by Joe Buff
“We have to chance it.”
“Understood.” Bell cleared his throat. “Attention in Control. Fire Control Coordinator, remove ADCAPs from tubes one and two, reload with high-explosive Mark Eighty-eights.”
Sessions relayed commands. Torelli and his people got very busy. Down in the torpedo room, the men and the hydraulic autoloader gear went to work, shifting weapons.
Up above, the dogfight continued to rage.
“Mark Eighty-eights loaded in tubes one and two!” Sessions shouted ferociously. These would be his first-ever warshots as Challenger’s XO.
“Very well, Fire Control,” Bell said clearly and deliberately. “Make tubes one and two ready in all respects including opening outer doors.”
Sessions issued more commands. Jeffrey watched on his weapons status display, copied into a window on his console’s lower screen. The tubes were flooded and equalized to the outside water pressure, and the outer tube doors opened.
Torelli ordered parameter presets to define search strategies for the homing weapons, in case the weapon guidance wires broke — and to protect Carter from friendly fire. The presets were sent electronically to the computers in each fish.
Both tube icons turned green on Jeffrey’s display, ready to fire.
“Ship ready. Weapons ready. Solution ready,” Torelli recited coolly.
“Firing point procedures,” Bell ordered, “tubes one and two. Target is the Amethyste-Two. Match sonar bearings and shoot.”
“Set…. Stand by…. Tube one, fire!… Tube two, fire!… Tubes one and two fired electrically!”
Both Mark 88 units swam out silently under their own power, to avoid making a launch transient that the Amethyste-II might detect. Quickly they went to attack speed, while weapons systems technicians controlled each unit through their wires, spreading them apart by a hundred yards.
“Both units running normally,” O’Hanlon confirmed.
Their engines were very loud on the sonar speakers, adding to the tumult from above, diminishing as they climbed, neck-and-neck, covering the distance to the target.
The Amethyste-II’s captain and control room crew, fixated on their battle with what they thought was a valuable prize — a U.S. Navy boomer — suddenly noticed the Mark 88s coming at them from below. Each bore a warhead that weighed over a ton, three times the size of an ADCAP’s. The Amethyste launched noisemakers, acoustic scramblers, and decoys, and started violent evasive maneuvers. These were standard defensive measures. None confused Torelli’s people, with a perfect, upside-down bird’s-eye view letting them track the target amid all distractions.
But the German captain’s true intent became clear.
“Sir,” Sessions said to Bell, “target is steering for this large polynya.” Sonar had previously mapped the open water in the area, using the noises of rain and sleet. Sessions moved his cursor with his trackmarble; an arrow moved in unison on Jeffrey’s screen. Jeffrey saw the Amethyste-II racing for the polynya, pursued at more than twice her speed by the twin Mark 88s. Though the map was changing fast now with the gale, and becoming garbled, that big polynya stood wide and clear.
Bell read his console data. “It’s touch and go if she’ll reach there before the Mark Eighty-eights reach her.” Both of the units went active, their homing sonars making loud tings at distinct frequencies, to not interfere with each other. The two-toned ringing happened faster and faster as they closed in.
Jeffrey continued to watch the attack unfold on his display screens. Harley was wisely holding Carter back, so as not to block the Mark 88s or cut their guidance wires.
“Sir,” Sessions warned, “target has increased her standoff distance from Challenger and from Carter!”
Crewmen reacted as if they’d been hit by cattle prods.
Bell was stunned. “She’s going nuclear on both of us!”
That clever bastard, Jeffrey told himself. He wanted us to think his goal was to get off a sighting report. He faked us out. His real goal was to safely get off nukes.
A tremendous double blast sounded over the sonar speakers, echoing off bummocks, bouncing back and forth between the ice cap and the bottom — sound traveled through water at almost one mile per second, so the vertical echoes came in rapid succession, and Challenger was right in their path. More than just sound, they were shock waves. The ship was battered again and again.
“Units from tubes one and two have detonated!” Sessions yelled. “Assess both as direct hits on the Amethyste!”
