Gaston had meant to yell and curse at whoever was there. He would lecture the bureaucrats on water and farms and how crops were more important than keeping the fountains going in Buenos Aires. Before he began his tirade, however, he became transfixed by a picture of a navy ship that rode up a sea-swell. The local recruiter saw the look in Gaston’s eye and smiled.
“¿Hermosa, no?” he asked the entranced youth.
“Yes. Very beautiful.”
“There is nothing like being aboard ship, sailing the seas and doing so for your country.” The recruiter set the hook, knowing full well it was submariners the navy was currently in need of.
“Yes,” Gaston repeated.
His signature and acceptance of a small cash bonus meant that Gaston Bersa now belonged to Comando de la Fuerza de Submarinos—the submarine branch of the Argentine Navy.
That night was the last time Gaston had seen his mother and father, or the stars that hung above the Lerma valley. Almost two years since had passed in rigorous basic and submarine training, and then San Luis II became Gaston’s new home.
Like everyone aboard Numero Dos, Raton was condemned to near-darkness and hot, stuffy breaths. However, unlike the others, Raton’s duties were especially rodential, the nature of which imparted his new nickname.
Chosen for his diminutive stature, wiry frame, and seeming immunity to claustrophobia, Raton spent most of his time at the bottom of San Luis II’s pressure hull where he lay upon his belly and slid a rail-borne sled over the submarine’s two battery banks.
San Luis II’s battery deck entailed a thicket of power cables, leads, and ventilation tubes that grew from row-after-row of foot locker-sized two-ton battery cells. It stank of battery acid, diesel, and salt. It was an underworld where the footfalls of fellow crewmates reverberated through the low ceiling. This was Raton’s nest. Despite the drawbacks, it was a place of privacy in a big unprivate, a place where technical knowledge made him ruler. He scurried along on his sled maintaining his batteries.
Raton checked each for corrosion, repaired ventilation nipples, and topped the cells off with distilled water. In this dim loneliness hid Raton’s thoughts, his hummed folksongs, and largely unnoticed by the boat’s officers, intermittent naps. With a flashlight headband to see his work, and with a hearty yawn, Raton checked the compartment’s hydrogen meter.
The meter indicated that the odorless, tasteless, and highly flammable gas—produced when the water portion of the battery was converted during charging—remained within safe limits. Raton checked a small flow meter on a cell’s ventilation duct header. The number indicated that the ventilators were doing their job of shunting the hydrogen to holding tanks, to be blown overboard. Before Raton wiggled and tightened an inter-cell connector wire, he checked the voltmeter and muttered a prayer.
He did this whenever he touched anything down here. Even though he knew his job inside out, everything around him was built by what he called ‘Vodka-infused Russian dockworkers,’ and was really just updated Cold War technology. It did not help his nerves or superstitions that a man was killed on the battery deck during the boat’s shakedown cruise.
San Luis II had been built for the Indian Navy. Named Varuna for the Hindu God of the Ocean, a contract spat between Moscow and New Dehli meant the submarine was instead counter-traded with Buenos Aires for copper. She was then renamed and, like all Argentine submarines, received the name of an Argentine province that began with an ‘S,’ and thus became the second Argentine submarine named San Luis. The first San Luis had performed a central role in commando actions during the 1982 conflict over Las Islas Malvinas. When Numero Dos had sailed on its shakedown cruise, a cell’s vent valve failed and burst. Covered with acid and burned by heat, Raton’s predecessor had died down here on the battery deck.
Raton had seen him once, he would swear. It was a ghostly head that stared back at him and smiled. So, Raton was always thankful when his job did not kill him. As he pulled his hand away from the battery, he knew that God, for now, had decided to keep him alive.
“Amén,” Raton mumbled. He grabbed at handholds and slid the sled a few more feet to check a cable junction. Like his fellow submariners, Raton had heard the reverberation of the active sonar ping, and felt it vibrate through his prone body. He ignored such things, however, and trusted in his captain and crewmates to keep him alive, just as they all relied on him to keep San Luis II’s air blowing, motor running, and keep the lights on. Whenever Raton’s mind turned to darker doubts, he would slide along on his sled and find something else to check or repair. When the next sonar ping—higher in frequency this time—echoed through San Luis II’s bilges, Raton paused and suddenly felt the tight confines and helpless vulnerability of his situation. As much as he loved the sea, down here beneath it, the sea had become his enemy. He knew its embrace would not be warm and gentle, but cold and hard.
