by Joe Buff
Bell frowned again. “Understood.”
As always when the fans were stopped, the control room was getting stuffy. This latest tactics dispute between Bell and Jeffrey had heightened the already existing tension among the crew. People tried to settle in for another uncomfortable wait.
“Signal Carter, ‘Acknowledge this message and then secure acoustic link except for extreme emergency. I will signal if evasive maneuvers required, or when I deem Master One is out of counterdetection range against strike group.’ ”
Jeffrey watched the tactical plot as Master One changed from a large, multicolored blob, showing a broad area of uncertainty, into a point: O’Hanlon and Torelli at last had better data.
Yikes. The closest point of approach would be within two miles, not four, in ten minutes. Master One was on a course due west at fourteen knots, at a depth of six hundred sixty feet — two hundred meters to her captain, who’d be thinking metric. Very close. She was an Akula-II, identified by quirks in her signature as K-335, commissioned in 2001 and upgraded since then.
O’Hanlon’s initial detection had been a fluke, showing how unpredictable sound propagation could truly be under the ice cap. Akula-IIs were extremely quiet.
“Sir,” Bell said in an undertone, “the Akula-Twos have very good nonacoustic ASW detectors.”
He knew Bell meant magnetic anomaly sensors, wake turbulence measuring devices, and chemical sniffers.
Jeffrey wasn’t worried about magnetic or turbulence detection. Even the revised closest point of approach was too far away for Carter’s steel hull to be detected above the magnetic field noise caused by the proximity of the North Magnetic Pole, over in northwestern Canada. Turbulence wasn’t an issue since Jeffrey’s strike group was drifting with the current. The real problem was the current, which ran from west to east: from the strike group toward the Akula-II.
Every submarine gave off traces of lubricants and hydraulic fluid into the surrounding sea. Fuel oil for the backup emergency diesel engine, even sewage from the waste-holding tanks, might also leak in small amounts. Carter had just come from six months in dry dock. How well was she repaired? Battle damage was known to greatly increase the rate of chemical leakage. If Carter was leaving a big and strong enough plume, K-335 would notice.
Despite the warmth in Control, Jeffrey’s hands began to feel morbidly cold. There was a burning sensation in his stomach. But all he could do, as he’d already told Bell, was wait.
Oh crap.
Jeffrey walked up the aisle to Bell. He bent over to talk into his ear. “Akula-Twos have gravimeters.”
Bell’s jaw clenched immediately. He remembered what Jeffrey had said days ago, about setting a special gravimeter watch. If Challenger could spot a stationary submarine’s reactor compartment, the same thing would work in reverse.
“What’s our speed over the ground?” Jeffrey asked.
Bell pointed at his console display. The window indicated 0.3 knots. They were moving with the current, but not by much.
“Is that fast enough?”
“To not be detected, sir?”
Jeffrey nodded.
“With Russian equipment? I’m not aware of intel on that. With U.S. equipment, it’d be touch and go. Two miles, resolution is sharp. They might see us both. At best we’d have one heck of a lot of explaining to do. At worst…” Bell didn’t need to say it aloud. The mission would be doomed before it began.
“Have Challenger put on one-half knot of speed translating downcurrent on auxiliary maneuvering units. Break acoustic-link silence and instruct Carter how to mimic our movements.”
Bell told Patel what actions to take at the helm. Sessions, distressed, typed gingerly, as if the sonarmen on K-335 might hear him touching the keys.
The motion put on to hide from gravimeter detection meant mechanical transients, flow noise, and turbulence. They’d be subtle, minimal, but this was an extremely high-risk situation.
Patel sounded nervous acknowledging Bell’s commands. When Sessions reported that Carter acknowledged, he sounded nervous.
K-335 was almost at her closest point of approach. Thinking of her out there gave Jeffrey the creeps. He locked his eyes on the sonarmen. If the Russian detected the strike group and reacted, they’d be first to know, by hearing telltale noise.
Noise from tubes flooding, or if she’s patrolling with weapons wet, then noise from torpedoes in the water. If that happens I go down fighting, to give Carter a chance to escape.
