Dangerous Ground

by Larry Bond

  Jerry instructed the Manta to terminate the simulator mode, cut the speed to creep, and dropped to the bottom. He’d grown to trust the Manta’s safety circuits and used them now as he sent the craft within ten feet of the bottom, far closer than Memphis could ever go. The torpedo’s seeker could distinguish the hull of a submarine from the seabed, but the Manta was much smaller, a hundredth the size of a nuclear attack boat. With any luck, the torpedo’s seeker would dismiss it as an echo from the seabed.

  And Jerry headed south. He kept a careful eye on the nav display, because now Memphis and the UUV were heading away from each other.

  He also watched the sonar display as the torpedo’s bearing remained firmly north, behind him. Whether the seeker had never spotted him or had been attracted by the countermeasure, it was still in search mode and seemed to have no idea where he was.

  “Sonar, U-bay. I need to know if you see any sign of the Russians searching to the south of that last attack.”

  “U-bay, sonar. We don’t hold any active sonars in your area, but the Manta’s passive arrays will know about it as soon as we do.”

  Jerry had to agree with them. He needed more information. He’d love to know where the airplane or airplanes hunting them were, but Memphis didn’t dare put up a mast.

  Jerry visualized the search radius of the torpedo and turned distance into time at five knots. The next two minutes seemed eternal and Jerry forced himself not to look at his watch. He stared at the sonar display instead and willed it to remain blank.

  There was no sign of attack, pursuit, or even interest in the Manta’s location, and Jerry gratefully turned the UUV east, carefully managing its depth as it rose up the steep eastern wall of the trench. He almost felt like a soldier leaving a foxhole as he brought the Manta out of the trench onto the shallow seabed.

  Memphis lay over six miles away, mostly to the east, and Jerry headed straight east at first, reluctant to do anything that would bring him closer to their Russian pursuers. The problem now was to rendezvous with Memphis. With the Manta and the sub both creeping, Jerry knew he’d never catch her. “Conn, U-bay, I need to speak to the Captain.”

  “Yes, Mr. Mitchell,” Hardy said after a brief pause.

  “Sir, I’d like permission to go to ten knots. At Memphis’ current speed, I’ll close in an hour and a half.”

  “What’s your battery charge?”

  “Twenty percent. I’m good for two hours at that speed.”

  “And at that speed, if you pass through a buoy field, they’ll pick you up for sure,” Hardy observed.

  “Sir, I can’t catch you at five knots.”

  There was a short pause. “I’m turning Memphis due north and slowing to three knots. Turn to zero four five and increase speed to seven knots. We should rendezvous in two hours.”

  Jerry made the course and speed changes. “Yes, sir, and thank you.” Jerry felt genuinely grateful. It would be easy for Hardy to abandon the Manta, claiming that the risk of pursuit was too great, but his solution would keep the two units covert and still get the UUV back.

  Jerry watched as the Russians remained preoccupied to the southwest. Bull Horn sonars pounded the water over the trench and by the Novaya Zemlya coastline. An occasional series of explosive charges to both the northwest and southwest confirmed Jerry’s hopes that they had indeed lost contact with the Manta, and more importantly Memphis.

  Two hours later the Manta rendezvoused with Memphis. Although there had never been a problem with the automated recovery sequence, Jerry sweated every step until the latches were engaged and the umbilical connected. Drained, he slipped out of his seat and headed slowly to the wardroom for something to drink. The XO said he’d meet him there to go over the tactics Jerry had used to break contact. “Better to get them down on paper while they’re still fresh in you head,” Bair said gleefully.

  Fresh? Yeah, right. Jerry thought cynically. Let’s see, how can one expand “pop chaff and evade” to fill a couple of pages of the patrol report? Still, the Manta had successfully been used to bamboozle a very determined Russian ASW force and the U.S. Navy would demand to know how it was done—in detail. As he climbed the ladder up to forward compartment, middle level, Jerry fervently hoped that there would be no further need to launch the Manta again on this cruise.

  * * * *

  “Keep at it, Ivan,” Kirichenko encouraged his deputy. It had been three hours since there had been any trace of the American sub, or possibly submarines, he corrected himself. “They’re still there. They didn’t just vanish.”

  “Yes, sir.” Admiral Ivan Sergetev tried to look determined, but couldn’t hide his disappointment. They had been so close to getting one of those arrogant trespassers that losing contact was a bitter pill to their morale. And the longer the Americans stayed lost, the greater the chance the Northern Fleet would never find them again.

  “Concentrate on the second line now, but don’t stop using the first.” Kirichenko didn’t dwell on the details. Sergetev was a good tactician. He knew what to do.

  “Yes, sir. I’ll find them.” On his second try, Sergetev sounded a little more confident.

  Kirichenko left the situation room and headed for his office. He trusted his deputy, but not enough to bet his life on him. Keeping calm and appearing positive in front of his staff had taken every gram of his concentration. He’d need his staff’s support to back him up—-later.

