Los Angeles Class

23

"Torpedo is arming itself!" Rodriguez's voice called over the intercom. "I repeat, torpedo is running hot! Range one-three-five-zero yards and closing!"

"Helm!" Gordon called. "Maintain turn to starboard!"

"Maintaining turn to starboard, aye, sir."

The kid at the helm control sounded as cool as the water outside Pittsburgh's hull.

"Torpedo has gone active!" Rodriguez reported. "Active pinging." A pause. "Torpedo has acquired target. Bearing now two-three-five, almost directly astern!"

"Maneuvering!" Gordon snapped. "Ahead full! Let's race this thing!"

"Conn, Maneuvering. Ahead full, aye, sir."

"Depth beneath keel?"

"Eight-five feet beneath keel, Captain," Lieutenant Carver announced.

"Damn, this beach is barely damp," Gordon said, keeping his voice light. "Let's find us some open water, shall we?"

"Aye aye, sir!" Carver replied.

Faster… faster … Gordon bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, willing the huge boat to move faster.

The torpedo had suddenly appeared on the sonar screens, fired from about a mile away and almost dead abeam off the port side. Gordon had immediately ordered the sub into a hard turn to port, away from the torpedo. His guess was that it had been launched either from another helicopter or from one of Randall's crawler subs… most likely the latter. Had it been launched that close from another sub — a real sub, not one of those tracked toys — he might have tried turning into the torpedo to get inside its arming range, but this fish would have a short arming range, making that a dangerous tactic indeed. And he'd guessed right; the torpedo had armed itself long before Pittsburgh could have closed the range.

If it was a 406mm torpedo, it meant a battery-driven motor and a relatively short range. His only hope was to outrun the thing, and that meant speed….

"Conn, Maneuvering. Now making turns for three-five knots."

"Give us all you can, Chief."

"Will do, sir." Pittsburgh's stated top speed was thirty-plus knots submerged. In fact, she could manage thirty-five and, for short spurts only, could stretch that to something just shy of forty.

"Sonar, Conn! Give us a countdown on the torp."

"Aye, sir. Torpedo now at seven-zero-zero yards, and closing. Estimate speed at six-five knots!"

As a kid, Gordon had always hated word problems in math class, the sort of imbecilic nonsense that had trains leaving from different stations so many miles apart at different times and traveling at such and such a speed, and at what time would they pass one another? Several times, he'd rewritten the problem so that the trains wouldn't pass, but collide in a satisfactorily fiery explosion… which hadn't exactly endeared him to the teacher.

Here at long last was a practical application of those problems. The Russian torpedo was following the Pittsburgh, coming right up her ass. If the 'Burgh was moving at thirty-five knots and the torpedo at sixty-five knots, the torpedo obviously was closing the range at thirty knots… about thirty-four and a half miles per hour.

Didn't seem like much… a slow cruise through town in a car. But at that speed it would cover seven hundred yards in a bit over…

"Forty seconds to impact," Rodriguez warned.

"Stand by the CM dispenser, COB."

"Ready to release countermeasures," Warren replied.

"Five hundred yards. Thirty seconds to impact."

Gordon closed his eyes, picturing the moving sub, the faster-moving torpedo homing now on active sonar. Countermeasures gave them a chance.

In World War II, the German U-boat skippers had perfected the use of bubble decoys. Pillenwerfer, they'd called it, the "pill-thrower," firing a capsule that released a dense cloud of bubbles that shielded the submarine from a surface ship's sonar or ASDIC.

Techniques and technologies were much improved nowadays. Torpedoes carried their own active sonar, allowing them to lock onto the target submarine and follow it.

Modern countermeasures were devices dropped from special launchers amidships and allowed to drift into a submarine's wake, generating a cloud of bubbles… and noise. That noise could mask the propeller noise of the sub, and confuse the people steering a wire-guided torpedo. And for an actively homing fish like this one, it could block and scatter the torpedo's homing pings, causing it to lose its target momentarily.

The key word was "momentarily." As soon as the torpedo punched through the bubbles, it would begin searching for a target once again, and was usually programmed to circle the area until it reacquired.

"Three-zero-zero yards! Seventeen seconds to impact!"

