by Peter Sasgen
“Like a pincer,” Alex said.
“Exactly.”
“And how will they conduct their search?” Abakov said.
“The Il-38s will drop thousands of sonobuoys that can pick up noise from the K-363’s reactor coolant pumps and turbogenerators—the three-hundred-hertz tone. The patrol boats use passive towed sonar arrays. Once they make contact with the sub, they’ll track her, then attack with homing torpedoes.”
“But excuse me, Captain Scott,” Botkin said. “Litvanov has ways of evading detection. He can run ultra quiet. If he is in deep water, there are present thermal layers that deflect sonar, while in shallow water sonar pulses scatter off the bottom and make it difficult to pick a target out of the echoes.”
“Right. We’re up against a clever skipper,” Scott said, “in command of one of the Russian Navy’s best submarines—an Akula, like the one we’re aboard,” he added for Alex and Abakov.
“How capable are they?” asked Abakov.
“They’re comparable to the U.S. Navy’s Improved 688 Los Angeles–class boats. They have a 190-megawatt nuclear reactor and can make over thirty-three knots submerged. They’re 370 feet long and displace about eight thousand tons. They also have advanced sonar suites and are extremely quiet and therefore hard to detect.”
“Most important, the Akulas can dive to almost two thousand feet,” Botkin interjected with barely masked pride.
Abakov bent slightly at the waist to study the chart. “I understand now, but still, the K-363 could be anywhere.”
Scott said, “True, but if Zakayev has plans to attack the summit meeting in St. Petersburg, the K-363
has to stay within range of the target. That narrows the search somewhat.”
The starpom, sandwiched between Scott and Botkin, pointed to a marked spot in the Arctic Ocean far north of the Il-38 patrol line established by NorFleet.
“What he’s pointing to,” Scott said, “represents the maximum theoretical distance from which an SS-N-21 can reach its target: sixteen hundred nautical miles. But Zakayev won’t stray that far. I’m willing to bet he’s somewhere within a sixty-degree arc due north of Olenya Bay. And not too far from land.”
“Why do you think so?” Alex asked.
“Because,” Scott said, “that’s what I would do if I were going to attack St. Petersburg. The attack is the only thing that matters—not playing tag with the Russian Navy. And the shorter the range to the target, the less chance there is of intercepting and destroying the missile.”
“Even so, how will we ever find the K-363?” said Alex.
“Our best chance is to hear her, get her three-hundred-hertz sound signature on sonar. It won’t be easy, but if we can find her, we can kill her.”
Alex, elbows on the table, put her head in her hands. “Kill her. How?”
“Antisubmarine torpedo,” Scott said.
“Okay, so we or the Russians blow the K-363 to bits. What happens to her nuclear reactor?”
“Depends. If the reactor compartment isn’t damaged, it sinks along with the rest of the ship. If it is—
say, the core’s blown open—the fuel assemblies will end up on the sea floor.”
Alex raised her head. “You know, don’t you, that the Russians have been dumping naval reactors at sea for decades. It’s one of the biggest problems Earth Safe has faced. There have been thousands of cubic meters of radioactive waste dumped off the continental shelf of the Kola Peninsula. Then there’s the Atlantic Ocean. In 1986, when the K-219 went down six hundred miles east of Bermuda, she had two reactors and was armed with ballistic missiles. The missiles each had two one megaton warheads with about two hundred pounds of plutonium, which has a half-life of about twenty thousand years. This one wreck has the potential to be an ecological disaster of epic proportions. Someday the reactors and warheads will deteriorate and their radioactive materials will eventually poison the sea. If the K-363’s reactor is destroyed underwater, it will be even worse.”
“You’re assuming it’ll be destroyed,” Scott said.
Alex gave Scott a look. “Can antisubmarine torpedoes differentiate between a reactor compartment and the other compartments of a submarine?”
“No. But Akulas are double-hulled boats, and anti sub torpedoes are designed to penetrate the outer hull, collapse the inner hull, and flood and sink the submarine, not blow the whole ship to hell.”
Abakov said, “If a torpedo hit the outer hull of the reactor compartment, would the explosion be powerful enough to destroy the reactor?”