Above the cacophony came another, more horrible sound, a metallic rebounding pshew—the implosion of a sinking submarine’s hull as it fell through its crush depth. The Amethyste shattered into thousands of pieces, in all different sizes and shapes. The remains of vessel and crew fell to the bottom in a cloud of wreckage whose chaotic flow noise was the loudest thing on the sonar speakers now — with spent noisemakers gurgling weakly, and now-irrelevant decoys receding rapidly, in the background above. There were no torpedo engine sounds — the Germans didn’t get off a nuclear shot. Carter had ceased her fake Ohio-class flank speed noise emissions, and was inaudible.
Soon the Amethyste’s pieces began to impact the bottom, with dull thuds, heavy crunches, and a pattering like pebbles tossed against a tin roof. The sounds went on for a very long time. The triumph felt aboard Challenger was tempered by dismay over the death of fellow submariners, even if they were the enemy.
“Contact on acoustic link,” Sessions broke the collective, heavy human silence in Control. He interrupted the last of the noise of this terrible war’s latest sea-floor debris-field forming — including the remnants of a nuclear reactor core, if the foot-thick alloy-steel containment had been breached. “Carter has given valid recognition signal, acknowledges receipt of signal from us. Captain Harley sends, ‘Good shooting and much thanks. Commence rendezvous procedures at your convenience.’ ”
“Commodore?” Bell awaited instructions.
“Oh, er, tell Captain Harley, ‘Excellent defensive subterfuge tactics against the Amethyste-Two. Our minisub will dock with Carter shortly.’ ” Jeffrey had been preoccupied, mulling over everything until Bell grabbed his attention.
Sessions typed on his keyboard and sent the message through the link. In a moment he said, “Carter acknowledges, sir.”
“Wait,” Jeffrey said. “Make signal to Carter, ‘What is local direction of surface wind?’ ”
The response, which took a minute, was read out by Sessions. “ ‘Gale has veered to west-northwest.’ ”
“Very well. Make signal, ‘Docking to be delayed. Maintain battle stations. Strike group steer in company, course west-northwest, speed twenty knots, depth eight hundred feet.’ ”
Sessions reported that Carter acknowledged.
“Sir?” Bell asked. “Your intentions?”
“I’m changing the place for the docking. This brew-up could draw other predators, and I don’t mean polar bears. We steam into the heart of the gale and use its bad under-ice acoustic effects as perfect concealment.”
“Understood.” Bell issued helm orders. Patel acknowledged, impressively calm in the aftermath of the battle. He’d found his combat sea legs, as every crewman had to in their own way.
Jeffrey pondered. What was a German submarine doing at the rendezvous point? The meet had been scheduled for when no Axis or Russian spy satellites passed overhead. Canada’s armed forces kept enemies from planting underwater listening devices anywhere near this part of the cap. Harley and Carter were too good to have been trailed all the way from New London. Was the German assigned on a barrier patrol, to catch U.S. subs moving between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and simply got lucky?… Or had someone told the Germans that Carter, or Challenger—or both — would be at this location at this time? The Arctic Ocean was far too big, and sonar detection ranges too short, for it to have been a coincidence, Carter meeting the Amethyste-II like this.
Chapter 8
Rear Admiral Elmar Meredov, sitting in his squeaky high-backed wooden swivel ch
air, decided to take a break from the endless paperwork that came with his job in the Russian Federation’s Voyenno Morskoy Flot—the Russian Navy. A dowdy antique clock ticking on one of his bookcases told him it was nearing the end of the regular workday. So did the particular way the rosy, horizon-hugging Arctic sun streamed through the tall windows, with curtains drawn, of his spacious, high-ceilinged corner office. He got up from behind his massive mahogany desk; it was so old he imagined it must date to Stalin’s era, perhaps once used by a succession of gulag commissars in Magadan or Yakutsk — real cities, and former labor camp centers, far to the south.
Meredov stretched, then considered asking his secretary to bring him another hot tea. His secure telephone rang. The caller ID said it was one of his favorite subordinates, a captain, first rank at a base two hours away by helicopter — the only way to get anywhere quickly in this rugged part of Siberia.
