by Larry Bond
“Yes,” answered Kokurin.
“Sir, Vice Admiral Borisov is on line one. He says he needs to speak to you about an urgent matter.”
“Thank you.” Reaching over, he picked up the phone and hit the blinking line.
“Greetings, Pavel Dmitriyevich, how are things at Sayda Guba?”
There was only silence on the line, and Kokurin thought that he had lost his connection with Borisov. “Pavel, are you there?”
“Yes, sir, I am still here,” Borisov replied with some hesitation. Kokurin could hear him taking a deep breath. Something terrible must have happened.
“Steady yourself, Pavel. Tell me, what is wrong?”
“Admiral, I regret to inform you that Severodvinsk hasn’t been heard from for thirty hours. Since Petrov has uncharacteristically missed two fleet communications periods, I am requesting you declare an emergency alert.”
Kokurin sat up straight in his chair; he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Thirty hours?” he repeated. “Did you send out messages ordering him to make contact?”
“Yes, sir. We have sent out three messages within the last six hours telling Petrov to break off pursuit and respond. There has been no reply.”
“Do you think he is still under the sea ice? That would limit his ability to communicate.”
“We looked into that possibility, sir,” Borisov admitted. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a good position for Severodvinsk. His last reported location was just on the edge of the ice zone, and the Amga buoy he was heading toward is only eight miles inside the zone. Even at a standard bell, Petrov could have cleared the sea ice within an hour or two, raised an antenna, and reported in. This kind of behavior is totally unlike Petrov, sir. We are very concerned that something dreadful has happened. Sir, I repeat my request for you to issue Signal Number Six.”
“Very well, Pavel, I concur. I will issue the alert,” said Kokurin. “Make sure my staff has all your data and analysis.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You can see what the weather outside is like just as well as I can. Rescue missions under the best of circumstances are a difficult undertaking. With this storm, it may be impossible. But, I will do what I can.”
“I know, sir,” replied a solemn Borisov.
“Keep me apprised of any new developments,” ordered Kokurin.
“Understood, Admiral. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Pavel.”
As the old admiral hung up the phone, his mind started racing. A hundred questions sprung up, and he had answers for none of them. Rubbing his thinly covered head with his hands, he wondered if they had lost yet another submarine and a brave crew. Slamming the desk with his fist, he cursed the fear that was gripping him. There was no time for self-pity. Hitting the intercom button, Kokurin summoned his deputy.
“Boris, get in here immediately. Bring Georgy with you.”
Within seconds, both men hurried through the door. They knew their boss well enough to know that something was wrong. As they approached the fleet commander’s desk, he began firing off orders at them.
“Boris, I am declaring an emergency alert. Have the communications officer issue Signal Number Six. Severodvinsk is thirty hours overdue and is considered missing. I want the readiness status of every vessel in the Atlantic Squadron within the hour, and I want them to prepare to sail at a moment’s notice. And get me the latest weather forecasts for the next week.”
Vice Admiral Baybarin furiously wrote down his instructions. He was full of curiosity, but there would be time for questions later. He bolted from the room as soon as Kokurin barked, “Now go!”
Vice Admiral Radetskiy was next, and he anxiously awaited his orders.
“Georgy, contact the Chief of the Search and Rescue Services and have him prepare Mikhail Rudnitskiy for departure within six hours. Tell him to bring as many functional rescue and salvage submersibles as he can. Coordinate with the Commander, Twelfth Nuclear Submarine Eskadra for specific information on Severodvinsk’s last known position and their analysis of the sub’s possible location. Move!”
As the chief of staff left, Kokurin looked at the clock on his desk. It read 1529. He should see the emergency message in about ten minutes. Turning to face the window, he watched as the snow was whipped about by the gale-force winds. The dreariness of the afternoon matched his mood. The real question now was whether or not a rescue force could actually leave in the middle of this accursed storm. God willing, the ships should be ready to get underway by the early evening hours. Now, if Grandfather Winter would only cooperate.
