Northern Fury- H-Hour

by Bart Gauvin

  One of the other sonar operators in the room who had been staring at his own waterfall display as he listened intently to his headphones sat back and tapped the chief on the elbow with the back of his hand. The older sailor turned and asked, “What?” his voice betrayed his annoyance at being interrupted. Tensions onboard were high for everyone right now. They’d trained for this, but being in it was something totally surreal.

  The younger sonarman removed his headphones and said, “There’s the two cruisers, Chief.” He indicated his display. “Following right behind the carrier, just like with the first group. No firm ID yet, but dollars to donuts that’s another Slava and the Kirov.”

  Both the chief and the captain nodded at the younger man’s conclusion. It was all starting to fit together. The Soviets were putting two powerful carrier groups to sea, each supported by a Kirov-class battlecruiser and Slava-class air defense cruiser. Even worse, one of them was built around a flattop that NATO didn’t even know was in play yet.

  Rogers clenched his fist in frustration once more. This could be huge, the kind of thing that loses wars. Rogers drained his coffee. This needs to get to Norfolk right now. Yet he knew that he couldn’t risk it with such a powerful Soviet force so close.

  Rogers briefly considered trying to sneak into the formation and attack this second carrier, but just as quickly dismissed the idea. With the Kuznetsov earlier, the Soviet ships had come to him. Now if he tried an attack on the Varyag, he would have to work his way into the formation, which was accelerating out of the inlet, already making fifteen knots in the choppy seas overhead. Even the ultra-quiet Connecticut would struggle to remain undetected while trying to catch up to a formation moving at that speed. No, Rogers reasoned, observe and report. That’s your mission. He would wait, and send his contact report as soon as it was safe. It’ll have to be good enough.

  CHAPTER 63

  1548 MSK, Sunday 13 Feb 1994

  1248 Zulu

  HMS Trafalgar (S107), northwestern edge of X-Ray Station, Barents Sea

  COMMANDER EDWARD DAVIES was well-rested for a change, as was much of his crew after standing down from general quarters for the past four hours’ deep speed run. He’d gone to bed himself in anticipation of a long day of playing cat and mouse with the group of Soviet amphibious transports they’d detected hours earlier. Davies shaved and took the time to make himself presentable before stepping out of his cabin just a few minutes before the ascent to communication depth.

  Davies poured freshly boiled water into his teacup, and then spoke calmly in his precise accent: “Sonar, this is the captain. A contact report from you as soon as we pass through the thermocline, if you please.”

  “Aye, sir,” was the immediate response.

  Trafalgar ascended from the depths of the Barents Sea until the dark cylinder of her hull pierced the invisible horizontal boundary between the very cold and relatively-less-cold layers of water that stratified the ocean in this part of the globe.

  After a minute, Davies heard, “Sir, we’re getting unusually good salinity readings.” That meant that sonar conditions would be better than normal for the British—and Soviet—sailors listening to their acoustic sensors in this patch of the sea. Low salinity in Arctic waters usually limited the performance of sonar relative to the excellent conditions present further south, but it appeared they had stumbled upon a bit of good luck.

  “Sir?” came the tentative call from the chief sonarman.

  “What is it, Sonar?” asked Davies.

  “Captain, we have multiple contacts.” A pause, like the sonarman couldn’t believe it himself, “Multiple contacts in the first conversion zone, bearing two-six-zero, sir.”

  Contacts to the west? wondered Davies. Thirty-five miles west of here is far too much distance for those rusty old amphibs to have steamed while we were running deep and rapid.

  “Is it our amphibious group, sonar?” Davies asked anyway.

  “Getting classifications now sir,” came the response. A moment later the mildly cockney accent continued, “No, sir, I don’t believe it’s the same group. It’s just four of them.” A pause, “Older. Sounds like a Kresta-class cruiser, a Kashin-class destroyer with maybe another one in tow, and a fourth ship we can’t make out yet. Headed away from us, stern on. I estimate range at thirty-seven miles. We’ll lose them soon sir as they pass out of the CZ.”

