Red Hammer 1994 (11 page)

“Control, Sonar,” said the voice on the 21MC squawk box, “we have a contact bearing 025 degrees.”

“Johnson,” said Sanchez, speaking back into the 21MC communications box, “are you picking up whales again?” Everyone within earshot grinned. The crew was loose and relaxed.

The alert sonarman ignored the barb. His voice was tempered, yet strong. “No, sir, can’t tell what it is yet, but it does have twin screws. Maybe a merchant.”

Sanchez straightened, and the smile left his face. He was surprised to find merchant traffic this far from the normal east/west shipping lanes. The executive officer shrugged his shoulders and went back to work.

“Get an ID. Let one of the new boys classify it, but I want you looking over his shoulder.”

“Good idea, Skipper, I’ll get Brown.”

Twenty minutes later, Sanchez was stretched out in his confined stateroom, no bigger than a small-sized walk-in closet, enjoying a hot cup of coffee when the sound-powered phone next to his bunk growled. “Captain,” he answered routinely, as he had hundreds of times on patrol.

“Skipper, could you come to Control?” It was the XO, and his voice sounded on edge. Sanchez sat up stiffly and secured his cup, then jogged the short distance from his stateroom to Control. For some reason his heart began to pound. Come on, he scolded himself, the patrol’s over, relax. The Control Room was business-like as usual.

“What’s up,” he said loudly, working his way past bodies and equipment to a small table used for plotting contacts. The XO was huddled with the Officer of the Deck, a string-bean lieutenant with black navy-issue glasses and red hair.

“Sonar says they have a sub out there, Skipper,” said the XO glancing up, his blue eyes signaling concern. Beads of perspiration had formed on his forehead. Sanchez hadn’t seen his number-two man this concerned since an Akula sniffed their trail off of Vlad. He studied the marks on the paper taped to the table and rubbed his jaw as he formulated an opinion.

“They’ve got an inexperienced man working the contact,” he reminded.

The XO didn’t look up. He stared at the dots and lines as if he could will them to disappear. “I know, Skipper, but Johnson’s confirmed it. It’s a twin-screw submarine. That can only mean one thing—a Russian boat.”

Sanchez straightened and placed his hands on his hips. “Off the Mexican coast? What the hell would they be doing here? I’ve never heard of a Russian submarine in these waters.” He thought for a minute. “What class?” His initial reaction was to disregard the contact, common sense told him so. But a good captain knows his own limitations and relies on the strengths of his officers and men, and the executive officer was a master of the hunt. He had deferred to the good doctor on more than one occasion. And his sonar team was first-rate.

“Don’t know yet. Johnson’s trying to pin that down.”

“OK,” said Sanchez, “we’re ahead of PIM. Change course, and close this mystery boat. Slow to ten knots, and take her down another hundred feet.”

“Aye, aye, Skipper,” responded the OOD. The Control Room sprang to life as watch standers obeyed the CO’s orders.

“I’ll be in my stateroom,” he announced to all.

Sanchez knew that tracking a surface ship or submarine with passive sonar was difficult under the best of conditions. His crew excelled at passive plotting, but there were so many variables. Sound waves propagated capriciously through seawater, bending and twisting through the ocean depths. They hadn’t had time to determine the local water conditions from the latest bathythermograph drop. All the critical factors, the water temperature profile as a function of depth, the salinity of the seawater, and the existence of a thermal layer, had to be inferred based on years of stealthily shadowing hostile vessels in all corners of the world.

San Francisco
’s linear and cylindrical hydrophone arrays could detect the weak sound energy emanating from a contact on a direct path or it could bounce off the ocean bottom, or more likely, travel a sinusoidal path, creating a series of annuli at the surface linked to the noise source. The catch was they would only know the azimuth to the intru-der, not the range or depth. Those parameters would have to be painstakingly developed over hours, aided by finely tuned maneuvers, like swinging
San Francisco
to and fro to shift the target’s bearing angle and sound profile. Modern computers helped, but still hadn’t removed the indispensable man from the loop. The alternative was active sonar—blasting the ocean with powerful, low-frequency sound energy, alerting listeners for tens of miles. The winner in the submariner’s world was the one who could detect and strike first, and that required cunning, patience, and skill. Active sonar was like ringing a church bell and was considered a desperate action when all else had failed.

