Kirov Saga: Armageddon (Kirov Series) (17 page)

There were no longer loud claxons or alarm bells on the stealthy
submarines of 2021. Alert conditions were signaled visually by lights. In the
torpedo rooms very near the main operations center the crews now stood ready to
load tubes if ordered.

Then it happened.

A maintenance crew had been competing a routine repair operation
aft near the turbines. The engineer finished reinforcing a small weld in the
turbine room where a piece of equipment threatened to come loose from the deck
with a bad bolt. It was very near the turbine itself, which made it careful,
dangerous work. He was using a small acetylene torch and when he went to shut
it down the valve stubbornly refused to close. As he moved his other hand to
assist, the red lights came on indicating battle stations and he glanced away
just long enough to cause him to misjudge what he was doing. His elbow struck a
shielded pipe in the confined space and the torch slipped from his hands, still
on as it fell to the deck with a harsh clatter. The hot blue jet of was pointed
right at a bearing housing and the lubricant suddenly caught fire.

Seeing what he had done, the man cursed his bumbling stupidity and
called out the alarm. “Fire crews! Turbine room! Now, now,
now!”

The men were already up for battle stations and now they came
running quickly into the turbine room in their bright orange suits, one man
still pulling on gloves and trying to fasten his rebreather mask. They each
carried fire extinguishers, and though the fire was very small, it was in a difficult
spot, and the engineer was wedged into a narrow space, the flames blocking his
only means of egress. They were forced to deploy a hose, which made for very
noisy business the next five minutes as they struggled to knock down the flames
and cool the bearings that had been briefly involved.

Back in the main operating room Gromyko saw the fire light, his
eyes registering surprise. “What’s going on aft?” He looked at Belanov as the
information registered, and the
Starpom
was quick to the comm system to
find out what had happened.

“We’re making a good bit of noise, sir,” said Chernov.

Gromyko could hear it now, a dry squeal where the bearings had
lost their lubricant and metal on metal doused by water and fire retardant was
causing a real mess.

“Captain,” said Belanov. “Fire in the turbine room. The number six
bearing housing was involved. They had to deploy a hose!”

“Damn!” Gromyko swore. Just what they needed now, slinking about
beneath a flotilla of North Korean boats out for special operations training.
Then it got worse.

“Con. Sonar torpedo in the water! Range 3,000!”

It was just their bad luck that the special operations deployment
in the mini-sub was there to set up sonobuoys on the seafloor to protect the
approaches to the harbor. They had already set down three, and this was buoy
four, though they had been unable to hear
Kazan
in the water until her
turbine bearings started singing. The mini sub carried two 533mm torpedoes,
both armed and ready, and they fired one down the direction of the sound bearing,
thinking they may have already caught a Japanese or even an American submarine
trying to penetrate their defensive perimeter.”

“Countermeasures! Launch decoys, both to starboard side!”

“Sir, launching countermeasures!”

“Left full rudder! Ten degree down bubble!”

“Sir, my rudder is left full and we are diving.”

Their luck was not all bad. The North Koreans had been startled by
the sudden discovery of a potentially hostile submarine close by. They did not
yet have a good fix on the location, in spite of the noise, which was now
abating and the engineers quickly got control of the situation aft. Their
torpedo was wide of the mark and when it tried to home in all it would find was
noisy sound decoys.

“Load tubes one and two!” Gromyko did not know what the enemy
knew. But what he did know is that he wasn’t going to give them an opportunity
to fire that second torpedo. The North Korean training exercise was now
dangerously real, and he was going to take no chances.

He fired, and he would hit the target dead on, ending the spec-ops
training mission and setting the entire North Korean Eastern Sea Command into
an uproar.

“That was probably not the best choice,” said Belanov.

The Captain nodded in agreement. “Unfortunately it was the only
choice. Their second torpedo might have been a winner for them. I wasn’t about
to let that happen.”

“Well we’ve just poked a stick into the beehive. Everything in
Wonsan will be out to sea in no time—helicopters, aircraft, and anything they
can float. It’s going to draw a good deal of attention to this entire sector.”

“Sir,” said Chernov. “I’m getting active sonar pings!”

“Active sonar? From what?” Gromyko could not believe the trawlers
he had seen could be ASW boats.

“It sounds like sonobuoys, Captain, at least three.”

“That’s what they were doing here,” said Gromyko. “They were
setting up a goddamned sonobuoy field and we sailed right into the middle of
their operation!” The spider had been slowly spinning out its web and they had
been the witless fly. They might have simply moved off undetected, as was
Gromyko’s intention, but the mishap aft had changed all that, a split second
distraction, an elbow that had bumped a shielded pipe, and the dominoes began
to fall. One would tip another, then another, until the situation cascaded to a
place no one had intended and no one could foresee. That was the way it always
happened, a feather light touch that became a push-point to tip some delicate,
unseen balance in the universe and change everything.

Gromyko did not know it yet, but they had just sailed across some
intangible barrier, past a tipping point that would have grave consequences for
all aboard.

“Head southeast,” Gromyko said grimly, steering the only place
that seemed reasonable given their planned destination. “Right standard rudder.
Come to one-four-zero degrees. Make your depth one-fifty.”

“Helm answering, right standard rudder and coming to one-four-zero
southeast, depth one-fifty, aye.”

The Captain looked at his
Starpom
now. “We can go no
farther west under these circumstances. So we’ll have to skirt south. Maybe the
waters will be quiet enough there for that reactor engineer. And speaking of
engineers, I’m going aft to see what in God’s name happened back there. You
have the boat. Get us southeast to safe water.”

