Northern Fury- H-Hour

by Bart Gauvin

  Strong shifted his weight to the other knee and looked over his shoulder. His team waited, lined up in the corridor behind him dressed in black dry-suits with hoods pulled up over their hair and ears. The hulking frame of Master Corporal Roy looked almost comical crammed as he was into the cramped corridor, the patrol’s gear all around his feet. Strong turned forward in time to see the boat’s executive officer cross the control room in one step and say to the captain, “Sir, should we get the swimmers top side?”

  The Onondaga’s hull was more akin to the submarines launched during the Second World War than the sleek cylindrical shapes of more recent designs. This didn’t mean the Oberon-class boats were outdated or lacking in lethality, however, far from it. It did mean that the width of the sub’s control room was limited to what one could expect from a city commuter bus, with a much lower ceiling. The Oberons were small, a mere ninety meters long and less than a tenth of that in width. The compartments available to the crew were nowhere more than four meters wide. The submarines’ designers had knowingly sacrificed creature comforts at the altar of lethality and stealth. Even with all the noise-dampening features incorporated into the boat’s design, or maybe because of it, Sergeant Strong could hear every word spoken in the control room.

  “Not yet, XO,” Hughes was saying. “We’ve got plenty of water under us, and every mile we move closer to the shore is one less our guests need to cover in an open boat.”

  Hughes was a short man, stocky from too many days living inside a steel hull and enjoying good navy cooking. In their three-day transit from Halifax to the southern end of Labrador, Strong had come to understand that the boat’s captain was supremely confident in himself, even to the point of arrogance. Now he was showing that he was aggressive, too.

  “Captain,” the XO was saying in a low voice, “I feel obliged to note that the depth is going to decrease rapidly on our present course, and the charts of this area have been off before.”

  “Noted, XO.” The response was dismissive, but not unfriendly. “I’ve been here before. Maintain current speed and heading.”

  The role of any good executive officer was to preserve the ship that he served, whereas the captain’s job was to put the ship in harm’s way to accomplish the mission. That tension was now at play in Onondaga’s control room.

  “Maintain current speed and heading, aye,” acknowledged the boat’s chief, his hand on the back of the helmsman’s seat.

  Strong and his men had become familiar with the sailors in front of them over the past few days. To describe the conditions in which Onondaga’s sixty-nine crew lived as “crowded” would have been an understatement. The vessel didn’t even possess enough bunks to accommodate its usual compliment and adding four landlubber passengers to the mix had done nothing to alleviate the strain. Even so, the navy men had been especially welcoming, making space for the commandos and their gear and taking time to familiarize them with the ship’s systems and operating procedures. The passage from Halifax to Labrador had been educational.

  Onondaga continued throbbing slowly into the bay south of Cape St. Charles. Despite the control room’s air conditioning, Strong could see sweat beading on the temples of the navigator as he tracked the vessel’s progress with grease pencil and compass. Strong could imagine that grounding one of his nation’s precious few submarines might be a significant event in the career of the vessel’s captain and his officers. His appreciation for Commander Hughes’ guts, and his abilities, was growing by the minute.

  Another moment and the navigator said in a taut voice, “Two meters under the keel.”

  Hughes did not react. Even Strong was starting to feel tense. The boat’s XO was casting sideways glances at his captain through the gaps in the sensor mast housing wells, which bisected the control room.

  Now the captain ordered “Up periscope” again and repeated his earlier crab walk performance. The scans were for navigation purposes, but also to simulate a wartime check for threats in the area. They also helped the small submarine to avoid icebergs, which were still present around the Labrador coast this time of year. This time Hughes was more satisfied, both with the bearings to the landmarks and the speed with which he conducted the triangulation.

  “One meter under the keel, sir,” the navigator’s voice cracked slightly as he looked up from his chart and protractor.

  Hughes finally said in a calm voice, “Engines all stop. Helm, keep us level. Starboard one-five, bring us to zero-nine-zero.”