Eyes still closed, Gordon continued to visualize the encounter, the torpedo less than three boat lengths astern. If that seventy-kilogram warhead detonated on or near Pittsburgh's cruciform tail, her screw would be destroyed, and her rudder and stern planes. She would have to blow ballast and surface, then wallow helplessly until Soviet surface vessels arrived to take her in tow. If she flooded and went down instead, she would end up resting in less than two hundred feet of water, an easy recovery operation for the Russians.

"Fifteen seconds to impact! Fourteen… "

"Release countermeasures!"

"Twelve …"

"Countermeasures away, sir!"

"Maneuvering! Give me everything you've got!"

He kept visualizing, counting silently to himself. He needed to allow time for Pittsburgh's length to slide all the way through the bubbles now exploding up and out… a cloud hanging in place while the submarine continued to move forward at just over thirty-five knots.

"Ten!.. Nine!.. "

"Helm! Hard left rudder! Now!"

"Hard left rudder, aye, sir!"

"Seven!.. Six!.. "

The deck tilted sharply beneath Gordon's feet, and he reached out to cling to one of the periscope housings. This was as bad as angles and dangles; Pittsburgh was literally heeling far over onto her port side as she made the turn. There was a sharp clatter and crash as someone's coffee cup skittered off a surface and smashed on the deck. A deeper, hollow sound, a groan of stressed metal, echoed from above the control room.

"Conn, Maneuvering! We're at one hundred fifteen percent on the reactor! Making turns for three-eight knots!"

"Conn, aye. Helm! Maintain hard left rudder! All hands! Brace for collision!"

"Three!.. Two!.. One!.. "

Gordon looked up toward the overhead, waiting. "Plus one!" Rodriguez announced. "Plus two! Sir! He missed!"

"Keep on it, Sonar! Tell me which way it circles!"

"Sonar, aye! But it's getting hard to hear anything out there!"

The torpedo had punched through the cloud of bubbles, emerging to find the target looming just ahead of it… gone. Its computer brain would have a simple search pattern loaded aboard… a circle to either left or right, and possibly a change of depth as well, though in these shallow waters that probably wasn't necessary and could be ignored.

"COB. What are the stats on a Russian 406?"

Warren didn't even need to access the boat's warbook. "It'll be either an M1962 or an M1981."

"Assume the worst."

"M1981. Seventy-kilogram warhead. Maximum effective range six nautical miles. Top speed about thirty knots."

"That's what I thought." He'd been surprised by the torpedo's speed, but hadn't had time to think about it. Soviet 406mm ASW torpedoes were too small to mount the big and complex Stored Chemical Energy Propulsion System — SCEPS — of an American Mark 46, a pump-jet system that gave it a top speed of over fifty knots. They were powered by batteries, which made them slow and short-ranged for most ASW situations.

This fish was moving at better than twice an M1981's speed. The question was… what kind of propulsion system did it have, and had there been a trade-off in range? The older Soviet M1962s could travel three nautical miles before running out of juice, an M1981 about six.

That fish out there could burn through the water at twice the speed of earlier 406s, but you couldn't get something for nothing. There had to be a trade-off somehow … in speed, performance, or payload. Which was it?

"Conn! Sonar! I think we have aspect change on target! Torpedo turning to starboard!"

Gordon allowed himself a small, inner sag of relief. The torpedo could have gone left or right, port or starboard, the tossing of a coin. Had it turned port, in the same direction as the Pittsburgh, its higher speed would have taken it in a much larger circle, bringing it back around on a new heading, directly toward the 'Burghs bow. To counter, he would have had to turn inside the torpedo's turning radius, which would have put it on the Pittsburgh's tail once again.

If it was turning to port, however, it would describe the same big circle, but clockwise instead of counterclockwise… and since Pittsburgh was already heading away from it at almost forty knots, by the time it reacquired—if it reacquired — the American sub would have a tremendous lead.

"Conn, Sonar! We're cavitating!"

"Understood, Sonar." Pittsburgh was traveling so swiftly that vacuum bubbles were momentarily forming on the surface of the rapidly spinning screw, then collapsing, creating a characteristic sound that could be easily heard by others. Even without the cavitation, Pittsburgh was putting out a lot of noise as she raced north through the water, so much noise, in fact, that her own sonar was almost deaf. Rodriguez had been able to track the torpedo, thank God, because it was close and loud, but he wouldn't be able to hear much of anything else.