  Davies nodded, relieved that he had not miscalculated badly. What he really wanted to know was where the amphibs were. Four warships led by an older Soviet cruiser composed a formidable force, known as a surface action group, or “SAG.” A single SAG was not of the same strategic import that the group of transports they had detected earlier.

  The sub’s communications officer entered the control room bearing a message flimsy, walked directly up the captain, and handed it to him. Trafalgar was now shallow enough to receive messages that had accumulated over the past several hours of deep running.

  “Sir,” the man said, “FLASH priority message from Fleet.” The communication lieutenant’s face was pale, and Davies saw the younger man’s hand tremble slightly as he handed the message to his commander.

  Davies kept his face and body impassive so as to impart confidence to the crewmen watching him out of the corners of their eyes. Everyone had been expecting this message, but all still wanted confirmation.

  After a moment, Davies looked up, then stood, unclipped the microphone from its place overhead, depressed the transmit key and said, “Do you hear there, this is your captain speaking. The message we’ve all been waiting for, or dreading, I suppose. Well, there’s nothing more to do but just say it: The Reds have decided to have a go at us. World War Three and all that. Don’t fret about your families just yet, it’s all nice and conventional. Started less than an hour ago.”

  The captain’s aristocratic manner could come off as flippant to outsiders, but his crew knew him as an eminently capable submariner, and someone who remained calm under every circumstance they’d ever seen. This situation was no exception. Davies went on, “Now let me tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to continue doing things just as we have been, just as we’ve trained for over these past months. I won’t give you a whole lot of the sort of rubbish you see in the cinema, ‘England expects’ and all that. No, I expect each and every one of you to continue to do what you do so well: your job, and I will do mine. We will start by finding that group of transports we’ve been looking for and sending our report back to Fleet so they can do something about it. That is all. Carry on.”

  He clipped the microphone back up and resumed his seat. Davies noted with satisfaction that the sailors around the control room had turned back to their stations and were no longer peeking his way. They were a good crew, as good a crew as he could hope to take to war. Which is fortunate, he thought, a little grimly, since that’s exactly what I have to do.

  A few moments later the sonar room was calling again. “Captain, Sonar. Contacts entering the first CZ, bearing one-one-zero. Many contacts. Sounds like our amphibious friends, sir. Classifications coming.”

  East-southeast from us, considered the captain. They’ve veered slightly south. Was that important? Davies stood and walked forward to the chart table. If there really was a brigade of Soviet naval infantry aboard those transports, they could be bound for any number of destinations. He traced lines on the map with his index finger, first the west and then to the southwest. From Trafalgar’s current position, great circle routes offered nearly equidistant travel to Iceland, southern Norway, and even Scotland.

  Despite his outward demeanor, Davies was still wrapping his mind around the idea of a World War with the resurgent USSR. He knew enough about the naval situation to realize that the Americans and their carriers were badly out of position. With the naval might of NATO far to the south, excepting the Norwegian fleet of missile boats and frigates and the surface combatants of STANAVFORLA
NT, the Alliance’s Standing Naval Force Atlantic, steaming in the North Sea, those amphibious transports could get rather far before they encountered any serious opposition. Particularly if the Soviets sent their big-deck carrier out in support. Could they possibly try for Scotland?

  Classifications for the eastern group were starting to come in from the sonar room. The escort appeared to be very strong, just as they’d detected earlier in the day. Several destroyers and at least one Kresta-class cruiser were shepherding the noisy transports. Davies briefly considered getting his command in position to conduct an ambush of the Soviet group, but dismissed the idea just as quickly. The Tigerfish torpedoes in his tubes were truly wretched weapons, with a maximum speed of less than thirty-two knots, slower than many of the ships at which they would potentially be fired. If, on the other hand, I had a few of those wonderful new Spearfish weapons, but alas. No, his mission was to observe and report. He had just told his crew to do their jobs, nothing more. That is what he would do as well.

