Arctic Gambit_A Jerry Mitchell Novel

by Larry Bond

  “I understand, Comrade President. A second group of ASW helicopters and support equipment is being organized right now. It should arrive the day after tomorrow.”

  “Why is it so hard to get helicopters to Bolshevik Island? The Navy has dozens in the Northern Fleet alone!” Fedorin was clearly irritated.

  “Most have been assigned to Northern Fleet warships in preparation for the operation. The ones sent to Bolshevik Island were spare aircraft, or those just coming out of a modernization overhaul…”

  “I don’t care if we lose half the fleet to submarine attacks!” Fedorin shouted angrily. “That facility is the key to everything, and its defense must have the highest possible priority.”

  “A larger helicopter detachment could draw attention, and will need more flights to supply them. Those may be hard to conceal,” argued Trusov.

  “Do it!” Fedorin ordered peremptorily. “What about submarines?”

  “Both the attack submarines Vepr and Kazan are on station, watching the western and northern approaches to the island.”

  “Move them in closer to the island, as soon as possible. Position one within striking distance of monitoring arrays. Maybe it can catch the next ‘false alarm’ that appears.”

  “Yes, Comrade President.”

  “And while you’re at it, have naval intelligence do a complete check of all Western submarines. Positively confirm the location of any that are capable of reaching the Arctic.”

  16

  MAKE A HOLE

  4 August 2021

  1400 Local Time

  USS Jimmy Carter

  * * *

  They moved well away from the island to the north and west. The water wasn’t that deep, just a little over one hundred fathoms, and Weiss hugged the bottom. Jimmy Carter couldn’t actually sit on the bottom like World War II submarines could. Back then, subs did it to save battery power, as well as hide from active sonar, but nuclear submarines used cold sea water—a lot of it—to condense the steam after it had spun the ship’s turbines. The intakes for the main seawater pumps were near the bottom of the hull, and if Carter got too close to the bottom, she could start vacuuming up silt, clogging the whole system and possibly losing propulsion.

  At Weiss’s orders, the sub remained at ultra quiet, creeping at bare steerageway as close as he could to the sea floor. LT Kathy Owens was the officer of the deck, and she ordered random zigzags, on the outside chance anyone had detected the sub and was trying to track it. Unlikely as that was, Carter’s crew was taking absolutely no chances. They might be in international waters, but they were certain the Russians would shoot first and explain later.

  Setting ultra quiet was a mixed blessing. It reduced the submarine’s noise signature, but it also adversely affected normal operations. Those not on duty were confined to their bunks, reading or catching up on their sleep. No maintenance or repair work was allowed, and the galley was limited to simple meals that didn’t require cooking. Maintaining the submarine’s trim became difficult, since the pump used to shift water from one variable ballast tank to another had to be used sparingly.

  Jerry had come to control to consult with Weiss; a face-to-face discussion was preferable to debating over an IC circuit. Dr. Cavanaugh had followed the commodore and, with the OOD’s permission, remained in control, silent and still. He listened to the sonar reports as they tracked the Russian helicopters’ search. While the Russian Lamb Tail sonar could detect a sub only a few miles away, the pinging could be heard much farther. The control room watch plotted the bearing of each dip, and compared their results with the plot in UCC, watching for changes that showed them getting closer to Carter’s position.

  Meanwhile, LT Owens had to solve a word problem: “If two helicopters with endurance X were detected at time Y, when will it be safe to return and recover José and Walter? Show your work. You will be tested on the material.”

  Their intelligence pubs told them how much fuel the helicopters could carry, and they knew where the airstrip on the island was located. Commodore Mitchell, the only one on the boat with actual aviation experience, told her about how much fuel the helicopters would likely keep in reserve, which shortened their time aloft somewhat. Then factor in the travel time back, as well as the detection range of the sonar, if they were listening.

  She reported to Weiss, “I compute turnaround at 1445, and ETA for rendezvous with Walter at 1530, assuming we tell the UUVs to wake up and close on our position at four knots.” Although speaking to Weiss, she did glance over to the commodore, who stood well off in a corner of the control room, pretending to study a tactical display.

