Echo Class

by David E. Meadows

  Growing daylight broke through the small windows of the building. He pulled a handkerchief and wiped the first beads of sweat from his forehead. He folded the khaki hat in his hand and jammed it under his belt. The temperature inside this building would hit over a hundred today, he surmised. He removed the pipe long enough to yawn and scratch the stubble of the morning shadow across his chin.

  “Chief, tell San Miguel to send a couple of huge fans in the logistics van. Tell them we will need them this morning.”

  Chief Welcher nodded. “Aye, sir. I’m going to check on the main van and see if it has left yet. Plus I want to do another check of the outside. We got some daylight now.” He stepped outside the building.

  Norton had forbade any communications over the telephone lines with San Miguel until he figured out what this contraption was and how it came to be installed inside the Subic Bay telephone switching system. He now knew where it came from and was sure he knew how it came to be installed here.

  The Marine Corps captain stepped into the small building, drawing Norton’s attention.

  “Captain, we have secured the perimeter, sir.”

  “How far down the road have you put forces, Captain Lewis?”

  “As you requested, sir. No one will be able to reach this end of Subic today without wading through my marines.”

  Norton nodded. “Well done, Captain.”

  “Captain,” Norton said, causing the young officer to stop and turn. “My condolences on the marines’ losses last night. I know everyone killed and wounded was a comrade of you and your men. They were also our comrades.”

  “We’re going to get them, sir.”

  Norton started to say something, but better the man believed his words than know the truth Norton had reached in the hour he had been here.

  “You are right, Captain,” he finally replied. “We’re going to get them,” he said, his words trailing off as his eyes returned to the strange contraption he had found. He stuck the pipe back between his lips. Blue smoke curled from the bowl as his teeth lightly trapped the stem.

  “Yes, sir, we will. Did you hear about the action in the Middle East?”

  “I did. Seems the Israelis have wiped out the Arab air forces, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. Kind of dumb of the Arabs to start telling everyone what they were going to do weeks ago and start preparing to do it and not expect the Israelis to do something.”

  “It is a strange and dangerous world in which we live, Captain. Back to the security,” Norton said, stirring the conversation away from the newest Middle East war.

  For the next five minutes the two officers discussed Norton’s orders for the security and where to mount the ingress and egress to the area. The fewer people who knew what he knew the better.

  Chief Welcher stepped into the narrow space between the marine officer and the bank of equipment. “Captain,” he said, looking at Norton. “I found where it’s connected.”

  Welcher glanced at Norton and then Lewis. When it became apparent the marine officer was curious over the chief’s words, Norton said, “Captain, that will be all. Thanks again for securing the area and relay my regrets to your men.”

  Lewis opened his mouth to say something. Norton knew the man was going to ask why they had secured the area, and he was prepared to lie and tell him it was because it was a crime scene. But the marine officer apparently changed his mind, and he stepped out of the doorway into the rising humid heat of the Philippines, which filtered into the fan-cooled area of the switching room.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Fairly simple, sir. A thin wire antenna trails from the telephone line here in the switching room to the top of the telephone pole. They just wrapped it around the heavier telephone cable.”

  Norton walked to the rear of the racks of equipment, where the bulk of connecting wires ran from the top of the telephone switching bank to the wall, disappearing through it to the outside. He turned on his flashlight and searched the wiring. “I don’t see where it connects here.”

  Welcher had followed the navy cryptologic officer. He reached up and traced his hand along the wires, searching for something. “I don’t see or feel anything either, sir. Maybe once we have more light we can tell better.”

  Norton went back to the contraption. “Looks as if whoever did this did not expect it to stay long before it was discovered.”

  “Piss-poor installation.”

  Norton grunted. “Works though,” he said, a puff of blue white Carter Hall smoke whiffing from his lips and the bowl of the pipe. “On the second hand, Chief, maybe they wanted us to find it. Think we’re right to leave it attached? Maybe safer for us to pull it out and destroy their mission. At least, someone would have a lot of explaining to do if it failed to work. What do you think? Leave it or pull it out?”

