashing.
O’Hanlon said that both real subs were still in the fight.
But how much longer can Harley hold out?
“Mark Eighty-eight engine tonals are distinctive, Commodore,” Bell warned. “If the Germans hear them, they’ll know right away it’s us who did the shooting.”
“She may eventually realize that Carter is really Carter, whatever tricks Harley pulls. The way he’s fighting, Carter’s too evenly matched with the German. We need to tip the scales.”
“There are open polynyas within a few miles,” Bell stated. “The German could float delayed-action radio buoys through one, sir, timed for when their polar-orbit comms satellite makes its next pass. Report both us and Carter as identified in company.”
“You know we can’t possibly let that happen.”
“Unless we really smash the Amethyste-Two, she might reach the surface herself, for long enough to bounce a short-wave transmission from here to Berlin.”
“Then let’s smash her real good, and quick. Two high-explosive Mark Eighty-eights.”