National Security Agency, Fort Meade, Maryland
Jack Ferguson was already bored. It was less than two hours into his shift, and there wasn’t much going on in the Russian Northern Fleet AOR. The winter storm had really shut things down. It’s going to be a very long day, he thought.
“Hey, Jack,” called Paul Anderson, Ferguson’s supervisor, “anything good on the Russia Northern Fleet channel?”
“Nope, they’re getting the snot beaten out of them by that storm. Overall traffic volume is way down, and most of the stuff is administrative shit. I did have one message, though, about ten minutes ago that had an urgent precedence. Nothing much since.”
“Well, it certainly makes sense to just hunker down in that kind of weather,” responded Anderson. “You know what this place is like if we get even an inch of snow. Say, I’m going down to the cafeteria for some coffee. You want anything?”
Ferguson didn’t respond; he seemed to be mesmerized by his computer screen. “Jack, I said do you want anything?”
“Holy shit! Paul, you’d better get over here. I’m seeing over two dozen urgent messages from just about every major ship in the Northern Fleet.”
“What!? This couldn’t possibly be an exercise. Not in that weather,” stated Anderson incredulously.
“Look at these ships that are answering. That is Petr Velikiy. And that is Marshal Ustinov. There is the Admiral Kuznetsov. Everybody and their brother is rogering up for something. And whatever it is, it’s big.”
“All right Jack, start writing this up. I want a FLASH precedence message reporting this activity in ten minutes. Do you have any theories as to what is going on?”
“I do now,” Ferguson replied smugly. “I just saw the Mikhail Rudnitskiy, the submarine rescue ship, send its reply. I think we have a submarine emergency.”
12. COLD CHOICE
Lieutenant Chandler knocked on the captain’s doorframe, just as a formality. The captain, the XO, and Jerry had all stopped their conversation and waited expectantly.
“One LF and one HF receiver are up,” Chandler reported. “I just came from radio and they’re copying the broadcast off the floating wire.”
Captain Rudel smiled. It was a tired smile, but it was one of the few Jerry had seen from him since the collision. “Good news. Well done, Chiefs, Mr. Chandler.” Then, turning to Jerry, “And you too, Mr. Mitchell.”
Rudel asked the chiefs, “Are your people still up there?”
Hudson nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Well, let’s go see them.” Rudel headed out of his cabin and up the ladder to the next deck. The officers and chiefs crowding the passageway melted against the bulkheads to make room, then Chandler and the chiefs followed. Jerry and the XO remained behind. Let Chandler get his face time with the captain, Jerry thought. He’s earned it this time.
Shimko smiled, broader than the captain’s. “That’s good. Once he talks with some of the crew, he’ll start to pull out of it. He loves his guys, and when he sees they’re okay, he’ll be okay.”
* * *
Rudel did appear at dinner that evening, subdued, but he was there. Chief Morrison also appeared shortly after the meal started and handed out message traffic to a mixture of applause and a few boos.
“Couldn’t you have left the receivers down for a few more days?” joked Al Constantino. The supply officer, as usual, had one of the th
icker piles of message traffic.
“You could just ignore your traffic,” Morrison suggested playfully. “Maybe nobody would notice.”
“Oh, they’d notice,” Constantino sighed.
Jerry’s own message traffic was trivial, but he looked through them as if they were the first naval messages he’d ever read. A weather report, some All-Navy notices, school availabilities. It was all routine, but they were back in touch with the rest of the world.
Shimko gave everyone ten minutes with their message traffic before he started working through his own list. They were going to show up, unannounced, at Faslane in a little less than two weeks and there were literally dozens of things that had to be done, arrangements to be made. Jerry’s task list grew rapidly, but his mood improved as his workload rose. They were moving forward; getting back into the swing of things. Navy business could deal with almost any circumstance — just wrap it in paper. As the XO so quaintly put it, “There is no greater cure for misery than hard work.”
