“The problem, sir, is I don’t know how to find out how or what this thing is monitoring without taking it off. This contraption makes me think it is a receiver. And I don’t know any receiver that also transmits.” Welcher shook his head. “Know what I think, Captain?”
“Tell me, Chief.”
“I think it roams the circuits looking for something that is active. Kind of what you were saying. When it finds someone in a conversation, it quits roaming, starts monitoring, and starts transmitting, until there is a click as they hang up, or a certain number of seconds pass with no conversation or something like that. Then it starts searching the telephone lines again for activity.”
“Well, we won’t take it apart yet, Chief. We’ll try some external exploitation. See if we can find the frequency this thing is transmitting its data on, and from there, we’ll extrapolate how it works.”
“Should be able to limit the lines it is monitoring, if it is more than one.”
“That’s why our deception team is on the way, Chief.”
The muffled sound of an explosion reached their ears.
“Another grenade,” Norton said.
“That’s the third one. Ten minutes until five,” Welcher said, tapping his watch.
“Might not need our team if our ships are preparing to fire on the Soviet intruder.”
“You think we have a Soviet submarine inside Subic Bay, sir.”
Norton motioned the chief over. “Look here,” he said pointing to the underside of the monitoring system they had found.
Welcher leaned down. “CCCP” was embossed in bright white Cyrillic letters on the equipment. “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” Welcher mumbled. “Not very smart spies, are they?”
“Smart enough to get in here and put the system in place. If they had not encountered our security forces, it might have been days, weeks, or even months until we found it. No telling how much damage could have been done from them puzzling out the operational intelligence they would have gleaned from what they heard.”
“They’re in for a surprise when our folks arrive,” Welcher chuckled. The chief leaned closer, ran his finger along the rough bottom of the foreign equipment.
Norton smiled. “That they are, Chief, that they are.”
Welcher laughed. “Well, I’ll be damned, sir. There’s something here.” He leaned down to look at the bottom of the foreign system. Welcher ran his fingers over it again. “Someone has scratched something into the bottom.”
“What is it?”
Welcher pulled his flashlight and squatted. Looking up at the scratching, he started spelling the Cyrillic letters out.
“I studied Chinese and Vietnamese, Chief. I don’t know Russian.”
Welcher flicked off the flashlight and stood. He chuckled. “Can’t say this is the Russian equivalent to ‘Kilroy was here,’ but someone has scratched ‘Greetings from Dolinski.’ ”
“Is that a city or someone’s name or what?”
Welcher shrugged. “It just says, ‘Greetings from Dolinski’ and beneath it is yesterday’s date: ‘June 4, 1967.’ And it’s scratched into the metallic casing, sir.” Welcher laughed. “The son of a bitch wanted us to know who did this.”
Norton grunted. “Or where the system came from. Strange. I couldn’t see one of our spooks doing that.”
They both laughed.
“Who threw the third grenade?” MacDonald demanded, rushing to the port-side bridge wing. He lifted the megaphone, pulled the talk trigger, and barely let the electronic squeal fade before he was shouting, “What the hell are you doing, Weps? I didn’t order the grenade.”
Lieutenant Kelly and Chief Benson raised their arms and shook their heads. Kelly cupped his mouth and shouted something, but the wind swept the words away from MacDonald.
MacDonald touched his ears and shook his head. Kelly ran in the direction of the bridge wing. He cupped his lips again and shouted, “Sir, we haven’t thrown the third one.”
MacDonald’s eyebrows arched. Then who did? He had turned to go back into the bridge when Goldstein filled the hatch. “Sir, Coghlan called. They accidentally dropped a grenade over the side.”
MacDonald rushed to the Navy Red and grabbed the handset. Before he could call the Coghlan, the bagpipe sound of the crypto gear synchronizing filled his ears.
“Dale, this is Coghlan. Is your Charlie Oscar there?”
“Ron, this is Danny,” MacDonald answered. “What is going on?”
“We had a little mishap over here, Captain. I had my men standing by to drop grenades in the event you needed us to help in the warning phase. Unfortunately, one of the pins fell out—”
“Fell out? How in the hell does a pin fall out?”
“Well, this one did, Captain, so we had no choice. The chief tossed it overboard.”
MacDonald was furious. He wanted to scream obscenities at the redheaded captain of the Coghlan, but what would it accomplish? The damage had already been done and the Dale was approaching the datum where the contact was last reflected.
“Captain,” Orlov said from his position near the helm. “Sonar reports Contact One off our aft starboard quarter is continuing to close.”
Bocharkov grunted with a nod. Everyone in the control room knew the third grenade would be the last warning the Americans would give. The contact closing on them would be the one to attack. The torpedoes would splash into the water above the K-122 and begin a circling search until their homing devices detected the submarine. Then they would straighten and head directly toward the K-122, small sonar pulses locking on the submarine as the torpedoes drove toward the Echo’s propeller area. If they disabled the Echo propellers, the best case would be that the K-122 would survive the attack. If the ballasts still operated Bucharkov could surface and surrender, but if the ballasts were damaged also, then the K-122 would settle to the bottom.
He thought the water was still too shallow to implode them, so in time the Americans would rescue them, hold them up for the world to see, and then return them to Mother Russia, where all of them would disappear for allowing themselves to be caught. And the Americans would have an entire K-122 submarine to exploit.
“Captain?” Ignatova asked.
Bocharkov blinked a couple of times. “XO?”
“Sir, I asked if you want to open the forward torpedo doors.”
Bocharkov took a deep breath. Most likely whatever they’d hit still protected them from being detected. If the Americans knew where they were, they would not have dropped the grenade so far away. Most likely he could open the forward tubes without them hearing the telltale sound.
“Open all outer doors, fore and aft tubes,” he commanded.
If they were going detect him opening one or two torpedo tube doors, they might as well hear him opening all of them. After all, they were the ones who dropped the third grenade. All he wanted to do was leave the area.
“Opening outer doors fore and aft, aye!” Ignatova acknowledged. “Outer doors aft open with exception of five and six. Opening forward torpedo doors.”
Bocharkov listened as the commands were passed to the two torpedo rooms and acknowledgments returned from them as the doors were opened. He now had twelve torpedoes at his command. Even if he failed to sink either American ship, he could give the crews of both of them moments of sheer, exhilarating panic when his torpedoes filled the top feet of Subic Bay.
“Aft tubes five and six replenished with decoys. Outer doors opened aft tubes five and six.”
He had two of the four aft tubes ready to fire. The six tubes in the forward torpedo room were also ready now.
“Sir, Sonar says the third grenade came from Contact Two, not One. Contact One dropped the first two.”