  The XO’s hand had been resting on the engine control dials. He quickly turned the knobs and announced, “All stop, aye,” as the massive banks of batteries housed beneath their feet stopped providing power to the boat’s two propeller shafts.

  The captain turned and looked back at the four commandos kneeling in his generator room and asked, full of confidence and apparently oblivious to his XOs nerves, “Sergeant Strong, are your boys ready?”

  Now came the part they had been rehearsing all morning. Strong felt the soft pulsing of the sub’s electric propulsion cease as he stood and responded, “Ready, Captain.”

  Hughes nodded. Then he turned back and ordered, “Helm, five degrees up on the planes. Surface the boat.”

  “Five up. Surfacing, aye.”

  Strong felt the deck beneath him take on a slight incline. Then it began to roll slightly. A terse, “Let’s go,” had his team turning around in the cramped space, facing aft. A sailor in a heavy rain slick was at the rear of the corridor, hands on the lever of the access hatch leading up through the pressure hull to the rest of the world. The rocking increased as the sail and then the hull of the submarine broached the surface.

  The captain barked an order from the control room and the sailor yanked the hatch open, pushing it up as saltwater dripped and daylight flooded into the boat. Now it was the JTF 2 team’s turn to act. The sailor pulled down a ladder and Corporal Tenny scrambled up and out, followed by Brown. Once on deck, the two men turned and reached back to accept the gear being hefted up by Roy and Strong.

  In seconds the two corporals hauled up the bundled inflatable raft, silenced outboard motor, and four plastic weapon cases lashed to four water-proofed rucksacks. They then reached in and helped pull first Roy and then Strong up and out into the bright sunlight. The sergeant, coming up through the hatch, took a mouthful of frigid saltwater as a wave broke over the deck, though his black dry-suit otherwise shed the water down into the submarine. Spitting out seawater, Strong squinted and assessed their deck-side situation. After three days sealed in a dimly lit submarine, his eyes hurt as he took in the blue sky, the rolling blue-green sea, and the submarine’s knife-like black mast towering two and a half stories above them. He didn’t have time to consider the waves breaking against the hull and over the deck. They each had work to do.

  Roy attached an air hose, run up through the hatch, to the cylinder containing the raft and the vessel hissed, unfolding into shape. Brown was already attaching the outboard motor as Strong joined Tenny in tossing the rucks inside, securing them to handles on the raft wall using carabiners. Finally, the four men jumped into the raft, still perched on the submarine’s deck. Sergeant Strong was in the rear of the raft, manning the outboard motor. Giving the motor a quick rev to ensure it was operational, he looked back at the sailor whose head was poking above the open hatch. Strong gave him a thumbs up, and the man disappeared below, slamming the hatch shut.

  Moments later Onondaga’s ballast tanks blew and sent white mists of spray into the air on either side of the raft as the sub began to submerge by the bow, slipping beneath the waves and leaving the raft and its occupants to bob on the swell.

  Strong depressed the outboard motor’s throttle, accelerating past the submarine’s submerging sail, heading northwest towards the gray-green shore. He took a moment to look forward over the backs of his men. Roy was at the bow with his body atop the gear, the other two with a leg each almost dangling
into the water to either side. Looking towards the land, Strong took his bearings on a wrist-band compass. He looked back just in time to see the dark fin shape of Onondaga’s sail silently slip completely beneath the waves.

  Strong had spent significant time studying the chart of their intended landing area, memorizing the ins and outs of the rugged shoreline in anticipation of this moment. Now was his first look at the real thing and he needed to judge exactly where he was. There. He saw the cove they had selected as their landing point, a small, sheltered area with what appeared now to be a cobble beach. That Commander Hughes really put us right on top of the place, Strong noted, pleased. He adjusted the outboard slightly and depressed the throttle, making for the cove.

  As the small raft picked up speed and bucked over the rolling swells, water occasionally lapping and splashing over the inflatable sidewalls, Strong took a moment to absorb the scene around him. They were moving through a large inlet with low, rocky, treeless shorelines stretching away ahead and to both sides. To the east was open ocean. Above, the sky was a brilliant blue, and Strong relished the warmth of the June sun on his back as he steered.

