Loe raamatut: «Hostile Contact»

1

400 NM east of Socotra, Indian Ocean.

Captain Rafe Rafehausen slammed his S-3B into the break and thought that he’d done it badly, out of practice, the move both too sudden and too harsh, and beside him he heard Lieutenant jg Soleck give a grunt. Rafehausen had an impulse to snarl and overcame it; he was the CAG and he didn’t fly enough and the kid was right—he should have done it better. Although, as he knew from the weekly reports, the kid’s landing scores were the worst on the boat.

“Gear one, two, three, down—and locked—flaps, slats out—hook is—down—read airspeed and fuel, Mister Soleck—”

The jg muttered the fuel poundage and airspeed, which Rafehausen could have read perfectly well for himself, of course. He supposed he was trying to communicate with the much younger man, who seemed mostly terrified of him.

“Not one of the great breaks of all time, Mister Soleck.”

“Uh—no, sir—but good, sir—considering—”

Rafehausen lined up dead-on, said, “Ball,” when he caught the green, and took the LSO’s instructions almost unconsciously, now into his groove and operating on long and hard-won experience. He caught the two wire, rolled, lifted the hook and let a yellow-shirt direct him forward.

“Nice landing, sir.”

Rafehausen smiled. “Little rough, Mister Soleck. Practice makes perfect.” He slapped the ensign on the shoulder. “Weeklies tell me you need some practice yourself.” He would have walked away then, but he saw the kid blush and look suddenly stricken, so he put the hand more gently on his shoulder and walked with him over the nonskid that way, shouting over the deck noise, “Don’t take it wrong, Soleck—we all get into slumps! Hey, how about you and me do some practice landings together sometime?”

He debriefed in the Det 424 ready room, which was his for the moment only because he’d borrowed one of their aircraft, and then made his way to the CAG’s office. He wished, often, that he was a squadron officer again—no stacks of paper, no wrangles with personalities and egos. Now that it was too late, he knew that when you were a squadron pilot, you were having the best that naval air offered; Soleck didn’t know how lucky he was. What came later—rank, status, command—were compensation for not being a young warrior with a multi-million-dollar horse and a whole sky to ride it in.

“Another urgent p-comm from Al Craik, Rafe,” a lieutenant-commander said as he sat down. “Same old shit—‘Request immediate orders,’ etcetera, etcetera.”

“What’s the medical officer say?”

“No way.”

“Even in non-flight-crew status?”

“Negative. MO says the man ‘needs to heal and overcome trauma, period, and don’t ask again.’ Another month, maybe.”

Alan Craik was a personal friend, and Rafehausen wished he could help him. Craik had been flown back to the carrier with part of one hand shot off and so much blood gone that the medics thought they’d lose him; now back in the States, he was recovered enough to be itching to return to duty. But not enough to serve.

“Send Craik a message over my name: the answer is no, and don’t ask again for at least two weeks.”

Unimak Canyon, Aleutian Archipelago.

“Depth is two hundred meters and steady.”

“Steady at two hundred.” The Chinese captain, standing by his command chair, turned and looked toward sonar station three, the towed array whose passive equipment had most reliably tracked the American. His crew had scored more contact hours on an American ballistic missile submarine in the last four days than any submarine in the history of the Chinese Navy. No moment of that time had been easy.

Even when he knew where the submarine would be, it was almost invisible.

Even trailing it by a mere four thousand meters, it was almost inaudible.

He dared not close any more. His own boat, the Admiral Po, was a killer, slow but sure—the best his service had to offer, but too loud and too old, and no amount of pious mouthing to the Party would change the fact that she leaked radiation from her reactor compartment. Her condition affected the crew, destroyed morale, made retention of the dedicated specialists vital to the service nearly impossible.

He was going to change that. He was going to follow an American ballistic missile sub, a “boomer,” from her base near Seattle to her patrol area, wherever that was. And he was going to take that information home and shove it down the throat of the Party until they paid the money to make his service the equal of her rivals in Russia, Great Britain, and, most of all, America. Because when he had the patrol area where the most precious eggs in the American nuclear basket rested, he would bury the army and the airforce.

