The Seventh Angel (12 page)

Although they bore many of the unwieldy earmarks of Soviet Cold War engineering, the
Akula
subs were extremely fast, and exceptionally quiet. Not as silent as the new American
Virginia
or
Seawolf
class boats, but quieter than the vaunted
Los Angeles
class nuclear attack subs that were the backbone of the US Navy’s submarine fleet. In any case, the
Akulas
were nearly undetectable to most types of sonar.

Armed with a combination of 65 centimeter and 53 centimeter torpedoes, RPK-255 Granat strategic cruise missiles, and an impressive array of mines and antisubmarine missiles,
Akula
class submarines were far more deadly than any shark that had ever prowled the ocean depths.

Kapitan Kharitonov was proud of his boat. Despite the heavy hands of her designers and the light fingers of the unidentified asshole who had stolen the dive clock,
Kuzbass
was 110 meters of lethal black steel.

Kharitonov himself looked like he might have been designed by the same brute force engineers who had laid the plans for his submarine. Exactly two meters tall, he was within centimeters of the maximum allowable height for Russian submarine Sailors. His shoulders were broad enough to force him to go through hatches at an angle, and his arms were so thick that even the heavy steel Komandirskie looked like a child’s watch against the wide bones of his wrist.

His dark hair and eyebrows were a near perfect match for the black serge of his winter uniform. Thanks to some skillful needlework on the part of his wife, the uniform did a bit to disguise his oversized frame, as did the speed and agility of his movements. In his youth, Kharitonov had been a fencer. Although he hadn’t touched a saber or a foil in nearly a decade, he’d never lost the quickness and balance he had learned on the fencing floor at Pogosov.

What had happened to the Russia of his youth? A few short years before, the formidable Soviet military had been undefeatable. The vision of worldwide communism had been a foregone conclusion. Now the great Russian military couldn’t even keep the riff-raff from stealing its submarines a piece at a time. How had the mighty Soviet empire fallen so far and so quickly?

Kharitonov checked the temporary dive clock again. Fourteen-oh-five. It was time. He tapped the Watch Officer on the shoulder. “Take the boat to periscope depth.”

The
Kuzbass
had been ordered to rendezvous with a Tupolev TU-142 anti-submarine warfare aircraft based out of Yelizovo air station on Kamchatka. Upon establishing contact, the submarine and aircraft were to conduct a detect and evade exercise. For three hours, the big lumbering bomber-turned-submarine-hunter would pepper the ocean with sonobuoys and crisscross the waves with its magnetic detection equipment in an attempt to locate and track
Kuzbass
. All the while, the submarine would be doing its best to avoid detection by the sensors of the searching aircraft.

The Watch Officer glanced back at Kharitonov and nodded. “Sir, take the boat to periscope depth, aye!” He turned toward the Diving Officer. “Make your depth forty meters.”

The Diving Officer acknowledged the order and repeated it back. Not more than two seconds later, he issued his own order to the Stern Planesman. “Five degree up bubble. Make your new depth four-zero meters.”

The Stern Planesman, Seaman Viktor Petrovich Ermakov, repeated back his orders and pulled back slowly on the steering wheel shaped control yoke. Eyes locked on the plane angle indicator, he leaned slightly closer to the Helmsman seated to his right. “I’m sick of this recycled air,” he said quietly. “In a few moments, I’ll be topside with the kapitan, breathing
real
air for a change!”

Before the official start of the exercise, the
Kuzbass
was scheduled to surface in order to give the sensor operators on board the TU-142 an opportunity to practice using their video cameras and infrared cameras to detect and track a
real
submarine.

Once the boat was on the surface, depth control would be handled by the controlled flooding and pumping of the trim and drain tanks, leaving the Stern Planesman with nothing to do. Aboard the
Kuzbass
, as aboard most Russian submarines, the Stern Planesman became the topside lookout when the sub was on the surface. Which meant that Viktor would soon be up in the conning tower with his commanding officer, enjoying sunshine and non-recycled air.