Writing in his private log, Sanchez tried to place himself in the Russian skipper’s mind. What was he doing here? Gaining experience in a potential wartime patrol area? Or just maybe he would head north, approaching San Diego from the south, hoping to catch an unsuspecting aircraft carrier leaving port. Were any scheduled for deployment? He would have Ops check.

Finished, he locked away his journal and stretched out on his bunk, kicking off his shoes and folding his hands behind his head. He was bushed. The fatigue swept over him like a slow, silent wave.
San Francisco
had been on patrol for over six months, with interspersed intense periods of special operations, or in other words, very dangerous missions in places they shouldn’t have been. He had been driving himself hard, never getting more than two or three hours of sleep at one time. It only took a moment for him to drop off.

“What the hell?” Sanchez murmured. He bolted upright to the obnoxious chirping of the sound-powered phone.

“Captain,” he mumbled. He struggled to clear his head. The OODs forward in Control were used to the half-asleep voice. It was a captain’s lot in life to get buzzed after dropping off.

“Sir, it looks like we have a Victor III.” Sanchez sat for a moment, letting the words register. He finally answered, now awake.

“I’ll be right there.” Hanging up the phone, he mentally ticked off the Victor’s characteristics. It was an older Russian attack boat, but still very capable. Victors were being phased out and replaced by the newer Akula class, almost as quiet as the best US boats. Most of the remaining Victors had been upgraded with improved sonars and the new, sea-launched cruise missiles. He smiled slightly, relishing the definite acoustical advantage he held over the Russian skipper driving the older boat. He could track the Russian long before coming in range of the Victor’s mediocre passive sonar.

“So we got ourselves a Victor?” The XO nodded with a smile. Once he knew his prey he was a happy camper. Child’s play, the veteran submariner mused, no surprises here.

Sanchez took a survey of those on watch. “Take a break, XO. We’re going to be at this for a while. Get the Ops Officer to prepare a contact report. When he’s done let me see it.”

“Aye, aye, Skipper,” replied the XO. He bounded off down the passageway.

“We’ll be moving in, so make preparations to quiet the boat,” Sanchez shouted at the retreating figure.

“Understand, Skipper,” shouted back the XO.

Sanchez moved to the plotting table and asked where they held the Victor.

“Right here, Skipper,” replied the young lieutenant, junior grade. “Looks like he’s making about six to ten knots, running a racetrack pattern. We’ve lost him temporarily. Out of the convergence zone. He should pop up in ninety minutes or so.”

“Let me know the minute we regain contact. Officer of the Deck, come to periscope depth in ten minutes; we’ll be sending a contact report.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Sanchez stepped the short distance to radio. The Ops Officer handed him a hand-scribbled message attached to a clipboard. The section labeled “commanding officer’s estimate” was blank. Sanchez rested the clipboard atop a four-drawer safe tucked away in a corner of radio. He thought hard for a moment before putting pen to paper. This contact message would generate a lot of interest, no doubt about that. He began to write.

Contact appears to be loitering, possibly conducting surveillance of a wartime operating area. Could be dropping electronic benchmarks for cruise missile firing positions. Maneuvering to investigate. Request relief on station at earliest possible time as low on stores.

He handed the finished message to a radioman, who would process it then send it over the speedy ultrahigh frequency (UHF) satellite uplink.

“Let the OOD know when it’s ready.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

The short and simple message was transmitted promptly to Commander, Third Fleet; Commander, Submarine Force, Pacific; and the Fleet Intelligence Center, Pacific, all in Hawaii. The hot news would be sent up through the chain of command to CINCPACFLT, then to CINCPAC, and then flashed from the island to the NORAD Missile Warning Center deep in Cheyenne Mountain, and on to the National Military Command Center in Washington, DC. Cruise-missile-carrying Russian attack submarines now commanded special attention. Their low-flying missiles would be almost impossible to detect if fired at strategic targets in the United States. Sanchez could imagine the pandemonium he had personally caused by dropping a Russian cruise-missile carrier into their laps. No question, his nuts were on the chopping block now.

