To Kill the Potemkin

2

Sorensen sat in the back of the jeep, peering with underwater eyes at the shabby streets and rotting Victorians of Norfolk. He felt as though a sheet of water was between him and Barracuda's home port. To him, Norfolk was a target, a blip on a Soviet attack console, and when he was there, he felt naked and exposed, like a sub on the surface.

The jeep turned a corner and he caught a glimpse of lights on the river and the darkness of the Atlantic beyond.

"What's the word, Chief? We got us a Russkie out there?"

Lopez shook his head. "Nah. There was one sub that tried to get in yesterday, but Ivan hasn't figured out yet that we can track him anywhere in the Atlantic. We let this November class get in as far as fifty miles offshore, but Mako flushed her last night. She won't be back. She's heading for the ice pack."

"Why didn't they leave it for us?"

"You're nuts, Sorensen, you know that? All you ever want to do is chase the Russians around the ocean. Me, I like a nice quiet patrol with no excitement."

"That's because you're a torpedoman, Lopez. It makes you nervous to think that someday you may even have to blow off one of your fish."

"This is my last patrol, Sorensen. I been down below for twenty years and I've never fired a war shot yet. I want to go out the same way."

"I'm gonna miss you, Chief."

"You won't miss me. Ace. You'll be too busy playing Cowboys and Cossacks to think about me. You'll be a thousand feet down, worrying about a saltwater pipe bursting and a jet of water cutting you in half. You'll be eating radiation and turning in your film badge. While you're trying to get into the Gulf of Finland, waiting for the Russians to drop sonic depth bombs all over the place, I'll be in L.A. lyin' around the pool sippin' a cold beer."

"Sure, Lopez. And what about your seven kids? You gonna buy them a beer, too?"

Lopez laughed, his heavy jaw hanging open and his gold teeth glinting in the street light. "My kids don't drink beer. They smoke reefer and drink mescal."

Traffic picked up as they neared the navy base. The day shift was going to work in the dark. The shore patrol driver stopped at the gate, and the Marine guard waved them through.

Sorensen said, "I heard a nasty rumor, Chief. I heard they assigned thirteen apprentice seamen to the ship yesterday."

Lopez turned around to face the back seat. "You heard wrong. They're not all apprentices. Yours is a third class."

"Mine? What do you mean, mine?" Sorensen groaned.

"That's the way it is. You get Sonarman Third Class Michael Fogarty."

"I don't suppose he's qualified in subs."

"You suppose right. But he's supposed to be another hotshot, just like you, Ace. He's your baby, you keep him in line."

The first red splashes of dawn appeared over Hampton Roads, turning the Elizabeth River to blood. The jeep wound its way through the base, past shops guarded by Marines, past the quonset hut that served as headquarters for Submarine Squadron Six.

Two hundred people lined the Submarine pier. Families clustered around their sailors, touching them in little ways. Mothers patted flat their sons' collars, fingering the white piping. Little boys saluted their fathers. One by one the sailors kissed their wives and children and disappeared down the hatch.

There was a commotion as the crowd parted before the jeep. Lopez and the driver sat in front, faces impassive, eyes straight ahead. From the back seat Sorensen waved his hat to the crowd like an astronaut on parade. "I love ya, I love ya," he shouted to the kids.

Out of the side of his mouth Lopez growled, "Shut up, Sorensen. You ain't no movie star."

Sorensen smiled at the crowd and continued to wave. The kids waved back.

The jeep stopped at the gangway. Straining at her lines, Barracuda rode low in the water with littft more than her sail and rudder above the surface. She had the look of a great black shark, a predator of the deep come momentarily into the light. Bunting hung from the gangway, and for a moment the white stars in the fabric shimmered red.

Sorensen smartly squared his hat and climbed out of the jeep. Reaching inside his jumper pocket, he extracted a five dollar bill and dropped it in the shore patrolman's lap.

"Thanks for the lift, pal. This is my stop."