  The only good news so far was the absolute certainty that there was a submarine to be prosecuted. It had been repeatedly echo-ranged. Aircraft had seen its wake as it fled the scene of the attack. The Americans had deployed numerous countermeasures and the sounds from those devices had been recorded. Unfortunately, the submarine had been attacked several times without result.

  There was no guarantee that the second line would catch the Americans. It was scattered, still forming. Like the first one, it was made up of units that had been out training or had been in a high state of readiness. There were precious few of those in the Northern Fleet.

  The second line consisted of every unit that could reach the Kara Sea before the intruder reached international waters. Diplomatically, the Russians could make a case for attacking a submarine in the Kara Sea, even if it was outside the twelve-mile limit, by invoking hot pursuit. That would be harder, much harder, in the Barents or Norwegian seas.

  So he’d have to have a reason to risk international condemnation. A strong one, one that represented a clear and present danger to the motherland. Easy to do if you’re not constrained by the truth. He started drafting a message.

  His staff knew that the Americans had been operating close to the coast. What they didn’t know was that he’d received top secret, compartmented information from the Northern Fleet’s counterintelligence officer. A foreign agent with stolen codes had evaded the FSB and was trying to leave the country. His last known location was in the Arkhangel’sk Oblast. If he had somehow managed to get to Novaya Zemlya and was aboard that submarine, and that sub made it safely back to port, Russian military communications would be compromised. Even after the codes were changed, Western intelligence would still be able to read a decade’s worth of encrypted messages. The damage to Russian security would be grave. Extreme measures had to be taken to prevent this from happening.

  * * * *

  Close Quarters

  June 12, 2005

  Northern Kara Sea

  Lunch that afternoon was a celebration, although an ultra-quiet one. Jerry thought the cold sandwiches and canned fruit were a banquet and the thought of going home filled him with possibilities. True, he had a ton of work to do if he wanted to qualify for his dolphins, but compared to their earlier problems, his quals didn’t seem so insurmountable now. He’d make the time.

  Especially at twelve knots. Lieutenant Commander Ho had already briefed the Captain, but the entire wardroom needed to know exactly what Memphis’ engineering plant could and could not do.

  The Engineer looked tired, and a little shaken. He’
d already briefed them on the four men who’d been injured, none dangerously so, but it was clear he’d felt their injuries almost as much as they had. His tone had improved and become steadier when he’d described the casualties to the plant.

  The worst was the port main engine. The shock of the depth charging cracked the main throttle valve casing and caused a major steam leak, scalding three men nearby. Another man broke his ankle trying to get away from the jet of steam. The space had immediately filled with vapor, making it hard to see and to breathe. They’d drilled for it, though, and after donning EABs, had secured the steam supply to the main engine.

  But now, to run at the same speed, the remaining engine would have to work twice as hard, which would make much more noise.

  And the throttle valve couldn’t be repaired at sea. Because it had to hold saturated steam at six hundred psi and 485° Fahrenheit, it was made of thick stainless steel. The ship didn’t have the capability to weld metal that thick, with a crack that large. They couldn’t even patch it while at sea. The only thing they could do was secure the port main engine until they reached a base with the necessary equipment and personnel to effect the repairs.

  Their creep speed was reduced from five to three knots. That wasn’t too bad, since nobody ever tried to get anywhere at creep. The point was to be as quiet as physically possible. Their transit speed was now twelve instead of twenty knots and their top speed, at which they’d make more noise than a boiler factory, was twenty knots. “Over twelve knots, I’d have to shift the starboard main seawater pumps to fast speed, and you can’t be quiet with those on the line.

  “The oxygen generator fried itself when some of the breakers were rattled around. Fortunately, the oxygen banks are full and we won’t need to make any more before we reach a friendly port. And there are pumps and fittings knocked loose throughout the engine room and the auxiliary machinery space,” Ho concluded. “The only good news is that if we don’t take any further hits, we’ll probably make it back without any more equipment casualties.”

  “That was a ringing endorsement,” Lenny Berg remarked cynically. “Would it help if I got out and pushed?”

  “I like the ‘getting out’ part,” the XO answered, with only a slight smile.

  “I was only trying to help,” Berg complained.

  “Jerry, any luck with the torpedo tubes?” Bair asked.

  “None, sir. With the preset panel gone, there’s no way to talk to a weapon. The Senior Chief’s been trying to jury-rig something, but he’s not hopeful.”

  Dr. Patterson, sitting to one side with Emily Davis, spoke up tentatively. “But you can still fire a torpedo, can’t you? Emily says there’s nothing wrong with the tubes themselves.”

  “That’s not quite true, doctor,” answered Hardy politely. “To fire a Mark 48, we need to apply warm-up power to get the inertial nav system up and running, and then we need to tell it where it is, where to go, and when to enable the active seeker. You need the fire-control circuits, or the emergency preset circuits to do those things; we have neither. If we launched a weapon, it would head straight to the bottom. No, ma’am, we have no weapons capability at all.” On that somber note, Bair stood up and announced, “All right, we’re not out of the woods yet and we have a long trip before us. Let’s get back to work.”

