100 Fathoms Below

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Even with Roanoke rigged for ultraquiet and moving at a bare three knots, they couldn’t shake the Victor off their tail. The tightness in Tim’s back and shoulders matched the tension that permeated the sonar shack and control room alike. Captain Weber asked him for constant updates, but it was always the same: she was still there, still shadowing them. After a few hours of keeping his eye on the sonar screen, looking for any sign the Soviet sub was leaving the area, he was surprised to see Senior Chief Farrington, the chief of the boat, come into the sonar shack.

“Spicer, come with me,” Farrington said. “Antopol will relieve you.”

Tim got up from his seat, confused. His watch section wasn’t over yet, but Farrington didn’t seem to care. He led Tim out of the sonar shack as sonar tech Antopol arrived to take his place. Tim followed Farrington out of the control room and down the main ladder to the middle level.

“COB, where are we going?” he asked.

“Your presence has been requested,” Farrington replied, and left it at that. He stopped in front of the wardroom and indicated that Tim should go inside.

Tim had never actually entered the wardroom before. It belonged to the officers, not the enlisted men. It was where they usually took their meals together and spent their downtime. The walls were wood paneled, just like the captain’s stateroom, and filled with storage cabinets and shelves full of notebook binders. A rectangular table, long enough to seat twelve, ran down the center of the room. Sitting around that table were all Roanoke’s department heads: Supply, Engineering, Navigation, Operations, and Weapons. He recognized many of the faces, including Lieutenant Abrams from the galley, Lieutenant Carr from Engineering, and Lieutenant Carl French, the weapons officer. Since sonar fell under the umbrella of the Weapons Department, French was technically Tim’s boss, although the two rarely interacted.

Tim paused in the doorway. There had to be some mistake. This didn’t look like a meeting an enlisted sonar tech should be in, but no one looked surprised to see him. Farrington waved him inside, but remained out in the corridor, shutting the door behind Tim.

Captain Weber sat at one end of the table, with Lieutenant Commander Jefferson beside him.

“Spicer, thank you for joining us,” Captain Weber said.

All eyes watched Tim expectantly. He felt his face grow hot. He wasn’t used to being the center of attention, especially not in a roomful of officers. He stood straight and cleared his throat.

“You sent for me, sir?”

“I need to know if the Soviets are aware of our presence,” the captain said. “Is the Victor shadowing us, or is it simply on the same course as us?”

“It’s impossible to know for sure, sir,” Tim said.

“Give me your best guess as an experienced sonar tech, Spicer,” the captain prodded. “Do you believe she knows we’re here?”

Tim took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yes, sir. I believe she does.”

The officers around the table muttered in alarm.

“Sir, if I may?” Tim said over the noise.

“Go on, Spicer,” Captain Weber said. The conversation died down.

“Sir, we’re right at the edge of their passive sonar, but they haven’t pinged us yet. I get the feeling they think they’ve caught us unawares, sir.”

The captain sat forward in his seat. “Explain.”

“They’re running slow and quiet just like us, sir,” Tim said. “I think right now, aboard their boat, they’re having the same conversation we are. They’re asking themselves if we know they’re here. I’m convinced that’s why they’re still using passive sonar instead of active, sir. They’re reluctant to give away their position, in case we haven’t seen them yet.”

“Captain, we should come about hard and nail her,” said Lieutenant French. “They’ll never see it coming.”

Captain Weber glared at him. “Torpedoing a Soviet boat would be an act of war.”

“But, sir, we’re in international waters,” French said. “Following us could be viewed as an act of aggression. We would be defending ourselves.”

“Except, we won’t be in international waters for much longer,” the captain said.

That brought all conversation at the table to a halt. Everyone, including Tim, stared at the captain in surprise.

“Spicer, I’m going to ask you not to repeat anything you are about to hear—not to anyone. From now on, everything said in this room is classified information. The only reason I am allowing you to stay is because I need your help. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Tim said. The words “classified information” gave him an uneasy feeling.

“Gentlemen,” Captain Weber said, “at the start of this operation, I told you this would be a routine reconnaissance op and that we would remain in international waters off the Kamchatka Peninsula. I regret to tell you, that was a necessary half truth. I am not in the habit of keeping details from my officers, unless I believe there’s a good reason for it.