Sanchez felt a hand on his arm. “Captain, we’ve got the Victor again.”

“Same course and speed?”

“Yes, sir.” Sanchez had been in the engine room. He followed the lieutenant, ducking through a series of watertight hatches over the reactor compartment and climbing a ladder to the Control Room.

The Victor was steaming a leisurely racetrack with long legs of 090 and 270 degree true.
San Francisco
was closing on a course of 010 degrees true, speed ten knots.

“Parallel her course,” ordered Sanchez. “I want a better fix before we move in.”

“Control, Sonar,” called Petty Officer Johnson excitedly. “I’m getting something unusual. I’m picking up noise in the vicinity of the Victor. I can’t ID it; it’s faint, and it’s being masked by the Victor’s prop wash. If we could get a better angle, maybe I can figure it out. Right now I would have to bet that it’s another Russian boat.”

“Very well,” responded the Officer of the Deck instinctively. Seconds later he was stunned, realizing what he had just heard. He face was frozen in an “I don’t believe this is happening” look.

The Ops Officer’s jaw dropped. “What the fuck?”

What the hell is going on? Sanchez thought. Are those people in Sonar losing their minds? His brain was running all the permutations. His outward calm was in stark contrast to his inward turmoil. He knew Russian boats often operated in hunter-killer pairs. It was a blatant admission of inferiority to overcome US superiority in quietness and sonar technology. And a tactic that gave American skippers fits. The Russians still had numerical superiority on their side and were also not hesitant to use active sonar to target prey at close range if forced. It was the Americans who worshiped passive detection, even when going head to head.

Sanchez was strategizing out loud. “We’ll make a high-speed run to the northwest to force target separation. Officer Of The Deck, take her down to eight hundred feet, increase speed to eighteen knots, come left to new course 330.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” responded the OOD, crisply repeating the orders to the watch standers, who in turn repeated them back to the OOD. The discovery of a second Russian boat had spooked the Control Room sailors. The normal chatter and joking had ceased.

Thirty minutes later
San Francisco
slowed dramatically, rising to a depth calculated for the best-possible sonar performance. The experienced OOD changed course to put the contacts on the beam. Everyone in the Control Room had their ears glued to the 21MC. The wait was draining. Come on Sonar. Then it came.

“Control, Sonar, second contact’s clearer now. Seems to be doing about three or four knots, plus it’s deeper. It’s definitely not one of the newer attack boats, but maybe an Oscar.” Johnson sounded confused. Then there was a loud commotion in the background. Swear words spewed out of the squawk box. It was the sonar chief’s gruff voice that won out.

“Damn it, Skipper, it’s a Delta. I tracked those bastards for eight months in the Barents. Johnson’s full of shit.”

Sanchez, the XO, and the Ops Officer were all frozen, looking like three cigar-store wooden Indians. Sanchez popped out of the trance first. He grabbed the Ops Officer’s arm. The XO scrambled over to the plot.

“Get word back to shore immediately,” said Sanchez. “We can’t wait. If we’re wrong, we’ll take our lumps. ID it as a probable Delta III or IV.”

“Aye, aye, Skipper.”

Sanchez leaned heavily against the stainless-steel rail surrounding the island and the thick stumps of the periscopes. The game’s just beginning, he thought. Problem is, we don’t know the rules on this one. The burning lump in his stomach that had plagued him for the last six months had returned.

CHAPTER 10

Thomas and Alexander sweltered in the August blast furnace that passed as a Washington DC summer. The ancient air conditioning in the Pentagon E-Ring had broken down the day before, and relief hinged on a promise to repair it over the long Labor Day holiday weekend. Both had sweat stripes down their shirts and had long ago shed their ties. The two were digesting reams of fanfold computer printouts spread out on an oval conference table, wrestling with the upcoming fiscal-year budget battle. A slight breeze, captured by cranked-open windows, brought a temporary respite from the midmorning heat.