Ohio Class

13

"Caswell?" the Chief of the Boat said from the doorway to the sonar room. "How you doing?"

"I'm okay, COB," Caswell replied. It was a lie.

Dobbs chuckled. "He's pining away for his lost love, COB."

"You'd damned well better snap out of it, kid," O'Day said. "No dame is worth it! Anyway, I have a job for you two. Show this zoomie your station, give him a rundown."

Caswell turned in his chair to study the newcomer. It was the aviator, Lieutenant Commander Hawking.

"Dobbs and Cassie'll take good care of you, Commander," the COB said cheerily. "I'll check back with you at the end of your watch."

"I think COB's trying to cheer you up," Dobbs said with a wry grin. "You've been sulking and moping for days now… and see what it got you?"

Caswell ignored the dig. "Pull up a seat, Commander. Grab a set of headphones and have a listen."

"I'm told you're the guy I owe an apology to," Hawking said, taking a seat.

"Beg pardon, sir?"

"You were on watch when I did the musical fly-by?"

"Oh, yeah."

"So I apologize. Didn't know I'd be blasting your ears."

"Maybe that's why they want you listening for a while, sir," Dobbs suggested.

"So… what am I listening for?"

Caswell began to run Hawking through the broadband sonar procedures. Actually teaching him anything was pretty much hopeless; that was why the Navy sent you to sonar school. However, he could give him a very general introduction.

"That's passive broadband you're listening to, sir. It's kind of like you have a radio that's set to receive all channels at once."

Hawking listened for a moment. "All I hear is static."

"White noise, yes, sir. That's waves breaking on beaches and water moving past the sub and wind blowing and everything else you can imagine. The idea is to try to pick out what sounds… different."

"Okay… "

"Up in the bow of the sub, there's this big fiberglass sphere twelve feet in diameter, with hydrophones all over it. The chamber's filled with water, so it listens in on everything going on in the sea around us." He pointed at the waterfall display. "We get a visual readout here. Loud noises make a brighter point of light… like that one." He pointed to a slanting line across the screen.

"So what's that?"

"Sierra Two-seven-niner. A skimmer."

"Skimmer?"

"To a submariner, everything on the surface is a skimmer. Two-seven-niner is a supertanker leaving the Gulf. Bearing… zero-five-eight."

"Yeah? What's the range?"

Caswell made a face. "That's Hollywood. With sonar, you can get an accurate bearing on the target, but not the range. It's not like radar."

"Oh, yeah. They went over that when I had my indoctrination. To get range, you have to move the sub around."

"Right. That lets you triangulate on the target. The chief of the sonar watch can even request that the captain change course, just so we can get a better look at the target."

"So… how do you know it's a tanker?"

"That's my job," Dobbs said. "I'm using narrowband here. Right now we're towing a narrowband sonar array behind the Ohio," Dobbs explained. "The BQR-15. It picks up the same sound the broadband does, but feeds it through a computer, our narrowband processor. That sorts through the hash and zeroes in on what we call tonals."

"Tonals?"

"Yessir. Every ship and sub is filled with machinery, and most of it is making noise, one way or another. The screws. Seawater pumps. Turbines. Diesel engines. Every piece of machinery that rotates puts tonals into the water. And the processor can pick 'em out and match 'em to known sounds." He pointed at his display, which showed an oscilloscopelike line of light with a sharp spike in it. "When there's machinery in the area, that's what it shows us."

"That's the tanker again?"

"Yup. Her screws, actually."

Caswell had fallen silent. He was listening now, very, very intently. "Hey, Dobbs?" he said. "You might want to try fifty Hertz."

"Yeah? Whatcha got?"

"I'm not sure. I just thought for a moment… " Dobbs turned a dial on his console. "Jesus!"

"What is it?" Hawking asked.

"I think we have a bandit." Dobbs hit the intercom switch. "Con, Sonar! New contact, Sierra Two-eight-one! Bearing zero-four-five! Fifty Hertz tonals! I think it's a sub!"