“Range to Master One increasing,” O’Hanlon murmured. K-335 had crossed Challenger’s and Carter’s bows, and was continuing on course, west. But no one relaxed. It might take time for K-335’s computers to process fresh incoming data. There could be a lag before her captain realized he’d passed so near two intruding submarines. The uncomfortable wait continued. People began to squirm and sweat. K-335 receded, at a rate a bit under five hundred yards per minute — faster than a gold-medal Olympic marathon runner, but in Challenger’s control room it felt like a leaden crawl.
At last O’Hanlon reported that he’d definitely lost the contact. Jeffrey knew the crewmen around him wished that they could cheer.
“Signal Carter,” Jeffrey ordered, “ ‘Rise on autohover, five-zero feet per minute, make your depth one-six-five feet. Make your heading one-eight-zero.’ ” Due south.
The slow rise should help avoid hull popping.
“Captain Bell, ditto for Challenger.” Nonstandard terminology, but Jeffrey was feeling something like glee after outwitting K-335. It gave him a new level of confidence, to have tested his strike group’s stealth at such close quarters against a first-class opponent.
Both ships finished rotating to face south, and Carter put herself behind Jeffrey and off Challenger’s starboard side. They rose vertically, toward the ice cap looming above. On the gravimeter, the continental slope — showing missing chunks and fissures such as scars from old earthquakes — slid progressively beneath them, until the shelf itself stretched out in front. The water ahead was sandwiched between the ice cap and the shelf. Clearance between, two hundred feet maximum, was tight.
Conspicuous on the gravimeter display, as two small lumps on an otherwise featureless plain, were Genrietty Island, fifteen miles off, and, thirty miles further southwest, at the extreme range of the gravimeter’s field of view, Zannetty Island. Both jutted barely one hundred fifty feet above the sea.
It was time to deploy remote-controlled unmanned vehicles from Challenger and Carter. Harley’s were larger and more capable, because his garage space sported arrangements to hold and release several Seahorse IIIs. Bell had to make do with smaller, older probes that were launched and retrieved through Challenger’s torpedo tubes.
The seemingly bland plain of Siberia’s silty continental shelf, and the hard lid of the ice cap so close above it, held unknown man-made hazards as well as ice keels that could endanger the strike group and ruin the mission. But the continental shelf also held an invaluable, indispensable prize. Jeffrey opened his mouth to issue an order.
“New passive contact on the starboard wide-aperture array!” O’Hanlon broke in. “Broadband contact, submerged, bearing two-seven-five!” Just north of due west. “Range uncertain! Designate the contact Master Two.”
“Sir,” Torelli told Bell, “timing is not inconsistent with K-335 having turned back this way.”
“Range? Estimate?” Jeffrey demanded.
“Insufficient data,” O’Hanlon said flatly.
“Suppose Master Two is Master One,” Jeffrey said. “Suppose it’s the same situation but he’s coming at us from the other direction. What can anyone tell me?”
“He’s further away from the shelf,” Torelli said, “by a couple of miles. Conjecture he’s following an oval track, a possible barrier patrol.”
“A barrier patrol against what?” Jeffrey snapped.
“Protecting the islands, sir?” Jeffrey could hear a shrug implied in how Torelli answered.
“Protecting them from w
hat? From us?”
For a minute no one said anything, cowed by their strike group commander’s raw anger. Jeffrey made himself cool down. “Or are we looking at it backwards, assuming the world revolves around our mission when it doesn’t yet?”
“Sir?” Bell was confused.
“A Russian boomer bastion. I bet they have one north of us, in the Wrangel Abyssal Plain. Think about it.”
Bell nodded. “K-335 isn’t protecting the islands. The islands are outposts to help protect the bastion.”
“Sir,” Sessions said, “Carter holds new submerged passive sonar contact, west. They conjecture K-335 is reexamining this area after finding signs of us in their sensor data.”
What if I’m wrong and Harley’s right? His mind-set, his intuition, perspective, judgment, would be different from Jeffrey’s — and possibly better. He’d gotten clobbered on his previous mission, whereas Jeffrey didn’t know firsthand what that was like: he might become a victim of his own prior unbroken successes, by making the incorrect call.
“Sonar, Weps, what’s K-335’s speed now?”
