Voyage of the Devilfish mp-1

by Michael Dimercurio

  Lieutenant Culverson, the Officer of the Deck, stood on the Conn and stared at the sonar-repeater console, a television screen covered with red filter glass. A heavily built Texan with a string tie around the collar of his blue poopy suit, Culverson wore a pair of blue Hush Puppies loafers. After all, the rig for ultraquiet had deprived him of his usual cowboy boots. Culverson, wearing red goggles to preserve his night vision in case the ship needed to come to periscope depth, stared at the sonar screen, straining to find a submarine in the mass of stringlike indications of random ocean noises and biologies. Twenty feet aft the sonar space was rigged for black, with only the six sonar console screens showing light in the room. Sonarman Chief Dawson sat at the central console of the sonar panel, the space silent except for a faint high pitched whine from the video screens. The center lower screen was tuned to the athwartships beam of the towed sonar array, a set of hydrophones towed astern on a mile long cable. The beam examined a thin slice of ocean, looking for specific frequency tonals from an AKULA-class attack sub that COMSUBLANT Intelligence had predicted would come into the Billfish’s patrol area. The central console graphs were displaying the frequencies surrounding the anticipated 314-hertz tonal of the AKULA’s turbine generators.

  As Dawson watched, the graph slowly grew a narrow hill in the center. The minutes clicked by, and the graph’s peak, the hill, became a mountain, then a pillar, then a thin sharp spike. 314.0 hertz. Exactly. Too clear and sustained to be a natural phenomenon. Dawson flipped through the other displays. One harmonic of 154 hertz was also spiking. With a 314 and a 154, it had to be an AKULA class. Dawson selected the LOFAR display, the low frequency analyzer that examined a contact’s screw pattern. The lines of frequency were showing the repetitious vibrations of an eight-bladed screw. It all added up to a Russian AKULA-class attack sub where it had no business being — 150 miles east of Norfolk, Virginia. Dawson keyed his microphone.

  “Conn, Sonar, narrowband contact Sierra One, bearing either three five zero or one seven zero, is a submerged contact, Russian nuclear type four, probable AKULA class, making three zero turns on one eight bladed screw. Recommend coming to course… zero three zero to resolve the bearing ambiguity.”

  “SONAR, CONN, AYE, WAIT.”

  Dawson switched the display to the broadband waterfall, the display of all frequencies in the ocean around them. He concentrated on the two possible bearings to the narrowband contact. There was the beginning of a trace at 350. He put his palm on the cursor ball set into the horizontal section of the console and rolled it, moving the computer cursor to the trace, thereby tuning his audio set to that direction and that direction only. He shut his eyes, listened. What he heard was static, white noise, like rain, or water flowing in a creek. Broadband noise. He cut in a filter, removing the lower frequencies. He selected higher and higher frequencies and waited. Finally he heard it. poosh… poosh… poosh… He dialed in a higher frequency and listened. roosh… roosh… roosh… Still higher. floosh… floosh… floosh… He turned up the volume. The new Russian reactor coolant pumps on the AKULA class made that sound. FLOOSH … FLOOSH … FLOOSH … He keyed his mike.

  “Conn, Sonar, trace on broadband bearing three four seven is definite AKULA class, bearing rate left and picking up. Contact is closing, approaching CPA. Recommend course one eight zero to get a second leg.”

  “Sonar, Conn, aye,” Culverson replied in his headset. “Designate the new contact Target One. I’m coming around now to one eight zero to the left.”

  “Conn, Sonar,” Dawson said to his microphone, “recommend coming around to the right. You’ll be pointing at the contact. Otherwise you could hit him—”

  “No, we’re coming around to the left. Better to hit him than loose him in the baffles. Skipper’s orders.”

  Dawson shook his head; this was how underwater collisions happened.

  The word to man tracking stations spread throughout the ship by the watchstanders. The tracking teammembers hurried to their stations. In the control room Culverson was programming the fire-control solution to Target One into the weapons in tubes three and four when Captain Harrison Toth IV arrived and looked over his shoulder. Culverson looked up at Toth, in his late forties, portly and bald. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but after coming up through the ranks as a former sonar chief he knew more about submarines than just about anyone in the fleet. He also never let his officers forget it. But for all Culverson’s gripes about Toth, he felt relieved to see him on the Conn this day.