"So what's all the fuss about fifty Hertz?"

"Quiet, sir!" Caswell said, his voice a harsh whisper. "Please!"

"Western electrical systems run on an AC frequency of sixty Hertz, Commander," Dobbs said quietly. "Russians run their equipment on a frequency of fifty

Hertz."

"That's a Russian sub out there?"

"Russian… or a boat purchased from them by one of their clients. Or maybe built to Russian specs. I do know one thing."

"What's that?"

"It ain't one of ours."

Chief Sommersby, the senior sonar tech, entered the room. "Let me have a listen," he said, putting on headphones. For a long moment he was silent. Then, "Control Room, Sonar. Recommend change of course to clear our baffles."

"Sonar, Control Room. Very well."

"Clearing out baffles?" Hawking asked. He sounded bewildered.

"I think we have several potential hostiles out there," Sommersby said. "We're getting lots of tonals, and they're consistent with Kilo-class submarines… and those new Iranian Ghadir-class boats. Trouble is, they're real, real quiet. Getting a fix on them is going to be tough. The big danger is that we have one trailing us astern. Can't hear for shit back there, because of the disturbance from our own wake. I just asked the skipper to bring us around in a big circle, which lets us listen to what's going on behind us."

"Contact!" Caswell said after several more minutes. "New contact, Sierra Two-eight-two, bearing one-one-two!"

"Ah-ha!" Sommersby said. "Nailed the bastard!"

"I've got him," Dobbs said. "Ghadir-class. He had his nose up our ass!"

"How do you know it's a Ghadir?" Hawking asked, staring at the new electronic spike that had just appeared on Dobbs' screen. The young aviator was clearly becoming more and more bewildered.

"Several weeks ago one of our L.A.-class boats spent some time following Iranian subs in and out of port," Sommersby explained. "Got some great beneath-the-hull photos through the periscope, and also recorded every sound they made. They picked up the tonals from the screw, both the diesel and electric motors, seawater pumps, toilets in the head, even an ice cream maker in the galley. Then they beamed all the data back to Washington by satellite, and they, in turn, beamed it out to us." Swiveling in his chair, he patted a console behind him. "Now our narrowband processor knows exactly what to listen for when there's an Iranian sub in the area."

Caswell heard the conversation with some part of his brain, but his full attention was focused on what he was hearing over his headset, and what he was seeing on the waterfall. Two Iranian subs were out there, obviously stalking the Ohio, and he hadn't heard a damned thing.

As he adjusted the broadband controls, sweeping the areas where the two subs were lurking, he could hear a difference — faint, but there. Holes in the water…

And he'd missed them both.

Captain Stewart studied the plot board, a remarkably low-tech device for such a high-tech vessel where every few moments a rating marked the position of the Ohio with a wipe-erase pen. The exact positions of the Iranian submarines were not known, of course, but their bearings were indicated by straight lines. As Ohio completed her baffle-clearing turn, however, additional bearings allowed more precise positions to be pinpointed through triangulation.

Ohio had just swung north in order to enter the Straits of Hormuz, running at a depth of just one hundred feet as the bottom shoaled rapidly beneath her keel. Two — at least — Iranian subs were following her, both now astern, but maintaining their positions relative to the Ohio, probably between three and eight thousand yards to the south and the southeast.

"Looks like the trap's been sprung, Skipper," the XO said.

"Well, at least they haven't fired at us," Stewart replied. "Damn, Sierra Two-eight-two could've taken us any time he wanted."

"What are they waiting for? Are they just playing with us?"

"Might be an exercise," Stewart conceded. "But I doubt it. My guess is their orders are to stick close… maybe trail us into Iranian waters."

"Yeah. They could hit us there, and claim self-defense."

"At the very least, they'd screw our mission."

"How'd they find us, though?"

Stewart shrugged. "Wasn't hard, I suspect. With this new configuration, we're not as quiet as we once were."

