by Ian Slater
* * *
But on the Yumashev, Captain Stasky could still pick up enough echo from the submarine’s bulk. If it was the American sub from Holy Loch, he knew that the whooshing sound of one of its 280-mile-range Tomahawk missiles, capable of being fired from the torpedo tube eighty feet beneath the surface, would alert not only the Yumashev but every Soviet Hunter/Killer south of the Greenland-Iceland-Norway Gap.
Also knowing the primary mission of the Sea Wolfs was to wait, to keep the United States’ last weapons platform intact should the Soviet ICBMs be unleashed, and that Roosevelt’s captain was engaged to be married, Stasky believed that it was all the more likely that the American somewhere beneath the Yumashev had deliberately held his fire. The American might also be confused by the new refit baffles welded on the Yumashev at the Tallinn Yards. Whatever the reason, the fact was that the American had held his fire, and Stasky believed that despite the chrezmerny zvuk machiny— “override clutter”—the Yumashev was getting from its own sonar echoes in the shallower water, the sub that his cruiser had picked up earlier must be in the near vicinity.
“Gotontes! Vesti ogon gruppoy RBU!”—” Roll drums! Fire RBU! All clusters!”
“Drums rolling,” confirmed the first mate, who then flipped up the Perspex protector, pushing the fire button for both twelve-barrel rocket launchers on either side of the stern helicopter hangar and the other two twelve-barrel launchers in the foc’s’le. From the starboard wing, the cruiser’s third mate and a midshipman, collars buffeted by the cold wind, watched the oil-drum-sized depth charges plopping unceremoniously over the stern, quickly disappearing in the ship’s boiling wake, the scream of the first salvo of antisub rockets filling the air, along with the thudding noise from gray bunches of mallet-shaped depth charges fired high in a scatter pattern, leaping into the air like grotesque quail.
The officer of the deck, already having started the clock, was counting, “One, two, three—” the drums timed to go off at greater depths than the RBUs. Stasky saw the first blip on the screen, the sonar alarm Dipping frantically like a smoke detector. “Torpeda v nashem napravlenii! Napravo!”— “Homing torpedoes! Hard right!”
The Yumashev heeled to starboard, discharging a cascade of khlam— “chaff,” aluminum strips and wafers designed to addle American torpedo sensors. As the RBU rockets were influence-fused, for magnetic signature, the Yumashev’s skipper knew the chaff might prematurely trigger them, but the old-fashioned drum charges set only for depth might still do the trick, though with the Americans’ titanium-reinforced hull, a drum charge would have to strike the hull itself to implode the sub.
* * *
“Dive — two thousand!” ordered Brentwood. It meant approaching crush point, but the stern planesman to his left didn’t hesitate and there was the surge of water pouring into the tanks. During the “hard,” steep-angled dive, Brentwood braced himself against the girth rail that ran around the raised periscope island as to his right the bow planesman watched depth gauge and trim as the Roosevelt, already having fired four Mk-48s, sank like a stone, nose first.
* * *
Six… seven… eight seconds, and aboard the Yumashev, Stasky knew something had gone wrong. The sea astern, off his port quarter, should be erupting in towering greenish-white mushrooms streaked with black oil from the sub’s raptured hydraulic systems. Instead the Yumashev’s captain looked out on a sea that was exploding only here and there. He estimated that less titan twenty percent of the RBUs and depth charges were detonating.
“Bozhe moy, Mendev!”—”My God, Mendev!” he said, turning to his first mate. “Chto zhe tut takogo?”— “What’s wrong?”
* * *
On Roosevelt, the depth gauge’s needle was passing the two-thousand-feet mark and quivering. There was a hiss, then a jet of water — thinner than a needle. Coming in at over a thousand psi, it created a stinging aerosol, a “car wash” mist in the control room, temporarily blinding the planesman and the chief petty officer watching the ballast tank monitors. In six seconds the Roosevelt had reached twenty-one hundred feet. There was a dull thump, then another, the sound punching Brentwood so hard in the stomach, he could tell the depth charge was even closer than the sound indicated. The sub leveled out at twenty-three fifty, its pressure hull starting to groan. Three minutes passed and nothing. Then another explosion so close that it threw him back against the periscope rail, the Roosevelt shuddering so violently it blurred the red-eyed squares of the monitors, more jets of water shooting into the control room, creating an even denser aerosol.
