by Jeff Edwards
The captain was silent for several seconds, and Chief McPherson began to wonder if she had said too much. “I’m sorry, Captain,” she said, finally. “Maybe this is a woman thing. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ll do my job when the time comes. I’ll be ready, sir.”
“I know you will,” the captain said. He laid his own hand on the back of a torpedo. “And don’t worry. It’s not a woman thing. It’s a human thing. And believe me, Chief. You are not the only one feeling it.”
CHAPTER 34
USS TOWERS (DDG-103)
NORTHERN GULF OF OMAN
(SOUTH OF THE STRAITS OF HORMUZ)
SATURDAY; 19 MAY
1830 hours (6:30 PM)
TIME ZONE +4 ‘DELTA’
In Combat Information Center, Ensign Patrick Cooper stood near the Computerized Dead-Reckoning Tracer and looked down at the digital flat-screen display that covered the unit’s entire upper surface. Five feet wide and nearly six feet long, the CDRT display screen was much too large to fit on a regular operator’s console. It had to be large, because Anti-Submarine Warfare was complex and intricate. Displayed on a normal-sized operator’s console, a typical ASW engagement would clutter the screen with so many tracking symbols and trial target geometries that it would quickly become impossible to sort anything out. The large CDRT display allowed the symbols to spread out enough to remain legible.
Cooper shifted his weight from his left leg to his right. The large size of the display had a downside. It was impossible to see the entire screen clearly from a sitting position. To take in the complete display, it was necessary to stand close to the unit and look down, directly into the screen. Consequently, the CDRT was the only watch station in Combat Information Center without a chair for the operator. Cooper had been on watch for less than an hour, and he could already feel his leg muscles beginning to tighten up. The hours of standing made for some long watches.
Ensign Cooper shifted his weight again and scanned the display. Friendly ships appeared on the display as small green circles, each with a single line sticking out from its center, like the stick of a lollipop. The lines were called speed vectors. The direction of each vector indicated the course of the ship it represented, and its length indicated the ship’s speed through the water. Fast-moving ships had long speed vectors; slower ships had shorter vectors. The circles and lines were called NTDS symbols, short for Naval Tactical Data System. (Although the NTDS system itself had long been superseded by more advanced technology, its easy-to-read catalog of symbols had carried its legacy into the twenty-first century.) The particular NTDS symbol that represented USS Towers was marked by a bright green cross that divided the circular part of the symbol into four equal quadrants.
Each symbol on the display was trailed by a small three-character code in capital letters: the tactical call sign for that particular ship. Today, Towers’ call sign was Y7M, pronounced “Yankee Seven Mike.”
To Ensign Cooper, the deployment of ships looked excellent. Spaced at eighty percent of their predicted sonar ranges, Towers, Benfold, and Ingraham formed a moving wall of acoustic sensors. They would sweep west in a locked-step zigzag pattern, searching every inch of water between themselves and the probable position of the enemy subs. In the “pouncer” position, Antietam would run behind the advancing barrier. When a submarine was detected, Antietam would come to flank speed and drive around the end of the formation to engage the unsuspecting sub with Vertical Launch Anti-Submarine Rockets. Then, while the sub was on the run, Antietam’s helicopter, Samurai Seven-Nine, would swoop down out of the sky like a hawk and drop a torpedo right off the target’s bow. Running at high speed to escape the ASROC, the sub should run right into the helo’s torpedo before it even had time to react.
It was a good plan, maybe even a great plan. Unfortunately, it was right out of the book. Ensign Cooper felt uneasy about his captain’s idea of abandoning established doctrine. But the thought of facing an enemy who knows your moves ahead of time had him really scared. No matter how good the Pouncer Plan looked on the color-coded screen of the CDRT, it bordered on suicide.
* * *
A voice broke over the encrypted Navy Red radio circuit. “All units, this is SAU Commander. Execute Passive Search Plan Delta, over.”
Ensign Cooper grabbed the red telephone-style handset of the Navy Red terminal and keyed the mike. “SAU Commander, this is Towers. Roger. Executing Search Plan Delta, out.”
Over the next few seconds, Ingraham and Benfold both acknowledged the signal.
