Dangerous Ground

15. COLD WELCOME

May 23, 2005

Barents Sea, Southwest of Novaya Zemlya

The next morning Jerry had the six to twelve watch in control. He and Tom Holtzmann arrived punctually at 0545, after their pre-watch tour through the boat, to begin the turnover with Lenny Berg. The relieving process always took some time, so officers were expected to show up at least fifteen minutes before their appointed watch.

Unlike the surface navy, which had four-hour watches followed by eight hours off, the submarine force used a more abusive six hours on, twelve hours off watch rotation. After six straight hours on watch, the brain turns to Tapioca pudding and all one wants is to be relieved on time. Usually, Jerry was paired with another officer who was the same rank or senior to him. But due to his aggressive qualification schedule, Jerry sometimes found himself standing watch with Ensign Holtzmann. Although Tom was junior to him in rank, he had more experience, and was formally qualified to be an OOD.

This meant he controlled the sub’s movements and actions during routine operations, and was responsible for three-quarters of a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money and the 137 souls aboard. If the boat went to General Quarters or some other special evolution, then the Captain would take over. Even if the Captain walked into the control room, Holtzmann would continue to run things, as long as Hardy was satisfied that he was doing a good job.

As the Junior Officer of the Deck, Jerry was learning on the job, backing up his book studies with on-watch time and training under a qualified officer. Eventually, he’d go before a board of Memphis’ officers. They’d question him within an inch of his sanity, and if he satisfied them, he’d be a qualified OOD.

There was no Junior OOD on the earlier midnight to six watch, so Jerry listened as Tom relieved a very sleepy Lenny Berg. Lenny showed Holtzmann their progress on the chart, reviewed the status of the ship’s reactor and engineering plant, and warned him about anything coming up in the next six hours. Some of the information was repetitive, as they had just talked to the offgoing Engineer Officer of the Watch, but a little redundancy is preferred over ignorance. After a few brief questions, Tom relieved Lenny and announced the turnover formally to the new watch section.

Fifteen minutes into what Jerry had expected to be a quiet transit watch, the loudspeaker announced. “Conn, sonar. New contact bearing three zero zero. Designate new contact sierra seven six.”

“Sonar, conn aye,” replied Holtzmann as he and Jerry clustered around the sonar console in control. The console had only a single display, but it could repeat whatever was on the eight displays the sonarmen were looking at.

“Look,” said Tom Holtzmann. “Can you see what it is?” He stepped to one side.

Jerry studied the computer screen, called a “waterfall display” because the older information “fell” toward the bottom of the screen as new data showed up at the top. The video display showed the sounds picked up by Memphis’ passive sonars, some of the most sensitive acoustic instruments ever built. The main passive array was a fifteen-foot sphere mounted at the bow with over twelve hundred transducers. It could also transmit powerful pulses into the water when the sonar went active. Memphis also had groups of passive hydrophones mounted along the forward part of her hull, and the most sensitive of all were the two lines of hydrophones towed behind her at the end of half-mile-long cables.

All the sounds they picked up were collected and displayed as bright green lines or wide spots on a ten-inch by ten-inch video screen. Engineers had learned long ago that humans have a keener sense of sight than hearing and had modified sonar systems to take advantage of this natural fact. The louder the signal, the brighter the spot.

Holtzmann had selected a broadband display that was divided into three separate bands. The top one displayed only a couple of minutes’ worth of data, but it was updated much more rapidly than the other two that showed more information. Every few seconds, a new line of data was added at the top, pushing the older lines down.

A dim series of spots could be clearly seen on the topmost band, while it had just appeared on the middle one below. The displayed noise was fuzzy and wide, like the line left by a felt-tip pen on damp paper. A ship, especially a noisy one, would appear as a sharper, brighter set of lines because a ship has many different pieces of machinery, all making noise. This noise-maker was much more limited, weaker.

