Voyage of the Devilfish

CHAPTER 7

In the winter, the polar ice almost reached the northern Russian coast. An icebreaker had to clear the way for the fleet submarine Kaliningrad to get under way, and now it proceeded at full speed under the icecap. Admiral Alexi Novskoyy unpacked his duffel bag into the spacious lockers of the commanding officer’s quarters. Captain 1st Rank Yuri Vlasenko had been surprised by Novskoyy’s arrival on the pier, saying he had not had time to arrange conveniences for an admiral and his staff. Novskoyy had waved the protests aside. There would be no staff, just himself. Vlasenko had quickly given over his captain’s stateroom, where the admiral was now settling in.

A knock came at the door of the outer room of the stateroom suite, which led to the second-compartment passageway.

Novskoyy shut the lockers and unlocked the outer room door.

Standing in the passageway was Captain Vlasenko, dressed in his underway uniform of olive green tunic over pants tucked into boots. Novskoyy waved him into the suite, pointed to a seat and locked the door after him. Vlasenko was a short but powerful man, a champion wrestler at the Marshal Grechko Higher Naval School of Underwater Navigation. His shoulders were so big that his uniforms required special tailoring. Now in his late forties, he was losing a little of his muscle tone. His once blond hair was now grayish silver and wrinkles surrounded his eyes.

Vlasenko stared for a moment at Novskoyy’s hip, where the admiral wore a gleaming leather belt, a shining holster and a fleet-issue semiautomatic pistol. Just as on the Leningrad, Vlasenko remembered, feeling the bile rise. The man affected airs like the American general he’d read about what was his name? Patton, wore pearl-handled revolvers like a fancy cowboy… “Sir,” he began, “I came to invite you on an inspection of the ship.”

Novskoyy smiled slightly at Vlasenko. Why would his old subordinate offer to parade him through the ship he had designed himself? All the credit belonged to him. Vlasenko was the captain only as a result of his benevolence.

“No, I have no time for a tour. I have urgent fleet work, Captain. And besides, I know this ship better than any man alive, including you. I will assume — I will demand — that it is combat ready. Your job. Captain. Dismissed.”

Vlasenko stared at the admiral, managed to nod and leave. As he stood in the passageway, he heard Novskoyy lock the door from the inside. Vlasenko tried to fight down his anger. Declining a ship tour with the captain was an insult, a violation of protocol for a visiting admiral. Vlasenko wondered just what this trip meant. Kaliningrad’s original agenda of machinery tests for sea trials had been cancelled by Novskoyy the moment he had come onboard. Taking an untested vessel under the icecap for a mission was not only unprecedented, it could be suicidal. And Novskoyy was acting like he was in command of the submarine. Vlasenko felt like a First Officer instead of ship’s captain. He concentrated on the ship’s inspection. Novskoyy’s ride wouldn’t last long — in a week or two he would go back to fleet HQ, leaving him in command of the most modern nuclear attack submarine in the Russian Northern Fleet. At least an inspection would get him out of his closet of a stateroom to where he could talk to the men, the kind of walk around that the arrogant Novskoyy would never bother with.

Vlasenko walked out of the First Officer’s stateroom, now that Novskoyy had appropriated his own suite, and moved along a narrow passageway lined by bleached panelling toward the starboard side of the vessel that terminated at the main shaft, the fore-and-aft running upper-level passageway. At the intersection was the ladder to the main escape pod, an enormous 7-meter-diameter titanium ellipsoid. The Kaliningrad, so automated that a relatively few enlisted ratings were required aboard, was manned by 18 officers, 13 warrant officers and 16 enlisted men. In an emergency the main escape pod, accessed from the second compartment upper level, would be able to evacuate about 30 of the ship’s 47 men. The rest would use the control-compartment escape pod, which was designed for 18 men. But many of the Kaliningrad’s missions were under ice, where an escape pod was useless.

Vlasenko continued forward through the main shaft, past the galley and messroom on the port side to the officers’ lounge, a large parlor with video equipment, books and easychairs. Vlasenko remembered how cramped the Leningrad had been by comparison. Well, these officers were a different generation, raised on peacetime, however uneasy the peace. He felt more than years separated him from them. He had seen more combat than he’d ever wanted. Witnessing the sinking of the American submarine… the Stingray… under the icecap by the Leningrad had been a shock. He had been the Weapons Officer under this same Admiral Novskoyy. He himself had actually pressed the firing key that sent the torpedoes out to the American vessel that day far in the past but never forgotten. He had tried to rationalize it… Novskoyy had ordered it, backed up with the threat of his service pistol… It never quite worked. He still had nightmares. And now, decades later, Novskoyy once again was a presence looming over him. As he was about to leave the lounge he was outraged to note that the door to the captain’s stateroom suite that opened into the lounge had been stitch-welded shut. A brand new submarine and this man comes onboard and welds a door shut. Why?

