Silent Warpath (Sean Quinlan Book 1)

by Dominic Conlon

  Sean glanced over at DD. ‘What about him - is DD OK?’

  ‘He’s OK. The President insisted we all go and I’m tagging along to look after you.’

  Sean thought the comment ironic. Lomax was not fit enough to fly, let alone look after Sean.

  A military jet brought them from Otis to the Naval Station at Norfolk Virginia. They were taken to one of the many briefing rooms on the campus and an instructor issued G-suits with helmets and oxygen masks. While they helped each other climb into the suits, the instructor took them through the safety procedures for their flight out to the carrier group.

  He left them briefly to consult the readiness of the crew. A few minutes later he came back and escorted them to the airport apron where they met the pilots. They were to be flown in two EA-6B Prowler support strike aircraft. From there they would get a helicopter lift to the task group in the Barents. Sean and Louis were taking the place of two electronic warfare officers in one of the Prowlers and Natasha and DD were flying in the other.

  Thirty minutes away from the USS Carl Vincent, Louis thumbed his mike.

  ‘I think I have an answer to that last question.’

  ‘Which question?’ asked Sean, perplexed.

  ‘How to stop the bloody thing in its tracks.’

  Natasha’s aircraft landed safely, brought up abruptly by the arresting wire. A few minutes later Natasha and DD were escorted to the command centre that rose some 150 ft above the deck. She took off her helmet, but had to immediately put her fingers in her ears to muffle the loud roar of an incoming jet. Her hair whipped into her face in the strong wind and the smell of engines and machine oil was pungent.

  She watched as Sean’s jet made its approach. This was so exciting!

  Natasha waited for Louis, DD and the crew to join them. She noticed for the first time Louis’ slow and difficult gait across the metal apron. He should be back in hospital she thought sadly.

  The ride in the jets was a doddle compared to the two hundred mile trip by helicopter out to the task force. The journey took nearly three hours and all the while they were buffeted by strong winds. At times the whole craft was shoved sideways and sometimes it fell sharply for what seemed like ages before it recovered, staggering to gain height. Natasha learned the best way to cope was to grit her teeth, hold on tight and look at Sean seated across from her.

  Eventually they approached the task group. The pilot spent a good five minutes following instructions from his wing man, who was watching the man on deck coordinate the aircraft’s movements.

  Natasha could not get out quick enough. But as soon as her feet touched the ground she realised the weather had taken a turn for the worse. It was almost dusk now, but she could see low dark clouds scudding quickly, driving pockets of rain horizontally across the deck. At least the cold wet rain on her face had the effect of waking her up.

  Two seamen appeared. One clipped a safety line to the helicopter and the other motioned them to hold on to the line and follow him. The first waited until they were all moving and brought up at the rear.

  When they reached the end of the line they were escorted up a companion-way and along several corridors. The first seaman knocked gently and opened the door to announce the party. They trooped in, closing it against a sudden downpour.

  Cetus was nearing the end of its mission. Delayed by its encounters with the Astute and the USS Cheyenne, it tried to make up time by sprinting north towards the arctic.

  Now it could sense an enormous object over ten kilometres away riding at shallow depth. Cetus collated data from its sonar array and fed it directly to the on-board identification database. The object was approximately 175 metres long, 23 metres across the beam and its underwater displacement came out at around 40,000 long tons. Its electronic package matched the sonar profile of the Kougar, the largest nuclear ballistic submarine in the Russian navy.

  Cetus had found its target.

  Chapter 32

  Sean looked at his watch. ‘It’s an hour past the deadline Admiral. What do we know about the Kougar?’

  McIver called the steward to fetch a copy of ‘Jane’s fighting ships’ and a couple of other reference works. ‘I remember it was a big boat, one of the early Typhoons. There were only six built and they like to patrol under the ice.’

  McIver flipped the pages and stopped to read the information. ‘One of the Typhoons was called Kougar, designated TK-51.’ McIver looked over at Sean and Natasha. ‘It’s a Russian built Strategic Ballistic Nuclear submarine developed under project 941 in the 1980’s. According to the catalogue only one is still on active service: the Dmitriy Donskoy.’