The next spot appeared on the left side of the display, now bearing three one zero degrees, to the northwest. That meant it lay to port and behind them. As Jerry watched, a new spot appeared, and seconds later, another. The spots didn’t change in brightness, but the line that they drew was angling sharply to the right. That was important. Whatever it was had a high bearing rate, which meant it was fast and close.

“What do you think it is, Mr. Mitchell?” Holtzmann asked.

The bearing rate was the key. The only thing that moved that fast was an aircraft and the only aircraft in this neck of the woods were Russian ASW planes. “A Bear or May patrol aircraft.” He tried to sound confident. “It’s close, too.”

As if on cue, the loudspeaker squawked back to life. “Conn, sonar. Sierra seven six now bears three one five degrees, drawing rapidly to the right. Contact is classified as a Bear Foxtrot.”

“Good guess, sir. Now tell me how they know it’s a Bear?” Holtzmann inquired as he reached up and changed the display to one that showed narrowband data.

Jerry smiled as he admitted his ignorance. “I know it has something to do with the type of engines, but other than that I haven’t a clue of what I’m looking at here.”

Narrowband sensors look for acoustic noise sources that are tightly confined within a very small frequency range. This kind of noise is produced by machinery that operates in a very regular and repetitive manner — like an aircraft’s engines. Both the Tupolev Bear and the Ilyushin May are driven by four large turboprop engines, but the Bear has huge contra-rotating props on each one. The extra set of blades showed up clearly on the display.

“See these four groups of doublets,” Tom said as he pointed to the close lines on the display. “That signal is the sound of his propellers. Each set of contra-rotating blades generates two frequencies that are really close to each other. Only a Tu-142 Bear Foxtrot has that kind of signature. And if we can hear the sound of his props, then he’s close. What should we do?”

Both planes were armed with ASW torpedoes, although there was no risk of attack this far away from Russian territorial waters. A greater danger was posed by the planes’ suite of ASW sensors. They carried radar, an ESM sensor that could detect other radars, and a short-range magnetic sensor called MAD that could sense the thousands of tons of steel in Memphis’ hull. They also carried dozens of sonobuoys that could be dropped in patterns designed to detect a sub — if the plane’s crew thought there was cause to use them.

Had this plane detected them? Were they responding to a report of a Yankee nuke approaching their waters? Or were they on their way home after a training mission? If Memphis was detected, or if the Russians even suspected there was a U.S. sub in the area, they would flood the area with ships and aircraft.

“Set up a track, and rig for ultra-quiet,” Jerry recommended.

“Should we change depth?” Holtzmann asked.

Jerry thought for a beat, then said honestly, “I don’t know.” Working it though, he reasoned, “If we go deep, we could get a little farther away from his MAD sensor, but if he drops sonobuoys, he’ll put them on both sides of the layer, and we won’t be able to hear him as clearly on the far side of the layer.”

The “layer,” or thermocline, was a sudden change in the temperature of the seawater that partially reflected sound waves. The depth of the layer varied from day to day, but sub sailors always made it their business to know where it was, and to use it to their advantage. Putting the layer between a sonar and the sub was like hiding in the shadows. It didn’t make you invisible, but it did make you harder to spot.

He paused, then said, “I recommend staying at this depth.”

Holtzmann nodded, “Do it.”

Jerry stepped back to the center of the control room. “Helm, all ahead one-third, make turns for five knots. Rig ship for ultra-quiet.” He turned to Holtzmann. “Should we notify the Captain?” As he asked his question, he heard his order echoed over the IMC: “Rig ship for ultra-quiet.”

“We’d be in big trouble if we didn’t,” replied the ensign. He picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Captain, Officer of the Deck. Sir, sonar’s detected a Bear Foxtrot off our port side, drawing rapidly to the right, evaluated as close. We’ve reducing speed and rigging for ultra-quiet.” He paused for a moment, then answered, “Yessir.”

Hardy stepped into the control room moments later. He stopped at the chart table for a moment, then studied the Bear’s track on the fire-control system. Silently, he headed toward the sonar displays as the watch team scrambled out of the way.

