CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Twenty-one-hundred-fifty miles of open ocean lay between us and Guam. There was little chance we would have company, but the Skipper wasn't taking any chances.
The day following our close encounter with the Soviets, we crept silently out of the trench, hugging the north wall and then the bottom until the bottom dropped out from under us as it disappeared into the abyssal deep. The Skipper had Sonar on six-hour port-and-starboard watches. Every piece of sonar equipment was continuously manned, our ears stretched to their maximum. Most of the crew was convinced that we had fooled the wily Soviet submariner, but some of us had reservations.
I, for one, was especially suspicious. The Whiskey didn't hang around at all. Instead, he hightailed it north toward Petropavlovsk. The way I figured it, he knew he had a clear speed advantage over us, and he was reasonably sure we were headed for Guam. He could top off his fuel and food, and get out ahead of us before we had covered more than 200 miles.
"Look at it like this," I said to the Skipper, as we set a great circle course for Guam, "he figures us for one-hundred-fifty miles a day at best." I pointed to a spot on the chart where our track intersected the edge of the continental shelf. "He's good for three hundred miles a day at least." I used a pair of dividers to walk 300-mile increments from our encounter datum north to Petropavlovsk, and from there back in our general direction. It was a total of about five days, including a half-day for provisioning. We had traveled about a hundred miles, and were two days out of the confrontation.
"I think the Whiskey is refueling right now. In about twelve hours he gets underway," I drew my finger along a path from Petropavlovsk to intersect our projected track ten days out, "to meet us here, five days or so from Guam — in the middle of goddamn nowhere."
The Skipper thought about my analysis for a bit. "So, what do you recommend, Mac?"
That was the conundrum, of course. If we could reach the Northern Mariana Islands before he got there, we could lose ourselves in the island chain, and there was no way he could find us. I measured our distance to the Northern Mariana Islands.
"We've got seven to eight days till we reach safe haven," I said, "on this course, anyway." I slid my finger over to the chain of islands that extended, basically from the southern part of Japan in a curving arc to Guam. It was bordered on the Pacific side by a deep ocean trench, called by various names, depending on where you were, but best known for the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench — the deepest spot on earth, 35,800 feet or 6.8 miles. "What if we headed a bit more south to here?" pointing at the middle of the chain.
"That's still six to seven days," the Skipper answered, "with no guarantees." He looked at me for a few seconds. "What if he thinks that's what we'll do?" he asked.
I thought about it — it was complicated. The Russkie was in the Skipper's head, anticipating what the Skipper would do. But the Skipper knew he was trying to anticipate him, and he was acting with that knowledge, which meant that the Russian would have to take the Skipper's knowledge into account, but the Skipper knew that as well… it was like diving into a fractal diagram. The deeper you go, the more complex it gets.
"We've used island cover at every opportunity," the Skipper mused. "It's our modus operandus. It's what we always do. It's what he'll expect." He stabbed Guam with his pencil. "So this time we'll make a straight run for it. Nav, set a course directly for Guam — shortest route." He turned and left for his stateroom.
Two days later I had the watch, balls to the wall at 700 feet — all of six point three knots. Our ears were stretched to their theoretical limit, but we had relaxed back to a three-section sonar watch, much to the Sonar Techs' relief. It was definitely back to boring.
If the Skipper was right, the Whiskey would be crossing our path in the next few hours as he headed toward the center of the island arc. He couldn't afford to slow to listen, because he had a lot of ocean to cover. Besides, if he was right, he was in our baffles, coming up on us from astern. We might not even hear him before he nailed us.
There were a lot of ifs… on both sides.
Following the watch, I went back to see how the divers were doing. When we departed the missile splash zone, Ham and I commenced the decompression. It's even more boring than a long, deep transit. It's a slow gradual ascent that takes a relatively focused concentration by the console watch, but nothing spectacular. By now the guys were two-thirds of the way to the surface — at about two-hundred feet.
I relieved Ham for a couple of hours so he could refresh himself and take a nap. The divers were in a sleep cycle — actually, Ski was on watch, but the other guys were sound asleep. I let Ski know I was on duty outside.
"Hi ya, El-Tee, heard you been having some fun driving this old tub around. Tangled with Ivan too, I hear." He paused. "So did I, ya know."
His voice sounded strange through the descrambler.
I stayed close while he read and the others slept. How remarkable, I thought, that we were limping along 700 feet below the ocean's surface while my guys were resting peacefully only two-hundred feet down, a full five-hundred feet shallower than we were. And somewhere out there a Soviet Whiskey was rushing pell-mell toward a date with destiny — or not.
I chuckled as I settled in for another hour of watch.
Nothing happened for the next few hours. The divers got closer to the surface, we moved closer to Guam, and the Whiskey… the Whiskey was the Whiskey.
I had just come on watch again with my regular crew. The guys knew me and probably had set up some interesting drills for the late night hours. We settled in, I was on my second cup of coffee, when Sonar announced, "Conn, Sonar, I have a contact bearing three-four-zero, designate Foxtrot-one."
I acknowledged, and then Sonar informed me that Foxtrot-one was doing fifteen knots — at periscope depth. What were the odds?
"Conn, Sonar, Foxtrot-one is on a course of two-two-zero."
I walked over to check the chart. This took the cake: a submerged, snorkeling submarine doing fifteen knots on a course of two-two-zero — right for the middle of the island chain, right where we would be had the Skipper taken that option. That got me to thinking. What if the Soviet skipper had made his decision, but was not 100 percent convinced it was the right decision? His ability to do simple arithmetic was as good as ours. If he was right, we were somewhere ahead of him; but if he was wrong, then we were just about where we actually were right then. I thought about that a bit, and then I did four things.
First, I ordered all stop, and called Maneuvering to shut down the turbine generators, and shift us to battery power. Then I awakened the Skipper to tell him what I was doing, and sounded General Quarters, let the boing-boing-boing sound for only fifteen seconds, and finally shut the ship down to ultra quiet.
As the Skipper came into Control, Sonar announced that Foxtrot-one had slowed dramatically and shut down his snorkeling operation. We were at 700 feet, coasting silently, listening carefully.
I briefed the Skipper completely, and as I finished, Sonar notified me that the Submarine definitely was our old friend, the Soviet Whiskey — and he had shut down completely.
"It's his version of the Crazy Ivan," I told the Skipper. He looked at me sharply.
"You may have something there, Mac," he said, and walked into Sonar. I followed, but stayed at the door, so I could keep an eye on Control.