  * * * *

  Slowly, the officers filed out of the wardroom, leaving Hardy to think in peace. As soon as he thought he was alone, he placed his face in his hands, rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. Exhausted, frustrated, and tired of having to act so confident in front of his crew, he tried to think about what he would do if they ran across another Russian.

  “Excuse me, Captain,” Patterson said softly.

  Momentarily startled, Hardy jerked his head up. “Yes, Doctor. What can I do for you?”

  “I... ah ... I need to apologize for some of the things I said earlier. I didn’t really appreciate all the risks you and your men take and, uh, it was wrong for me to call you a bus driver and your sub a piece of junk.”

  Hardy smiled weakly. “I believe the phrase was a ‘glorified bus driver,’ Doctor, but then I’m being picky. Apology accepted.” He then stood up and faced her. “And while we’re on the subject of apologies, I believe I made a remark about your political derriere being in a sling that was inappropriate. I know you didn’t just make the environmental threat up, that you do believe it’s a problem. I’m sorry that I implied you had.”

  Patterson nodded her acceptance and then looked down at the deck. “Do you ... do you think we’ll make it home?”

  “Frankly Doctor, I don’t know,” Hardy said honestly, and then started to walk toward the wardroom door. After a few steps, he stopped and turned back to face her. “I’d like to think we’ll get out of this mess in one piece, but I have nothing but my training to base that on. This is my first time in a combat situation.”

  “You and your crew have done very well so far, Captain. It’s obvious that the training they’ve had is paying off.”

  “Yes, it is. And Lord knows that I’ve trained them hard. Perhaps, too hard at times. But I’ve found out training only goes so far, Doctor. You have to have confidence that they’ll do the right thing at the right time.”

  Patterson chuckled briefly. “We don’t work with trust much in politics, Captain. It’s in short supply.”

  “I know that, Doctor. But it hasn’t exactly been plentiful on Memphis either.” Hardy opened the door and motioned for Patterson to leave first. He then closed the door carefully, so as to make as little noise as possible.

  * * * *

  Memphis continued to creep northward, Ho nursing the battered engineering plant as if it were a sick child. Jerry went back on watch in control with Lenny at 1800. He wished he could’ve slept more than two hours, but Bair made it clear they had to stand watch. “I’ve got to put everyone in the engineering department back aft to hold this old lady together. You two will just have to pull extra time forward.” It made sense. There would be little communicating with the outside world while the Russians were pursuing them, and without a weapons capability, there was little need for an Assistant Weapons Officer.

  Memphis would not be out of the Kara Sea until late that evening, but that assumed a straight-line course and a constant quiet transit speed. Especially after the attacks that morning, everyone on the boat was silent and extremely alert. Jerry actually tiptoed in the passageway as he made his pre-watch rounds with Lenny.

  In control nobody spoke unless absolutely necessary. Hardy and Bair alternated between the chart, the TMA plot, and the fire-control system, speaking quickly and softly. They ordered frequent depth, speed, and course changes, trying to use the seabed for cover as much as possible, trying to avoid any obvious paths. After all, the Russians knew these waters better than they did. Like a soldier dashing from one piece of cover to the next, Memphis quickly transited the deep spots, then headed back to shallower water, always working her way north and out.

  In the early evening Hardy risked exposing the BRD-7 ESM mast to accurately fix the bearing to any radar signals. The ESM stub antenna on the Type 18 periscope could tell him if a radar was radiating in the area, as well as its rough direction, but he needed fine bearing information that only the ESM mast could provide. He found them, all right—three airborne radars covering the exit to the Kara Sea like a quilt. That meant at least three ASW aircraft were overhead.

  While the ESM mast was small and covered with radar-absorbent material, there was still a slight risk of detection every time it was raised. So Jerry was surprised when Hardy put the mast up again half an hour later, and then again forty-five minutes later. Each time he lowered the mast, Memphis immediately changed course and “dashed” at eight knots to clear datum, all the while waiting for depth charges to bracket them.

  After the third ESM search, Hardy invited Lenny Berg, the OOD, and Jerry over to the chart table. Memphis’ zig-zag course lay crookedly on the chart, well to the east of center. The beari
ng lines from the ESM cuts all pointed north, ahead of them, and the bearing lines all converged in three general locations.

  Jerry could see that the areas were almost on a line. In fact, they straddled a line that marked 77° north latitude. The Russians probably had that same line on their charts as well.

  “That’s where the buoy fields are,” Hardy announced. “The planes aren’t stationary, of course. They do figure eights or racetrack patterns over the fields they’ve laid, loitering while they wait for a sonobuoy to make detection. According to intel, they typically lay fields twenty-five miles square, so look what happens if we put in three fields of that size.”

  Bair handed Hardy three squares of paper. “These are cut to the same scale as the chart,” Bair explained. It only took a moment to arrange them across the latitude line. Each square lay across the transition from the shallow water of the Kara Sea to the deeper water of the Barents. The line was well placed and made an almost solid barrier ahead of them.