From his perch on the bridge Captain John Springfield watched the proceedings on the pier. He enjoyed the pomp, if only because it meant a brief respite from the tension of preparing his ship for patrol.

The tall, slender Texan had been in command of Barracuda for eighteen months, long enough, he thought, to have become intimately acquainted with the ship and her crew. He scrutinized the sailors as they went aboard. Torpedomen, yeomen, reactor technicians, the quartermaster. The eldest was the steward, forty-three-year-old Jimmy "Cakes" Colby. The youngest was an eighteen-year-old Seaman apprentice, Duane Hicks. Springfield was thirty-five.

He watched Sorensen come aboard. At sea Sorensen was perfectly disciplined. Ashore, well, at least this time they didn't have to salvage him from the drunk tank at Newport News.

The ship tugged gently at her lines. The tide had peaked, stopped for an instant and now was ebbing back to the sea. A flurry of butterflies churned up his stomach. A navy band struck up "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

In the control room the executive officer, Lt. Commander Leo Pisaro, was going through the departure checklist when Sorensen came through the hatch. Pisaro held up his hand for Sorensen to wait and went on with his list. He spoke into a headset with division heads throughout the ship.

"Reactor control, report."

"Steam, thirty-one percent."

"Very well. Engine room, report."

"Engine room standing by on number one turbine."

"Very well. Helm, report."

"Helm standing by."

"Very well. Stern planes, report."

"Stern planes standing by."

"Good afternoon, Sorensen, good of you to join us."

Sorensen snapped to attention. "Petty Officer First Class Sorensen reporting for duty, sir."

Starkly bald, swarthy, tenacious, Pisaro was the only officer aboard who was not an Annapolis graduate. His jumpsuit was covered with patches and insignia, a quilt of blazing lightning bolts, missiles, guns, swords and antique engines of destruction. The newest and most prominent patch was a sub whose bow tapered into the snout of a great barracuda. "SSN 593," it read. "Shipkiller."

He snapped open a heavy Zippo and lit a Pall Mall.

"You're four hours late, Sorensen."

"Yes, sir."

"It's a good thing Chief Lopez knew where to find you."

"Yes, sir."

"You drunk?"

"No, sir. Hung over." Sorensen tugged at his crotch.

Pisaro shook his head, smiling to himself. Every cruise was the same. Either the shore patrol or the civilian police would drag Sorensen back to the ship, and he would stand in the control room with a shit-eating grin on his face and scratch his balls. His uniform was a mess. His hat was dirty. He smelled.

One thing was certain: drunk or hung over, Sorensen could go into the sonar room right now, sit down at his console and drive the ship to Naples.

"All right. Get out of your blues. I want you in sonar in fifteen minutes."

"Yes, sir."

"You're a disgusting mess, man. Take a shower."

"Aye aye, Commander."

Sorensen descended two decks to the forward crews quarters. The compartment was crowded with boisterous sailors changing from blues into shipboard uniforms, dark-blue nylon jumpsuits and rubber-soled shoes.

"What say. Ace? Where the hell you been?"

Sorensen searched the upper tier of bunks for the owner of the bayou drawl. A freckle-faced redhead peeked out from behind a technical manual.

"Hey, Willie Joe."

"Where you been, man?"

"Tokyo."

"Tokyo, Japan?"

"That's the one."

"You're puttin' me on. Lopez was pissed. You ain't never on time."

"It's a long ride back from Tokyo. Don't worry about the chief. We kissed and made up."

Sonarman Second Class Willie Joe Black lay down his booklet and yellow felt-tipped pen. "Tell me something, Ace. I know I shouldn't ask, but why the hell did you go to Japan with just three days' liberty?"

"I got a friend over there."

"That's a long way to go to get laid."

"Not that kind of friend," Sorensen laughed. "I know this guy, an old pal from sub school who lives over there. He's what you might call an advanced gadget freak. He likes to make toys a few years before anybody else."

