War Plan Red

by Peter Sasgen

  “And you are one of them.”

  “It’s all there. Not in black and white, mind you, no hard evidence, nothing that would stand up in a court of law. Always there are prevarications and caveats and nuances of interpretation. But if one reads between the lines and applies common sense, you can see why the Americans are so eager to get rid of Zakayev. Because they have blood on their hands.”

  Grishkov ran through in his mind how the people at the top might have gotten such damaging evidence of U.S. involvement with Zakayev and Chechen terrorism. But Stashinsky was saying, “The American naval officer, Drummond. It was his failure to head off Zakayev that set off the alarm for the Americans.”

  “Yes, I remember Drummond: murdered in questionable circumstances, in Murmansk. There was a sailor involved.”

  “A setup, I assure you, Mikhail Vladimirovich. Zakayev handled it. The FSB investigated and wrote a report. Now we have the Amerikanski, Scott, on the K-480.” Stashinsky growled. “The K-480. A Russian submarine with two Americans aboard, one of them a naval officer, the other one a woman. A woman! What was I thinking when I authorized it? I should have had my head examined.”

  “She’s a scientist,” Grishkov offered.

  “She’s a spy.”

  “But there’s also the FSB officer, Abakov. He’s Russian.”

  Stashinsky waved a hand. “The Americans still claim to know nothing of the K-480’s whereabouts. As you reported, they are putting on an act that they’re looking into the possibility she’s gone down.”

  Grishkov nodded. Stashinsky’s hair was getting snowier; so was Grishkov’s fedora. They saw a pair of male tourists coming toward them. One held a deployed green, white, and red Cinzano umbrella over their heads.

  “We absolutely must find Zakayev and Litvanov before the Americans do,” Stashinsky said. “Even if it means shifting all our forces out of the Barents Sea to the south.”

  “That will take days.”

  “Then use what you have in the Baltic. Everything. Even if you have to send in every helicopter and plane and auxiliary and oiler and barge we have. Just do it. The only thing the Americans understand is force and resolve. We have to demonstrate what we are capable of.”

  “I’ll do what I can. But I must tell you, Admiral, we are not in good shape in the Baltic. The Americans know it too. If we do what you say, it may send the wrong signal and make us look desperate.”

  “On the contrary, it will clog up the Baltic and make it difficult for them to operate freely. I’m for anything that will impede their hunt for the K-363.”

  “It may also impede our own hunt for the K-363.”

  “We are looking for only one submarine, not an entire fleet.”

  “Actually, if this American, Scott, shows up, we may end up having to deal with two submarines. It could be difficult telling them apart. I wouldn’t want to make a mistake and sink the wrong one. It could happen, you know. And if it did, the Americans would shit their pants.”

  Stashinsky smiled and pointed to Khrushchev’s grave, turning white with snow. “I think Nikita would like that.”

  16

  North of Anholt

  A fter sorting for hours through dozens of false contacts, sonar reported: “Kapitan, contact! A submarine—an Akula!”

  Scott donned a pair of spare headphones and listened to it. How many times had he heard Akulas while patrolling off the Kola Peninsula, in the Atlantic Ocean off Spain, and once off the coast of South Carolina?

  “Faint. Very faint. A three-hundred-hertz line bearing zero-three-two; for sure it’s the K-363.”

  Scott had slowed their headlong dash across the Skagerrak, and, north of Læsø, had started hunting for the K-363. At first there had been nothing to hear but the normal squeal and pop of sea life, the groaning shift of sand and bottom debris, and the sound of wind-driven waves, which provided perfect cover for a submarine.

  Scott had hesitated to deploy the submarine’s ultra sensitive towed sonar array from its stowage pod on the after vertical fin, fearing that the noise it would make reeling out might alert the K-363. To find their target, he was relying solely on the K-480’s MGK-503 passive bow sonar array and the sensitive ears of his sonarmen.

