No more. No less. Admiral Zhang alone among the Chinese High Command did not like it. He could not determine where the US submarine might have come from. “We probably left one behind in the North Atlantic,” he murmured. “Then what might they have done?…The Panama Canal route is too far…maybe they sent one north from Pearl Harbor or even San Diego…but I’d be surprised. They would want their subversive actions kept quiet. Not broadcast all around the fleet. If there is a US nuclear tracking the Kilos, it’s got to be the best they have. Which means we had better be very careful…I don’t like the tone of that Russian captain — too complacent. When you’re dealing with Americans you don’t want to be complacent. Otherwise you might not live.”
He walked into the next office, where Admiral Yibo was working. He too had read the signal from the
“Do you have any thoughts?” asked the C in C.
“I’ve been considering it. But it seems highly unlikely the Americans could have a nuclear boat tracking the Kilos down the coast of Siberia. Where would it have come from? Perhaps the West Coast?”
“I suppose it’s possible. But it’s a very long way.”
“Sir, if I was commanding the
“So would I, Yunsheng, my friend. So would I. Our Russian colleagues, however, seem to think the Americans would not dare to open fire on Russian surface ships in Russian waters. They also seem confident that the Americans can’t see or hear the Kilos.”
“Thus far, they have been right.”
“Yes. But I think they may not have faced the fact that an American submarine has only just arrived.”
“The Russians think their sound barrier is foolproof. They think that to get at the Kilos, the US nuclear boat will have to hit at least two of the escorts…which they are plainly not going to do. Too reckless, and too public.”
“The problem is, Yunsheng, it’s so difficult to understand how the American mind functions. We both have our pride, our sense of face, but we think differently. In two hundred years we have never really come to grips with American thinking.”
Yunsheng laughed. “Probably not, sir. Nonetheless if I were commanding that big Russian destroyer, I wouldn’t drop my guard for one split second.”
“Neither, my friend, would I. In fact if I caught one sniff of a US nuclear submarine, I would sink it without hesitation.”
“If you could, sir. If you could.”
“Yes, Yunsheng. If I could.”
061100SEPT. A hundred and thirty miles east of the Siberian coastline. Boomer Dunning, Mike Krause, Jerry Curran, and Dave Wingate stood huddled over charts. Navigation center USS
“From the convoy’s last known in Ol’utorsky,” said the XO, “it’s close to a thousand miles down the Pacific side of the Kamchatka Peninsular. The convoy will get there by September 10, probably in the afternoon. SUBLANT believes we already lost the Typhoon, and I expect to lose the icebreaker and the replenishment ship, and probably a couple of the escorts when they reach Petropavlovsk sometime on September eighth.”
“Right,” said Boomer. “But lemme just say this. If I was in command I’d keep those four escorts in place until we reached the Shanghai Roads, somewhere west of Nagasaki in the East China Sea.”
“Yessir. That’s just because you know what you know. They don’t know what you know. They don’t even know we’re here.”
“Don’t they? I wouldn’t be surprised if they got a sniff when we took a quick look around back at Ol’utorsky.”
“Possibly, sir. But even if they were sharp enough to catch us onscreen, they still might not have been sharp enough to interpret the ‘paint’ as a marauding US nuclear submarine.”
“Maybe yes. Maybe no. But if someone had taken out five of my brand-new submarines, I’d open fire on a fucking lobster if it waggled its claws at me.”
Lieutenant Wingate laughed at the Captain’s choice of metaphor, as he usually did. But they all got the point: the Russians had to be on full battle alert. Unless they were crazy.
“Meanwhile we better familiarize ourselves with our patrol area.” Boomer had his dividers on the big navigation chart of the Kuril Islands, a sure sign that he meant business. “Okay,” he said, “right here we have the end of the Kamchatka Peninsula, which tapers off to Point Lopatka…couple hundred miles southwest of Petropavlovsk…these are pretty lonely waters. Then the islands, the Kurils, stretch in a near-straight line for eight hundred miles, right down to the big bay at the northeastern corner of Hokkaido, Japan’s north island.
“According to this chart, the islands have been occupied by the Soviet Union since 1945, heavily disputed of course by the Japanese, who claim the four nearest ones are owned by them. Which they would, wouldn’t they?
“Anyway, we don’t give a rat’s ass about that end of the chain. We’re concerned with this big bastard right up here in the north, by Point Lopatka. It’s called Paramushir Island. It’s about sixty-five miles long. The next one south is Onekotan, which is about a quarter the size. The bit we care about is the seaway that separates them. It’s about forty miles across, and it will be the first time since we’ve been on the case that the Russian convoy has crossed a wide stretch of sea in deep water without land off its starboard beam. At their speed of nine knots, they will take four and a half hours to make their way from the southern point of Paramushir to the northern headland of Onekotan. Sometime during those four and a half hours, I intend to sink both Kilos.”
“How about the sound barrier, sir?” asked Lieutenant Wingate.
“It’s going to be reduced because some of the ships will probably peel off at Petropavlovsk. The rest will then have to form an all-around barrier instead of just the crescent along the seaward side. That could reduce the effectiveness of their sound barrier. It could also make the target area smaller. Plus, all of our systems will work better in deep open water. We’ll set up our patrol right here.”
Boomer pointed with his ruler to a mark at 49.40N 154.55E, in six hundred feet of water. “This will be the very first time in the whole passage we’ve had it deep enough and clear enough. Gentlemen, trust me, this is good submarine hunting country. Right here we do have Russian international waters, but we’ll be fourteen miles offshore, just out of ’em.”
“Sir,” said the navigator, “I’ve plotted our turn into the patrol area right here on the fiftieth parallel, exactly where it bisects 160 East.”
“Looks good, Dave,” said Boomer. “There is one other question: on which side of the Kurils do we think they will go? They could swing inside and steam all the way down the edge of the Sea of Okhotsk, which the Russians regard as a private inland sea of their own. Or they could stay outside and keep on running down the Pacific. It’s possible they may feel safer on the inside, so we better be ready. Get the ship well into the seaway between the islands. We can always slide back outside if that’s where they are. At least we have the elements of speed and surprise on our side.”
Back in Fort Meade, for the third night in a row, the satellite picture arrived at 0300 local time. There were no surprises for Admiral Morgan or Admiral Dixon. Big Bird still showed all six escorts in their crescent formation, two hundred miles farther south from Ol’utorsky. There was still no sign of the Kilos. The surface ships were still making nine knots, and there was no further sign of the Typhoon.
“No news,” grunted Morgan. “That’s the best kind. There’s no way the Russians are going to be dumb enough to use a twenty-one-thousand-ton ballistic-missile submarine to protect a couple of export Kilos. If it’s there, they would want us to know it was there, in order to deter us from shooting. They know good and well we might hit it by mistake if we open fire. We can no longer see it, and we must thus assume the Typhoon is gone…on the inter-Fleet transfer we first considered. Let’s hit Boomer with this information. Then get the hell outta here.”
082030SEPT. Shanghai Naval Base. Admiral Zhang made his nightly perusal of the communications from the Russian Pacific Fleet headquarters. Tonight he was informed that no further transient contacts had been observed by the lead destroyer, despite vigilant radar and sonar surveillance. The icebreaker and the thirty-five-thousand-ton replenishment ship had peeled off at Petropavlovsk, but the four surface escorts were still in place and would continue to make their presence obvious to any enemy for the remainder of the 3,200-mile journey to Shanghai. For the first time Admiral Zhang was given a solid ETA. “We expect to berth in the port of Shanghai late afternoon on
