by Larry Bond
“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 bearing 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.
“We can’t be sure of the fields’ positions,” Bair cautioned. “They could be up to five or even ten miles off on any side.”
“So we’re not going to go anywhere near them.” Hardy announced. “We’re going to hug the coast off the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya and keep Memphis in shallow water. We should be able to pass the westernmost field at a distance of five miles.”
Lenny Berg looked worried and even the XO looked concerned. Hardy saw their faces. “The shallower we go, the less our noise will carry to the buoys. If we’re lucky we’ll find some biologies to hide in, but I’ll even settle for some wave slap.”
“They’ll be expecting us to try and go around, sir,” Bair cautioned. “They’ll have surface craft patrolling the gaps.”
“Of course, but I’d rather deal with a thirty-knot ship than a three-hundred-knot airplane.”
“How many ships will they have?” asked Lenny Berg. “And how many aircraft?”
“Three planes, all the way out here in the Kara Sea, is a lot,” Bair answered. “They only have one or two understrength squadrons in the entire Northern Fleet and their maintenance is iffy at best. I’m betting this is all they had available to sortie on such short notice. The ships are more of an unknown. We’ve already detected four; it could be two or even three times that number. We just don’t know.”
“Lucky for us,” Berg commented sarcastically.
“More will come, which is why we have to keep heading north,” Hardy said. “Remember, this is the season when the Russians do most of their training. Every available ship from those exercises is heading in this direction. That first group we got past was probably the closest, but there will be more guarding the gaps not covered by the buoy fields.
More will arrive the longer we take, and I do not want Memphis to be anywhere near here when they arrive.
“My intention is to get us out of the Kara Sea as quickly as possible. Once we’re in the Barents and we’ve broken contact for a while, the Russians will be reluctant to attack a submarine contact. And we’ll have more maneuvering room.”
Hardy turned to Jerry. “And you’re going to be our pathfinder. I wouldn’t trust these charts even if they were printed in Cyrillic, not for this. We’ll send the Manta out in front, so we’ll know exactly what the bottom looks like and where we can safely navigate. We’ll man Manta launch stations in three hours.”
Jerry looked at his watch and saw that he’d have to head down to the torpedo room just before the next watch rotation. Based on the Captain’s intentions, he probably wouldn’t get any rest for the next twelve hours.
“I know you’re tired, Mr. Mitchell. We all are. But there is nothing I can do about it until we get out into the Barents and away from the Russian ASW forces,” Hardy said apologetically.
“I understand, sir,” replied Jerry, surprised by Hardy’s concern.
“Very well, then. Mr. Berg, change course to three zero zero and increase speed to seven knots.”
“Change course to three zero zero and increase speed to seven knots, aye, sir.”
At midnight Hardy turned Memphis more to the north, to parallel the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya. As the water shoaled, Jerry and his division manned their U-bay stations and launched the Manta, now nearly fully charged.
Jerry felt at home as he guided the Manta toward the sloping seabed. Harry O’Connell, the Navigator, was on the phone circuit this time. He told Jerry where to steer and constantly quizzed him about water depth and bottom topography. Everyone kept a close watch out for uncharted obstructions.
Jerry used the vehicle like a hunting dog, searching for the smoothest, deepest path across the seabed. He’d run ahead and back at five or six knots while Memphis glided behind him, sometimes with only ten feet of water between the keel and the bottom.
Three knots doesn’t sound very fast. It’s three and a half miles an hour. People can walk that fast. Cars in traffic jams move faster than that. But a car weighs a few thousand pounds. A submarine weighs several thousand tons. It doesn’t stop quickly or quietly. As he scanned the seabed in front of Memphis, he was constantly conscious of the submarine’s mass bearing down on him.
Jerry used the Manta’s high-frequency active sonar to look for sudden shelving of the bottom or obstructions. While he still wished for a TV camera of some sort, the sonar provided him with a usable picture of the bottom.
The pathfinder idea paid off almost immediately when the Manta found an outcropping of rock that projected well above the seabed. While Memphis’ keel would have cleared, her rudder projected a couple of feet farther down, and that might have struck with disastrous results.
At three knots, traveling in a somewhat straight line, Memphis would take over ten hours to cover the thirty miles, but Hardy wasn’t exactly sure of where the buoy field was. Jerry flew the UUV for over five hours, scouring the bottom. After the outcropping, he found a ridge that lay across Memphis’ path and also managed to find a deep spot, almost a ravine, that safely hid the submarine for nearly an hour’s travel northwest.
They heard the destroyer’s sonar long before they were clear of the western sonobuoy field. O’Connell told Jerry over the circuit, “Sonar’s picked up a Horse Jaw sonar pinging to the north. It’s most likely an Udaloy-class destroyer.”
That was bad. The Udaloys were the newest class of Russian ASW destroyer. They carried antisubmarine missiles that reached out almost thirty miles. They also carried two helicopters fitted with a dipping sonar and rocket-propelled torpedoes. The Horse Jaw was a big low-frequency set with tremendous power. Actually, the Udaloy class wasn’t the only Russian warship to carry it. If it wasn’t an Udaloy, the other possibility was a Kirov-class nuclear-powered battle cruiser. Jerry decided he’d hope it was an Udaloy.
