Seas of Crisis cjf-6

by Joe Buff

  “Concur in the extreme…. And I better make damn sure I don’t mix up which link is which, and send the Russians a message I mean for Harley. Everybody hear that? Backstop me if I make a mistake.” Sessions and the Russian-speaking chief nodded.

  Jeffrey studied the tactical plot. Challenger would reach the prearranged rendezvous point with Carter, from the old mission plan, only a few minutes before the Akula-IIs got within extreme torpedo range. They were all still over the shallow continental shelf, giving little room to maneuver or use fancy tactics. He had to work out a whole new doctrine for his strike group and convey it to Harley, all in a very short span of time.

  “Sirs,” Meltzer asked from by the navigating table, “may I offer a suggestion?”

  “Go ahead, Nav,” Bell said.

  “Use one of the vertical wide-screen displays set up as a split screen.”

  “Nav?” Jeffrey didn’t get it.

  “Two tactical plots, sir. One labeled from the point of view of your combined task force with the Russians. The other from the point of view of the Challenger-Carter strike group. It’ll help you keep things straight and manage two sets of strategies if you have the proper visual aides.”

  “Good thinking, Executive Assistant. The same four ships, except that on one display three are friendly and one is hostile, a German Amethyste-Two, and on the other two are friendly, us and Carter, while two are hostile, the Russians.”

  “That’s what I meant, Commodore,” Meltzer said.

  “Okay,” Jeffrey responded. “Captain, I need Lieutenant Meltzer’s help full time for the duration.”

  “Of course, sir,” Bell said.

  “Let your assistant navigator take over here,” Jeffrey told Meltzer. “You and I need to bone up ASAP on Akula-Two and Amethyste-Two strengths and weaknesses and their relevant antisubmarine weapons. We need some way to keep Carter alive for a thousand miles as she pretends to be an ex-French sub with half Carter’s real capabilities, while two Russky skippers do their very best to try to destroy her. Let’s use my office…. Captain Bell, have a messenger get me when we’re five minutes out from effective acoustic-link range to Harley.”

  Jeffrey and Meltzer headed aft. Jeffrey stopped in his tracks. “Weps!”

  “Commodore?”

  “Get that Russian minefield overlay overlaid on both sides of the split screen.”

  One of Torelli’s technicians typed keys, and more icons appeared on the display that showed two tactical plots.

  This is gonna give me schizophrenia before we’re done.

  “Captain!”

  “Sir?”

  “What’s in the tubes?”

  “Four high-explosive ADCAPs, two high-explosive Mark Eighty-eights, and our two remaining Mark Three decoys.”

  “Perfect, for the moment.” With the Russian sensor and minefield maps, Challenger didn’t need to send out off-board probes. “Get the outer doors open on all tubes, now, while we’re noisy. Prepare two ADCAPs for immediate firing at Carter.”

  “Armed, Commodore?”

  “Armed.”

  Several hours later, Jeffrey had updated Harley and given him orders to head east toward the hulk of the real Amethyste, continuing to emit the proper false acoustic signature. After warning Harley of what he was about to do, Jeffrey ordered Bell to fire a pair of live ADCAPs at Carter, programmed and wire-guided to barely miss. This would establish Challenger’s credibility to the Russians, while creating a sonar disruption that would help Harley begin to evade.

  Bell gave orders, firing ADCAPs. The near-misses made very satisfying, ear-splitting roars. Shattered bits of pack ice, thrown high into the air, pattered down for minutes afterward. Carter vanished through this impenetrable acoustic wall.

  Jeffrey established contact with the two Russian captains, and worked out a scheme to pursue the Amethyste into a trap in the Canada Basin, meanwhile wearing the German skipper down. He told them not to open fire at all unless he gave them orders, so as not to foul a shot from Challenger with her superior capabilities. Wild Boar and Cheetah could dive below two thousand feet, almost twice an Amethyste’s crush depth, but not nearly as good as Challenger’s. Akula-IIs were very quiet, the best fast-attacks Russia had, quieter than a real Amethyste, but noisier than the real Carter.