It was true. Ohio-class boomers were extremely quiet — the better to hide from Soviet hunter-killers during the Cold War. However, Ohio now carried the ASDS on her afterdeck, which went a long way toward ruining her sleek streamlining. Besides, Ohio had been moving at better than twelve knots as she moved up through the Arabian Sea. With some luck, even the relatively poorly trained technicians on board the Iranian boats would have been able to pick her up easily enough.

And this trap had been carefully planned — deploying a number of subs, keeping them submerged and quiet by using oil tankers as cover…

What were they planning?

"So what do we do about them, Skipper?"

"Nothing, for now. There's not much we can do. However, we're going to have to scrape them off when it comes time to deploy. Put your talent in strategy and tactics to that problem, Mr. Shea."

"Aye aye, sir." Shea cocked his head to the side. "One thing to consider, sir."

"Yes?"

"We've spotted two bogies. There might be more, especially now that we're entering the straits."

"I'm well aware of that."

"If we go active, we'll spot them all. It's not like our presence is secret any longer."

Stewart considered this. So far, all of Ohio's sonar contacts were passive, meaning she'd picked up the noises they were making on her hydrophones. Her powerful BQS-15 passive/active sonar had the capability, however, of sending out a powerful pulse of sound, one that would bounce back from every target in the Ohio's vicinity. During the Cold War, Soviet SSNs had used that technique a lot, knowing their boats were noisier than American subs, and therefore easier to detect anyway. American skippers tended not to use the active sonar, since it both pinpointed the U.S. sub's position and let the enemy sub know that his presence — and location — were known.

On the other hand, Ohio was entering a tangle of shallow water, islands, and shoals. Passive tracking was going to become more difficult within the Straits of Hormuz. There might be alternatives….

"Later, maybe," he said. "For now, we pretend we don't know they're there. But we watch 'em."

"Yes, sir."

"Skipper?" Master Chief O'Day said, approaching the plot table.

"What is it, COB? We're kind of busy."

"Beg your pardon, sir. It's one of the sonar techs."

"What about him? Who is it?"

"ST2 Caswell, sir. The kid whose girlfriend dumped him?"

"I remember."

"He's just asked me to be relieved."

"Eh? Why?"

"He told me he'd screwed up, that he hadn't been paying attention and he missed the Iranian bogie when it dropped into our wake."

Stewart looked up from the plot, meeting O'Day's eyes. "COB, this is not the time. Tell him to… no." He moved back from the plot table. "Have him report to me. Now."

"Aye aye, sir."

A few minutes later O'Day reappeared, a skinny young kid with glasses in tow. Stewart remembered him. "Caswell? What's this I hear about you wanting to quit?"

"Sir, uh… it's not that I want to quit. I just… I mean… "

"Spit it out, son."

"Sir, I really screwed up a few minutes ago! I've been… well, things've been a little crazy, and—"

"Caswell, we'll discuss your personal problems later… or you can take them up with Mr. Shea or Master Chief O'Day. Right now I'm not interested in them. I need you at your station."

"But, sir… "

"I said I need you, Caswell. You've got two of the best ears on this boat, and I need both of them listening for the bad guys!"

Caswell looked startled. "But I… Sir, I wasn't paying attention…. "

"You made a mistake? I'll spot you one. One. But you think I'll just let you off the hook when things get tough? Like hell I will!" Stewart raised his forefinger and thumped it, hard, against Caswell's chest. "You, son, are one of my most important assets on this boat, and I will not lose you! You've been trained to do a job and do it well, and by God you will do what you've been trained to do, no matter what you happen to be feeling like! Do I make myself clear?"

"Y-Yessir!"

"I want you to be especially sharp. You hear anything like a torpedo door opening, and you sing out. Understand?"

"Yes, sir!"

"If one of those characters astern decides he wants to wind up and take a shot at us, I want you to hear that Iranian captain thinking about it before he makes the first move!"

The kid swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing against his skinny throat. "Yes, sir."

"Now get back to your station and tell me where the bad guys are. I'm counting on you. The whole damned boat's counting on you!"

