by Bart Gauvin
“It’s going to be a bit, Sparks,” Rogers said after a moment, biting off another snide comment about the shore weenies back at Norfolk. “We’re about to have the whole Red Banner Northern Fleet sail over the top of us.”
Then the captain paused. An ELF just as the entire Red Fleet sorties? What do you think that message is going to say, Ethan? he asked himself. He turned to the communications officer and said, “Not your fault, Sparks. We’ll go shallow just as soon as we can. For now, go get a contact report ready to send. We need to let Fleet know that the Soviets’ big boys are putting to sea.”
Sparks nodded and withdrew.
“Sir,” the head sonarman said next, “there’s one more thing.” He pointed to another line on the waterfall display. “This contact here, Skunk Thirteen, it’s new, not in the library yet. It sounds like an Udaloy but it’s not like one we’ve heard before. It may be that new Udaloy II we’ve been hearing about.”
Rogers grunted unhappily. The new iteration of the Udaloy-class was purported to be a far more dangerous version of the already dangerous class of ASW destroyer fielded by the Soviet Navy. Rogers hadn’t counted on one of these passing just a few hundred feet over his head. Damn, this is going to be close. He retreated to his command chair to brood and wait.
The tension in the submarine’s quiet command room was palpable as the Soviet task force approached the Connecticut. The boat had been rigged for silent running for days now, so no special orders were necessary to suppress unnecessary noise, but petty officers throughout the ship nonetheless watched the younger sailors like hawks, ready to pounce on any perceived threat to noise discipline. Nearly everyone sweated, despite the air conditioning, imagining that they could actually hear the thrumming noise from the thrashing propellers of the approaching Soviet task force growing louder as the warships approached.
“Con, Sonar,” called the chief sonarman, “the carrier’s escorts are spreading out as they clear the inlet. The lead ship is just about to pass right over us. It’s the Udaloy II, sir.”
1511 MSK, Sunday 13 February 1994
1211 Zulu
BPK Admiral Chabanenko, Kola Inlet, two miles south of USS Connecticut
Sergei Medvedev was beginning to put his hangover and the drama of his home life behind him after three cups of strong tea brought up to the bridge from the galley. The tea and a brusque meeting with Group Captain Gordinya had gotten young Medvedev’s blood pumping. He’d thought he was ready for anything but found himself still stunned by the developments of the past few minutes. The task group commander had called on the task group radio net to announce that German and American forces had attacked Soviet forces in Poland, and that war with NATO in defense of the Rodina had commenced. The announcement caught nearly everyone off guard, but the quick report from the task force commander aboard Admiral Kuznetsov, stating that ASW patrol forces had already sunk two American submarines, worked to steady everyone’s nerves. Still, the Soviet officer thought, there are certainly more enemy boats out there. If the Americans launched a surprise attack against us in Europe, then they will also almost certainly have boats to ambush us as we leave port up here as well. Fortunately, Medvedev thought with a smile, I have just the ship for the job of clearing inlet exits.
The captain looked out over the bow of his ship as it crossed from the relatively calm waters of the inlet into the ocean swell of the gray Barents Sea. They sailed under a deep blue sky mottled by a layer of cotton ball clouds. Ahead and to the right, an Il-38 maritime patrol aircraft was approaching from the opposite direction, hugging the undersides of the clouds as it flew south to its base near Murmansk. Sergei watched the gray-painted aircraft pass to starboard, close enough that he could make out the red star on its tailfin and the spinning red circles of its four propellers.
From the patrol plane, his eyes drifted down to a dark shape on the horizon: another ship to starboard, the Sovremenny-class air defense destroyer EM Besstrashnyy, his name meaning “Fearless” in Russian. To his left, out the other window of Chabanenko’s bridge, Medvedev could see Besstrashnyy’s twin, Gremyashchiy, knicknamed “Thunderous,” pulling away to port. Behind the trio of destroyers, the other ships of the task group were spreading out into a formation a dozen kilometers across, with the three largest ships at the center. Sergei could not see backwards from the bridge of his ship, but he knew from the chart before him that the aviation cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov, the battlecruiser Kamiral Zakharov.
