Kilo Class

“It is for one submarine, sir,” replied Admiral Dixon. “Unless we can pick ’em up, and provide some hard facts.”

“Okay, gentlemen. I guess that’s it. All we can do is watch and wait.”

By 0400 on September 4, Boomer had sucked the bad news off the satellite. There was little he could do — he was now four hundred miles southwest of the escort’s last known position, and no one yet knew which course they would make on this mammoth journey around the world to China.

The Commanding Officer of Columbia could only listen and wait. And hope.

At 1900 that same day, the all-seeing space camera in Big Bird passed silently overhead twenty thousand miles above the lonely waters at the southeast corner of the Siberian Bay of Anadyrskij. The evening was clear, the quality of the pictures was excellent, and the content encouraging. Admirals George Morris and Arnold Morgan, sipping black coffee in Fort Meade at 0230, made their deductions from the photographs of the Russian ships.

Big Bird had snapped them right off Cape Navarin — the three destroyers, Admiral Chabanenko, Admiral Levchenko and Admiral Kharlamov, and the ASW frigate Nepristupny. They were in a crescent formation inside the fifty-meter-depth contour, against the shoreline. The icebreaker Ural was out in front, and the giant replenishment ship brought up the rear. The key was that the convoy did not appear to have swung to the west around the bay but had proceeded straight across, making some 210 miles in twenty-four hours, which meant they were still making less than nine knots, which in turn meant that K-9 and K-10 were most probably still there. Dived and snorkeling, but there. Otherwise the convoy would have been making fifteen knots or more for home, clear of the ice and the Kilos. There was still no sign of the twenty-one-thousand-ton Typhoon, which meant it had probably left to pursue its own special business.

“You little babies,” said Admiral Morgan. “That speed’s exactly right. Nine knots, two hundred and ten miles exactly. Those cunning pricks must have dived, just in case we were out there waiting for ’em. The other great news is the Typhoon seems to have beat it.”

George Morris packed up the pictures. Arnold Morgan decided to snatch three hours of sleep at his home in nearby Montpelier, and then track on down to Norfolk in the chopper. His chauffeur, Charlie, would wait for him throughout the rest of the night until the Admiral and the package were delivered safely into the Marine helicopter that waited on the Fort Meade pad.

The following day, the three Admirals met again in the Black Ops Cell at SUBLANT. In the opinion of Admiral Dixon, the convoy would stay more or less in place all the way to Petropavlovsk, the big Russian naval base that lies right on the northern Pacific, seven hundred miles southwest of Ol’utorsky toward the end of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

“With that settled,” he said, “we’ll have a reasonable chance. The water off Ol’utorsky comes up from two hundred meters to the beach within twelve miles of the shore. That means Columbia can lie in wait outside of the limit of Russian water and fire from fourteen miles out, straight inshore, straight at the Kilos.”

The three Admirals drafted their “appreciation” of the situation accordingly, stressing that the Kilos were most certainly there but that the Typhoon had almost certainly left. The signal concluded with the following sentence:

“Provided you are able to POSIDENT Kilos, you are free to attack at will.”

Boomer, who now knew the time frame of the satellite pass, ordered Columbia to periscope depth at 0430 on September 5. He sucked down the signal from SUBLANT, and then presented his own appreciation of the situation. He informed the Navy Chiefs he would like to receive one more fix from the satellite this evening, with the Kilos at 60.40N 173.30E, northeast of his patrol spot, sixty miles short of the headland. His signal required no further reply, and Columbia slid swiftly back beneath the calm but chill Pacific waves. To wait.

He took up his position fourteen miles due east of the Siberian shore, a mile outside the two-hundred-meter depth line. Seven miles farther inshore was the fifty-meter line, and he fully expected the Russians to steam down here, just landward of that line, with the two big ships, the three destroyers, and the frigate forming their crescent, presumably around the two submerged Kilos, six miles offshore. So far as he and Mike Krause could tell there was much in their favor. They had deep water to seaward, which would enable them to evade attack if necessary. It would also allow them adequate sonar performance, even though they were looking “uphill,” toward the noisier shoreline.