He picked up the phone. “And how are you, Aleksei, on this fine afternoon?”
“I’m well, thank you, sir…. I’m afraid I’ll be late with the month-end aircraft maintenance reports.”
“How late?”
“I might need as much as a week, unless you want me to just fake some numbers to get it all in on time.”
“The last thing I desire is to see us slipping back into habits of the bad old days. There’s enough of that going on around us. You know precision and honesty please me most, Aleksei. Always. I’m simply curious, why the delay?”
“Too many engine refits, and not nearly enough qualified mechanics. Delegation wasn’t working, and leadership does little good with sullen, raw conscripts who don’t want to be led. I had to become directly involved, scramble for spare parts everywhere, then get my hands dirty out on the flight line. Took me away from admin. I’ve fallen way behind. You know how it is, sir.”
Meredov could sense the younger man shrug in semidefeat over the phone. The scourge of AIDS — spread by a lack of clean needles even in hospitals, intensified by the easing of Soviet-era travel restrictions — made it hard to find willing, healthy recruits. Other chronic diseases made the pool of viable draft-age manpower shrink even more, causing constant problems for Meredov as throughout Russian national defense.
“What’s your regiment’s operational availability?”
“Sixty percent, sir. Unlikely to improve.”
“That’s quite excellent, under the circumstances you so aptly describe, especially with the weather we’ve been having.” A strong gale had blown through, leaving clear skies in its wake, but disrupting air and ground operations at more than just the base from which this subordinate’s maritime patrol bombers flew. As regiment commander, he was telling Meredov that sixty percent of his bombers were airworthy on short notice — meaning the other forty percent were not. By some standards, forty percent out of action would be dreadful, but this was Russia.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Was there anything else?”
“No, sir.”
“Then send me your end-of-June forms filled out as soon as you reasonably can. If Vladivostok complains about timeliness, which I seriously doubt, I’ll handle those supreme bureaucrats my way.” Meredov’s double meaning, supreme bureaucrats, was intentional. The commanders at Pacific Fleet headquarters in Vladivostok were very senior, and maddeningly hidebound to go with their exalted ranks and advanced ages. Meredov was grateful that his immediate boss spent all his time down there, fifteen hundred kilometers away. “You just keep your airplanes ready, Aleksei, and your pilots sober… and the rest of the aircrews more-or-less sober.” Meredov chuckled.
“Easier said than done, sir. It’s tough on them, being stationed here.”
“Remind them there’s a war on. They’re supposed to be protecting the sacred Motherland!” He lowered his voice. “Even if we are in theory neutral in this one.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell them, if you have to, that they should be grateful the risks they face come from storms and their own carelessness, not combat with the Americans.” At least, not yet.
“Understood, sir.”
“And inform me at once if your July aviation fuel allocations aren’t delivered when due.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Very well, Aleksei.” Meredov hung up.
For a moment he listened to the steady hiss of the ancient steam radiators, from which the dirty white paint was peeling in scabs. He wore his winter formal uniform, dark navy-blue wool with a double-breasted jacket, mostly to help stay warm — the temperature outside was well above freezing, but his office was drafty with the winter shutters taken down. The windows were double-glazed, but their frames were warped and loose. His jacket cuff edges were shiny from wear, and so was the seat of his pants, which he thought, as with the radiator and the ragged carpet, was symbolic: threadbare, not pretty, but effective enough to get by, like Russia herself. The numerous medals on his jacket swayed and clinked whenever he moved. These seemed symbolic, too, since he’d never been in battle, never had to fight a shooting war. Even so, Meredov was proud of the medals and ribbons. He’d earned them for various outstanding achievements, including vital peacetime ballistic missile submarine deterrent patrols. Yet he also felt the decorations emblematic of a wider national culture based on puffery and bluff, deception and disinformation, as much as on any true substance. He glanced at the photos, models, and other memorabilia decorating his office walls and desk; the experiences and relationships behind these were quite genuine.
Twenty-five years of service to my country. My sad, despairing, tormented country.