In San Luis II’s Control Room, Ledesma reported to Matias: “Dipping sonar at two-three-six. Range: five miles.” Another ping and everyone cringed. “It’s the helicopter, sir…The Merlin.”
◊◊◊◊
The Merlin’s rotor chopped at the air. The 30,000-pound machine hovered and performed a delicate balancing act of physics and thrust. The rotor wash sent white-capped waves off in a wide circle, while a steel cable unwound from beneath the Merlin’s fuselage. The FLASH dipping sonar splashed through the surface and continued downward into the depths. In the Merlin’s computer-filled cabin, John turned his dial to stop its descent. He hit a red button.
At 100 feet beneath the surface, the FLASH sent out a high-frequency pulse. Then it listened for a return. John announced what everyone already knew: “Significant layer at 410 feet.” He adjusted a dial to unreel more cable, dipping the FLASH beneath the thermocline.
“Cable now at 500 feet. Hammer.”
Another ping. The sound wave traveled in all directions, reaching for the bottom of the Atlantic. As the computer analyzed returns, an image began filling the display in the helicopter’s rear cabin. It showed the undulating sea bottom, the false ‘ceiling’ of the thermocline, a clustered school of fish and…an ovoid shadow. A red light flashed above the screen.
“Submerged contact,” John announced. “Depth: 600 feet. Bearing: zero-six-zero. Range: five miles. Designate ‘Possub.’” A possible submarine. The FLASH was reeled in so the Merlin could move again.
As contact data was relayed to Dragon’s Action Information Center, Seamus tipped the helicopter’s nose down and began a sprint toward the contact’s coordinates. Captain Fryatt would place Dragon between the contact and Iron Duke, but the Merlin’s mission was to localize and attack any target. The Merlin continued its charge, sprinting at just over 180 miles-per-hour. It covered several miles in just minutes. Rodi leaned his head into the cabin window and raised his binoculars.
“A lot of water,” Rodi said with his Bermudian lilt.
The grey shapes of Dragon and Iron Duke were now far on the horizon. A high-pressure front had pushed the storm away, drying and heating the air and creating a shimmering haze where sea met sky. It made the grey outline of the warships hard to see. Furthermore, Dragon’s rather significant but white superstructure blended it into the bright sky. In the Merlin, John alerted Seamus of their proximity to their first drop.
The first sonar buoy shot free of the aircraft’s fuselage. Pushed from its tube by high-pressure air, the cylindrical sensor splashed in and then bobbed at the surface. It deployed its whip antenna and unfolded its transducers. The buoy found a global positioning satellite and logged its location, and then made contact with the Merlin’s computer. The first of many to be deployed in a diamond-shaped pattern, this sonobuoy was of the bathythermograph type, designed to ascertain local density, salinity and temperature conditions. The next sonobuoys the Merlin deployed would be DIFAR and HIDAR types. The DIFARs would provide direction to any particular producer of sound, and the HIFARs would instantaneously provide the target’s range. The Merlin sprinted and dropped, sprinted and dr
opped, repeating this process, surrounding the original contact with listening devices. When the pattern was complete, Seamus shoved his stick over.
The Merlin screamed toward the center of the pattern, where the FLASH had first discovered the anomalous contact among the sonar returns from the rocky bottom, the swimming fish, and haunting whale songs. The Merlin raised its nose to rapidly shed airspeed until it virtually stood still, Seamus leveling his aircraft and nursing the hover. He balanced the collective and cyclic sticks and engine power as well, until he became in tune with every breeze and pull of gravity, keeping his machine steady and floating in place above the sparkling ocean. When he felt ready, he gave clearance to the cabin crew. From the helicopters belly, the dipping sonar descended.
The FLASH unreeled again and penetrated the water’s surface, falling to breach that problematic thermocline. It would peek beneath this layer to verify and firm up data on the previous contact. As the FLASH did its job, John monitored the sonobuoys that listened for any possible transitory signals. Kingfisher 21—Dragon’s Merlin—had cast its net wide. Now, it began to cinch it and haul it in.