Admiral Chabanenko was the lead ASW warship of the task force. In this role Medvedev’s command had taken onboard the screening force’s group captain, Aleksandre Mikhailovich Gordinya, who was a man so full of himself that not even the fact that Sergey’s father was the President of the USSR seemed to make any difference. He would coordinate all of the ASW efforts of the task force. Despite this unwelcome addition, Sergei was pleased and impressed by the power of the force heading to sea in the company of his ship. Two air defense destroyers and two anti-submarine destroyers, including his own, escorted the formation’s three powerful capital ships. Kuznetsov’s dangerous Su-33 fighters, the navalized version of the Su-27, provided the task group’s air cover. Massive Kalinin provided the formation with its anti-ship punch and was no slouch at air defense either. The cruiser Slava was the task group’s most potent air defense asset, maybe the best air defense ship afloat. Well, Sergei corrected himself grudgingly, maybe the American AEGIS ships are as good.
“Tovarich Captain,” the young officer spoke in a loud clear voice so that Medvedev wasn’t sure if the man was repeating himself. The captain indicated that he was listening, “Our sonar officer reports a very weak contact directly to our front. He says it goes in and out, sir.”
“Tell him I will be there in a moment,” Sergei said as he left the bridge, descending a ladder and taking a passageway forward to his destroyer’s sonar room. A contact directly in our path? He wondered. Could this be an American ambush?
Entering the compartment, the captain commanded, “Tell me of this contact, Sonar Officer.”
“I,” the junior officer licked his lips, “I cannot definitively call it a contact, Captain. It is so faint, and it comes and goes. I thought I was tracking movement, but now it’s still.”
“Show me,” ordered the captain.
The young officer pointed to his display, indicating a series of very faint, seemingly unconnected dots amid the green noise of the computer display. Sergei strained to see a pattern amid all the lines of sound slowly falling down the screen.
After a moment, Sergei asked, “Can we deploy our variable depth array?”
The other officer shook his head, his eyes wide, as if he was afraid to disappoint his captain. “No, sir. It is still too shallow here for the VDS.”
Medvedev nodded again, silently cursing himself for this misstep in front of his subordinates. “Very well, we will slow to see if we can give the bow sonar a better listen on the potential contact. It may be nothing, but we cannot gamble with the safety of the flagship.”
Sergei grabbed an intercom from the sonarman’s work station and called the bridge, giving the order to slow the ship to ten knots. As he returned the handset to its cradle, the sonar officer’s screen flickered, then went black.
“What just happened?” asked the captain. “Where is the display?”
The junior officer, who was desperately punching keys, responded, “I don’t know, Captain, the feed is just gone,” the young sonar officer turned to one of his enlisted men and asked, “how is the display on your console?”
“Nyet, tovarich Lieutenant, and I am hearing nothing through the headsets. There must be a problem with the connection to the main array!”
Not now! thought Medvedev. His crew had experienced all the usual problems with breaking in a new ship in the one short cruise they’d taken since Admiral Chabanenko’s commissioning, but they had not spent nearly enough time at sea to work out a
ll the kinks that new warships inherit from shipyards. A failure of the sonar system? Now? Of all the rotten luck!
“Fix it, Lieutenant,” Sergei blurted, nearly shouting at his sonar officer.
The man swallowed as he nodded, then said, “Captain, with your permission, I will take a man and check the connections from the array to our computers. I think I may know where the problem lies, but—”
“How long?” demanded Medvedev.
“Ten minutes. Fifteen if we have to solder,” the man said quickly.
Sergei worked to rein in his frustration. The most advanced anti-submarine vessel in the fleet, rendered useless by bloody poor workmanship at the start of the war. He took a deep breath and nodded. He had to trust this man, whom he knew to be competent and hard working. If it can be fixed quickly, he will do it.
The captain nodded. “Very well,” he said, “I will return to the bridge. Call me as soon as the problem is resolved.”
The lieutenant nodded jerkily, then grabbed one of the enlisted men in the room and hurried out.
Medvedev climbed the ladder back to the bridge, arriving just in time to see his executive officer, somewhat white-faced, return an intercom receiver back to its cradle.