The waterfall display now showed about five minutes of track history, a single fuzzy line angling to the right, straight and steady. The Russian was continuing on his way

The Captain returned to the plot table, then the sonar display. He started to speak but caught himself before saying anything. Finally the petty officer manning the fire-control position said, “Contact is past closest point of approach and opening.”

He spoke softly — not a whisper, but not a normal speaking voice either. Jerry noticed that the control room suddenly seemed quieter. He realized that many of the familiar machinery noises were missing from the background. He also felt the boat slowing, a subtle difference in the deck’s vibration.

Hardy also spoke softly. He ordered, “Maintain this speed for thirty minutes after contact is lost, then resume normal speed and secure from ultra-quiet.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Holtzmann acknowledged.

Hardy left, but a minute later the two ladies entered, almost breathless. “What’s ‘ultra-quiet’ mean?” demanded Patterson. “What’s happening?” asked Davis. Concern filled both their faces. Their voices, also full of concern, were raised and sounded harsh in the quiet control room. A soft chorus of “Quiet, please” and “Speak softly” surrounded them. Even Patterson looked embarrassed as the two were hushed.

“It’s just a precaution,” assured Holtzmann. “Sonar picked up a Russian patrol plane and we went quiet to make sure it didn’t pick us up.”

“You mean it almost found us?” Concern grew to alarm on Patterson’s face. She started to speak softly, then forgot as emotion filled her voice.

“No, ma’am, there’s no sign of that. It passed close enough for us to hear it, but there’s no indication it changed course or did anything but continue flying from point A to point B. It’s headed away from us now, but just to be on the safe side, we’ll lay here in the weeds for a while, just in case he did drop a sonobuoy or three.”

“And they can hear us if we speak too loudly?” Emily’s question was a mixture of curiosity and surprise.

“Ma’am, at ultra-quiet, we reduce speed to a creep. This not only reduces the flow noise as the boat’s hull passes through the water, it also lets the engineers shut down some of the machinery. Unnecessary equipment, like some of the ventilation fans, are turned off, and some normal activities, like cooking in the galley, also stop. And all off-watch personnel are supposed to get into their racks and stay there.”

“Like us?” Emily asked.

Holtzmann nodded. “Like you two ladies.”

“And they can really hear us walking around and talking?” Patterson asked.

“It isn’t that the walking and talking are all that noisy.” Holtzmann explained. “It’s that everything else is that quiet. The whir of a fan, the sound of pans clattering in the galley, or a loud conversation may be the first thing they pick up.”

The XO had come in during Holtzmann’s explanation. He checked the fire-control track and the chart, then turned toward the ladies. “This is the part where we lie on our bellies in the mud while searchlights pass overhead. This is where we paint our faces green and merge with the underbrush. If they find us on the way in, it’s going to be harder — a lot harder — for us to get the job done.

“It’s not like it was back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when we had a huge acoustic advantage,” he continued, “and we are heading straight for the Russian Navy’s front yard. Not only is their Northern Fleet headquarters here, but half a dozen sub and surface ship bases and as many air bases. In other words, the entire Northern Feet’s right over there.” He pointed to the southeast.

“Imagine how we’d feel if a Russian submarine went snooping into the Chesapeake Bay. How would our Navy react?”

“It’s going to be hard to type lying down,” Patterson declared resignedly, then left, with Davis following her. As she left, Bair said, “It shouldn’t be too long — this time.”

The signal from the Bear faded completely a few minutes later without changing course. They waited thirty minutes, the tension gone but prudence still in charge, then secured from ultra-quiet. They resumed normal transit speed, but Jerry sensed a different mood in control: not grimmer, but quieter and more focused. From here on they could expect to encounter Russian units at any time.

It was almost the end of his watch before anything else happened to break the quiet. Jerry looked up from his quals book as sonar announced, “Conn, sonar, new contact bearing one six zero degrees. Designated new contact sierra seven seven. Contact is a distant active warship pinging with a medium-frequency search sonar. Probably a patrol craft.”