  The K-363 was quiet but not totally silent. Her slowly turning seven-bladed prop created a corkscrew of collapsing bubbles and low-amplitude pressure ridges that bounced off the seabed and radiated outward from the coast. Little by little the MGK-503 sonar suite stripped away the K-363’s cover. A half hour into the search a green spike—a three-hundred-hertz tone—began to crawl down a video monitor in the sonar room.

  “Fire Control. Range?”

  “Under twenty kilometers, Kapitan.”

  Scott checked the bathythermograph readout. The K-480 was enveloped in a layer of cold water, which had piped long-range sound reception from the slow-moving K-363 into the K-480’s sonar.

  “Bearing?”

  “Three-three-zero, steady.”

  “Excellent. Can you nail down his base course?”

  “Aye, Kapitan.”

  “Now let’s see if we can ease on in without being detected,” Scott explained to Abakov, who by now had a good grasp of tactics.

  “Maybe he’s already heard us,” Abakov said. “And is expecting us.”

  “Maybe,” Scott said. “But he’s operating on the edge, where his sonar’s ability to detect targets is degraded.”

  “Because he’s in littoral waters?”

  “Exactly. We may be able to sneak right up on him and stick a fish up his ass.”

  Scott glanced at the fire control console. The K-480’s four 650mm torpedo tubes were loaded with Type 65-76 antiship torpedoes and the 533mm tubes held TEST-71M antisubmarine acoustic wire-guided homing torpedoes. She also had six 400mm bow tubes loaded with acoustic decoys. Rows of illuminated green lights on the fire control console indicated the status of each weapon and decoy.

  “Kapitan, Fire Control. Target is on base course one five-two degrees.”

  Scott laid a steel rule on the chart’s compass rose and saw that 152 degrees from due north pointed south-southeast to the entrance of The Sound. The K-480’s present course was the hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle, while the K-363’s course was the height. If nothing changed, the two submarines would meet at the tip of the triangle.

  “He’s heading for the Baltic Sea,” Abakov said, looking over Scott’s shoulder at the chart.

  “Damn right. Starpom, call away battle stations: Pass the word by mouth. I don’t want our friends in the K-363 to hear the gongs.”

  “Aye, Kapitan, battle stations away.”

  The men in the CCP and in other parts of the submarine had been alert to the subtle changes that a submarine undergoes when tracking a target and had been hovering near their battle stations, anticipating the call. Now they sprang into action.

  Scott looked around the CCP and saw the fire control plotters at work; the auxiliarymen at their manifold controls; that the diving station was fully manned and ready. Reports came in from every part of the ship. Engine room, auxiliary machinery spaces, reactor control. In the torpedo room a deck below the CCP, torpedomen had run tests on their fish and double-checked their circuits and links to the fire control station in the CCP.

  “All stations manned and ready, Kapitan,” the starpom reported.

  As the K-480 closed in and the K-363’s relative bearing changed, the tactical display on the fire control plotter changed with it, constantly updating information the torpedoes needed to find their target.

  Scott saw Alex ease into the CCP. She’d been tending Botkin and looked exhausted. Abakov said something to her that Scott couldn’t hear but saw her shake her head no.

  “What’s going on?” she asked Scott.

  “We have sonar contact with the K-363. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next hour or so, but you’re welcome to stay here.” His eyes roamed her fatigued face. “How’s Botkin?”

  “Same.” She looked around
as if seeing the CCP for the first time, its lights, its equipment, the men themselves taut with expectation. “Is this the real thing, Jake? Are you trying for a kill?”

  The tension had risen until it was palpable. The men, intent on their duties, had reached the point that they were unaware of anything or anyone around them. It was the moment they had trained for, and the payoff would soon be theirs to savor. Even Alex had been affected. Consciously or not, both her hands had a white-knuckle grip on the railing around the periscope stand.

  There was no need to explain. She could see for herself that something extraordinary might happen soon. Yet, Scott wondered if it could be this simple, that on his first contact with the K-363 he might nail her with a clean shot. He knew it was never that easy and tempered his anticipation of the kill with a dose of reality. Anything could happen and probably would. Expect it and you won’t be taking a torp up your own ass….

  “Kapitan, sonar! Multiple contacts bearing on an arc one-two-zero through two-two-zero…. Norsk-class frigates…and…the Oslo-class frigates we heard before!”

