Red Storm Rising Part 38

"Let's get moving, people," Edwards ordered. They should have been moving already. Somebody had to be coming to investigate the burning truck, and if they used a chopper . . . "Garcia, you watch the lady. Smith has the rear. Rodgers, take the point. We have to put six miles between us and this place in the next three hours."

Smith waited ten minutes before tossing his grenade into the house. The kerosene he'd spread on the first floor went up at once.

USS CHICAGO.

The contact was a lot better now. They had cla.s.sified one s.h.i.+p as a Kas.h.i.+n-cla.s.s missile destroyer, and her propeller-blade count indicated a speed of twenty-one knots. The leading elements of the Soviet formation were now thirty-seven miles away. There seemed to be two groups, the leading formation fanned out and screening the second. McCafferty ordered the ESM mast raised. It showed lots of activity, but he expected that.

"Up scope." The quartermaster worked the operating ring, then snapped the handles into place and stepped back. McCafferty swept the horizon quickly. After ten seconds, he flipped the handles up, and the periscope was instantly lowered back into its well.

"It's going to be a busy day, troops," the captain said; he always let the attack center crew know as much of what was going on as possible. The more they knew, the better they could do their jobs. "I saw a pair of Bear-Fs, one due north, the other west. Both a good way off, but you can bet they're dropping son.o.buoys. XO, take her back down to five hundred feet, speed five knots. We'll let them come to us."

"Conn, sonar."

"Conn, aye," McCafferty answered.

"We got some pingers, active son.o.buoys to the northwest. We count six of them, all very faint." The sonar chief read off the bearings to the signal sources. "Still no active sonar signals coming from the target formation, sir."

"Very well." McCafferty returned the mike to its holder. Chicago's depth was changing quickly, as they dove at a fifteen-degree angle. He watched the bathythermograph readout. At two hundred twenty feet the water temperature began to drop rapidly, changing twelve degrees inside of seventy feet. Good, a strong layer to hide under, and cold water deep to allow good sonar performance for his own sensors.

Two hours before he had removed a torpedo from one of his tubes and replaced it with a Harpoon missile. It gave him only one torpedo ready for instant use if he found a submarine target, but a salvo of three missiles available to fling at surface s.h.i.+ps, plus his Tomahawks. He could fire either now, and expect hits, but McCafferty didn't want to fire at just anything. There was no sense wasting a missile on a small patrol craft when there was a cruiser and a carrier out there waiting for him. He wanted to identify specific targets first. It wouldn't be easy, but he knew that easy things didn't have to be done by the 688-cla.s.s subs. He went forward into sonar.

The chief caught him out the corner of his eye. "Skipper, I may have a bearing to Kirov. I just copied six pings from a low-frequency sonar. I think that's him, bearing zero-three-nine. Trying to isolate his engine signature now. And if-okay, some more son.o.buoys are dropping to the right." The display showed new points of light well to the right of the first string, and a sizable gap between the two.

"Think he's dropping them in chevrons, Chief?" McCafferty asked. He got a smile and a nod for an answer. If the Soviets were deploying their son.o.buoys in angled lines left and right of the formation, that could mean that their s.h.i.+ps were heading right for Chicago. The submarine would not have to maneuver at all to intercept them. She could stay as quiet as an open grave.

"They seem to be alternating them above and below the layer, sir. A pretty fair gap between them, too." The chief lit a cigarette without averting his eyes from the screen. The ashtray next to him was crammed with b.u.t.ts.

"We'll plot that one out. Good work, Barney." The captain patted his sonar chief on the shoulder and went back to the attack center. The fire-control tracking party was already plotting the new contacts. It looked like an interval of just over two miles between the son.o.buoys. If the Soviets were alternating them above and below the layer, there was a good chance he could sneak between a pair. The other question was the presence of pa.s.sive buoys, whose presence he could not detect.

McCafferty stood at the periscope pedestal, watching his men at work as they entered data into the fire-control computers, backed up by other men with paper plots and hand-held calculators. The weapons-control panel was lit up by indicators showing ready. The submarine was at battle stations.