"So what did he make for you?"

"This," Sorensen replied, tossing the tape recorder on Willie Joe's bunk.

"What is it?"

"What's it look like?"

"I dunno. I never seen anything like it."

Sorensen pushed a button and out came the Beatles "Can't Buy Me Love." Throughout the compartment, heads swiveled toward the music. A half-dozen sailors crowded around Willie Joe's bunk, all talking at once.

"What is that?"

"Whereja git that thing?"

"Is it a radio?"

"I hate the Beatles, ain't you got the Stones?"

"It's a tape recorder, the smallest in the world. Rechargeable battery, the works."

Shaking his head in amazement, Willie Joe asked, "Transistors?"

"Yeah, nothin' to it, really, except the heads."

Willie Joe picked up his pen and resumed his study of advanced hydraulics. Sorensen peeked at the cover of the manual. "You looking for a promotion, Willie Joe?"

"Yeah. My old lady wants a new Bonneville. If I make first class, I guess she can have it."

"You spend your liberty with her and your kids?"

"Sure did. I think I spent all three days buying carloads of crap in the Navy Exchange."

"You love it," Sorensen said.

"You went to Japan."

"For six hours."

The Beatles went into "Back in the USSR." Sorensen looked around at the faces shining in the bright fluorescent lights. The music seemed to pop the bubble of pressure that surrounded departure. He recognized all but one of the sailors.

"Willie Joe," he said, "I hear we got a green pea."

"That's right."

"Did you check him out?"

"No, he just got here. He's a good-lookin' kid, and he'd better watch his ass." Willie Joe grinned and nodded his head in the direction of a young sailor standing in the passageway, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jumpsuit, staring at the maze of piping and cables that ran through the top of the compartment. He didn't appear shy but he hung back from the crowd around Willie Joe's bunk and the little tape recorder. He had a pretty face and a look that wasn't so much cocky as confident.

Fogarty felt Sorensen's eyes looking him up and down. He lit a Lucky Strike and turned to meet Sorensen's stare.

Sorensen walked over to him. "Got another smoke, kid?"

"Sure." Fogarty held out his pack and offered his cigarette as a light. Sorensen noticed that Fogarty had not torn the aluminum foil away from the pack but had carefully folded it over the tobacco to keep it fresh. Sorensen took a cigarette and replaced the foil as he found it.

"Fogarty, right?"

"Right." Fogarty smiled. "You must be Sorensen."

"That's me."

"I heard about you in sonar school."

Sorensen waited.

"They played us tapes of all the different Soviet subs and told us you're the guy who made the tapes. They said you've collected more signatures of Soviet subs than anyone else."

"That's what they told you? It wasn't me, kid. It was Barracuda. Whatever we do here, we do together. Willie Joe there, he's done his share, too. It's the luck of the draw."

Fogarty nodded. "That makes me the luckiest guy in the navy. I asked for this ship."

"You must believe in miracles. I'll tell you straight, kid. Barracuda is going to get a special assignment in Naples, and they put you and all these other apprentices on this ship to foul us up and get in our way."

Sorensen was a good four inches taller than Fogarty, and his narrowed, unsmiling eyes bore down now on Fogarty. When he saw that Fogarty didn't flinch, kept cool, he relaxed.

"Well, you're here," he said. "We'll make the best of it. You stow your gear?"

"I did."

"Tell me something, Fogarty. Why'd you ask for this ship?"

"Because of you, Sorensen. I wanted to learn from the best."

"You mean you don't know everything yet?"

Fogarty seemed to blush and shook his head. Sorensen punched him in the shoulder and was surprised to find the muscle hard as steel. "All right, kid. Welcome aboard."

"Thanks."

"Thanks for the smoke. Catch you later."

Sorensen retrieved his tape recorder, switched off the music, and put the machine and tapes in his locker. "Show's over for today, gents. Tune in tomorrow."

Willie Joe leaned over the edge of his bunk. "We muster in ten minutes, Ace."