  ‘What happened to the Kougar?’ Sean enquired.

  ‘Of the six that were built, three were scrapped and two were put in reserve. Following this, one of the reserves – the Arkhangelsk – was cannibalised for parts to keep the Dmitriy Donskoy a going concern. But I’ve no idea why the Kougar is still in active service.’ McIver pushed the books away. ‘There is one other possibility. Kougar is still in active service because the Russians have secretly kept it going.’

  ‘Has the Kougar been informed about Cetus?’ Sean asked.

  Captain Armstrong looked at McIver. ‘We’ve gone through all the channels’ he said simply. ‘But whether they passed on the information to the captain of the Kougar, I can’t say.’

  For a moment everyone tried to absorb the news.

  ‘I know the Russians have said that if they are attacked, they will take it as an act of war’ said Lomax gravely.

  McIver turned to Lomax. ‘We have to find Cetus and stop it before it attacks. But how we are going to do that?’

  ‘We know the area that Cetus is heading for’ said Sean. ‘Did the Russians tell us the location of the Kougar?’

  Captain Armstrong shook his head. ‘They weren’t exactly in a cooperative mood.’

  ‘Well we know the area we have to search’ said Sean.

  ‘I don’t want to spoil your enthusiasm’ responded McIver. ‘But it’s still a huge area – something like 600,000 square miles of ocean.’

  ‘Suppose they tell us roughly where the Kougar is, how do we stop our sub from making it into a pile of scrambled egg?’ asked Sean.

  Louis pulled a table napkin towards him and brought out a Biro. DD watched over his shoulder as he drew an outline picture of their ship in the middle and one of Cetus near the edge. ‘There’s another way to communicate with Cetus. It’s our engineering method of controlling the sub – completely different to the normal methods the programmers developed. We can use Wi-Fi.’

  ‘You mean, like computer Wi-Fi signals?’ asked Natasha sceptically.

  ‘Exactly like Wi-Fi signals’ responded Louis.

  ‘Whatever for?’ queried Natasha.

  ‘We wanted a way of diagnosing problems without relying on a fixed line to the sub. Standard Wi-Fi signals can be received up to three hundred metres in clear air, maybe more provided there is nothing in the way.’

  Louis started to draw a series of concentric circles around the ship in the middle of the napkin.

  ‘But Cetus will be underwater’, said Natasha. ‘Surely that would reduce the contact distance?’

  Louis acknowledged the point. ‘Correct, Natasha. We will keep trying on all the normal communications channels as well. Every method we can use should be used.’

  ‘Could we broadcast Wi-Fi signals underwater?’ asked DD.

  Louis looked towards McIver. McIver looked at Captain Armstrong. ‘What do you think Jim?’

  ‘We might be able to use our sonobuoys. Take out the electronics gear and replace it with a Wi-Fi router.’

  ‘Assuming that we can do that, how far can they be picked up?’

  Louis frowned. ‘To be truthful, I don’t know the answer to that – possibly as little as 20-30 metres.’

  Natasha sat back, suddenly overwhelmed by the thought that this could not possibly work.

  Louis saw the look of disappointment. ‘It was never meant
to be used underwater,’ he said. ‘I’m just suggesting this way, because it’s the most direct.’

  McIver tossed a pen onto the table. ‘Doesn’t seem feasible to me’ he said.

  Sean picked up the pen. ‘But I think you had an idea Louis?’

  Louis nodded.

  ‘Well, let’s hear what you have to say before we start pouring cold water over it.’ Sean passed the pen to Louis.

  Louis began to draw a series of zigzag lines on the napkin, radiating out from the centre. ‘If we can get enough Wi-Fi base stations to transmit certain codes I can give you, the sub will pick them up and obey.’

  Natasha looked doubtful. ‘Why should it do that when we know it has ignored all the other codes we sent telling it to stop?’

  Louis looked offended. ‘I told you, it’s an engineering solution. No-one else really knows about the Wi-Fi method – it’s a bit like text messaging - before it was hi-jacked by the marketing departments.’