"Take her up to two hundred feet, we'll listen above the layer for a few minutes." The maneuver paid off at once.

"I got direct-path to the targets," the sonar chief announced. They could now detect and track sound energy radiating directly from the Soviet s.h.i.+ps, without depending on the on-again, off-again convergence zones.

McCafferty commanded himself to relax. He'd soon have work enough.

"Captain, we're about due for another son.o.buoy drop. They've been averaging about every fifteen minutes, and this one might be close."

"Getting that Horse-Jaw sonar again, sir," sonar warned. "Bearing three-two-zero at this time. Signal weak. Cla.s.sify this contact as the cruiser Kirov. Stand by-another one. We have a medium-frequency active sonar bearing three-three-one, maneuvering left-to-right. We cla.s.sify this contact as a Kresta-II ASW cruiser."

"I think he's right," the plotting officer said. "Bearing three-two-zero is close to our bearings for a pair of screen s.h.i.+ps, but far enough off that it's probably a different contact. Three-three-one is consistent with the center screen s.h.i.+p. It figures. The Kresta will be the screen commander, with the flags.h.i.+p a ways behind him. Need some time to work out the ranges, though."

The captain ordered his submarine to stay above the layer, able to duck beneath it in seconds. The tactical display was evolving now. He had a workable bearing on Kirov. Almost good enough to shoot on, though he still needed range data. There seemed to be a pair of escorts between him and the cruiser, and unless he had a proper range estimate, any missile he launched at the Soviet flags.h.i.+p might attack a destroyer or frigate by mistake. In the interim, the solution on the attack director set the Harpoons to fly straight for what he believed to be the battle cruiser Kirov.

Chicago began to zigzag left and right of her course track. As the submarine changed her position, the bearing to her sonar contacts changed also. The tracking party could use the submarine's own course deviation as a baseline to compute ranges to the various contacts. A straightforward process-essentially an exercise in high-school trigonometry-it nevertheless took time because they had to estimate the speed and course of the moving targets. Even computer support couldn't make the process go much faster, and one of his quartermasters took great pride in his ability to use a circular slide rule and race the computer to a hard solution.

The tension seemed to grow by degrees, then it plateaued. The years of training were paying off. Data was handled, plotted, and acted upon in seconds. The crew suddenly seemed a physical part of the gear they were operating, their feelings shut off, their emotions submerged, only the sweat on their foreheads betraying that they were men after all, and not machines. They depended absolutely on their sonar operators. Sound energy was their only indication of what was happening, and each new bearing report triggered furious activity. It was clear that their targets were zigzagging, which made the range computations even more difficult.

"Conn, sonar! Active son.o.buoy close aboard to port! Below the layer, I think."

"Right full rudder, all ahead two-thirds," the executive officer ordered instantly.

McCafferty went to sonar and plugged in a set of headphones. The pings were loud but . . . distorted, he thought. If the buoy was below the temperature gradient, the signals radiating upward would be unable to detect his submarine-probably. "Signal strength?" he asked.

"Strong," the chief replied. "Even money they might have picked us up. Five hundred yards farther out and they lose us for sure."

"Okay, they can't monitor them all at once."

The XO moved Chicago a thousand yards before returning to base course. Overhead, they knew, was a Bear-F ASW aircraft armed with homing torpedoes and a crew whose job it was to listen to the son.o.buoy signals. How good were the buoys and the men? That was one thing that they didn't know. Three tense minutes pa.s.sed and nothing happened.

"All ahead one-third, come left to three-two-one," the executive officer ordered. They were now through the line of buoys. Three more such lines were between them and their target. They'd nearly determined range for three of the escorts, but not to the Kirov yet.

"Okay, people, the Bears are behind us. That's one less thing to worry about. Range to the nearest s.h.i.+p?" he asked the approach officer.

