Voyage of the Devilfish mp-1

by Michael Dimercurio

  Behind the control station was the Conn, the raised platform, eight-by-four feet, penetrated by the two periscope poles. A console with a remote sonar display, microphones and computer gear was on the port side. To the right of the periscope stand, the Conn, was a long row of computer consoles — the fire-control system. To port, on the outboard side of the Conn, was the SHARKTOOTH underice sonar console. The SHARKTOOTH, which looked up and forward to find the ice, was an active pinging sonar but faint to being nearly undetectable. In the far rear left corner of control was the chart table, and in the rear center of control was the Ship’s Inertial Navigation System equipment, the SINS.

  “Off sa’deck, your report,” Pacino said.

  “Captain, the ship’s rig for dive was checked by Lieutenant Commander Bahnhoff, Ensign Fasteen and Lieutenant Brayton. Straight board. Bottom sounding is 670 fathoms. One contact, tanker, bearing two zero five, range twelve thousand yards, angle on the bow starboard one twenty degrees, past closest point of approach and opening. We are on course zero three five, all ahead two thirds. Latest fix by NAVSAT shows us two miles northeast of the dive point. SINS agrees. Request permission to submerge the ship, sir.”

  Hands in his pockets, Pacino looked at the television monitor showing the view out the periscope. He stepped up to the Conn and took a look at the remote sonar display, then stepped back down and looked at Pos Two, the central of the three TV computer displays for the fire-control system. He disappeared around the other side of the periscope stand, studied the chart for a moment and checked the depth sounder. He returned to a position by the Diving Officer of the Watch seated between the planesmen.

  “Off sa’deck, submerge the ship.”

  Stokes nodded. “Diving Officer, submerge the ship to six seven feet.”

  Fasteen repeated the order. “Submerge the ship to six seven feet, dive aye. Chief of the Watch, open the vents on all main ballast tanks. Sound the diving alarm, over the P.A. Circuit One, dive, dive.”

  The Chief of the Watch Chief Robertson flipped eight solenoid switches to the up-position and saw eight lighted green bars on his panel turn into red circles. “Vents open, sir.” He pulled a lever in the overhead, and throughout the ship the diving alarm sounded.

  OOH-GAH. OOH-GAH.

  “DIVE, DIVE,” Robertson announced on the P.A. Circuit One. Stokes trained the periscope view down and forward, and a huge cloud of white spray rushed out from below his view. “Venting forward,” he called out and rotated the periscope aft. More clouds of water vapor rushed out of the aft vents as Pacino and the crew watched on the periscope TV monitor. The rear deck of the sub was now settling into the sea as the white foam washed around it, and Stokes called out! “Decks awash.” Soon the aft end of the ship vanished and the waves were getting closer to the periscope lens.

  “Four five feet, sir,” Diving Officer Fasteen announced.

  “Very well. Dive,” Stokes replied. Steadily, the Devilfish settled into the waves. After the deck vanished, the sail was all that was visible. Soon the fairwater planes, the horizontal control surfaces protruding from the side of the sail, splashed the waves, then also vanished underwater. The top of the sail settled until it too was obscured. Only the tall number-two periscope rose above the water, lowering until it only poked above the waves by four feet, a small foamy wake trailing behind it.

  “Six seven feet, sir,” Fasteen called out.

  “Vents shut,” said Chief Robertson.

  “Get a trim. Dive. Helm, all ahead one-third.” Stokes never removed his eye from the periscope as he continued to train his view around in slow circles, switching between low and high power, then looking upward in search of aircraft, the submariner’s lethal enemy. After ten minutes of pumping and balancing, Fasteen had Devilfish at neutral buoyancy.

  “Captain, we’ve got a good one-third trim. Request to go deep and head north, sir,” Stokes said.

  “Off sa’deck, proceed to five four six feet and continue northeast at flank,” Pacino responded.

  American submarines cruised at odd depths like 546 feet, the idea being to avoid collisions with Russians, assuming the Russians measured depth at the keel and cruised at even depths measured in meters. Pacino always wondered if they cruised at depths like 334 meters to avoid collisions with Americans…

  “Helm,” Stokes called, “all ahead two thirds. Dive, make your depth five four six feet.”

