Los Angeles Class

2

Commander Mike Chase leaned in what he trusted was a casual manner against one of the stanchions next to Pittsburgh's periscope walk and looked up at the heavily painted maze of pipes, fittings, and cable bundles running among the fluorescent lighting fixtures of the combat center's overhead. The pings were coming faster now, shrill, hard punches of sound that rang through the boat's hull and internal spaces like the tolling of enormous, high-pitched bells.

This, he reflected, with just a trace of bitterness, is one hell of a way to end up my final cruise aboard this boat.

"Of course it's just a guess," the boat's XO said quietly, "but I think they just might have us where they want us." LCDR Frederick Yates Latham, as always, was unhurried and unperturbed, an expert at the subtle understatement and the faintly sardonic quip. Just once, Chase thought, he'd like to know what the young Executive Officer was really thinking. As always, though, those pale, ice-blue eyes and recruiting-poster features gave nothing away. "Diving Officer," Chase said. "What's the depth below keel?"

Lieutenant Francis J. Carver looked at a gauge on his board. "One-nine-six feet beneath the keel, Captain," he said. "We're coming up on the hundred-fathom line."

"Very well. Tell me when we hit the line."

"Report crossing the hundred-fathom line, aye, sir."

Carver was new aboard the Pittsburgh, young and green, but he seemed to have all his shit in one seabag, as the saying went. He'd come aboard back at Mare Island just before the Pittsburgh had gotten under way, replacing the boat's previous D.O., John Quimby. After almost three years of sea duty, much of that spent aboard the Pittsburgh, Quimby had finally swung a billet in a postgrad course at Monterey, headed for a master's in aeronautical engineering.

Quimby was going to be missed, damn it. The 'Burgh was about to move into some shallow and treacherous waters, and chances were they were going to have to do some fancy depth changes, hard, fast and accurate. Chase would have liked a more experienced man behind the planesman.

Still, Carver seemed to know his stuff, and he deserved a chance. It wasn't his fault that his first tour aboard the Pittsburgh was taking him into a hot Kuril passage.

"These are the waters Flight 007 went down in, aren't they?" Latham asked.

"Not quite, XO," Chase replied. "Northern Sea of Japan. They managed to overfly Kamchatka and Sakhalin before the Russians finally got fighters up." Another piercing ping echoed through sea and hull. "I'd say they're a bit more on the ball up there, now, wouldn't you?"

PING….

"Captain?" Carver said. "Crossing the hundred-fathom line."

"Very well." PING….

The one-hundred-fathom line — six hundred feet — was the arbitrary topographical boundary marking the edge of the continental shelf. The shallows surrounding Kunashir, southernmost of the Kurils, humped up above the much deeper water to the west, averaging a depth at the top of about thirty to forty fathoms. But just beyond that flat-topped ridge, if they stayed on this heading, was a deeper channel… and a safe escape to the open Pacific beyond.

But a hundred fathoms wasn't much to work with… less than twice the Pittsburgh's 340-foot length. At thirty fathoms, the sub would be practically pinned in a shallow film of water half as deep as the boat was long. Submarines by nature were three-dimensional creatures, capable of taking advantage of maneuvers up and down, as well as ahead and back, port and starboard. Periscope depth for an LA-class boat was 52 feet; in water 180 feet deep, she wouldn't have much room to maneuver.

But the Russians would know the channels between the islands well, and would have them blocked by now, or worse, mined. Chase was taking a gamble, but a calculated one, trying to slip over the ridge and into the deep channel beyond halfway along the undersea valley's sinuous length.

If they could make it that far… another five miles…

"Conn, Sonar," a voice announced from the 1MC overhead speaker. "New sonar contact, designated Sierra Two-five, bearing zero-zero-six. Twin screws, estimate twenty knots, making fifteen turns per knot. I think it's another Krivak I, Captain."

"Very well." He looked at Latham. "That makes four Krivaks up there. They're eager."

"KGB Maritime Border Guard," Latham replied. "They're not usually this far out."

"Probably a blocking force stationed in the Kurils." He picked up a microphone and keyed it. "Sonar, Conn. Keep on 'em, Rodriguez. And keep a sharp ear out for any air traffic."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

Chase smiled. SM/2 Enrique Rodriguez, at least, was an old hand on the 'Burgh, and one of the best sonar men he'd served with. Rodriguez was one of those sonar magicians, men who could listen to the wash and rumble of sound in the ocean around them and extract information that seemed like the product of nothing less than witchcraft.

