Seas of Crisis (35 page)
Authors: Joe Buff
And nothing says I have to be honest when I answer.
Challenger
had a maximum speed advantage over an Amethyste of almost thirty knots. Jeffrey would order Bell to put on bursts of speed and make end runs to the north, cutting off the supposed German each time Harley pretended he was trying to escape toward and beyond the pole.
J
effrey’s pursuit of the Amethyste with the Russians was relentless. After twenty-four straight hours they’d covered half the distance to where the final reckoning, over the debris of a real Amethyste-II, would take place.
Jeffrey was doing this on purpose. He wanted the Russian captains, their senior officers, and the remainder of their crews exhausted. Each Akula-II had a total of about seventy men, barely half the size of
Challenger
’s and
Carter
’s crews. But modern Russian submarine captains did more delegating in battle than their U.S. Navy counterparts. Jeffrey was counting on his own combat-tested, iron constitution to outlast the Russian command teams, gaining a better mental—and tactical—edge. At Bell’s urging, Jeffrey allowed modified watch rotations once the stern chase seemed to have settled into a routine. It was important, Jeffrey knew, for
Challenger
’s people to eat, sleep, and relax every day, so the ship would be in ideal fighting form. Over the acoustic link, Harley confirmed he was doing the same for his people—but like Jeffrey, he neither wanted nor could afford even a short catnap himself.
Challenger
’s battle-stations crew roster had recently rotated on watch again.
Then Jeffrey’s plan to wear down the Russians backfired.
“Hydrophone effects,” Chief O’Hanlon shouted from his sonar console. “Torpedo in the water, Russian UGST!” He gave the range and bearing. It had been fired by
Wild Boar.
“Second torpedo in the water,” O’Hanlon reported. “Also Russian UGST!” This one had been fired by
Cheetah.
In moments, each Akula-II fired a second torpedo.
“Target for all four torpedoes is
Carter,
” Torelli said. Jeffrey eyed the new torpedo icons on the tactical plots. They quickly drew ahead, chewing up the range to the Amethyste-
Carter.
Shit. I told them not to open fire without my permission.
“Ru-ling, how did they coordinate without us hearing the conversation?”
“I think there was no conversation, sir.”
Bell glanced at Jeffrey. “
Wild Boar
must’ve gotten trigger-happy, and
Cheetah
used the excuse to join in.”
“Weps,” Jeffrey ordered, “confirm speed of the UGSTs.”
“They’re all making fifty knots, Commodore. That’s their maximum attack speed.”
“Commodore,” Sessions reported, “
Carter
signals, ‘Torpedoes in water detected by echoes off bummocks. Torpedoes closing my ship. What are your instructions?’ ”
Jeffrey stared at the plots. They seemed to dance around, and fade in and out of focus. He’d been awake for a lot more than twenty-four hours. His plan to exhaust the Russians—while pretending they all were ganging up to exhaust the Germans—was having an effect on his own ability to think straight. He hadn’t made proper allowance for how much his delicate negotiations and bluffs in Siberia drained him.
“Sir,” Sessions stated, “
Carter
sends, ‘Repeat, what are your instructions?’ ”
“Ru-ling, make signal to
Wild Boar
and
Cheetah.
‘Why have you opened fire without my prior order? By word of your own commander in chief, you are under my command.’ ”
The chief typed on his keyboard.
“Commodore,” Sessions interrupted, “
Carter
sends, ‘Repeat, inbound torpedoes closing on me. Will impact before their maximum range if I maintain present course and speed.’ ”
“Okay,” Jeffrey said. “Okay.” He had an idea. “Make signal to
Carter,
‘Go silent and go to all stop. When you hear me making flank speed, make actual flank speed as
Carter
in wide circle, return to starting location after twenty minutes circling.’ ”
Harley signaled he understood. Jeffrey waited five minutes.
“Ru-ling, what reply from
Wild Boar
and
Cheetah
?”
“Nothing yet, sir.”
“Repeat the message and add ‘Response imperative.’ ”
The Ru-ling typed. Jeffrey waited another five minutes. The four UGSTs closed the distance to
Carter
faster than ever, making fifty knots while she sat still.
This was getting dicey, but Jeffrey realized he needed to pull off another subtle, dangerous sleight of hand to set up the Russian captains for later. “Ru-ling, response?”
“None yet, sir.”
