It was enough to give anyone one hell of a headache.
“Have there been any threats to Twenty-five?” Tombstone asked Penhall.
“No direct threats,” the lieutenant replied. “A number of radar sites all along the coast have been keeping tabs on them, of course, but no weapons radar signatures, and nothing that could be interpreted as a hostile move. Yet.”
That final word was offered as an afterthought, and Tombstone nodded understanding. No one in this part of the world really wanted them here in these waters, and all parties concerned would be very glad to see the Americans leave.
And that goes for me, too, Tombstone thought. He pointed to a cluster of yellow symbols over the Black Sea, south of Kerch and the straits leading to the Sea of Azov. “And who are those guys?”
“They’ve been IDED as another military flight out of Krasnodar,” Penhall said. “Reinforcements for Sevastopol, I expect.”
“I think,” Tombstone said slowly, “that the Crimea is going to sink if they pile anything more in there.”
Penhall smiled. “What was it the Russian general said about Stalingrad, sir, back in World War II? That it was one big prison camp?”
“I’m not sure the Russians said that,” Tombstone replied, “but I take your point.”
The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine was what made the American incursion into the Black Sea particularly dangerous. More so than even the civil war between Blues and Reds, the Russo-Ukrainian War carried with it the seeds of a general conflict throughout this part of the world, one that might well spill over into both Europe and the Middle East.
It had, in fact, all of the makings of a new world war.
“Top Hat, Top Hat,” a radio voice called from a nearby speaker, carrying more urgency now. Tombstone cocked his head, listening, as Penhall switched the map display back to a view centered on the Jefferson. “This is Sierra One-five. We’re over the target area at seven-five feet and we’re trolling for big ones, over.”
“Ah, roger that, Sierra One-five. Commence active sonar.”
“And a one, and a two…”
The sonar pings weren’t transmitted over the open communications channel, but Tombstone could imagine what it must sound like aboard the Russian sub. That SH-3 was hovering just above the sub’s location, its sonar dangling at the end of a long cable, dipping beneath the surface of the water like bait on the end of a line. When the sonar started broadcasting ? ”going active,” as opposed to passively listening ? every man aboard the sub would hear it as a sharp, ringing chirp transmitted through the bulkheads of their tiny, enclosed world, proof positive that they’d been spotted and were in someone’s gun sights.
“Any idea yet whose sub that is?” Tombstone asked.
“Not really,” Penhall replied. “Our best guess is that it’s Russian.
The signature matches a Victor III that’s been operating out of their sub pens at Balaklava for some time now. It’s not conclusive, but…” He shrugged.
“Understood. Hardly matters, anyway. Nobody out here likes us much.”
“They might like us even less after this,” Penhall said. “We’re telling them, in effect, “Go away!’ Not exactly neighborly, you know?”
“More neighborly than an ADCAP torpedo,” Tombstone said. He hesitated, watching the unmoving graphics symbols, green and red, on the screen. He grinned. “Wonder how they’re enjoying the concert down there?”
Ping!…
Scowling, Captain First Rank Aleksci Aleksandrovich Vyatkin looked up toward the control room’s overhead, past the maze of conduits, wirings, and piping that ran fore-and-aft through the compartment like a writhing bundle of spaghetti.
Ping!..
Louder this time, loud enough to hurt sensitive hearing. Kislovodsk’s sonar officer, Valery Sofinsky, had already pulled off his headset and was ruefully rubbing his ear. Even at a depth of four hundred feet, it sounded as though the American helicopter-mounted sonars were right on top of them, scant meters from the outer hull.
It hadn’t taken the bastards long to find them, either. Another Russian sub, the Krimsky Komsomolets, had been shadowing the American battle group up the Aegean; orders had come through from Balaklava just hours ago for the Kislovodsk to pick up the group and continue shadowing it inside the Black Sea. Their orders were to remain unobserved, but to get as close to the major ships of the CBG as possible ? especially either their Aegis cruiser command ship or the carrier itself.
Ping!..
“They have us bracketed, Comrade Kapitan,” Captain-Lieutenant Yuri Aleksanyan, the boat’s first officer, said. “I think they must have known we were here all along.”
“The bastards have the devil’s own ears,” Vyatkin spat. But it was more than the vaunted American technology. He knew that.
In the old days, in the Soviet days, Russian crews had not quite been the match of their American counterparts. Now, with morale at rock bottom, with machinery falling apart and no spares to be had anywhere save, just possibly, on the black market, things were much worse. His crew was sullen to the point of mutiny, and as likely to drop a heavy metal tool in protest to some unwanted order as out of stupidity or neglect. Equipment designed to run quietly didn’t. Sensors designed to monitor sound aboard the submarine didn’t. Officers supposedly trained in the skills necessary to navigate efficiently and silently while submerged weren’t. Service aboard a Russian submarine, always both dangerous and uncomfortable, was fast becoming a nightmare.
Ping!..
“That was from directly ahead, Comrade Captain,” the sonar officer said.
He didn’t even need his headset, so loud and bell-tone clear was the American transmission.
“They are warning us, Captain,” the first officer added.
“They are telling us they want us to come no closer to their precious nuclear carrier,” Vyatkin said.
PING!..
“Comrade Captain-“
“We will fox them, Yuri Aleksanyan,” Vyatkin said. “Ready Kukla.”
“At once, Comrade Captain.”
The submarine known to the West as a Victor III was the oldest class of SSN still in service with the Russian navy. The first Soviet undersea vessel to be a match for the sophisticated submarine technologies of England and the United States, it was nonetheless the result of a number of compromises… not the least of which was the fact that the same power plant used to drive the smaller, lighter Victor II was used on this larger submarine, which translated to a slower top speed and more sluggish handling.
Worse, Kislovodsk had been one of the last of the Victor IIIS to come off the ways at Komsomolsk in 1985, and he ? Russians always thought of their ships as he ? was decidedly showing his age. There were few alternatives, but Vyatkin found the obvious one of flight to be distasteful in the extreme. To allow the hunter wolf to be chivied away from its prey by the squawking of crows… no. There was another way. A better way, one that might help unite this crew that had been beaten on the day it had set out to sea, and perhaps instill in these men confidence in their commanding officer.
“Torpedo room reports Kukla loaded, Comrade Captain.”
“Open outer torpedo doors, and prepare to fire.”
“At once, Comrade Captain.”
He might be old and slow, Vyatkin thought, but the creaking dedushka Kislovodsk had a few tricks left in him Yet.
“Captain! Sonar! He’s opening his outer doors!”
“Damn!” Lang slapped the intercom switch on the console just above his head. “Torpedo room! Stand by tubes one and three!”
“Tubes one and three ready, Captain,” a seaman’s voice came back. He sounded young… and scared.