  WESTERN ATLANTIC

  FS VLADIVOSTOK

  Captain Dmitri Krakov held onto the handrail of the periscope well as the AKULA-class fleet submarine Vladivostok tossed in the sea off the continental shelf of the United States. Vladivostok had been at her hold-coordinate off the city of Norfolk, Virginia, for some twenty hours, rolling and pitching at periscope depth, waiting for any further mission directive. During the last week the crew had become increasingly edgy, and no wonder. So far Krakov had been unable to tell them exactly what their mission was. He wasn’t sure himself.

  Now he tapped the deck officer on the shoulder to ask for the periscope. The junior lieutenant quickly moved away from the scope, and Krakov grasped the horizontal periscope grips somehow reassured by the feel of the antiskid etching on the cylindrical grips. He put his eye on the rubber of the eyepiece, still warm from the deck officer’s face, and looked out at the waves splashing and spraying over the periscope-view. If it was sickening to stand in the control compartment in these tossing seas, it was worse looking out the periscope. A queasy stomach was a hell of a condition for a submariner, but there it was.

  Krakov waved the deck officer to take the periscope back. He was as impatient as his crew. More so. Like Vlasenko, he had been aboard the Leningrad in 1973, but unlike Vlasenko he had not felt in conflict over the sinking of the American submarine. He was, after all, a military man, raised and trained to destroy the enemy, and the enemy had been… how soon some forgot… the Americans. The politicians had had their way and now the country was being disarmed, destroying its capacity to defend it self. He had long had such feelings, but under the tutelage of Admiral Novskoyy his feelings had not only been kept alive, they had been hardened. It was thanks to Novskoyy that he had risen through the ranks to gain his own command the previous year. The admiral was the man he most admired, most trusted to do what was best and right for him, and for the future of his troubled country. Indeed, he felt very much toward the admiral as a son might toward a father his own having died when he was just entering his teen-age years. It was because of his admiration for Novskoyy that he had chosen the navy and submarine service. If Admiral Novskoyy wanted him here, he had his reasons, and that was good enough for Captain Krakov. Captain… he relished the sound of it, and the responsibility that went with it. He loved it, all of it… except, of course, the secret miseries his stomach still underwent. Well, nothing was perfect…

  He thought now of the ultrasecret loading of the SSN-X27, listed on the inventory as an “exercise unit,” loaded in its canister in the number-four torpedo tube. He thought of the nursing of the ship’s mechanical and electrical system in the months prior to this sudden deployment. He thought of the deployment itself, so obviously planned with their food loadout and equipment maintenance, but without immediate warning in the hours before the order to depart the pier. Krakov felt sure that the long, tortuous hours at periscope depth would soon be rewarded. And in a special way that along with the legendary Admiral Alexi Novskoyy, he would be called on to play an historic role. The thought of it was strong enough to overcome even his rebellious stomach.

  ARCTIC OCEAN

  BENEATH THE POLAR ICECAP

  Devilfish had arrived at coordinate A21.2-53.6 on top-secret Chart Zl, the position relayed by Donchez. Her position was drawn on the chart on the navigation table. The anticipated coordinate of the OMEGA was shown as an orange dot. Pacino leaned over the chart in the navigation alcove, aware of the ghostly moan of the SHARKTOOTH sonar beams il
luminating their way in the ice rafts and stalactites ahead, OOD Stokes giving slight rudder orders to the helm to steer the ship around the pressure ridges, and the creaking of the ice around them as the masses of ice rafts shifted and ground against each other.

  The position report from Donchez had given the OMEGA’s approximate position, but even drawing a 30-mile circle around the reported position had not led to a detection. The satellite coordinate must have been subject to some kind of error. There were no sonar detects on the OMEGA on broadband, and none on any of the guessed narrowband frequency gates they were searching in.

  Was the OMEGA gone? Or was he going about this the wrong way? Instead of searching for the OMEGA, should he be searching for a polynya? Pacino walked to the SHARKTOOTH sonar console.