Vlasenko reentered the main shaft, turned left to go forward, passing the other door to Novskoyy’s stateroom. He couldn’t help trying the knob. Locked. What the hell was Novskoyy hiding? He moved to the forward bulkhead of the second compartment, a watertight boundary between the compartments. One compartment could flood and still allow the ship to survive; if two compartments flooded it was more serious but the ship might still survive. The second compartment was designed to be the most survivable — no weapons that could explode, no seawater pipes that could rupture, no oil lines or tanks that could catch fire, no heavy equipment that could jump out of their foundations. And so it was chosen to contain the huge main escape pod. Vlasenko ducked to pass through the automatically closing watertight hatch to the first compartment — the weapons spaces. He inhaled, relishing the smell of the ozone from the electrical cabinets in the first compartment’s upper level that housed cabinets of electrical and computer gear for the communications and navigation equipment. It was the high-voltage cabinets that spewed ozone, with a smell particular to a submarine since the ventilation system could not quickly disperse it.

Vlasenko now doubled back to the hatch to the second compartment, where a narrow, steep stairway led to the middle deck. He climbed down, and the whole environment changed. This was the middle level torpedo-tube space, the home of the three 100 centimeter tubes and the Magnum nuclear-tipped torpedoes. The immense size of the weapons was a shock. The torpedoes were the size of the minisubmarines used in World War II by the Japanese, and they were the fastest underwater weapons in the world, able to go nearly 110 kilometers per hour. With their huge girth, they also had tremendous endurance; they could go on at attack-velocity for over an hour, covering over 100 kilometers. No submerged adversary on earth could outrun a Magnum. The Magnum torpedoes were painted glossy black, gleaming and deadly in the bright lights of the compartment. Over the red-taped barricade warning of the nuclear torpedoes’ radioactivity, Vlasenko reached out and put his hand on the smooth cool surface of the topmost weapon. Immediately a cold pistol barrel nudged his neck.

“Turn around very slowly and put your hands behind your head.” Vlasenko did, and stared into the face of Warrant Officer Dmitri Danalov, chief of security aboard, his heavy mustache nearly obscuring his upper lip.

“Captain!” he said, lowering his pistol and holstering it in his wide shiny black leather belt. “No offense, sir, but no one touches one of the nuclear weapons without me knowing about it.”

Vlasenko waved off Danalov’s apology. “No, no, what you did was proper. I commend you for it.”

“The admiral wouldn’t agree, sir…”

“The admiral? Novskoyy was here?”

“He was looking over the Magnum an hour ago.”

“Did he say anything? About the Magnum?”

“Yes, in fact, he did. He said he hoped the scientists who designed them knew what they were doing.”

Vlasenko stored the comment. “Warrant, I’m going to the lower level. Want to come?”

“I’d better. Captain. I don’t want my torpedo officer killing you if you surprise him.”

They made their way to the ladder to lower level, the area with the six 53-centimeter tubes. Following Vlasenko down the stairs, Danalov was impressed at how fit Captain Vlasenko looked at forty-eight, then remembered he had been a champion wrestler at Marshal Grechko Higher Naval School of Underwater Navigation.

The men now reached the base of the stairs, where young Senior Lieutenant Vasily Katmonov, the Torpedo Officer, came to attention.

“Is there something I can do for you. Captain?”

“No, just wandering the ship.” Vlasenko looked around at the space. It was clean and fresh looking. The lower-level compartment was the home of the six 53-centimeter conventional tubes and their 53-centimeter torpedoes. The weapons lay on two large racks with hydraulic rams to maneuver them into the tubes. These torpedoes were painted a dull black, as sinister looking as the Magnums above.

Vlasenko complimented Katmonov on the lower two levels of his compartment, adding he was especially pleased with security. “Warrant Officer Danalov here is an asset to this vessel.”

Katmonov and Danalov shared a quick look. “That is not what the admiral said,” from Danalov.

“What did he say. Lieutenant?”