  “Communications, this is the captain,” he called via the intercom. “Make a message ready for Fleet: ‘Soviet amphibious group detected…’”

  CHAPTER 64

  0851 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994

  1251 Zulu

  USCGC Adak, off Breezy Point, Entrance to Outer New York Harbor

  “TRAWLER TROGG, THIS is the United States Coast Guard,” blared the hailer across the choppy gray water. “Come about and prepare to be boarded.”

  Adak’s skipper, Lieutenant Jackson, peered out from his wheelhouse at the rusty Bulgarian fishing trawler, continuing to bob forward in the swell two hundred yards ahead. There was no response to the hail, nor had there been one to the previous three. In front of Jackson, on the bow of his ship, three Coast Guards in orange life preservers and navy blue coveralls trained the cutter’s big twenty-five millimeter Mk38 cannon towards the other boat. On either side of the wheelhouse, two more crewman did the same with M2 Browning .50 caliber machineguns, mounted on pintles on the Adak’s catwalk. Jackson, in charge of this small cutter as his first real command, was taking no chances with the hostile crew aboard the Trogg. Looking behind him, the lieutenant could see the Port Authority pilot boat Wanderer keeping its distance, it’s shattered wheelhouse windows a clear testament to the danger of their current situation.

  On Adak’s stern, Chief Everfield, an experienced old hand, was supervising the boarding party as they loaded into the cutter’s launch, a rigid hull inflatable boat, or RHIB. Jackson was unhappy about sending his Coast Guards over to a ship potentially filled with armed enemies, but under the circumstances he didn’t see an alternative. He’d watched the barrel-shaped objects continue to roll off the back of the trawler with maddening regularity as Adak approached from across the harbor. By now, everyone on board had heard the news that the objects were likely mines. He simply didn’t have the time to wait for backup while whoever was on the Trogg continued to lay a minefield at the entrance of the most important harbor in the world.

  As the Coast Guard ship approached to within a hundred yards, Jackson was lifting the hailer’s hand-mic to give the Trogg one last warning when a figure appeared over the trawler’s gunwale. The man lifted a rifle and fired a short burst in Adak’s direction. Jackson flinched as he heard rounds ping off his ship’s bow.

  “Gunner!” the lieutenant shouted to alert his crew manning the deck cannon, his Brooklyn accent showing through. He was angry now. “Tell ’em to cut that crap out. Give ’em a warning burst!”

  The twenty-five-millimeter automatic cannon let out a deafeningly rapid-fire thump-thump-thump, and Jackson watched as three small puffs of foam appeared just in front of the still-moving Trogg. Shoot at my ship, will you, he thought. I’ve got the bigger guns, dirtbags!

  Another mine splashed off the back of the converted fishing vessel, but this time it didn’t seem to roll cleanly, instead entering the water end-first. Scanning more closely, Jackson saw that one of the trawler’s two cranes was now swinging violently back and forth with the motion of the boat.

  The mining ceased after that. Jackson could no longer see anyone on deck through his binoculars. He was seriously considering just lighting up the other ship with Adak’s cannon and machineguns, but a radio call from Sandy Hook informing him that something “was going on back in the City” and the NYPD wanted the crew and boat intact, put an end to that idea. Truth be told, the thirty-year-old lieutenant was still struggling to adjust to the idea that he was at war, and that the war was going on right here in New York Harbor. If trading shots with shadowy characters aboard a trawler dropping mines in the channel was any indication for how the rest of the war would go, Jackson feared the worst.

  Now Adak was close, within fifty yards, and beginning to pull across the Trogg’s starboard bow. Motion beyond the rusty trawler caught Jackson’s attention. He raised his binoculars and adjusted the focus, hearing before he saw: the throaty roar of an outboard motor cut through the sound of Adak’s own engines. A small, blue-painted RHIB appeared on the other side of the Trogg, skipping across the waves on a course away from the larger vessels and towards Breezy Point to the northeast.

  Holding the binos to his eyes with one hand, he snatched his radio hand mic with the other and called, “Sandy Hook, Adak. We’ve got leakers from the Trogg! One small boat with outboard motor and what looks like…four, maybe five individuals, making for Breezy Point. I’m dispatching my boarding party to the Trogg and then I will pursue. Can we get some police backup on the beach, over?”

