Ohio Class

19

Captain Mehdi Jalali brought his fist down hard on the plot table. "Fire torpedo number one!"

A sharp hiss… and the deck lurched as the torpedo was ejected from Tareq's forward tubes by a blast of compressed air, momentarily interfering with the vessel's trim.

"Torpedo one fired electrically, sir!"

"Fire number two!"

"Torpedo two fired electrically, sir!"

"Fire number three!"

"Torpedo three fired electrically, sir!"

Jalali looked at the clock on the bulkhead, noting the position of the sweep second hand. Range to target was 1,800 meters… one and a half minutes, close enough.

He would have liked to have gotten in closer before firing, but his first active sonar pulse had returned a target — good, strong, and close. He hadn't expected to find himself with the enemy already squarely in his sights, Allah be praised. He would have been foolish to wait, hoping for a better solution, especially when the American now knew Tareq was here, and exactly where she was.

Three torpedoes to sink one submarine was probably excessive, Jalali thought… but then, this was an exceptional target. Ohio-class subs were big, and one 533mm torpedo might not be enough.

And he was well aware that he might not get a second chance.

"All torpedoes running normally," the weapons officer announced. "Allah be praised!"

Allah be praised indeed… when the warheads found their mark.

"Torpedoes in the water, Captain!" came the urgent call from Sonar. "Two… no, now three torpedoes! Range eighteen hundred yards!"

"Snapshot!" Stewart yelled. "Sierra Three-one-one!"

Ohio never went on patrol with fewer than two of her four tubes loaded and ready to fire at all times, and since entering the Gulf, Stewart had ordered four war-shots loaded. Boomers weren't expected to use their torpedoes; their weapons were twenty-four MIRVed Trident ICBMs, and if the boat had to fire a torpedo, it was because an enemy hunter-killer sub had found them, and because their mission — to remain undetected and serve as a deterrent — had failed. In her new role as an SSGN, the Ohio's operational envelope left a lot more leeway. She was still expected to remain undetected, especially when carrying out a clandestine insertion op along an enemy coast. However, the very fact that she did have to approach that coast meant she was a lot more vulnerable. Firing in self-defense was a lot more likely now.

A "snapshot" was just that, a quick, return shot fired without aiming. The idea was to loose one of the ready torpedoes as quickly as the tube could be flooded and the outer door opened, getting it off and running. If the incoming enemy torpedoes destroyed the Ohio, at least there was a chance that the American submarine would take her killer down with her.

"Torpedo tube three fired, Captain," the weapons officer announced. "Running hot, straight, and normal." A pause. "Torpedo three has acquired the target, Captain."

"Cut the wire, Lieutenant. Helm! Hard left rudder! Maneuvering, ahead full!"

"Torpedo three is running free, sir."

"Helm, hard left rudder, aye aye!"

"Control Room, Maneuvering. Ahead full, aye!"

Stewart felt the building power trembling through the deck as Ohio accelerated into a turn. He grabbed hold of the edge of the plot table to stay upright. The deck was canting beneath his feet.

This was why the helmsman and planesman stations actually had seat belts, though they usually weren't needed on boomers. Normally, submarine maneuvers were gentle enough, but high-speed combat maneuvers were something else entirely. Stewart heard a loud crash from somewhere forward as some piece of unsecured gear flew loose and struck the deck.

The hell of it was that the water here was just too shallow to allow any real maneuvering. With so little third dimension to work with, the Ohio might as well have been a skimmer, stuck on the roof. Her single available weapon now was speed, to literally outrun the oncoming torpedoes. Soviet-made 533mm torpedoes could travel at 35 knots, while the Ohio could manage 25 or a bit more. That meant that the torpedoes, now 1,500 yards astern, were closing with a relative velocity of ten knots.

Ohio had just extended her remaining time to four and a half minutes.

The problem, though, was that the torpedoes had a range of eight nautical miles, and could travel for twelve minutes.

They would reach Ohio a good seven to eight minutes before they ran out of fuel.

"Captain! One enemy torpedo is running! It has not yet acquired us!"

"Cut the wires," Jalali ordered. All three of Tareq's torpedoes had locks on the American vessel. They no longer needed to be guided by wire. "Helm! Come right to zero-one-zero degrees! Maneuvering! Ahead flank!"

