“It’d better. I don’t have that long!”
Admiral Dixon smiled, and the two submariners walked over to the chart desk, a big, sloping, high, polished table, which had belonged to the Admiral’s grandfather. On the ledge below were sets of dividers, steel rulers, and a calculator. Spread upon the surface beneath the desk light was a detailed map of the northeastern Atlantic, placed on top of a large map of the world. He was a man who had given the subject a lot of thought.
“Okay, gentlemen,” Admiral Dixon began, “to bring us all up-to-date. Until a few days ago we expected the two Kilos to make their journey home to China on the surface. We now have reason to think that the submarines will dive close outside their workup base, then proceed west out of the Barents Sea along the Russian coastline. We expect them to run on down past the North Cape, off Norway, and straight down the northeast Atlantic.
“From there they might swing through the Gibraltar Strait, where we will be able to see them but unable to do much about it. They would then transit the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, which are also somewhat difficult areas for our purposes.
“They may of course head on south and skip Gibraltar. Though it’s longer, it’s a more straightforward route. They would then head around the Cape of Good Hope, across the Indian Ocean, and through the Malacca or Sunda Straits. By then they may have acquired a close surface escort. We will concentrate on taking them out good and early, somewhere before they get through the GIUK Gap. If they choose to make a covert dived passage all the way to China, and we lose them, the search area becomes hopelessly large. We want them as they approach the GIUK Gap.”
The Admiral referred to one of the most important choke points on this planet — the great narrowing of the waters in the northern reaches of the Atlantic, the tightest point in the entire ocean, where Greenland, Iceland, and the UK’s northern coast form a direct northwest/southeast line 1,300 miles across. Situated directly on this line is the 500-mile-wide island of Iceland, which cuts the navigable waters considerably. This relatively small area — the deep, icy waters where commanding officers have been trained for generations — was the great hunting ground for US and UK submarine strike forces.
Throughout the Cold War all Russian submarines heading for the Atlantic traveled through the GIUK Gap under the watchful attention of their American and British adversaries, deep beneath the surface. Night and day, month after month, year after year, the two great Naval allies watched and waited. Few Soviet submarines ever made their way through the GIUK undetected.
There are three main routes through the Narrows: closest to the UK, east of the Faeroe Islands, which stand four hundred miles northwest of Scotland’s Cape Wrath; west of the Faeroes across the Aegir Ridge; and through the Denmark Strait, which runs between Iceland and Greenland’s Grunnbjorn ice mountain. These are lonely, haunted waters. Only four men survived when the giant forty-two-thousand-ton British battle cruiser HMS
Admiral Dixon placed his steel ruler across the Gap and muttered, “Somewhere in here, Boomer. We’ll take ’em out just before they head into the Gap.”
“Yessir. And the sooner the better. Actually I had been considering the possibility of the Barents Sea, as soon as they clear the Murmansk area?”
“I don’t think so. It’s a bit too close to their starting point. Ideally, it would be perfect if we could catch them right off the North Cape, right here,” the Admiral said, pointing to the large map spread out before them. “It’s deep water, and it’s off Norway rather than Russia, and they could scarcely avoid it if the buggers are on their way home to China.
“Trouble is we don’t have the time. They’ll be off the North Cape two days after, which will almost certainly be a Monday morning. It might take us till Friday before we realize they’re not coming back. By which time they’ll be well down toward the UK. For our first contact we’ll have to rely on SOSUS.”
The Admiral was referring to the ultra-secret American underwater network of acoustic surveillance, which covers most of the world’s oceans, particularly sensitive areas like the GIUK Gap.
“Once we get a SOSUS fix on ’em, we can use Maritime Patrol Aircraft, MPA, to localize. This is going to take time and a bit of luck, but it’s all we’ve got.
“I think we should first look at a holding area, where you will await your prey. I was thinking of here.” The Admiral pointed to an area in a three-hundred-foot depth of water south of the Shetland Isles, 59.7N right on the two-degree line west, 180 miles due north of Scotland’s granite city of Aberdeen.
“This will put you around four thousand miles from New London, Boomer,” said Admiral Dixon. “If you run at around twenty-five knots across the Atlantic, it’ll take about six and a half days. Right now we think the Kilos will leave in the first week in January. You should be on station southwest of the Shetlands by December thirty- first.”
“Yessir. Hell of a way to spend New Year’s Eve. But before we begin a detailed plan, I should like to ask one question.”
As Boomer spoke, the door swung open and a guard let in the pugnacious figure of Admiral Morgan. “Hey, Johnny, Boomer. How we comin”?”
“Just started,” said the Admiral. “I have selected a holding pattern for
“Sir, do we expect the Kilos to be armed?”
“Yes, you’ll have to assume they’ll be armed, Boomer. Fully armed,” Admiral Morgan answered. “And you can expect each of them to be equipped with its full complement of torpedoes — twenty-four each. These two hulls we are looking at are older than the remaining five, but I think we should assume they have been fitted with the newest Russian system. They probably have wire-guided torpedoes that can be fired in pairs, and engage two targets simultaneously.”
“Yessir. Got that, Admiral. Seems they’re catching us up all the time. I guess I need to plan for the worst case, like they’re both dived when we meet up. D’you think they’ll be on the surface, or will they make the whole journey dived?”
“We can’t be sure. The three Kilos the Chinese now have all went by freighter. Brand-new submarines are normally delivered on the surface because it’s much more fuel efficient, less wearing on machinery, and safer. But this is a bit different. We have two Chinese crews training in Russia for several months, and as we speak they are working the boats dived, out in the Barents Sea. I gotta hunch they might be planning to make this journey underwater.”
Boomer nodded. “Either way we have no options,” the Admiral continued thoughtfully. “I just spoke to the President again. He is very clear. We cannot allow ourselves to be shut out of the Taiwan Strait and permit another power to dominate the sea in that part of the world. Right here I’m thinking not only of Taiwan, where we have billions of dollars invested, but of our friends in South Korea, and our trading partners in Japan. They are more worried than we are. That Chinese Navy is a world-fucking nuisance. They have two hundred and fifty thousand people in it.
“The President thinks this issue is about the balance of power in those waters. If China gets a working submarine fleet, they will call the shots on every level. We would be impotent in the Taiwan Strait; the risk to our ships and people would be too great. We’re not going to let them have those submarines.
“
“Nossir. I guess the only real difficulty could be getting ’em both at once. Can’t loose off one weapon active too quick, or it’ll alert the other Kilo, which will then have time to go silent and fire back. Maybe even get away long enough to tell his base what’s happening. Still, my team is well trained, and unless the Chinese have the Kilos more than four or five miles apart, or less than five hundred yards apart, we should be okay. Just need to wait till they’re close enough to separate on the screen.”
“I’m assessing they’ll make their passage in loose company, Boomer — about two thousand yards apart — which they’ll know is good for low-power underwater telephone, but not so close they have to worry about running into each other. I just can’t see ’em having time to get one off themselves.”
“But I can’t count on that, sir. They got one off in the South Atlantic. Damn quick.”
“Yeah,” Admiral Dixon interjected. “But didn’t they have that Israeli commander on board?”
“Not according to Baldridge. He says the Russian captain got one away.”
“Hmmmm. We’ll have to trust you to get it right, Boomer. I do not want
