Ice Station Nautilus (10 page)

“LAN Technician, open the battery breaker.”

The Petty Officer repeated back the order, then headed to lower level, where the battery was located. Shortly thereafter, the Control Room went dark. There was no electronic life aboard the submarine, not even a solitary indicating light. Molitor flicked on his battle lantern, and a bright shaft of light pierced the darkness.

Tolbert reached up and retrieved a second lantern. As he debated where to head next, he realized he had lost track of time. He turned on his lantern and checked his watch. It was 0855 Greenwich Mean Time.
North Dakota
’s next report was due in five minutes.

16

NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

In the U.S. Navy compound off Terminal Road, Petty Officer Second Class Vince Harms sat at his console in the Communication Center. It was approaching 4 a.m., but as usual, the message traffic was brisk this time of day. With submarines synchronizing their day to Greenwich Mean Time, it was almost 0900 on every American submarine on deployment. The workday had begun, and those authorized to transmit had uploaded their radio messages.

Harms checked the printout listing the submarines due to report in during his watch. It was only a few minutes before
North Dakota
’s deadline, but Harms wasn’t worried. She was on a northern run, and submarine crews in trail often pushed it to the limit as they waited for an opportune time to come to periscope depth and transmit, without losing contact of their adversary.

He busied himself with additional message traffic, then checked the message queue again at exactly 0900. No message from
North Dakota
. He waited another minute to be sure, then looked around the Communication Center, spotting Chief Marc Arsenault, the supervisor during tonight’s mid-watch, standing behind another radioman on duty.

“Chief,” Harms called out. Chief Arsenault looked over as the junior radioman added, “We’ve got an issue.
North Dakota
is overdue.”

The Chief stopped behind Harms and examined the printout by his console, then glanced at the time displayed on the Communication Center wall.

“Yep,” Arsenault replied, “we got a problem. Draft a message to
North Dakota,
directing her to report in ASAP, and a SUBLOOK message for all commands. I’ll brief the Watch Officer and get authority to release.”

*   *   *

Later that afternoon, sitting at his desk in COMSUBLANT’s headquarters, Vice Admiral Bob Tayman waited impatiently for word from
North Dakota
. She was now twelve hours overdue. It wasn’t the first time a submarine had failed to report in, the crew engrossed with the tactical situation, unaware the clock had struck midnight and they had turned into a pumpkin. However, the probability that something had happened to
North Dakota
was increasing with each passing hour.

A SUBLOOK had been issued, but the timeline to implement SUBMISS procedures wasn’t written in stone. It was a judgment call, depending on the situation. Twelve additional hours would normally be enough time to convince him something had gone wrong. But
North Dakota
had gone under the ice, and her ability to transmit would be affected by the availability of open leads or polynyas, or ice thin enough to surface through. Still,
North Dakota
’s commanding officer would have taken that into account.

If he initiated SUBMISS procedures, he would expend millions of dollars in the effort, perhaps for nothing more than a false alarm. However, if
North Dakota
was in distress, there was no time to waste. His head hurt as he thought about the implications—a submarine sunk under the polar ice cap. How would they find it? The 406 MHz transmission from their emergency SEPIRB buoys wouldn’t penetrate the ice.

There was a knock on the door and Tayman acknowledged. Captain Rick Current, his chief of staff, entered. It was the end of the day and time to make a decision.

Tayman gave the order. “Initiate SUBMISS procedures for
North Dakota
.”

17

NORTH ISLAND, CALIFORNIA

It was mid-afternoon in San Diego as Commander Ned Steel leaned back in his chair, taking a break from reviewing the paperwork in his inbox. Steel was the commanding officer of the Navy’s Undersea Rescue Command, located on the western shore of North Island, across the water from Naval Base Point Loma, home to Squadron ELEVEN’s fast attack submarines.

Steel’s second-story window overlooked the test pool, a twenty-by-fifty-foot pool used to train pilots for the Atmospheric Diving Suit, and Steel took a moment to observe the latest training dive as the launch system lowered the suit into the water. Built from forged aluminum with sealed rotary joints, and attached to an umbilical for power and communications, it could descend to two thousand feet.