◊◊◊◊
The passive array that ran the length of San Luis II’s hull heard the thump-thump-thump of an approaching helicopter, and then the splashes of sonobuoys. Indoctrinated and trained by Argentines, each submariner had nonetheless studied and held a secret admiration for their British enemy. After all, the británicos had overcome the German U-boat threat by developing tactics and technology that had turned the table on the greatest underwater mariners humankind had ever known. They then had joined the Americans in corralling the Soviet threat, whose machines and men threatened to rule the world. This secret admiration of the British by the Argentines also indicated an unconscious fear, and fear always meant hesitation. As much as it was Captain Matias’ job to keep his boat from going to the bottom, it was also his job to inspire the crew to believe they were better than those British, who seemed to think they had a God-given right to dominate affairs. As much as Captain Matias believed Las Islas Malvinas were not worth the risk, he would fight for his flag, and for those placed under his command. His thoughts were interrupted by a sound from outside.
Captain Matias knew that his submarine created hydrodynamic noise resulting from the flow of water over its hull. Any protrusions and orifices such as bollards and free-flood holes, accentuated this noise. Even though the Russian builders had tried their best to minimize such sources, the propeller remained an insurmountable acoustic problem for any submarine.
When on batteries, diesel-electric boats like San Luis II enjoyed advantages over their atom-smashing counterparts, because there were no unbalanced turbine gears, blades and cooling pumps to make a racket and reveal their position. However, like their nuclear cousins, diesel-electrics had to transfer propulsive power from an engine to the water, making the propeller the acoustic weak link in the whole nearly silent system. In San Luis II’s case, it was a single giant six-bladed prop that did the job.
At the tips of this carefully-machined wonder, vortex cavitation took place, whereby air bubbles formed and collapsed under sea pressure, producing a hissing sound that carried for miles underwater. This noise travelled horizontally from the propeller, increased with the momentum of the blades, and became most pronounced at high speed, especially during acceleration and maneuvers. At lower speeds, the natural frequency of the blades produced a characteristic ‘beat’ that an enemy could use to identify the specific class of his adversary. Sometimes, unique acoustic ‘fingerprints’ would even allow a skilled sonarman to identify a submarine by name. Such noise was the very clue Captain Matias sought to deprive his enemy, the very reason he had ordered: ‘All stop.’ Despite his efforts to silence San Luis II, there remained the issue of her physicality. She was, after all, a steel hole in the water, and despite precautions against detection by passive systems, active sonar, such as that carried by the enemy helicopter, constituted another matter altogether.
“Get us closer to the bottom, Santiago,” Matias ordered. The captain hoped the seamount off to starboard would screen his boat and spoil any acoustic reflection that would allow the British aircrew to discern the hull of San Luis II from among the boulders, cliffs, and peaks of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Already near their recommended maximum depth, Ledesma shot the captain a concerned glance. “Down,” Matias reiterated.
Ledesma hesitated for a moment, and Matias waved a hand at him that said, ‘Get on with it.’
“Muy bien señor,” Ledesma finally acknowledged, and ordered negative buoyancy. Vents on the outer hull were opened, and more seawater flowed into San Luis II’s main ballast tanks. Already stationary, the boat dropped straight down into the pitch black deep. The men in the Control Room watched the depth gauge needle move from the yellow zone, into the red. The steel hull protested with clicks, groans, and tortured snaps. Ledesma swallowed hard and began to read off the depth: “Three hundred twenty; 330; 340…” The boat protested with a loud bang.
The ocean tested San Luis II. It wanted in, and it searched for the path of least resistance. Thousands of pounds pressed on the submarine. Another bang, and everyone looked to Captain Matias. He looked up the main ladder at the Control Room hatch. BANG. The thinner steel of the submarine’s sail had flexed under extreme pressure and deformed, stretching between its latticed framework.
“Deeper,” the captain ordered.
San Luis II let out a prolonged noise like the song of a melancholy whale. One submariner began to breathe heavily, and then he whimpered.
“Tomalo con soda,” Ledesma calmed the neophyte submariner with an Argentine expression. Then he turned to Matias. “Señor, estamos a 360 metros.” Then came an unholy creak from San Luis II. “I don’t think she can stand much more,” Ledesma pleaded.