“No data,” O’Hanlon repeated in frustration, edgy, irritable, taking his wrestling match with the bad local acoustic conditions very personally.
“No reason from bearing rate to believe speed has changed,” Torelli said. “But I can’t say for sure that speed hasn’t changed, either, sir.”
“What’s the contact’s CPA?” The closest point of approach.
“Four miles, sir. Maybe.”
“You said that last pass, and it was only two.”
“Understood, sir.” Torelli sounded as if he felt he was letting his commodore down. The tactical plot showed a wide error zone in Master Two’s position.
“If he were after us,” Jeffrey said, “I think he’d either go noticeably faster or slower than before.” Shit. “We don’t have time to deploy our probes and scout ahead enough that we can get safely up onto the continental shelf and out of his way.”
“Same tactics?” Bell asked tentatively.
“Affirmative. Bows north, translate east a half-knot faster than the current, keep real quiet, wait for the threat to go by.”
Things were out of Jeffrey’s hands. K-335 knew they were there, or she didn’t. If she didn’t, she’d detect them on this pass, or not. If she opened fire she opened fire. If K-335 did shoot, Jeffrey knew what to do: draw the weapons away from Carter, and stop K-335 from launching more or reporting Carter’s presence. But in sub-on-sub combat, the first well-aimed shots were usually fatal; at this short range the duel would be savage, over quickly — and Challenger might easily lose.
If that did happen, Harley would escape on his own, then somehow regain stealth, and carry on as best he could. The struggling Allied cause just didn’t have the months it would take to abort the mission and start it again from scratch when the diplomatic, military, and intelligence flurry over an undersea firefight in Russian home waters subsided. Harley would have to hope that Jeffrey’s sudden death at the hands of K-335’s captain didn’t too badly handicap the President negotiating with Moscow over the Hot Line. All involved could only pray that Challenger, if sunk so close to Genrietty Island, didn’t shatter Kurzin’s pseudo-German frame-up subterfuge.
Fat chance. The risks might have looked acceptable at the Pentagon or the White House, as paper studies in conference rooms with tired people sitting amid big piles of empty coffee cups. Standing in the control room, with an Akula-II so close that Jeffrey could practically reach out and touch it, tore away the academic tone of the simulations. What was going on right now, right here, was much too real.
He seriously considered opening fire first. This would utterly violate his rules of engagement, and with Russian hydrophone nets in range the action could surely be reconstructed accurately. Ambushing K-335 to save his mission, in the short term, would start the very Russian-versus-American war he was supposed to help permanently avoid in the long term. Jeffrey was handcuffed from every direction. He hated not holding the initiative. He had to regain it, period, if necessary by sheer force of will. He ran through all that had happened so far. He saw that he needed to pick between being an optimist and a pessimist…
K-335 won’t shoot. He hasn’t seen us yet, and he won’t.
“New plan,” Jeffrey announced theatrically to dispel the tension and gloom. “This guy’s just what the doctor ordered.”
“Commodore?” Bell was mystified.
“These waters are awfully polluted. I doubt he pays his chemo-sniffer readings any mind. So we continue drifting, and do nothing until after he comes back once again from the east. Russian command and control are rigid. I expect his oval patrol track and his speed are fixed, dictated by superiors. I want to know this guy’s schedule. When we’re ready, he’ll be the perfect key to unlock the outermost shell of the matryoshka doll.”
Chapter 15
Challenger and Carter waited for K-335 to return. In the meantime, Jeffrey ordered the strike group to secure — stand down — from battle stations, so people could eat, rest, and use the heads. He took a much-needed nap himself, then a refreshing hot shower, grabbed a bite in the wardroom, and dosed himself with every submariner’s drug of choice: caffeine. He filled a travel mug with more strong coffee and went to Control.
Apprehension there mounted. There was no guarantee that K-335 would come back. Another ELF message came through from Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, reconfirming that the mission was still on. This time, Jeffrey was secretly glad. He was too far in, too mentally engaged and emotionally committed, to welcome any idea of withdrawing.
His adrenaline surged when contact on K-335 was regained, ten hours after she’d disappeared east.
Satisfied that he understood her schedule, Jeffrey issued orders for Challenger and Carter to release their off-board probes. They’d use them to scout several miles ahead before following at the same speed the probes were making, seven knots.