The Tareq began picking up speed, turning away from the oncoming American torpedo.

"Control Room, Sonar. Range to nearest torpedo… seven hundred yards."

Stewart did a fast calculation in his head. Seven hundred yards with a closing rate of ten knots meant a minute and forty-eight seconds.

"Tell me when the range is five hundred yards," he said.

"Aye aye, sir."

Stewart looked at the chart showing Ohio's current position. There was Abu Musa, just five miles to the south.

When you looked at the bottom topography, however, Abu Musa was revealed as the top of a mountain, with a large plateau — the shallows along the Saudi Arabian landmass — extending off to the south. On the north side, directly ahead, the side of that mountain plunged from the highest peak on Abu Musa — a rocky crest called Jabal Halwa, a hundred feet above sea level — to the sea floor some 250 feet below. The slope was fairly steep, more cliffside in places than hill.

And the Ohio was racing directly toward that cliff now at 25 knots. At that speed, they would reach the flank of the underwater mountain at just about the same time the torpedoes caught up with them.

It was going to be damned tight….

The next minute crawled past at an agonizing pace.

The sea floor, as revealed by Ohio's BQR 19 navigation sonar, was rising rapidly to meet the fast-moving submarine's keel. The sub was at a terrible handicap. The shoaling water now was less than 120 feet deep, but the Ohio herself was almost eighty feet tall, from keel to the top of her fair-water.

"Captain!" the dive officer shouted. "We're breaching!"

"Can't be helped," he shouted back. If he could make them fly to escape those fish, he would. "Control Room, Sonar! Range five hundred yards!"

"Release countermeasures!"

It might buy them another few precious moments….

A pair of cylinders fired from launch tubes in Ohio's flanks slowed, then exploded into clouds of bubbles. In seconds the torpedoes' sonar locks were broken as, from their perspective, their target vanished behind a large and fuzzy wall of sonar returns.

Moments later the first torpedo punched through the bubble wall. Ohio was already turning, swinging sharply to the right and pulling clear of the torpedo's cone acquisition zone — the cone-shaped space in front of it in which the torpedo could "see." Lock broken, the torpedo continued chirping, seeking a new target.

Seconds later it found one, closed the range at forty knots, and struck….

The thunderous roar of the explosion rang through the hull. A second later the submarine rolled hard to the right, tipping farther… farther… until notebooks, pencils, coffee mugs, and unsecured gear crashed to the deck… and still farther as men grabbed hold of chairs or consoles or anything else anchored down to keep from falling into the starboard bulkhead.

And then Ohio rolled back, righting herself. Several men gave brief, heartfelt cheers, but quieted immediately. One torpedo was down — detonating against an underwater cliff. But there were two more still coming.

Stewart felt the telltale shift and lurch of a submarine moving at speed on the surface. Submerged, submarines felt nothing of the wave action on the roof unless they were very close to surfacing. Once surfaced, they felt the effects of wind and wave the same as any other ship.

"Helm! Keep us in the turn," Stewart ordered. "Bring us around to… make it zero-three-zero!"

"Make course zero-three-zero, aye aye!"

"Diving Officer! We're naked! Get us back where we belong!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Make depth one hundred feet!"

"Make depth one-zero-zero feet, aye aye!" Stewart locked glances with Shea. "We're violating our first order."

" 'Remain undetected.' I kind of got that, sir."

"Sonar! Where's that next torpedo!"

"The second torpedo has not reacquired, Captain. It's hunting…. "

It would have been programmed to begin turning in circles, looking for the target it had lost. The question of the moment was which way it would turn. If it swung right, it might very well reacquire the Ohio on its first pass. If it swung left, toward the island…

A second massive thud sounded through sea and hull metal, this one more distant.

"Captain, Sonar! Second torpedo has detonated."

"Acknowledged!"

"What about the third?" Shea asked.

"It was trailing the other two," Stewart replied. "It might not have lost us in the decoy."

"Captain, Sonar! Third torpedo is still locked! Range four hundred!"

"Release countermeasures!"

"Countermeasures deployed, sir!"

Ohio had now completed a full half-circle, and was moving to the north-northeast, away from the island and toward the Iranian Kilo.

"Come right to zero-eight-five!"

