Deep Whisper

by Henry Martin

  Next to Busfield, Pham was the best sonarman on the boat. He was a short kid from SoCal who loved the good submarine chow a little too much. Normally the kid had a sunny disposition. But now anguish twisted his features.

  “The Victor,” said Castillo.

  “That’s affirm, Captain.” The kid’s eyes were wide. His right phone covered his ear, but the left was off so he could hear his commander. Suddenly he wheeled around, shifted the left phone back over his ear, closed his eyes. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered. He turned back around and pulled the phone set off his head. “I’m getting water rushing sounds, Captain. Her screw—” He shook his head. “It’s pinwheeling. I think—” He shook his head again. “I think she’s going down.”

  Castillo took a moment to absorb that—but only a moment. He turned to find Green standing right behind him. “Officer of the Deck,” he snapped. “Bring us to periscope depth. Inform Radio we have flash message traffic for the national command authority. And sound battlestations.”

  “Periscope depth, aye aye, Captain,” Green repeated smartly and then he was pushing back into Control.

  Castillo paused for a second before following him, watching the hash the explosion had made of the Petty Officer Pham’s waterfall display, the bright emerald light coloring the faces of the boys in Sonar a pale, unnatural green.

  He had just lost the chance to write the book on the new Typhoon.

  He’d have to run up on the Victor and the boomer would hear his flank bell, hear it and fade away into the ocean like a ghost. But Castillo didn’t have any choice. He didn’t like the Russians, didn’t trust the Russians. But a sinking submarine—

  (My dear God!)

  That was a nightmare.

  Silence reigned in Main Control, but this silence was different from the one Castillo remembered from their hunt of the Japanese destroyer. That had been a taut silence born of tactical necessity, the ship control team leaning forward in their chairs, muscles tight, eyes glued to their gages and displays, minds racing furiously as they stalked Kirishima like a mountain lion stalks a deer.

  This silence was entirely different. It was a nervous, jittery silence, grating an uncomfortable. It stank like sweat. It tasted foul and metallic. It was the kind of silence that settled over the family of a father who’d had a heart attack as they sat or paced in a hospital lobby, waiting to know.

  As a submariner, silence had always been Castillo’s friend.

  But this silence he hated.

  He leaned over the chart table, studying the Russian coast, eyes locked on the contour that separated the pale blue of the continental shelf from the royal blue of the abyssal depths. They’d had a pretty good fix on Vic-18 when the casualty had sent her to the bottom, but a sinking submarine did not fall like a stone. The hull breach would have flooded at least one compartment to sea, but if her crew had managed to close her watertight hatches—

  (Please God, please.)

  —then the rest of her spaces would still be filled with buoyant air, which meant her fore-and-aft trim had gone straight to hell. The submarine would have gone down unbalanced. No, she hadn’t gone down like a stone. Daniil Moskovskiy would have fluttered down like an autumn leaf.

  No telling where she ended up.

  If she had come down on the continental shelf, there was a chance, a chance that survivors could be rescued. But if she’d plunged into the abyssal dark—

  Castillo shook his head.

  “Officer of the Deck,” he said softly, “time to station?”

  “Seven minutes, Captain,” Glazer answered in the same low voice.

  The math was brutal—and undeniable. Vic-18 had been sixty thousand yards out when she’d gone down. Castillo had a flank bell on, his submarine running flat out at 32 knots submerged. That meant 55.6 minutes to arrive at the posit where the Russian went down. An hour. It was like watching someone get hit by a car and having to wait an hour to help.

  In his left hand he held a crumpled strip of paper which was stupid because he’d already read it so many times that he had it memorized. But for some reason he just couldn’t bring himself to put it down. It was a response from CINCPACFLT and it included in the disbo list both the chief of naval operations and the president. Castillo took it out and read it again.