The tension thickened as the vessels moved onto the continental shelf. Jeffrey told Bell to turn on the sonar speakers. With the strike group sandwiched so narrowly between the ice cap and the bottom, groans and creeks and crackling from the pack ice were louder than ever. Jeffrey also heard constant splish-splashes, and barks and yips and different kinds of cries.
“Biologics are raising the acoustic sea state,” O’Hanlon reported. Closer to land and the edge of the summertime ice cap, seals and sea birds swarmed. Crewmen jumped when an agonized animal scream filled the air. It died off abruptly.
“A polar bear just caught lunch,” O’Hanlon said. The sonarman sitting next to him seemed squeamish. “Enjoy the extreme ecotourism, me boy.”
Bell’s two probes, shaped like torpedoes, battery-powered, loaded with sophisticated sensors, searched a narrow path on the shelf for anything emplaced by the Russians that might give Challenger’s or Carter’s presence away. Data and imagery from the probes filled several screens in the control room, coming through their fiber-optic tethers as Torelli’s men directed them with joysticks. Captain Harley had deployed three Seahorse III unmanned undersea vehicles. Much wider and heavier then Challenger’s probes, and thus better equipped as robotic investigators, they helped check the seafloor and the underside of the ice.
The Seahorses gave much earlier warning of polynyas than the strike group’s passive sonars could. Jeffrey wanted to stay clear of such open water almost as badly as he craved avoiding a crash into an ice keel. He thought of each hole in the ice as a window through which his ships might be seen and attacked.
One value of the probes was that their small size and silent propulsion made them essentially invisible. Near Genrietty they located man-made objects in a line along the bottom, and in a more uneven line above, attached to the underside of the ice.
Carter signaled again: “Unknown if objects are mines or ASW sensors or both. Classification requires high-frequency Seahorse sonars go active.”
“Captain?” Bell asked.
“Doesn’t ma
tter what they are. Regardless, we need to find a way past…. Fire Control, signal Carter, ‘Active sonars to remain secured, repeat, secured. Commence passive search for access route trending south.’ ”
Technicians on Challenger and Carter sent their probes swerving in a coordinated pattern, to find a gap broad enough for Challenger, and then Carter following behind, to squeeze through at three knots. One of Torelli’s probes won this friendly competition. Jeffrey ordered Sessions to relay the information to Carter.
When safely beyond the Russian picket line of sensors or mines or whatever they were, both ships went back to seven knots.
“Commodore,” Sessions soon called, “Carter signals, ‘Permission to commence active search for cable?’ ”
Tapping this buried undersea fiber-optic communications cable was the next vital part of the mission plan. One of the Seahorses had a narrow-beam, low-frequency, look-down active sonar. Its purpose was to penetrate the ocean floor and find buried objects. By moving slowly just above the bottom, the bulk of the Seahorse was supposed to mask the returning echoes from prying enemy ears. At such close vertical range, if an object wasn’t too deep into the silt or sand or gravel covering different parts of the shelf, a long-wavelength search beam could seek incongruous materials and shapes a few yards down.
Blood pressures started rising in Challenger’s control room. Going active was an iffy tactic in such confined and hostile waters. As the navigation plot and the gravimeter proved, the strike group was pinched between Genrietty and Zannetty Islands. Satellite surveillance had shown that both were occupied by garrisons of naval infantry troops. Facilities for living year-round had been dug deep into the rock of the islands. Radar domes, and radio antennas, were conspicuous in the picture files provided in Jeffrey’s orders pouch. Both islands had helicopter landing pads, and helos. These could shuttle southwest, to the much larger parts of the New Siberian Island landmasses, or could fly due south to the mainland, three hundred nautical miles away.
The helos didn’t just rotate troops and bring in supplies. They patrolled aggressively, dropping dipping sonars and LIDAR projectors through the polynyas. And the troops, on skis or using snowmobiles, patrolled the surface of the cap, moving back and forth between Genrietty and Zannetty, watching for commandos who might think there were easy pickings here. Jeffrey assumed the naval infantry followed routes mapped out by the helos across the uneven, ever-changing, treacherous ice.