By Dawn's Early Light (13 page)

1005 GMT
SEAWOLF

“Make turns for two knots, come right to new course three-zero-zero,” Dillon ordered his COB.

“Aye, skipper,” Master Chief Young responded. “Making my speed two knots, turning starboard to new course three-zero-zero.”

The
Seawolf
swung slowly to starboard. Dillon got on the growler phone.

“Sonar, this is the captain. We're making a slow turn to three-zero-zero. I think sierra seventeen will show up in our port quarter. I want to know if there is any aspect change in the target other than from our relative motion.”

“Aye, skipper. Stand by,” Ski said.

“Our speed is two knots, our course is three-zero-zero,” COB Young reported.

“Very well,” Dillon said, “Mr. Alvarez, where is the thermocline?”

“Estimate eleven hundred feet, skipper,” Teflon responded.

“Chief of boat, I'm going to want a real slow dive to twelve hundred feet. No noise. On my mark.”

“Aye, skipper. One-two-zero-zero feet on your mark,” Chief Young replied crisply. The captain was going hunting, this time with live fish in tubes one and three. And this was just the beginning of their mission. He had a chance to forget his own complicated life and problems for a while. It didn't get any better than this, in his estimation. He could see that the rest of the control room crew had the same feeling.

“Ski, talk to me,” Dillon called back to sonar.

“Don't need the AC blower noises, Captain. Sierra seventeen is now making turns for four knots; I'm counting her prop. She's turned to port. New relative bearing three-two-zero.”

Dillon did the math in his head. The
Lenin
had turned to a course of two-six-zero to minimize the danger of colliding with the
Seawolf
, which the
Lenin
thought was still on a course due west. It meant that the
Lenin's
skipper knew that they were here, but not exactly where.

“Stand by,” Dillon said. “We'll send sierra seventeen a calling card.” He glanced over at Bateman and gave him a nod.

Engineering had brought up a three pound ball peen hammer. Bateman picked it up from the chart table, walked over to the middle of the control room, gave Dillon a big grin, and dropped it to the deck with a tremendous clang.

“Okay, chief, take us down to twelve hundred feet,” Dillon said. “But real slow and nice and quiet.”

“Yes, sir,” Young said. “Two degree down angle on the planes,” he ordered. He began slowly adjusting their ballast tanks to a slightly nose-down attitude.

“Has sierra seventeen changed course?” Dillon asked.

“She's coming right, skipper.”

“We're going to duck below the thermocline, but it's going to take fifteen or twenty minutes to get there. I want to know the moment sierra seventeen starts down after us.”

“Roger that.”

“Ski, I want to know if she does anything at all: change course or speed, goes silent, sends up a buoy, opens her outer doors. If she makes so much as a twitch I want to know about it immediately. I'm going to pull a trick on her skipper. But it's not going to work if he knows we've gone deep.”

“Yes, sir,” Zimenski said. “I'm on it.”

“By the way. It was a ball peen hammer.”

Zimenski laughed. “We had bets that it was a crescent wrench, skipper.”

1006 GMT
V.I. LENIN

Captain Savin stepped the few paces forward to the sonar compartment. Sonarman Markin was busy with his equipment. A long green line on his display was already fading, but Markin had made a grease-pencil mark.

“What was it?” Savin demanded.

Markin shook his head. He was listening to something in his headphones. “Something heavy. A tool, perhaps. Amidships. Below the sail.”

“In the control room?”

“Maybe, Captain. It's hard to tell.” Markin made an adjustment to his controls. “The bearing changed to zero-four-zero. Range is now two thousand one hundred meters.”

Seawolf
had somehow detected them, and had turned right to three hundred degrees. They were trying to sneak off, or perhaps even trying to circle around behind
Lenin
.

But the noise in the control room was as if someone had dropped a heavy tool on the deck. An accident, or a purposeful misdirection?

“Is there anything else?” he asked his chief sonarman.

“No, sir. If he is moving he's being very quiet about it.”

“I'm going to put us in his baffles and get in a little closer. Listen with care this time.”

Sonarman Markin looked up guiltily, but then nodded. He was being given a second chance. “
Da
, Captain.”

Savin went back to the control room. “Yuri, turn right to three-zero-zero.”

Sergeyev gave the orders, and
Lenin
eased gently into a right turn, then came back to the captain, who was at the chart table studying the
Seawolf
's track. “What was the noise, Captain?”

“Someone very clumsy, or very smart dropped something in the control room,” Savin said.

Somehow the American boat had detected
Lenin
, or the skipper had been warned, and now he was possibly laying a trap of his own.

The noise had been…what? A challenge?

Savin called back to engineering. “This is the captain. Send a pry bar up to the control room on the double.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me.”

Everyone took a furtive glance at the captain, but no one said a thing. No one would have dreamed of saying anything.

An engineer's mate showed up a minute later with a thick, steel bar of the kind used for prying open stuck hatches.

“Throw it on the deck,” Savin ordered.

The young mate was unsure of what he was supposed to do. Everyone heard stories about officers suddenly snapping, going crazy. He glanced at the XO and the others. The XO nodded.

“On the deck, if you please, sailor,” Captain Savin said pleasantly.

The mate nodded and tossed the pry bar on the deck. It hit with a tremendous clang that everyone aboard the boat heard.

