Los Angeles Class

14

"Michman Antonov!! Stand ready by the ballast lever!" Unless he could be sure the American was diving, he wanted to be ready to blow ballast and surface.

"Helm! What's happening?"

"Responding, Comrade Captain… but he's as sluggish as a pig…. "

"Engine room! Increase revolutions to twenty knots!"

"Make revolutions for twenty knots, yes, Captain!"

He could actually hear the other vessel now, a steady throbbing pulse transmitted through the bulkheads. Rogov's deck heeled over to port as the Barrakuda class submarine turned hard away from the oncoming American.

"Sonar! Give me bearing and estimated range to the American!"

"Sir, we're deaf. At this speed, I couldn't hear an explosion outside the hull!"

Damn, and damn again!

"Helm! Maintain this turn. I want to come back parallel with the American's new course."

"Da, Comrade Captain!"

The rumbling of the other vessel was much nearer now. He could feel it beneath his boots through the Rogov's steel decking. Jesus Christ… he was passing directly beneath the Ivan Rogov!

The maneuver was easily the match of any pulled earlier that morning during the angles and dangles evolution, a hard left turn at high speed. The hull shuddered, and gave an ominous creaking sound, as the deck tilted sharply underfoot.

Had he guessed right?

"Depth reading, Mr. Carver."

"Eight-five-zero feet beneath the keel, Captain," the Diving Officer reported. "We are now passing two-five-zero feet…."

"Now on course zero-zero-five, Captain."

"Maneuvering! Engine to dead slow. Just give us enough revs to keep us moving."

"Engine ahead dead slow, aye, sir."

Silently the Pittsburgh continued to nose ahead, on a new heading, now, her screw just turning over as she descended into the inky depths northwest of the continental shelf dropoff.

And then… the rumble of the other submarine faded off astern and to starboard, as the Rogov continued his hard, high-speed turn. Dubrynin saw at once what the American had done… lose himself within Rogovs baffles, then change course. He would maintain his sprint for a few moments to get clear… and then…

"Engine room! Slow to eight knots!" Faster than that and they would remain deaf. Damn it all, he needed to hear….

"Eight knots, aye, Captain."

"Sonar! Do you have him?"

"Wait one, please, Comrade Captain."

Seconds dragged on, interminable. Dubrynin found he was sweating heavily, his uniform shirt drenched. "Sonar!"

"Sir, I fear we have lost the American. I cannot register him on any of my screens."

"Lost him! How?"

"Sir, it is only conjecture, but I believe he made another hard, high-speed turn either beneath us or just astern, moving onto a new heading when we could not hear the course change. He then cut his engine and is drifting."

"You mean… you mean he is still close by?"

"Da, Comrade Captain. But close by… where?"

Where indeed? It was a terribly large ocean, and a submarine was a very small chip adrift in all that water.

There seemed to be nothing to do but to break off the pursuit… or to rift and wait, listening.

Dubrynin knew he would never be able to adequately explain simply breaking off the chase.

"Helm, all stop!"

"All stop, da!"

"Maintain current attitude and course. We will drift. Sonar room!"

"Da, Captain!"

"Find the bastard. Find him!"

"Yes, Comrade Captain. We will do our best."

"Never mind your best. Just find him!.. "

"Conn, Sonar."

"Go ahead Sonar."

"Conn, we've just dropped through a thermal. I can't hear Sierra One at all now."

"Very well. Keep listening."

Pittsburgh continued her downward course, sliding now past four hundred feet. The thermal the sonar watch had just reported was a boundary layer between warmer, upper waters and the much colder and less salty waters beneath. Such thermals reflected and bent sound waves in odd ways, creating deep channels that allowed sonar signals to be picked up across hundreds of miles … but also forming shields that allowed a submarine on one side of the layer to remain perfectly invisible to a searching boat on the other. At six hundred feet, she leveled off, continuing to move gently north.

"Sonar, Conn. Did you get anything during our pass?"

"Just a little, Captain," Rodriguez replied, "just before you put the pedal to the metal. Got enough to get a make on him from the library. He's a Sierra II, probably number three in the class."

"Pretty good work, pegging him as a Sierra from the initial contact!"

It was a weak joke. All initial sonar contacts were identified as "Sierra," with a sequential number listing the number of contacts through the course of the mission. It was pure coincidence that the boat following them was also a

Sierra… in NATO's international signal alphabet nomenclature for Soviet submarines.