"Okay. Where's Davic?"

"Where do you think?"

"In the galley stuffing his face. Who's the sonar officer this trip?"

"Hoek. He's been made weapons officer, too."

"Oh, that's ducky. We'll have a regular fat guys' convention," Sorensen said. "You know something, Willie Joe? The navy's got its head up its ass."

He stripped off his blues and stashed them in his locker. In jockey shorts he paraded through the compartment, flexing his muscles and displaying his tattoo. Whistling, We all live in a yellow submarine, he headed for the showers.

A year out of Annapolis and fresh from Nuclear Power School, Lt. Fred Hoek was making his second patrol. Twenty-three years old, gung-ho, overweight and plagued by zits, Hoek was the ninth sonar officer to serve on Barracuda in eight years.

He was standing at attention in the executive officer's tiny cabin, watching Pisaro shuffle papers. Pisaro's thick lips and large teeth made Hoek nervous.

"You squared away, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir."

"At ease. Sit down."

"Thank you, sir."

Hoek sat at attention. Pisaro stacked his papers in a neat pile. "You're wearing two hats this cruise, Lieutenant, weapons and sonar. Did you go down to the torpedo room and have a chat with the boys down there?"

"Yes, sir."

"You run a check on the weapons console?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right, have you looked through the sonarmen's records?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well?"

"Davic and Black are solid, hard-working men. Davic is, ah, unusual."

"He wants to go to work for the CIA when his enlistment is up. He knows quite a lot about the Russians. You might learn something from him."

"Yes, sir. Black is up for first class, so he's going to be a bookworm this cruise."

"Willie Joe is a top-notch technician. On any other ship he'd be the leading sonarman. I expect him to get his promotion and move on. We're lucky to have him here."

"Yes, sir."

Pisaro lit a cigarette. "That brings us to Petty Officer Sorensen."

"Yes, sir."

"Did you go through his records carefully?"

"Yes, sir."

"And what do you think. Lieutenant?"

"Well, Commander, he's clearly a genius at sonar, but otherwise he's somewhat unconventional."

"Somewhat? He's a fucking maniac."

"I was trying to maintain decorum, Commander."

Pisaro burst out laughing. "Okay, Lieutenant. You're very young, and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. A short lecture: The strength of the navy is our senior petty officers. You don't see many of them around the Naval Academy. They're called men."

"Yes, sir."

"Petty Officer Sorensen is the kind of man who puts to shame computer projections. He knows more about sonar than you or I ever will. Sonar is an art. Every sound is a question of interpretation, and Sorensen has an uncanny feel for it. Don't ask me how. I doubt if he can explain it himself. If he is, as you say, unconventional, we tolerate that down here. As long as a man does his job, we leave him alone."

"Yes, sir."

"All right, did you meet the new man? What's his name?" Pisaro looked at his papers.

"Fogarty, sir. Yes, sir, briefly. He did very well in sub school."

"School's over, Lieutenant. Sorensen will look after him. Here's one more short lecture: This is an experienced crew. They've been through a lot together, the Cuban missile crisis and more than one dangerous patrol in unfriendly waters. When we close the hatch and dive, we're all alone. We're at war with the sea every second, and not far from same with the Russians. Under those conditions there is no such thing as a routine patrol. That's all. Dismissed."

Hoek found the sonarmen waiting in the control room.

"Good morning, sir," Sorensen said.

"Good morning." Hoek cleared his throat, realizing that nothing he had learned at the academy had prepared him adequately for this moment. He felt the steel deck vibrating slightly under his feet. He heard the white noise of air conditioners and the background chatter of the command intercom. He saw Sorensen's eyes, still bloodshot but testing him. Next to Sorensen, Willie Joe looked like a puppy dog, anxious to please. Then came Davic, a scowl firmly etched across his plump face. At the end of the line was Fogarty, looking straight ahead.