“In this case, due to the sensitive nature of the operation, I was ordered to keep the information on a need-to-know basis. But now, with the Soviets on our tail, I think you need to know. You’ve no doubt heard rumors that the Soviets are looking to replace their outdated Victors with a better class of submarine. What you likely do not know is that there is speculation, based on reliable intelligence, that a prototype of this new submarine already exists and is being tested in the waters near the Rybachiy Nuclear Submarine Base. It’s a sleeker, faster, quieter submarine with an advanced sonar system and, if the intelligence is to be believed, surface-to-air missile capability.”

Tim’s jaw fell in surprise as astonished murmurs went around the table.

“Our orders are to get confirmation of this submarine’s existence,” the captain continued. He looked at Tim. “That includes recording any sonar readings we take, Spicer.”

Tim nodded. “Aye, sir.”

“Gentlemen, the point is this,” the captain went on. “To complete this operation, we have to enter Soviet waters.”

“All the more reason to take out that Victor before it can tell Moscow we’re here,” Lieutenant French persisted.

“I won’t take the risk of giving away our position, French,” the captain replied. “Spicer, am I correct in assuming the Victor is still below the thermocline?”

“Aye, sir, it is.”

“Then they can’t tell Moscow anything,” Captain Weber said. “They won’t dare rise to periscope depth and give away their position. Aside from that, attacking a Soviet submarine would be a sure way to draw the kind of attention we’re trying to avoid. I intend to slip by this Victor without leaving so much as a bubble for it to follow. For that, I will need to rely on your sonar expertise again, Spicer. I want your eyes on the Victor at all times. I don’t want you to so much as blink.”

“Aye, sir,” Tim said.

“Dismissed, Spicer. Farrington will return you to the sonar shack. And remember, Spicer, not a word.”

“Aye, sir,” Tim replied.

He opened the wardroom door and stepped out. Farrington was waiting for him in the corridor and led him back up to the control room. Tim could feel Jerry’s curious gaze on him when he entered, but he kept his eyes forward and went straight to the sonar shack, where he relieved Antopol and resumed his watch. The Victor was still there on the sonar screen, lagging probably four or five miles behind, just where he had left it.

The captain returned to the control room a few minutes later. “Officer of the Deck, rig for deep submergence.”

The OOD picked up the phonetalker and told the crew, “Rig boat for deep submergence.”

The crew had several duties to perform in preparation for deep submergence. All over Roanoke, the massive watertight hatches between compartments were shut and locked with clamps that sealed them tight, dividing the crew into small pockets of men throughout the sub. In the nuclear reactor compartment, engineers checked the seawater pipes for anything that looked abnormal, because if one of them broke and flooding occurred at deep-submergence depth, the intense water pressure would fill the compartment so quickly there would be no time to escape. The engineers would drown, the reactor would malfunction, and the added water weight would drag the sub down to the bottom of the ocean and either implode or trap them there.

Tim shivered at the thought. Sinking was every submariner’s worst nightmare. To die in the dark silence at the ocean floor, with oxygen and food supplies dwindling, knowing you would never see the sky again, never see the sun—nothing else frightened him like that. Not even the awful dark winters of Presque Isle.

“Mark the sounding,” the OOD ordered.

“Mark the sounding, aye, sir,” the quartermaster replied from the navigation electronics station. “Sounding two-three-nine fathoms, sir.”

Tim did the sounding calculation in his head. The ocean floor was 1,434 feet below them.

“Officer of the Deck,” Captain Weber said, “make our depth one-three-zero-zero feet.”

Thirteen hundred feet—Jesus. Roanoke was a Los Angeles–class submarine, which meant their crush depth was 1,475 feet. They would be descending dangerously close to that threshold—closer than he had ever been. Tim felt a bead of nervous sweat break free and trickle down his forehead. It was called “crush depth” for a reason. If a sub went below that depth, the pressure on the outer hull would squeeze it like a tin can, until it finally imploded. The fuel and air tanks would follow suit, as well as the inner hull. A leak on a sub was bad enough, but if the hull broke open, it wouldn’t be a leak; it would be an unstoppable flood of water rushing in at horrifically high pressure. If they were lucky, the air trapped inside the sub would form bubbles at either end, where the crew could gather to slowly suffocate in the dwindling oxygen. If they weren’t lucky, the trapped air would escape out of the broken hull immediately and they would all drown. Either way, everybody died, and neither way sounded pleasant.

“Captain, we’re making five knots and rigged for dive,” the OOD reported.

“Officer of the Deck, dive,” Captain Weber ordered.