“Up angle!” shouted Zeldman.
In the forward torpedo room, rivets began popping, one ricocheting about the titanium casing until it lodged in a crewman’s brain, splattering the pinkish-gray mass over the bulkhead, another smashing a Perspex fire button protector, sending off a torpedo. The torpedo was not yet armed, but its impact inside the tube was like that of a bullet in a closed barrel, its flame-burst concussing several crewmen in the torpedo room. The fire in the tube quickly died through lack of oxygen, but not before the meticulously tooled lining of the tube had been badly scoured. The first torpedo that Roosevelt had fired from the forward section and the two fired from the stern had gone haywire, heading into the fallen “chaff,” but these torpedoes’ premature explosion sent shrapnel whistling high into the air, inadvertently clearing a path for the lone stern-fired Mark-48 that was still running. It glanced the Yumashev’s starboard bow beneath the water-line — not enough to sink her, but the shock wave of methane and carbon dioxide from the explosive gases was enough to buckle the cruiser’s outer plating, imploding it with an elliptical gash twelve feet long and three feet wide.
The Russians were quick to the pumps, however, and with watertight compartments sealed, the cruiser was able to limp away at five knots, her two twin Goblet antiaircraft missiles, which could also be used in an antiship role, intact as well as her Kamov-26 over-the-horizon missile-targeting helicopter. The Kamov was already airborne, its contra-rotating rotors catching afternoon sunlight, its bug-eyed face, remarkably like that of a blowfly, hovering off the ship’s port quarter, its chin-mounted Bulge-B surface-search radar already scanning the horizon for any NATO ships that might be diverted to the area by the British commander of the western approaches. The helicopter’s radar and its height allowed it to pick up hostile targets well beyond the seventy-nautical-mile limit of the Yumashev’s head net-C air search radar.
* * *
The Allied ships the Yumashev expected didn’t materialize, most of them within steaming distance committed to the vital convoy duty farther south, where the Gulf Stream curves into the North Atlantic drift. But Allied aircraft did come, the Russian sub chaser detected by another sub chaser, a Dassault-Breguet Atlantic-2 patrol aircraft, which, too slow, low on fuel, and not equipped to attack the seven-thousand-ton cruiser, relayed the information to St. Mawgan, the USAF communication center in Cornwall.
Within five minutes, south of St. Mawgan, in the lush and windswept countryside, the orange jet of flame from a Sepecat Jaguar could be seen as the aircraft taxied out of its hardened “splashed-greens” camouflaged shelter onto a short stretch of highway, the blacktop marked off by detour signs. The plane’s high wing would enable it to take off from half the tarmac length usually used in its close support and reconnaissance role. Normally a light-strike aircraft kept for coastal defenses and photographic overflights of the battlefields across the Channel, the Franco-British jet had been scrambled because RAF fighter squadrons were in the process of intercepting large incoming Soviet formations over the North Sea. The Jaguar, its dark green-gray shape fleetingly veiled in fog, began its short run, the two eight-thousand-pound Adour turbofans, on afterburner, thrust into the mottled sky over England’s Land’s End, taking it to Mach 1.1 in less than a minute. The pilot, Roger Fernshaw, kept the plane low, where its small wing and fly-by-wire touch controls enabled the Jaguar to skim over the ruffled, cobalt-colored sea without emitting telltale radar signals,
its FIN digital inertial navigation and weapon aiming system going through its paces, Fernshaw checking his HUD or head-up display and the Ferranti laser range and marked-target seeker. The late sun glinted momentarily off the metallic sea as Fernshaw punched in the coordinates for the Yumashev’s last reported position as relayed via St. Mawgan by the Dassault-Breguet patrol aircraft.