Hoek cleared his throat again. "Our transit time to Naples will be ten days. We don't expect to encounter any problems, but let's keep our ears alert and our eyes on the screen."

Sorensen rolled his eyes. It was a tradition in the Submarine Service for the most junior officer on a ship to be assigned the duties of sonar officer. Over the years Sorensen had learned that the only things these young lieutenants had in common were a bad complexion and a drive to become admirals.

Hoek continued, "There is one thing to note. Crossing the Atlantic, we will be participating in a test of a new SOSUS deep water submarine detection system. As you know, the bottom of our coastal waters has been seeded with passive sonars for ten years. This new extension of the system will enable us to track any sub in the North Atlantic. The hydrophones are laid out in a grid centered in the Azores. It's similar to the system we've been operating in the Caribbean for the last year. As far as we know, the Russians don't know anything about it. Any questions?"

Sorensen asked, "Do we have to give position reports to Norfolk?"

"Not until we get to Gibraltar. We pretend it's not there. Anything else?"

Sorensen shook his head.

"Okay, Chief Lopez has assigned the watches. Sorensen, you take the first watch, Willie Joe the second, Davic the third. The watches will be four hours, so you'll all be four on, eight off. Sorensen, you will be responsible for training the new man, Third Class Fogarty."

"Yes, sir."

Throughout the ship, division heads were making similar speeches. Pisaro, who also served as navigation officer, stood before the assembled helmsmen, planesmen and quartermaster, and spoke out for the benefit of the entire control room. "Set the maneuvering watch and let's haul ass."

"You heard the man," Hoek said. "Sorensen, you and Fogarty take us out. Dismissed."

The sonar room was amidships, next to the control room and flush against the pressure hull. A tiny chamber, it contained a cabinet for tools and parts and three operators' consoles, each with a keyboard and CRT screen.

Fogarty followed Sorensen into the small chamber and looked closely at the banks of loudspeakers and tape recorders mounted on the bulkheads. Layers of acoustic tile and cork insulated the compartment from noise in the control room and the machinery aft.

"Welcome to Sorensen's Sound Effects. Sit down."

The colors were drab military. The overworked air conditioner never completely cleaned out the smell of cigarette smoke and sweat. In 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis Sorensen had taped up a newspaper photo of his hero, John Kennedy. It was still there, yellow and ragged, partially obscured by fleshy pinups and a photograph of Sergei Gorshkov, Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union. A large chart displayed line drawings of the several classes of Soviet submarines: Whiskey, Hotel, Echo, Golf, November and the new Viktor.

Sorensen put on his earphones, and the last effects of his hangover disappeared. His fingers danced over the keyboard and activated the array of sixteen hydrophones, each a foot in diameter, mounted on the hull around the bow and down the sides of the ship. The hydrophones — the passive "listening" sonars — were sensitive microphones that collected sounds that traveled through the water, sometimes across great distances.

He listened to the familiar sounds of Barracuda's machinery, the pulse of pumps and the throttling steam. He heard the underwater beacons, fixed to the bottom of Chesapeake Bay, that would guide the ship through the channel and into the Atlantic. Satisfied that all was in order, he took off his earphones and looked at Fogarty.

To his surprise, Fogarty's eyes were closed. He was literally all ears. "What do you hear?" Sorensen asked.

"Barracuda."

"And what does she sound like?"

Fogarty opened his eyes and smiled. His eyes were dark brown, almost black. At first glance they were relaxed, but on closer inspection there was a hint of controlled tension.

"She sounds like World War Three."

Sorensen blinked, then laughed. "Okay, wiseguy, switch on the fathometer."

"Switching on fathometer." Fogarty's hands played over his keyboard.

"What's our depth?"

"Thirty feet under the keel."

"Test BQR-2, passive array."

"Testing BQR-2, passive array." Fogarty checked the circuits which connected the hydrophones to his console. "Test positive. All circuits functioning."

"Test active array."