But he wanted to put as much distance between Pittsburgh and that 406 as he possibly could.

Minutes passed, as the Pittsburgh continued to race toward the north.

"Conn, Sonar. Sorry, sir, but we're deaf as a post in here. I lost the torpedo."

"Not to worry, Sonar," Gordon replied. "Keep listening in case it gets close again."

"Aye aye, sir. But at this speed, and with it coming up our baffles, it'll be point-blank before we can pick it up."

"Understood. Stay on it."

"Aye aye, sir."

Latham caught his eye. "You like giving impossible orders, don't you, Captain?"

"Not impossible, Number One. Just improbable. And nothing this crew can't handle." He said it deliberately and loudly. By the beginning of the next watch, the enlisted personnel in the control room would have spread his words throughout the boat, a far more effective form of praise, in Gordon's opinion, than some sort of pat, "well-done-men" speech.

He checked the big clock on the forward bulkhead. The torpedo had been in the water six minutes now … long enough to have covered over six miles. Unless the Russians had developed some sort of super high-tech wonder-motor, chances were the 406's batteries were exhausted by now, and the fish was floating on the surface.

He ordered Pittsburgh's speed brought back down to thirty knots, but held it there for another five minutes, just to be sure. By that time, they were well across the twelve-mile line and out into what were technically international waters.

Then he ordered the speed cut yet again, this time to a near-silent eight knots, and after a few minutes more, he ordered the Pittsburgh to be brought onto a new heading… of zero-one-five. That would take them past Mys Yelizavety, the northernmost cape of Sakhalin, fifty miles distant, and get them clear of this damned tight, shallow bowl.

At eight knots, it would take them just over six hours.

Lieutenant Gennadi Lemzenko, Krasnoyarskiy's Navigation Officer, placed the parallel rule on the chart and extended a green, grease pencil line across the paper. "At ten knots," he said, "five hours. If they slowed to eight knots to be certain of silence, more like six and a quarter."

Captain First Rank Anatoli Vetrov studied the tangle of straight lines, dots, and curves littering the chart of the Sakhalinskiy Zaliv. The American submarine had been fired upon there … probably by one of the Spetsnaz crawler subs the Fleet had deployed throughout the southern reaches of the Zaliv. The Krasnoyarskiy Komsomolets, now hovering virtually motionless 130 kilometers north of the action to allow his sonar the chance to listen carefully, had picked up the unmistakable sound fingerprint of the big Los Angeles when its captain had boosted its speed to over thirty-five knots and hurled it into a series of tight turns, attempting to outmaneuver the torpedo. For several minutes, the Krasnoyarskiy had listened to the deep Convergence Zone channel as the American vessel had sped north at high and noisy speed.

And then… the Los Angeles sub had simply dropped off the Krasnoyarskiy's sonar screens, becoming, once again, invisible.

"That is his new course," Vetrov said with confidence. "Zero-one-five … or close to it." He brought a pair of calipers down on the grease line on the chart, just north of Mys Yelizavety. "We will catch him here."

Salekhov, his Exec, looked dubious. "That may be a bit too simple, Comrade Captain. The American could have kept moving north. We may have lost him as he left the convergence zone."

"No. His mission here is over, and the sooner he gets out of the Sea of Okhotsk, from his perspective, the better. Once he clears Sakhalin, he will have a straight run southeast to one of the northern Kuril channels." He used the calipers to walk out a course from Cape Yelizavety to the Chetvertyy Passage south of Paramusir. "That's nine hundred kilometers … or a bit more. That's four days at a quiet ten knots. Thirty hours at speed." He walked the dividers again, this time tracking south down the east coast of Sakhalin. "It is two hundred fifty to three hundred kilometers farther if he makes for La Perouse Strait or one of the southern Kuril passages. That's an extra five hours if he's running at full speed, fifteen hours at ten knots. In any case, it hardly matters." The calipers came down once again off Cape Yelizavety. "Here is where we will take the bastard! Before he must choose whether to go southeast, or south."