  Still watching Owens’s report, Cavanaugh quietly slid over next to Mitchell and asked, “What if they send another pair of helicopters to continue the search?”

  “Then we’ll hear more pinging after the first two should have gone home,” Jerry responded. “But it’s unlikely. From the Russians’ point of view, all they had was the initial contact from that fixed acoustic sensor. They sent out a pair of aircraft to check it out, and found nothing. False alarms are a fact of life for any sonar system.”

  “But what if the next pair are just listening?” Cavanaugh persisted.

  “Remember the difference between active and passive ranges,” Jerry countered. “They’d have to be listening in exactly the right spot. There is a small risk in going back at all,” he admitted, “but we’re fighting the clock. I’m confident we’ll be able to recover the UUVs safely. The larger question is what we’re going to do about those ublyudok sensors.”

  “Can you speak Russian?” Cavanaugh asked. As capable as Commodore Mitchell seemed to be, it wouldn’t surprise him.

  “No, but I know how to start a fight,” Jerry answered.

  1430 Local Time

  USS Jimmy Carter

  UUV Control Center

  * * *

  Jerry studied the navigation display with Cavanaugh, Weiss, Segerson, Malkoff, and Ford. Joining them was Master Chief Paul Gibson, Carter’s chief of the boat or COB. The large flat-screen showed a composite chart of the waters off Bolshevik Island. The launch facility lay seven miles north-northwest of Cape Baranova, in five hundred and ninety feet of water. A circle showed its position, determined by the location of the ships Weiss had seen through the periscope on Carter’s first mission and from observations taken an hour earlier—a quick check to make sure the helicopters had left the area. The recorded video showed a cylinder being lowered into the water by the icebreaker.

  “I’m pretty sure those are smaller than the ones we saw earlier, Skipper,” commented Segerson.

  “Concur, XO.” Weiss nodded as he spoke. “Which means—”

  “That they’re probably loading the launchers,” interrupted Jerry. “I’m willing to bet those are transport launch canisters for the Dragon torpedo.”

  “And that means we’re running out of time,” Segerson concluded.

  “Pretty much,” said Jerry.

  “So, how do we get to the launcher complex?” asked Cavanaugh. “I’m not much good to you this far away.”

  It was a good question. The UUVs’ surveys had counted at least twenty PMK-2 mines. If spaced at an optimal distance, it would take fifty to form a complete barrier twenty-seven miles wide. There was probably another line to the south, but that was irrelevant. They’d figured out how to deal with the mines, but they were just the first layer of the facility’s defenses. The second layer, comprised of MGK-608M fixed acoustic modules backed up with helos, was more of a challenge.

  * * *

  “I guarantee these were not here the last time we scouted the area,” Weiss stated.

  “It makes sense that the Russians were still installing their defenses,” Jerry remarked philosophically. “I’ve encountered these acoustic sensors before, and just like last time, we found them by literally tripping over one. José’s image looks identical to the one I saw earlier. The system is called ‘Sever,’ and it can obviously detect a Seawolf-class boat.”

/>   “What did you do about them the first time?” Ford asked.

  “We ran like thieves, with most of the Northern Fleet after us,” Jerry answered, smiling.

  Ford wasn’t deterred. “The UUVs were originally designed to find and destroy mines. This acoustic sensor is just like a bottom mine, except it listens instead of exploding. I recommend we put a mine-clearing charge on top of the cylindrical body and knock it out.”

  Weiss and Jerry considered the suggestions, but only for a moment. Jerry waited for Carter’s skipper to speak first.

  “No good, Ben, for two reasons. First, the modules on either side will transmit the sound of the explosion, but even worse, the network is almost certainly designed to show when a module has stopped working. Either way, we draw attention to ourselves.”

  “And cutting the cable with a mine-clearing charge does the same thing,” Ford muttered. “That was going to be my second suggestion.”

  Weiss observed, “What we have to do is get through the sensor net without alerting it in any way. But we couldn’t even get a UUV close to the sensor without being detected. How are we going to get anything close enough to do any good?” He didn’t sound optimistic.

  Jerry smiled broadly. “No, there is something we can do.” He turned to Ford. “Has anyone ever measured the glide slope on the UUVs?”