“What is it, Number One?” Sergei asked, feeling the strain of the possible contact just ahead and not wanting more unwelcome news just yet.
“Sir,” his second-in-command answered, “the group captain was calling. He wishes to know why we’ve slowed. He says we are interfering with the formation of the entire task group.”
Damn that man, cursed Sergei. Does he not care that there may be something out there that could ruin our war before it even starts? He walked over, snatched the handset, and called the flag bridge a few compartments away.
“This is the captain,” he said brusquely to the staff officer on the other end of the line, “let me speak to the group captain.”
A moment later Group Captain Gordinya’s voice came over the line, peremptorily saying, “What is going on up there, Medvedev? You are throwing the entire task group into confusion with your antics.”
Antics? raged Sergei. What do you expect the ASW screen you command to be doing, you idiot? He didn’t say it though, biting his tongue.
“Sir,” Medvedev, said, trying to keep his voice even and temper cool, “we think we have a faint contact directly ahead.”
“Think you have?” Gordinya interrupted. “Do you or do you not? What are your people doing up there, Captain?”
“It is very faint,” responded Sergei, keeping his cool, “but we were just beginning to develop a track when our system malfunctioned and—”
“Malfunctioned?” the group captain snapped. “What sort of a ship are you running, Sergei Pavlovich?” The superior used Medvedev’s patronymic, showing that he didn’t care in this circumstance who his subordinate’s father was. “You are saying you think you have a contact, but you cannot show me this supposed contact because of the poor maintenance aboard your command? For this you throw off the entire formation around the flagship? No! Ring up the ordered speed and let us clear this channel! Speed and deep water are our best protection.”
Medvedev began to protest. “Sir—”
“No arguments, Captain! You are under my orders, and you will obey them. Get this vessel back up to your assigned speed, NOW!”
1515 MSK, Sunday 13 February 1994
1215 Zulu
USS Connecticut (SSN 22), mouth of the Kola Inlet, Barents Sea
The sound of screws churning the water over their heads was no longer imagined. Everyone onboard could hear the rhythmic thrum of powerful propellers turning rapidly a few hundred feet above Connecticut’s sail, even through the high-pressure steel of the submarine’s hull. Rogers was back in his command chair trying to affect an air of nonchalance, but behind his eyes his mind raced. Sonar had just reported that in addition to the battlecruiser, now positively identified from their computer’s signature library as the Kalinin, and the carrier, there was also one of the dangerous Slava-class cruisers in the formation. A sortie of all of these ships together could mean only one thing. But, wondered Rogers, what can we do about it?
The lead ship of the Soviet task group, almost certainly a new Udaloy II, Rogers now knew, had slowed briefly as it approached the patch of water directly over the Connecticut. Everyone onboard had held their breath for a moment, wondering if they’d been detected, but then the destroyer accelerated again and passed overhead without incident. Now the three capital ships were drawing near, and the American skipper had a decision to make.
Do I engage, even though I haven’t received official word that a war has started? He wondered. Do I dare? There was that ELF message in Sparks’ hands, but all it said was to come to communications depth. What if the message Norfolk wants to give us is to avoid provoking the Russians at all cost? What if, instead of laying low, I put a spread of torpedoes into the guts of the Red Banner Northern Fleet and start World War Three? He just couldn’t take that chance.
Besides, Rogers reasoned, engaging now, in these restricted waters, with a whole enemy task group around me is suicide. Then he paused. Or is it…?
The skipper ran through the math. The Seawolf possessed a whopping eight torpedo tubes for their Mk48 ADCAP torpedoes, so they could engage multiple targets at once. He put it all together: three at the carrier, three at Kalinin, two at the Slava. Then, thought Rogers, all we’d have to do is slip away in the confusion of burning and sinking ships. It would be a submarine story for the ages, but it might also be suicide. Rogers reminded himself, We don’t even know if we’re at war.
Rogers made up his mind. He would stay put, wait for the formation to pass, clear the channel, and then report in.
As the sound of the Soviet propellers faded away above and to the north of them, Commander Ethan Rogers hoped he’d made the right call, though he couldn’t shake a nagging feeling that he had not.