  “Sir, I’m a chief. I’ll do what you tell me to. We already have it. We can rip it out anytime, box it up, and ship it to the Foreign Technology Exploitation office at Office of Naval Intelligence, or we can take it back to San Miguel.”

  “We could do all of those. I think we’ll leave it in. Kind of a gesture of goodwill between us spooks,” he joked. “Let them think for a few days they were surreptitious enough to fool us.” Norton looked the out-of-place equipment over closely without touching it. “Is there some way we can connect this to only one line or two? Right now, I’m not sure how it is determining which telephone lines to monitor.”

  Welcher leaned over, the two heads nearly touching. The beer aroma of Olongapo coming from Welcher and the sweet tobacco smoke of Norton’s pipe mixed around the two men.

  “Captain, I think we can do it, but we run the risk of destroying the instrument once we start messing with it.”

  “The van from San Miguel will be here in two hours, followed by the logistics van.” He fanned his face. “Let’s hope they remember to send the fans.”

  “Which teams are coming with the group?”

  “I asked for the operational deception team.” He looked at Welcher. “Did you find out if it had left yet or not?”

  “I wrote the message for transmission and one of the runners has left with it for Subic Operations Center. Not being able to talk with them directly makes this a hard way to exchange information.”

  “No choice, Chief, until we know what we are up against. Until then, every conversation made by telephone by anyone on the base, whether it is the Cubi Point airdales or the Subic Bay ship drivers, their conversations are being transmitting into the ether.”

  “I don’t think it can monitor every conversation, sir.”

  Norton shook his head. “I think you are right, Chief. I would offer most likely it sets itself to active lines and stays there.”

  “Only one transmission line outside and it’s a wire antenna. Can’t transmit a lot. Probably one conversation at a time.”

  Several more puffs of smoke rose from the bowl as Norton nodded. “You’re probably right, Chief. Would do them little good to listen to sex talk between the sailors coming into port and their wives back in the continental United States.” Norton shook his head. “No, they’re going to want to monitor the talk between Subic Operations and the ships tied up here.”

  “The problem, sir, is I don’t know how to find out how or what this thing is monitoring without taking it off. This contraption makes me think it is a receiver. And I don’t know any receiver that also transmits.” Welcher shook his head. “Know what I think, Captain?”

  “Tell me, Chief.”

  “I think it roams the circuits looking for something that is active. Kind of what you were saying. When it finds someone in a conversation, it quits roaming, starts monitoring, and starts transmitting, until there is a click as they hang up, or a certain number of seconds pass with no conversation or something like that. Then it starts searching the telephone lines again for activity.”

  “Well, we won’t take it apart yet, Chief. We’ll try some external exploitation. See if we can find the freque
ncy this thing is transmitting its data on, and from there, we’ll extrapolate how it works.”

  “Should be able to limit the lines it is monitoring, if it is more than one.”

  “That’s why our deception team is on the way, Chief.”

  The muffled sound of an explosion reached their ears.

  “Another grenade,” Norton said.

  “That’s the third one. Ten minutes until five,” Welcher said, tapping his watch.

  “Might not need our team if our ships are preparing to fire on the Soviet intruder.”

  “You think we have a Soviet submarine inside Subic Bay, sir.”

  Norton motioned the chief over. “Look here,” he said pointing to the underside of the monitoring system they had found.

  Welcher leaned down. “CCCP” was embossed in bright white Cyrillic letters on the equipment. “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” Welcher mumbled. “Not very smart spies, are they?”

  “Smart enough to get in here and put the system in place. If they had not encountered our security forces, it might have been days, weeks, or even months until we found it. No telling how much damage could have been done from them puzzling out the operational intelligence they would have gleaned from what they heard.”

  “They’re in for a surprise when our folks arrive,” Welcher chuckled. The chief leaned closer, ran his finger along the rough bottom of the foreign equipment.