“Bien, Santiago,” Matias conceded, “Hold us here.”
“Neutral buoyancy,” Ledesma said, pointing at the vent levers. “Hold your depth at 380 meters.”
The boat quieted as the depth gauge steadied and stopped, just a few hash marks short of ‘400,’ the highest number the dial showed. Someone sighed with relief, followed by a moment of silence, of calm. Then suddenly, a water pipe running along the top of the Control Center whined and burst.
Water sprayed from a valve and ran along the pipe, raining down.
“Damage control,” Ledesma yelled.
The valve shot off and bounced twice. The deck plate it hit rang fantastically loud. The metal wheel wobbled for a moment and then stopped. Everyone in the Control Room looked at it, hated it, and knew what it had done.
One sailor immediately took a wrench to the valve and instantly became soaked by the leak, yet he tightened the connection. The water slowed, but still it cascaded down a panel.
Sparks flashed and the panel’s display lights extinguished. However, back-up analog displays confirmed the tank vents had in fact closed. Valves were opened and closed along the pipe in order to isolate the leak. Everyone looked to the curved ceiling. They all wondered if the enemy had heard the commotion.
“Señor, the leak has been isolated,” Ledesma whispered.
“Very well,” Captain Matias acknowledged.
PING.
“Sir, active--”
PING.
“Yes, Santiago,” Matias put his hand on his friend’s shoulder, “I hear it.”
6: ABRAZO
“Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.”—William Shakespeare
Kingfisher 21 hovered. The Merlin’s dipping sonar dangled in the water, fishing for anything that happened to be biting. Among the miles-wide sonobuoy field Dragon’s helicopter had sown, one passive type—buoy ‘Papa Three’—had registered an anomalous sound. It transmitted to the helicopter the contact’s general depth, heading, and range. Kingfisher 21, in turn, bounced the data back to Dragon.
In the Op Room’s cool darkness, Dragon’s anti-submarine warfare officer adjusted his flash hood and
gloves and surveyed his screen. It showed the GPS plot of each sonobuoy, and represented by a green ‘H,’ the radar position of the helicopter.
The Merlin had raced to sonobuoy Papa Three’s position and hurriedly lowered its dipping sonar below the thermocline. John fired off an active ping. The sound waves moved through the liquid medium, where they bounced off shoals of fish, off rock, and off sand, and off anything else in the oceanic water column. Then the sound waves boomeranged and returned to, and were collected by, the FLASH’s cylindrical transmitter/receiver. Tied into the buoys, the computers in the Merlin’s rear cabin analyzed the data and presented it on a monochrome screen.
An object differing from the contours of the sea bottom immediately caught John’s highly trained eye. John tapped the display’s glass in recognition.
“What have we here?” he mumbled to himself, and then pushed the transmit button for his headset. “Draig TACCO, this is Kingfisher 21. PROBSUB, PROBSUB,” John reported to Dragon’s tactical coordinator. He then switched from the radio to the intercom. “Dropping smoke,” he told the Merlin’s pilot.
A small cartridge was fired from the helicopter’s wheel-wells that splashed in, stained the water a glowing green, and sent up a plume of red smoke. This marker would help Seamus maintain position over the contact, and also mark the contact position for the destroyer. On the horizon, Dragon turned.
◊◊◊◊
Captain Fryatt peered through binoculars. He found the red smoke cloud, glanced at the compass, and ordered a heading: “Make your course two-five-five.” It was the captain’s intent to keep the destroyer’s sharp bow and towering superstructure between Iron Duke and ‘Master 1,’ the tactical coordinator’s designation for the probable submerged submarine.
“Ahead full,” Fryatt ordered. Dragon’s two Rolls-Royce gas turbines revved up and drove the ship’s electric motors. The bow rose, and Dragon’s sleek, grey hull planed, churning the dark water as white as milk. Dragon became an 8,000 ton speedboat. A minute later, 27,000 shaft horsepower had shot the destroyer to over 30 knots. She turned to her new heading, leaned in, and threw spray up in a great fan. Fryatt intended, once at the contact coordinate, to use Dragon’s powerful bow sonar to localize Master 1. Dragon drove a wind before her, and as if pushed by it, the Merlin banked off.
Dragon Fire (The Battle for the Falklands Book 2) Page 5