He saw a fleeting shadow below him, began evasive action, then realized it was the shadow of the external fuel pod needed to give the Jaguar an extended range of twenty-one hundred miles as it streaked west sou’west, armed on all five hard points, including two fifteen-hundred-pound Exocet missiles.
* * *
Inside the Roosevelt, everything was shaking violently, as if in an earthquake, both the deep rumble and high-pitched screeching of her bent prop reverberating throughout. Suddenly the sub jerked hard right, sending Brentwood and Zeldman crashing into the scope island, Brentwood striking his head on the girth rail.
* * *
A crewman grabbed for one of his sneakers floating in the ankle-deep pool now sloshing between the control room’s sill and the forward electronics room.
“What the hell—” Brentwood began, but now the noise had suddenly decreased, the chief engineer apparently having dropped the sub’s speed to five knots on his own initiative as the sub leveled out fifty feet above her crush depth. Yet Brentwood knew that despite the reduction in the noise level and the fact that most of the leaks had been sealed, his sub was in serious trouble. The noise was still a problem, a giveaway to an enemy sub anywhere within fifty miles or so. And now a bank of square red eyes, circuit monitors, grew bright, the control room’s light dimming with the drop in current.
In the gloomy light the sound of the sloshing water created an ominous overtone amid the crunching noise of the prop’s warp and, above, the rhythmic pulse of the pumps. He gave the order to reduce speed still further, but the vibration unexpectedly grew worse and for a second all monitors faded.
“Fucking great!” someone said.
“Hold your tongue!” snapped Brentwood. “Mr. Zeldman!”
“Sir?”
“Shut down the prop.”
“Yes, sir.”
For a moment all was quiet — the sub in neutral buoyancy, no longer diving or rising. Then they could hear a choking, gurgling noise, the only sound above the rapid purr of the pumps that were sucking up the water, transferring it to number one ballast tank. Brentwood ordered the other tank vented to keep the sub in neutral trim and listened to the damage reports coming in. Someone had thrown up and the stench was overpowering, telling Brentwood that the airconditioning was out of action. In an effort to get the crew’s full attention back on their job, he chewed out a forward torpedo room bosun for not responding earlier but was chagrined to discover the bosun had already done so — that what he was now receiving was a follow-up report.
“You were out for a bit, sir,” explained Zeldman. Brentwood apologized to the bosun over the intercom, then turned to Zeldman.
“Where’s the Russian?”
“Three miles off, sir, and limping. Looked like we banged him up pretty—”
“Damn it! Give me a bearing.”
“Yes, sir. Zero three seven, sir.”
“Very well.” He called the reactor room. “You all right back there, Chief?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stern room?” asked Brentwood.
“Man missing, sir.”
“Who?”
“We’re not sure, Captain. We had a ‘Rover’ working the watch overlap.”
“Well, find out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Probably in the can,” said Zeldman, risking a note of levity after the tension of the Russian attack. The sonar operator gave a forced laugh.
Brentwood saw the square red eyes of the circuit monitors lighting up — full power restored. He shook his head. It was an infuriating dilemma, enough to elicit a record three “damns” from him in as many seconds. Here was the pride of the U.S. Navy, America’s vessel of last resort, with power to burn, its reactor-driven steam turbines back to generating enough power to light a city of over a hundred thousand. But to what effect? With a damaged prop, the sub, even if it used its auxiliary diesel hookup or, failing that, the “bring it home” capability of the smaller “dolphin dick”—the emergency screw slotted in the stern ballast — could only make a maximum of three to five knots. It meant that for combat purposes, self-defense included, the Roosevelt was virtually dead in the water — a sick whale in a sea full of sharks. On top of this, Zeldman informed him that the hydraulic line for the sail’s starboard diving plane was losing pressure — a possible perforation. It couldn’t be repaired; they’d have to go to manual override, a slow business at the best of times.