Jeffrey gave them five more minutes; the UGSTs would now be very close to where
Carter
went quiet and stopped. “That’s
it.
As far as they’re to know, they’ve gone too far and they’re ruining everything. Captain Bell, make flank speed and cut back and forth in front of
Wild Boar
and
Cheetah,
at one thousand feet below their present depth. I want to teach them who’s in charge here, and get them to behave themselves, but I do not want to break the wires to their torpedoes or we might lose
Carter.
”
Bell acknowledged and issued helm orders. Patel acknowledged and dialed up flank speed. Bell ordered rudder turns and Patel put them into effect.
Challenger
vibrated and banked steeply into each turn, first to starboard and then to port and then back again. Jeffrey knew Harley would be kicking
Carter
up to her own flank speed, which slightly exceeded that of the UGSTs. He’d outrun the torpedoes until they ran out of remaining fuel. Meanwhile, Jeffrey anticipated that his own flank speed noise and maneuvers—his angry reminder of
Challenger
’s tactical and sonar superiority over the Akulas—would mask
Carter
’s actual signature.
Using their own rebelliousness to outfox them. I hope.
For Jeffrey’s basic deception scheme to keep holding up, and for his gradually gelling final-engagement strategy to have any chance to work, it was vital that the guidance wires to the UGSTs not break,
and
that the Russian captains from now on did exactly what he said. Neither was guaranteed.
“Ru-ling, make signal to
Wild Boar
and
Cheetah.
‘Have lost contact with target, unable to regain, believe it hovering under ice to evade UGST homing sonars. Reduce your own-ship speed to five knots to retain separation against a German counterambush. Engage gravimeter sensors and steer your weapons to search area near last known location German vessel. And maintain task force discipline or I will personally tell Russian president to reprimand you.’ ”
The chief, as he typed all this in Russian, couldn’t help chuckling at the tart tongue-lashing Jeffrey was giving to the captains of
Wild Boar
and
Cheetah.
Jeffrey told Bell to maintain flank speed, while he kept an eye on the chronometer. If the Russians followed Jeffrey’s orders, the UGSTs would search in vain near one place for an Amethyste reactor compartment that wasn’t there. If they disobeyed, or had a fire-control malfunction, or the wires to one or more of their weapons broke, Harley could survive by outrunning the errant torpedoes—and would end up almost back where he started, as if he’d been an Amethyste, hiding, hovering all along and the Russian warheads had failed to find him.
Except.
If a Russian captain’s UGST somehow made, and held, active and passive homing acoustic contact on
Carter,
with the guidance wire to his weapon still intact so he knew what his weapon and
Carter
were doing, he’d realize that something was way too fishy. The Amethyste would have seemed to go quiet only temporarily and then started racing around at twice her possible flank speed. The Russian couldn’t dismiss this as just bad sound propagation—not when his UGST held a lock on the target.
Jeffrey began to sweat, despite the chill of the air fans. He told Bell to charge ahead, east, as if getting ready to deliver a coup de grace to the German from below, after she’d been hit by the gravimeter-homing UGSTs. Using UGST engine-noise data from O’Hanlon and Finch, Torelli confirmed that the Russians were doing what they’d been told to with their weapons.
The clock ran down; the UGSTs ran out of fuel and shut down. By now
Carter
would have reverted to being quiet and slow, so
Challenger
reduced her speed from flank to twenty-five knots. He told Harley to resume fleeing east, as a German sub once more.
It had been one of the most nerve-wracking half-hours Jeffrey ever spent in undersea combat—and this wasn’t over.
Jeffrey ordered Bell to reverse course and steer toward the Akulas, to keep a better chase formation with them—if he drew too far ahead, he’d be vulnerable to fire from the Amethyste, including nuclear fire, without adequate Russian backup. And to any real German,
Challenger
identified as who she was, by the noise she’d made, would be a prize of such high value that going nuclear would be justified, even at the risk of self-destruction.
Challenger
neared the Akula-IIs. The Ru-ling finally spoke up. “Sir,
Wild Boar
signals, ‘Misunderstood rules of engagement. Weapons launched in error.’ ”
“Yeah, right,” Meltzer murmured.
“
Cheetah
signals, ‘Misunderstood actions
Wild Boar.
’ ”
“Ru-ling, make signal, ‘Task Force Commander expects and insists that rules of engagement now clear.’ ”
“New passive sonar contact on the port wide-aperture array,” O’Hanlon called out. “Tonals match Amethyste-Two class.”