  Z 180916OCT12

  FROM: CINCPACFLT PEARL HARBOR HI

  TO: USS PASADENA

  CC: NCA WASHINGTON DC

  CNO WASHINGTON DC

  COMSEVENTHFLT

  COMSUBPAC PEARL HARBOR HI

  COMSUBGRU SEVEN

  COMSUBRON SEVEN

  TOP SECRET//N03130//

  SUBJ: RUSSIAN SUBMARINE DOWN

  1. USS PASADENA DETACHED FROM NORMAL DUTIES TO CONDUCT SEARCH AND RESCUE (SAR) OF CREW OF RUSSIAN VICTOR-CLASS SUBMARINE DANIIL MOSKOVSKIY.

  2. JMSDF RESCUE SHIP JDS CHIHAYA (ASR-403) EN ROUTE FROM KURE AT BEST SPEED. ETA 0300Z 19 OCTOBER. CHIHAYA WILL ASSUME ON-SCENE COMMAND OF SAROP UPON ARRIVAL. PASADENA WILL PROVIDE ALL REASONABLE SUPPORT.

  3. PASADENA WILL DEFER TO RUSSIAN FEDERATION FORCES IN CONDUCT OF SAROP AND WILL NOT RPT NOT ENTER RUSSIAN TERRITORIAL WATERS WITHOUT EXPLICIT PERMISSION FROM RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES.

  GOOD LUCK, PASADENA, AND GODSPEED. ADM HAROLD JOHNSTON SENDS

  BT

  Castillo’s orders, which he read as: Do all you can to rescue the Russian sailors but do NOT cause an international incident, were exactly what he had expected when he’d reported the loss of Vic-18. Really, what else could the chain of command say?

  But he couldn’t help but worry about that third paragraph.

  He had to “defer” to the Russians in the conduct of the SAR operation. When the Oscar-class Kursk had gone down in the Barents Sea in 2000, both the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy had immediately offered use of their DSRV’s to rescue the trapped sailors. For four critical days the Russians dithered, Ivan’s pride preventing him from accepting the offered assistance. On day five, the Russians finally accepted the aid of the Brits and the Norwegians.

  But by then it was already too late.

  One hundred eighteen men had died aboard Kursk.

  “On station, Captain,” Glazer reported. “Recommend yankee search.”

  Castillo thought about that for a moment. Yankee search was shorthand for the use of active sonar. U.S. submarines normally used passive sonar to listen to the sea and carefully tease out the sounds of their opponents. If submarine warfare was like a gunfight in a pitch black room, using active sonar was like turning on a flashlight. It would help you see—but it would help your enemy see even better.

  In this case, tactical considerations were secondary—but Castillo didn’t think a yankee search would be much help. They were trying to find a sub on the sea floor—and this patch of ocean covered a rocky, irregular surface. Even if he went active, there was a good chance that bottom scatter would hide Vic-18.

  And there was something else to consider.

  “Quartermaster, are we in international waters?”

  “Yessir,” said QM3(SS) Williams. “Based on dead reckoning from our last fix, I hold us six hundred yards outside the line.”

  Six hundred yards. Castillo turned to look at his QM.

  The petty officer looked back at him placidly.

  Estimating position based on dead reckoning added error—especially since his submarine had just come off a high speed run.

  “All right,” he said. “Once we localize Vic-18, we’ll come to pee dee. Quartermaster, I want a satellite fix right away.”

  “Yessir,” said Williams.

  Castillo turned to Glazer. “One ping only,” he said. “Tell Sonar, full power.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said Glazer. The OOD pulled a sound-powered phone off the bulkhead, adjusted the selector, and gave the crank a quarter-turn, producing a little whoop. “One ping, full power,” he said into the mouthpiece.

  There was a moment’s pause and then a high-pitched tone echoed through Pasadena’s hull. Castillo’s people look
ed around at the eerie noise. No submariner liked the sound of active sonar.

  The ping faded to silence and Castillo felt his hope going with it. He didn’t expect to locate Vic-18 with the ping, but he hoped if there were survivors nearby they would hear it and—

  “Con, Sonar!” Busfield’s voice was excited over the speaker. “I got something.”

  Castillo ran for Sonar. Busfield handed him a phone set without having to be asked and the captain pulled it down over his ears.

  What he heard was a frantic cacophony of clanks and thuds as if men were using wrenches or fists to pound on the bulkhead of their submarine.

  “The Russians,” said Busfield, the kid’s voice wavering with emotion, “they’re alive.”

