A collection of quiet snickers broke out from the control room watchstanders. Even Carter’s CO chuckled as he rubbed his forehead. “I suppose if one’s personal reference for just what defines ‘close’ is a collision, then anything else is a walk in the park!”
“Sort of like the old adage, ‘any landing you can walk away from is a good one.’ Come to think of it, I’ve done that too.” This time everyone laughed — the crew was well aware of their commodore’s early career as an F-18 pilot. Jerry, noting the stress level had dropped a bit, gestured aft with his head and said, “Captain, let’s take the geoplot and retire to the wardroom to nuke this problem out. We’ll be less of a disturbance to the control room watchstanders.”
“Of course, sir,” responded Weiss. The captain then signaled the XO and navigator to join them. While Segerson gathered up the paper plot and the fire control chits, Jerry pointed to the weapons officer. “Kat, please have the sonar techs print out the latest sound velocity profile, as well as range of the day estimates for a Severodvinsk-class submarine at slow to moderate speed, say five to ten knots.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Owens said as she turned toward the sonar shack.
“Oh, and at a depth of four hundred fifty feet,” Jerry called out. Owens waved her acknowledgement.
For three hours the four men hovered above the geoplot like fortune tellers over a Ouija Board, trying to piece together what had happened. Sitting in the quiet of the wardroom, Jerry, Weiss, Segerson, and Malkoff pored over the sparse bearing data trying to refine the intruder’s movements. The contact had been picked up on the TB-33 thin-line towed array in broadband-search mode. It had passed through the aft beams quickly, which meant the bearing information was on the fuzzy side. None of the hull arrays got a whiff, including the wide aperture array that would have given them range as well as bearing. Classifying the target was just as difficult, since there was very little narrowband to go on; and what they did have wasn’t consistent. To Jerry, it was bad case of déjà vu.
By overlapping multiple course and speed scenarios with the calculated sonar ranges of the day, Jerry and the others were able to cut down the possibilities to a narrow set of solutions. Malkoff drew a line of best fit through the data and read off the results. “Best course is three one five, speed six knots, with a closest point of approach of four thousand six hundred yards.”
“That matches pretty much with what I remember when Seawolf got jumped by Severodvinsk,” Jerry remarked as he stood up and stretched.
“I would have thought we’d have a better detection range than that with the new fiber-optic towed arrays,” commented Malkoff.
“Ah, yes, but this isn’t Severodvinsk we’re dealing with, Nav,” reminded Jerry. “Kazan is a Project 885M submarine. The M means modernized, and one of those mods is supposedly a reduced acoustic signature. So, it’s basically a wash between our better arrays and their quieter boat.”
Segerson pointed to a choppy, faint line on the narrowband display printout. “The turbine generator line is almost invisible. I can barely make it out. And it’s noticeably weaker than the SSTG lines I’ve seen on Akulas. Not that they’re all that easy to find, either.”
Weiss shook his head; there was a worried expression on his face. “This guy is going to be a problem.”
“Concur, Lou, but now we at least have a better idea of when we can expect to hear him. And it’s important to note that nothing suggests he heard us,” Jerry affirmed, strongly emphasizing the last three words.
Weiss nodded his understanding and took a deep breath. “Okay, XO, let’s see if the sonar techs can tweak their search settings to match this target and eke out a few hundred yards or more for us. But use four thousand yards as the initial range for the fire control solution.”
As Segerson finished repeating the captain’s order back to him, LT Ford knocked, opened the wardroom door, and stepped in.
“Captain, both UUVs have completed their battery charges, and we’ve reloaded the lead ballast. They’re ready to deploy at your convenience.”
“Thank you, Ben. We were just getting ready to discuss that—” A sudden growl of the sound-powered phone interrupted Weiss. Reaching over, he grabbed the handset. “Captain.”
“Captain, Officer of the Deck, sir. Sonar reports the construction noise from the launch complex has suddenly stopped. And Mario says this isn’t according to the schedule.”
“Understood, OOD. We’ll be right there.”
Jerry and Weiss stared at the displays over the sonar techs’ shoulders. Very little could be seen, or heard, from the direction of the launchers. No hammering, no humming, nothing. After thirty minutes of silence, Jerry knew this wasn’t just another shift change. He waved to Weiss, and they stepped out of the sonar shack. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this, Lou,” Jerry whispered.
“Agreed, sir. Do you think it means the Russians are done loading the weapons?”
“Possibly. The intel guys said they didn’t have a good handle on the Russians’ schedule. But if you’re correct, then we are almost out of time.” Jerry walked over by the plotting boards, studied the charts for a moment, then strutted back. There was a determined look on his face. “We’re going to make another attempt, right now.”
Weiss hesitated, then started to speak, “Commodore, I don’t think that’s a good—”
“I don’t like it, either,” Jerry cut him off. “I wish we had more time to plot Kazan’s movements, but we’ll just have to do the best we can, with what we have. I’ll get the UUVs deployed. You get us headed to the gap.”
“UUVs are back in position,” reported Ford. Jerry swiftly glanced at the status display on the command console; Walter and José were holding at fifty feet above the bottom and three hundred yards away from the cable. Ford and Lawson looked over at the commodore, waiting for him to give the order.
“All right, gentlemen, here’s to hoping the second time’s a charm,” Jerry said wistfully.
“Technically, sir, isn’t this the third time?” joked Lawson.
“Hush up, Thing Two!” snarled Jerry with feigned annoyance. Followed shortly by, “Smart-ass… and mind your console.” The smile on his face revealed he really wasn’t angry.
“Aye, aye, sir!” snorted Lawson. All four UUV operators laughed, even Cavanaugh found the exchange amusing. The junior lieutenant wore a very self-satisfied grin.
Jerry toggled the mike and reported to control that they were ready. A moment later Weiss announced, “Commence UUV run.”
Ford exhaled a deep breath, and then uttered optimistically, “Here we go. Half speed to the motors, stand by for the turn.”
The UUVs accelerated sluggishly, building up speed. The large-screen display on the bulkhead showed their positions relative to the minefield and the passive sonar net. The UUV icons moved painfully slowly toward their targets.
“Contact!” Frederick and Alvarez reported virtually simultaneously.
“Contact, aye. Stand by to shift to dual-frequency mode,” ordered Ford.
So far, so good, Jerry thought. With the shorter-range active mode, they’d have a better feel for range to the first hydrophone, the marker to begin the flare. Once the range to the cable ticked down to fifty yards, Jerry gave the command. “Execute the turn, propulsion motors all stop. Stand by for downward pitch maneuver.”