  The swell lessened as he steered into the sheltered cove. A hundred meters from the beach Brown, the team’s radioman, and Tenny, the demolitions expert, reached into the center of the raft and unzipped their watertight weapons cases, removing their carbines and aiming them over the bow. Their leader slowed the throttle as the rocky bottom became visible through the pristine water, and then the raft gently scraped on the stones. Tenny and Brown splashed into the lapping waves on either side of the boat, keeping their weapons high and wading forward the last few meters to dry land. Roy stepped out of the bow and began dragging the raft up the beach while Strong tilted the motor into the boat and jumped out to help him.

  With the raft on dry land and the two corporals kneeling nearby providing security, Strong and Roy unpacked their own weapons, then set them aside on the rocks and unloaded the rest of the gear. The hulking Québécois took Brown’s position in the patrol’s small perimeter so the smaller man could assemble the team’s radio, an academic exercise at this point as Onondaga, the only station that could hear them out here in the wilds of Labrador, was currently underwater. With that task accomplished, Strong gave a signal and the four men shouldered their loads and moved in a wedge formation up the rocky, mossy headland overlooking the cove.

  After a couple hundred meters they reached the low crest of the headland. Here they transitioned out of their dry-suits, taking turns peeling off and stowing the rubbery clothes and putting on olive drab combat uniforms. When the change was complete, Sergeant Strong “called” the exercise. The other three relaxed visibly, speaking in normal tones once again and carrying their weapons more loosely as they walked back down to the beach. They could train tactical operations on land at Dwyer Hill whenever they wished. Time in boats, and especially with a real RCN submarine, was a novelty.

  As the team trudged back down the slope, Brown and Tenny picked up with the light-hearted, mildly insulting banter that had become a mainstay of their increasingly close relationship.

  “Hey Will,” Brown said, “too bad your girlfriend couldn’t see you in the dry-suit, eh? This one might actually stick with you if she did!”

  Tenny had been through three girlfriends since the team had formed last fall, and Brown and his own young wife had been on double dates with all of them, if for nothing else but the story that was sure to come out of the experience.

  “Be nice, Bear,” Tenny responded in mock indignation, using his friend’s nickname. Brown always introduced himself with the first name ‘‘Clark,” but when Tenny had discovered that his friend’s given name was actually “Aclark,’’ the Inuit word for Brown Bear, the younger man had dubbed him “Bear” and proceeded to call him nothing but. Eventually Strong and Roy had joined in, and the nickname stuck. “You know,” continued Tenny, “I’m the model of gentlemanly virtues around the ladies. They flock to my magnetic personality. My stunning good looks are just the gravy.”

  Strong and Roy, bringing up the rear, both snickered. Tenny was many things, but a “gentleman with the ladies” was not one of them. He had been known to keep more than one relationship going at a time, which helped explain why they never lasted very long.

  “Oh yeah?” the half-Inuit corporal teased. “That must be why they always leave so happy, eh?” The young corporal had been at the center of some spectacular public dressings down from his erstwhile girlfriends, so much so that he already possessed a reputation around the task force.

  “You know it, Bear!” was Tenny’s answer.

  The back and forth continued all the way to the raft. Strong enjoyed the camaraderie of it, but from a distance. He envied the easy, natural relationship the two men shared. He had always struggled to form friendships, and his role as the patrol’s leader added another layer of awkwardness to his interactions, at least in his mind. Tenny and Brown had each other. The huge, silent, Felix Roy had his wife and kids. Strong, in moments like this, was painfully aware that he had only his profession to keep him company in his off hours.

  During a real operation they would have deflated and stowed the raft in a hide site, along with a bottle of compressed air to re-inflate it for exfil. In this case however, they arrived back where they had simply left the raft tied up on the beach. The four began to strip off their combats and get ready to zip back into their dry-suits. All were shirtless and barefoot when suddenly Brown stopped, looked at Tenny and said, “Hey Will, you up for a swim?”