  Norton smiled. “That they are, Chief, that they are.”

  Welcher laughed. “Well, I’ll be damned, sir. There’s something here.” He leaned down to look at the bottom of the foreign system. Welcher ran his fingers over it again. “Someone has scratched something into the bottom.”

  “What is it?”

  Welcher pulled his flashlight and squatted. Looking up at the scratching, he started spelling the Cyrillic letters out.

  “I studied Chinese and Vietnamese, Chief. I don’t know Russian.”

  Welcher flicked off the flashlight and stood. He chuckled. “Can’t say this is the Russian equivalent to ‘Kilroy was here,’ but someone has scratched ‘Greetings from Dolinski.’ ”

  “Is that a city or someone’s name or what?”

  Welcher shrugged. “It just says, ‘Greetings from Dolinski’ and beneath it is yesterday’s date: ‘June 4, 1967.’ And it’s scratched into the metallic casing, sir.” Welcher laughed. “The son of a bitch wanted us to know who did this.”

  Norton grunted. “Or where the system came from. Strange. I couldn’t see one of our spooks doing that.”

  They both laughed.

  “WHO threw the third grenade?” MacDonald demanded, rushing to the port-side bridge wing. He lifted the megaphone, pulled the talk trigger, and barely let the electronic squeal fade before he was shouting, “What the hell are you doing, Weps? I didn’t order the grenade.”

  Lieutenant Kelly and Chief Benson raised their arms and shook their heads. Kelly cupped his mouth and shouted something, but the wind swept the words away from MacDonald.

  MacDonald touched his ears and shook his head. Kelly ran in the direction of the bridge wing. He cupped his lips again and shouted, “Sir, we haven’t thrown the third one.”

  MacDonald’s eyebrows arched. Then who did? He had turned to go back into the bridge when Goldstein filled the hatch. “Sir, Coghlan called. They accidentally dropped a grenade over the side.”

  MacDonald rushed to the Navy Red and grabbed the handset. Before he could call the Coghlan, the bagpipe sound of the crypto gear synchronizing filled his ears.

  “Dale, this is Coghlan. Is your Charlie Oscar there?”

  “Ron, this is Danny,” MacDonald answered. “What is going on?”

  “We had a little mishap over here, Captain. I had my men

  standing by to drop grenades in the event you needed us to help in the warning phase. Unfortunately, one of the pins fell out—”

  “Fell out? How in the hell does a pin fall out?”

  “Well, this one did, Captain, so we had no choice. The chief tossed it overboard.”

  MacDonald was furious. He wanted to scream obscenities at the redheaded captain of the Coghlan, but what would it accomplish? The damage had already been done and the Dale was approaching the datum where the contact was last reflected.

  “CAPTAIN,” Orlov said from his position near the helm. “Sonar reports Contact One off our aft starboard quarter is continuing to close.”

  Bocharkov grunted with a nod. Everyone in the control room knew the third grenade would be the last warning the Americans would give. The contact closing on them would be the one to attack. The torpedoes would splash into the water above the K-122 and begin a circling search until their homing devices detected the submarine. Then they would straighten and head directly toward the K-122, small sonar pulses locking on the submarine as the torpedoes drove toward the Echo’s propeller area. If they disabled the Echo propellers, the best case would be that the K-122 would survive the attack. If the ballasts still operated Bucharkov could surface and surrender, but if the ballasts were damaged also, then the K-122 would settle to the bottom.

  He thought the water was still too shallow to implode them, so in time the Americans would rescue them, hold them up for the world to see, and then return them to Mother Russia, where all of them would disappear for allowing themselves to be caught. And the Americans would have an entire K-122 submarine to exploit.

  “Captain?” Ignatova asked.

  Bocharkov blinked a couple of times. “XO?”

  “Sir, I asked if you want to open the forward torpedo doors.”

  Bocharkov took a deep breath. Most likely whatever they’d hit still protected them from being detected. If the Americans knew where they were, they would not have dropped the grenade so far away. Most likely he could open the forward tubes without them hearing the telltale sound.