"Aye aye, sir!" It was almost a squeak. Turning, Caswell hurried back toward the sonar room.

"I think you just put the fear of God into him, Skipper," Shea said. "You just ordered him to use psychic powers? Jeeze. That was pretty harsh."

"You can apologize on my behalf later, Mr. Shea," Stewart replied. "The men are your responsibility. The mission and the boat are mine. We can't mollycoddle them."

"No, sir. We can't. It's just… "

"What?"

"The stress levels are pretty high already, sir. Most of these kids… hell, they are just kids. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years old. Two-thirds of 'em, this is their first sea duty." The clear implication was that if he pushed them too hard, they would break.

"No, Mr. Shea. They're not kids. They're submariners. There's a difference."

"Yes, sir."

"And as for stress… believe me, Mr. Shea, they've not seen anything yet."

Captain Majid Damavandi didn't like this sort of situation. Most of his training, both in Iran and at the special sub school for officers presented in Russia five years ago, had emphasized detecting an enemy, closing on it, and destroying it with torpedoes. Simply trailing the enemy vessel had been discussed, but there'd been precious little practical experience to go with the lectures.

The problem was that he couldn't see. Somewhere up ahead, perhaps less than a thousand meters, was the giant American submarine, but the only way to track the behemoth was by the sound the vessel made as it slid through the water. Lieutenant Fardin Shirazi, Ghadir's sonar officer, was good, very good… but the task assigned him was extraordinarily difficult. The American submarine, according to Savama, was carrying an ungainly structure mounted on its deck just aft of the sail, and it disturbed the water in a peculiar way as the vessel moved. The sound was faint, however, and extraordinarily subtle. And the surrounding waters were filled with the noise of commercial shipping.

The real problem, though, was not knowing the precise range to the target. For all Damavandi knew, the American was not a thousand meters ahead… but less than a hundred. If it suddenly slowed, or went into a turn, the Ghadir could easily smash straight into the enemy vessel's stern.

And that, Damavandi thought, might well solve everybody's problem. The American submarine crippled, and its mission, whatever it was, ended.

Unfortunately, a collision would also effectively end his career as well, assuming the Ghadir even survived the encounter.

He longed to order the sonar officer to send out an active pulse. His Russian teachers had stressed the importance of knowing the precise range to the target, had stressed that American sonar technology was the best in the world, and that in most cases the captain hoping to track an American submarine would be better off revealing his own position in order to have a definite fix on his target.

Unfortunately, this was a tactical situation that clearly precluded revealing his own position — or his presence. As far as could be determined from the American's movements, he didn't yet know that he had a growing flotilla of hunters stalking him. Twice, now, in the past several hours, the American vessel had abruptly turned, completing a full 360-degree swing in order to check to see if he was being followed. Each time, Ghadir had gone completely quiet — even switching off her already quiet electric motor — and drifted in complete silence, waiting until the American resumed his original course.

Such tactics were to be expected; they did not prove the enemy knew the Iranian subs were there. Damavandi suspected that if the American did spot them, he would be off and running at high speed. An Ohio-class sub could easily outpace a Kilo or a Ghadir-class boat. All he needed to do was move at high speed, then go silent once more.

But instead the American continued moving slowly north into the straits.

"Captain!" the sonar officer called.

"Go ahead."

"Target vessel is increasing revolutions! He appears to be increasing speed to ten knots."

What now? "Maneuvering! Increase speed to ten knots."

The newest sonar contact, Sierra Two-nine-five, was another tanker, this one moving north, deeper into the straits. Stewart had just given the order to fall into the vessel's wake, moving close enough that they could feel the pounding of the screws and the rough shuddering of the turbulent water just ahead.

Two could play this game… using the passage of a large, twin-screwed tanker to mask the far quieter creeping of a submarine just astern.

"Control Room, Sonar," Chief Sommersby called. "We've lost everything but Sierra Two-nine-five. Estimated range to target… one hundred yards."

"Very well. Maneuvering! Slow to six knots!"