But he heard Rodriguez chuckle. "Actually, I heard her skipper jingling loose change in his pocket. Only Sierra skippers do that…. "

"Okay, Rodriguez. You tell me if you so much as hear anyone sneeze back there."

"Aye aye, sir. We are commencing sneeze watch."

An hour passed, dragging by slowly, with nothing to break the monotony, though in this case, nonevent was definitely good. The longer they eluded the Sierra's questing ears, the more likely they were to get away unheard.

The bad guys could still catch them if they decided to dive below the thermal. Gordon knew better than to try to outdive the other boat. A Los Angeles class submarine had an operational depth of just under 1500 feet… and a maximum depth, the "crush depth," so endearingly named, of 2460 feet. Recent Soviet designs, however, their Alfa interceptor, the Akula, and the Sierra II, were capable of reaching extreme depths… partly because of the aluminum-hull designs pioneered by the Alfas and Akulas, but possibly, too, because they were willing to push the engineering envelope a bit more than were American submariners. Sierras were thought to have operational depths of six hundred meters, nearly two thousand feet… with a maximum depth of a thousand meters, or over thirty-two hundred feet.

There were some voices in the Pentagon who felt that the Sierras, which didn't have the aluminum-hull construction of the Alfas and Akulas, probably had operational depths of no more than 450 meters, about the same as a Los Angeles. Gordon wasn't about to test that theory, though, especially since Sierras almost certainly had towed arrays that could be lowered through deep thermals to detect submarines hiding below them. Whether the Sierra up there went sub-fishing that way, or came down to pay them a personal visit didn't really matter. Now that Gordon had the other guy off his tail, it was a simple matter to choose a depth and remain silent or nearly so, knowing that the other skipper's chances of picking them up again under these circumstances were very slim indeed.

An hour passed… and then two. Eventually, Gordon gave the order to increase revolutions to twenty knots, and the Pittsburgh accelerated, coming onto a new course, headed northwest.

Dubrynin had been forced at last to admit that the American had slipped away. After three hours of careful searching, including dives to five hundred meters to search beneath the thermal layer, he'd turned up nothing more interesting than some migrating gray whales.

The American had dived beneath the thermal, then slipped away at three or four knots, making so little noise the Rogov had not had the ghost of a chance of hearing.

Long experience had taught Dubrynin that American submarine captains were good; this one, he thought with wry admiration, was fucking fantastic.

There would be a rematch. He would find this American captain again, and the next time, he would be ready for the encounter.

"Up planes, ten degrees," he ordered. "Bring us to periscope depth."

Nubriev, the political commissar, looked at him curiously. "What are your plans, Comrade Captain?"

"Plans? What is there to plan? We will go to periscope depth, raise a mast, and report to Petropavlovsk that we have lost the target. We will tell them that the American is on the way, and that we will be there to intercept him in the Sea of Okhotsk, as written in our orders."

"You think, then, that we can still catch this American?"

"We know where he is going, Comrade Nubriev. And we will be there waiting for him when he arrives.

"What more do we need to know?"

The gray shape of the Ivan Rogov slid upward toward the distant light of day.

"Gentlemen," Gordon said. "Thank you for coming."

"Like we had a choice?" Master Chief Warren said, and the others laughed. They were in the Pittsburgh's Wardroom, a compartment almost filled by the dining table, with booth chairs around two of the bulkheads. This was where Pittsburgh's officers took their meals, and where ship's business was conducted when it required the presence of more than three or four people. Gordon's stateroom — a compartment smaller than most American jail cells — usually served as the Captain's Office, but larger gatherings simply demanded space enough to allow breathing.

This time, there were six present besides Gordon — Latham; Carver; Walberg; the Navigation Officer, Lieutenant Sean Garrison; the Engineering Officer, Lieutenant James Ostler; and Master Chief Warren as the representative of the enlisted crew. The final member of the assembly was the civilian spook who'd identified himself only as "Mr. Johnson," almost certainly a pseudonym. Bearded, balding, and pinch-faced, he looked wildly out of place in blue coveralls, a garment worn by boat officers and universally known as a "poopie suit."

With the seven of them around the table, Gordon couldn't help but think that if anyone yelled "Fire!" they were all going to be in very serious trouble.

"First of all," Gordon told them, "I want to thank each of you for a job very well done. Brushing off that Sierra earlier was a bit rough as a shakedown. The men did a superb job. Fred, COB, I'd like you both to pass along my 'well done.' "

"Will do, sir," Fred Latham said.