The Krivak I was an old sub hunter, her equipment long out-of-date. Likely, the Soviets were employing her as a driver, to chase the 'Burgh toward the real hunters astern, or else to serve as a barrier force to keep her penned.

"Conn, Sonar."

"Conn. Go ahead."

"New contact, designated Sierra Two-six, bearing three-five-zero. This one sounds like an aircraft, probably big and low over the water."

"Let me hear. Put it on the horn."

He heard it then over the speaker, a low, droning rumble, muffled by water and distance.

"Sounds like a big four-engine turboprop, Captain," Rodriguez added. "Not a clatter, like a helicopter."

"Thanks, Rodriguez. I want—"

"Conn! Sonar! Splashes close aboard, port and starboard! Sounds like sonobuoys! They're going active!"

A barrage of pings hit the Pittsburgh, each one a finger reaching down to touch the vessel and pinpoint its location to the surface hunters. The aircraft overhead must be an ASW plane, a May or a Mail, and the fact that they'd laid a pattern of sonobuoys suggested they were pretty sure exactly where the Pittsburgh was.

"Helm, come right to zero-nine-five," Chase said. "Make depth five hundred feet."

"Helm, right to zero-nine-five," Lieutenant Daly, who had the helm watch, echoed.

"Coming right to zero-nine-five," an enlisted man repeated. He was seated at the right-hand set of what looked like the control yoke and instrumentation for a commercial aircraft. The deliberate redundancy of orders repeated, then repeated again, was an essential part of submarine operational procedure, a way to check and double-check that the captain's orders had been correctly heard and correctly acted upon.

"Fifteen degrees down bow planes," Latham said. "Make depth five-zero-zero feet, aye."

"Fifteen degrees down bow planes. Make depth five-zero-zero feet, aye, sir," the planesman, on the left-hand yoke, repeated.

Chase grabbed the periscope walk stanchion as the deck tilted beneath his feet. They were already at 115 feet. For the next few seconds, Latham chanted off the depth figures from his readout. "Passing two-zero-zero feet, sir. Two-one-zero. Two-two-zero… two-five-zero… " And the Pittsburgh continued her long, silent descent into blackness.

"Sonar, Conn," Chase said into the mike. "Any sign of a layer we can hide under?"

"Conn, Sonar. Negative, sir. Not in these waters, not this early in the season."

Temperature inversions, a layer of warmer, less salty water beneath a colder, heavier layer, created a kind of barrier to sonar. The curtain wasn't opaque, necessarily, but a submarine had at least a fighting chance of shaking her echo-hungry pursuers by slipping beneath an inversion layer that channeled most of the searchers' sonar away from the target.

Unfortunately, the Sea of Okhotsk was cold, especially now, with its seasonal ice cap only recently melted. The upper layers were somewhat warmer than the lower, but the temperature was fairly constant top to bottom, the waters well mixed. There would be no help there.

"Sonar, Conn. What's the status on Sierra One-nine?"

"Conn, Sonar. Sierra One-nine bearing now zero-zero-two, Skipper. Heading one-eight-three, making turns for twenty knots. I estimate his range at nine thousand yards, sir."

That might work. Contact Sierra One-nine had arrived on the scene almost an hour ago. Rodriguez had identified her as a Kresta II class ASW cruiser, probably the Admiral Yumashev.

A Kresta II was big—521 feet in length and pulling an unloaded displacement of 6200 tons. She was also noisy, with her twin steam turbines and high-pitch screws. She was a dangerous adversary, with a powerful, medium-frequency sonar forward, and mounting RBU-1000, RBU-6000, and two quad launchers for the rocket-delivered torpedo NATO had designated as SS-N-14 Silex for attacking submerged targets.

But there might be a way of using her bulk and her noisy power plant. The Kresta was almost bow-on, bearing down on the Pittsburgh like an oncoming express freight.

"Leveling off at five-zero-zero feet," the planesman said.

"Captain, we are at five hundred feet," Latham announced.

"Very well. Helm, come left to three-five-eight degrees. Make turns for eight knots." That put them precisely on a reciprocal course with the Kresta; the two were approaching one another now bow-on, with a combined velocity of thirty knots.

"Helm left to three-five-eight, aye, sir. Making turns for two-zero knots." The litany of orders given, repeated, and re-repeated was like a kind of intricately and meticulously choreographed ballet. There was a sense of affirmation, of tightness, of certainty that had its effect on every man in the combat center.