  And aside from being nearly immune to incoming high-explosive fire, the Akula-IIs were very heavily armed by Western standards. They had ten reloadable torpedo tubes forward, plus six more external single-shot tubes that were loaded at a pier. Their torpedo rooms could each hold forty weapons. The Akulas’ captains told Jeffrey via the link that they each carried twenty-five of the UGST torpedoes with new under-ice gravimeter homing sensors. All ten reloadable tubes were configured to fire these weapons. In a melee, the Akula-IIs could achieve an overwhelming rate of fire. Their weak spot was their sonars. Even the Russians admitted they were a fraction as sensitive as the ones on American subs. In the pursuit of the Amethyste, the Akulas would serve as Jeffrey’s arsenal ships.

  Jeffrey and Meltzer figured out, fast, that the key to Carter’s survival was convincing the Russians to keep their distance from her in her guise as the German. The reasoning Jeffrey gave Wild Boar and Cheetah, with the digital link working in effect as a three-way chat room, was twofold. If the Amethyste felt too cornered too soon — and considering what her commandos had already done at Srednekolymsk — her captain would likely go nuclear, even near land. If so, wide separation was needed to be able to take adequate countermeasures. Otherwise, even though the Amethyste had only four torpedo tubes and fourteen torpedoes maximum, Jeffrey’s combined task force could suffer serious losses. The flip side was that, because the twenty-kiloton yields on the Russians’ own nukes were so large — U.S. nuclear torpedoes used yields of a single kiloton or less — the Akulas had to stay well back or they’d be severely damaged or sunk by their own exploding fission weapons.

  Wild Boar’s and Cheetah’s captains, men seen only as disembodied responses in typed text on the chat, agreed with Jeffrey that, at least for the first stage of the pursuit, they’d all stay about fifteen nautical miles away from the German, half of maximum range for their UGST torpedoes. Plus, an Amethyste’s F 17 Mod 2 torpedoes had a range of just under fifteen miles. Secretly, Jeffrey knew, for Harley’s sake this was comfortably within the reach of the better American acoustic-link system.

  The arrangement made even more sense from Jeffrey’s conflicted point of view because the need to keep within Russian acoustic-link range for constant coordination — and yet maintain that adequate separation from the German — precluded a pincer movement to surround the Amethyste using the higher speeds of the three-ship task force. The Akulas and Challenger would have to spread too far apart to form the pincers, losing touch and leaving big holes in their formation that the German could easily slip through. Agreement on this was essential to the specific battle scheme vaguely forming inside Jeffrey’s head. He held his breath. The Russian captains’ replies soon appeared as Cyrillic text on the Ru-ling’s console screen: they both concurred.

  Jeffrey had contrived things so the battle would stay as a stern chase, proceeding along at the Amethyste’s flank speed of twenty-five knots, and the Russians would be dependent on Challenger for meaningful target tracking data.

  And nothing says I have to be honest when I answer.

  Challenger had a maximum speed advantage over an Amethyste of almost thirty knots. Jeffrey would order Bell to put on bursts of speed and make end runs to the north, cutting off the supposed German each time Harley pretended he was trying to escape toward and beyond the pole.

  Chapter 34

  Jeffrey’s pursuit of the Amethyste with the Russians was relentless. After twenty-four straight hours they’d covered half the distance to where the final reckoning, over the debris of a real Amethyste-II, would take place.

  Jeffrey was doing this on purpose. He wanted the Russian captains, their senior officers, and the remainder of their crews exhausted. Each Akula-
II had a total of about seventy men, barely half the size of Challenger’s and Carter’s crews. But modern Russian submarine captains did more delegating in battle than their U.S. Navy counterparts. Jeffrey was counting on his own combat-tested, iron constitution to outlast the Russian command teams, gaining a better mental — and tactical — edge. At Bell’s urging, Jeffrey allowed modified watch rotations once the stern chase seemed to have settled into a routine. It was important, Jeffrey knew, for Challenger’s people to eat, sleep, and relax every day, so the ship would be in ideal fighting form. Over the acoustic link, Harley confirmed he was doing the same for his people — but like Jeffrey, he neither wanted nor could afford even a short catnap himself.

  Challenger’s battle-stations crew roster had recently rotated on watch again.

  Then Jeffrey’s plan to wear down the Russians backfired.

  “Hydrophone effects,” Chief O’Hanlon shouted from his sonar console. “Torpedo in the water, Russian UGST!” He gave the range and bearing. It had been fired by Wild Boar.

  “Second torpedo in the water,” O’Hanlon reported. “Also Russian UGST!” This one had been fired by Cheetah.

  In moments, each Akula-II fired a second torpedo.