"Sure thing, Skipper," Warren added. Latham, as the boat's XO, was responsible for everything that happened within her bulkheads. As such, he was the official link between captain and crew within the Navy's chain of command.

The Chief of the Boat, however, as the senior enlisted man on board, was the practical, day-to-day link between the men and the officers. Most enlisted men would go to Warren with a problem before they would approach an officer, and a "well-done" from him often meant more than the XO's formal benediction… or even he personal thanks of the captain.

Gordon turned and punched up the combination to the wardroom safe. Inside was a manila envelope, tied shut with string and sealed by a DOD secret sticker.

"Orders, gentlemen. We all know more or less what's happening. They briefed me, and I briefed you. But these will give us the specifics."

The COB handed him a penknife. He broke the seal and opened the envelope. He pulled out the top sheet and began to read aloud.

"What the hell is NURO?" Lieutenant Walberg wanted to know.

"Naval Underwater Reconnaissance Office," Latham said. "It's a scam."

"What makes you say that?" Gordon asked.

"It's theoretically a fifty-fifty operation between Naval Intelligence and the CIA, only the Agency's always able to buy the pot."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's supposed to be a joint venture, Naval Intelligence and CIA, right? Headed by the CNI, with the CIA's

DDO as his number two, and roughly equal numbers of personnel, CIA and Navy. But it's actually almost all CIA, using Navy assets and money."

"Cute," Walberg said.

"Sure. The CIA pulled the same trick back in the sixties when they set up the NRO, the National Reconnaissance Office. It was supposed to allow the sharing of intel from Air

Force spy satellites. But where the Air Force couldn't afford to put that many people into the new program, the CIA could send all it wanted. Before long, the NRO was turning out good intel, but it was all Central Intelligence Agency stuff … and the Air Force was paying for a lot of it."

"You're saying the CIA is doing the same thing here?" Warren asked.

"Of course. NURO is run by the Chief of Naval Intelligence, but he can't afford that many people to operate the place. But the Agency's always happy to help out. Isn't that right, 'Mr. Johnson'?"

Johnson didn't meet Latham's gaze. He appeared to be intensely interested in the piping of the overhead in the far corner. "I wouldn't know about any of that," he said. "But I submit that this subject is not one for public discussion."

"Come on, Mr. Johnson," Ostler said, grinning. "No secrets here."

"The organization and purview of NURO is a matter of national security," Johnson said, "and not a matter for public debate."

"Is it national security?" Latham asked with a bitter quirk to his mouth, "or is it that the Agency just doesn't want any more oversight?"

"Come on, people," Gordon said. "We're supposed to be on the same side. Sean? You have the charts?"

"Yes, sir," Pittsburgh's Navigation Officer said. Alerted ahead of time by Gordon, he'd brought along an aluminum carry tube containing several charts. Pulling them out and unrolling them on the table, he pointed to the first one, which showed the pearl-string line of the Kuril Islands, from Cape Lopatka at the tip of Kamchatka all the way to Hokkaido.

All of the charts were marked SECRET. Normally, they would be kept covered by a blotter, and revealed only to select members of the boat's crew. Gordon glanced at Johnson, suppressing as he did so a momentary twinge of distrust. The man's security clearance was astronomically higher than Gordon's. Still, a submariner's ingrained worship of security, his unwillingness to share anything with outsiders, was tough to overcome.

"Okay," Garrison said. "The Chetvertyy Kuril'skiy Proliv is this gap in the Kurils, between Paramusir and Onekotan. Deep-water channel… averaging five hundred feet. It's one of the main entrances into the Sea of Okhotsk… which worries me a bit. I'm wondering why our orders are so specific about where we go through."

"It's the northernmost deep-water channel through the Kurils," Gordon said, arms folded, "and the closest to a direct-line course for us coming down the great circle route along the Aleutians. However, I'm not going to worry too much about that line in the orders, gentlemen. Captain's discretion. If there's too much traffic at that entrance, if I so much as get a bad feeling about what's there, then we go south… to this passage north of Raykoke, or even all the way to the Proliv Bussol'. You might have those charts ready, Sean, just in case."

"Aye, sir. Already have 'em pulled."

"Good man."

"Once into the Sea of Okhotsk, things aren't so bad," Garrison continued, opening another, larger chart. "We've been there before. No surprises. We have this nice, deep arm of the sea running northwest toward Ostrov Iony — that's 'Saint Jona's Island,' though the Soviets don't recognize saints. Brings us up to the northern tip of Sakhalin.

