the squawk box. The captain ordered the acoustic decoys deployed. Within sixty seconds, three of the four ready decoys were in the water. One of the decoys, the decoy that should have been ejected the farthest to starboard, was not launched due to a short circuit in the launcher. While a small knot of sailors and petty officers worked frantically to remedy this glitch, the captain had a decision to make. Should he continue on this course, turn left, or turn right? He elected to turn right, to starboard, for a perfectly logical reason — there was a Japanese submarine to starboard, in the mouth of the bay, and drawing the enemy in that direction seemed like a good idea. The captain had already turned his ship and was steady on the new course when the OOD reported that one of the acoustic decoys had failed to deploy. The captain had only seconds to consider this news when Saratov’s first torpedo hit an acoustic decoy, destroying it without exploding, and went roaring past the ship about a hundred yards to port. Harukaze’s sonar operators were listening to the decoys and the screw noises. The loss of one decoy changed the pitch of the cacophony. In addition, the sound of the first torpedo dropped in volume and pitch as it receded. The computer displayed a graphic of the torpedo’s track. It had missed by only a hundred yards!
The two grinned at each other and shouted congratulations. Tight sphincters relaxed somewhat. The junior operator was the first to get back to business. He was amazed to hear high-speed screw noises very near, and getting louder. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing and stared at his computer screen. Another torpedo!
This is no drill. These are real tobb7eaedoesst
“Torpedo,” he shouted as he stared at the bearing presentation on the screen and tried to concentrate so that he could repeat the number to the tactical action officer. The big Russian ship-killer smashed into the stern of Harukaze. Water being essentially incompressible, most of the force of the explosion was directed into the structure of the ship. The explosion ripped off Harukaze’s rudder and both screws, bent the shafts, and smashed a huge hole in the after end of the ship. Water poured into both engine rooms, drowning the engineers who had survived the initial blast concussion. The ship drifted to a stop and began sinking at the stern. The echoes from the pings were very faint when they returned to Asashi. The Russian submarine was almost bow-on, three miles away, and four hundred feet deeper than Asashi. Sounds echoing off the rising seafloor were causing havoc with the computer. In addition, the sonar operator was also trying to determine the bearing drift on the torpedo noises that he was hearing. He was getting a positive drift when the acoustic decoys from Harukaze went into the water and complicated the problem. Then the explosion from Harukaze reached him, quite loud, water being an excellent conductor of sound. All this input, much of it extraneous, was giving the computer fits. He reported the explosion and the bearing, relieved and sick at the same time. Relieved because his boat was not the target, and sick because the bearing was to Harukaze, which he had been listening to for hours. He was startled when he heard more screw noises amid the horrifying sounds of ripping metal and bulkheads collapsing. Automatically, he checked the bearing. “Another torpedo, Captain. Bearing two one zero relative.”
The relative bearing was the same as the first torpedo he heard, but not the magnetic bearing, because Asashi had turned sixty degrees. “Screw noises getting louder, Captain. Little bearing drift apparent.”
“Launch the acoustic decoys,” the captain barked. “Screw noises on constant bearing, Captain.”
“I asked for decoys, people! Our lives are at stake! Get them launchedst”
“It will be a few seconds, Captain.”
“Stop all engines.”
“All engines stop.”
“Left full rudder. Come left another sixty degrees.”
“Left full rudder,” the helmsman repeated, just as Admiral Kolchak’s torpedo struck the stern of the submarine and exploded.
22
Jack Innes slipped up behind the president as he sipped his after-dinner coffee and whispered the news from Sagami Bay in his ear. President Hood made his excuses to the people around the table and stood up. He followed Innes out of the room. “A destroyer and a submarine — he torpedoed them both. Only a few dozen men from the destroyer survived. The sub was lost with all hands.”
“What is he trying to do?” Hood asked the question in such a way that Innes knew the president didn’t want an answer. Finally Hood said, “Better get the Joint Chiefs over here. And the Secretary of State.”
The two men walked to the Oval Office. After Innes called the duty officer, Hood said, “Is this the same skipper who blew up Yokosuka?”
“Apparently so. CIA says the Russians have only one boat left, a Kilo-class named Admiral Kolchak.”
“What was the skipper’s name?”
“Pavel Saratov.”
“One obsolete old boat …”
“He’s a fox, he’s in shallow water, and he’s been damned lucky.”
“What is he trying to do?”
“I don’t know, sir.” An hour later, Hood asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff that question. “What is he trying to do?”
Everyone had a guess. Hood waved the guesses away. “Why haven’t the Japanese found this guy? It’s an obsolete dieselstelectric boat.”
The CNO answered. “It may be old and have limited capabilities, sir, but battery boats are very quiet. In shallow water they are extremely difficult to detect quickly. The computers have a devil of a time with the bottom echoes.”
“Quickly?”
“They have to snorkel every day or two, Mr. President. Given a couple days, trained hunters will find them every time.”
“Gentlemen, to get back to it, the question we must answer is this: What trouble can Pavel Saratov cause with his little submarine?”
“Obviously, he can sink a lot of ships,” someone said. “He could have done that without going into the lion’s den.”
With the help of computer graphics, they reviewed the military situation. “Whatever Captain Saratov hopes to accomplish, sir,” the CNO said, summing up, “he had better hurry. He sank that destroyer three hours ago right there.” He used a laser pointer. “Even if he dashed away at fifteen knots — and that is a real juice-draining dash — he’s within forty-five miles of that position. The Japanese have four destroyers closing that area and they are flying in sonar-dipping helicopters from other naval bases. Regardless of what Pavel Saratov intends, he and his crew are rapidly running out of time.”
“Gentlemen,” the president of the United States said, “I think Captain Saratov intends to deliver a nuclear weapon. How he will do it, I don’t know. My concern is that Japan may be tempted to retaliate if they have nuclear weapons.”
They sat in absolute silence as the president looked from face to face. “We have given Japan all the information we possess on Captain Saratov’s submarine. I wish we could do more.”
“Perhaps, Mr. President,” General Tuck said, “we should threaten both Russia and Japan with nuclear retaliation by the United States if they use nukes on each other.”
Dead silence greeted that suggestion. President Hood rubbed his temple. “I don’t have what it takes to push the button,” he said finally. “I couldn’t do it. Kalugin and Abe might have the stuff, but I don’t. They would know we were bluffing. My daddy always told me, Never point a gun at a man unless you’re willing to shoot.”
Saratov was bent over the chart of Sagami Bay, measuring distances to Esenin’s fault, when the sonarman said, “Helicopter, Captain. He’s hovering, I think.”
A hovering helo could only mean one thing: a sonar-dipping ASW chopper. “Pass the word— back to silent routine. Tell the torpedo room to stop reloading the tubes. Absolutely no unnecessary noise.”
Saratov glanced at the depth indicator, which registered twenty-five meters. Here in the shallow water of the bay, that was as deep as he could go. At least the water was noisy. There were fishing boats, ships, pleasure craft, high-speed ferries, all roaring back and forth here in Japan’s inland waters. Pavel Saratov donned the headphones and closed his eyes so he could concentrate better. A cacophony of screw noises smote his ears, some of them