  “Target for all four torpedoes is Carter,” Torelli said. Jeffrey eyed the new torpedo icons on the tactical plots. They quickly drew ahead, chewing up the range to the Amethyste-Carter.

  Shit. I told them not to open fire without my permission.

  “Ru-ling, how did they coordinate without us hearing the conversation?”

  “I think there was no conversation, sir.”

  Bell glanced at Jeffrey. “Wild Boar must’ve gotten trigger-happy, and Cheetah used the excuse to join in.”

  “Weps,” Jeffrey ordered, “confirm speed of the UGSTs.”

  “They’re all making fifty knots, Commodore. That’s their maximum attack speed.”

  “Commodore,” Sessions reported, “Carter signals, ‘Torpedoes in water detected by echoes off bummocks. Torpedoes closing my ship. What are your instructions?’ ”

  Jeffrey stared at the plots. They seemed to dance around, and fade in and out of focus. He’d been awake for a lot more than twenty-four hours. His plan to exhaust the Russians — while pretending they all were ganging up to exhaust the Germans — was having an effect on his own ability to think straight. He hadn’t made proper allowance for how much his delicate negotiations and bluffs in Siberia drained him.

  “Sir,” Sessions stated, “Carter sends, ‘Repeat, what are your instructions?’ ”

  “Ru-ling, make signal to Wild Boar and Cheetah. ‘Why have you opened fire without my prior order? By word of your own commander in chief, you are under my command.’ ”

  The chief typed on his keyboard.

  “Commodore,” Sessions interrupted, “Carter sends, ‘Repeat, inbound torpedoes closing on me. Will impact before their maximum range if I maintain present course and speed.’ ”

  “Okay,” Jeffrey said. “Okay.” He had an idea. “Make signal to Carter, ‘Go silent and go to all stop. When you hear me making flank speed, make actual flank speed as Carter in wide circle, return to starting location after twenty minutes circling.’ ”

  Harley signaled he understood. Jeffrey waited five minutes.

  “Ru-ling, what reply from Wild Boar and Cheetah?”

  “Nothing yet, sir.”

  “Repeat the message and add ‘Response imperative.’ ”

  The Ru-ling typed. Jeffrey waited another five minutes. The four UGSTs closed the distance to Carter faster than ever, making fifty knots while she sat still.

  This was getting dicey, but Jeffrey realized he needed to pull off another subtle, dangerous sleight of hand to set up the Russian captains for later. “Ru-ling, response?”

  “None yet, sir.”

  Jeffrey gave them five more minutes; the UGSTs would now be very close to where Carter went quiet and stopped. “That’s it. As far as they’re to know, they’ve gone too far and they’re ruining everything. Captain Bell, make flank speed and cut back and forth in front of Wild Boar and Cheetah, at one thousand feet below their present depth. I want to teach them who’s in charge here, and get them to behave themselves, but I do not want to break the wires to their torpedoes or we might lose Carter.”

  Bell acknowledged and issued helm orders. Patel acknowledged and dialed up flank speed. Bell ordered rudder turns and Patel put them into effect. Challenger vibrated and banked steeply into each turn, first to starboard and then to port and then back again. Jeffrey knew Harley would be kicking Carter up to her own flank speed, which slightly exceeded that of the UGSTs. He’d outrun the torpedoes until they ran out of remaining fuel. Meanwhile, Jeffrey anticipated that his own flank speed noise and maneuvers — his angry reminder of Challenger’s tactical and sonar superiority over the Akulas — would mask Carter’s actual signature.

  Using their own rebelliousness to outfox them. I hope.

  For Jeffrey’s basic deception scheme to keep holding up, and for his gradually gelling final-engagement strategy to have any chance to work, it was vital that the guidance wires to the UGSTs not break, and that the Russian captains from now on did exactly what he said. Neither was guaranteed.

  “Ru-ling, make signal to Wild Boar and Cheetah. ‘Have lost contact with target, unable to regain, believe it hovering under ice to evade UGST homing sonars. Reduce your own-ship speed to five knots to retain separation against a German counterambush. Engage gravimeter sensors and steer your weapons to search area near last known location German vessel. And maintain task force discipline or I will personally tell Russian president to reprimand you.’ ”

  The chief, as he typed all this in Russian, couldn’t help chuckling at the tart tongue-lashing Jeffrey was giving to the captains of Wild Boar and Cheetah.