  “Are you crazy? That water can’t be warmer than two degrees!” responded Will.

  “Warm enough, unless you’re scared of a little cold, eh?” said Bear. Before anyone could respond he had stripped off his trousers in one smooth motion and was running barefoot across the rocks towards the water.

  “You’re crazy!” Tenny called after him as Brown entered the water with ungraceful splashing footsteps before performing a shallow swan dive so he was completely submerged. After a moment Bear resurfaced and stood up with a splash, gasping from the cold but remaining where he was, waist-deep in the gently rolling saltwater.

  Between gasps he called back, “You coming in or what?”

  Tenny looked over at his sergeant and said once more, “He’s crazy!” just as a flesh-colored mountain of a blur flashed between them. Felix Roy repeated Brown’s performance, running into the surf until the splashing water checked his momentum, then diving in head-first. He too jumped up, gasping and flapping his long, muscular arms like a bird.

  Strong turned back to Tenny, who was looking at him with a bewildered, pleading look in his eyes. Strong smiled, stripped off his trousers, and sprinted towards the water as the corporal let out a four-letter expletive.

  Strong dove in, gliding above the rocks in the shallow water. He didn’t feel uncomfortable initially, but after a few seconds the cold hit him and literally took his breath away. He planted his feet and stood half out of the water, gasping like the other two before joining in with their laughter. After much teasing and encouragement, Tenny finally stripped down and entered the water. He didn’t dive, instead comically trying to remain upright on the uneven, slippery rocks. After a few steps he fell in, flailing back up as the other three loudly enjoyed his clumsiness and discomfort. Then the four men waded back to the beach, naked as the day they were born.

  They collapsed onto the ground and Strong savored the warmth radiating off the rocks in the sun. The transition from warm to bracing cold and back to comforting warmth brought on an invigorating high.

  Strong looked out to sea, past the mouth of the cove, and the sight caused all his latent insecurities to come rushing back. There was Onondaga on the surface, the low, dark profile of her hull broken by the tall rectangle of her sail amidships and the bulbous protrusion of the large sonar dome at the bow.

  Did they see us? He wondered, suddenly concerned. W
hat will the sergeant major think if he hears we were wasting training time goofing off, taking a swim? The RSM likely would not care, but that didn’t make it into Strong’s thoughts. I need to get this back under control.

  He stood up, grabbed his dry suit, and said, “Get dressed,” in a voice that was too demanding for the circumstances.

  Tenny and Brown looked up at him, surprised by his change in tone. Brown looked ready to respond, but then Roy stood also and said in his deep French-Canadian accent, “You heard the sergeant. Let’s get to it!”

  PART III: DECISION POINT

  “War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.”

  —Sir Basil H. Liddel-Hart

  CHAPTER 11

  2200 KRAT, Tuesday 15 June 1993

  1500 Zulu

  Eastern Sayan Mountains, Tuva Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Siberia

  PAVEL MEDVEDEV LEANED back from the wooden table and pinched the bridge of his nose in an attempt to fight off the onset of a headache. Can I not escape my country’s woes, even here in the depths of Siberia? He was having trouble seeing the future, seeing how to move his country past its present troubles and back into its rightful place as a secure global superpower. In front of him on the remote dacha’s rough dining room table he fixed his eye on an open folder containing the voluminous Plan Boyar. Included in the folder were assessments from KGB and GRU, both of which communicated the grim appraisal that Boyar possessed only the slightest chance of success if NATO decided to counter the Soviet strike on Poland.

  Those assessments, along with a troubling brief on the state of the Soviet economy from Drugov’s Interior Ministry and another unflattering report from the Foreign Ministry, had been delivered by Senior Captain Ivanenko, Marshal Rosla’s naval aide. The navy man had departed several hours previously, driving back down the narrow, wooded mountain paths that passed as roads in this part of Russia’s deep interior. With luck, he would make it back to the dusty crossroads town of Kyzyl before sunrise. There he would board a military transport for the several-hours return flight to Moscow.