The Chase: One Courageous Skipper Battling The Perilous Evil Out To Destroy Him. (Sea Action & Adventure) (2 page)

The crew of the small, secured electronics chamber in the mid-quarters of the submarine felt a slight jolt as their antenna tower hit the bow of the Galatea. What most drew their attention though was the sudden disappearance of all the blips from the green monitors they were watching. Grisha, tall with a sparse novice’s mustache and smooth dark hair was wearing a set of supersensitive Japanese earphones. He plugged the phone jack into another channel, turned several dials and tapped a few knobs on the control panel. Nothing. His listening post was dead. He turned in his swivel chair to meet the puzzled look of his two comrades.

The ELINT station of the U.S.S.R. submarine Slavianka was totally dead.

Yuri, the senior of the three technicians, picked up the heavy black telephone, which connected him directly to the Captain on the bridge.

Second officer Vladimir Korchenko answered the phone, the second on the left. It had a buzzing sound rather than the usual beep of the other telephones in the submarine. This one was the direct line to the ELINT room. ELINT, ELectronic INTelligence, was the primary reason for the existence of this submarine. In fact, it was the only reason. This category of Russian submarines was dubbed by NATO WHISKY CANVAS BAG.

Anything to do with the operation of the ELINT system was handled directly by the Captain.

Captain Valerie Nickolaiev Poliakov reached the ELINT room which was situated some ten feet down from his cabin, within seconds. He rushed into dimly lit room with a brisk step that belied his forty years of service. The three technicians jumped to attention, expecting the worst.

“What happened comrade Yuri,” he snapped while they were still at attention.

Second lieutenant Yuri Kovak tried to be brief yet concise: “At this time it seems that something failed somewhere between the receivers and the antenna system. It could be one of the intermediate R.F. amplifiers, or possibly the main supply to the phase detector network”.

Hesitantly he looked at his comrades and then added awkwardly, “It is almost as if we lost the whole microwave antenna”.

“Call the repair crew”, said the Captain in a calm, authoritative voice, “I am sure it’s those damn amplifiers. We can’t have lost the antenna. We keep an eye on every darn vessel within five miles around us. There is no way we could have hit a ship without noticing her, the sound of her engines or the loud flaps of her screw in the water. It must be those amplifiers. Let me know as soon as it’s fixed”.

He looked at his watch and walked out. It was 17:14 G.M.T. Captain Poliakov decided to spend the forty-five minutes left until mealtime inspecting his sub, surprising crew and officers alike.

Four hours later the chief ELINT officer informed the Captain of his final diagnosis: “It’s the antenna system, comrade Captain,” he said tensely. “We’ve checked everything over and again. It's either a massive cable failure at the antenna base or something in the antenna itself”.

Anxiety in the room grew tense. They all knew the meaning of what was said.

“Say it out loud, comrade,” the Captain said somberly. “We’ll have to surface now, right?” and, without waiting for an answer he walked, out leaving his ELINT crew still nervously standing at attention. They all knew their mission was not quite legitimate. They were cruising underwater in NATO’s backyard, spying on electronic activities in the area. It was obvious the Slavianka could not surface in broad daylight. Even at night it would be unsafe to do so. There were rumors of American satellites now capable of picking up and tracking a single car in the middle of Moscow’s Red Square. It would be easy for such a satellite to track down a massive one thousand and fifty ton submarine floating in the calm waters of the Aegean Sea.

Captain Poliakov stood up, facing his senior officers who were assembled in the mess hall, which served also as conference room in the space-starved vessel.

“Comrades! We face a serious situation. I trust every one of you to do his very best so we can solve this problem in a manner befitting a unit of the great Soviet Navy. Should we fail to solve this crisis honorably, we will disgrace our ship and our country.”

They all recognized the implicit warning in his words. Exposure of the submarine in these waters would lead to an international scandal, as well as a personal hell for each and every one of them. There were rumors of a submarine sinking in the Pacific in 1960, and the hype that ensued afterwards. The stories varied in detail, but they all had a very unhappy ending.

“Turning back home is not an option,” the Captain continued. “A Soviet ship does not turn tail for every little problem.” Some of them suspected it was his own tail the Captain was protecting rather than the integrity of the Russian Navy. “I want your recommendations for a safe check-and-repair operation of the ELINT antenna”. He didn’t mention the word
surfacing
, yet it was definitely implied by what he said.

“Comrades,” he continued with a bit of pathos, “this is the time when your country demands the most of you. Do not let her down”.

The room went silent for a while. The low and steady hum of the electric motors dominated the space. Being used for spy missions, the Slavianka was modified to run extremely quietly, enabling her to approach vessels and ground installations without being detected.

“With your permission comrades, I would like to point out some places which, I believe, may be suitable for surfacing without getting detected.” It was the navigation officer who interrupted the silence. He spread a 1:100,000 map on the table and tapped a nervous finger upon it as he explained:

“These small bays on the Turkish coast are deep enough for the Slavianka and the steep rocky walls surrounding the bay offer excellent cover from aerial or space reconnaissance. The rocks cast a shadow over the water in the narrow bay for most of the day. It should also obstruct our infra-red signature from any satellite above, except one which may pass directly overhead”.

“I am sure there is no satellite monitoring this hole in the rock,” said the radio officer, his comment being more a moral support of his fellow officer than a considered opinion on celestial snooping.

The navigation officer thanked him with a brief smile and continued –“but there are people. Turks. This coast is mainland Turkey. An uninhabited coast, yes, but still there is a chance of people. Shepherds, hikers, army troops on maneuvers, God knows who…”

“It is mainland Turkey,” he repeated with emphasis. “On the other side, here,” he pointed at a couple of small islands a few miles to the west, “there is nobody. These islands are barren. No one lives here or, indeed, has lived here for centuries. One of the islands is Turkish territory. The other belongs to the Greeks. Unfortunately, however, they do not offer the protection of the bay.” He stepped deftly back as he finished his short presentation. The room was silent again for a while.