  Jeffrey told Bell to maintain flank speed, while he kept an eye on the chronometer. If the Russians followed Jeffrey’s orders, the UGSTs would search in vain near one place for an Amethyste reactor compartment that wasn’t there. If they disobeyed, or had a fire-control malfunction, or the wires to one or more of their weapons broke, Harley could survive by outrunning the errant torpedoes — and would end up almost back where he started, as if he’d been an Amethyste, hiding, hovering all along and the Russian warheads had failed to find him.

  Except. If a Russian captain’s UGST somehow made, and held, active and passive homing acoustic contact on Carter, with the guidance wire to his weapon still intact so he knew what his weapon and Carter were doing, he’d realize that something was way too fishy. The Amethyste would have seemed to go quiet only temporarily and then started racing around at twice her possible flank speed. The Russian couldn’t dismiss this as just bad sound propagation — not when his UGST held a lock on the target.

  Jeffrey began to sweat, despite the chill of the air fans. He told Bell to charge ahead, east, as if getting ready to deliver a coup de grace to the German from below, after she’d been hit by the gravimeter-homing UGSTs. Using UGST engine-noise data from O’Hanlon and Finch, Torelli confirmed that the Russians were doing what they’d been told to with their weapons.

  The clock ran down; the UGSTs ran out of fuel and shut down. By now Carter would have reverted to being quiet and slow, so Challenger reduced her speed from flank to twenty-five knots. He told Harley to resume fleeing east, as a German sub once more.

  It had been one of the most nerve-wracking half-hours Jeffrey ever spent in undersea combat — and this wasn’t over.

  Jeffrey ordered Bell to reverse course and steer toward the Akulas, to keep a better chase formation with them — if he drew too far ahead, he’d be vulnerable to fire from the Amethyste, including nuclear fire, without adequate Russian backup. And to any real German, Challenger identified as who she was, by the noise she’d made, would be a prize of such high value that going nuclear would be justified, even at the risk of self-destruction.

  Challenger neared the Akula-IIs. The Ru-ling finally spoke up. “Sir, Wild Bo
ar signals, ‘Misunderstood rules of engagement. Weapons launched in error.’ ”

  “Yeah, right,” Meltzer murmured.

  “Cheetah signals, ‘Misunderstood actions Wild Boar.’ ”

  “Ru-ling, make signal, ‘Task Force Commander expects and insists that rules of engagement now clear.’ ”

  “New passive sonar contact on the port wide-aperture array,” O’Hanlon called out. “Tonals match Amethyste-Two class.”

  Torelli’s target tracking team used the range and bearing data from Sonar to plot the contact’s position and course. “Captain Harley is accelerating to Amethyste-Two’s flank speed,” Torelli said. “Course is due east.” The tactical plots marked Carter’s new position; one plot showed Carter as friendly, and the other as enemy. She was slightly south of where she’d been at the start of her wide circling turn, and the maneuvers had cut target separation from fifteen miles to twelve, thus seeming to increase task force pressure on the German sub — Jeffrey’s goal.

  Both plots showed the Russians, on one as enemy and on the other as friendly. Jeffrey questioned, from the Akula captains’ transparently disobedient behavior, which in the end they would turn out to be. “Ru-ling, make signal to Wild Boar and Cheetah. ‘Contact regained. Resume chase.’ Get the data from Weps and relay it. Then say, ‘Target undamaged. You wasted ammunition and betrayed new UGST capabilities. Obey orders in future.’ ”

  Chapter 35

  For another day the grueling stern chase continued. From time to time Harley would fake another dash north, and Jeffrey would force him back east with the threat of a two-to-one advantage in torpedo tubes and speed, and a great advantage in crush depth. Jeffrey’s behavior, by closing the separation menacingly if the Germans didn’t turn away fast enough, was supposed to make it clear to the German captain that, at this point — frustrated or egged on by the Akulas’ impetuous conduct — Jeffrey was willing to risk destruction in order to also destroy the Amethyste-II, a double kill acceptable for reasons of higher statecraft. This was consistent with his prior nearly suicidal tactics against real German subs, so if the Akulas had any intel reports from the Axis on Jeffrey’s warfighting style, it would all be believable. If they didn’t have such intel reports, they were finding it out for themselves, and he wanted them to know, to strengthen his psychological domination.