“She’s turning to port.”

“All engines stop!” Drift. Every time the American maneuvered, Admiral Po had to drift. He couldn’t take the risk that the Americans were executing a clearing turn to get their passive sonar on their wake. Twice the boomer had done just that, and he had waited, knuckles white, drenched in sweat as the two submarines passed in silence. He couldn’t risk detection. Detection would imperil not only the operation but also its source, a faceless spy whose radio transmissions told him where to pick up the boomer near the American west coast and when.

Admiral Po’s secret friend. Jewel.

“Passing 340 relative and increasing engine noise.”

“Increasing speed?”

Two men in a darkened ballroom. Each can track the other only when he moves and makes a noise. Where is he? Where is he going? How fast is he moving?

Omnipresent—Is he behind me?

The sonarman, his best, watched his three screens, touching buttons and waiting for the computer to analyze tracking data. Passive sonar was an imperfect sensor that had to detect emanations from the target; only active sonar sent out its own signal and listened for the reflection. Sonarmen on passive looked for certain telltale “lines:” auxiliaries, reactors, propeller wash. They hoped for a specific signature that could be reliably assigned to the target, and not, say, a passing whale or a fishing boat on the surface. When they had a library of such noises, they became better trackers, but this endless game of follow-the-leader required constant analysis and perfect guesswork. The cream of the sonar team had been at their stations since they entered the difficult undersea terrain of the Aleutian chain—three watches. The captain hadn’t left the bridge for more than an hour in four days. Despite air-conditioning and high discipline, the bridge stank of sweat and shorted electrical power, a faint ozone smell that never left the Admiral Po. The captain thought it was the smell of leaking radiation.

“Nine knots and still increasing, turning hard to port. I think he’s diving, as well. I’m losing the track in his own wake.” The man sounded exhausted. That was not good; the excitement had kept them going through the first bad moments off Kodiak Island. Now that, too, was gone.

“Come to 270 and make revolutions for three knots.”

“270 and three knots. Aye.”

“Status?”

“He’s gone.”

The captain rolled his head slowly to the right and left, banished all thought of angry response from his mind, and settled slowly into his command chair.

“He’s drifting. He will complete the turn as a clearing turn before running the Unimak channel.” The captain didn’t feel anything like the certainty he projected, but it was a skill that came with command.

“270 and three knots, captain.”

“All engines stop.”

Two of the sonarmen played with the bow sonar, a much weaker engine than the powerful towed array behind them. The tail could be deployed only at low speeds, and certain maneuvers like rapid turns were not possible while it was deployed, but it was their only tool for following the American. The bow sonar had intermittent contact at best. He could hear the two murmuring to each other about the noise that the ocean was making, pounding on the island due north of them. Background noise, a white noise that would cross most of the spectrum, all of the “lines.” They were murmuring because sonarmen had a superstitious respect for their opposite numbers, afraid that loud conversation would be heard by the opposing specialists. No one knew how good the American sonars really were, but four days had taught the captain that they were not as good as his worst fears, and their tactics showed that they were cocky.

That still left a lot of room for them to be very, very good.

“350 relative! Range 3500 meters and closing!”

It was eerie, having his prediction fulfilled like that. He had tossed it off, based, yes, on some experience. But mostly to steady the bridge crew. The bastard was coming around toward them, and quite fast, now that his engines were driving him again.

“Take us down to 255 meters, bow up.”

“255 meters, bow up, aye.” The Admiral Po began a very slow dive, aiming to get her metal bulk through the deep isothermic layer that would reflect most sonar and greatly hamper passive detection. The captain looked down at his knuckles on the collision bar in front of his command seat and gradually willed his hands to relax.

In the darkened ballroom, there are long, velvet curtains that hide sound if you can get behind them.

“000 relative, 3000 meters and closing. Speed five knots. Vector 190.”