  Pacino watched the periscope view showing on the remote TV monitor to the right of the control station, where the view of the sea grew more restricted as the vantage point got closer to the waves.

  “Six eight feet, sir. Six nine,” Fasteen reeled off. The periscope view hit the waves. Foam boiled up around the periscope lens. The view cleared. Waves again.

  “Scope’s awash… scope’s awash…” Stokes called out.

  “Seven zero feet, sir,” from Fasteen. One final wave came up and splashed the periscope view. Then the view showed the underside of the waves. The field of view trained upward and looked at the waves from the bottom side, watching them get further away. When they were 40 feet overhead Stokes snapped the periscope grips up, reached into the overhead, rotated a large metal ring and said, “Lowering number-two scope.” The periscope optic-control section vanished into the periscope well, and the stainless steel pole lowered thirty feet until the top of the scope disappeared into the sail. The periscope television repeater automatically turned itself off, and the deck angled downward as the ship went deep.

  “Helm, all ahead flank,” Stokes ordered. The hull creaked and popped as the ship went deeper into the increasing sea pressure.

  “Off sa’deck, maneuvering answers all-ahead flank,” the helmsman called.

  “Very well. Helm.”

  “Off’sa’deck, passing four hundred feet,” Fasteen reported.

  “Very well. Diving Officer.” Stokes looked at the remote sonar display. One lone contact, the supertanker, was fading astern.

  “Offsa’deck, depth five four six feet.”

  “Very well. Diving Officer.” Stokes picked up the P.A. Circuit One microphone. “RIG SHIP FOR PATROL QUIET.” Pacino looked at Stokes, who leaned on the periscope pole, arms crossed over his chest.

  “I’ll be in my stateroom,” Pacino said, and walked aft.

  Five-hundred-forty-six feet beneath the waves, the USS Devilfish continued northeast, enroute to the polar icecap. Enroute to Pacino’s fateful confrontation.

  CHAPTER 9

  TUESDAY, 14 DECEMBER, 1135 EST

  NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

  COMSUBLANT HEADQUARTERS

  Admiral Richard Donchez lit his first Havana of the day, ignoring the pained expression on Captain Fred Rummel’s face. Rummel, the SUBLANT Chief Intelligence Officer, had called Donchez to the Top Secret Conference Room for an urgent brief. Donchez had been in the office before the sun to work on plans for a Stingray monument. The memorial had been kicking up objections from Naval Intelligence, which wanted the entire affair forgotten.

  “Sir,” Rummel began, “CIA PHOTOINT sent us this.” The room lights dimmed and a slide projector clicked on to show a view of the Kola Peninsula on the Russian north coast. Most of the countryside was a cool blue, while bright orange dots lit up half a dozen points on the coastline.

  “Infrared,” Rummel said. “Blue is cold, orange is hot. As you can plainly see, we’re getting hot spots at the submarine bases of the Northern Fleet along Russia’s northern coast.” Donchez nodded. “Power plants, buildings with poor insulation, floodlights. Lots of thermal sources.”

  “Right. That’s why it took a few hours for us to get around to looking at this.” The slide changed to a closer view of one of the submarine bases. Donchez stood up slowly. “Oh shit,” he said softly, dropping cigar ashes into the carpeting.

  “Indeed, sir. As you can see, each of the twenty-five submarines here has an orange spot showing mid-length in her hull. Those thermal traces are reactor cores. They look like that when they’re critical, making power, but a
lso when they’re shut down. But look aft of each reactor. The steam lines inside the turbine rooms are also glowing. These submarines are all hot, the reactors are critical. They’re making steam.” Rummel now clicked the control on the slide projector and the machine ran through a dozen similar shots, each a different Kola Peninsula base, each showing nuclear submarines with reactors and engine rooms hot.

  A knock came at the door and a petty officer looked in at Rummel, handed him a sealed envelope lined with a red banner and quickly left.

  “How old are those photos?” Donchez asked.

  “Three hours, sir.”

  “We need to see what’s happening now.”