1015 GMT
SEAWOLF

Frank Dillon laughed out loud.

He glanced up at the multifunction display over Zimenski's shoulder as the chief sonarman replayed the sound. They were at seven hundred feet and still heading down.

The noise was sharp. It had to have reverberated throughout the
Lenin
, putting everybody's teeth on edge. And it was definitely not a mistake. The
Lenin
's CO had sent them a very clear message.

“What was it, Ski, a piece of pipe?” Dillon asked.

“Wasn't hollow, sir. Maybe a crowbar, or a long drift pin, something like that.”

“Range and bearing?”

“He's turned to three-zero-zero, still making turns for four knots. Lateral range is two thousand six hundred yards, but he's maintaining his depth.”

“He thinks that he's going to run up our tail,” Dillon said. He stood in the passageway just outside the sonar room. Bateman had come forward with him to see what the racket aboard the Russian submarine was all about.

“He figures that we found him and set our own trap,” Bateman said. “He just told us that he knows all about us.”

Dillon smiled. “Or
thinks
he does, Charlie.”

They went back to the control room where Dillon called his weapons officer over to the chart table. He plotted the course, speed, and depths of the
Seawolf
, the
Lenin
, and the
Brezhnev
.

“They were out here waiting for us when they got tangled up with the
Abe
's battle group,” Dillon said. “But they stuck around and set a trap for us, which we walked right into. Means they knew we were coming.”

“The spy,” Lt. (jg) Marc “Doctor Death” Jablonski said.

“Looks like it.”

“Well, we can flood tubes one and three. They'll get the message loud and clear,” Jablonski said. He flexed his thick arm muscles. He was itching to get into a fight. It was something that his dad, who was a bruiser of a steelworker in Gary, would understand.

“When it's over they'd still know which way they went,” Dillon said. “I have a better idea. Oaktree Resource.”

“It'd be tight,” Jablonski cautioned. “If you think that they know we're up to something they might figure out that we pulled a fast one on them.”

“They'll figure that out sooner or later, but it'll give us time to get out of here,” Dillon said. “We'll send up two noisemakers: one from the forward three-inch tube and one aft. Set the forward buoy to hover at two hundred fifty feet with a thirty-minute delay. The second one send to the surface on a forty-minute delay.”

Jablonski studied the chart for a few moments. “If we do it right now, the buoys will pop up aft of the
Lenin
, in her baffles. She won't hear a thing until they start transmitting.”

“Do it.”

Bateman grinned. “They're going to have a couple of busy hours sorting things out.”

“If they stick around, which I don't think they will,” Dillon countered. “They knew that we were heading west, so they might just bug out in that direction hoping to run across us again. So we're going to head south until we're sure that we're clear.”

“
If
it works,” Jablonski said. He had a basic mistrust of anything that didn't go bang.

“If it doesn't, the navy spent a hell of a lot of money on R and D for nothing,” Dillon said.

1035 GMT
V.I. LENIN

All hell broke loose.

It had been a half hour since they'd heard the noise aboard the American submarine and sent their reply. Savin was starting to get impatient. They had circled in an ever-widening pattern hoping to run up close enough to the
Seawolf
for Markin to snag him. But they'd found nothing.

He was about to step forward into the sonar compartment when a very excited Markin called the control room.

“Conn, sonar, I have many subsea contacts to the west and southwest. Sierra twenty, bearing two-seven-five, range ten thousand meters and closing. Evaluate the contact as a Los Angeles class submarine. Sierra twenty-one, bearing two-eight-zero, range six thousand meters and closing. Evaluate the contact as a second Los Angeles class submarine—”

Savin stepped forward to the sonar compartment and donned a pair of headphones as Markin continued to report to Sergeyev on the conn. The four sonar screens were alive with thick lines indicating solid contacts.

“Sierra twenty-four, bearing two-five-zero, range eleven thousand meters and steady. Evaluate contact as possible
Seawolf
submarine.”

“Sierra nineteen?” Savin demanded.

Markin looked up. He was frightened. “I can't tell, Captain. The signal is…indistinct.”

“At eleven thousand meters?”

“I can't be sure. There's too much turbulence.”

Savin could hear it in his headset. It sounded as if half the entire American submarine fleet was bearing down on them. But that was impossible. They'd had no indications; only that of the lone
Seawolf
exactly where he should have been.

Sergeyev was at the control room hatch. “What are your orders, Captain?” he asked.

Markin sat bolt upright, as if his ass had been plugged into an electric outlet. “
Yeb vas
,” he swore. “Conn, sonar. I have multiple surface contacts, bearings from two-one-zero to three-zero-zero. Ranges all over the place. Possible carrier group; three destroyers, maybe four. At least five frigates—” He looked over his shoulder at the captain, his eyes wide. “One minute there was nothing, and the next they were there. I think it's the
Abraham Lincoln
battle group.”

“That's impossible—”

“Captain, we're running out of room,” Sergeyev called urgently.

Savin took off the headphones, set them aside and smiled. He nodded. “Very well. Come right to three-five-zero, make your speed flank and make our depth one hundred meters.”

“Why not duck under the thermocline,” Sergeyev asked. “They might not hear us.”

“I want them to hear us,” Savin said. “We've been outmaneuvered. I want them to understand that we are not trying to hide. We are no threat.”