"Here's where it'll get hairy, though. Sakhalin Island is this long, skinny one right running north-south right off the Siberian coast. At its closest, here at Lazarev, the Tatarskiy Strait is only a few miles wide. There are rumors — unconfirmed — that Stalin had slave labor digging a tunnel between the mainland and Sakhalin during World War II. It's narrow.

"North of there, we have this big, circular bay between northern Sakhalin and the northern tip of the Maritime Provinces. Sakhalinskiy Zaliv — Sakhalin Bay — is about eighty miles across, wide-open to the north… but it narrows sharply to the northern opening of Tatarskiy Strait.

There's an underwater oil pipeline here, at Puir, connecting Nikolayevsk and the North Sakhalin oilfields at Okha. Water depth is estimated at forty to fifty feet, depending on the local tides.

"Puir is here, right on the opening to the Tatarskiy Strait. Nothing much there. Pipeline and communications facilities. Probably some small naval facilities. Lord knows what the SEALs are supposed to do there."

Johnson was still studying the overhead piping, Gordon noticed.

"Now, right around the Puir headland is the mouth of the Amur River," Garrison continued. "And ten miles up the Amurskiy Liman — the Amur Estuary — is the city of Nikolayevsk-na-Amure. Major port. Major naval facility. Major shipbuilding complex. Very heavily guarded. They obviously chose the placement of their sensitive naval facilities to make it damned difficult for us to slip in and photograph it from a periscope. We have some fair satellite photographs of the area, of course, but almost no data on the underwater topology, depths, presence of ASW nets or minefields, that sort of thing."

"That close to Nikolayevsk," Gordon said, thoughtful. "ASW coverage and coastal patrols are going to be a bitch." He looked at Johnson. "And we have to sit there in shallow water for two days?"

"How deep's the water north of this Bolsoje place?" Carver wanted to know.

"Bolsoje Vlasjevo," Garrison said. "Depending on how close ashore we get… seventy, maybe eighty feet."

"Shit," Carver said. "That's practically periscope depth!"

"We're gonna be a damned cockroach on a dinner plate," Warren added.

"That's going to be another captain's discretion," Gordon said. "I don't see why we can't come in and drop off our packages at midnight, then move back up here to the north, where we have some maneuvering room."

Johnson gave him a hard look at that. "Your orders, Captain, are to wait for us until we're done doing what we have to do ashore."

"My first order is to support you and yours, as well as Lieutenant Randall's SEALs, to the best of my ability without compromising the safety of this vessel."

"If you got into trouble while you were joyriding off somewhere in the Sea of Okhotsk," Johnson said, angry, "you wouldn't be able to come back in and pick us up!"

"If we get spotted by a Russian Krivak," Gordon said evenly, "or if we trip a seabed sensor, we're not going to be able to pick you up either, because we will be dead."

"Damned straight," Latham said.

"We'll be there to pick you up, don't worry," Gordon told the NURO spook. "I can promise you that our moving into deeper water will not increase the chances of our being caught. Quite the opposite, in fact."

"I thought you could just sit on the bottom," Johnson said.

"Not in an LA boat," Carver told him. "We have thrusters and we have delicate sonar equipment on our keel. We can hover pretty close above the mud, but we can't go sit on the bottom like a Sturgeon or an old World War II boat. No way."

"The bad part of it, sir," Warner said, "is that if we're right down near the bottom in seventy foot of water, the top of our conning tower is about twenty feet deep. On a bright, sunny day, an aircraft flying overhead would see us like a big, dark, cigar-shaped shadow under the water."

"Like the man said," Gordon added, "a roach on a dinner plate. Kind of easy to notice, know what I mean?"

"I will protest this violation of your direct orders," Johnson said.

"You go right ahead and protest, Mr. Johnson. We're specifically forbidden from making radio contact with anyone, except for the signals protocols in these orders. Hell, we're not even going to be able to allow the crew Family-grams this time out. So you just write down your protest, put it somewhere safe, and deliver it to the proper authority when you get back to Mare Island!"

"The SEAL operations in the Tatarskiy Strait may require our presence," Latham reminded them. "We'll need to coordinate with the SEALs, to see how far we can withdraw back into open water. But," he added, looking at Johnson, "I agree that we cannot remain in shallow water during daylight hours."

"We're going to be busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest," Gordon observed. "But we can do it. Do the rest of you concur with the plan, as revised?"