  Rummel opened the envelope. “This is hot off the TS fax machine, sir.” He pulled out a long strip of paper with the same kinds of coloring as the slides. Donchez turned up the room lights as Rummel spread the fax out from one end of the long table to the other— every fourteen inches was a photo of a submarine base. Donchez looked from one photo to the next.

  “They’re gone. Every god damned one of them.”

  Rummel nodded, face tight. Each photo showed the same bases as the three-hour-old shots, but in the new photos the piers were empty.

  “How many attack subs are in their Northern Fleet?”

  “One hundred twenty, sir.”

  “Any in dock for repair?”

  “No, sir. Not one.”

  “Any activity out of Vladivostok?”

  “No, sir. The Pacific Fleet is dead quiet. Almost all their submarines are in port, shut down, getting routine maintenance. This activity is altogether confined to the Northern Fleet.”

  Donchez sat back down in his seat while Rummel folded up the fax. The cigar’s tip had gone cold. “Get SOSUS on NESTOR,” he ordered, referring to the secure UHF radio telephone to the Sound Surveillance System Control Room on the eastern shore of Maryland, the receiving and analysis point for the ten thousand miles of U.S. sonar-array cables laid on the Atlantic.

  In the two minutes it took to get the SOSUS duty officer on the line, Donchez had summoned his own duty officer to the conference room.

  “SOSUS CONTROL ROOM. DUTY OFFICER,” the speaker rasped out to the room. Donchez nodded at Rummel.

  “SOSUS, this is SUBLANT. Report any detects in the North Atlantic and Barents Sea that are new within the last three hours. Over.”

  “SUBLANT, SOSUS. SORRY FOR THE DELAY — THERE SHOULD BE AN IMMEDIATE MESSAGE COMING OVER YOUR UHF SATELLITE NETWORK NOW. WE HAVE MULTIPLE SONAR DETECTS, TOO MANY TO DISTINGUISH. CONTACTS SEEM TO BE WARSHIPS WITH SUBMARINE-TYPE SCREW PATTERNS. BEARINGS GENERALLY CORRELATE TO THE NORTH ATLANTIC AND REGIONS IN VICINITY OF KOLA PENINSULA AND NOVAYA ZEMLYA. OVER.”

  Rummel acknowledged and broke the connection. Donchez turned to the SUBLANT duty officer.

  “Assemble my staff in this conference room, then get on NESTOR to CINCLANTFLEET and tell Admiral McGee I’ll be briefing him in a half hour.”

  The Duty Officer left in a hurry.

  “What do you think, Rummel?” Donchez asked, pulling his Piranha lighter from his jacket pocket to relight his dead cigar.

  “A deployment exercise… what else? Things are pretty cozy between us and them these days…”

  Donchez pointed to the fax photographs. “Does that look cozy? Get on the horn with Langley and ask about the Russian SSN-X-27 cruise missiles’ status. Put the same question to OP Oh Nineteen at the Pentagon. I want to know if these attack subs are loaded with anything that could be tossed at us. Cozy, my ass.”

  Rummel took off without a word. Donchez watched the smoke from the Havana rise toward the ceiling, and wondered what in hell Admiral Alexi Novskoyy was up to now.

  ARCTIC OCEAN

  BENEATH THE POLAR ICECAP

  Captain Vlasenko knocked on the door to his commandeered stateroom. It was time to take back the ship.

  Novskoyy called out, “Who is it?”

  “Captain Vlasenko, sir.”

  Through the door Vlasenko heard the rustling of papers, the sound of books being shuffled and the safe door being shut. Finally the door mechanism clicked as it was unlocked. The door opened and Vlasenko saw Novskoyy’s back as the admiral returned to his seat at his desk. The desk’s papers and books had been covered by a chart, laid blank side up, revealing only the TOP SECRET stamps on its blank wide surface.

  “What can I do for you, Captain?” The glance at the stateroom had momentarily thrown Vlasenko off balance.

  “Sir, I had wanted to talk to you about, well, about what you are doing aboard. You’ve practically taken over this ship, aborting my sea-trials agenda without letting me brief the crew on what we’re doing, giving direct orders to my officers, threatening my Security Warrant Officer, transmitting messages from my control compartment without my signature, assigning maintenance schedules to the Communications Officer. Sir, I am the captain of this vessel, these orders should come through me…”

  He had run out of steam, and was furious with himself. It sounded like a plea for Novskoyy to give him back the ship please? sir?