A few officers offered their professional opinions. The chief engineer was worried about sand getting into the cooling system or clogging the ballast water pumps, thus favoring the Turkish rocks over the Greek sand. The radio officer then pointed out that their radio would be completely blocked, both in reception and transmission.

They debated, weighing pros and cons. There were technical issues and tactical considerations. For a half an hour no one ventured a decision. That would have to come from the Captain. It was probably the first time they were glad to have one.

The burden was inscribed on the Captain’s solemn, furrowed face. The strain was obvious. At 57, Captain Valerie Nickolaiev Poliakov was a tired and morose man. He had fought the Germans fearlessly, but never made it to the atomic-powered missile subs. He couldn’t match the drive and ambition of the young officers who were born after the war and educated in the best post-revolution schools. He was doomed to sail forever in hostile waters, never to achieve anything. Only retirement would save him. Now he had to make a decision, crucial to him and to the country, to his career and his crew… he abruptly snapped out of his gloomy train of thought and returned to the problem at hand.

“Comrades,” they all silenced as he stood up, “We shall sail at periscope depth on first daylight. It will be not far from the Turkish coast. Our divers will go out and check the antenna tower. It is now past midnight and we have five hours to prepare men, equipment and weapons for the operation”.

By 0600 GMT, 0800 local time, the first sortie of the divers returned to the submarine as she floated motionless, her tower barely under the surface. The black intimidating rocks were on their port side ten miles south of Bodrum.

The divers, still in their dripping rubber suits, turned to the Captain: “Half of the antenna mast is gone. The whole left side is missing”. The shaken gaze of their comrades stopped them from adding unnecessary details.

The Captain was tense, visibly stressed. Yuri Kovak, the chief ELINT officer was pale and astounded. The antenna mounted on the left side of the tower was the latest addition to the Slavianka’s snooping equipment. It was a dual frequency antenna designed to operate on the millimeter wavelength. It incorporated the receiver front-end and was capable of tracking and monitoring signals on the 34 and 94 Gigahertz bands. The antenna, indeed, the whole system was top secret. The fact that the Soviet naval intelligence was listening on these extremely short wavelengths was an even greater secret.

By 0800 hours, there were fifty-four extremely worried Russians inside the Slavianka. There were two essential reasons for their anxiety. Firstly, no one walks free from a Soviet court of investigation. Even light charges may carry a punishment of a few years in some extremely remote and cold place. The second, more immediate, problem was that of surfacing. There are two things submarine crews fear above all – uncontrolled diving and unscheduled surfacing. The first one is usually brief in nature, ending, as it does at two hundred fathoms, when a pressure of twenty tons stresses each square foot of the hull, and the structure crumples like a tin can.

Surfacing, while not quite fatal, renders a submarine extremely vulnerable. Even a small gunboat can destroy a surfaced submarine, which would have the maneuverability of a pregnant guppy.

* * * * *

By 1600 local time, the Slavianka sailed slowly into Barylia Bay, confined within the tall, black walls of the Gulf of Mandalya, on the western coast of Turkey. The sheer cliffs made darkness fall early inside the narrow inlet and the Russians didn’t waste much time. The submarine navigated slowly left into the northern fjord at the end of the bay. It was a tight dead-ended inlet well suited for their task.

She surfaced at 1640, very slowly and silently. Tension was high and their breathing inside was heavy. As soon as the hatch cleared the water, thirteen sailors scrambled out into the gray air. Eleven of them, dressed in dark fatigues, slipped silently into the water and swam ashore, holding their Kalashnikov assault rifles up above their heads. It took them some twenty minutes to climb up the rocks and hold positions in the countryside above. Everything was clear and they waved to the submarine below.

The two sailors who stayed on the deck of the still rising submarine were busy covering all the hull markings with yards of canvas.

The technicians on the antenna mast had to work silently, professionally and expediently. Some microwave components had to be replaced, a few waveguide sections were damaged and the whole millimetric down-channel had to be sealed and secured to prevent further damage.

Shadows covered the deep cove as the sun arched to the west. The soldiers on the hill were still in bright sunlight and all was clear. Not a soul was in sight, not even a rodent in the heath or a bird in the sky.

A faint sound of a distant motor got everyone to a standstill like living statues. Someone called the Captain and he was out on the deck within seconds.

“Get ready to dive,” he whispered hoarsely, but it was too late. A small fishing boat glided in from behind the bend, heading into their cove. It was still some five hundred yards away, but this left no time for the Slavianka to dive. They would have been seen for sure.

“Forget the dive. Get ready to fire, everyone, on my command”.

The boat was edging closer. A fisherman was sitting on the roof of the doghouse, facing the open sea while his son was at the helm. They were Greek from the island of Phrmako, East of Bargylia bay. The older man had been fishing near the Turkish coast for many years now, as did many other Greek fishermen. The catch was good and the Turks didn’t bother them much. He and his son had laid their fishing nets during the night before and now they came for a day shelter in the hidden inlet, as they had done many times each summer.

The young son let out a short yelp of surprise as he saw the tower of the submarine in the middle of the cove. The fisherman turned his head toward the Slavianka, but, before he realized what it was, he saw the muzzle flashes. The sound of the shots reached his ears as he watched the bullets rip his son’s body to pieces. There wasn’t much left of the young body by the time it hit the water. “You don’t shoot people for fishing,” he shouted speechlessly as a barrage of bullets tore through him.

The firing continued for another minute, until the boat was shredded to bits. The echoing gun blasts died a few seconds later and the bay was tranquil again.