“One-three-zero-zero, aye, sir. Diving Officer, submerge to one-three-zero-zero,” the OOD ordered. Then he announced into the phonetalker, “Dive! Dive!”

Once again, because they were rigged for ultraquiet, there was no dive alarm. The floor tilted precipitously as the submarine dived more steeply than before, setting Tim’s nerves even more on edge.

Lieutenant Duncan updated their depth every few seconds. “Seven-seven-five feet, sir… eight-two-five… eight-five-zero… nine-zero-zero…”

At 900 feet, Tim knew, the pressure bearing down on the hull was 400 pounds per square inch. The bulkheads began to creak and squeal. He tried not to think about a beer can getting stomped.

“Nine-two-five, sir,” Duncan continued. “Nine-five-zero.”

“Spicer, any reaction from our friend the Victor?” Captain Weber asked.

“None, sir,” Tim replied, grateful for a chance to focus on something other than the loudly groaning hull. “The Victor is holding steady.”

“Excellent,” the captain said. “Let me know if that changes.”

Tim stared at his screen, wondering what was happening on board the Soviet sub right now. Could she no longer detect Roanoke, or was she just patiently watching them dive?

“One-zero-zero-zero feet, sir,” Duncan reported. “One-zero-five-zero.”

The bulkheads groaned as if the sub itself were in pain. The sound was loud. Too loud. There was no way the Victor, even with its lousy sonar equipment, could fail to hear it. And if the Victor heard them, it would come and investigate. Tim prayed Captain Weber knew what he was doing.

“One two-five-zero,” Duncan reported. “Sir, we’ve reached one-three-zero-zero feet.”

“One-three-zero-zero, aye,” the OOD said.

“Officer of the Deck, make our speed two knots,” Captain Weber said.

They slowed to a crawl, 1,300 feet below the surface of the ocean, just a few fathoms from the floor, in a submerged world that was as dark as a cave. For a few seconds, everything was quiet. And then, suddenly, the blip on the sonar screen began to turn.

“Captain, sir, the Victor is moving,” Tim called.

Captain Weber hurried into the sonar shack. He stood directly behind Tim’s chair, watching the screen.

“They’ve slowed to two knots and executed a turn, sir,” Tim reported.

“They’re trying to find us,” the captain said.

The Soviet submarine moved slowly, practically at a drift. Thirty slow, tense minutes passed as it caught up to Roanoke’s position. Thirty minutes of Tim staring at the sonar screen and tracking the Victor’s bearing. Thirty minutes during which every crewman in the control room sat silently and nervously at his station. Thirty minutes of listening to the hull’s ominous creaks and rumbles.

The Victor floated right above them. Instinctively, Tim held his breath. He looked up at the ceiling as if he might see through the hull to the Soviet submarine above them. Everyone was quiet. The bulkheads groaned. Tim wished he could shut them the hell up.

The Victor passed over Roanoke and kept moving.

Tim let out his breath. “They don’t know where we are, sir. I don’t know how they didn’t hear the hull, but they’re still trying to find us.”

“They heard us; they just can’t find us,” the captain explained. “We’re shielded. I saw it on the charts earlier: an oceanic trench big enough for us to hide in. The only thing their sonar is going to pick up is solid rock.”

Frustrated at losing them, the Victor switched to active sonar and lit up on Tim’s console like a Christmas display. The Soviet sub gave off three loud pings, but the captain was right: all she could detect was the ocean floor. Rigged for ultraquiet and shielded by the trench, Roanoke was impossible to hear. The Victor tried again, and a third time. Still finding nothing, she finally changed course and sailed away.

Captain Weber gave it another hour, just to be on the safe side, but the Victor never came back. When he called off the ultraquiet, Tim and the other techs in the sonar shack cheered and slapped one another on the back. He could hear the sailors in the control room doing the same, and in a brief fit of optimism, he hoped this moment of triumph might make Jerry and Lieutenant Duncan put their differences aside. If anything could inspire them to bury the hatchet, successfully eluding a Soviet submarine in pursuit might be just the thing.

The captain ordered the boat back up to 600 feet, on a bearing north and west. Tim went back to watching his sonar screen, but his elation slowly gave way to worry again. Unlike most of Roanoke’s crew, he knew the truth about the op. The new course the captain had given would take them deep into Soviet territory. And somewhere in those unfriendly waters, a prototype of the Soviets’ super sub was waiting.