  Novskoyy seemed to have barely heard. “Whatever you like, Vlasenko. Now you’ll excuse me, I have some matters to attend to. By the way, I’ve instructed the Deck Officer to use the topsounder and find the nearest polynya. We will be surfacing as soon as there is thin ice overhead.”

  Vlasenko stared. What was Novskoyy doing? An order to surface along with his demand that the radio sets be fully functional…? Vlasenko started to protest but Novskoyy cut him off.

  “Captain, shut the door behind you and set the lock, if you please.”

  He hadn’t so much as looked at Vlasenko’s face as he said it, his eyes focused on the far bulkhead. Without further word the admiral began to unlock his safe again as Vlasenko moved out, locking the stateroom door behind him.

  * * *

  In his stateroom Vlasenko again thought of the spare key to the captain’s — Novskoyy’s — stateroom. It was in the First Officer’s safe, and the combination was set so that it would be easy to remember — his graduation date from the Marshal Grechko Higher Naval School of Underwater Navigation: right to zero five, left twice to twenty-eight, right again to sixty-eight.

  The small safe opened, and at the bottom was an envelope with a single key. The key to the captain’s stateroom. No question in Vlasenko’s mind now— after what he had seen… or rather not seen… he had to get in and find out what Novskoyy was up to.

  * * *

  Admiral Novskoyy stared at the room’s door after Captain Vlasenko left, eventually shrugged and returned to his study of the deployment of his submarines. They would dictate the disarmament of the U.S. Dictate and if necessary force… Excitement, exhilaration over the plan now moving to fruition mingled with a wash of exhaustion. It was a heady feeling, one he had not known since twenty years ago when the USS Stingray went to the bottom…

  * * *

  Vlasenko sat at the polished oak foldout table, hating his situation, being deprived of his ship. He had been with the Kaliningrad through its five years of construction, since the first beam of structural titanium had arrived from the west by railcar. He was there when the beam was rolled into a ring, at the first hoop of framing, when the keel had been laid. He had watched the gigantic hull grow, module by module, deck by deck. And every day of those five years he had waited for the moment when she would submerge under the waves, with Vlasenko in command. He had devoted thirty years of his life to the Navy, almost all of them at sea. He had never married, never made love to a woman, unless you counted the Severomorsk and Vladivostok prostitutes. When he died his name would die with him. He had given it all up for the submarine force. Not to be Novskoyy’s errand boy.

  Vlasenko shut his eyes, let his mind wander, hoping it would somehow take him away from the pain. Instead, it returned to the epicenter of the hurt. Clear as day he saw himself some twenty-five years earlier, the day he had pulled in on that run under the ice, the run when Novskoyy had shot and destroyed the America
n attack submarine…

  * * *

  It was December of 1973. It had been blowing wet snow the entire ride in. The waves were violent, spraying cold seawater onto the shivering officers and men on the bridge, coating them with its gritty salt.

  At the time a senior lieutenant, Yuri Vlasenko had been Deck Officer. Normally he would have been proud to drive the new attack submarine into the Polyarnyy piers, but this time he was exhausted and overcome by a deep unease. As the Leningrad’s lines were thrown over to the men on the pier, a long black Zil limousine drove up to their berth. Twin red flags fluttered on the fenders, each flag displaying five stars — the limo of Fleet Admiral Konalev, commander of the entire Red Banner Northern Fleet. The car skidded to a halt on the ice-coated pier, and Vlasenko put down the bullhorn, the line handlers having finished securing the ship. He called down to the control room to have nuclear control parallel into shorepower and shutdown the reactor.

  Captain Novskoyy looked ready to leave the bridge. Vlasenko decided to speak his mind, cautiously.

  “Captain…” Vlasenko began.

  Captain Novskoyy frowned. “What is it, Vlasenko? The admiral is waiting for my report.”

  “Sir, I was just wondering… what are you going to tell the admiral?” His meaning was clear. Would the captain tell the admiral he’d sunk an American submarine without any real provocation, only because the American had been trailing them for a time, actually risking a nuclear conflict with the Americans?