“
Don’t talk nonsense,” the Helmsman said. “We aren’t more than twenty kilometers from the ice pack. It’s nice and warm down here, but the air up topside will be colder than a Siberian whore.” He chuckled. “Your
sosiska
will freeze and fall off!” A
sosiska
was a thin Russian sausage.

Viktor elbowed his friend in the ribs. “You’ve been drinking the water from the reactor again, haven’t you? You’re hallucinating. My
sardelka
is fat and juicy! It is a man’s sausage!”

The Helmsman snorted. “You’ll see how fat and juicy it is when that cold air hits it.”

Viktor laughed, but kept his eye on the depth readout. He cleared his throat. “Passing sixty meters.”

The Diving Officer nodded. “Very well. Zero your bubble. Take all planes to horizontal. Level off at four-zero meters.”

The Watch Officer pulled a communications microphone from its cradle in the overhead angle irons. “Sonar—Watch Officer, coming shallow in preparation for going to periscope depth. Report all contacts.”

The answer came from an overhead speaker a few seconds later. “Watch Officer—Sonar, we hold three contacts at this time, all evaluated as fishing boats, and all bearing to the South. Target number one, surface, bearing 176 degrees with slow left bearing drift. Target number two, surface, bearing 194 degrees with moderate left bearing drift. Target number three, surface, bearing 212 degrees with slow left bearing drift.”

“
Watch Officer, aye.”

The Watch Officer reached up and grasped the hydraulic control ring that encircled the upper hull penetration for number one periscope. He rotated the control ring about ten degrees to the right. With a muffled thump, the scope hydraulics engaged, and the periscope began to rise from its form-fitting well beneath the deck.

As soon as the optics module slid clear of the deck, the Watch Officer leaned over and flipped the periscope grips into place. A second or so later, when the scope had risen about a meter, the Watch Officer crouched and placed his left eye against the black rubber collar surrounding the eye piece. He followed the still rising optics module, starting from a crouch and turning the scope as he duck-walked his way through an entire 360 degree revolution.

Kapitan Kharitonov observed his Watch Officer’s periscope procedures without speaking, noting with silent approval that the young lieutenant managed to complete a full visual sweep by the time the eyepiece had reached eye-level above the deck and he could stand normally.

The Watch Officer thumbed a control button, increasing the optical magnification of the scope and began a second visual sweep. At forty meters, the head of the periscope was still well submerged, but enough sunlight filtered down to that depth to backlight any sizeable object on the surface of the ocean. The lieutenant was checking for
shapes and shadows
: the telltale silhouettes of any ships or boats floating on the surface.

In a perfect world, sonar would detect any surface vessels well ahead of time, allowing the sub to steer clear, but it’s nearly impossible to hear a boat or ship drifting with its engines cut. In the past, more than a few submarines had collided with quiet surface craft, usually with devastating consequences to both vessels. A little extra caution during this procedure could easily make the difference between safety and disaster.

The Watch Officer increased the magnification of the scope again and conducted a third sweep. When he was finally satisfied that the surface near the submarine was clear of collision hazards, he pulled his face away from the periscope. “Diving Officer, make your depth twenty meters.”

The Diving Officer nodded. “Make my depth twenty meters, aye!” He turned and began issuing orders to the individual watch stations. Five minutes later, he had the boat holding steady at its new depth and trimmed to his satisfaction. “Sir, my depth is two-zero meters.”

Kapitan Kharitonov nodded. “Raise the radio mast.”

The Watch Officer acknowledged the order and flipped a switch on an overhead panel. The muffled whine of hydraulics announced the raising of the radio antenna mast. A green status light illuminated on the panel. The Watch Officer looked at his kapitan. “Sir, the radio mast is deployed and locked.”

Kharitonov nodded. “Very well.” He lifted a radio microphone from its cradle and verified that the channel selector was set to the designated frequency for the exercise. He held the mike to his lips, pressed the transmit key, and spoke. “
Volk-shentnadtsatiy
, this is
Kuzbass
.”