  Castillo picked up the handset for the underwater telephone, better known to submariners as the growler for the device’s poor sound quality, and raised it to his face. “Daniil Moskovskiy, this is U.S. submarine seven fife two. Are you receiving, over?”

  No answer.

  Castillo looked over at Pasadena’s XO, Lieutenant Commander Paul Trent. “Nothing.”

  Trent frowned. The XO was a thoughtful man who wore his blond hair in a buzz cut and was a frequent user of the boat’s weight machine. “If they lost the forward compartment, they may not be able to reach their growler. Kursk went down when she had a torpedo mishap. If the same thing happened here, we can assume the survivors are restricted to the engine room.”

  “I’d rather not assume anything,” said Castillo. He repeated his transmission.

  This time he was answered by a smattering of Russian.

  A smile flashed across Castillo’s face. The XO handed him a bunch of nonsense words scrawled across a piece of paper. “Ya ne govoryu po Russki,” Castillo read aloud. “Ti govorish’ po Angliiski?”

  He put the phone down and looked askance at Trent. “Really? You’re sure that’s right? It sounds like I’m clearing my throat.”

  Trent shrugged muscular shoulders. “Your guess is as good as mine, Skipper, but I got it out of the Russian phrase b—”

  A voice on the other end of the growler interrupted Trent. “Greetings, Pasadena!”

  Castillo frowned. He hadn’t told the Russians the name of his submarine. Had they looked it up—or had they already known who SSN-752 was?

  “This is Captain of Daniil Moskovskiy, Captain Second Rank Martyn Leonidovich Volkov.” The voice was slow and halting. Between Volkov’s heavy accent and the growler’s shifting frequency, it was hard to understand.

  “I am very glad to hear your voice, Captain. This is the captain of the USS Pasadena, Commander Mark Castillo. We are here to render assistance. What is your situation?”

  He nodded to Trent to put the conversation on the speaker.

  Even over the growler, Castillo heard the long, unhappy sigh. “We have weapons casualty. Still we are not sure what it was, but we think torpedo… em, I’m think how to say in English, explode, that’s how you say it, da, explode?”

  Castillo felt a sudden chill. God in Heaven! “That’s right, Captain,” he said evenly, “explode.”

  Around Main Control, his people were staring at the speaker in horror.

  Not Senior Chief Washington, though, Castillo noticed the cob was looking at him.

  “We think the torpedo open us to ocean. Roving watch reported severe flooding. Managed to get watertight hatch closed, but lost entire forward compartment in two minutes.”

  If Castillo had felt a chill before, now his guts were ice. Two minutes. No way would that be enough time to evacuate the forward spaces. Volkov had locked some of his men in a flooding space to save the rest. Castillo wondered if he would be able to do that, be able to carry the crushing weight of that decision.

  And then he thought, better to never be in that position.

  Better never to make that mistake.

  “Do you have power?”

  “Battery only, enough to talk on sonar phone and power emergency lights. But is getting very cold, Captain. Soon, cold and dark. Have our countrymen arrived?”

  “We think we are first on scene. We reported the accident immediately so by now your people should be on their way. I know for a fact the Japanese have deployed a submarine rescue ship. We expect it to arrive tomorrow in the early morning.”

  There was a long silence. Castillo looked at Trent.

  “I…am not certain Japanese rescue submarine mate with Russian escape hatch.”

  Trent shook his head. “Their DSRV’s are designed to provide a watertight seal around the hatch. Should be fine.”

  “My XO tells me it should be fine,” said Castillo. “Can we provide any assistance?”

  Another silence.

  Castillo tried to imagine what it would be like, cold and desperate in a ship that had torn itself apart, talking on a growler to the outside world while even the dim illumination of emergency lighting flickered and faded. A captain had to give his men hope, but not so much that a setback would turn hope to crushing despair. How did a man walk that tightrope?

  “Spasiba, Captain. Uh, thank you. For now, I think best thing is to report our status to countrymen. When Japanese and Russian ships arrive, can decide best course of action.”

  “Acknowledged, Moskovskiy. We will relay your status. In the meantime, our prayers are with you.”