"Come right to course zero-eight-five, aye aye, sir."

Shea looked at Stewart. "You're trying to get inside his turn."

"Might work."

"Control, Sonar! Range two hundred!"

"Then again," Stewart said.

They could hear the shrill hum of the torpedo as it closed the gap.

"Countermeasures!" Jalali yelled. "Now!"

"Countermeasures released, Captain!"

"Hard left helm! Bring her around!"

Sweat dripped down Jalali's face and drenched his uniform. It's just the wet air, he told himself. These Russian diesel subs were cramped, hot, and wet. There was always condensation everywhere, and the humidity on board often was so high it was impossible not to sweat as badly as the pipes, metal surfaces, and bulkheads themselves.

But he looked at the tight, pale faces around him, the wide eyes staring at the aft bulkhead.

No, this time it wasn't just the humidity.

Moments before, the entire crew had erupted in cheers as the rumble of an explosion reached them. A hit! Perhaps a kill!

But then the sonar officer had reported transient noises. It sounded as though the American was surfacing. He was damaged, perhaps, damaged and surfacing to put off the crew.

But the sonar picture was murky, and it was hard to make any sense out of what they were hearing.

But then they heard something they understood only too well — the high-pitched chirp of an enemy torpedo acquiring them and bearing in for the kill.

"What are you doing, Captain?" It was Bavafa, the cleric, a painfully thin, oily man with the look of an ascetic… or a fanatic.

"Foxing the American torpedo," he told him. "Or trying to."

"How?"

"By giving it something else to lock onto, at least for a moment. While it chases our decoy, we change course and slip away."

"Captain! Enemy torpedo has lost its lock!"

"Well done!" Bavafa said, face creasing in a smile.

"Don't count your blessings yet, holy man. We're not out of this yet."

The Kilo possessed an important advantage over the huge American vessel in its superior maneuverability. It wasn't as fast as the Ohio, but it could easily turn well inside the radius of the much faster torpedo, forcing the torpedo to make a long, wide swing around in a circle to reacquire if it missed.

"The enemy torpedo is circling. It has not reacquired…. "

Seconds passed.

"Sonar!" Jalali said. "Go active. I want to know what happened to the American!"

"Captain, the American is destroyed, surely!" Bavafa said. "We heard the explosions!"

"One thing you learn as a submariner, cleric," Jalali told him. "Take nothing for granted."

Ping!

"Captain!" the sonar officer cried. "The American! He's directly ahead! Bearing two-zero-four, range one thousand, speed twenty-five knots!"

So… not damaged after all, and certainly not destroyed.

"He's passing us off the port bow, Captain! Turning away… he's turning away from us!"

A chance to fire another shot, and take him at point-blank range. "Ready torpedo tubes four, five, and six!"

"Tubes four, five, and six are ready to fire, Captain!"

"Captain! Sonar! Incoming torpedo, dead ahead!"

"Idiot! The torpedo is astern of us, not in front!"

"No, sir! It's our torpedo, coming back at us!"

The tactical picture dropped into place for Jalali at that instant. The last of his three torpedoes had missed the American, who'd evidently pulled the same inside-turn maneuver he'd been attempting with the Tareq. Decoyed a second time, Tareq's torpedo had missed the Ohio, begun searching for its lost target, and acquired… the Tareq.

"Do something, Captain!" Bavafa screamed.

"Do?" He could already hear the whine of the torpedo coming closer. "There is nothing to do, cleric, but pray."

The explosion hurled both men across the deck, slamming them into the weapons console as the port side of the control room opened to the sea. For a thunderous instant men shrieked and struggled and died.

And there was only the sound of water flooding Tareq's crew spaces, as the Iranian submarine nosed into the soft bottom.

"Captain, Sonar. I'm getting breakup and flooding noises. We got him!"

"Where's our other fish? I don't want to score an own-goal like our friend out there just did."

"It's gone silent, sir. Must've run out of fuel." American torpedoes were set to flood and sink when they ran out of fuel, so as not to pose a hazard to surface ships.

Stewart allowed himself a long, slow, and somewhat shaky breath. Ohio boats simply were not designed to pull off maneuvers like an SSN. And yet, somehow, Ohio had pulled it off… and in water no deeper than a bathtub.