  Scott donned headphones and heard the noise from ships’ machinery distorted by heavy seas. “You’re sure?” he asked the sonarman.

  “Positive, Kapitan. I have them up and matched. Look.”

  One set of sound profiles matched the two Oslos perfectly. The Norsk-class ships were new and Russian boats didn’t yet have their individual profiles recorded but instead had signatures of their distinctive-sounding Laval-Ljungstrom gas turbine power plants. The picture had cleared slightly and Scott didn’t like what he saw: a line of Norwegian ASW frigates driving the K-480 toward the K-363.

  Scott said, “They’re going to drive us south whether we like it or not, right into the approaches to The Sound. If the Swedes haven’t already been alerted, they will be now.”

  Abakov took a quick look at the chart. The Sound was in Swedish-Danish waters. “What about the Danes?”

  “Their ASW capability is nil, so they’ll rely on the Swedes to screen The Sound to prevent a submarine from getting through submerged. They can’t shut it down completely because of all the commercial traffic that passes through.”

  Scott saw the look of concern on Abakov’s face and said, “That’s right, we’re about to be painted into a corner.”

  “Kapitan, I have contact with numerous targets.”

  “Do you have the Akula?” asked Litvanov.

  The sonarman slowly nodded. “I think so, a three hundred-hertz tone line, but faint. Masked by the frigates and commercials. Bearing zero-nine-five. Range rate closing, fifty yards a minute.”

  “Fire Control. How does that compute?”

  “Range under twenty kilometers, sir, perhaps less.”

  Litvanov glanced at Zakayev to confirm that his description of how hard it could be to slip through The Sound might yet prove true.

  Litvanov had also pointed out the hazards seafarers faced when approaching The Sound. The Russian navigation charts warned of shifting bottom conditions that affected depth, residual danger from old minefields, east-west ferry traffic between Sweden and Denmark, and dangerous setting currents.

  Veroshilov had also reminded Litvanov of the shallow water in the Kattegat: on average only thirty fathoms, less in the approaches to The Sound.

  “We’ll let that nosy bastard come to us and then spring a surprise on him,” Litvanov said.

  “You mean torpedo him?” Zakayev said.

  “Not unless I have to,” Litvanov said.

  “What, then?”

  But Litvanov was conferring with his sonarmen.

  “Where are those frigates?”

  “North, bearing now zero-nine-five.”

  “What kind of commercial traffic do you have?”

  “Mostly single-screw diesel, Kapitan.” He pointed to the waterfalls of sound crawling down the sonar screens. “Four big ones, probably container ships and ro-ros.” The latter were roll-on/roll-off freighters designed to carry mixed cargoes of cars, trucks, and containers. “Targets are inbound to The Sound and in-line on a track parallel to our own. They all bear due east of Anholt.”

  “The weather’s not slowing them down a bit,” Litvanov observed. “A regular freight train. They’re either heading for Hälsingborg or Copenhagen.” Litvanov turned to Zakayev and the girl and grinned.

  “Too bad we don’t have time for a visit. Copenhagen is a beautiful city.”

  He mounted the periscope stand.

  “Periscope depth. Let’s see what we have.”

  He was right: A freight train of ships partially obscured by rain and mist steamed past the raised periscope like ducks in a shooting gallery. Their green running lights and tiers of white lights strung along their weather decks and top hampers lit them up like a carnival midway. In high magnification and with waves breaking over the scope, Litvanov moved down the train left to right, ticking them off.

  “Container ship. Next, a gas hauler.” He saw the letters LNG for liquid natural gas painted on the ship’s side in white letters twenty feet high, and, rising above her main deck, four huge domed containers filled with liquid gas. “Third, a ro-ro. Last, a container ship, big bastard, over a hundred and fifty thousand tons. Down periscope.”

  “So, what do we do?” Zakayev said.

  “I like that container ship. Maybe we’ll hitch a ride on her into The Sound.”

