At eight knots, it would take them just over six hours.
Lieutenant Gennadi Lemzenko, Krasnoyarskiy's Navigation Officer, placed the parallel rule on the chart and extended a green, grease pencil line across the paper. "At ten knots," he said, "five hours. If they slowed to eight knots to be certain of silence, more like six and a quarter."
Captain First Rank Anatoli Vetrov studied the tangle of straight lines, dots, and curves littering the chart of the Sakhalinskiy Zaliv. The American submarine had been fired upon there … probably by one of the Spetsnaz crawler subs the Fleet had deployed throughout the southern reaches of the Zaliv. The Krasnoyarskiy Komsomolets, now hovering virtually motionless 130 kilometers north of the action to allow his sonar the chance to listen carefully, had picked up the unmistakable sound fingerprint of the big Los Angeles when its captain had boosted its speed to over thirty-five knots and hurled it into a series of tight turns, attempting to outmaneuver the torpedo. For several minutes, the Krasnoyarskiy had listened to the deep Convergence Zone channel as the American vessel had sped north at high and noisy speed.
And then… the Los Angeles sub had simply dropped off the Krasnoyarskiy's sonar screens, becoming, once again, invisible.
"That is his new course," Vetrov said with confidence. "Zero-one-five … or close to it." He brought a pair of calipers down on the grease line on the chart, just north of Mys Yelizavety. "We will catch him here."
Salekhov, his Exec, looked dubious. "That may be a bit too simple, Comrade Captain. The American could have kept moving north. We may have lost him as he left the convergence zone."
"No. His mission here is over, and the sooner he gets out of the Sea of Okhotsk, from his perspective, the better. Once he clears Sakhalin, he will have a straight run southeast to one of the northern Kuril channels." He used the calipers to walk out a course from Cape Yelizavety to the Chetvertyy Passage south of Paramusir. "That's nine hundred kilometers … or a bit more. That's four days at a quiet ten knots. Thirty hours at speed." He walked the dividers again, this time tracking south down the east coast of Sakhalin. "It is two hundred fifty to three hundred kilometers farther if he makes for La Perouse Strait or one of the southern Kuril passages. That's an extra five hours if he's running at full speed, fifteen hours at ten knots. In any case, it hardly matters." The calipers came down once again off Cape Yelizavety. "Here is where we will take the bastard! Before he must choose whether to go southeast, or south."
"I actually was concerned about him maintaining a northerly course," Salekhov said. "By running silent, he could follow the curve of the coastline up as far as Magadan, before cutting across the center of Okhotsk and making for the Kuril channels. It would be the smart move, avoiding any obvious way points where he might expect an ambush… such as the northern tip of Sakhalin, for example."
"Nyet. He must know that the entire Soviet Fleet in this region will be hunting for him, and he knows or has guessed that we have seabed sonar arrays everywhere. He runs too great a risk to remain in Okhotsk for even one extra day when he doesn't need to."
"You are right, of course, Comrade Captain."
"Good."
"There is also the possibility that our Fleet will find them first. The possibility of their passing close by Mys Yelizavety must have occurred to Admiral Andryanov and his staff as well."
"Bah. Fools! You notice how they botched the transit time for the American vessel from San Francisco to Okhotsk? I swear, I think they forgot about the Date Line! And this American captain is good. To have evaded our torpedo at close range, he must be good, and with a good crew.
"But we are better."
"Da, Comrade Captain."
"There will be elements of our fleet in the area, no doubt, but the American will be using them for cover. We will need to move in close and listen carefully to ferret him out. We may be able to pick him up when he makes a dash from cover."
"Yes, sir."
"Now. We are … one hundred thirty-five kilometers from Cape Yelizavety. To reach this point in five hours, we must increase speed to twenty-seven kilometers per hour. A snail's pace, Felix! They will never hear us coming!"
"No, sir."
"Helm! Come to one-seven-zero degrees! Maneuvering! Make turns for twenty-seven kph! We are going to catch ourselves a very big fish indeed!"
Silently, the Russian attack submarine accelerated, heading south now at a fifteen-knot crawl.
"Which way out of this bottle, Captain?" Latham asked. They were leaning over the chart table, where the blue line marking Pittsburgh's course ended just north of Sakhalin.
"Southeast is shortest," Gordon said. "At this speed, we could be through the Kurils in another ninety-six hours."
"Crawling all the way," his Exec pointed out.
"True. But I'd rather that than run the risk of triggering one of their seabed sensor arrays. Or getting tagged by one of their subs." His finger trailed south along the pearl-strand string of the Kuril Islands on the chart. "Here. We'll head for Proliv Bussol', south of Simushir. The channel is wide and deep. And it's not quite so obvious a way out as up here by Paramusir."
Latham nodded. "Last time out this way, we slipped out through the Proliv Yekateriny, down here between Iturup and Kunashir."
"Well, no need to repeat ourselves for the benefit of our friends."
"No, sir."
"Mr. Carver! Depth below keel, if you please."
"Depth below keel now eighty feet, sir." They were at a depth of 160 feet, and the bottom was dropping way rapidly. Soon they would be into the central deep of the Sea of Okhotsk, where depths plunged to ten thousand feet or more. Gordon could almost sense the yawning Deep ahead.
"Sonar, Conn. What are you tracking?"
"Currently three contacts, Captain. Sierra Three-three, Four-one, and Four-five. Range … about ten miles, bearing three-zero-zero."
Northwest, then, and well behind them. "Nothing ahead?"
"Not that we've been able to pick up, sir."
If I were the Russian admiral in charge of this operation, he thought, where would I put my assets? Part of the problem, of course, was that he wasn't sure exactly what the Soviet's local assets were. Simplest to assume they had virtually unlimited ships. Where would they concentrate them, though?
Along the Kurils, of course, with special emphasis on the passages between the islands leading into the Northern Pacific. And La Perouse Strait, between Japan and the southern tip of Sakhalin. That might not be as heavily protected, of course, because in that direction lay the major Russian Pacific port at Vladivostok, and yet another cramped, shallow, and narrow-straited sea, the Sea of Japan.
He was tempted to try that route simply because it would be unexpected… but the disadvantages outweighed the advantages. The western shoreline of the Sea of Japan was bordered by such unpleasant neighbors as the Soviet Union, all the way down to Vladivostok, and the People's Democratic Republic of Korea — no friends to the United States. There was the option of slipping into Japanese territorial waters if he needed to, or paying a quick visit to South Korea, but the northern reaches of that sea would be swarming with ASW craft out of Vladivostok and Nakhodka. If they were mad enough, they might try to mark Pittsburgh down, even when she was clearly in international waters.