And on none more than Mike Chase. Hearing the orders called back to him allowed him to close his eyes and visualize the tactical situation developing around them, allowed him to enter a mental zone where the Pittsburgh was an extension of his body, of where he was the Pittsburgh, carrying out her dance on a dark and three-dimensional stage.

"Diving Officer, make depth one-five-zero feet."

"Depth to one-one-zero, aye, sir. Planesman, up forward planes ten degrees. Make our depth one-one-zero feet."

"Up forward planes one-zero feet, aye, sir. Make depth one-five-zero, aye, sir."

The deck tilted up as the planesman brought back his yoke. For long seconds, the command center was silent save for the recitation of depth figures. "Passing three-five-zero feet. Three-two-zero feet. Now passing three-zero-zero feet, sir…. "

"Sonar, Conn. Rodriguez, tell me the moment you detect any aspect change on Sierra One-niner."

"Will do, Captain. He's still coming straight for us. No active sonar. He's following us on the sonobuoys."

"Watch him. He's your priority target right now."

"Aye aye, sir."

At last, the Pittsburgh leveled off, still traveling directly toward the Kresta, bow-on. As the range narrowed to less than a thousand yards, the men in the combat center could actually hear the oncoming Soviet warship, an urgent, pounding thrash muffled by the sea, but quite distinct, and growing louder moment by moment. Faces throughout the compartment looked up toward the overhead; Chase was cutting this one pretty close, given that the Pittsburgh measured just over fifty feet from keel to the top of her sail, not counting her periscopes, and that a Kresta II typically drew about twenty feet of water. Chase was "dusting off the keel" of the warship above, allowing something like forty feet clearance.

A dangerous ploy. And also his best chance for eluding the enemy's sonar net.

The Kresta's screws churned directly overhead now. The helmsman and the planesman kept their eyes rigidly on the readouts above their yokes, but every other man in the combat center looked up, as though waiting for the deadly crunch of a steel-on-steel impact.

"Mr. Daly, come right sixty degrees… now!"

There was only the briefest of hesitations as Daly looked back at his board. "Come right sixty degrees, to bearing zero-five-eight, aye, sir!"

As the Kresta rumbled overhead and aft, chugging like a slow-moving locomotive, the Pittsburgh swung to the right. They could all feel the vibration of the cruiser's passing, as her twin screws thrashed through the water. "On new heading, zero-five-eight, sir," Daly announced.

"Hard left rudder. Bring us back around to a heading of two-three-eight. Planesman, watch our depth. I don't want us popping up and broaching."

"Hard left, to two-three-eight, aye, sir…. "

"Son of a bitch!" an enlisted man, Torpedoman's Mate Second Class Benson, his station at the combat center plot board, exclaimed. "He's pulling a Wilkinson!"

"Belay that chatter, Benson," Master Chief Warren, the Chief of the Boat, snapped from his post at the ballast controls.

Chase said nothing. He didn't mind Benson's outburst, but he would not interfere in the COB's disciplining of one of the men… not in front of the crew, at any rate. Maybe later….

If there is a later, he thought. As the sound of the passing ASW cruiser dwindled, the Pittsburgh continued her turn to port, ending up on a reciprocal heading from the previous course. She was now behind the Kresta, and following her, hidden from Russian listeners in the froth of white noise churned by the cruiser's screws.

Even the pings of active sonars, from other ships and from the line of sonobuoys dropped by ASW aircraft, faded as they dogged the Kresta's wake. For a moment, at least, Pittsburgh had just rendered herself invisible.

"Sonar, Conn," Chase said into his microphone. "Let me know the instant you get any aspect change on Sierra One-niner… or any change in his revs."

"Will do, Captain. Right now, he's just charging straight ahead, blasting away with sonar. Don't think he knows we just disappeared into his baffles."

"Good." Russian sonar operators — their people were all officers, as opposed to the American Navy which used highly trained enlisted sonar men — were not as well trained as their American counterparts, and originality and imagination were not encouraged in any part of the Soviet military.

It was one thing to listen to a target and know it was dead ahead… but something different, and more difficult, to determine which way it was going. Kresta's sonar operators had known the Pittsburgh was in front of them and that they were closing, but they could not have been sure whether the American sub was running away from them, or charging them head-on. Chances were, they hadn't been expecting Pittsburgh's sudden Wilkinson turn right under their fantail, and since other ships in the area hadn't picked up the American boat coming out from behind the Kresta, the Americans must still be ahead, possibly trying to hide in the bottom clutter of the rapidly shoaling water. The depth, now, was down to less than three hundred feet.