Boomer accessed the satellite at 2030 and received confirmation from SUBLANT that the convoy was proceeding as anticipated at the critical nine knots. Big Bird photographed them at 1900, in position 60.40N 173.30E, which put them a little more than sixteen miles to his northeast.

Even as he lowered the mast, the sonar room, deep in the control center of Columbia, picked up the first signals of their approach. The Combat Systems Officer, Lieutenant Commander Jerry Curran, was in attendance, and his sonar chief mentioned that whatever was happening out there sounded a lot like World War III. Lieutenant Commander Curran himself was observing what was a most terrible racket, loud active sonar transmissions, massive cavitation, and many propellers as the Russians came steaming into range.

“Captain…Sonar…could you come in, sir?”

Boomer was there in seconds, and he too was temporarily mystified by the unearthly noise roaring through the water, causing a complete whiteout of the underwater picture. “There’s no pattern to it,” said the sonar chief. “It’s just chaotic, so loud and uneven it’s obscuring all engine lines…just a total mess…we’ve got shaft rates, and blade rates all over the place…can’t make a lick of goddamned sense out of any of it.”

Lieutenant Commander Curran was thoughtful. The tall, bespectacled Connecticut native was an expert on these systems, and he had a master’s degree in electronics and computer sciences from Fordham. A world-class bridge player, he recognized a truly brutal finesse when he saw one. And the dizzying white lines on his screens represented exactly that. “They know we’re out here, and they’re putting up a sound barrier between us and the Kilos,” he said slowly.

“Those destroyers’ blades turn at a hundred revs a minute going forward. But we’re not hearing blades going fast-forward, we’re hearing ’em in reverse as well…making sixty revolutions the other way. That’s what’s causing the incredible cavitation. Those Russian helmsmen are driving one propeller forward, and one in reverse…using a ton of gas…but they don’t care…they’ve got a ton of gas.”

“If that’s right, it sure works,” said the sonar chief. “I never saw a wall of sound like this before.”

“That’s just what it is,” said Boomer. “A wall, starting with the icebreaker, which is still out in front, and running back in a four-ship curve to seaward with the replenishment ship bringing up the rear, seven miles from the lead ship. That’s their formation…has been all the way down this coast. The Kilos are most probably behind that wall, maybe a mile inshore. We can’t see them and we sure as hell cannot hear them. Basically, our weapons have absolutely no chance. We don’t know where the targets are, we don’t even know whether the targets are there at all…never mind getting a POSIDENT, and standing a chance of hitting it. And I’ll tell you something else — if they’ve thought about us this carefully, they’ve got decoys towed behind all four of the escorts, helping with the noise.”

Columbia was now patrolling six miles to seaward of the nearest Russian escort ship, which happened to be the frigate. “We should assume they are all on active sonar,” said Lieutenant Commander Curran, “which means we could be detected. If we come to PD, they could pick us up on radar. I assume they would attack us instantly if they see or hear us.”

“Very likely. FUCK IT,” snapped Boomer out loud, neither enjoying the reversal of roles, nor sharing his tumbling thoughts with his crew. “It’s supposed to be us hunting them, not the other way around…but the fact is I can’t draw a bead on them. Isn’t this an unholy bitch? And what the fuck am I going to do about it?

“Okay, team, I’m gonna withdraw out into deep water for the moment. We can continue to head southwest. We’re not going to lose them with that racket going on — they can probably hear the bastards in Shanghai. But I need some time to think. No sense hanging around here, that’s for sure. We can’t get off a shot, and we got a reasonable chance of getting shot ourselves…still, I want to go to PD very briefly, and take a look, see what’s out there. For all we know the Kilos are on the surface, then we’re gone.”

Columbia angled her way slowly to PD, raising her periscope and ESM mast when