"Why there?" The Skipper asked.
"Guam is the odds-on favorite for our destination," I said. "They have no idea of our speed limitation, so they're thinking we do it like they do — balls to the wall, and then disappear for a while, repeat. If they can get out in front of us they might be able to see us coming and head us off."
"Which means maybe we should stay west of the Kurils and head south into Japanese waters," the Skipper added.
"How about this," I said, "we send a quick message in the clear stating our intentions to do just what you said, but then we cut eastward and make our run while they are looking further to the south."
"I don't know…," the Skipper said.
"A broken message," I added, "like we didn't mean to send it. We cut off the transmission in the middle, but after the main information gets out."
"It could work," Dr. Banks said.
And that did it. The Skipper nodded as he rolled up the chart. "Set it up, Nav."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
To say the next five days were uneventful would be an understatement. We experienced the epitome of the "endless boredom" part of the classic definition of submarining — endless boredom interrupted by moments of sheer panic. Nothing to tell, really. We stayed deep, and moved as fast as we could.
Basically, we aimed for a small active volcanic island about a third of the way down from Kamchatka named Chirinkotan, located about twenty miles west of Ekarma at the southern end of the Ekarma strait separating Ekarma and Shiashkotan. The island itself is a four-square-mile peak of an underwater mountain that extends about 2,200 feet into the sky — a nearly perfect volcanic cone. Chirinkotan, Ekarma, and another even smaller volcanic island — 1.5-mile wide, 1,800-foot- high Raikoke — together formed a perfect triangular shield spanning Krusenstern Strait between Shiashkotan and Raikoke. This formation was essentially cloaking our approach from the (presumed) lurking Soviet fleet to the east of the Kurils.
As we approached the area, I was on watch with section one, and King reported from Sonar that they could clearly hear rumblings emanating from the volcanic activity. We knew that Raikoke had last erupted in 1924, and thought — perhaps — that it was due again. It turned out, however, that as we entered Krusenstern Strait, the sound was more localized to Ekarma itself.
Regardless, it was a perfect acoustic cover. There was virtually no chance that whoever was out there looking for us would be able to hear anything so quiet as we were against this rumbling background noise.
As luck would have it, the weather turned in our favor as well. The storm wasn't as ferocious as the one that nearly got us caught up along Kamchatka, but it still was a doozy. I looked up at the surface wave monitor. It showed ten- to twenty-foot waves marching out of the Sea of Okhotsk behind us, through the Krusenstern Strait, and out into the Northern Pacific. The wave height, where we were in the Strait was higher than behind us, probably due to the lens focusing effect of the relatively narrow shallow strait. Ahead of us the water certainly would settle down a bit, but for the guys on picket duty looking for us, it was no picnic.
I presumed that they were DIW in order not to alert us to their presence. But in this water they were being tossed all over the place. It was only a question of time before they had to get underway to gain some steerageway and a measure of control over their movement in this chaotic water. Sure enough, as I poked the Halibut's nose cautiously around Raikoke, making sure to keep the noisy volcano as a backdrop, King reported that Sonar had acquired a Russian surface contact.
"Make that two Russian surface combatants, Conn, bearing one-six-zero and one-five-three. Designate Kilo-one and two."
I stepped down to check the chart when Sonar called again. "You're not going to believe this, Conn. It's the same two Kashins we tangled with up at the missile range, the Ognevoy and Odarenny. Kilo-one is the Ognevoy."
"Damn!" I said to Chris and Pots and to the Control Room in general. "That was some kick-ass transit."
"Conn, Sonar," King announced, "I have a contact with suppressed cavitation bearing one-two-zero, designate Kilo-three. This is a submerged submarine, Sir, at snorkel depth. I can hear his snorkel valve cycling."
Things were pretty unpleasant right then on that diesel sub, because the water really was way too rough for reasonable snorkel ops. The fact that he was using his snorkel meant he was almost certainly not a nuke. Up here that meant probably another Whiskey or…
"Conn, Sonar, Kilo-three is the same Whiskey we screwed around with up in Shelikhov Bay."
So there it was — a family reunion.
The Skipper joined me in Control and took his place, leaning back in his chair to light one of his cigars.
"How do you want to handle this, Mac?" he asked.
I had known we would have company as we exited Krusenstern Strait, but I really didn't anticipate meeting Ognevoy and Odarenny. I figured we might run into the Whiskey again. That skipper had a bone to pick with us; but the other two? I'm not one to believe in coincidence, but short of someone onboard having informed them where we would cross the Kurils, how else could you explain their presence?
I discussed this with the Skipper, who doesn't believe in coincidence either.
"Look at it this way, Mac," he said. "You figured how to get us here by putting yourself into their Skipper's head. We already know this guy's no dummy. It's a virtual certainty that he has a pretty good idea how his boat got so messed up. He may have trouble believing it, but when he has worked through all the other possibilities, and discarded the ones that are not realistic, what do you think he has left?" The Skipper smiled at me. "What do you think, Mac?"
"When you put it that way, Skipper," I said, "I guess the answer is — if not obvious — then at least in front of your nose. Had to be divers down there. No way they were friendlies. Their only possible purpose would be the missile splashdown, 'cause the cable tap is not even in the radar room, let alone on the screen."
The Skipper nodded.
"So he knows the Yanks are here with lockout capability."
The Skipper continued to nod.
"And we made an ass out of him."
The Skipper's face broke out in a grin as he exhaled pungent smoke.
"So he puts himself in our place without knowing any of the details, but with a general scope of the problem in his mind. He's got to figure we're carrying whatever we took externally on the hull… that means we're speed limited. He can't ignore our intercepted message about heading toward Japan either, but he's one wily sonofabitch." I was starting to enjoy myself. "He gets on a visual conference with his two Kashin buddies and they get themselves placed right where he would cross the Kurils if he were you." I spread my hands and grinned at the Skipper. "So we get here, only to find them waiting. Does that mean he outsmarted us, Skipper?"
"Not really, Mac, it just means we didn't outsmart him."
I certainly could see his reasoning. The bottom line, however, was that two modern Kashin-class destroyers and an ancient World War II conventional sub with a world-class skipper were between us and our ticket home. What we had going for us was the storm, and we had at least a day or so of cover left before it passed.
The Ognevoy's towed array wasn't worth squat in this weather, and neither Ognevoy nor Odarenny had hull-mounted sonar that could detect us in this shit. But Ognevoy also had a bird with dipping sonar and sonobuoys. If the bird was able to fly in this weather, they could possibly locate us, but there was no certainty.