Holtzmann told Jerry, “You make the report to the Captain this time. I’ll get us quiet.” As he gave the orders to reduce speed and rig the boat for ultra-quiet, Jerry picked up the phone, dialed the Captain, then repeated sonar’s report.

Hardy replied, “Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. What are your recommendations?”

Jerry replied, “Continue on base course, sir.”

“Because a medium-frequency sonar has a relatively short range?” Hardy prompted.

“Yes, sir.”

“Wrong answer, mister!” Hardy’s voice was harsh. “Order a turn to the north right now, new course zero two zero. I’ll be there in a minute. See if you can figure out by then what your mistake was.”

Puzzled, Jerry put down the phone and told the OOD about the course change. Holtzmann let him issue the order and then asked about Jerry’s expression. “I recommended that we stay on course, but the Captain said that was wrong. I don’t understand why. Russian patrol craft all have short-range sonar, and he’s not even close to us.”

“All true,” Holtzmann replied. “But what time of year is it?” he asked.

“Summer,” Jerry answered, confused by the question.

“In the Barents,” Holtzmann continued. “It’s a short summer up here. The weather’s decent, and the Russians cram a lot of exercises into these few months. Now, we know there’s a patrol craft out there pinging, but he’s too far away to be pinging for us. So what’s he pinging for?”

“A Russian sub.” Jerry answered, beginning to understand.

“Exactly,” Holtzmann confirmed. “There’s a decent chance that a patrol ship is getting practice on a live sub or that a sub’s getting practice with a live pursuer, probably both. Now the patrol craft can’t pick us up this far away, but if there’s sub around, then we are in an entirely different ball game.”

Hardy arrived as Holtzmann finished his explanation. “Anything more from sonar, Mr. Holtzmann?” Hardy asked.

“Sonar reports a single pinger only. They evaluate it as a Bull Horn sonar, bearing correlates with a passive sonar contact, possibly a Grisha. But it’s not a single contact. They’re getting several similar passive contacts, all close together, all with a very slow right bearing drift.”

“A group of ASW patrol craft,” Hardy concluded, “with one conducting an active search.” He stepped over to the intercom and pressed the switch. “Sonar, conn. Sort out those passive contacts and make damn sure they are all surface ships. And keep a sharp eye to the south for anything that might not be a surface vessel.”

“Conn, sonar aye” came over the speaker from sonar.

Hardy turned back to face them, but his explanation was for Jerry. “Individually, a Grisha or a Parchim isn’t much of a problem. A couple of short-range sonars, ASW rocket launchers, and ASW torpedoes. We can outrun one or sink it with one torpedo. But they hunt subs in packs, usually in groups of three or four. They spread out in line abreast and march back and forth across a swath two dozen miles wide. They also like to work with ASW aircraft and helicopters. Right now, they’re practicing how to hunt us. We’re going to do our best to avoid giving them a real target to train on.”

Hardy went over to the chart table to check the new course, then the fire-control display. “Mr. Holtzmann, assume an exercise area fifteen miles on a side, centered on the pinger’s current position, then add the detection range of a first-line SSN’s sonars. How wide is the danger zone?” Hardy sounded like he already knew the answer.

“I’ll assume an Akula II with a Skat-3 sonar suite,” Holtzmann answered as he brought up a detection/counter-detection program on the HP computer. “We’re ultra-quiet, so that roughly quarters the noise we are putting into the water.”

He punched in the data, then moved to show the display to Hardy as his finger traced a graph. Hardy shook his head. “Remember, mister, he’s trying to avoid detection as well. Assume he’s ultra-quiet, too.”