Torelli’s target tracking team used the range and bearing data from Sonar to plot the contact’s position and course. “Captain Harley is accelerating to Amethyste-Two’s flank speed,” Torelli said. “Course is due east.” The tactical plots marked
Carter
’s new position; one plot showed
Carter
as friendly, and the other as enemy. She was slightly south of where she’d been at the start of her wide circling turn, and the maneuvers had cut target separation from fifteen miles to twelve, thus seeming to increase task force pressure on the German sub—Jeffrey’s goal.
Both plots showed the Russians, on one as enemy and on the other as friendly. Jeffrey questioned, from the Akula captains’ transparently disobedient behavior, which in the end they would turn out to be. “Ru-ling, make signal to
Wild Boar
and
Cheetah.
‘Contact regained. Resume chase.’ Get the data from Weps and relay it. Then say, ‘Target undamaged. You wasted ammunition and betrayed new UGST capabilities. Obey orders in future.’ ”
F
or another day the grueling stern chase continued. From time to time Harley would fake another dash north, and Jeffrey would force him back east with the threat of a two-to-one advantage in torpedo tubes and speed, and a great advantage in crush depth. Jeffrey’s behavior, by closing the separation menacingly if the Germans didn’t turn away fast enough, was supposed to make it clear to the German captain that, at this point—frustrated or egged on by the Akulas’ impetuous conduct—Jeffrey was willing to risk destruction in order to also destroy the Amethyste-II, a double kill acceptable for reasons of higher statecraft. This was consistent with his prior nearly suicidal tactics against real German subs, so if the Akulas had any intel reports from the Axis on Jeffrey’s warfighting style, it would all be believable. If they didn’t have such intel reports, they were finding it out for themselves, and he wanted them to know, to strengthen his psychological domination.
Wild Boar
and
Cheetah
also continued the pursuit, and the combined task force gradually neared the eastern end of the Canada Abyssal Plain.
“We’re moving into the endgame phase,” Jeffrey said out loud, to no one in particular. He gulped down the last of what he thought must be his twentieth mug of coffee since reboarding
Challenger
; he used it to wash down the last of a ham and cheese sandwich, one of his favorite snacks when he was in the throes of deep fatigue during combat.
But he’d never pushed himself this hard for so long.
I’m too wired out, and stretched too thin. I need to wrap this chase up soon and send the Russians home happy. The only problem is, I haven’t figured out yet how to pull the rabbit out of the hat, and make the Amethyste sink while
Carter
escapes.
Jeffrey stood in the aisle next to Bell and stared at the pair of tactical plots.
“Commodore,” Bell said, “the assistant nav reports that at present speed, assuming no further misbehavior by the Russians, we’ll reach the location of the genuine Amethyste’s wreck in two hours. May I ask your intentions?”
“If I knew them, I’d tell you.”
Bell frowned. “Sir, with respect, if we just keep running east we’ll hit the line of Canadian islands and whatever friendly subs could get in position. If
Carter
keeps on going, and the waiting American and Canadian boats don’t open fire, the Russians will know something’s up. The distances are too great, and the closing speeds too high, for the submarines out in front of us to coordinate something with
Carter
fast enough to be effective and put one over on the Akulas.”
“I know. I asked for those subs to keep Meredov and his cronies from getting suspicious, since if I really wanted the German destroyed that’s one order I’d certainly give. It’s what Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet would tell Commander, Submarines, Pacific to do anyway.”
“Concur.”
“But it’s up to us to fool the Russians.”
“Sir, I know you do your best work under pressure, but the margins in time and space are getting narrow.”
“Yup. They sure are.”
“Do you want to order Harley to make another feint north? If we add some zigs and zags now, it could buy you an extra hour, maybe more.”
“No. Good idea, but it only postpones the inevitable.”
“Then what do you intend?”
“Let me think.”
“Yes, Commodore. Of course.”
Jeffrey looked at the tactical plots, the two different versions of reality displayed side by side, just as Meltzer had suggested so many mugs of coffee ago. The plots faded in and out of focus again. Jeffrey began to zone out altogether. Then he realized that he’d induced a state of near self-hypnosis.
Schizophrenia. That’s what I told myself at the start. If I stared at these two plots long enough I’d give myself schizophrenia.
Jeffrey was feeling mentally punch-drunk.
What the hell does schizophrenia have to do with submarines?