“He wanted me to demote the Warrant Officer. He said Danalov should be disarmed. It seems Danalov put a pistol to the admiral’s head when the admiral was looking at the weapons. I don’t like the idea of an officer carrying a loaded pistol, sir. Neither did Danalov. But Admiral Novskoyy refused to hand over his weapon, a serious violation of Fleet Regulations, sir, particularly in the weapons spaces. I don’t know what I should do, sir. How do I tell an admiral he’s violating Fleet Regs?”

“You don’t. Lieutenant. You tell me, I handle it.”

He left them and made his way back to the second compartment’s main shaft and again stared at Novskoyy’s locked door. It occurred to him that he knew where there was an extra key to the door, but dismissed the thought. Don’t provoke the man on this trip — the admiral would soon be gone and the boat would again be his.

Vlasenko turned away from the door and went to the ladder to the lower level, where he found Captain 3rd Rank Vladimir Ivanov standing ten meters aft in the passageway outside his stateroom door. Ivanov, normally the Operations Officer, was responsible for Weapons, Communications, Sonar and the ship’s tactics, but on this run he also became Acting First Officer when the second in command of the Kaliningrad took sick.

Ivanov motioned to him, and Vlasenko walked aft down the passageway.

“Good morning, sir. We have a problem. Two problems.”

Ivanov was in his mid-thirties but seemed younger. He could drink vodka all night and was unofficially the ship’s number-one bachelor, usually not one to take life too seriously, but ever since he had assumed the duty of Acting First Officer when the ship had pulled out of Severomorsk he had seemed agitated and tense.

“Go on, Ivanov.”

“Technical problem first, sir. The multifunction transmitter cabinet is blowing fuses. It’s eaten two circuit boards for the signal drivers. We’re trouble-shooting it now, but I’m beginning to think the UHF to the satellite may be out of commission for some time.” Vlasenko shrugged. Routine trouble and they would soon be under the arctic ice cover where there would be no need to transmit to the satellite. Emergency systems could handle the communications if they needed a rescue.

“Well, sir, that leads us to the second problem. Admiral Novskoyy… he wants the UHF systems of the multifunction antenna ready at all times, commencing now.”

Son of a bitch, those were orders that should have originated with him, Vlasenko thought, not with a visiting flag officer.

“I will talk to the admiral, Ivanov. Meantime, keep working on the problem. Are you going forward?”

“Yes, sir. I expect I will be there until the equipment works. The admiral wants the gear to be up by this evening.”

“Tonight? Did he say why?”

“No, Captain. Just that I will be sorry if the equipment is not working by then.”

Ivanov looked ready to deal with Novskoyy personally as he hurried up the ladder to the upper level. Vlasenko understood, but hoped the young headstrong Ivanov could keep his temper under control this run. He knew it wouldn’t be easy… not for any of them.

Vlasenko, aborting the tour of the second compartment, headed aft to the nuclear control room. Nuclear control was really just a large waist-high computer console that wrapped around a right angle with an elevated platform behind it. The platform had a command chair reserved for the Chief Engineer, who was sitting in it and looking altogether regal.

Captain-Lieutenant Mikhail Geroshkov plainly loved his job and little wonder. The propulsion plant of the Kaliningrad was far superior to any other in the fleet, for that matter was much more advanced than anything the Americans had, with their low-power density, water-cooled cores. The Kaliningrad had two reactors, each cooled by highly conductive liquid sodium. Pumps had no rotating parts and pushed the coolant through the loops using magnetism. It was very quiet. Vlasenko did not pretend to know much about nuclear power. The Russian fleet was split into two tracks — the seamanship officers, of which he was one, and the engineering corps that had the responsibility of running and repairing the plants.

“Any problems with the plant?” Vlasenko asked Geroshkov.

“So far, perfect. Captain.”

“Computers working out okay?”

“Very well, sir. I was skeptical at first but they make this operation very efficient.”

Vlasenko watched the screens for a while, wishing he shared Geroshkov’s optimism about the computers. “Did the admiral happen to come back here?”

“No, sir. Why would he?”

“No reason. I’m going forward. The spaces look shipshape.”

Vlasenko had intended to confront Admiral Novskoyy over the admiral’s giving direct orders to his men, but on reaching the upper level of the second compartment a messman indicated the admiral was in his stateroom sleeping. Well, he’d check out the control compartment and wait to confront Novskoyy after figuring out exactly what he would say. He didn’t want to start a war aboard his own ship. Still…