"Twenty-six thousand yards. We think he's a Sovremenny. The Kresta is about five thousand yards east of him. He's pinging away with hull and VDS sonars." McCafferty nodded. The variable-depth sonar would be below the layer and had scant chance of detecting them. The hull sonar they'd have to pay attention to, but it wouldn't be a problem for a while yet. Okay, the captain thought, things are going pretty much according to plan- "Conn, sonar, torpedoes in the water, bearing three-two-zero! Signal faint. Say again torpedoes in the water, three-two-zero, bearing changing-additional, lots of active sonars just lit up. We're getting increased screw noises for all contacts." McCafferty was in the sonar room before the report ended.

"Torpedo bearing change?"

"Yes! Moving left-to-right-Jesus. I think somebody's attacking the Russians. Impact!" The chief jabbed his finger at the display. A series of three bright spokes appeared right on the bearing to Kirov. The display suddenly went berserk. The high-and medium-frequency segment lit up with active sonar lines. The lines indicating s.h.i.+ps became brighter as the s.h.i.+ps increased engine speeds and changed direction as they began to maneuver.

"Secondary explosion on this contact-holy s.h.i.+t! Lots of explosions in the water now. Depth charges, maybe, something's really ripping the water up. There's another torpedo-way off, bearing changing right to left."

The display was now too complex for McCafferty to follow. The chief expanded the time scale to allow easier interpretation, but only he and his experienced operators could understand it.

"Skipper, it looks like somebody just got inside on them and launched an attack. He got three solid hits on Kirov, and now they're trying to beat on him. These two s.h.i.+ps appear to be converging on something. I-another torpedo in the water, don't know whose. Gawd, look at all these explosions!"

McCafferty went aft.

"Periscope depth, now!" Chicago angled upward, taking a minute to reach her position.

He saw what might have been a mast on the horizon, and a column of black smoke, bearing three-two-zero. Over twenty radars were operating along with a number of voice radios.

"Down scope. We have any target solutions?"

"No, sir," the XO answered. "When they started maneuvering, all our data went to h.e.l.l."

"How far to the next son.o.buoy line?"

"Two miles. We're positioned to run right through a gap."

"Make your depth eight hundred feet. Ahead full, move us in."

Chicago's engines sprang into life, accelerating the submarine to thirty knots. The executive officer dived the boat to eight hundred feet, ducking deep below a son.o.buoy set for shallow search. McCafferty stood over the chart table, took a pen from his pocket, and unconsciously began chewing on the plastic end as he watched his sub's course take him closer and closer to the enemy formation. Sonar performance dropped virtually to nil with the high speed, but soon the low-frequency sounds of the exploding ordnance echoed through the steel hull. Chicago ran for twenty minutes, zigzagging slightly to avoid the Russian son.o.buoys, as the fire-control men kept updating their solutions.

"Okay, all ahead one-third and take her back up to periscope depth," McCafferty said. "Tracking party, stand by for a firing run."

The sonar picture cleared up rapidly. The Soviets were continuing to hunt frantically for whoever had fired at their flags.h.i.+p. One s.h.i.+p's trace was entirely gone-at least one Russian s.h.i.+p had been sunk or crippled. Explosions rippled through the water, punctuated by the screeing sound of homing torpedoes. All were close enough to be a matter of real concern.

"Shooting observation. Up scope!"

The search periscope slid upward. McCafferty caught it low and swept the horizon. "I-Jesus!" The TV monitor showed a Bear only half a mile to their right, heading north for the formation. He could see seven s.h.i.+ps, mainly mast tops, but one Sovremenny-cla.s.s destroyer was hull-down, perhaps four miles away. The smoke he'd seen before was gone. The water resounded with the noise of Russian sonars.

"Raise the radar, power-up, and stand by."

A petty officer pushed the b.u.t.ton to raise the submarine's surface-search radar, activated the system, but kept it in standby mode.

"Energize and give me two sweeps," the captain ordered. There was a real danger here. The Soviets would almost certainly detect the submarine's radar and try to attack it.