As the first seating finished up, Jerry saw one of the cryptological technicians in the passageway, waiting. He caught the XO’s eye, and the two of them headed forward. Jerry followed. He usually checked the nav plot after dinner, and besides, he was curious.
Entering control, he saw Shimko disappear through the aft door, the CT behind him, heading for officers’ country. He’d barely had time to look at the chart before the XO came back and told the chief of the watch, “Pass the word, department heads to the Captain’s cabin.” His tone was routine, but Shimko’s expression said he’d heard bad news.
Lieutenant Commander Lavoie, the engineering officer, had the deck watch, and the XO added quickly, “And get a relief. You need to be there, too.” Lavoie nodded and picked up the phone.
Jerry hurried forward to find Rudel seated, head resting on one hand, staring at a single sheet of paper. The XO and the CT stood in the cabin, taking up what little floor space there was. Jerry knocked quietly on the doorframe, and Shimko looked over. All he said was “Stand by.” Jerry waited silently.
Constantino showed up a moment later, with Wolfe right behind him. Even with the operations, supply, and weapons department heads present, the XO still kept everyone waiting. Finally Stan Lavoie, temporarily relieved as the OOD, appeared.
Rudel saw Lavoie in the doorway and stood, his department heads clustered at the door, the XO and the CT standing behind him. He spoke softly, as was his habit.
“CT1 Sayers brought the XO this intercept a few minutes ago.” The CTs, or cryptological technicians, were intelligence specialists who recorded and analyzed Russian radio transmissions. As soon as the HF receiver had been repaired, they’d been able to resume their jobs. Their first priority had been listening for any reaction by the Northern Fleet to the collision, for example, looking for a sortie of an ASW vessel or aircraft to look for the offending U.S. boat.
Sayers was a big man, a blond crew cut already starting to thin as he entered his thirties. He seemed to shrink, uncomfortable among so many listeners. His work was rarely this public, or this immediate. At Rudel’s prompting, he explained.
“Most of the stuff we just tape for later analysis. It’s almost always encoded, and even the voice stuff usually uses code words or phrases.” He pointed to the paper. “But this was broadcast in the clear. Someone on the submarine rescue ship Mikhail Rudnitskiy asked the Northern Fleet Headquarters to confirm the emergency alert and to verify the coordinates. The duty officer at fleet headquarters was none too happy about it too. Chewed the guy’s ass off.”
“An emergency alert?” asked Lavoie. “What kind of emergency?”
“The message that the guy on Rudnitskiy referred to was Signal Number Six, a coded alert the Russians send out for a submarine in distress. The location given was supposedly where the missing sub was last heard from. It was near where we had the collision.”
“I don’t understand.” Stan Lavoie’s reaction was automatic, uncomprehending. “They lost a submarine? That can’t be the one we collided with. We lost that encounter. It left and went home.”
“We assumed it went home,” the XO corrected him.
Jerry tried to process the information. If the Russian Northern Fleet had declared an alert, then the boat had failed to communicate with its base. Had the other sub lost its radio, too? But they were close enough to be home by now, even if they had to crawl at five knots. And if they were adrift on the surface, they had rescue gear and emergency-transmitters, short-range equipment that they could use to call for help.
And they had that big escape capsule. Every modern Russian attack sub had a built-in escape chamber, large enough to hold the entire crew. It included emergency radios as well. Had they been prevented from using even that last resort?
He listened to others list and then dismiss the same possibilities, and others besides. It wasn’t impossible that another sub had gone down, but with so few Russian attack boats in operational service, the chances of two of them operating together, with one being lost and the other not sounding the alarm, were nil.
Rudel listened to the discussion silently, letting it run its course. “The only reasonable explanation is that the Russian boat is severely damaged, probably crippled. It’s down, and we know where it was, where it may still be.” Jerry couldn’t disagree. If it had gone down, it was going to be near where they had run into each other.