  “Open all outer doors, fore and aft tubes,” he commanded.

  If they were going detect him opening one or two torpedo tube doors, they might as well hear him opening all of them. After all, they were the ones who dropped the third grenade. All he wanted to do was leave the area.

  “Opening outer doors fore and aft, aye!” Ignatova acknowledged. “Outer doors aft open with exception of five and six. Opening forward torpedo doors.”

  Bocharkov listened as the commands were passed to the two torpedo rooms and acknowledgments returned from them as the doors were opened. He now had twelve torpedoes at his command. Even if he failed to sink either American ship, he could give the crews of both of them moments of sheer, exhilarating panic when his torpedoes filled the top feet of Subic Bay.

  “Aft tubes five and six replenished with decoys. Outer doors opened aft tubes five and six.”

  He had two of the four aft tubes ready to fire. The six tubes in the forward torpedo room were also ready now.

  “Sir, Sonar says the third grenade came from Contact Two, not One. Contact One dropped the first two.”

  The farthest American warship had dropped the third grenade. Why did they change for the third grenade?

  “Sir, Contact One is picking up speed and remains heading toward us.”

  So they had not lost the K-122 as he’d thought. If that was right, then they knew he had opened his torpedo doors. They knew he was able to fire first or retaliate if they fired. He hoped that was a good thing.

  “Sonar has reduction in revolutions on Contact One.”

  Why is Contact One slowing? Bocharkov asked himself.

  “SLOW our speed to five knots,” MacDonald said. What was the Soviet captain thinking? What would he think if he were in his Soviet counterpart’s position? Everyone in every navy in the world that had a submarine force knew what the three grenades meant. The submarine had to have detected the third grenade. What would he do if he heard the third grenade? Would he fire first? Would he wait? Could the Soviet captain afford to wait? MacDonald wasn’t sure he could.

  “Coming to five knots, sir,” Goldstein said.

  “V
ery well . . . ,” MacDonald answered, his words trailing off. The clock on the bulkhead showed zero five hundred hours. A slight breeze flowed through the opened port-bridge-wing hatch, through the bridge, and out the opened starboard-bridge-wing hatch. The humidity of the Philippine day remained behind as the breeze tapered and ceased. MacDonald lifted his arms, feeling the sweat beginning to stick his T-shirt to his underarms. It was just another glorious day in the Orient.

  He pushed the toggle switch on the 12MC. “Combat, Bridge. Have we regained contact?”

  “Not yet, sir. Recommend active sonar.”

  MacDonald bit his lower lip. “Not yet, Lieutenant.” If he sent a single pulse now, the submarine might think it was the final firing solution, and if the Soviet captain intended to fire, he would fire when that pulse reached the submarine.

  The rear hatch opened and Admiral Green stepped onto the bridge.

  “CTF-Seventy on the bridge!” the boatswain mate of the watch announced from his position near the 1MC system.

  “Morning, Admiral,” MacDonald said as the World War II veteran walked up alongside him. Bright sunlight shined through the port windows of the bridge.

  “Seems to me, Danny, you got a handful right now.”

  “Yes, sir. If we ping him, sir, I am concerned he might think we are fixing to launch torpedoes and fire first. If we don’t, we might lose him.”

  Green pursed his lips as he nodded. “It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.”

  “Any suggestions as CTF-Seventy, sir? After all, you are the officer in tactical command.”

  Green smiled. “Yep. I am the OTC, but you are the skipper. You have your orders. I notice you slowed down, so I wanted to ask why.”

  MacDonald shared his reasoning with the admiral.

  After a few seconds of listening, Green interrupted. “Danny, you have your orders. Eventually we were going to drop that third grenade anyway. Eventually, the Soviet Echo is going to surface, or continue running for the open ocean, or fight us. But our orders are not to let it reach the open ocean. It either surfaces or we sink it.”