Pete would prefer to have drilled this procedure with his crew. The efficiency and precision of a submarine in a deadly environment – and every dive into the depths of the ocean could turn deadly with one mistake by one of the hundred crewmen – was crucial. The Navy's response: Practice. Practice. Practice. The urgency of this crisis would not allow for that.
"Easy. Easy. Bring her up slow and easy, Mr. COB, " Pete said.
The procedure that they were attempting was delicate and dangerous.
Hovering underneath the Aegean Sea at a depth of ninety feet, just below the freighter Volga River, Honolulu was blowing incremental amounts of compressed air from her air flasks into her ballast tanks. This tedious process was making the sub just slightly lighter and bringing the top of her sail closer to the bottom of the drifting freighter.
The Honolulu was 360 feet long. The Volga River at 1065 feet long and weighing over sixty tons was a giant in comparison. Because of Volga River's size, an ascent that got out of control had the potential to reek havoc on the submarine, like facing the punch of a heavyweight boxer.
A mistake could sink the submarine.
Pete glanced at the docking schematic devised by Naval engineers back at Newport News. It was mounted on a table next to his position.
The plan was to raise the sub gently through the water, inch by inch, until finally, the top of the submarine's sail surfaced into the mammoth watertight compartment that had been cut into the ship's hull.
One problem was movement by the freighter. The Volga River had disengaged her propellers, but she was not entirely still in the water. All ships, even the mightiest aircraft carriers and the largest oil tankers, were prone to drift in the sea.
The process of docking a 6100-ton submarine with a 40, 000-ton surface ship left no room for error.
If the ascent through the water was off even just a few feet, the submarine's sail could collide with the keel of the freighter. If the ascent was too rapid, a collision could threaten the watertight integrity of his sub. But the danger that Pete feared the most were the huge titanium O-rings that were mounted by Naval engineers under the bow and stern of Volga River.
In theory, if Honolulu could surface into the open space in the bottom of the freighter, the O-rings would then slowly collapse inwardly along a mechanized track until they gently caressed the bow and stern sections of the submarine. Once in place, they would serve as a giant cradle in which the sub would rest on its transit under the freighter through the Bosphorus.
Should the sub miss and strike one of those O rings at too fast of a rate… Well, no skipper wanted a giant underwater hatchet taking a hack at his boat. Such a disaster might just send Honolulu to the bottom.
This was all compounded by the problem of murky visibility. Submarines do not have windows so that captains can look out and simply drive the ship to some point under the water. And even if they did have windows, the darkness in the depths of the sea would leave a submarine skipper like Pete Miranda staring into a black abyss.
Like an airplane flying through thick cloud cover in the middle of the night, submarines operating under the sea rely totally on instruments for navigation. For her eyes, Honolulu used active and passive sonar to determine what objects might be in the water around her. GPS was used to determine the sub's exact latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates on the earth. Active sonar shot a very loud ping through the sea that could be heard for miles away and could be heard by warships operating in the area.
Detection could not be risked.
Therefore, Pete had ordered that Honolulu turn off her active sonar. The entire ascent operation was being driven by a GPS homing device positioned inside the Volga River that was feeding data to computers in the Honolulu's control room. The idea was to bring the submarine up just under the bottom of that GPS device.
As a human backup to the GPS, a team of Navy SEALs, decked in black scuba gear and oxygen tanks, swarmed outside the submarine. They swam with powerful underwater lights and underwater transmitters. These transmitters provided contact directly to the bridge of the freighter and the control room of the submarine.
If the ascent was off target, the SEALs could press a transmitter on their watches, which would alert the sub to implement an emergency dive through the water to avoid the collision.
That was the plan anyway.
"Eighty-five feet."
"Slow and easy, " Pete said. "Easy does it."
"Eighty feet."
Something felt wrong. The sub seemed to be ascending too fast.
"Seventy-five feet."
"Easy. Reduce the blow a bit." A lower air-rate blown into the ballast should slow things down.
"Seventy feet."
An alarm buzzer sounded on the control panel. One of the Navy SEALs swimming outside the submarine had pressed his emergency transmission button. The SEALs had spotted trouble in the ascent.
"Sound collision alarm!"
The alarm siren blared throughout the submarine. The siren started with a very low pitch and continued to a high shrill, then repeated itself.
"Collision alarm! Collision alarm! Rig ship for impact!" Alarms rang all over the ship. Like firemen rushing into action at the news of a blazing structure, men's feet trampled all over the steel grated decks, rushing to their stations for a collision.
"Execute emergency deep!" Pete's order rung over the 1MC, over the sound of the claxons, trampling feet, and ringing bells.
"Emergency deep. Aye, Captain."
"Sixty-five feet."
"Wrong way!" Pete snapped. "We're continuing to rise. Emergency deep! Flood ballast tanks! Now!"
"Sixty feet."
"Execute emergency deep! Now!" Pete slammed his fist against the railing in the control room. Like a fast-moving elevator, the boat kept rising. This was taking too long. Time was running out.
"Fifty-five feet."
"Emergency deep!" The chief-of-the-watch's voice rang throughout the ship over the 1MC.
"Ahead full!" Pete ordered. The cavitation bell rang three times, alerting the throttle man in the aft of the engine room to bring the ship to full power.
"Fifty feet!"
"Rig for impact!"
Water flooded the main ballast tanks. In an instant Honolulu's nose dipped dramatically. Clipboards, coffee mugs, and anything else not buckled down slung across the control room. The sub dropped, angled nose-first, like a cart on a roller coaster. Pete grabbed the mast in the center of the control room, hanging on and praying as his boat plunged to a depth of four hundred feet.
Incirlik Air Base Adana, Turkey
Captain A. J. Riddle, United States Air Force, throttled the F-15E Eagle slightly forward, to the number one waiting position at the end of the three-thousand-meter runway.
Riddle had just reported for duty last week from Seymour Johnson AFB in North Carolina. His transfer to the U.S. Air Base at Incirlik, strategically located less than fifty miles from the aqua-blue waters of the Mediterranean and less than one hundred miles from the northeastern border of Syria, provided the best opportunity for aerial combat, he had figured.
Captain Riddle was itching for some action. He had expected to tangle with the Syrians or the Iranians. He had not expected this.
Riddle unrolled his navigational chart for a last glance at his flight plan.
This flight plan would take him on a northeasterly route, directly into Georgian airspace.
Georgia was a tiny border country. Barely one hundred miles of it separated the Turkish and Chechen borders – the distance of a millisecond, or so it seemed to a supersonic jet fighter.
Riddle knew what loomed on the northern side of the Georgian border. Formidable Russian MiG-29 jets, all intent on defending what they considered their territory, filled the Chechen airspace. This would be like lighting a sparkler while pumping your gas.
A sparkle against a fume – and poof.