Because the inside of the ADS was maintained at normal surface pressure, it wasn’t a diving suit at all. It was actually a deep submergence vehicle, operated by the pilot inside the contraption. Maneuvered by two thruster packs and with a light and camera on one shoulder and a sonar transducer on the other, the ADS’s primary mission was to determine the condition of a sunken submarine and clear off any debris from the hatch area so the rescue vehicle could mate.

As the command’s name implied, rescuing a distressed submarine’s crew was what the Undersea Rescue Command was all about. Although the ADS could investigate a sunken submarine, the rescue effort fell to the Submarine Rescue System. Steel’s eyes shifted to the SRS, staged not far from the test pool. The SRS consisted of three main components: the Pressurized Rescue Module, the Launch and Recovery System, and two hyperbaric decompression chambers.

Steel’s BlackBerry vibrated at the same time his personal cell phone and desk phone rang. He checked his BlackBerry as the two phones continued ringing. It was a text message from the Squadron ELEVEN Operations Center. Steel answered his desk phone and, as expected, heard an automated message. A SUBMISS message had been sent. He turned to his computer, where another prompt was displayed on screen. He pulled up his email, and the unclassified message was at the top of his inbox.

Steel read the message quickly, and as he finished, his XO and lead contractor arrived. Lieutenant Commander Marlin Crider and Peter Tarbottom had their cell phones in hand. Tarbottom was an Australian expatriate who made America his home when he joined Phoenix International twenty years ago. The fifty-year-old with the colorful language was the senior supervisor for the contingent of contractor personnel supporting the Undersea Rescue Command.

“What are the details?” Steel’s XO asked.

“
North Dakota
is twelve hours overdue.”

“All right,” Tarbottom said as he interlocked his fingers and cracked his knuckles. “I’ll get the men packing. What port will we be loading out from?”

“I don’t think we’ll be loading out from a port,” Steel said, as he tried sorting through the implications of
North Dakota
’s location.

“What do you mean?” Tarbottom asked. “We have to load onto a ship somewhere.”

“I don’t think a ship is going to take us where we need to go.”

“And where might that be?”

“
North Dakota
is under the polar ice cap.”

“Aw, crikey!” Tarbottom exclaimed. “Under the ice?”

Tarbottom had summarized the problems facing them in one succinct question. Could the ADS and SRS function in subfreezing temperatures? How would they get the equipment onto the ice cap? Five C-5s or fifteen C-17s were required to transport the equipment to an airport, where it would be trucked to a nearby port and loaded aboard an awaiting ship. However, there was no ship that could transport the equipment to the rescue location and serve as a base of operations.

Even if they got the equipment onto the ice, what would they anchor the Launch and Recovery System to? The hydraulic lift system was normally bolted to supports welded to the deck of the surface ship, holding the A-frame in place as it lifted the twenty-ton PRM and lowered it into the water. Without being secured to something, the A-frame would topple over when it tried to lift the PRM.

“We’ve got our challenges,” Steel replied, “but the Navy has an even bigger problem.”

“What’s that?” Tarbottom asked.

“How are they going to find
North Dakota
?”

18

POINT LOMA, CALIFORNIA

The conversation had been short, and Director Bobby Pleasant hung up the phone with a single thought.

It was an impossible task.

Pleasant was the director of the U.S. Navy’s Arctic Submarine Laboratory. Located in warm San Diego, California, the Arctic Submarine Lab was responsible for developing and maintaining the skills, equipment, and procedures enabling the United States Submarine Force to operate safely and effectively in the Marginal Ice Zone and under the polar ice cap.

Before
North Dakota
departed for its northern run, Arctic Submarine Lab personnel had trained the crew to operate safely in the unique Arctic environment. Had Pleasant known the submarine was headed under the polar ice cap, he would have recommended they take an ice pilot, which was the normal protocol. However,
North Dakota
wasn’t supposed to head under the ice; whatever the crew was trailing must have taken her there.