"Maneuvering, slow to six knots, aye aye!"

The Straits of Hormuz were a tough playground for submarines in any case, with shallow bottom and narrow sea lanes always crowded with shipping. Even in the best of circumstances, sound echoed weirdly from rocks, shoals, and obstructions.

Stewart looked up toward the overhead. "Catch us if you can," he said.

"We have lost them, sir," Lieutenant Shirazi reported. "They used the noise from the tanker to mask themselves."

Damavandi looked up from the plot table and bit off a sharp curse. Mullah Hamid Khodaei was at his side, studying the tangle of red and blue lines showing the relative movements of Ghadir and the American intruder. Turning to the cleric, he shrugged and said, "As

God wills."

"Perhaps," the cleric said, "God wills a more aggressive approach."

"Indeed? And what would God, the Almighty, suggest that we do? He may be able to suspend the laws of physics, but I cannot."

"Be careful, Captain," Khodaei snapped. "Remember who it is with whom you are speaking!"

Damavandi glanced at Commander Tavakkoli, who carefully looked away. The rest of the personnel in Ghadir's control room appeared to be very still, very intent, and very careful not to appear to take notice of the sudden confrontation at the plot table.

"And what do you propose that we do, Mullah Khodaei?"

"Use our active sonar, of course."

"To do so would reveal our presence, Mullah."

"So? The enemy clearly knows our submarines are in these waters already. And we must know where he is, and what he is doing."

Damavandi considered this. He also considered Ha-mid Khodaei.

Mullahs were Islamic clergy, men who had devoted their lives to the study of the Qu'ran and the Hadith, doctors of the law of sharia who were considered to be experts on all religious matters.

Religious matters. Unfortunately, within the Shi'ite fundamentalist worldview of the current Iranian government, everything was a religious matter, from the way a man dressed and spoke and acted, to the zeal with which he carried out his duties to the state. The Guardian Council, in its infinite wisdom, had seen fit to install civilian mullahs on board each vessel of the Iranian navy, ostensibly to safeguard the spiritual lives of the crew.

However, at the same time they were in an excellent position to report on the loyalty and the religious zeal of the men in command of those ships.

It was an idea rooted in Soviet doctrine. As far back as the Second World War, or earlier, perhaps — the Russian Civil War — Russian military units had gone into battle with commissars actually sharing command with military officers. It had been, Damavandi reflected, a bad idea. The commissars were supposed to guarantee the political reliability of both the officers and the men, in an atmosphere steeped in mistrust and paranoia. In fact, all too often command decisions did not fall into clearly separate domains — the military and the political. The effect, he believed, had been to weaken the Soviet army, if only because its commanders were unwilling to take risks that might result in their arrest and court-martial.

The mullahs of the Guardian Council had applied the concept to military units within the Iranian military, especially the elite Pasdaran. They'd avoided the inherent problems of divided command, technically, by not giving the unit clerics rank or official military status, but officers were expected to pay careful attention to their advice, and to disregard that advice at the peril to their own careers.

Damavandi had three choices now. He could follow Khodaei's advice. If things went wrong, he at least would be able to demonstrate that he'd done God's will. Or he could use his better judgment, his military judgment, which was to remain hidden and to continue to draw close the net already spread about the American intruder. If his strategy worked, his rejection of Khodaei's advice would be ignored. If it failed, however, he would have to answer for it at his court-martial.

The third option was the one most often adopted by Soviet commanders saddled with a militarily incompetent commissar. He could buck the whole problem up the chain of command.

"Maneuvering!" he snapped. "Bring us to periscope depth!"

"What are your intentions, Captain?" Khodaei asked.

"We are all very small parts of a much larger plan, Mullah," he replied. "A misstep on our part could cause that plan to unravel. We will ask headquarters how to proceed."

"By the time they make up their minds, Captain, the American will have eluded us!"

"I think not," Damavandi replied. He gestured at the chart on the light table between them. "It's not as though he has many places in which to hide."