“Not necessarily. Reactor containment vessels are designed to withstand heavy damage. Chances are the reactor would hold together.”
“Then again, it might not,” Alex said.
Botkin said, “Excuse me, Captain Scott, but Communications say they are receiving a ZEVS.”
Communication links aboard the K-480 had been reconfigured to receive both U.S. and Russian satellite burst transmissions.
“ZEVS?” asked Alex.
“To communicate with submerged submarines, the U.S. and Russian navies broadcast extremely-low-frequency transmissions, known as ELF,” Scott said. “The U.S. ELF transmitter is up on Michigan’s upper peninsula; the Russian ELF transmitter, which they call ZEVS, is located in Archangel.”
“So how do they work?”
“ELF and ZEVS transmissions can penetrate hundreds of feet below the surface of the sea to summon a submarine to periscope depth to receive coded burst transmissions from satellites in earth orbit. Trouble is, ELF data transmission rates are so damn slow that a submarine’s identity code takes minutes to arrive, which forces the sub to loiter near the surface, where it’s vulnerable while recovering its burst transmission.”
“Request permission to come to periscope depth to receive ZEVS,” said the starpom.
“Very well,” Botkin said.
“Kapitan, please double the sonar watch,” Scott said. “I don’t want to be caught napping by Litvanov.”
Crabbing against a setting current, the K-363 crept down the western coast of Norway.
“Depth to keel?” Litvanov said from the periscope stand.
Veroshilov had his lower lip trapped under his front teeth. The Norwegian coast was host to graveyards of ships that had blundered into unmapped seamounts and scarps.
“Sounding!” roared Litvanov.
“Ten fathoms, Kapitan.”
Litvanov racked the scope’s magnification control through a series of detents into high power. “Take a look,” he said, turning the scope over to Zakayev.
He saw a pair of headlights moving south on a road carved from the living rock of the peninsula that formed the western bank of Vest Fjord. On the peninsula’s tip he saw a lighthouse warning seafarers of shoal water.
“See any good restaurants?” Litvanov laughed. “The Norwegians make a fantastic fiskepudding with haddock. Maybe we can send a man ashore to get some.” He laughed again.
Zakayev wasn’t amused. Litvanov had insisted on cruising in littoral waters virtually up against the Norwegian coast to avoid detection and to stand clear of commercial shipping lanes. But the fear of running aground had set the crew’s teeth on edge and made Veroshilov argumentative. So far they had encountered only Norwegian and Japanese fishing boats and a few rusty coastal luggers. And Litvanov was thinking of food. Well, let him, Zakayev decided. There wasn’t much time left to think of things that once made life enjoyable.
He stepped away from the scope and beckoned the girl to have a look too.
“Quick now: What do you see?”
“Lights. Strings of moving lights shimmering on the water.”
The SC1 speaker hummed, then: “Kapitan—sonar contact! Bearing three-two-zero, converging.”
Litvanov took a quick look at the CCP’s sonar repeater with its sloping trace line and saw an unidentified contact closing in on the K-363. He sprang to the periscope stand and pushed the girl aside.
He saw her string of lights. Red and green running lights on a vessel standing o
ut of Vest Fjord. To Litvanov’s night-adapted eyes there was something about her top hamper…. He switched to infrared and a spectral image danced before his eyes: a heat bloom from the turbines and exhaust stacks of a frigate-size ship.
“Switch to narrow band sonar,” Litvanov commanded.
“Aye, Kapitan.”
“Come right twenty degrees.”
The helmsman acknowledged Litvanov’s order.
On the sonar repeater the sloped line had disappeared, replaced by a horizontal row of bouncing green spikes. The sonar system needed time to filter and compare the received sound frequencies with signatures archived for the purpose of identification.
“Periscope down.”
“What is it?” Zakayev said.
Litvanov stood by the periscope stand with arms crossed on his chest, not moving a muscle. “Maybe nothing. Then again…”
The row of bouncing signature spikes on the CCP monitor had frozen while the computer searched its memory for a matching set. They meant nothing to Zakayev, yet had taken on a life of their own. He
sensed that the next few minutes were critical to their mission.