CHAPTER 53
0816 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994
1216 Zulu
Off Breezy Point, Entrance to Outer New York Harbor
THE ALUMINUM HULL of the sixteen-meter-long Port Authority pilot boat Wanderer bounced across the gray waters of New York Harbor’s Outer Bay into a cold, damp wind that blew under a solid sheet of leaden clouds. A quarter mile directly ahead was the rust-stained and obviously well-used fishing trawler SS Trogg slowly churning on its course out of the harbor.
Protected from the wind and waves inside the pilot boat’s enclosed wheelhouse, the senior pilot checked his logbook for information about the Trogg. She was Bulgarian flagged, and her being this far from home was reason enough for the Port Authority to be curious. That, and the fact that Eastern European fishing vessels in these waters were getting a little extra attention from the local authorities ever since the Cod fisheries had collapsed a couple of years ago. Russian factory trawlers had contributed enormously to that ecological disaster off the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada, and locals were more than willing to extend the blame to the Soviets’ allies.
Today though, the Wanderer was simply acting on a request from the Sandy Hook Coast Guard Station, whose watch staff was curious about what had kept the Trogg tied up so long in New York without obvious reason. The pilot looked up from the logbook as the ugly Bulgarian vessel loomed larger through the plate glass of his own boat’s wheelhouse. The Trogg was nearly midway between the spits of Breezy Point and Sandy Hook, which formed the broad entrance to the expansive harbor, and Wanderer was closing in.
Taking the radio mic from in front of his helmsman, the pilot depressed the talk button and called over the harbor control frequency, “Fishing vessel Trogg, fishing vessel Trogg, this is the Port Authority pilot boat Wanderer, conducting a normal cargo inspection. Please come about and prepare to receive an official, over.”
The senior pilot waited for a response as
they pulled closer to the trawler’s starboard beam. Nothing. He called again, “Trogg, Trogg, this is the Port Authority pilot Wanderer. Come about and prepare to be boarded, over.” The radio speaker remained silent.
The pilot raised his binoculars and scanned the rusty fishing trawler, starting at the vessel’s bow. She was a decent-sized ocean-going boat, perhaps a hundred feet long, with the wheelhouse in front and cranes aft. The official scanned up to the boxy wheelhouse where his eyes stopped. That’s strange, he thought, where’s the captain? The wheelhouse shouldn’t be empty when they’re transiting the middle of the channel.
A continued scan leftwards to the aft of the ship revealed that the vessel itself was rocking in the wind-driven swell. The Coast Guards’ eyes caught movement as three men appeared to be working at the rear of the trawler, doing their best to heave some heavy object that was hidden behind the gunwales. That’s odd too, thought the pilot.
That’s when the pilot saw out of the corner of his eye a dark object roll off the back of the trawler and splash into the choppy gray water. His immediate reaction was anger. Dump in my harbor, will you? Right under my nose? Oh no, you don’t.
The senior pilot snatched the loudspeaker hand-mic for the hailer from its spot above his head. The megaphone boomed, “SS Trogg! This is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Cease your activity at once and prepare to receive an official. You are engaged in illegal dumping. I say again, cease all activity and prepare to be boarded!”
At the sound of the megaphone, all three men at the stern of the trawler looked up, surprised. The pilot could see them exchanging rapid words, one clearly giving orders. A second man darted forward to amidships of the vessel and bent down. The pilot watched this man as he came back up from behind the gunwale. For a moment the official didn’t register the distinctively shaped object the fisherman was holding until—
“Gun!” the pilot shouted as the AK-47 winked at them from a hundred yards away. He grabbed his helmsman, dragging the other man down as the plate glass of the pilothouse window spider-webbed and they heard the thunk thunk thunk that sounded like hard-thrown baseballs hitting the bulkhead. The pilot reached up and pulled the wheel all the way over to the right, then shoved the pilot boat’s throttles to their stops. The metallic thunks now worked their way along Wanderer’s port side as the boat veered away from the Trogg, accelerating. Now the pilot could hear the cracking reports as the assault rifle continued to fire.