  “Energize the topsounder,” he told Stokes. Stokes nodded and dialed in a rotary switch that activated the ultrahigh-frequency hydrophones on top of the sail, which pinged upward, and “listened” for two pings— the first a reflection off the bottom of the ice, the second a reflection off the top. The comparison of the two showed distance to the ice overhead as well as its thickness.

  “Looks like a pressure ridge above now, sir,” Stokes drawled. “Thick ice. One-hundred-fifty feet.”

  Pacino called over the Junior Officer of the Deck, Lieutenant Brayton.

  “JOOD, establish a zigzag search of this area for thin ice.” Pacino drew a square around the omega’s reported position three miles on a side. “Do a search in this block, then search in blocks further outward from the position. Keep plotting ice thickness. And notify me the instant you’ve got thin ice.”

  Before Pacino left the control room, he glanced over at the SHARKTOOTH’s topsounders. Still thick ice. 125 feet. The possibility of not finding the OMEGA before she turned around and returned to port suddenly hit Pacino hard — the aching in his neck and shoulders feeling like knives going through him. Knives wielded by one Alexi Novskoyy…

  * * *

  All through the night Devilfish moved back and forth under the ice, the secure pulse topsounder clucking, finding only thick ice and pressure ridges. At 0810 GMT Devilfish had to go down to 350 feet to avoid a deep pressure ridge. Back in the control room, Pacino watched in frustration as the ice got thicker. 90 feet. 120 feet. 130 feet. He glanced at the chart, seeing that this was the furthest block to the east they had yet tried. Obviously the east side of the OMEGA position would turn up nothing but thick ice. It was hopeless. Pacino marked on the chart in bold pencil the area to avoid on the east side and again summoned the JOOD.

  “Just thick ice here. Get us back west, to this area. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find the polynya there.” Brayton plotted a course to get the ship to the new search sector.

  “One-hundred-fifty feet, thick ice,” Stokes called out from the SHARKTOOTH console. Brayton moved up beside him and told him the new course. Stokes nodded, giving the overhead-ice-thickness readout a grimace before making the rudder order. He looked over to the helmsman.

  “Helm, left fifteen degrees rudder, steady course two seven zero.”

  After several minutes, for a split second, the ice-thickness readout on the SHARKTOOTH sloped from 145 feet down to five. But as the ship came around, the ice thickness grew back to 175 feet.

  “Get back to zero nine zero,” Pacino ordered. Stokes understood. “Helm, shift your rudder!”

  “Shift my rudder, helm aye, my rudder is right fifteen degrees, passing course zero one five to the right, no ordered course, sir.”

  “Aye, helm,” from Stokes. Pacino patted Stokes on the back as they watched the ice thickness, at the same time Pacino wondering if it had been only a phantom reflection from a void in the ice. But as they got under the thick part of the pressure ridge the ice thickness once again sloped down, from 155 to under five feet in less than thirty seconds. It was an inverted cliff overhead. The polynya.

  “Helm, steady as she goes,” Stokes said, trying to contain his excitement. And Devilfish sailed out from under the pressure ridge to the underside of a wide flat lake of thin ice that stretched on for almost four thousand yards. Pacino allowed himself to believe. This had to be it.

  “JOOD, map the polynya,” Stokes called to Brayton, who turned on the plot table in the forward starboard corner of the control room. Actually the table was more a flat box with a glass top. Inside the box was a device that received inputs from the ship’s gyro-and-speed indicator and moved inside the box in scale to the ship’s motion in the sea. The device shined a small crosshair upward to the glass. Brayton taped down a large sheet of tracing paper to the glass top and began to plot blue dots on the paper at the crosshairlight’s position every minute-mark of the chronometer. As the ship continued east, the ice remained thin, and Brayton continued with blue dots, connecting them with blue line segments. Finally, two and a half miles east, the ice became thick again, coming down in craggy inverted mountains overhead until it was 190 feet thick. As the boat moved from thin ice to thick, Brayton marked the crosshair and began to plot the dots in orange with orange dashes connecting them and indicating thick ice. With Brayton’s directions Stokes was able to drive the ship in a cloverleaf pattern to explore the boundaries of the polynya — a procedure that could be vital to the ship’s survival… if there was a fire or flooding Devilfish would have to try to make it back to the polynya and surface through the ice. It was essential to know its shape so in an emergency with a loss of the topsounder the captain could make an educated guess where the thin ice was by using the plot table. It was low-tech, dating back to the 1950s, but it worked and would continue to work even if the computers died.