The monitor peeped and displayed a match: overlapping green on blue spikes.
“Oslo-class frigate, Kapitan. The KNM Narvik, F-304.”
“Periscope up. Let’s have another look.”
As the K-363 slowly pulled away from the coast, Litvanov kept the scope planted on the Royal Norwegian Navy frigate. Her convergence onto the K-363’s track, whether by design or accident, prompted Litvanov to offer a running commentary.
“She’s one of those older ASW frigates, probably equipped with variable depth sonar. ASW rockets.
She’s either heading out on an exercise or—” He didn’t finish his thought.
“Kapitan—new contact. Bearing one-eight-zero, also converging. Sounds close.”
The sonar repeater recycled to the new contact.
A minute later: “Oslo-class frigate, Kapitan. The KNM Trondheim, F-302. She still has that nicked prop blade on the port shaft.”
Litvanov put the periscope on 180. “I’ve seen her before. She’s in trail with the Narvik. Periscope down!”
“How could the Norwegians know we’re here?” Zakayev said.
“They have a SOSUS—Sound Surveillance System, an underwater linked hydrophone system developed by the Americans to track our submarines. The information from the Norwegian system goes to a central operations headquarters in Stavanger, where they identify submarines from recordings of their machinery and propeller noises. The American SOSUS arrays used to be strung out on the sea bottom across choke points near Greenland, Iceland, and the U.K. Also the mid-Atlantic ridge. Even in the Barents. But we cut the cables and destroyed the arrays. The Americans finally gave up repairing them and shut down the system.
“The Norwegian system is no longer fully operational. Luckily for us, their coastal waters are strewn with rock and bottom heaves. Also, the salinity varies. Temperature layers too. Sonar is unreliable under those conditions and often gives off false alarms. This may be one. We’ll soon see.” Litvanov consulted the navigation chart. “We’re here, just north of these two groups of small islands off the tip of Lofoten.”
Veroshilov had monitored the automatic plotter responding to inputs from the ship’s inertial guidance system. The plotter’s stylus mounted under the backlit plotting table had recorded the K-363’s track, now an open-ended C on the acetate overlay marked with grid lines.
“We’ll turn ninety degrees off our present track and rig for ultraquiet. If the frigates turn west, they’ve probably been vectored into our area.”
Litvanov issued the necessary orders. One turbogenerator went offline to reduce the K-363’s already minimal sound signature, as did machinery and equipment not essential to her operation, such as ventilation fans and the oxygen generator that broke water down into hydrogen and oxygen.
“Will they find us?” the girl whispered to Zakayev. He put an arm around her shoulders and felt a shiver. He whispered back, “Don’t worry. Litvanov knows what he’s doing.”
In the Combat Information Center aboard the frigate KNM Trondheim, Royal Norwegian Navy Kaptein Löytnant Gunnar Dass paced the deck. He tore open a fresh pack of cigarettes and tamped one out.
“Commander—incoming Priority.”
Dass turned on his heel and strode to the twittering Multex terminal. He seized the message after it had finished rolling out of the teleprinter, scanned it, then headed for the bridge. The Trondheim’s skipper, Orlogs Kaptein Harald Bayer, broke off his conversation with another officer and motioned Dass to follow him into the wheelhouse out of the wind’s cold fury.
“ComInC FOHK Stavanger, Captain.”
Bayer read the message under a red-lit battle lamp. “So, a possible second submarine contact.”
He summoned the signals yeoman, who had a clipboard with recently decoded messages. The one Bayer wanted had arrived less than an hour earlier and he gave it a quick review, then reread the message Dass had collected from the Multex.
“Perhaps this latest one is a genuine contact. Any thoughts, Mr. Dass?”
“The Russians again, trying to prove something? But what? That they can elude us?”
Bayer looked seaward, where a sliver of dawn had arrived over the coast of Norway. “The Russians tried it years ago off Sweden. The Swedes couldn’t find them and were ready to admit it when the Russian sub ran aground in the Skagerrak. I don’t think the Russians would risk embarrassing themselves again.”