"Okay, gentlemen," he said, speaking into an utterly silent compartment. "It's not over. Not by a long shot. Diving Officer, take us as deep as we've got. Maneuvering, slow to one-third."

"Maneuvering, slow to one-third, aye, sir."

"Making depth one-zero-five feet, sir."

"Very well." He looked at Shea. "You can breathe again, Wayne," he told his XO.

"My God, Captain. You handled her like an attack boat!"

"And for our next trick," Stewart said, "we go north. We have some SEALs up there who are counting on us."

"Yes, sir!"

They would conduct the recon in two groups of four. Tangretti, Hutchinson, Avery, and Hobarth would carry out the actual descent and infiltration; Mayhew, Richardson, Olivetti, and Wilson would remain at the top of the cliff as the tactical reserve, and maintain the satellite link with the ASDS and with Washington.

They'd found a stretch of canyon wall around the bend in the valley above the tunnel entrances, a steeply descending slope with one vertical descent, a forty-foot drop. After carefully scoping the area out through their

NVGs, they secured four rappelling lines at the top of the cliff, checked climbing gloves, harnesses, and equipment, then backed over the edge, bouncing lightly down the face of the canyon wall in long, easy bounds.

At the bottom, Tangretti let Mayhew know they were all down safely over his M-biter. That was SEAL slang for the AN/PRC-148 (V) Maritime MultiBand Inter/Intra Team Radio — or MBITR for short — a 2.7 pound tactical radio each man wore attached to his combat harness.

"Delta One-one, One-two," he whispered into the needle mike beside his lips. "Down, set, and good to go."

"Copy, One-two. Good luck."

The descent lines were drawn up the cliff face by the men waiting above. There was no sense in risking having them discovered by a passing Iranian patrol.

They'd actually given thought to making their descent inside the complex fence. The Iranians had fenced off both ends of the valley, but not bothered with the sheer rock walls to either side. During the daylight hours, the SEALs had watched as several patrols went past along the canyon rim, several on foot and one by helicopter. None had noticed, however, the small and carefully camouflaged SEAL hide.

In any case, the canyon walls inside the base perimeter were sure to be more carefully watched than those outside, possibly by men using infrared or low-light goggles, or by electronic surveillance through cameras or more subtle technological means.

And so Tangretti's One-two descended to the canyon floor two hundred yards west of the fence, then made their way back along the canyon wall, moving slowly, quietly, and remaining blended with the shadows.

The pole lights inside the fence provided more than enough of a glow for them to navigate using their NVGs. Those lights also guaranteed a bonus; sentries inside the fence or close by it outside would not be dark-adapted. It would be that much harder to see four night-black shadows moving silently through the darkness.

When they reached the fence, they moved north along the outside, crossing the valley until they were about twenty yards from the four flatbed trucks parked inside the wire. After checking to be sure the chain-link fence itself wasn't wired, Hutch used a set of wire cutters to carefully snip open an entryway, a triangle-shaped flap that he left connected along one side. With the improvised gate open, the four SEALs crawled inside, and Avery wired the flap shut behind them, using short lengths of silver wire.

"One-one, One-two," Tangretti whispered. "We're in."

"Copy."

They crawled flat on their bellies, two at a time, across a patch of open but deeply shadowed ground. As Tangretti and Avery neared the trucks, however, he froze, raising a fist to signal a halt. He could hear boots crunching gravel just ahead.

The Pasdaran sentry rounded the back of the nearest flatbed, an AK-47 slung carelessly over his shoulder. He walked past the SEALs within ten feet of them, stopped, looked around, and then began fishing inside the front of his trousers. In another moment he was urinating against a slab of rock leaning against the north wall of the canyon, whistling tunelessly.

Tangretti and Avery lay motionless, flat on the ground; in the dark, the human eye sees movement before it can make out shapes, and so far the Iranian soldier hadn't seen them. In another moment the man refastened his trousers, turned, and walked back toward the nearest tunnel entrance, about fifteen yards away.

Gradually, Tangretti made himself relax, then continue crawling. The two SEALs reached the flatbed, crouching in the shadows, as Hutch and Richardson joined them.

Avery pulled a Geiger counter from an equipment pouch and swept the wand along the side of the truck. The instrument had been designed for covert ops such as this one — in this business, you never knew when you were going to be surreptitiously searching for traces of nuclear material — and it was silent, without the irritating clacking sound made popular by the movies.