  “Spasiba,” Volkov whispered. “Spasiba.”

  “Pasadena out,” said Castillo softly. He gently reached up and replaced the growler handset in its cradle. There was no sound in Control, absolutely no sound, as if the horror of what had happened to Daniil Moskovskiy had banished sound.

  He turned to Glazer. “Officer of the Deck, surface the ship.”

  “Surface the ship, aye, aye, sir. Diving officer, make your depth six two feet.”

  Suddenly Main Control was filled with the comforting sound of well-trained watchstanders repeating back their orders.

  Two minutes, Castillo thought. Jesus Christ.

  Thank God the sea state was mild, three to four foot swells from the northeast, but that’s not how it felt as the Zodiac slalomed over the cobalt blue ocean at 25 knots, charging up the crest of one wave only to slam down into the trough of another in a shower of cold, white spray.

  It was a jarring, dangerous ride.

  But then that was a pretty good way to describe the last twenty-four hours.

  A jarring, dangerous ride.

  Castillo’s eyes were fixed on the clean lines of the Kongō-class destroyer holding station two nautical miles abeam of Pasadena, the Rising Sun flapping in the heavy wind.

  Their old friend, Kirishima.

  Already deployed for SCARLET GOALPOST and capable of a top speed of more than thirty knots, the destroyer had reached the op area well ahead of the submarine rescue ship Chihaya.

  The Zodiac was approaching the destroyer from the bow, but Castillo saw that the vessel had her Jacob’s ladder hanging down amidships, just aft of the superstructure. Castillo turned around to tell the coxswain, Petty Officer Sonderson, to modify his approach, but Sonderson had already thrown the Zodiac into a wide U-turn, bringing the boat around so it would come alongside Kirishima stern to bow.

  Castillo caught the boy’s eye and gave him a nod.

  Sonderson grinned back at him

  Castillo turned his attention back to the destroyer. He was very happy to see the Japanese—hell, he would have been happy to see anyone who could lend a hand in pulling those men off the bottom—but he knew the Kirishima’s captain. Sakutaro Kagawa was as tough and professional a mariner as Castillo had ever met. If there was anyone who could help him think of a way out of the box it was Sakutaro Kagawa.

  Sonderson cut speed and the Zodiac glided past the destroyer’s stern, angling towards the rope ladder hanging down the ship’s gray flank.

  He desperately needed to talk with Kagawa before the Russians got here and complicated the diplomatic equation.

  And then Castillo glanced up.

  He saw a helicopter si
tting on the destroyer’s landing deck, but it wasn’t the SH-60F Seahawk Castillo expected. No, if the Seahawk was a graceful dragonfly, this machine had the squashed aspect of a fly, short and dumpy, topped with dual rotors, its fuselage painted white, its engines and belly painted a baby blue.

  A flapping Russian flag painted just aft of the cockpit.

  Castillo’s mind was racing as he rose carefully to his feet in the Zodiac, trying not to tip out of the small rubber boat and plunge into the sea. They had more than enough people to rescue already. He stood in a low crouch as the Zodiac dipped with a falling wave then rose with the heaving sea and slammed into the destroyer’s steel hull. Castillo had been leaning in towards the ship and the contact punched the air out of his lungs, but he had the wit to grab a rung of the manila rope ladder hanging over the side and climb.

  He felt the Jacob’s ladder flex as Paul Trent followed him up. Castillo reached the top and a man reached down to help haul him over the side. Castillo scrambled to his feet and saw the man who’d helped him was Sakutaro Kagawa.

  Castillo came to attention and saluted. “Request permission to come aboard, Captain.”

  Kagawa returned his salute. “You mosta welcome, Captain.”

  Castillo slowly slipped off his green foul weather jacket and draped the sodden garment over his arm, careful of the envelope tucked inside. He had traded his poopie suit for scrub khakis in an effort to show respect for Kagawa and his crew, but he was startled to see that the Japanese captain was dressed in service blues.

  He was even more startled to see a Russian officer standing next to Kagawa, also wearing dress blues, the three stars on his gold-trimmed epaulettes telling Castillo that he was a full admiral.