Dass looked blankly at his captain’s profile. Bundled in a heavy khaki-colored bridge coat with the collar turned up, a white silk scarf at his throat, binocular shanging from his neck on a strap, Bayer faintly resembled a European film star whose name Dass couldn’t recall.
“There was an earlier advisory from Operational Headquarters that the Russians were planning an exercise,” Bayer said. He thumbed the dispatches. “Yes, here it is.”
“I suppose it’s possible, sir, that it could be one of theirs.”
“Supposing won’t do, Mr. Dass. Stavanger wants us to find out.”
Bayer underlined with a pen the contact coordinates in the latest message from ComInC.
“Quartermaster!”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Plot a course to commence a search of this area. I want an ETA.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Signals.”
“Aye, Captain,” said the yeoman.
“Stand by to send a visual to Narvik: ‘Have second unconfirmed contact. Stop. I will lead. Stop.
Coordinates, course, speed, the rest….’ ”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” said the yeoman sketching notes.
Bayer paced the wheelhouse. The steel deck under foot throbbed with the rhythm of the Trondheim’s Laval-Ljungstrom PN 20 geared steam turbines. The sea, now dark gray, splashed and hissed along the frigate’s oil canned sides. It was going to be a gunmetal day.
Impatient, Bayer rounded. “Quartermaster?”
“Sir. Recommend course three-two-zero for ten minutes, then zero-four-one for twelve minutes.
Estimated time of arrival at twenty knots is zero-five-one-zero hours.”
“Very well,” Bayer said. “Send it, Signals.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Then, “New course: Steer three-two-zero degrees. Both engines, turns for twenty knots. Mr. Dass.”
“Sir?”
“Stand by to launch VDS arrays. Let’s see if we can locate this intruder and force him to the surface.”
Abakov, looking a little shocked, held a message form in one hand and with the other rubbed his bald pate. “They found the missing FSB officer in St. Petersburg.”
They were seated in the wardroom. The ZEVS summons had been followed by a burst message transmitted via Northern Fleet to the K-480 from FSB Headquarters in Moscow. Abakov sat there looking shocked.
“His body was buried behind a car repair shop in St. Peters
burg. Zakayev and his men had used it as a headquarters. The man was tortured, burned. He didn’t deserve that.”
“I’m sorry, Yuri,” Alex said, her hand on his arm.
Abakov stroked his mustache, then his bald head. “Bastards.”
“How did they find him?” Scott said.
“One of Zakayev’s men was spotted getting on a train in St. Petersburg and was stopped and questioned. He told them about the officer and about the shoot-out with Ivan Serov in St. Petersburg.”
“Did he know anything about the plan to attack St. Petersburg?”
“No. According to this message, he expired during the interrogation and before they had a chance to ask him.”
Abakov didn’t explain what that meant, to “expire during interrogation,” but Alex bit her lower lip and made a face.
“There’s this too,” Abakov said. “Forensic identified Serov’s body and those of his two men killed in Murmansk. Also, Zakayev is traveling with a young Chechen woman believed to be about seventeen or eighteen years of age. They don’t know her name, only that Zakayev saved her life in Chechnya, and in return she pledged her life to him.”
“What exactly does that mean?” Alex said.
“It’s an old Chechen custom: You save my life, I owe you everything. Only death can break the bond.
Do you understand?”
“What does this bond entail?” Alex said.
“She is his wife and must do whatever he tells her. She lives to serve him. For the rest of her life.”
“You mean like a slave?”
“It’s not slavery. The Chechens are a very loyal people. That’s why Zakayev and Litvanov want revenge for the deaths of their families.”
Alex said, “I don’t care how loyal they are, it’s still slavery. She’s being forced to do something she may not want to do.”
“I doubt it,” Abakov said. “After all, she’s a terrorist like the others. She probably had a hand in the Moscow bombing. Someday she’ll probably strap on a bomb and blow herself up in a crowded shopping mall.”
“That’s an ugly thought,” Alex said.
“Terrorism is an ugly business.”
“It stands to reason that the girl is probably aboard the K-363 with Zakayev,” Scott said.