The radar was on for a total of twelve seconds. It "painted" a total of twenty-six targets on the screen, two of them close together about where he would have expected Kirov to be. The radar operator read off ranges and bearing, which were entered into the Mk-117 fire-control director and relayed to the Harpoon missiles in the torpedo tubes, giving them bearing to target and the range at which to switch on their seeker-heads. The weapons officer checked his status lights, then selected the two most promising targets for the missiles.

"Set!"

"Flood tubes." McCafferty watched the weapons-panel operator go through the launch sequence. "Opening outer doors."

"Solution checked and valid," the weapons officer said calmly. "Firing sequence: two, one, three."

"Shoot!" McCafferty ordered.

"Fire two." The submarine shuddered as the powerful impulse of high-pressure air ejected the weapon from the tube, followed by the whoosh of water entering the void. "Fire one . . . fire three. Two, one, and three fired, sir. Torpedo tube doors are shut, pumping out to reload."

"Reload with Mark-48s. Prepare to fire Tomahawks!" McCafferty said. The fire-control men switched the attack director over to activate the bow-mounted missiles.

"Up scope!" The quartermaster spun the control wheel. McCafferty let it come all the way up. He could see the smoke trail of the last Harpoon, and right behind it . . . McCafferty slapped the periscope handles up and stepped back. "Helix heading in! Take her down, all ahead flank!" The submarine raced downward. A Soviet antisub helicopter had seen the missile launch and was racing in at them. "Left full rudder."

"Left full rudder, aye!"

"Pa.s.sing through one hundred feet. Speed fifteen knots," the XO reported.

"There he is," McCafferty said. The pings from the helicopter's active sonar reverberated through the hull. "Reverse your rudder. Shoot off a noisemaker." The captain ordered his submarine back to an easterly course and reduced speed as they dropped through the layer. With luck the Soviets would mistake the noisemaker for the cavitation noises of the submarine and attack it as Chicago drew clear.

"Conn, sonar, we have a destroyer heading in, bearing three-three-nine. Sounds like a Sovremenny-torpedo in the water aft. We have one torpedo in the water bearing two-six-five."

"Right twenty degrees rudder. All ahead two-thirds. Come to new course one-seven-five."

"Conn, sonar, new contact, twin screws, just started with a low-frequency sonar, probably a Udaloy, blade count says twenty-five knots, bearing three-five-one and constant. Torpedo bearing changing, heading aft and fading."

"Very well." McCafferty nodded. "The helicopter dropped on the noisemaker. We don't have to sweat that one. All ahead one-third, make your depth one thousand feet."

The Sovremenny he didn't worry too greatly about, but the Udaloy was another thing entirely. The new Soviet destroyer carried a low-frequency sonar that could penetrate the layer under certain conditions, plus two helicopters and a long-range rocket-boosted torpedo weapon that was better than the American ASROC.

Ba-wah! The sound of a low-frequency sonar. It had hit them on the first shot. Would it report Chicago's position to the Udaloy? Or would the submarine's rubber coating prevent it?

"Target bearing three-five-one. Blade count is down, indicates speed of ten knots," sonar reported.

"Okay, he's slowed to search for us. Sonar, how strong was that ping?"

"Low edge of detection range, sir. Probably did not get a return off us. Contact is maneuvering, bearing now three-five-three. Continuing to ping, but his sonar is searchlighting west-to-east away from us. Another helo is pinging, sir, bearing zero-nine-eight. This one's below the layer, but fairly weak."

"XO, take us west. We'll try to loop around them to seaward and approach their amphibs from the west." McCafferty returned to the sonar room. He was tempted to engage the Udaloy, but could not launch a torpedo this deep without using a dangerously high amount of his reserve high-pressure air. Besides, his job was to kill the command s.h.i.+ps, not the escorts. His fire-control team set up a solution anyway in case killing the Russian destroyer became a necessity.