They really had no other option now and, as soon as the situation
in the turbine room was corrected and they could make speed without noise,
Kazan
moved out, as far and as fast as Belanov deemed prudent.

Yet it did not take long for the bee keepers to notice the hive
had been stirred up near Wonsan harbor. US satellites soon spotted the engine
heat bloom in two North Korean destroyers on infrared, and saw them putting out
to sea with three coastal patrol boats and a corvette. They also noticed the
frenetic activity at airfields near Wonsan. The North Koreans were reacting to
something that had happened off shore, and word soon started to circulate, with
speculation as to just what it was that had Kim’s mariners all in a tizzy fit.
Photos and analysis went from one desk to another, and orders followed soon in
their wake.

*
* *

Those
orders landed right on Captain Sato’s bridge aboard the destroyer
Onami
in the Sea of Japan where he was keeping his watch with two smaller and older
ASW destroyers, the
Amagiri
and
Abukuma
. They were out from
Maizuru, sailing past the Oki Islands when the orders came in. Without knowing
it, their wakes had just crossed that of the battlecruiser
Kirov
, where
Karpov had ordered a turn southwest, all of a hundred and thirteen years ago.

As Sato looked out on the relative calm of the sea, it was as if
he could perceive that passage, the unseen movement of some dark shadow on the
sea, a presence…a feeling of unease and disquiet that stirred in his mind. He
was not surprised when a signalman came up, saluting as he handed him a decrypt
from the secure EAM channel. It was an Emergency Action Message—what else in
these waters? He took it with a sullen feeling of foreboding and read it
quietly, his brow betraying concern.

“Looks like the North Koreans think they found a hostile
submarine,” he said to his Executive Officer Onoshi.

“One of our boats, sir?”

“Not that I know of. We are the only Japanese force in these
waters at the moment. Everything else is down south.”

“An American boat?”

“Not from the information I’ve received. The
Mississippi
is
supposed to move southwest to cooperate with our patrol, but they could not be
that close to North Korea. They came through the Tsugaru Strait last night.”

“What would be there, sir?”

“Possibly a Chinese boat that failed to sign in as it approached
Wonsan. It could even be a Russian boat.” The process of elimination was very
simple math.

“Russian? That’s our duty call, Captain.”

“Yes, and that’s what these orders say as well.” He handed his XO
the recent decrypt. “We’re to move northeast and approach Ulleung-do island.
They want us to investigate.”

“Dangerous waters, sir. That will put us well within range of
North Korean shore based aircraft, and we have no carrier support.”

“Read the rest. The South Koreans are supposed to put up fighter
cover for us.”

“Well what do they think this is all about, sir?”

“You want my opinion? I think it’s that Russian submarine they
were looking for. There’s no reason for the Chinese to be up there, but the
Russian would hug that coastline heading south if they wanted to slip a boat
through the Sea of Japan. That’s why we’re out here in the first place. That
boat was thought to be in the Sea of Okhotsk for replenishment, but no one
knows for certain. The Americans want to know where it is, and we are their
eyes and ears out here. If it comes south it would very likely hug the Koran
coast, neh? And I don’t think they would make reservations with the North
Koreans any more than the Chinese would.”

“Then the North Koreans found this boat, sir? That seems hard to
believe.”

“Yes… It does. This submarine would be very quiet. The North
Koreans would have to be very lucky to stumble upon it, but that would be very
bad
luck. The report indicates a possible sea engagement.”

“The Russians and North Koreans? Why would they tangle with one
another?”

“Even two old friends might bump heads in the dark while drinking
tea, Onoshi. It was probably happenstance.”

“Now it falls to us, sir.”

“That it does. I’m going to the chart room. Take us northwest at
25 knots, and see that the other two destroyers are notified. Get the
Seahawks
ready. I want them all available for ASW search in thirty minutes. And one
other thing, send a coded message to
White Dragon
. They probably
received those orders as well, but they are technically under my command. Inform
them of our intentions and tell them to coordinate.”

“Aye sir. Right away.”

Chapter 14

White
Dragon
was out on point that
day, cruising about 50 kilometers north of the Japanese surface flotilla under
Captain Nakamura. Loosely translated, his name might mean “middle of the field,”
and he was soon to find himself right in the middle of the war that had begun
just weeks ago when Japan and China had quarreled over the Senkaku Islands to
the south.

SS-503
Hakuryu
, the
White Dragon,
was the lead boat
on forward watch. SS-596
Kuroshio
was cruising some fifteen kilometers
to the southwest. Together they were the horns of the bull that was now moving
forward with the three destroyers under Captain Sato as its head.

Hakuryu
was a
Soryu
class Diesel-Electric boat, laid down in
February of 2007 and commissioned into the fleet in March of 2011. The boat was
36 meters shorter and only a third the displacement of the big Russian sub she
was hunting that day, her 4200 tons barely a ripple in the sea when submerged,
though it was the largest class sub in the Japanese navy at that time.
Kuroshio
was just a little older, a smaller
Oyashio
class boat commissioned in
2004. Both subs were slow movers on the surface at 12 knots, but could make 20
knots submerged where they spent most of their time at sea.

For teeth, the
Hakuryu
had six
HU-606 21-inch
(533mm) torpedo tubes waiting for her inventory of thirty Type 89 torpedoes or
sub-launched UGM-84 Harpoon SSMs.
Kuroshio
had the same, though it was a
little lighter with only twenty weapons in inventory.

With air-independent propulsion that did not need to rely on a
snorkel, the subs could stay submerged longer, and were very quiet. They could
not match the deep ocean performance of their Russian quarry, as their diving
crush test depth was only 900 feet or 275 meters compared to a published test
depth of 600 meters on the
Kazan
.