Moments crawled past. The Kresta slowed, and Pittsburgh slowed with her. With her engines turning over slowly, the white noise from her wake was lessened, but the American sub continued to lurk in the Kresta's blind spot, pulling in a bit closer, until her sail was somewhere just abaft of the Russian warship's turning screws.

After a time, the Kresta swung due north, Pittsburgh continuing to follow her. "Nuts to butts," the COB said quietly, apparently forgetting his earlier injunction to silence as he intoned an old and crude litany from boot camp, addressed to recruits required to line up close behind one another. "Make the guy in front of you smile." Sierra One-niner began sprinting again, and Pittsburgh stuck with her. Their contact with the American sub lost, the other sonar contacts began scattering over a wider and wider area, casting sonobuoy and active sonar nets farther and farther abroad as they searched for the missing target.

And as the Kresta moved north at twenty-five knots, she and her unseen shadow came abreast of Proliv Yekateriny, north of Kunashir Island. "All stop," Chase ordered. "Let her drift. Down planes five degrees. Level off at one hundred eighty feet."

"All stop, aye, sir. Down planes five degrees. Level off at one-eight-zero feet, aye."

Drifting silently, now, the 6,927-ton boat continued moving forward on sheer inertia, but the Kresta, still pinging ahead, swiftly outpaced the slowing Pittsburgh, racing for the northern horizon. Pittsburgh fell out of the Soviet warship's baffles, but her departure went unnoticed as she drifted gently toward 180 feet, slowing to a near stop, her neutral buoyancy holding her suspended between surface and seabed.

"All ahead one-third," Chase said. "Make revolutions for seven knots. Helm, come to course zero-nine-five. What's our depth below keel?"

"Depth below keel now eight hundred twelve feet, Captain."

"Diving officer, take us down to seven hundred feet."

The orders echoed back at him in confirmation and the steel deck tilted sharply as the Pittsburgh dove for deeper, safer water. The passages between the Kurils were narrow, but tended to be quite deep. Chase had ordered them to make the transit at a crawl, however. Those passages were almost certainly strung with the Soviet equivalent of a SOSUS net, sensitive underwater microphones designed to pick up the sounds made by a passing submarine. By remaining quiet, however, and keeping her speed well below ten knots, Pittsburgh was nearly as silent as it was possible to be… a "hole in the water," as her crew liked to describe her.

In another two hours, tense minutes, but without incident, the Pittsburgh entered open water once more, the broad, wide emptiness of the North Pacific. With Rodriguez's assurances that there were no enemy vessels close by, Chase ordered the Pittsburgh back to within a few feet of the surface once more, so that she could extend her radio mast in order to pick up orders … and to broadcast a mission complete.

"Well, XO, we skinned the cat again," he said, after ordering the ' Burgh ahead full, with her prow set toward distant Hawaii, her next scheduled port of call.

"Yup," Latham said, nodding. "With all those sonar contacts banging away up there, it sounded like the whole Red Banner Pacific Fleet was after us. I hope it was worth it."

"If the other boat skippers did their jobs, it was," Chase replied. "It'll help to know just how good their reaction time is."

"Sometimes, I think the Beltway bean counters don't really care one way or another for the information we bring back," Latham said, folding his arms. He looked uncharacteristically troubled.

"Oh?"

"It's got to be some kind of a game for them. See how far they can push the other guy, see how hard they can stomp on his toes before he blinks… or throws a punch."

"Could be," Chase replied. "Could be. But God help us all if you're right."

Breakfast had been served already, but coffee, juice, and various snack foods were always available in the Pittsburgh's galley. Every man aboard agreed that the chow served in the Silent Service was the best in the Navy… a tradition that went back as far as World War II.

"So, whaddaya think of the Old Man's performance, Big C?" TM2 Roger Benson said, grinning as he topped off a cup of bug juice at the mess dispenser. "Was that slick or what?"

"Not bad," BM1 Charles Scobey said. He'd opted for coffee. "Not fucking bad at all. He gets points on originality, at least."

"Not bad? Hey, he was fucking incredible! Doubling back and dusting off that cruiser's belly, then pulling a Wilkinson like that, cool as you please, and then following the son of a bitch right up to the mouth of the channel. Man, I ain't seen nothing like it!"