"G.o.d, what a mess," the chief breathed. "The depth-charging up north has tapered off some. Bearing is steadying down on these contacts here. Either they've resumed their base course or they're heading away. Can't tell which. Uh-oh, more son.o.buoys are dropping down." The chief's finger traced the new dots, in a steady line-heading toward Chicago. "Next one's going to be real close, sir."

McCafferty stuck his head into the attack center. "Bring her around south, and go to two-thirds."

The next son.o.buoy splashed into the water directly overhead. Its cable deployed the transducer below the layer and began automatic pinging.

"They got us for sure, skipper!"

McCafferty ordered a course change to the west and again increased to full speed to clear the area. Three minutes later a torpedo dropped into the water, either dropped by the Bear or fired from the Udaloy, they couldn't tell. The torpedo started searching for them from a mile off and turned away. Again their rubber anechoic coating had saved them. A helo's dipping sonar was detected ahead of them. McCafferty went south to avoid it, knowing that he was being driven away from the Soviet fleet, but unable to do much about it at the moment. A pair of helicopters was now after him, and for a submarine to defeat two dipping sonars was no simple exercise. It was clear that their mission was not so much to find him as to drive him off, and he could not maneuver fast enough to get past them. After two hours of trying, he broke off for the last time. The Soviet force had moved beyond sonar range, their last reported course being southeast toward Andya.

McCafferty swore to himself. He'd done everything right, gotten through the outer Soviet defenses, and had had a clear idea of how to duck under the destroyer screen. But someone had gotten there first, probably attacked Kirov-his target!-and messed everything up for his approach. His three Harpoons had probably found targets unless Ivan had shot them down-but he'd been unable even to monitor their impacts. If they had made impacts. The captain of USS Chicago wrote up his contact report for transmission to COMSUBLANT and wondered why things were going the way they were.

STORNOWAY, SCOTLAND.

"A long way to go," the fighter pilot said.

"Yeah," Toland agreed. "Our last report had the group heading southeast to evade a submarine attack. We figure they're back to a southerly course now, but we don't know where they are. The Norwegians sent their last RF-5 in to look, and it disappeared. We have to hit them before they get to Bod. To hit them, we need to know where they are."

"No satellite intel?"

"Nope."

"Okay. I go in with the reconnaissance pod, out and back . . . four hours. I'll need a tanker to top me off about three hundred miles out."

"No problem," the RAF group captain agreed. "Do be careful, we need all your Tomcats to escort the strike tomorrow."

"I'll be ready in an hour." The pilot left.

"Wish you luck, old boy," the group captain said quietly. This was the third attempt to locate the Soviet invasion force by air. After the Norwegian reconnaissance aircraft had disappeared, the Brits had tried with a Jaguar. That, too, had vanished. The most obvious solution was to send a Hawkeye with the strike to conduct a radar search, but the Brits weren't letting the E-2s stray too far from their sh.o.r.e. The U.K. radar stations had taken a fearful pounding, and the Hawkeyes were needed for local defense.

"It's not supposed to be this hard," Toland observed. Here was a golden opportunity to pound the Soviet fleet. Once located, they could strike the force at dawn tomorrow. The NATO aircraft would swoop in with their own air-to-surface missiles. But the extreme range of the mission gave no time for the strike force to loiter around looking. They had to have a target location before they took off. The Norwegians were supposed to have handled this, but NATO plans had not antic.i.p.ated the virtual annihilation of the Royal Norwegian Air Force in a week's time. The Soviets had enjoyed their only major tactical successes at sea, and they were successes indeed, Toland thought. While the land war in Germany was heading toward a high-technology stalemate, up to now the vaunted NATO navies had been outmancuvered and out-thought by their supposed dullard Soviet adversaries. Taking Iceland had been a masterpiece of an operation. NATO was still scrambling to reestablish the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom barrier with submarines that were supposed to have other missions. The Russian Backfires were ranging far into the North Atlantic, hitting one convoy a day, and the main Russian submarine force hadn't even gotten there yet. The combination of the two might just close the Atlantic, Toland thought. Then the NATO armies would surely lose, for all their brilliant performance to date.