To Kill the Potemkin

11

In the control room of Potemkin nine men were crowded into a space designed for six. After seventy-three days at sea, every minute of which had been spent submerged, Potemkin's moment of truth was at hand.

Standing behind the sonar operator, his arm draped over the young officer's shoulders. Captain Nikolai Federov calmly gave the orders to maneuver Potemkin under the perimeter of ships that surrounded Kitty Hawk.

All eyes were on the sonar screen, where a splendid array of blips represented the U.S. Sixth Fleet.

"Quite a sight, eh, Popov?"

"Yes, sir," Popov whispered, his face gone white.

"Steady as he goes," said the captain quietly.

"Steady as he goes," repeated the helmsman.

Potemkin was an Alpha-class experimental submarine. Her sleek, orca-shaped hull was constructed of an alloy of titanium, a rare, strong, lightweight metal. The use of titanium in place of steel enabled Potemkin to cruise at fifty knots, a speed that had been thought impossible, and at a depth below four thousand feet. No other sub in the world could go that deep.

Potemkin was the most secret ship in the Soviet Navy. Only those in the highest echelons of command were aware of her presence in the Mediterranean. She was not officially attached to the Black Sea Fleet, whose bailiwick included the "Med." Potemkin was a fleet unto herself.

Potemkin had sailed submerged through the Norwegian Sea, the Iceland Gap and the Strait of Gibraltar without being detected. Federov had run the Strait by going deeper than the NATO sonar operators expected, positioning himself under a giant tanker and drifting through with the current and short bursts of electric power. Once in the Med, Federov concealed Potemkin's identity even from other Soviet ships. The officers of the surveillance ships with whom he communicated, and who reported to him the movements of the American fleet, thought Potemkin was a Viktor.

During the cruise, the longest submerged patrol in Soviet history, Potemkin had exceeded her design specifications. Federov had tested her depth and speed, her weapons, sonars, and electronics, all with glorious results. As he approached the American fleet, at a depth of only four hundred feet, his orders were to test the ultimate effectiveness of one more system: Acoustical Reproduction Device Number Seven.

A Sony tape recorder was mounted above the sonar console. Transfixed, the men in the control room listened as the reels spun out the song of the Swordfish. The taped signature of the American sub was the heart of a complex apparatus designed to make American sonar operators think Potemkin was one of their own. An earlier test had demonstrated that the device could make the Americans believe Potemkin was a Viktor.

Seven American submarines and fourteen surface ships were involved in the exercise. In a locked vault in the captain's cabin Potemkin carried tapes of every American nuclear sub. Of the seven subs in the war game, Fcderov had elected to simulate Swordfish because she was the oldest and noisiest.

Federov was not fond of Acoustical Reproduction Device Number Seven. For ten weeks he had eluded detection without it. With the aid of the thermal beneath him, he believed he could station Potemkin directly under Kitty Hawk without the Americans suspecting he was there.

But orders were orders, the tape was rolling, the special sound-absorbent silicon packing that quieted Potemkin's turbine was in place, and she was running shallow and slow, just as Swordfish would do as part of the American defense.

Since testing the Viktor tape on Barracuda, Potemkin had encountered no American sub. Should the genuine Swordfish happen to be in radio contact with the surface fleet at that moment, Potemkin was going to attract a lot more attention than the designers of Acoustical Reproduction Device Number Seven had planned for.

On the sonar screen the nearest blip, a destroyer, turned toward Potemkin. A moment later everyone on board heard the ping of the American's echo ranger.

Federov looked around the control room at the tense bearded and sweating faces. He switched on the intercom. "Engine room, how's the packing on the turbine?"

"Running hot, sir, but holding."

"Destroyer range?"

"Five thousand meters," said Popov. "He's… he's turning back. Captain."

On the screen the blip revolved back to its original course. A muffled cheer chorused through the control room.

"Silence!" ordered the captain.

"It's working," gloated First Officer Kurnachov, who was officially responsible for Acoustical Reproduction Device Number Seven. Kurnachov was also the Political Officer, the representative of the Party, and he had great faith in the prowess of Soviet technology.

"Don't be so sure, Comrade First Officer. All this means is that, for the moment, the Americans are more screwed up than we are."

Kurnachov turned back to his diving panel, making a mental note to write a memo about the captain's tasteless remark. "The only thing I regret, Captain First Rank Federov, is that we cannot surface and reveal the Alpha to the Americans, to throw it in their faces. Their metallurgists can't build a submarine of titanium. They would give anything to photograph our pretty ship."

Federov, tuning him out, had the uneasy feeling that he was being sucked into a trap. In ten minutes he would be inside the American perimeter, steaming directly at Kitty Hawk. He wanted a drink. In his hip pocket was a silver flask filled with vodka, the cheap, flavorless table vodka the Ministry of Trade sold to the Americans under the label Stolichnaya. He was tempted to pull it out and down a stiff belt, but resisted. Later, after the test was completed, he would lock himself in his cabin with Alexis, the chief engineer, and empty the flask.

He was weary of playing war with the Americans. He either wanted to make war or make peace, put an end to the purgatory of waiting. If this were war, Kitty Hawk would be sunk by now, and perhaps Potemkin as well, but at least that would be a clean and honorable finish to this dirty business of game-playing and its gamesmanship.

Federov had spent fifteen years in subs, fifteen years in — what did the Americans call it in their journals? — inner space: the lightless, heartless, impersonal ocean that had swallowed him, his ship and his crew. Inner space — the hostile, menacing sea, relentlessly seeking every microscopic flaw in every tiny weld; ruthlessly testing every square millimeter of the pressure hull, looking for the weak spot, the casual error of every drunken shipyard worker, every lazy quality control inspector—nyet, his mind was wandering…

"Range to Kitty Hawk?"

"Twenty thousand meters."

Suddenly Popov was out of his seat, his eyes fixed on the screen. "Captain, there's another sub… he's right under us."