The boomer suddenly appeared as a digital symbol on the command screen with her course and speed displayed next to her. The distance between the Admiral Po and her quarry seemed very short, and the captain wondered if they were about to change roles.

“255 meters.”

“Try to put the bow sonar up in the layer.”

“Bow up, aye.”

This was a tricky maneuver and one that couldn’t really be accurately gauged for success. It required that the planesman adjust the pitch of the submarine so that her bow sonar was actually above the acoustic layer, allowing that sonar to listen to the enemy while the rest of the submarine’s metal hide was hidden below the temperature gradient of the layer. The problem was that you never knew for sure that you had it exactly right; the acoustic layer was simply a metaphor for the invisible line where two different layers of water with different temperatures met. It couldn’t be seen, only sensed, and only sensed as a relative gradient. The bow might be in the layer or meters above it, depending on luck and skill and local variations.

He’s bow on to us right now. The American, with his infinitely superior equipment, was in the best position he could ask to detect Admiral Po.

“Nothing on the tail.”

“Bow sonar has contact, 010 relative, 2500 meters and closing. Speed five knots. Vector 180.”

He has us. Or he will turn away.

The captain turned to the planesman.

“Well done. Very well done.” The bow sonar report indicated that the bow was, indeed, above the layer. But how far? And how reflective was the layer?

He watched the symbol on the bridge screen, the only visual input that mattered, willing it to continue its turn to port.

“020 relative, 2700 meters. Speed six knots. Vector 160.”

Deep breath, long exhalation.

“Make revolutions for three knots. Hold us at 255 meters and pitch for normal.”

“Aye, aye.” That pulled the bow back under the layer, making them blind, but he had to move or the American would get too far away. Simply avoiding detection was only half the game.

“Three knots.”

“Helmsman, three knots for the center of the channel.”

“Aye, aye.”

He cast an eye at the chart and decided he had a safe amount of water under his keel, even in these treacherous seas.

“Depthfinder off.”

“Depthfinder off, aye.”

Ahead, perhaps well ahead if he stuck to his six knots, the American would be entering the channel already. The captain calculated quickly; the American would be well over six thousand meters ahead when they were back in the deep water on the other side of the channel, but the captain thought that the risk was worthwhile, and he was a little distracted by the obvious adulation of the bridge crew and his own internal buzz of triumph. He had outguessed an American boomer captain. His crew had reacted well. He was worthy.

“Center of the channel.”

He waited patiently, following the channel on his chart while thinking over the last set of moves, trying to guess the next. His eyes actually closed twice. Minutes trickled by. He hated letting the American have so much time undetected, but he couldn’t risk anything in the narrow channel.

“Bow sonar has possible contact, range seven thousand meters, bearing 000 relative.”

He snapped fully awake.

“Speed?”

The man looked anguished. The data were too sketchy. He needed a longer hit, or a second and third hit in quick succession to get a vector and speed.

Seven thousand meters was too far ahead, and too far for the bow sonar to make contact. Unless he was going very fast. It had to be a false contact—a seamount, or a boat. Or another submarine. He struggled with the possibilities as his own boat continued to creep down the channel.

“All engines stop. Planesman, bow above the layer.”

The Admiral Po seemed to hold its breath.

“Possible contact, range seven thousand meters, bearing 000 relative.”

The image returned on the command screen.

“Vector 000. Speed twelve knots.”

The American was racing away. He would be clear of the channel in moments; indeed, given the vagaries of passive sonar, he might be free now, and increasing speed.

“Make revolutions for four knots. Retrieve the tail.” It was useless in the channel, anyway. The American was surely too far away to hear its telltale 44dB line as the bad bearing in the towed array winch screamed.

Were they detected? He didn’t think so, couldn’t think so. This had the smell of a standard operating procedure, a routine to lose hypothetical pursuit. If so, it was crushingly effective.

“Towed array housed, sir.”

“Very well. Make revolutions for six knots.”

