Seas of Crisis

flat, at a depth of only one-hundred-sixty feet.

On the left edge of the image, a mountainous knob three miles wide rose suddenly from the ocean floor to altitudes of over six thousand feet above sea level: the beginning of mainland Russia. On the right edge, on both the gravimeter and the navigation chart, Cape Prince of Wales and the Prince of Wales Shoal were visible. This jutting part of the Alaskan mainland was tipped by a mountain, too, though only half as tall as the Russian ones.

Jeffrey eyed the tactical plot. All merchant shipping had been left behind, and none was detected in front. Every one of the handful of contacts held on the display, surface or airborne, was denoted by an icon that meant it was military, and Russian. If something submerged was lurking in ambush, a submarine or an unannounced minefield, Challenger’s sensors and technicians hadn’t spotted it yet. Not that they weren’t trying. A few of the sonarmen and fire-control specialists were already wiping sweat off their foreheads.

Rules of engagement for neutrals were words on paper, Jeffrey reminded himself. Russia didn’t have a stellar record putting them into practice in the field. In 1983, when local commanders ordered Korean Airlines Flight 007, from JFK to Seoul, be shot down by a fighter — without properly verifying the 747’s identity first — the Kremlin was humiliated before an angry world. Hundreds of innocent civilians were killed. The blunder helped bring down the Soviet Union. Though that was almost thirty years ago, the newest Russian Federation regime was autocratic, and talked very tough about self-defense, with rising investments in hardware to back up the talk. It was unclear if local forces would open fire on an unidentified undersea contact.

Jeffrey was second-guessing his own decision, too late. The navigation plot showed Challenger miles beyond the treaty line already.

Bell ordered several more course changes to get the ship into position to transit the Bering Strait. Jeffrey’s displays showed Challenger nearing the mouth of the Russian-side channel. The constricted part, the strait itself, was only three miles long from start to finish before widening out again, so depending on Bell’s tactics they could be through it very quickly. He’d chosen to aim for a path about two-thirds of the way from Big Diomede to the protruding knob at the tip of Siberia. Closer to the mainland, the water should be cloudier from soil erosion and thaw runoff. The Russian side was also more nutrient-rich — more productive biologically — and phytoplankton could turn the surface yellow-brown or milky white; even droppings from numerous sea birds helped obscure submerged visibility.

This would make it harder to detect Challenger via optical sensors: dipping blue- green lasers called LIDAR, or airborne cameras linked to supercomputer software — called LASH — able to notice anomalous color gradations and shapes deep underwater.

Out of curiosity, and to audit the proper preparedness of Challenger’s brand-new command team, Jeffrey called up a copy of the main weapons status page. He saw that Bell had four tubes loaded with high-explosive Mark 48 Improved ADCAP torpedoes, the standard heavyweight fish of the U.S. submarine fleet. The other four tubes held Mark II brilliant decoys, which could be programmed to imitate Challenger, or another sub, by giving off an acoustic signature meant to be noticed by the enemy.

He typed a message to Bell: “Why no off-board probes to scout ahead?” Remote-controlled probes could be deployed through the torpedo tubes, too. Similar in size and shape to an ADCAP, they were fitted with a mix of active and passive sonars, passive photonic imagers, and active laser line-scan cameras.

Bell answered right away, typing, “Path here known clear of shipwrecks.” A pause. “You’re welcome to stand by my console.”

Jeffrey got up and eased forward through the compartment’s cramped left aisle. He stopped next to Bell’s console, with his back touching the sonar supervisor’s chair. Bell turned from his horizontal screens and looked up at Jeffrey. He responded to the query more, his voice lowered to be barely audible. Bell spoke softly mainly to not break his crew’s concentration on their console displays, since a threat could appear out of nowhere at any time. But some of it was purely mental: at ultraquiet people walked and talked and even thought on pins and needles.