The others nodded or voiced their agreement. It wasn't as if the command of Pittsburgh was anything close to a democracy, of course, but Gordon believed in letting his officers participate in the command process as far as was possible.

"Okay," he went on. "What do we know about this Mike?"

The COB leaned forward, eyes eager. He was always at his best when he could show off some portion of his encyclopedic stores of knowledge, everything from specs on other submarines to tall, tall sea stories. "Well," he said with an easy drawl, "that's a bit of a challenge, isn't it, sir? Your Mike is a pretty sharp boat, if half of what we think we know about her is true. She's a direct descendent of the Alfa, and that means trouble right there. Aluminum hull, we think. Liquid-sodium reactor… and that would be second or third generation, not the crap that screwed up their very first Alfa prototype.

"Four hundred feet long, overall. Thirty-nine-foot beam. Seven thousand eight hundred tons' displacement on the surface, and about ninety-seven hundred tons submerged. Big sucker, bigger than us. Biggest SSN in the world except for the Soviet Yankee, and that's because it's a converted SSBN, a boomer. Top speed unknown, but probably in the neighborhood of thirty-six to thirty-eight knots underwater, a bit slower on the surface."

"Bigger than us, and faster," Carver said, thoughtful.

"The bad news," Gordon said, "is that the Mike is significantly quieter than earlier Soviet subs. Sounds like they worked the bugs out of the Alfa's noisy propulsion plant. It's at least as quiet as a Flight I Los Angeles, and that means big trouble."

"I find it fascinating," Latham said, "that the Soviets are experimenting with so many different designs. We're pretty much locked into the Los Angeles class attack boat, which is a direct follow-on from the Sturgeon and Permit classes. We're modernizing the same design, with Flight II boats like the 'Burgh, and we'll have it again when the Flight III boats come on-line, but all of the LAs are basically the same. The Soviets, though, have the Alfas, Sierras, versions I and II, Akulas, and now this new Mike. Must be nice to be able to throw money at any military project that comes down the pike."

"Well, a lot higher of a percentage of their gross domestic product goes to the military, you know," COB said. "I guess we could do the same, if the American people didn't also want paved roads, social security, and free-lunch programs at school."

"Screw that," Ostler said. "Soviet boats are meltdowns waiting to happen. Everyone knows the U.S. has a perfect operating record with sub reactors. The Russkis have lost… how many,now?Two?Three?That we know about? At least ours wort"

"Gentlemen, let's attend to the business at hand," Gordon said, dragging the conversation back on course. "Do you have any comments about… this?" He waved a hand above the charts of Sakhalin Bay, taking in the whole mission, and its dangers.

There was no reply for several heartbeats. "It's a bitch," Warner said at last. "A royal, fucking-A-one bitch."

"Second that," Latham said. "Someone back in the Five-Sided Squirrel Cage is living in a dream world."

"Is it your opinion that the mission is impossible, XO?"

"Not… impossible, sir…. "

"But highly improbable," Garrison put in. "We're going to be in a tight box, in shallow water, and exposed for a lot longer than is healthy."

"Can we do it?" Gordon pressed. "I'm the newcomer here, remember. Captain Chase knew this boat cold. He knew each of you and the people in your departments. I can't imagine him accepting an order that he knew to be flat-out impossible… for their sake. I need your honest assessments."

"You're not thinking of turning back…." Johnson said, his brow creasing. "This mission is important."

"I'm sure it is, Mr. Johnson. So are the lives of my men. So is the safety of this submarine, which, incidentally, is my responsibility. No nuke-driver accepts suicide missions. It's not in the job description."

"We can do it," Garrison said, peering again at the Sakhalin Bay chart. "// we can move in and out of this shallow area, so we're not sitting there in plain sight in the daylight. And if we can avoid their seabed sonar nets and any other surprises they've rigged for us."

"The boat is up to it, certainly," Latham said.

"And the crew," Warren added. "They're hot, prepped, and eager to please."

"Maneuvering is in A-one condition, Captain," Ostler said. "But you knew that."

Gordon nodded. He'd been making almost daily inspections of the engineering department for the past two weeks.

"Please God we won't need them," Walberg said, "but the Tomahawks and Mark 48s all test out optimal. We've got teeth, if we need them."

"As you say, let's hope it doesn't come to that. Okay, gentlemen. Thank you for your input. This mission is a go."

He thought now that he knew what Caesar had felt while crossing the Rubicon.

There was no going back now.