  ‘OK’ Sean intervened smoothly. ‘What do we need to do?’

  ‘Well, we would need the helicopters to dip the sonobuoys in the water - like they do when hunting submarines. The base stations would need to be broadcasting all the time. The helicopters would drag them through the water in a line.’

  ‘I can think of at least one problem with that’ interjected McIver. ‘Helicopters are fine at dunking sonobuoys in the water at a fixed depth. We don’t know what depth your sub might be at. We could still miss it by passing well above it.’

  Louis turned to look at McIver. ‘Unfortunately I don’t have a plan to deal with that – we would just have to hope the base stations were at the right depth.’

  DD looked thoughtful. ‘If we had enough base stations, we could string them together in a vertical line, say four placed 20 metres apart. We could drag one set from a boom on the port side of the helicopter and another set from starboard.’ He looked at McIver for confirmation. ‘We could have, say, four helicopters in line together. They would mark out a search area, north to south. When they reach the end of the box, they would all turn and travel back along the same line, just shifted over by 10 metres. That way, we could cover a depth of up to a hundred metres – twenty metres above the top and twenty metres below the bottom base station.’

  ‘I don’t want to rain on your parade, ‘ said McIver. ‘But where do we get so many Wi-Fi base stations? We’re miles from shore.’

  ‘Do you have Wi-Fi aboard your ship?’ asked Louis.

  McIver thought for a moment. ‘I think we do – but I’ve no idea how many we have. Even if we could find a few, how can they be made to work underwater?’

  DD turned to McIver. ‘Let me talk to your tech guys. I’d like to look at how your sonobuoys are put together – perhaps we could use the casings to enclose the base stations and deliver the necessary power.’

  McIver looked uncertain, thinking that the idea had gone way past the bounds of credibility. But even if there was only a slim chance, he would have to take it.

  ‘You could also order some from the mainland and get a jet to pick them up and drop them off – shouldn’t take more than a few hours’ said Sean.

  Everyone looked at Sean, surprised they hadn’t thought of the idea.

  ‘Right’ said McIver. ‘Let’s get to it.’

  ‘Con, sonar. I can hear dipping buoys in the water’ yelled the young sonar operator.

  Captain 1st Rank Vasily Toporov was astounded. He had been patrolling this area of arctic ice and water for the last two months without incident. It was boring. But in the space of the last sixty seconds all hell broke loose.

  It began with a distant booming noise travelling up and down the length of the boat. Sonar were unable to give him an exact fix on the source of the noise. He felt a deep pulse inside his own chest and he looked at the officers close by. They looked apprehensive and he knew they all felt it too.

  ‘Hull integrity risk!’ shouted the Chief Of the Boat.

  In the warfare control section Starshina Polichev tried to ignore the loud caroming noises coming straight off the outer hull of the boat. He checked his screen. The direction of target designated SG-3, determined by the sonar array, was woefully inaccurate. The actual source of the vibration did not show up on any of his sonar screens. He could see a collection of shadows some 10 km distant and although this tallied with the general direction of the source, he couldn’t be sure it was SG-3.

  ‘Source designated SG-3, distance unclear, general direction 127 degrees’, Polichev read off his instruments.

  ‘Make your best guess at a firing solution!’ commanded Toporov.

  Any of the shadows could be SG-3, Polichev thought. He chose the largest and patched it into the firing solution computers. ‘Firing solution committed’ replied Polichev.

  ‘Rise..’ commanded Captain Toporov. Before he could complete the order a loud crack like thunder boomed down the length of the sub.

  ‘Outer hull breached!’ shouted the Chief of the Boat.

  Captain Toporov gripped the table. ‘Dive and make evasive turn to port.’

  Several heads turned towards the Captain. It was unheard of to order a dive when the hull had been breached. But such was the discipline amongst the crew, not one person raised an objection.

  Immediately the Kougar went into a steep descent and papers from the captain’s table slid to the floor. Toporov’s knuckles grew white as his grip on the table tightened.