Chagrined, Holtzmann punched in the corrections, then followed another line on the plotted graph. Hardy nodded and said, “Add that distance to the size of the box and plot a course around it.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“And then figure out the distance we have to be from the box before we can secure from ultra-quiet.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Jerry and Holtzmann turned over the watch at noon, with the boat creeping north-northeast, away from the Russian exercise area. Lunch was cold cuts in the wardroom, eaten in almost total silence and with Jerry being careful not to scrape his chair across the deck. The two ladies were even more careful than the rest of the crew, speaking in whispers, setting down a glass slowly to prevent any sound.

They secured from ultra-quiet in mid-afternoon, and an almost tangible weight lifted from Jerry’s shoulders. Staying quiet wasn’t a hardship, or even difficult, but it meant being constantly aware and constantly careful. That awareness also included the presence of Russian forces, not really the enemy, but a dangerous and capable opponent.

Jerry came back on watch at six, after eating an early dinner. Although most officers would stand one watch section out of every three or four, Jerry had doubled up to get in the experience he needed in this one patrol. Sleep would have to wait until they got back home.

Memphis was on course and at transit speed, but there was something new on sonar. Lieutenant Commander Ho was OOD this time, and he steered Jerry to the sonar display. “Here’s something new,” he announced.

The waterfall display was filled with bright speckles, like a thin fog. The “fog” lay in front of them, and as he watched it move down the display, it widened slightly. That meant it was filling more of the horizon. They were headed straight for it. Into it.

“It’s the Marginal Ice Zone,” Jerry announced. “We’re picking up the sound of the ice floes as they melt and hit each other.”

“Correct,” replied Ho. “This time of year, you’ve got to go pretty far north to reach it. Implications?”

“Reduced passive detection ranges. And we have to be more careful when using the periscope, or any mast.”

Ho nodded. “And this is just small junk. They weigh less than a hundred pounds apiece. Later we’ll get into the bigger stuff.”

By the middle of the watch, they had entered the Marginal Ice Zone. The waterfall display was covered with tiny white specks, like slow-moving static. Above them, the ocean’s surface was littered with an ever-thickening cover of ice floes and a slushy mix of seawater and small ice chunks. To Jerry, everything felt the same, but now there was a roof on their world.

“The good news is,” Ho explained, “we don’t have to worry too much about Russian ASW aircraft and ships. The bad news is that Russian subs operate under this all the time. Their detection ranges are reduced as well, but they’re used to it.”

Ho continued to lecture Jerry as the watch continued. “We can surface in this stuff, if we had to.” His tone made it clear that they wouldn’t do it casually. “Later on, it’ll be solid pack ice. We can navigate well enough under it, but we can’t surface through that. Some subs can, but we are not, I repeat, not, ice-capable. Late-flight 688’s have bow planes they can retract, but we’d wreck our fairwater planes if we tried to go through solid ice.”

“So what happens if we have a problem?” Dr. Patterson entered the control room from the forward passageway. She’d overheard the conversation.

Ho asked, “You mean the kind of problem where we might need to surface?” His tone was light, but when he saw her expression, his changed as well. “We’ve got air as long as the reactor is working, and even if the reactor failed, the battery will last long enough to get us out of trouble.”

Patterson waved her hands in the air, as if warding off biting insects. “Please, don’t tell me all the precautions because that means you have to tell me what might go wrong. I’m sure you’ve thought it all through, just like NASA. But things don’t always go well for them, either.”

“That must be why they pay us the big bucks,” one of the enlisted men muttered sarcastically.

Ho shot him a hard look, but said, “We do our best and try to be ready.” He shrugged. He turned back to Jerry “I need you to stay alert, Mr. Mitchell. Our charts of the area are less than complete.”

Patterson rolled her eyes, but Ho saw the gesture and motioned toward the chart. “The path we’re taking, especially as we get closer to Russia, hasn’t been traveled all that often by U.S. boats, and we weren’t able to get current charts from the Russian Hydrographic service or AAA. Look at the numbers that show depth, Doctor. See how they run in lines. You can almost see where every U.S. submarine has passed in these waters by following the soundings they took.”