“We’re turning around. Immediately. Mr. Mitchell, give me the quickest course back to the location of our collision. Plan for a UUV search of the area when we arrive. We need to find the sub, if it’s there.”
Jerry automatically responded “Aye, aye, sir” even as his mind raced ahead. What would they do when they got there? What could they do?
“As of right now, this is a rescue mission. I’ll inform the crew in a few minutes. Dismissed.”
Stan Lavoie and Jerry headed back to control. Jerry was still on automatic pilot, only half his attention on his task as he checked the chart. He laid a straightedge along their path, then waited until Lavoie had taken over as OOD. “First cut, new course is zero eight zero.”
Everyone in control heard Jerry’s recommendation, but nobody reacted until Lieutenant Commander Lavoie ordered the course change, turning Seawolf away from Scotland and back into the Barents Sea.
QM3 Gosnell was the quartermaster of the watch, and he leaned across the chart table. “Mr. Mitchell, sir. What the. ” He paused, then asked, “Sir, why are we changing course?”
Jerry could see other watchstanders looking at each other, and at the officers. They had question marks for faces.
“We’re going back to look for the Russian,” Jerry explained to Gosnell. “Northern Fleet’s. ”
“This is the Captain.” Jerry gratefully let Rudel do the talking.
“The Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet has broadcast an emergency alert for a lost submarine. This is no secret — someone on a submarine rescue ship sent it in the clear to the entire Northern Fleet. The sub they are looking for is almost certainly the boat we collided with. It hasn’t come back to port, and they can’t reach it by radio.
“It’s likely that the Russian boat was damaged more severely than we thought, and it’s probably down. We’re going back to find them if they’re there, and then guide rescue forces to the correct location.”
Rudel paused for a moment, letting the crew absorb the news, then continued. “We could continue on to Faslane and home, but I would never get a good night’s sleep again knowing I’d left those men to their fate. We will stay long enough to make sure that Russians have found their sub, then we leave.”
After the captain finished, nobody spoke. Gosnell watched as Jerry worked out the course back east and passed a small correction to Lavoie.
Jerry straightened up from the chart table to see the XO talking to Lavoie. “Have your engineers double-check the patch work on the hull in the electronics equipment space.”
He saw Lavoie’s expression and raised his hands, defending
himself. The XO cut him off: “I’m not saying they did a sloppy job, but they were in a hurry. Now it’s got to last for a while. And tell me if you can brace it further — no, wait. Just find a way to strengthen the bracing.”
Shimko walked over to the chart table and inspected the new track. Jerry showed him the course and the time to reach the collision site.
“As soon as Stan’s men have reinforced the shoring, the skipper wants to increase speed. He wants us up to at least seven knots by midnight, preferably ten if we can swing it.”
Jerry suppressed his immediate response, but his worried expression said it for him. Shimko didn’t have any sympathy. “The Captain’s going to move heaven and earth to find that boat. Remember what he said. This is now a rescue mission.”
A dozen thoughts were running loose in Jerry’s mind. He snagged one in passing. “The storm. The Russians won’t be able to get any units in there until it clears.”
“And when it does, they’ll need to make up lost time.” Shimko’s intensity impressed Jerry. He’d taken the captain’s decision and made it his own. “We may be the only chance those guys have.”
“What if we can’t find them?”
“I already asked the Skipper how hard he wants to look. We can cover a lot of ground with the UUVs and do a thorough job of it. Here’s a rough search plan.”
He showed Jerry a sheet of graph paper with a rounded fan shape. It narrowed near the site of the collision, with the wide end pointing toward the Russian coast. “Get together with Wolfe and Palmer. Refine the search pattern and figure out when we can launch two UUVs, how long it will take them to double-cover this area. When they’re done looking, and if we haven’t found the Russian, we go home.”
