“What in the hell was—?” Bocharkov had started to ask, when a steady clanging started vibrating through the ship.
“Clappers,” Uvarova said. “Damn them.”
All eyes in the control room turned toward him. He had heard of these. Clappers. Hundreds of little magnetic noise-makers dropped by the Americans over a large area of the ocean, searching for something metal upon which to latch.
“Bring the boat to all stop.” As the speed dropped off, the clacking sound created by water moving through the cheap mechanical devices diminished.
“What do we do?”
“Officer of the Deck, ask Sonar what is the layer depth,” Bocharkov ordered.
A few seconds later, Orlov said, “Sonar reports layer depth at seventy-five meters, sir.”
“Then let’s hope the Americans cannot hear them,” Ignatova said.
“I don’t think they did, XO.”
“Sir?”
The clappers continued to vibrate, with the intensity lessening as the boat slowed toward all stop.
“They have no ASW forces within a hundred miles of us. This was pure dumb luck. What they did was fire in the blind with their devices, putting noise in the water, hoping that we would continue away, and when their P-3 ASW Orion aircraft showed up, it would drop a few sonobuoys, detect the clapping, and ergo simulate a sinking.”
Everyone looked at Bocharkov.
“We will use established Soviet Navy doctrine,” he said.
Ignatova and Orlov looked questioningly at him.
“We stay put until nightfall, then we surface, rush out on deck, pull the little zasranecs off,” he announced, using the colloquial expression for “asshole,” “and then we continue our closure of the American battle group.”
Laughter filled the compartment
“Toss them overboard,” Orlov added to the humor.
Ignatova shook his head. “No, we bring them aboard for our scientists to assess.” He looked at the captain.
“Probably a good idea. I suspect they already have a pot of them, but I would like to see what they look like also.”
He turned at the sound of someone opening the aft watertight hatch to the control room. Lieutenant Motka Gromeko stepped into the compartment, wearing his dark Spetsnaz utilities. For the last six months, submarines heading to the waters of Vietnam had begun carrying a team of Soviet Naval Special Forces. Bocharkov nodded at the lieutenant, who stepped away from the hatch and pressed himself against the nearby bulkhead, away from the ongoing activity.
Five minutes later, after Bocharkov finished giving further instructions on what to do if American forces were detected in the area, he departed through the aft hatch, toward the radio shack. Gromeko followed him, causing Ignatova to scratch his head, wondering what was going on. An XO should always know before the skipper what was happening with the boat.
Bocharkov wondered what type of super-secret message Pacific Fleet would have sent for his eyes only. His mission was to track the Kitty Hawk until the carrier reached the Vietnamese waters, then they could return to Kamchatka.
Minutes later, Bocharkov discovered how wrong he was.
TWO
“Captain on the bridge!” the boatswain mate of the watch shouted as MacDonald walked through the port inside hatch that led from the combat information center.
At the navigator table directly ahead of him, the signal-man on duty made a notation in the ship’s log.
“What you got?” MacDonald asked, looking at the officer of the deck, Lieutenant Sam Goldstein, who was looking over the shoulder of the quartermaster, making sure the petty officer was making the proper notation. Goldstein was the Dale’s administrative officer and navigator.
Goldstein smiled. “Sir, Admiral Green wants you to contact him. He intends to detach us from the battle group to lead an antisubmarine surface action group.”
MacDonald nodded, crossed the bridge, and crawled up in his chair on the starboard side. “I know,” he replied. The combat information center watch officer told me on the way to the bridge.” From the darkness lit by blue light in Combat to the bright sunlight of the bridge. Enough to ruin your eyes. He crossed his legs. Give him the bridge any day to fight his ship, rather than this high-brow concept of where the captain hides in the darkness to launch his weapons.
“Lieutenant Burnham has the watch,” MacDonald said, his voice slow and methodical.
“Aye, sir. Does the captain want to go to general quarters?”
MacDonald shook his head. “No, the captain does not want to go to general quarters. If we have a submarine out there two hundred miles from us, it will be tomorrow morning before we reach the vicinity of last sighting. What would our condition be if we kept the men at GQ for…” He looked at Goldstein. “Quick! Tell me how long we would have to keep the ship at GQ before we reached the area.” He put both hands on his hips. “Well, anytime this afternoon would be fine, Mr. Goldstein.”
“Twelve hours, sir.”
“Twelve hours is wrong,” MacDonald said calmly. “But it would bring us to within the horizon of where the suspected submarine was last seen.”
“I was told the reconnaissance aircraft out of Guam saw it.”
“Airdales see what they want to see. They have been known to be wrong, but don’t ever try to get one to admit it; it is like pulling teeth. Did I ever tell you about my niece who had a blind date with one?”
“No, sir.”
“Unfortunately, I lined it up. She came back from the date just shaking her head. Brenda met her at the door, wanting to know how it went. My niece said the first half of the date all the airdale did was talk about himself. Then, about halfway through dinner he said, ‘Well, enough about me, let’s talk about flying.’ ”
Goldstein chuckled. “Aye, sir.”
“Did we get any intelligence from the VQ-1 Willy Victor that overflew the submarine?”
“Not much, sir. They sent an operational report, but the OpRep only gave the coordinates of the submarine with the direction in which it dived.”
“We can expect the submarine came to a different course as soon as it was out of sight.”
“They dropped some clappers.”
“Useless piece of shit those clappers. I don’t think any submarine has ever been tracked or detected because of those cheap things. We drop them and somewhere on the bottom of the ocean are growing beds of clappers, clapping away as the current swifts through them. Keep this up, by the time you and I have grandchildren, we’ll have an ocean that’s transmitting a continuous cacophony of clapper symphony.
“As for GQ, Mr. Goldstein, you keep offering advice when I ask it. If you don’t and I make a wrong decision and you knew the correct answer, then you will have let me and the ship down. Meanwhile, let’s keep the crew doing the day’s work.” He leaned forward, out of the shadow offered by the forward top bridge structure, letting the sun hit his face. “Might even be able to have the movie topside tonight if this weather holds,” he said, leaning back into the shadow.
“Some new ones came aboard during the under-way replenishment yesterday, Skipper.”
MacDonald pointed at the navigation table. “You need to have your watch work us a path out of the battle group. We’re going to be heading southwest toward the datum.”
“Datum” was the naval term commonly used to identify the last known location of a submarine. Whatever happened to the good old terms such as “enemy,” “submarine,” “contact,” or even “sneaky bastard”? No. Somewhere there was an academic think tank laughing, drinking their martinis, and throwing all the dollars they’d made into the air, to let them rain down upon them because they came up with this new way of sinking subs. MacDonald sighed.