Volk-shentnadtsatiy
, Wolf-sixteenth, was the call sign of the Tupolev TU-142 anti-submarine warfare aircraft that would be attempting to track the
Kuzbass
for the next few hours.

The radio speaker rumbled with static, but there was no reply.

After about a minute, he keyed the mike and tried again. “
Volk-shentnadtsatiy
, this is
Kuzbass
.”

Again there was no answer.

“
We are at the proper coordinates, at the correct time, and on the designated frequency,” Kharitonov said. “Perhaps our esteemed shipmates in naval aviation have forgotten how to locate the ocean.”

Most of the members of the control room crew chuckled.

Kharitonov looked over at the hole where his master dive clock should have been. “Or it could be that some gutless idiot has stolen their clock and they don’t know what time it is.”

There were fewer laughs this time. His men knew that, joking aside, their kapitan was still torqued over the missing clock.

Kharitonov keyed the mike again. “
Volk-shentnadtsatiy
, this is
Kuzbass
. Do you read me?”

This time, there was a response. “
Kuzbass
, this is
Volk-shentnadtsatiy
. I read you clearly.”

Kharitonov’s eyebrows went up. “
Volk-shentnadtsatiy
, this is
Kuzbass
. I am at periscope depth and preparing to surface for your camera and infrared sensor runs. Do you read?”

The reply came almost immediately. “
Kuzbass
, this is
Volk-shentnadtsatiy
. Understand you are at periscope depth. Can you mark your position with a smoke float?”

Kharitonov frowned. A smoke float? If those flying idiots were any good at their job, they wouldn’t need a smoke float to locate a submarine.

He sighed. “Watch Officer, launch a smoke float for our cloud-hopping shipmates.”

The young lieutenant repeated the order and carried it out. “Smoke float deployed, Kapitan.” He grinned. “I used an orange one so they won’t have any trouble finding us.”

Kharitonov returned the grin. “Good thinking, Lieutenant.” He started to key the microphone when an ear-splitting squeal erupted from the radio speaker. He grabbed the gain control and cranked the speaker down to minimum volume. The painful sound was diminished but still audible.

He was about to call for a technician when one of the radiomen stuck his head into the control room. “Sir! Our communications are being jammed!”

Kharitonov’s ears were still ringing, but he heard the man without difficulty. “Are you certain?”

“
Positive, sir,” the radioman said. “We’re getting broad spectrum jamming on all naval communications frequencies.”

“
Understood,” Kharitonov said.

The air crew of that plane really
were
idiots. Obviously one of the operators had hit the wrong button by mistake. No doubt they’d realize the error before long and shut down their jammers.

An intercom speaker crackled in the overhead. “Control—Sonar, torpedo in the water! Repeat, torpedo in the water, bearing zero-four-four! Recommend immediate evasive maneuvers!”

Kharitonov’s brain went into high gear immediately. The torpedo report
had
to be a mistake, but he couldn’t take that chance. “I have the deck,” he shouted. “All ahead flank! Left full rudder!”

The boat heeled over instantly as the Helmsman executed his orders. “Sir, my rudder is full left! All ahead flank!”

“
Very well,” Kharitonov said. “Launch countermeasures!” He paused for a half-second. At flank speed, hydrodynamic force would mangle the periscope and the radio antenna. “Down scope! Retract the antenna mast!”

The deck began to vibrate as the turbines brought the screw up to maximum speed. Something
had
to be wrong with the sonar equipment. The torpedo
had
to be a mistake. But no … he could hear it now, right through the hull, the unmistakable dental drill whine of high-speed propellers. It wasn’t a sonar error. It really
was
an incoming torpedo. The sound was quickly growing to a howl.

“
Countermeasures away!” the Watch Officer shouted.

The intercom speaker flared again. “Control—Sonar, we have startup on a second torpedo! Repeat, we have two inbound torpedoes! Classify both torpedoes as 400 millimeter type UMGT-1!”