“U-bay, conn. The Captain wants you to come up to control.” After making sure the Manta could fly safely ahead for a few minutes, Jerry left Davidson to baby-sit while he dashed up to the control room. He found the Captain and the XO huddled over the chart table. They both looked tired and worried.
“At least we know there is a gap,” the XO commented. He tried to sound positive, but it didn’t work.
Hardy didn’t even try. “If that Udaloy spots us, we’re in deep kimchee. Even if we could evade him, his two helicopters would likely pin us down and he’d move in for the kill. Their dipping sonars actually perform better in these water conditions than the Horse Jaw.”
Bair continued. “The only advantage we’ve got is that he has to stay active if he’s going to find us. He’d never get a whiff of us with a passive search, not in water with all this ice.”
“But he’s ideally positioned to block the gap. We either try to slip past him or we’re forced into the buoy field.” The Captain’s conclusion clearly laid out the trap the Russians had set for them.
“So we’re going to take our chances in the buoy field?” Bair asked.
“No, XO, we’re going to cut the corner and run through Russian territorial waters,” Hardy announced matter-of-factly.
Bair and Jerry stood in shocked silence. Hardy’s plan was daring, but also very dangerous. If the Russians found them, there would be no place to hide in the confined, very shallow waters near the coast. Unable to run or fight, Memphis’ chances of survival were nil.
“Captain, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but are you friggin’ nuts?”
Hardy grinned at his Executive Officer’s unusual outburst. “I haven’t lost all my marbles yet, XO. Look at how they’ve distributed their forces. They’ve covered virtually every path out of the Kara Sea beautifully. Whoever is directing their efforts is a real pro. But, they don’t know how badly we’ve been hurt. They have to assume they’re facing a healthy 688 that can still run — and fight, if necessary. From their point of view, no sane U.S. sub captain would try to navigate the poorly charted coastal waters and risk the excellent chance of running aground. I have a hunch they don’t believe that we’d run the huge political risk of getting caught and sunk in their waters. So, if they’ve covered them at all, I’m betting they’d assign a less capable asset, one that we’d have a better chance of getting past undetected.”
“So to escape, we’ve got to act insanely?” Bair asked skeptically. Then a smile popped up on his face and he waved his right index finger at Hardy. “But there’s a method to your madness. The Manta.”
“Exactly, XO. The Russians don’t know that we have that unique capability. And that’s why you’re up here, Mr. Mitchell.” Pointing to the chart, he traced the new route Memphis would take. “We’re going to turn more to the west and skirt the coastline, within seven miles of land. Any questions?”
Jerry shook his head no. Bair passed as well, although he looked very uneasy. Hardy’s chosen path took them through water that was even shallower than the shoal water they’d been using. The incomplete chart showed some areas along their path as being only one hundred feet deep. Jerry also looked at the length of the route. It was at least twenty-five miles, nine plus hours at their current speed.
“I wish that your Manta could spot sonobuoys for us,” Bair mused.
“You might as well wish it could take them out and clear a path for us as well,” Hardy countered, his impatience starting to grow.
“Actually, I like the sound of that.” But then Bair shook it off. He turned to Jerry. “Mr. O’Connell will give you courses to steer. You will give him constant water depth data and warnings of any obstacles. Can you dial down the power on your sonar?”
“Yessir,” Jerry answered quickly.
“Then use minimum power for our safe navigation. Go.”
Jerry hurried back down to the torpedo room. The instant he was on the circuit O’Connell gave him his first course change
, to two eight zero true. Memphis turned slowly, to avoid any risk of creating a knuckle and Jerry used the time to scout ahead.
The seabed started to slope down, away from Memphis. For a change, she wouldn’t head for deep water. Safety lay in the shallows, where sound didn’t carry well and where sea life and wave slap would help hide any noise she was making.
For the first time, Jerry wished they could just fire a pair of torpedoes at the Udaloy. They couldn’t, of course, but even with four fully functional tubes, they’d never do it.
In wartime a single destroyer pinging like that was a sitting duck. But Memphis was the intruder here, and the United States and Russia were not at war. The men on the Udaloy were just doing their jobs, defending their nation from an outside threat. Harming even one Russian sailor would poison the mission.
Even at reduced power, Jerry could still see about half a mile ahead on the sonar display. He turned the confusing screen into an image in his mind and visualized a landscape of rocky hills and ridges pushing up toward the surface. Ironically, the high spots offered the best concealment for Memphis.
There were still risks. The hilltops were not smooth mounds, but jagged, uneven points. A ridge might be indicated by two or three shallow soundings in a line. But a closer, less threatening object could mask a sharp peak, which could suddenly shoot up or, almost as bad, disappear and leave Memphis exposed.
Jerry’s Manta found many uncharted hazards and unsafe spots, where the water depths looked like nothing on their charts. Occasionally, Jerry circled the Manta back to check on exactly how close Memphis was to the seabed. Sometimes Hardy would hug the side of a ridge, dangerously close.
There was no way to know for sure if they were making good their escape. They’d be hard-pressed to detect a drifting warship, because the same noise that hid them would hide it as well. All they could do was hope that they were being quiet enough to pass by any sentry. Aside from Harry O’Connell’s courses and questions about depth, the only other piece of information was the bearing to the pinging Udaloy. It had started out almost due north of them, barring their path like an angry dog. As Memphis circled around the destroyer, the bearing drifted slowly right, like the hour hand on a clock.