Now it begins, Ensign Cooper thought. He leaned over the CDRT and waited for the Sonar Supervisor’s contact report.
For the next few hours, Cooper was the ship’s USWE, or Undersea Warfare Evaluator. It would be his job to coordinate the actions of the Towers USW team: cross-referencing contact reports from the ship’s sonars, targeting information from the fire control computers, oceanographic data—particularly the thermal structure of the water and the topographic shape of the ocean bottom—predicted acoustic ranges, non-acoustic sensor information, the locations of friendly or neutral ships and aircraft, and an almost overwhelming array of other variables that could affect the tactical situation. And to make matters more interesting, much of the data was based on computer projections, not all of which would be correct. The USWE was expected to take this mishmash of information, swirl it around in his head for a bit, discard some pieces of it, latch on to others, and come up with a mental picture of the tactical situation. Then, if the contact was designated as hostile, the USWE would supervise the programming and launching of USW weapons. If the USWE’s tactical picture was accurate enough, those weapons should get close enough to the target submarine for their acoustic seekers to lock on, and (hopefully) destroy the bad guys. Conversely, if the USWE’s tactical picture was too far off the mark, the ship’s weapons wouldn’t be properly placed or programmed, and the submarine would eat their lunch.
Hunting submarines was still more art than science, and the best computers in the world—while they could help him—could not do the job alone. Ensign Cooper smiled nervously to himself. He might not have Chief McPherson’s years of experience, but he was good at this part. At least he had been in school. He’d been the best USWE in his class, and his tactical awareness had been excellent. He’d killed the sub in sixty or seventy percent of the tactical simulations the course instructors had thrown at him—a far better record than anyone else in his class.
Of course, this was not a simulation. The enemy subs out there were real, and their weapons were real. If Cooper guessed wrong at a critical juncture, people would die. The wrong people. His people.
Which meant that he couldn’t let that happen.
* * *
The search continued. Seconds dragged into minutes. Then the minutes began to stack up.
He keyed his mike. “Sonar—USWE, testing Net One One.”
The Sonar Supervisor answered instantly. “Read you Lima Charlie, USWE. How me?” (Lima Charlie was net-speak for Loud and Clear.)
Ensign Cooper keyed his mike again. “Read you same, Sonar.”
There was nothing wrong with the communication circuit.
He tapped a fingertip on the glass display screen of the CDRT. Why hadn’t sonar reported anything yet?
* * *
Ten more minutes passed, and Ensign Cooper keyed his mike again. “Sonar—USWE, report all contacts.”
The Sonar Supervisor’s reply came a few seconds later. “USWE—Sonar, my tracks are as follows: Ingraham, designated Friendly Surface Zero One, bears three-one-five. Benfold, designated Friendly Surface Zero Two, bears two-one-seven. Antietam, designated Friendly Surface Zero Three, bears zero-niner-four. Sonar holds negative passive or active POSS-SUB contacts at this time.”
The ensign chewed on this for a few minutes. Could the subs have slipped by them already? Were the Sonar Technicians searching in the right place? He keyed the mike again. “Ah … Sonar—USWE, your Threat Axis is two-eight-zero. Your Search Secto
r is two-five-zero to three-one-zero.”
The Sonar Supervisor’s voice carried a note of annoyance. “Sonar copies, sir. I promise you, if we get anything, you’ll be the first to know.”
“USWE, aye.” Ensign Cooper let his finger off the mike button. He was getting his first glimpse of real Undersea Warfare, and it was a waiting game. Hours, maybe days of searching between contacts, most of which would ultimately turn out to be biologics or distant shipping traffic.
The Tactical Action Officer keyed his mike. “USWE—TAO. Now do you understand why we call it U-S-W?”
“Sir?”
The TAO chuckled. “It stands for Unbelievably … Slooooooow … Warfare …”
Ensign Cooper smiled wanly. “USWE, aye.”
“Roger that,” the Sonar Supervisor said over the net. “Do you know the definition of USW, sir?”
Cooper said, “I know the definition that’s in the book, Sonar. What’s your version?”
“Six months of boredom, followed by thirty seconds of sheer terror.”