Fogarty punched more buttons, activating in turn the transducers mounted in the center of each hydrophone. The transducers created the familiar sonar "pings" that radiated through the water and, if they struck an object, returned as an echo heard by the hydrophones. The "echo ranger" was rarely used, only in special circumstances, since each time it was activated it revealed the sub's location.

"Testing active array, test positive."

"Test weapons guidance."

"Testing weapons guidance. Weapons guidance locked on. Test positive."

"Test target-seeking frequency." In combat the target-seeking frequency was created by a special transducer to locate and pinpoint a target. To the target it was the sound of doom, followed immediately by a torpedo.

"Testing target-seeking frequency. Test positive."

Sorensen lit a Lucky Strike. "How'd you do in sonar school, kid?"

Fogarty flushed. It seemed he did that easily. "I was first in the class."

"No foolin'? Good for you. You look like a smart kid. Why didn't you go to nuclear power school? How come you're not a nuc?"

"I'm not that fond of radiation."

Sorensen blew smoke at the air-conditioning vent. "Can't say I blame you for that. Where you from?"

"Minnesota."

"Oh yeah? A child of the frozen north. You don't look like an Eskimo."

Fogarty grinned. "I'm from Minneapolis, and I hate snow."

"Well, at least you've got some sense, you left."

"At the first chance."

Sorensen said, "Okay, read the notice on the door. Read it out loud."

Fogarty twisted around in his seat and read. " 'WARNING! This Is A Secure Area. Any Unauthorized Use Of Classified Material Will Result In Imprisonment And Forfeiture Of Pay. Removal Of Classified Material Is A Violation Of The National Security Act.' "

"That's not all," Sorensen said.

At the bottom, scribbled in large block letters, Fogarty read, " 'LEAVE YOUR MIND BEHIND.' "

"That's what you do when you come in here," Sorensen said.

On the bridge the captain told the lookouts to be sharp. Two tugs stood off the bow, but Springfield intended to take his ship into the channel without assistance. The wind was in his favor, blowing from the south.

"Deck party, stand by to cast off lines," he shouted to the sailors fore and aft. He watched the shore as the ship drifted with the wind and current, then spoke quietly into his microphone, "Bridge to navigation, how's our tide?"

"Navigation to bridge, the tide is running with us."

"Very well. Cast off the stern line."

"Stern line away."

Some people on the pier began to cheer and wave. The band played "The Star Spangled Banner."

"Cast off the bow line."

"Bow line away."

"Steer right ten degrees."

"Right ten degrees."

When Barracuda cleared the dock and there was no danger of fouling her huge propeller, he ordered, "All ahead slow."

Sorensen and Fogarty listened intently to the sounds coming through their earphones. With infinite smoothness, sixteen thousand horsepower surged out of number one turbine, passed through the reduction gears, and the five blades of the massive propeller began to turn. They heard the whoosh of water as it began to wash over the hull, and the cavitation of the prop, the chunk chunk chunk of every revolution that would be audible until they submerged to four hundred feet. Sorensen punched several buttons on his console and the computer began to filter out the sounds of Barracuda's machinery. Ungainly on the surface, the ship rolled and pitched slightly as they headed for the channel.

"Sonar to control. Do you have the beacon on the repeater?"

The repeater was the sonar console in the control room that duplicated what the sonarmen saw and heard. Hoek sat at the repeater, but it was Pisaro who replied, "Control to sonar, we have it."

Twenty minutes after leaving the pier the captain and the lookouts came down from the sail. Springfield closed the hatch.

"Prepare to dive," said the captain. "Take her down, Leo."

Pisaro gave orders to retract the radars and systematically went through his diving panel.

"Mark two degrees down bubble."

"Mark two degrees down bubble, aye."

"Flood forward ballast tanks."

"Flood forward ballast tanks, aye."

"Half speed."

"All ahead half, aye."

"Stern planes down three degrees."

"Three degrees down, aye." Barracuda angled over and slid silently beneath the sea.