An hour went by, then more. And then he saw it. The win-or-lose gambit that would determine now and forever who won this crazy endgame—America or Germany, the truth or a very big lie. Just about the biggest big lie in military history.
He cleared his throat and spoke with new vigor. “Captain, man silent battle stations.”
“Man silent battle stations, aye, sir. Chief of the Watch, on the sound-powered phones, man silent battle stations.”
“Man silent battle stations, aye,” the senior chief acknowledged. He spoke to the phone talker, and the order was relayed throughout the ship. Bell’s control room first team began to arrive. COB looked like he’d been showering—his hair was still wet and his Latino skin had a rosy tinge from vigorous use of a scrub brush. Patel appeared, his facial features softened as if by sleep, but he sharpened up quickly. Meltzer and Torelli dashed in together, brushing crumbs off their clothes and still chewing the last bites of food—they’d been snacking in the wardroom. Finch, O’Hanlon, Sessions, and over a dozen technicians and chiefs arrived in a flood. Soon COB reported that the ship was at battle stations.
“Make signal to
Carter,
‘Man silent battle stations. Prepare to receive my orders for final melee.’ ”
Sessions acknowledged, typed, and reported that Harley had received and understood the message.
Jeffrey turned to the Ru-ling. “Make signal to
Wild Boar
and
Cheetah.
‘Man silent battle stations. Prepare to receive my orders for final melee.’ ”
The Ru-ling acknowledged, then the Russian captains did.
“I think we’ve worn down and lulled the Amethyste’s poor German skipper long enough. Captain Bell, the key to beating an opponent who might go nuclear, using only high-explosive ordnance ourselves, is to stick to the fundamentals.”
“Commodore?”
“Surprise, and overwhelming firepower.”
A half-hour later, all the orders were relayed and acknowledged. All the torpedo tubes and weapons in them were ready.
“Make signal to
Carter,
” Jeffrey ordered, “ ‘Implement. Repeat, implement.’ ”
On both tactical plots,
Carter
-Amethyste continued to behave as before, steaming east at twenty-five knots just below the reach of summer ice keels. But for the first time in two days, the tactical plots showed very different symbols.
On the real plot, the icon that was
Carter
stayed on track but changed into the icon representing a brilliant decoy, programmed to act and sound like the Amethyste. The icon for
Carter
split off and turned south, slowed to fifteen knots to stay quiet while getting out of the way, steaming south toward distant Alaskan territorial waters. On the fake plot, the one from the combined task force perspective—the Russian point of view—the icon steaming east continued to show the actual Amethyste. There was no icon there for
Carter.
“Ru-ling, make signal to
Wild Boar
and
Cheetah.
‘Prepare to open fire.’ ”
Both Akula-IIs acknowledged quickly, their captains eager to go into action and share credit for an actual combat kill—not just a paper score in some training exercise.
Jeffrey kept a careful eye on the chronometer. Everything had to be coordinated to the second.
Now.
“Ru-ling, make signal to
Wild Boar
and
Cheetah,
‘Open fire. Repeat, open fire.’ ”
The Ru-ling typed. The Russian captains didn’t even bother acknowledging.
“Hydrophone effects!” O’Hanlon shouted. “Multiple torpedoes in the water! UGSTs!”
“Captain Bell, open fire. Launch the decoys in tubes seven and eight.”
Bell began to issue his orders. Soon
Challenger
had eight units in the water, rising toward shallow depth from below the twenty high-explosive UGSTs launched by the Russians—a full salvo from each Akula-II.
Jeffrey watched the tactical plots. As he’d ordered, everything was targeted at the Amethyste. The Russian torpedoes began to spread out, horizontally and vertically, to leave the German no room to run—even accounting for several inevitable Russian torpedo malfunctions.
Not much longer.
His heart raced. If the timing was off, if the coordination between
Carter
’s and
Challenger
’s decoys wasn’t precise enough, if any of them broke down or had a programming input error or a software bug—or if Bell’s units from tubes seven and eight were destroyed by shocks from the real weapons that they absolutely had to stay near—the whole grand deception scheme would collapse. If so, the next overwhelming Russian salvo would be aimed at
Challenger,
and would be nuclear.
Wild Boar
and
Cheetah
between them could fire twenty nukes at once.
Challenger
only had eight tubes. Her better speed and crush depth would be no help against so many twenty-kiloton fission warheads. Russian nukes would surely get through, while none of her puny one-kiloton Mark 88 fish would reach the Russians.