Although no one could see him, Ensign Cooper nodded. “Point taken, gentlemen. I’ll try to be patient. But if you get anything …”
“You have my word, sir,” the Sonar Supervisor said. “We won’t keep it a secret.”
* * *
Three hours and about six cups of coffee later, Chief McPherson showed up to relieve the watch. The hours of uneventful searching had dulled Ensign Cooper’s enthusiasm a bit, and the idea of hitting his rack was starting to sound pretty attractive.
The chief yawned and took a sip from her own coffee. “What have you got, sir?”
The ensign echoed her yawn. “Not a hell of a lot, Chief. We’re about two and a half hours into Passive Search Plan Delta. No luck so far.” He looked up at the clock. “We don’t roll over to a new Zulu-day until after your watch, so you don’t need to worry about updating call signs or loading new-day crypto.”
He yawned again and was about to start a rundown of all surface contacts being tracked by radar and sonar, when the Sonar Supervisor’s voice came over the net. “USWE—Sonar, request clear-or-foul, bearing three-zero-seven.”
Cooper slapped his palm on the CDRT’s trackball and slewed the cursor over to three-zero-seven. His heart skipped a beat. There were no surface symbols on the plot anywhere near that bearing; the SPY-1 radar had no contacts. But it might still be a small craft. Sometimes wooden boats, especially those with low profiles, didn’t show up very well. He keyed his mike. “Bridge—USWE, request a visual clear-or-foul, bearing three-zero-seven.”
The reply came back in less than ten seconds. “USWE—Bridge, your bearing is clear. Lookouts report no surface contacts to thirty degrees either side. Mast-mounted sight shows negative visual and negative infrared.”
Ensign Cooper swallowed. Instantly awake, his fatigue and boredom were forgotten. He keyed his mike. “Sonar—USWE, bearing three-zero-seven is clear. Tag it, bag it, send it to fire control, and then call it away.”
A few seconds later, speakers for the 29-MC announcing circuit crackled to life all over CIC. “All stations—Sonar has passive broadband contact off the port beam, bearing three-zero-seven. Initial classification: POSS-SUB, confidence level low.”
Even before the contact had popped up on the CDRT screen, Ensign Cooper was punching the button that patched his comm headset into Navy Red. The sync pulse warbled crazily in his ear for a second until the ship’s encryption system synchronized with the encryption system aboard Antietam. He cleared his throat before keying the mike. “SAU Commander, this is Towers. Contact report to follow. Time, seventeen fifty-one Zulu. My unit holds passive broadband contact, bearing three-zero-seven. Initial classification: POSS-SUB, confidence level low, over.”
Less than a second later, Captain Whiley’s voice came over the scrambled radio net. “SAU Commander, aye. Your contact designated Gremlin Zero One. My unit will launch Samurai Seven-Nine in approximately five mikes. Alert status of your aircraft, Firewalker Two-Six upgraded to Ready-Five, over.”
“SAU Commander, this is Towers, roger, out.” As soon as he punched out of the radio circuit, Ensign Cooper keyed back into the USW control net aboard Towers. “TAO—USWE, the SAU Commander has upgraded our helo alert status to Ready-Five.”
The TAO’s voice came back immediately. “TAO, aye. Break. ASTAC—TAO, set Helo Ready-Five.”
The current Ready-Five helicopter, Samurai Seven-Nine was sitting on Antietam’s flight deck, spinning its rotors up for launch at that very second. It would be in the air in five minutes or less—time the screening ships would use to build a firing solution and refine their classification of the contact.
Cooper shifted his attention to the CDRT. Now came the tough part. The next four or five minutes would be crucial. He needed to know what the submarine, designated Gremlin Zero One, was up to—before Antietam’s helo was in the air.
The first piece of the USW puzzle was in place; they knew the contact’s bearing. Instead of a tidy NTDS symbol, the contact appeared on the CDRT display as a red line extending from the center of the symbol for USS Towers to the edge of the screen. The angle of the line was 307 degrees: the bearing of the contact from Towers. The contact could be anywhere along that line of bearing, at a range of anything from a couple of hundred yards, to hundreds of thousands of yards. To localize him further, they would need to know his range. For an effective firing solution, they would also need to know the target’s course and speed, but that could be estimated with a good degree of accuracy once they knew the contact’s range.