"Ahh," Big C replied with a negligent wave of his hand. "Saw the same thing on Swifty Larson's boat, back in '80. And that was in the Barents Sea, too, with Russkie boomers and attack boats crowded elbow to elbow, and half the Northern Red Banner Fleet lookin' on. It was in an old Sturgeon class, not one of these fancy Lala-Land boats that do everything for you 'cept take a piss when you need it."

"Ha! You think that was bad?" TMC Bart Allison said, taking an empty seat at one of the mess-deck tables. "Back when I was a very raw newbie on board the old Seawolf… now that was primitive. Nothing ever worked right on that boat. Yeah, I remember the time when the reactor scrammed, left us shut down and drifting under the Bering ice. The skipper was threatening to rig oars, but the chief nuke puke figured out how to use the COB's breath to recharge the reactor."

"You're full of shit, Chief," Big C said. "Nah. Just finished using the crapper in the goat locker, thanks."

"Damn, I thought I smelled something putrid wafting aft," Big C said.

"Must be a conspiracy, Scobey," Benson said. "Better tell the captain."

They all laughed. "Big C" had acquired his handle not by his size — he was short even for a submariner, and almost painfully thin — nor by his first name. Big C was a conspiracy theorist, big-time, and could always be counted on to regale his listeners with stories of deep, secret, and mysterious conspiracies, everything from both Kennedy assassinations and Chappaquiddick, and how they all obviously tied in together, to cattle mutilations and black helicopters out West. The other 'Burghers teased him unmercifully about his paranoid thinking.

Which was fine by Scobey. He liked being the center of attention.

"Anyway, in my expert opinion," Benson went on, "our skipper is the best damned sub driver in the fleet. Listening to him in the CC today, it was like watching a master craftsman at work, y'know? Cool as the Pole Abyssal, givin' orders like it was some kind of damned training simulator. It's gonna be a real shame to lose him."

"Is this really his last cruise?" EM3 John Boyce asked, joining them at the table with a cup of coffee and a couple of doughnuts on a plate.

"That's the word," Chief Allison said. "He'll be off to some nice, cushy job in the Pentagon for a few years, I suspect. Or maybe captain of a sub base."

"Y'know, the Brits have the right idea," Big C said. "When their sub captains get too senior to drive boats, they move 'em up to skipper an ASW surface ship. Set a fox to catch a fox, right?"

"Nah, wouldn't work for the skipper," Allison said, shaking his massive head. "He's a true submariner, and that means that as far as he's concerned, there's only two types of ships, you know … submarines… "

"… and targets," Benson and Scobey chorused, completing the line. It was an old joke, a favorite of submariners.

"Fuckin' A. I can't see the skipper backsliding so far as to start driving targets. Uh-uh. Not his style."

"Well, we don't have to worry about a new skipper yet," Scobey said. "We're headed for Pearl! …" and with that he stood up, ground his hips in a lewdly suggestive hula, and moved his hands to outline a woman's curves. "Man, there ain't no liberty like Honolulu, man! The girls there are so… are so… "

"Know exactly what you mean, Big C," Allison said, laughing. "No words for it."

"But you're a married man, Chief!" Boyce said.

"Doesn't stop me from appreciatin' the finer points of biology, son." The others laughed.

"So, did you guys hear the scuttlebutt about our next mission?" Scobey asked.

"There can't be no scuttlebutt about no next mission," Allison said, "on account of the orders ain't even been transmitted yet."

"Well, maybe. But I heard it from a buddy of mine in personnel back at Mare Island. They're planning on starting up something like Ivy Bells again. You know, slipping into Oshkosh, tapping a telephone cable, and—"

"Belay that," Allison growled. "I think the name of that op is still classified."

"Sure, but the op is over, right? The Russians found out and pulled the plug."

"That may be, but we're not supposed to talk about some things, even among ourselves."

Scobey shrugged. "Sure sounds like a conspiracy of silence to me."

They laughed.

Benson wondered, though, if Scobey really did have an inside track to the straight dope. Oshkosh — the enlisted submariner's slang name for the Sea of Okhotsk — was damned hot and getting hotter, if the Soviet fleet's performance there that morning was any indication.

And he was beginning to wonder if all the sneaking and peeking was worth the lives of Pittsburgh's twelve officers and 120 men. It was something he'd never admitted to anyone… even himself, but after that morning, he was forced to see it.

Roger Benson was afraid. The captain had pulled their fat out of the fire that time, but he was leaving the ship as soon as they got back, to be replaced by an unknown.

He was wondering if he was going to be able to stay in the Silent Service himself, and the thought left him feeling both afraid and ashamed.