  “Wait one, Adak,” was the response. Jackson stepped out of his wheelhouse and called back to Chief Everfield, ordering him and his party across to the trawler. The RHIB roared away from Adak’s stern, heeling over as the chief maneuvered the boat expertly, pushing the powerful outboard motor to twenty-five knots in seconds. In front of the old petty officer, half a dozen Coast Guardsmen knelt in their orange life vests, blue uniforms, and baseball caps, training their M-14 rifles and Vietnam-era shotguns towards the deck of the Trogg.

  Sandy Hook was calling as Jackson stepped back into his wheelhouse. “Adak, NYPD is pretty busy right now. Some confusing reports coming in from all over the City, but they’ve got some squad cars headed to Breezy Point. Keep those leakers in sight, over.”

  “Copy, Sandy Hook,” Jackson said into his hand-mic. He ordered his cutter to full speed, directing the helmsman standing next to him to steer around Trogg’s bow. Adak surged forward in pursuit of the fleeing RHIB just as the chief maneuvered his own small boat up against the starboard side of the trawler’s stern.

  From the RHIB, Chief Everfield directed one of his men up the rust-stained side of the Trogg, while the rest trained their rifles upwards. The first man slung his M-14 over his shoulder and scrambled the half-dozen feet up an access ladder, then swung himself over the gunwale and out of sight.

  A second Coast Guardsman was already scrambling up the ladder in support when Everfield heard the first man call, “Uh, Chief?”

  Something in the man’s voice made Everfield push forward from his position next to the RHIB’s outboard motor and climb the ladder himself. He swung his legs over the gunwale just as the second man up the ladder started retching, emptying his breakfast back over the side and into the sea.

  The chief scanned the messy deck. It was covered in heavy chains and winches, some of which were still attached to the boat’s wildly swinging crane, giving the trawler the eerie feeling of a ghost ship. In the center of the deck, positioned on tracks so as to roll off the rear of the boat, sat what looked like five fifty-five-gallon oil drums. One of the drums had clearly jumped off the rails, popping its lid off, which gave the chief a view of what was inside. The drum was filled with some sort of hard foam substance for flotation, he was sure, wrapped like a donut around what could only be a cylindrical explosive core. Attached to detonators in the explosives were what looked like six floating wires. Three led to a fu
se at one end of the mine, while three more appeared to be attached to the still-sealed other end.

  The chief’s experienced eye quickly worked out the system that had been at play here. The mines sat on a pair of jerry-rigged rails, secured by chains attached to the crane. When the crew had been ready to release one of the weapons, they would use the crane to create slack in the restraints, allowing another barrel to roll forward to a sort of cradle, where a crewman would then need to reach across the rails to attach and arm the two fuses. It was a terrible system, Everfield thought, and one clearly executed by people with little seamanship. His eyes brought him to why the Guardsman was retching.

  Streaks of red near the overturned barrel and the cradle were too bright to be rust. At the end of one of the streaks, laying among the chains and winches that covered the deck, was a severed forearm, still in its tattered sleeve. He must have slipped and caught his arm just right to sever it like that, the chief thought, clinical in his assessment, otherwise he would still be pinned there. Sure lost a lot of blood too.

  Following their well-rehearsed drill, the other six members of the of the boarding party were pairing off, spreading out to search the trawler. One pair scrambled up into the wheelhouse, forward of the deck area. Another team disappeared below deck.

  The chief decided to call in the carnage on deck to Jackson.

  “Adak, Adak, this is Away Team,” he said into his handheld radio, looking over the opposite gunwale and watching as the Adak pursued the fleeing RHIB across the gray harbor.

  “Go ahead boarding party,” crackled Jackson’s voice.

  “Sir,” the chief began, “we have some interesting developments here. You can expect an injured man in that boat you’re chasing.”

  “Injured how?” Jackson’s voice crackled over the radio.

  “Missing an arm, for starters,” the chief said into his radio.