Another report came in from the forward torpedo room. Using a chain pulley to recradle one of the three-and-a-half-thousand-pound Mark-48 torpedoes which had shaken loose in the pitch darkness that had followed the final salvo of RBU rockets, the torpedo crew found the missing seaman, an electrician’s mate. They were unable to identify him for five minutes or so, his dog tags embedded in the bloody mash that had been his head.
Brentwood issued orders for the emergency prop to be extended from its ballast sheath and engaged. Its fanlike whir was quiet enough, picked up by the sub’s implant hull mikes, the TACTAS, or towed array, mikes having been knocked out by two of the Russian drum charges. Brentwood tapped on the NAVCOMP keys, the computer screen’s warm amber readout informing him that at its maximum speed of five knots, it would take Roosevelt twelve days at least, through enemy-sub-infested waters, to reach Land’s End at the southwestern tip of England. If they turned about and headed south against the stream, to Newfoundland, it would take them much longer. Either way, they would be in constant danger of being discovered through the noise of the emergency prop. If this happened, the Roosevelt would have only five knots against a Hunter/Killer’s forty.
Brentwood ordered the emergency prop resheathed. They would wait for the next scheduled rendezvous with the TACAMO — take charge and move out — aircraft due in seventy-three hours time. He would take her up, out of the sea noise, give a signal requesting emergency assistance, then go down and wait rather than move and risk “noise shorts”—any noise from inside the sub that could resonate loudly enough from the hull to give away its presence. But Robert Brentwood knew that the waiting was by far the hardest thing for a submariner to do.
“Don’t sweat it,” the quartermaster told one of the fire control technicians in the forward compartment. “With the freshwater converter and our freezers, we’ve got enough food and fresh water down here to last us a year. Hell, we convert so much fresh water, we have to dump half of it.” It was meant to be a reassuring thought until an electrician’s mate pointed out that by now the noise of their engagement with the cruiser must have been picked up by both sides’ ocean-bottom arrays scattered at various points throughout the North Atlantic. Further reducing their chance for a pickup tow by a fast navy tug to one of the big sub tender/floating docks was the gale warning from the last TACAMO contact. On top of that, there was the problem of whether the TACAMO aircraft would arrive on schedule, if at all, given the increasing Russian air cover of Soviet Hunter/Killer packs which had broken out south of the Greenland-Iceland Gap and the Iceland-Faroes Gap.
Brentwood knew the only other choice he had was to take the sub to the surface just minutes before the next scheduled TACAMO contact and risk “pop-up, pop-down”—putting up the vertical VHF (very high frequency) aerial with which Roosevelt could send a high-intensity “burst” message more quickly than from the slower “fishline” trailing VLF aerial. He would expose the HF aerial for no more than thirty seconds, then retract and submerge. Even so, the danger was that any penetration of the sea’s surface could be picked up by Soviet satellite — not so much by the protrusion of the aerial itself but rather from discoloration or “ruffle” caused by the warm water envelope around the sub
entering the surface temperature zone. Nothing could be done to prevent this warm envelope, the result of pumps having to continually cool the “coffeepot” or nuclear reactor, from rising to the surface with the sub. Brentwood knew that a Soviet satellite spotting the TD, or temperate differential, “patch” would give the Soviet Hunter/Killers the Roosevelt’s exact position rather than that reported by the Russian surface vessel that had attacked him. He could keep the Roosevelt deep to eliminate the thermal patching, but this would make him unable to use the VHF to ask for help. Any way he moved, it was risky.
In the meantime he decided to take her up halfway toward VLF depth, where any thermal patching would not be as recognizable via satellite and could be interpreted as local upwelling from one of the millions of oceanic springs venting from the sea floor.
In the quiet, redded-out control room the bulkhead was now beaded in flamingo-colored droplets of condensation.
He called for the chief electrician’s mate in charge of the stern torpedo room and also for the next shift’s sonar operator.
“Chief, I want you to get a MOSS. Here—” Brentwood showed him the drawing of the mobile submarine simulator. “Here, I’ve drawn a sketch of what I want you—”
“Sir!”
It was the hospital corpsman, looking worried. “We’re going to have to deal with Evans…”