  ‘Engineering parties to the breach.’ he ordered.

  At that second, the sound and vibration from the hull lessened quickly and then stopped altogether. As the engineering parties began to report the status of the hull, the Captain’s thoughts switched from the earlier threat to the more immediate one – with the hull breech, how was he going to save his boat from sinking?

  ‘Con, sonar. I have a report. Sounds like a Russian Typhoon class submarine, bearing 275 degrees, range approximately 12 kilos.’

  ‘OK sonar. Warfare, assign more choppers to target.’

  The Warfare operator turned to a separate mike and thumbed the switch.

  ‘Dispatch, I have orders from the con to reassign northern most helis in the box to the area of SY-PB15. Russian sub has been detected and we need all available resources on the target. Acknowledge please.’

  McIver was listening to the radio chatter over the loudspeaker in his quarters. Quietly he was pleased with the performance of the sonar detection ring provided by the helicopters. Picking up any sub through the normal noises made by the bumping and grinding of the pack ice made it difficult, especially when trying to identify one of the quietest subs in the Russian navy. The speaker blipped again with static.

  ‘Flight, con. Two helis reassigned, but experiencing difficulties.’

  DD’s idea of stringing together sonobuoys crammed full of Wi-Fi gear was a good one, reflected McIver. But they hadn’t thought about the practical issues. The number of sonobuoys each helicopter had to pull through the water caused so much drag on the booms that they had to slow their forward speed to prevent the boom from breaking off.

  This meant they were unable to cover the area as fast as they would like, so the whole process slowed to a crawl. Nevertheless the aircrew persevered – though none had so far found any trace of Cetus.

  McIver’s phone buzzed.

  ‘Jock – I’ve briefed the President, but the Russians are still not playing ball.’ The Admiral’s exasperated voice crackled out of the speaker. ‘The bastards just don’t believe us and they won’t tell us the Kougar’s position. The best we can do is to get them to warn the Kougar’s captain about a potential attack, but they’re not taking it very seriously. I just hope they’ll send the message in time.’

  ‘OK Admiral, you ...’. The rest of the message was drowned by a loud klaxon. An anxious officer appeared.

  ‘What’s happening?’ queried McIver.

  ‘We’ve just started to pick up really high amplitudes about 10 km away, so it could be Cetus.’

&nb
sp; A stir of excitement worked its way quickly through McIver’s bloodstream.

  ‘You’re dammed right! Task all our helis to find the source’ he barked. The officer waited for any further instructions.

  ‘Immediately!’ McIver roared.

  ‘Engineering parties report!’

  The one thing which kept hope alive for Captain Vasily Toporov was the build of the Kougar. In terms of its construction it was a magnificent piece of Russian over-engineering. Its multi-hulled design afforded five inner hulls inside a superstructure of two parallel main hulls. It would take more than a breach of the outer hull to sink the boat.

  ‘Breach now under control, captain!’

  ‘Very well. Bring us to an even keel and take us up to 100 metres.’ He paused. ‘Sonar, do you still have a firing solution?’

  ‘Yes Captain!’ Polichev replied smartly.

  ‘Fire tubes two and three!’

  ‘Firing tubes two and three’ echoed Polichev. Seconds later, ‘Torpedoes have cleared tubes, running straight!’

  ‘We’ve got an acknowledgement from Cetus!’ the Executive Officer said. He saw the Admiral look puzzled. ‘Cetus has acknowledged our signal to cease its attack and surface’ he explained.

  ‘Good’ said McIver, ‘but don’t forget we have a Russian sub about, with a captain like a bear with a sore head. Be ready for evasive action.’

  It was a minute before anyone realised just how much foresight the Admiral had.

  ‘Torpedoes in the water!’ the loudspeakers blared.

  ‘Bugger’ said McIver under his breath.

  Captain Armstrong turned to the C-in-C. ‘Launch counter-measures, full turn to starboard and get those helis to provide a diversion – torpedoes, depth charges, everything they’ve got.’

  ‘Yes Captain. Torpedoes are fifty seconds from us, coming straight and true.’