"I actually was concerned about him maintaining a northerly course," Salekhov said. "By running silent, he could follow the curve of the coastline up as far as Magadan, before cutting across the center of Okhotsk and making for the Kuril channels. It would be the smart move, avoiding any obvious way points where he might expect an ambush… such as the northern tip of Sakhalin, for example."

"Nyet. He must know that the entire Soviet Fleet in this region will be hunting for him, and he knows or has guessed that we have seabed sonar arrays everywhere. He runs too great a risk to remain in Okhotsk for even one extra day when he doesn't need to."

"You are right, of course, Comrade Captain."

"Good."

"There is also the possibility that our Fleet will find them first. The possibility of their passing close by Mys Yelizavety must have occurred to Admiral Andryanov and his staff as well."

"Bah. Fools! You notice how they botched the transit time for the American vessel from San Francisco to Okhotsk? I swear, I think they forgot about the Date Line! And this American captain is good. To have evaded our torpedo at close range, he must be good, and with a good crew.

"But we are better."

"Da, Comrade Captain."

"There will be elements of our fleet in the area, no doubt, but the American will be using them for cover. We will need to move in close and listen carefully to ferret him out. We may be able to pick him up when he makes a dash from cover."

"Yes, sir."

"Now. We are … one hundred thirty-five kilometers from Cape Yelizavety. To reach this point in five hours, we must increase speed to twenty-seven kilometers per hour. A snail's pace, Felix! They will never hear us coming!"

"No, sir."

"Helm! Come to one-seven-zero degrees! Maneuvering! Make turns for twenty-seven kph! We are going to catch ourselves a very big fish indeed!"

Silently, the Russian attack submarine accelerated, heading south now at a fifteen-knot crawl.

"Which way out of this bottle, Captain?" Latham asked. They were leaning over the chart table, where the blue line marking Pittsburgh's course ended just north of Sakhalin.

"Southeast is shortest," Gordon said. "At this speed, we could be through the Kurils in another ninety-six hours."

"Crawling all the way," his Exec pointed out.

"True. But I'd rather that than run the risk of triggering one of their seabed sensor arrays. Or getting tagged by one of their subs." His finger trailed south along the pearl-strand string of the Kuril Islands on the chart. "Here. We'll head for Proliv Bussol', south of Simushir. The channel is wide and deep. And it's not quite so obvious a way out as up here by Paramusir."

Latham nodded. "Last time out this way, we slipped out through the Proliv Yekateriny, down here between Iturup and Kunashir."

"Well, no need to repeat ourselves for the benefit of our friends."

"No, sir."

"Mr. Carver! Depth below keel, if you please."

"Depth below keel now eighty feet, sir." They were at a depth of 160 feet, and the bottom was dropping way rapidly. Soon they would be into the central deep of the Sea of Okhotsk, where depths plunged to ten thousand feet or more. Gordon could almost sense the yawning Deep ahead.

"Sonar, Conn. What are you tracking?"

"Currently three contacts, Captain. Sierra Three-three, Four-one, and Four-five. Range … about ten miles, bearing three-zero-zero."

Northwest, then, and well behind them. "Nothing ahead?"

"Not that we've been able to pick up, sir."

If I were the Russian admiral in charge of this operation, he thought, where would I put my assets? Part of the problem, of course, was that he wasn't sure exactly what the Soviet's local assets were. Simplest to assume they had virtually unlimited ships. Where would they concentrate them, though?

Along the Kurils, of course, with special emphasis on the passages between the islands leading into the Northern Pacific. And La Perouse Strait, between Japan and the southern tip of Sakhalin. That might not be as heavily protected, of course, because in that direction lay the major Russian Pacific port at Vladivostok, and yet another cramped, shallow, and narrow-straited sea, the Sea of Japan.

He was tempted to try that route simply because it would be unexpected… but the disadvantages outweighed the advantages. The western shoreline of the Sea of Japan was bordered by such unpleasant neighbors as the Soviet Union, all the way down to Vladivostok, and the People's Democratic Republic of Korea — no friends to the United States. There was the option of slipping into Japanese territorial waters if he needed to, or paying a quick visit to South Korea, but the northern reaches of that sea would be swarming with ASW craft out of Vladivostok and Nakhodka. If they were mad enough, they might try to mark Pittsburgh down, even when she was clearly in international waters.

