torpedoes and missiles, with a total of twenty-four weapons carried aboard… and deadly when skillfully used.
Submarines ? even Russian submarines ? were not that common inside the Black Sea. Treaty constraints restricted the number of subs allowed to pass the Bosporus-Dardanelles waterway each year; more to the point, the Dardanelles were only meters deep in spots, deep enough to hide a submerged sub ? barely ? but with precious little room for error. Subs trying to pass unobserved through the straits did so with the certain knowledge that the waterway was thickly laced with sound detector equipment and other sub-hunting gear… not to mention the less predictable hazards imposed by fishermen’s nets. Since submarines survived in modern warfare by remaining unobserved, the old Soviet Union had never added many submarines to its Black Sea Fleet, and the majority of those stationed there were diesel electric boats out of the secret pens at Balaklava ? Kilos, Tangos, and aging Foxtrots.
There were a few more modern, nuclear-powered boats in the Black Sea, however, and this Victor III was one. Obviously he’d been deployed to keep an eye on the CBG, and it was Orlando’s task to keep an eye on him.
Or rather… an ear. Davies remained motionless, not straining to hear so much as he was losing himself in the hissing, churning cascade of sound coming through his headset.
“Davies?”
He looked up, startled. Commander Peter Lang was leaning against the entrance to the sonar shack. “Yes, Skipper?”
“You’re sure of that heading, son?”
He took a moment more before answering, listening to the churn of the Russian’s eight-bladed screw. Yes… the sound was definitely moving off to the right now as Orlando continued forward. “Yes, sir. I make it between one-seven-oh and one-seven-three. He’s on a straight heading now. It’s not a crazy Ivan.”
Lang ducked out of the compartment long enough to say, “Helm! Come right to one-seven-one. Gently, now!”
Davies heard the source of the noise drifting back to the left, until it was coming from directly ahead of Orlando’s bow. “That’s it, Skipper,” he said after a moment. “We’re still squarely in his baffles.”
That was where they wanted to be in this deadly game ? inside the cone-shaped area astern of the Russian sub where her own wake and propeller noise made detection of the American sub almost impossible.
“Think we can release a message buoy without him hearing?”
“With all the racket he’s making? Sure thing.”
Twice so far in the hunt, Orlando had dropped off astern of the contact, letting the Russian sub move on ahead so that they could quietly slip close to the surface in order to radio the carrier group, then reacquiring the contact later. Releasing a tiny buoy with a radio transmitter and a canned, coded message, however, would permit the Orlando to stay on the contact’s tail.
“I don’t want to lose this bastard,” Lang said quietly. “One-seven-one is going to put him right on the Jefferson.”
Davies looked up, startled. “No shit?”
“No shit,” Lang agreed. He looked up at a clock mounted on the bulkhead above the waterfall. “Your watch is up in fifteen.”
“Supposed to be.”
“You mind sticking around for a while, son? I want the best ears in the boat on this one.”
“Hey, no problem, Skipper. I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”
“Good man. If that son of a bitch even twitches toward a weapons release, I want to know about it. Understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
Lang smiled and nodded. “Keep me posted.”
Davies exchanged glances with Brown after the captain left. “They’re going after the Jefferson?” the other sonarman said. “Shit!”
“Makes sense,” Davies replied. “They’re gonna want to keep assets close and ready, just in case another shootin’ war breaks out.”
“What about us?”
“I guess we’ve just got to be closer… and readier.”
He closed his eyes, losing himself once again in the dark, swirling roar of sound from ahead.
CHAPTER 3
The clouds had closed in completely as Jefferson turned into a freshening wind out of the northeast, dropping a low, gray ceiling across the sky. The overcast increased the sense of claustrophobia Tombstone had been feeling since entering this landlocked sea.
South, some twenty miles away, the northern coast of Anatolia showed as a streak of green and brown between gray sea and gray sky. Turkey claimed a six-mile limit on their territorial waters in the Aegean, which they shared with Greece, but twelve miles in the Med and in the Black Sea. It had taken Jefferson less than thirty minutes to work her way north out of Turkish waters, after transferring their pilot to the Yavuz. They were on their own now, though Turkish naval units continued to shadow the American force to the south.
“Feeling better, Stoney?” Brandt asked with a chuckle.
“I’m not sure, Captain,” Tombstone replied. He thought a moment. “You know, sir, when you’re in an F-14 coming in for a trap, a carrier looks damned small, about the size of a postage stamp… especially at night or in rough weather. Out here, though, I feel just about as small and as inconspicuous as an elephant in a phone booth.”
“I know what you mean.” Brandt chuckled. “Ain’t hardly enough room out here to swing a Tomcat.”
Tombstone laughed. He nodded toward the flight deck, where the normal bustle and excitement of air ops had resumed. “Or a Hawkeye.”
Now that they were out of Turkish territorial waters, Jefferson was launching aircraft as fast as she could hurl them off her deck. Four F-14 Tomcats, her Combat Air Patrol, had been first aloft; now, a big E-2C Hawkeye was being readied on Cat One.
One of the carrier’s four E-2Cs of VAW-130, the gray, twin-engined turboprop aircraft seemed anachronistic among all of the sleek, high-powered jets… not to mention a bit exotic with its large, flat, flying-saucer radome mounted on its back. That radome, or rather the powerful APS-125 radar inside, truly made the Hawkeye the eyes of the fleet. Its sophisticated electronics were capable of keeping track of air and surface targets across a circle nearly five hundred nautical miles in diameter and could control up to twenty-five simultaneous intercepts, making it an AEW ? Airborne Early Warning aircraft ? of awesome sophistication and abilities. Once on station, it would be able to see everything on and over a good two-thirds of the entire Black Sea and be able to peer deep into Ukraine and Russia in order to alert the battle group of gathering hostile aircraft.
On the deck, the launch officer, identifiable by his bright yellow jersey and green-striped helmet, made a last check up and down the length of the aircraft, then snapped off a crisp salute to the pilot. Dropping to one knee, he pointed two fingers down the length of the deck, then jabbed his thumb to steel, signaling the catapult officer to punch it. The Hawkeye, its props already howling, rocketed forward on a trail of steam boiling from the catapult slot. In two seconds, it was traveling at over 150 miles per hour; flaps down for maximum lift, it sailed off the Jefferson’s bow, hung there in the wet air for a moment as though unsure whether to climb or fall… then began climbing.
“I’m sure glad to see him away,” Tombstone said with heartfelt relief.
“I hate being blind.”
“Amen to that, Stoney,” Brandt replied. “At least now we can see ‘em when they come after us.”