Challenger
and all aboard her would die. The enraged Akulas would hunt down
Carter
and then go home and report the terrible truth of American treachery.
Apocalypse Soon, Apocalypse Later, Apocalypse Now.
The decoy that was the Amethyste began to give off the sounds of noisemakers and jammers. Already making flank speed, this was all her imaginary captain could do. According to Jeffrey’s endgame scheme—reinforced by him scolding the Russians about having given away the UGST’s special capability—the Germans had figured out, from seeing the search pattern used by the four torpedoes the day before, that the Russian weapons possessed some way to successfully search for a nuclear submarine hiding quiet and still against the ice. The Russian captains might wonder why the German captain didn’t return fire, but decoys couldn’t launch convincing phony torpedoes—and real torpedoes from
Carter
had entirely different sound signatures from the weapons used by Amethyste-IIs. Decoys from
Carter
pretending to be German weapons, coming at the Russians, would never fool them, and would leave irrefutable physical proof that the pseudo-Amethyste was really American.
This was a loophole in Jeffrey’s strategy that he’d simply have to live with—or die with: the German captain would not return fire. Maybe he’d used up his few torpedoes and decoys days ago, approaching Russia, his weapons load drastically reduced to make room for so many commandos. Maybe he’d had a mechanical breakdown in the torpedo room. Or maybe he realized, with the geometries of torpedo maximum ranges versus ship flank speeds, that his countershots had no chance of being effective.
One tactical plot showed twenty-eight torpedoes quickly catching up with the Amethyste. The other plot showed twenty-six torpedoes and two decoys. Everything depended on those decoys doing exactly what Jeffrey needed them to do, exactly when he needed them to do it. They were the last two Mark III brilliant decoys
Challenger
had. They were preprogrammed, and fully autonomous once launched, with no guidance wire and no way to recover them. If something went wrong and they ran astray they’d be more forensic evidence unmasking Jeffrey’s elaborate subterfuge.
The consequences will be far worse than Russians calling me a liar.
Challenger
’s Mark 88 fish, launched from tubes one through six, were faster than the UGSTs, making almost seventy knots. Though they’d been fired from much deeper depth, they reached the target first. Jeffrey had counted on this. It was essential that
Carter
’s decoy be pulverized, but
Challenger
’s decoys had to survive because their indispensable tasks were yet to come.
Torelli crossed himself, and ordered his people to detonate their warheads via the fiber-optic guidance wires. Their massive high-explosive warhead charges caused tremendous, thundering blasts. Russian torpedoes began to explode right behind them, some command-detonated through intact guidance wires, others because the nearby blasts touched off their warheads sympathetically or spoofed their arming software, and a few because they’d been programmed for contact-fusing against anything solid they hit—including ice bummocks.
Challenger
was buffeted by many shock waves and strong turbulence.
Did the brilliant decoys survive?
Months of mission preparation, weeks of hard work and bloody sacrifice and terrible risks, all came down to the next few moments. And then it happened. The blasts, echoes, and protesting ice cap were drowned out by a much louder sound, the unmistakable implosion of a submarine hull. A shower of wreckage of all shapes and sizes made flow noise as it fell, thudding into the seafloor.
The real tactical plot showed that these last effects were coming from Bell’s two deep-capable decoys, emitting a modified rendition of a recording of the real Amethyste’s death here two weeks before. As they dove for the bottom themselves, the decoys spread apart to give a better illusion on Russian sonars of a three-dimensional debris cloud forming.
The Mark III decoys still had crucial work to do. Jeffrey’s acoustic smoke-and-mirrors ploy wasn’t finished. The Mark IIIs were in the water, they’d eventually exhaust their fuel and might be found, and they needed a damned good excuse for being there.
Both decoys went silent, and rose back to
Challenger
’s depth. They returned toward her, then altered their courses and headed in opposite directions, north and south. They began to sound and act like
Challenger
making flank speed—as if just launched to draw off return fire aimed at Jeffrey’s task force.
So convinced were the Russian captains of the danger of German torpedoes—last gasps from the now-dead Amethyste, possibly nuclear, undetected while inbound through the deafening sea—that
Wild Boar
and
Cheetah
launched decoys, too.
But no German torpedoes emerged from the echoes and reverb and roiling clouds of bubbles and tumbling, shattered pack ice.