At six knots, the Admiral Po was one of the loudest leviathans in the deep. Her second-generation reactor could not be made really quiet by the addition (and in some cases the slipshod addition) of the best Russian quieting materials from the third generation—isolation mounts, for instance. The captain hated to go above four knots in an operational patrol. He felt naked.

They roared along the channel, a painful compromise, too loud to avoid detection, too slow to catch the American if he was determined to go fast.

“How did we miss him going so fast? I make no accusation, understand. I need to know.”

“Captain, he is not much noisier at twelve knots than at six. Even the cavitation noise is, well, muffled. He is very quiet.”

No submarine should be so quiet at twelve knots.

In Severomorsk, they had told him about the “steel Sierra,” the Russian submarine that would do these things. That had been twelve years ago, before the Soviet Union rolled over and sank. Clearly the American boats could do the same. His antiquated attack boat had just fallen even farther behind, because the ability to run fast without cavitation, the designers’ dream since the 1960s, placed the new American boomer in the fourth generation.

He timed out the channel’s length on his own watch. The second he was sure he had depth under his keel, his voice rang out.

“Make our depth 300. Turn to port heading 270. Make our speed two knots.”

Turning gradually broadside to the expected vector of the target, exposing the length of the towed array to get the maximum signal, diving to avoid an unexpected ambush.

Time gurgled by down the hull.

“All stop.”

Nothing.

“Sonar?”

“No contact.”

The captain was a thorough professional and he didn’t quit. He searched in ever-increasing spirals for twelve hours, sprinting and drifting, risking detection and flirting with disaster if the American sub was lurking in the deep water just north of the channel. But he took such risks only because he already knew the answer: his opponent had raced down the channel and into the deep water and had vanished to the north.

Sleepless, grimy, sweat-stained, he rose from his command chair and addressed the bridge crew.

“This is not a total loss, comrades. We have unprecedented sonograms on the American; we know that he was headed north. We know more about their patrol routes and procedures than any boat in Chinese history. And they have no idea that we’re here.”

“Do we go north, then, Captain?” asked his first officer.

“No. No, we return to our patrol area, study our sonograms, and wait.”

Until Jewel gives us the next one, he thought. But Jewel was too precious, and he couldn’t say that to the crew.

The submarine set a course for the waters off Seattle.

Suburban Virginia.

The gleaming new S-3 sagged a little, turning on final for the carrier; his break had been weak, and he knew that no self-respecting LSO would give him an okay on any part of this trap so far. Now he was in the groove but chasing his lineup like a nugget, all of his motor coordination sluggish and unresponsive, like a bad hydraulics system in an old airplane. His brain knew where his hands should go, but his injured hand lagged and the signals seemed to move too slowly, too jerkily, and the plane, like a horse that knows that the hand at the reins is weak, seemed to fight him.

He eyeballed the lineup, called the ball in his head, and tried to recapture the flawless rhythm that he had once had at this game. One mile, six hundred feet, one hundred and forty knots. He knew the numbers, but the response seemed to lag and he wanted to blame the equipment, wanted to suddenly press a button and have all of those reaction times and skills come flooding back, and then he jerked physically to realize that he was there, the deck was THERE.

His angle of attack was too steep, tending to sag at the very end and fighting his near-stall speed for altitude; the plane had nothing to give him; his correction was too late, and the immovable laws of physics and mathematics grabbed his plane and flung it into the back of the ship, just a few feet above the neat, white lettering that said “USS Thomas Jefferson.” A brilliant orange-and-white explosion obliterated his control screen—

—and he picked up the joystick in his good, strong right hand and smashed it through the wallboard of the living room, screaming his frustration at the top of his lungs.

“Fuck! FUUUCK! Jesus FUCKING Christ!” He was roaring with anger, sweat and failure dripping from him, and the shards of a piece of expensive computer equipment broken by his own stupid rage prodded him to a sicker, meaner level, as he thought of what he had become with one wound—two fingers shot off his left hand in Pakistan and he was half what he had been. Less than half.