No, the mid-Kurils was the best option.

"Helm! Come to course one-four-five."

"Helm to course one-four-five, aye aye, sir!"

"Make our speed ten knots."

"Make revolutions for ten knots, aye, sir!"

"Kind of an inglorious end to the operation, sir," Latham said. He sounded disappointed, as though the whole affair had wrapped itself up too quickly for him.

"What did you want, a blazing run home on the surface?"

"No, sir. I just man, well, this boat has never failed in its mission before."

"This boat hasn't yet. We delivered the people where they wanted to go. We made the rendezvous for pickup, even if they didn't. We conducted the seabed survey. And now we're going home. That's all the glory I care for, anyway."

"I guess you're right."

"In any case, I'm not going to breathe easy until—"

"Conn! Sonar!"

"Sonar, Conn. Go ahead."

"New contact, designated Sierra Five-zero, bearing one-one-zero, range estimated at ten thousand yards. I've got twin screws, a big sucker. Wait one… okay, the computer IDs her as a Kresta II. Probably the Marshal Voroshilov, sir."

"Do you have a heading on her?"

"Sounds like she's heading south, Captain, across our path. She's making turns for ten knots. Just loafing, sir. Not in a hurry at all."

"Thank you, Sonar. COB? What can you tell me about a

Kresta II?"

"Big monger. Seventy-seven hundred tons' displacement fully loaded. Five hundred twenty-one feet long. Nineteen-

foot, eight-inch draft. Top speed about thirty-four, thirty-five knots. Heavily armed. Ten 533mm torpedo tubes in two quintuple launchers. Two SS-N-3 Goblet launchers. Eight Silex ASW missiles in two quad launchers. RBU-6000 and RBU-2000 ASW rocket launchers. And various antiaircraft guns, 30mm and 4.57mm. She'll also have a helipad aft, with a Ka-25 Hormone helo for ASW work."

"Thank you, COB." He exchanged looks with Latham. "Coincidence? They're just passing through? Or are they tracking us?"

"No reason to think they've heard us, Captain. Chances are they're covering themselves by posting a few ships at each likely waypoint. Cape Yelizavety qualifies, if only because it's on the shortest route out of Sakhalin Bay."

"I concur. Maneuvering! Slow to five knots."

"Slowing to five knots, aye, sir."

"Well let him pass in front of us," he told Latham. "Helm, steady as you go."

"Helm, steady as you go, aye, sir."

"My only question… "

"Yes, sir?"

"A ship that big usually has escorts. Why is he traveling alone?"

"I imagine they're in a bit of disarray right now, after chasing all over after us."

"Hmm. Maybe. Don't care to gamble on it, though. The Russians are usually pretty methodical. Isn't like them to lose focus like that."

"You think it's a trap?"

"After what we've seen so far, Number One, it's definitely a possibility."

Captain First Rank Viktor Dubrynin held the headset to his ear, listening to the sonar signal. He could hear the deep, steady thrum of the Marshal Voroshilov's twin screws, the hiss of his wake. And beneath that …

He thought for a moment he'd heard something, far out in the black and impenetrable depths of Okhotsk.

It might have been a submarine. Lieutenant Vladimir Krychkov had called him to the sonar console moments before, after thinking he'd heard the distinctive throb of a submarine power plant. The question… whose was it? The American was almost certainly in this area — Dubrynin was willing to stake his career on it — but so too were a large number of Russian submarines. An entire PLARB bastion had been designated in the waters southeast of here, almost straight ahead, and there would be ballistic-missile submarines hiding there. And there were the attack boats, some guarding the PLARBs, others hunting for the American.

No doubt Vetrov's Krasnoyarskiy was somewhere close by as well. The man wasn't that skillful, but he was lucky, and sometimes luck was more to be treasured than skill. Vetrov might have guessed the American would be passing this point as well.

What had Krychkov heard?

Ivan Rogov was running just ahead of the Marshal Voroshilov, probing the sea ahead with his sonar. Somewhere out there, the American sub was trying to sneak away.

And Dubrynin was going to find him….