  Finally Pacino ordered the ship to bare steerage way under the polynya, affixed his headphone and boom microphone and climbed the step up to the Conn.

  “Sonar, Captain,” he said into the microphone, “we’re under thin ice at a two-and-a-half-by-three mile polynya. The OMEGA may be surfaced here. Use maximum positive deflection/elevation and check for signs of him.”

  Pacino stared at the sonar panel on the Conn console as he flipped through the displays with the selector keypad. The screen was blank. They were alone.

  “Conn, Sonar,” the headphone intoned, “even with max D/E selection we have no trace of a broadband detect on the OMEGA.”

  “What about narrowband?” Pacino pressed.

  “Cap’n, Sonar, the towed array is dragging at this speed, but it’s still negative.”

  The son-of-a-bitch either wasn’t at this polynya or had moved on, Pacino decided.

  As the ship cruised at two knots, Stokes keeping it under the thin ice, Pacino returned to the navigation table to try to figure the next search-step. Maybe there was a new intelligence message in the satellite waiting to tell him the OMEGA had gone or been spotted elsewhere. No, an ELF transmission would have called him up from the deep if that were the case. Which meant… the OMEGA still had to be on the surface. Pacino reached into the overhead and grabbed the control ring for the number-two periscope.

  “Lookaround number-two scope,” he called out.

  “Depth 300 feet, speed two knots,” Stokes called back.

  “Up scope,” Pacino said, and rotated the ring a quarterturn. The hydraulics thunked above him as the high-pressure oil fought the sea pressure outside the ship. It seemed to take an eternity for the pole to come out of the well. The smooth stainless steel climbed up and up from the well, until the control module peeked out from the well and climbed even with Pacino’s midriff. Another clunk as the hydraulics stopped. Pacino snapped down the periscope grips and trained the view upward with the left grip. Nothing but darkness, until the view was almost directly overhead. And then there was a faint light, a glow from the thin ice above.

  “Off’sa’deck, bring us up slowly to one five zero feet. Two knots.”

  Stokes made the orders. Pacino rotated the periscope in slow circles, looking overhead, trying to see any sign of broken ice, any sign of the OMEGA. His earpiece crackled.

  “Conn, Sonar
, we have a transient, no, a whole lot of transients at bearing two seven five.” Pacino strained to see. Two seven five was on the aftport quarter. Sonar could be hearing an ice raft collapsing the polynya. The polynya might not last if the two ice rafts on either side started to move together. The ice could crush a submarine hull if she was unlucky enough to wait too long on the surface. Maybe the OMEGA had heard the ice shifting and had submerged to avoid trouble…

  Something dark was blocking out the top of Pacino’s periscope view, now rotated up to the maximum, about seventy degrees from the horizontal. Not completely upward but almost.

  “Conn, Sonar,” Pacino’s earpiece crackled, “we’ve got… broadband steam noises… definite near-field effect transient broadband steam noises! Conn, there’s a submerged contact directly overhead!”

  “Sonar, Conn, aye,” Pacino called, straining his eyes to see upward as the dark spot on the periscope view enlarged and became a line and then a blot that blocked out half the light from the surface. Pacino ordered Devilfish deeper so he could see the shape. Fifty feet lower was not enough to see either end of the behemoth that was above him, but any deeper would cut off the light. This had to be the OMEGA, he decided, and it was the biggest submarine he could have imagined. It dwarfed Devilfish. There must be room for at least ten Piranha-class submarines inside that huge hull. How could he hope to defeat something that big and invulnerable? And then he reminded himself that inside that… monster was the man who had killed his father. The same man that now threatened him, his crew and the ship that he loved.

  When he looked away from the periscope he saw that the eyes of the men and officers were on him. He was, after all, the captain, and they were trained to trust him so that it had become a matter of instinct. They also had, short of mutiny, no alternative. There was the temptation to talk to them, to explain, but that was not his role. Pacino put his eye back on the periscope and called to Stokes.