Cooper keyed his mike. “UB—USWE, got anything yet?”
The Underwater Battery Fire Control Operator keyed up. “USWE—UB. That’s a negative, sir. The sonar track is looking pretty good, but it’s going to take me a while to nail this guy down off passive broadband alone. If you want something quick, I’m going to need a turn.”
“USWE, aye.”
If they’d had passive narrowband frequency data on the contact, the fire control computer could have calculated the target’s range based on minute changes in Doppler as the submarine moved through the water. Without frequency information, they were restricted to Target Motion Analysis. While it would eventually give them the information they needed, TMA could take twenty minutes or more and would require them to turn at least once (and maybe twice) to feed the computer enough changes in bearing rate to do its magic. But turning wasn’t an option right now. He couldn’t afford to open up a hole in the formation. If he did, the submarine could slip through it and get inside the screen’s defenses—which was exactly what had happened to Kitty Hawk.
The ensign stared at the colored symbols on the CDRT. Every thirty seconds, another red line appeared, each one tagged by a tiny set of digits that represented the Zulu time of that particular bearing update. The red lines accumulated slowly. Using only bearings, this was going to take a long time. Too long.
He exhaled fiercely. “Shit.” He keyed his mike. “Sonar—USWE, have you got any kind of narrowband on this contact at all?”
“No discrete tonals, sir. The target is showing a tightly packed cluster of frequencies up around 550 hertz, but it’s so garbled I can’t do anything with it. Everything else I’ve got is too broad and diffused to track or classify. We are definitely not getting anything we can use for Doppler. Request permission to go active, sir.”
Cooper’s answer was immediate. “Negative, Sonar. Remain passive. If we spook this guy, he’ll pop off a shot at us and run like hell.”
Chief McPherson nodded. “Good call, sir. No sense in tipping our hand this early in the fight.”
Cooper tapped his fingers on the face of the CDRT. “Thanks, Chief. What do you think about having Sonar adjust the depth of the towed array, to see if we can get some useful narrowband?”
Chief McPherson shook her head. “Never violate the second rule of USW, sir: ‘If you’ve got contact, don’t screw with anything.’”
“We’re running out of time, Chief.
Antietam’s helo is going to be airborne in …” he checked his watch—“about two minutes.”
“It’s your call, sir,” the chief said. “Until we finish our watch turnover, you’re still the USWE. But if it were me, I’d say screw the helo. That’s a LAMPS III bird, strictly re-detect and attack. They’re not set up for search. They’ve got no business launching until we have the contact localized.”
A hand squeezed Ensign Cooper’s shoulder. He looked around to find the captain standing behind him. “Listen to your chief, Pat. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen somebody lose contact because they were futzing with equipment line-up, trying to get a better picture.”
“What do I tell the SAU Commander when he starts screaming for amplifying contact data?”
“You let me worry about Captain Whiley,” Captain Bowie said. “You follow your search plan and keep your eyes open. And don’t get tunnel vision.”
“Sir?”
“There are four subs out there. Don’t let yourself get wrapped around the axle over one contact, especially if it’s POSS-SUB low. We still don’t have any real classification data on this guy. We don’t even know his range. He might still turn out to be an Omani fishing boat way the hell and gone outside of radar range, and his signal’s caught in the surface duct.”
“I’ve seen it happen, sir,” Chief McPherson said. “More than once. Just be ready to shift gears on a second’s notice if we get any new information on the contact.”
The ensign nodded. “I’ll remember that.” He looked up. “Are you ready to assume the watch?”
The captain said, “Hang on to it for a while, if you want to, Pat. This is your first no-shit bad guy, and he showed up on your watch. In my book, that means you get to chase him down. This will be your kill … if you want it.”
Ensign Cooper swallowed heavily. He was frankly surprised that the captain wasn’t pulling him off in favor of a more experienced USWE. He suspected that he’d been given the watch for the first leg of the search because the captain hadn’t anticipated any action so early in the hunt. But now the captain was trusting him with the safety of the ship—saying as much right in front of the CIC crew. True, the captain and Sonar Chief would be close at hand, in case he screwed up, but it was still a pretty clear vote of confidence from the old man. He felt a surge of nervous pride.