He pointed to their own track, drawn on the chart. “See where we’ve crossed these blank areas? The mapmakers will use our fathometer logs to fill in some of the empty spots and also check to see if there have been any changes. Because the seafloor up here never stays the same.”

Ho looked over at Jerry, standing by the chart table and listening to the conversation. “Mind the gauges, mister.” Mitchell quickly turned back to his watch station.

Dr. Patterson said, “Thanks for the explanation, although I’m no less nervous for knowing why the charts are incomplete. What are the chances of hitting an underwater mountain or something?”

“We watch the fathometer closely,” Ho assured her, “and if the bottom starts sloping, either up or down, we find out why — and quickly. We have a high-frequency mine-avoidance sonar mounted in the sail and on the lower part of the bow that we can use to look for obstacles ahead of or over us, but it’s an active sonar, so we won’t use it unless we have to.”

“And if we do hit something?” she asked.

Ho shrugged. “Depends on what it is. If we strike something head-on, at speed, it would damage the hull and cause injuries inside, since we’re not wearing seat belts. When USS Ray, an old Sturgeon-class attack boat, hit a sea mountain in the Med at flank speed, her bow looked like a stubbed-out cigar. But she managed to limp home.”

Patterson gave Ho a dirty look that told him that she was tired of constantly hearing about the worst-case scenario. Clearing his throat, he quickly moved on to a more likely possibility. “Our biggest fear is that we could scrape our bottom on a shallow spot that isn’t on our charts. Most likely it would only cause minor damage. There’s almost no chance of rupturing the pressure hull. That’s a couple of inches of HY80 steel. It might limit our speed or make us noisier, which would be a real pain. Of course, if the screw or rudder is damaged, then we’d be in a world of. ” Ho stopped talking, suddenly conscious of Patterson’s exasperated expression.

After a small pause, she changed the subject. “How long until we reach the area?” Patterson asked.

“You mean the dump sites?” Ho asked and she nodded.

Ho rummaged through several rolled-up charts and pulled out the same one she’d shown at the briefing after they’d gotten underway. He noted the location of the first dump site and made a pencil mark on the larger navigational chart. He measured the distance from Memphis’ current position and said, “About fifty-five hours at this speed. We should be in position early on the 26th, the day after tomorrow.”

Patterson nodded again, as she followed along with Ho’s explanation. Then hesitantly, she asked, “What will the Russians do if they find us? I mean specifically.”

Ho thought for a moment and spoke carefully. “Pretty much what we’d do, under similar circumstances. They’ll try to track us, filling the area with as many units as they can. The first to arrive will be aircraft, because they’re faster, but they’ll send surface ships out as well. They probably won’t use subs to chase us, because they don’t want to confuse us with one of their own. If they can pin us down long enough, they’ll talk to us over sonar, ordering us to surface and identify ourselves.”

“Not that we’d do that,” Patterson replied. Her tone didn’t match the certainty of her words.

“No, ma’am, we wouldn’t. We’d just keep evading and eventually break away. We couldn’t continue the mission after that, obviously.”

“They wouldn’t try to shoot at us? To keep us from getting away?”

“Outside territorial waters, firing at us would be an act of war. Of course, they view this whole area as their territory, and if we’re skirting the border, they won’t take an exact navigational fix before they shoot. Ships and planes have been lost before doing what we’re doing.”

Ho stopped for a moment, then repeated himself. “Yes, ma’am. If we’re found near their territorial waters, especially within twelve miles of land, they’ll do their best to sink us, and it’s their backyard. They know these waters better than we do, and they’ll have numbers on their side, we can’t even call for help. We certainly won’t shoot back. They’ve got all the angles. We’ve got stealth and surprise. As long as they don’t detect us, we’ll be just fine.”

“So we really are risking our lives on this mission.” Patterson looked thoughtful.

“Yep. Days of boredom punctuated by brief moments of mind-numbing terror.” He smiled. “But it’s going to be a milk run, right?”