  “Like a plane?” Ford asked. When Jerry confirmed the meaning, the UUV officer answered, “Definitely not. I can tell you how far it will coast, given its speed when we stop the motors, but the UUVs are neutrally buoyant. And they’re shaped like a brick. There’s nothing to generate any lift like an airplane.”

  “Okay,” Jerry replied, “so it’s not so much a glide as a controlled fall. If we put a UUV at the right depth off the bottom, and make it negatively buoyant, it will start to sink. We then point the nose down…”

  “And you will get some forward speed,” Ford concluded.

  Weiss nodded approvingly. “After we recover José and Walter, we’ll move some distance away from the island and test the idea. We will start a UUV moving, then shut down the motors and angle the nose down. We can measure the rate of depth change, then play with it until we find the best combination of angle and buoyancy.” Carter’s captain smiled. “So we launch the UUVs and they glide silently over the sensor’s position and then…” He stopped, unable to finish the sentence and scowled.

  “If we can’t knock the sensors out,” LT Ford mused, “could we blind them by launching countermeasures? Use the UUVs to place several at different spots along the barrier and then drop one ourselves as we go through. We could even launch a mobile decoy while this is going on and point it north so they’re chasing the simulator while we head toward the island.”

  “So instead of sneaking in, we just kick down the door?” Jerry asked.

  “Doors and windows, all at once,” argued Ford. “Give them three, five, or even more major noise sources that blind portions of the net. Even if they assume we’ve crossed the barrier, they won’t know exactly where.”

  Weiss wasn’t convinced. “But instead of letting them sleep, they’ll go to battle stations for sure. Going through the fence safely and undetected is just step one. We still have to get the UUVs to the facility, survey the target, place the beacons, fire the torpedoes, and then get out of there.”

  Jerry calculated, “Given the distance from the airstrip to the facility, the Russians can have helicopters overhead in about fifteen minutes or so. Instead of alerting them at the very end, we would be waking them up as we come in. Kind of like kicking the bee’s nest before you get the honey.”

  “I’d much prefer being on the way out by the time any ASW helos arrive,” declared Weiss.

  “And I’d like to withdraw my suggestion,” Ford replied sheepishly.

  “Not entirely, Lieutenant,” Jerry countered. “I like the idea of blinding—or more properly muffling the sensor. Don’t knock it out, just keep it from hearing anything.”

  “Cover the cables with something,” Weiss suggested.

  Jerry explained, “Technically, we only need to cover up the hydrophones that stick out on either side. The center body holds the electronics. You can’t break or damage the cables, though. The system would interpret that as a fault.”

  Weiss concluded, “So we bury it. The bottom is mostly silt and sand. If we could scoop up some of the mud…”

  “Even if we could jury-rig some way of getting the mud and loading it into UUV canisters, it would take too long,” remarked Jerry.

  Lieutenant Ford had followed the two senior officers’ reasoning carefully. He knew the UUVs’ design better than anyone else aboard. He tried to imagine some way of gathering material from the bottom …

  “Captain, would lead shot work?”

  “The ballast!” Weiss exclaimed.

  Ford nodded and expounded on his theory. “We’d have to make the UUVs negatively buoyant for their ‘gliding’ approach. To restore neutral buoyancy, I’d have to dump ballast anyway.” He smiled. “We could come in and drop the lead shot on the hydrophones … sort of like a dive-bombing run.”

  “More like glide bombing, but the idea is similar. This could work.” Jerry thought for a moment, then added, “The UUVs’ 3-D imaging sonar is more than accurate enough to locate the individual hydrophones and guide the vehicle over them. Well done, Lieutenant.” He clapped Ford on the shoulder.

  “Two UUVs, left and right hydrophone sets,” Weiss observed. “We follow the UUVs through the gap and we are in. But where? Until we cover the hydrophones, we’re still vulnerable. I’m betting if we have to get low enough to avoid the mines detecting Jimmy, one of the Sever modules would still be able to hear us as we approached.”