“Because probes might be detected, Commodore, and Russian subs wouldn’t use them in their own safe corridor. It would show right away we’re not friendlies. Besides, in these conditions our own probe sensors in passive-only won’t give us much we can’t get better on Challenger herself.”

Sessions joined in from the seat next to Bell, his soft features softened further in the dim red lighting. “The Captain and I discussed it, Commodore.” While Jeffrey had been in the wardroom, apparently. “Since we can’t afford to radiate, we can’t use the acoustic link to control any probes. If we use a fiber-optic tether instead, and it breaks, we can’t recover the probe and then we’ve left a clue we were here…. Plus, to send a probe on ahead of us slowly and quietly, by far enough to make a difference in tactically useful data, would take too long when we want to minimize our dwell time by the strait.”

“What about antisubmarine mines, if this path you picked isn’t in their safe corridor of the day? The whole channel’s fifteen miles wide. What if we’re too far right or left of where Russian subs know they should go?”

“No notices to mariners, sir,” Sessions reminded Jeffrey politely. “No minefield.”

The reminder was unnecessary — Jeffrey had been quizzing him. By international law, all naval minefields had to be publicly announced, with all mines moored or otherwise held stationary. Modern mines could be programmed to ignore surface shipping, and to go off only when a submerged submarine went by. They could also be armed and later switched off via remote control, altering safe pathways through a solid field of mines.

Jeffrey nodded sourly. “If there’s one good thing we can say about Moscow, they’re sticklers for the outward letter of international law…. Axis subs using the strait?”

“Intel says our forces have them too well bottled up on the other side of the world, sir.”

These were good answers. “Okay.” Jeffrey eyed the tactical plot vertical display on the forward bulkhead. Something genuinely puzzled him. “Why do you think the U.S. doesn’t have any surface ships or aircraft patrolling the American channel?”

He felt the sonar supervisor sliding sideways in his seat. Jeffrey glanced at O’Hanlon, a self-assured expert who liked to go clean-shaven, and almost bald with a razor cut, accentuating the way his small ears stuck far out from the side of his head. Senior Chief O’Hanlon, in his mid-thirties, was a battle-hardened sailor, and Jeffrey could see the very top of a chest tattoo above the collar of his undershirt, worn beneath his jumpsuit. He had a pair of sonar headphones draped around his neck, so he could don them in a jiffy if he wanted to. A small lip mike was positioned to one side of his very square jaw.

Jeffrey stepped back to not block his view of the captain and XO. “If I may?” O’Hanlon asked. Bell nodded.

“Sir,” the chief told Jeffrey, “we conjecture it’s to minimize signal-to-noise ratio for U.S. bottom sensors and our own subs sneaking through or doing barrier patrols.”

“Makes sense,” Jeffrey said. By flying around and charging all over, engine and machinery sounds from aircraft and ships created underwater interference. This would make it harder for bottom hydrophones, or the sonar arrays of a lurking American submarine, to pick out a hostile sub’s giveaway broadband and tonals from amid the extra background clutter. But…

“That would be true for Russian bottom sensors, too.”

“Of course, sir,” O’Hanlon said.

“Then why are they making things harder for themselves?”

“We conjecture that with the water so shallow, and no pronounced sonar layer, they use a completely different approach from us, relying mainly on surveillance from above instead.”

“Which is why you’re keeping the ship as deep as you can,” Jeffrey stated to Bell, who nodded.

“There’s another factor in these waters, Commodore,” Sessions murmured. “The entire strait’s bottom is just within reach of divers using compressed air rigs. If they work out of a seabed habitat, they can spend long hours inspecting the bottom, day in, day out, and map or even disable a bottom sensor grid.”

“You mean, SEALs deploying out of a SeaLab type of contraption, saturation divers, sneaking to the Russky side and jiggering with their security measures?”

“Something like that, sir,” Sessions said.

“Suppose so. Then what prevents Russian divers from doing the same thing to us?”

“Presumably the SEALs would be standing guard against that, or they could have sensors specifically meant to watch for human intruders crossing the treaty line.”