"Okay, guys," Avery whispered over the tactical channel. "I've got a positive."

"Copy that," Mayhew said over the SEALs' headset receivers. "How strong?"

"Just a trace. But they've been moving something nasty around on this truck."

After carefully recording the readings taken from a complete sweep of the back of the truck, Avery and Hutch moved on to the next vehicle. Tangretti and Richardson used strips of duct tape, pressing them down at different points on the back of the truck, then lifting them, rolling them up, and transferring them to small, watertight plastic tubes. The nature of the trace radioactivity could be determined in a radiation lab stateside. Traces of plutonium dust, for example, would adhere to the tape and be detectable later, as would alpha particles; beta or gamma radiation would leave no source particles, however, but might contaminate dirt or specks of metal lying on the flatbed. By analyzing the strips of tape in the lab, looking for types of radiation and the nature of any particles adhering to them, the NEST birds — the

Nuclear Emergency Search Team scientists — would be able to make a very good guess at just what those trucks had been transporting, and when.

The fact that there was radiation was a lucky break, Tangretti thought as he sealed his first specimen container and stowed it in a pouch. If the Iranians had been more careful, they'd have stowed the material securely in a lead container, and no amount of duct tape in the world would have picked anything up. The likeliest scenario was that they'd assembled nuclear warheads somewhere else, then shipped the warheads here on the trucks. With a bit of sloppy technique, traces of radioactive material might have been smeared on the outside of the warheads, then transferred to the trucks during the ride.

Tangretti and the others had been assured during their briefing stateside that any radiation they encountered on this op would be very low level — as much, perhaps, as they would get in a chest X ray — and would not be hazardous. He tried not to think about the fact that exactly how much radioactivity was lingering on the outside of the warheads depended almost entirely on how careful the Iranian missile technicians had been in assembling them. There was a good chance that the warheads weren't actually atomic bombs, but were instead "dirty bombs" using conventional explosives to scatter a cloud of plutonium dust. Such a bomb could contaminate much of a city and cause thousands of deaths through cancer — a true terror weapon. If that was what they were dealing with here, all bets were off. Plutonium was the single most toxic substance known to man, and a microgram could kill you.

Tangretti was very careful in how he handled the tape, and he planned to dispose of his black combat gloves just as soon as he had the chance.

For the next hour the four SEALs continued their covert reconnaissance. They took samples and readings off all of the trucks, as well as from a couple of jeeps and a covered four-by-four parked nearby. They examined several of the tunnel entrances, verifying the thickness of the steel doors — and the fact that the Iranians tended to leave those doors open. They took photographs with a digital camera, transmitting each image as they snapped it back to Mayhew, who routed them on up to the satellite and back to Washington. And they took careful GPS readings at the tunnel entrances, relaying that data back as well.

Three more times they froze in position as Iranians wandered past, including one with a large, black German shepherd on a leash. The dog caught their scent and barked; its handler cuffed the animal and forced it to keep going.

So much for high security in a top-secret nuclear storage facility.

Finally, the four SEALs made their way back to the opening in the fence, unwired it, slipped through, and wired it tightly shut behind them once more. Half an hour later they were climbing the lines lowered by their teammates at the top of the canyon rim.

This, Tangretti thought, was the ideal SEAL mission. Somehow, the Hollywood version always seemed to end in gunfire and mayhem, but a totally successful sneak-and-peek like this one had the operators slipping into the objective, doing their job, and slipping out again, all without being detected by the enemy. Even quietly killing a sentry would have compromised the mission, since the chances were good that the man's body would be found, and the Iranians would know someone had been inside their base.

All that remained now was for the team to exfiltrate the area, link up with the ASDS offshore, and then get back to the relative security of the Ohio. According to the last report they'd had, Ohio had given ASW forces the slip and would be at Waypoint Bravo as planned.

As planned. Tangretti felt an unpleasant twinge at that, a foreboding, more superstitious than anything else. So far the op had gone perfectly. They'd gotten where they were supposed to be and done what they were supposed to do.

But there was still that old military maxim about no plan surviving contact with the enemy.

There was still plenty of room for something to go terribly, terribly wrong.