Kilo Class (52 page)

BERING SEA TO KURILS. The Siberian route of the Russian convoy. Somewhere south of the Bering Strait,
Columbia
, commanded by Boomer Dunning, prepares the ambush
.

The Paramount Ruler understood the motives of Zhang Yushu, and his most senior trusted Admirals, and he raised no voice against them. For they were all men who treated China’s problems as their own. They were also men who would gladly have laid down their lives for the Great Republic. Such men were rare, and the Paramount Ruler would indulge their ambitions.

For the past two weeks, Admirals Zhang and Yibo had watched the signals being routed through Russia’s Pacific Fleet Communications Center in Vladivostok, via the satellite, on a direct link to Shanghai. Every twenty-four hours they heard confirmation that the two Kilos were making smooth and steady progress along the icy northern route across the top of Siberia.

The C in C agreed that if the Americans were laying a trap, they would have done so in the GIUK Gap in the North Atlantic, as they had probably done for K-4 and K-5. He also agreed that the men in the Pentagon must have been furious when they realized the cunning of the Russian plan to go east instead of west, and to protect the Kilos with such an impressive flotilla of Naval power.

Each day, while the Russians and Admiral Yibo had grown more enchanted with their own brilliance, a feeling of disquiet had begun to cast a shadow over the street kid from the Xiamen waterfront, who had made it to the very top of the Chinese Navy. It was true, Zhang admitted, that the Americans may have been outwitted on this one… and yet he understood the ruthlessness of the men in the Pentagon, as well as their determination and their no-holds-barred attitude to military power. Of course he did. He was one of them. From another culture, another place. But nonetheless one of them.

In his hand he held the latest signal, transmitted from the destroyer
Admiral Chabanenko
at 2130, two hours ago, from somewhere off the eastern coast of Siberia. He kept reading the words over… “
052120SEPT. 60.40N 173.30E. Short transient contact picked up… three sweeps radar. Six miles off our port bow. No data for firm classification. Did not reappear. Possible US SSN. No subsequent attack. No reason for additional defensive measures. Acoustic barrier in place. US powerless, especially while we proceed in Russian waters
.”

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
Admiral Chabanenko
.

“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
Admiral Chabanenko
, I would be very careful indeed.”

“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
Columbia
.

“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 September 24.” A frisson of excitement prickled his scalp. It had been a long wait.

100200SEPT. 49.40N 155.54E.
Columbia
patrolled silently, at five knots, two hundred feet below the surface, deep in the seaway that separates the Siberian islands of Paramushir and Onekotan. Commander Dunning and his XO were in conference. Two evenings previously the satellite signal from SUBLANT had confirmed the disappearance of the icebreaker and the replenishment ship. The latest communication showed the four escorts still making nine knots in their regular crescent formation, presumably to seaward of the Kilos.

This latest satellite picture, shot at 1900 the previous evening, showed the three Russian destroyers and the frigate steaming steadily southwest, 51.00N 152.80E, thirty miles east of Point Lopatka, fifteen and a half hours from
Columbia
. They were now four hours up-range, in the dark, and plainly staying east of the Kurils.

Boomer Dunning ordered the submarine once more to periscope depth, principally for a weather check because at this moment he could not believe his luck. Conditions were set fair, with a brisk force-four breeze off the Sea of Okhotsk — just enough to whip up the waves a little and make it difficult for the opposition to see
Columbia
’s periscope. But not too choppy for the sonar conditions to deteriorate. “Perfect,” said Boomer. “Couldn’t have hoped for better.”

“I think we ought to assume they’ll change their formation when they get into deep open water south of Paramushir,” said Mike Krause.

“No doubt,” said Boomer. “They will probably make some kind of a ring around the Kilos. Maybe one on each corner… that’s when I might be able to get at ’em a little better. There will definitely be less noise blanking them out. I ought to be able to fire a couple of weapons deep into the ‘square’ between the escorts. We’ll use the new guidance system for the search pattern — keep those babies under tight control — which ought to find the Kilos, if they’re there.”

“They’re there okay,” replied Lieutenant Commander Krause. “That nine-knot speed they’ve held all the way from the Bering Strait confirms that. Unless they’ve been trying to fool us all along and the submarines split off way back. Either way, we’ll know soon enough.”

100350SEPT. Patrolling two hundred feet below the surface, USS
Columbia
held her position at 49.40N 155.54E. Lieutenant Commander Mike Krause had the ship. The Captain was in the navigation area. The sonar officer, Lieutenant Bobby Ramsden, carefully monitored the work of his team of sonar operators. He suddenly turned to Lieutenant Commander Jerry Curran, who was standing behind him, and said, “We’re getting something, sir… bearing 030… several ships… unusual amount of noise… allocated track 4063.”

“Captain… sonar,” Jerry Curran said into his microphone. “We just picked ’em up… the Russians bear 030… twenty miles plus. Could you come in, sir?”

Boomer entered the room quickly. “Okay, Jerry, we ought to be able to see them on the infrared in what, say… seventy-five minutes from now?”