He went to the windows, taking in the view of the snowcapped Cherskiy Mountain Range on his left, southwest, and the uninterrupted vista to his right, northward, as the land fell away toward boggy lowlands and the desolate permafrost tundra. In the foreground, silver birches soared, hardy shrubs clung to the moist and mossy taiga soil, and wildflowers bloomed in open fields that teemed with migratory birds; though six months from now the temperature would be brutally, killingly cold, at the peak of summer’s heat in August a person would sweat standing still in the shade. In the distance, scattered smoke plumes rose from wood-pulping paper factories, from coal-fired power plants, and from smelters busy purifying valuable metals from ores.
Eventually, in that same direction, north, too far to see from where he stood, mainland Russia ended, where frigid waves from the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea broke against the shore. In winter, he knew from experience, those waves froze to solid ice. Now both seas were sprinkled with icebergs, and their farther sides bordered the polar cap itself. Past the New Siberian Islands was no more dry land until well beyond the North Pole, in an alien place called Canada — not much more distant from Meredov in one direction than Vladivostok was in the other.
He gazed thoughtfully to the north. Out there lay his area of responsibility. Rear Admiral Elmar Meredov commanded all shore-based and surface naval forces that defended the northeastern part of the Siberian coast against amphibious assault, and protected nearby home waters from incursion by foreign submarines. What an absurd military arrangement. Three thousand kilometers of coastline in his jurisdiction, not counting the islands, and he had no control over army troops, air force fighter jets, or any major fleet formations or Russian submarines. His own assets — smaller ships, long-endurance patrol planes, his undersea hydrophone nets, and even his headquarters building itself — depended for their own defense on other departments, directorates, and branches of the armed forces, between which cooperation, even in these turbulent times, was conspicuous by its nonexistence.
Meredov was very used to such things. In a way, he’d started out his career as a product of the Soviet state at its best. The son of poor factory workers in Leningrad, with no Party affiliations at all, he’d excelled in mathematics in school. After he won a regional math contest against stiff competition, the communist system sent him to college at Moscow State University, where he received a superb education in the mid-1980s.
As graduation day approached he was invited to join the navy, by a regime whose invitations could not be refused. Trained as a junior officer, his technical talents and resilient, even-tempered personality led him to an assignment in submarines.
The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia deteriorated into an era of experiments with democracy and capitalism — experiments that tragically failed. The Russian military dwindled, pay became increasingly irregular, but at least there was food and clean clothes. This was a lot better than most civilians had, including his parents, whom he was forced to scramble to support. He’d married a woman he met at university, a linguistics major of great inner character strength and no great beauty. But Elmar Meredov was neither charming nor handsome himself — and he knew it. In real life, love and passion had nothing to do with good looks; the marriage thrived and they raised three wonderful, bright, athletic sons. His wife’s language skills won her plenty of work as a translator, and the extended family, with her unemployed parents too, got by.
Meredov rose further in the Russian Navy based on his evident merit and persistent hard work, plus an increasingly shrewd sense of how to play the ridiculous system. He became the assistant captain of one of Russia’s handful of Project 941 subs. NATO called them Typhoons. Weighing almost as much as a World War II battleship, carrying twenty long-range missiles that each bore ten hydrogen bomb warheads, a Typhoon was immense and almost indestructible. Meredov earned another promotion, but there were too few submarines still in commission for him to get to command one. Instead, he was put in charge of a sector of Russia’s equivalent of the American SOSUS underwater sound surveillance system. The ever-adaptable Meredov adjusted quickly, making the most of his prior experience as a qualified submariner, and became a leading expert in antisubmarine warfare instead.
Russia turned autocratic again, just as tremendous oil and natural gas reserves began to be efficiently exploited — and exported — to the full. The resurgent Kremlin wanted a strong defense and suddenly had the hard currency to pay for it. Meredov made rear admiral, much higher than he ever thought he’d go. It was a symptom of his continuing lack of insider connections that he was posted to the portion of Siberia which, even for Siberia, was truly the middle of nowhere.