In addition to training and assigning ice pilots to submarine crews during under-ice missions, the Arctic Submarine Lab was responsible for planning and executing periodic ice exercises, or ICEXs, which included the establishment of Arctic ice camps, especially when submarines were shooting exercise torpedoes under the ice. Exercise torpedoes floated to the surface after completing their run, where the multimillion-dollar weapons were retrieved and sent back to a maintenance facility for refurbishment. However, under the ice cap, the torpedoes didn’t float to the surface; they bumped up against the ice. So Arctic ice camps were established with the personnel and equipment to locate the exercise torpedoes and retrieve them.

It was the Arctic Submarine Lab’s experience in establishing ice camps, as well as locating torpedoes under the ice, that resulted in the phone call Pleasant had just received. However, locating a sunken submarine was a far different task than finding a torpedo. Exercise torpedoes had end-of-run pingers that were detected by a sonar array laid on top of the ice, plus the ice camp personnel already knew the area in which the torpedoes would be fired; typically only a few square miles.
North Dakota
’s location was unknown. At this time of year, the polar ice cap was at its maximum extent, and the submarine could be anywhere beneath six million square miles of ice.

Pleasant picked up his phone and called two men. A moment later, Vance Verbeck, the Arctic Submarine Lab’s Technical Director, and Paul Leone, the Lab’s most experienced ice pilot and a retired submarine commanding officer, entered his office.

“What’s up?” Verbeck asked.

“There’s a SUBMISS on the broadcast.
North Dakota
is twelve hours overdue.”

Verbeck was silent for a moment, then said, “Since you called us in here, I take it
North Dakota
went down under the ice cap.”

Pleasant nodded.

“Do we know where she sank?”

“I’m afraid not,” Pleasant replied.

“What
do
we know?”

Pleasant located the SUBMISS message on his computer, then read aloud the pertinent details.
North Dakota
was last located eighty-five hours ago in the Marginal Ice Zone in the Barents Sea, headed north. Pleasant read off the latitude and longitude, and the three men turned to a laminated map of the Arctic on Pleasant’s far wall.

Paul Leone pulled the cap off a dry-erase marker and put an X on the LAT/LONG position. Directly north was the gap between Svalbard and Franz Josef Land. He sketched a narrow wedge, widening out from
North Dakota
’s last known position, constrained by the shores of Svalbard to the west and Franz Josef Land to the East. Once past the two archipelagos, he drew a larger wedge expanding outward at forty-five degrees.

“Let’s assume an average speed of ten knots,” Leone said. “If she was trailing a ballistic missile submarine, it’s unlikely they were traveling any faster. Assuming she went down somewhere between her last position and seventy-two hours later when she missed her reporting deadline, that gives us a maximum distance traveled of seven hundred and twenty nautical miles.”

He drew a straight line north from
North Dakota
’s last known position, then marked off the distance in one-hundred-nautical-mile increments. When he reached 720, he drew a curved top to the wedge and then cut off the bottom, marking the maximum extent of the ice cap at this time of year, then stepped back.

Leone had drawn an area resembling a slice of pie with the crust at the top, and a bite taken off the bottom. It was approximately six hundred miles long with an average width of two hundred miles.

“She’s somewhere in here,” Leone said.

Pleasant did the math. Assuming Leone was correct, they had narrowed the search area from six million to 120,000 square miles. However, the sonar array they laid over the ice covered only four square miles. It would take at least a day to transport, set up, and listen in each of the four square miles. That meant it would take thirty thousand days—more than eighty years—to cover the 120,000 square mile area.

“Well,” Pleasant said, “it’s a start.”

He looked up at his technical director. “We need to expand the area we can search with the tracking array. Let’s combine the two arrays we have and add our spare hydrophones. Find a spot for the ice camp as close to the center of the search area as possible, and we’ll start from there. We’ll need multi-year ice, the thickest we can find.”

Verbeck examined the map. “Let’s stage out of Svalbard. We can fly everything into the airport at Longyearbyen, then transport it to the ice camp from there.”