  Ford scratched his head. “Theoretically, the UUVs could create a gap in the field by placing a mine-clearing charge. But the sensor net would hear the explosion…”

  Jerry’s expression became solemn. He tapped a spot on the navigation chart display. “Walter’s closest to this location?”

  Ford nodded.

  “Then instead of recovering Walter first, we should pick up José while Walter surveys this section of the minefield.” The others noted the small cross that someone had added to mark the place where Toledo lay.

  “You believe the mine that sank Toledo left a gap in the mine barrier,” Weiss realized. “But wouldn’t they refresh the field?”

  Jerry shrugged. “I don’t think so. The Russians have been pretty busy. They may not have gotten around to it. And it’s entirely possible that they don’t even know there is a missing mine. Remember, the sensor net wasn’t set up until after Toledo was lost. The Russians couldn’t possibly have heard the mine explosion that far away, not with the sonars they have on the ships near the construction site. We just have to confirm this theory with Walter.”

  “Thank you, USS Toledo and Captain Lenny Berg,” Weiss observed. “By the way, when we found her, we hovered overhead and held a memorial for her crew. Tom Norris is an ordained minister, and he led the service.”

  Jerry smiled, although it was a sad one. “I hadn’t heard about that. Thanks, Lou. After this is all over, hopefully we can tell Jane Berg everything. And I’ll say a prayer, when we’re nearest. That’s about all we’ll have time for right now.”

  “A missing mine should give us a thousand-yard gap,” Weiss reasoned.

  “Which we can hit precisely, with the UUVs navigating for us,” Jerry argued.

  Weiss nodded. “Agreed, but we’ll have to line up well out in front of the opening, and once we commit to entering the gap, we’ll be unable to maneuver freely for ten, perhaps fifteen minutes. In fact, we’ll probably have to manually guide the UUVs to begin their ‘bomb run.’”

  “I suspected as much,” said Jerry. “And we’ll need to be close to the hydrophones so the lead shot doesn’t scatter too much; say a foot or two off the bottom. Tricky.”

  Ford looked at Mitchell with apprehension. “Commodore, the minimum range for the imaging sona
r is one meter, three point three feet. For the last foot or two the pilot will be essentially blind. We won’t be able to accurately place the lead shot on the target.”

  “We’ll work on that, Mr. Ford. If I can train a pilot to drive a UUV into a torpedo tube, I think I’ll be able to help you and Mr. Lawson on this.”

  Incredulous, Ford stammered, “Dr … drive a UUV … manually … into a torpedo tube? That’s … that’s impossible!”

  “Mr. Ford,” Gibson chimed in, “they did it. Twice. I was there.”

  Ford swallowed hard and looked at Jerry with amazement. The lieutenant then started writing down his to-do list. “I have to calculate the amount of ballast that the UUVs will be able to drop and still stay neutrally buoyant.”

  “And the battery levels,” Jerry added. “You’ll save some power during the ‘bomb run,’ but once they’re past the sensor net, you’ll want them to use their best speed to reach the facility so they can begin the sonar survey.”

  Ford continued to make notes.

  “After we figure out how to glide the UUVs properly, we’ll practice a little ‘formation flying.’ Once you and Lawson get comfortable with manually flying the UUVs, we’ll do a few dry runs to familiarize you with how it feels.” Turning toward Weiss, Jerry asked, “How long before we’re ready to make the attempt, Captain?”

  “We’ll need to recharge the UUVs’ batteries once they’re recovered. That will take about five, maybe six hours. Then the practice runs. Top off the batteries again and load the lead shot, at least twelve hours, Commodore.”

  “Very well. Let’s get started, people.”

  With the planning meeting over, Weiss and the others headed forward, that is, with the exception of the chief of the boat. Gibson caught Jerry’s eye and motioned for the commodore to join him over at the DC locker at the back of UCC.

  Walking over to Gibson, Jerry spoke quietly, “What can I do for, COB?”

  “Sir, we’ve been shipmates before, so let me get straight to it. Some of the crew is a little uneasy about the ‘incident’ you and the skipper had earlier. A lot of people heard it, and there is some concern that it has raised doubts as to the skipper’s abilities; doubts that might have unfortunate consequences later. It was felt that I should quietly bring this to your attention.”