  Captain Bayer was pleased but also a little disappointed with his own performance. The new frigate Kalix, with her green crew, had made contact at long range with one of the two Akulas now due south of their current position near Anholt. He regretted his earlier decision to deploy Trondheim’s VDS

  sonar because it would restrict maneuver in confined waters. Narvik and Norsk had also started hauling in. He wanted the Russians for himself but now he would have to share them.

  “We’re in a hurry, Mr. Garborg,” he had said, “but I don’t want any casualties.” Garborg appreciated Bayer’s concern for the sailors who had to manhandle the gear on the ship’s fantail but felt the pressure all the same. He knew Bayer was pacing the bridge, waiting for confirmation that the tow had been winched aboard.

  “Anything new from Kalix?” Bayer asked of Executive Officer Dass.

  “She still has a passive contact, sir.”

  “Do we have an open channel to Stavanger?”

  “Yes, sir. Signals is monitoring it. They’re standing by.”

  Bayer had already given the order to change course toward the sonar contact. There was nothing more he could do now but fret. “Sound conditions are very poor,” Bayer said to Dass. “I’m surprised Kalix made contact at all. Surprised even more that she can hold it.”

  Bayer looked aft at the floodlit fantail and saw sailors in blue hard hats swarming around the winch. He watched the dripping VDS cable wrap slowly around the take-up spool. It seemed that the retrieval operation would take forever.

  “What’s our radar picture, Mr. Dass?” said Bayer, gaze planted aft.

  “Four heavies still running south in train, Captain.”

  Bayer started pacing again. “Keep an eye on them. We may have to warn them off the area where that damned Akula is operating. They won’t like it, but they’ll have no choice.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Bayer paced another ten minutes, until he heard Garborg’s report that the sonar body was out of the water. Bayer spun on his heel in mid-stride across the bridge and boomed at Dass. “Both engines ahead full. Set watch condition two.”

  “Aye, sir. Ahead full. Call away general quarters.”

  Annunciators clinked and answered. The deck shuddered underfoot. The frigate’s bow rose as her screws bit in hard.

  “Signals!”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Send to Narvik and Norsk: ‘Follow on ASAP, et cetera.’ Send to Kalix: ‘Hold position until we go active on sonar, then break off VDS.’ Mr. Dass.”

  “Sir?”

  “We’re at the fringe of sonar range, but you may go
active in five minutes. And stand by on weapons.”

  “I have three pingers, Kapitan.”

  “The Norwegians,” Scott said. “They’re drawing a bead on the K-363.”

  “What’s to prevent them from drawing it on us?” Abakov said.

  “Unless we can stay out of their way, nothing.”

  Scott studied the tactical picture. Three Norwegian frigates pinging with active sonar; the K-363

  somewhere south of the Norwegians, likely near the approach to The Sound; four merchantmen north of the K-480’s current position, headed for The Sound.

  “If we stick our nose in there now, we’re going to get depth-charged by the Norwegians. If we don’t, there’s a good chance Litvanov will get into The Sound before the Norwegians can head him off.”

  “Look here, The Sound is only three and a half miles wide,” Abakov said, his face practically on the chart. “Can’t the Swedes be a stopper in the bottle?”

  The Sound had two narrow and shallow ship channels. In some places the water was less than ten fathoms deep. On the Danish side of The Sound at Kronborg Pynt, the southbound channel made a sharp dogleg to the left before opening up for the approach to Copenhagen. It reminded Scott of a pair of cattle chutes.

  “They probably don’t want to risk a submarine sinking in the channel,” Scott said. “It would be better to nail the K-363 before she gets through or before she reaches Copenhagen.”

  “Kapitan!” The sonarman handed Scott earphones. “Something…!”

  Scott heard the familiar shrill pinging of the Norwegians’ sonars. Between pings he heard the steady thump, thump, thump of the approaching merchant men.

  Scott said. “Yuri, give a listen. They’ve gone active. Won’t do them much good because Akulas have an anechoic coating on their hulls that defeats active sonar. But you never know. The Norwegians might get lucky.”

  Abakov heard thrashing screws and the eerie, crystal clear pings of hull-mounted sonars.