“I thought they can't track our missile submarines.”
“Sir, nobody can, but in this case they must have DF — I mean used direction-finders to locate the sub when she radioed for help. Maine is a missile submarine, part of SIOP, and is under DEFCON-TWO Rules of Engagement. Therefore, so is the Orion that's riding shotgun for her. Sir, they want to know what to do.”
“How important is Maine?” Fowler asked.
General Fremont took that. “Sir, that sub is part of the SIOP, a big part, over two hundred warheads, very accurate ones. If the Russians can take her out, they've hurt us badly.”
“How badly?”
“Sir, it makes one hell of a hole in our war plan. Maine carries the D-5 missile, and they are tasked counter-force. They're supposed to attack missile fields and selected command-and-control assets. If something happens to her, it would take literally hours to patch up that hole in the plan.”
“Captain Rosselli, you're Navy, right?”
“Yes, Mr. President — sir, I have to tell you that I was CO of Maine 's Gold Crew until a few months ago.”
“How soon before we have to make a decision?”
“Sir, the Akula is inbound at twenty-five knots, currently about twenty thousand yards from our boat. Technically speaking, they're within torpedo range right now.”
“What are my options?”
“You can order an attack or not order an attack,” Rosselli replied.
“General Fremont?”
“Mr. President — no, Captain Rosselli?”
“Yes, General?”
“How sure are you that the Russians are boring straight in on our boat?”
“The signal is quite positive on that, sir.”
“Mr. President, I think we have to protect our assets. The Russians won't be real pleased with an attack on one of their boats, but it's an attack boat, not a strategic asset. If they challenge us on this, we can explain it. What I want to know is why they ordered the boat in this way. They must know that it would alarm us.”
“Captain Rosselli, you have my authorization for the aircraft to engage and destroy the submarine.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Rosselli lifted the other phone. “GRAY BEAR, this is MARBLEHEAD ”—the current codename for the NMCC—“National Command Authority approves I repeat approves your request. Acknowledge.”
“ MARBLEHEAD, this is GRAY BEAR, we copy request to engage is approved.”
“That's affirmative.”
“Roger. Out.”
The Orion turned in. Even the pilots were feeling the effects of the weather now. Technically, it was still light, but the low ceiling and heavy seas made it seem that they were flying down an immense and bumpy corridor. That was the bad news. The good news was that their contact was acting dumb, running very fast, below the layer, and almost impossible to miss. The Tacco in back coached him in along the Akula's course. Sticking out the tail of the converted Lockheed Electra airliner was a sensitive device called a magnetic anomaly detector. It reported on variations in the earth's magnetic field, such as those caused by the metallic mass of a submarine.
“Madman madman madman, smoke away!” the system operator called. He pushed a button to release a smoke float. In front, the pilot immediately turned left to set up another run. This he did, then a third, turning left each time.
“Okay, how's this look back there?” the pilot asked.
“Solid contact, nuclear-powered sub, positive Russian. I say let's do it this time.”
“Fair enough,” the pilot observed.
“Jesus!” the co-pilot muttered.
“Open the doors.”
“Coming open now. Safeties off, release is armed, weapon is hot.”
“Okay, I have it set,” the Tacco said. “Clear to drop.”
It was too easy. The pilot lined up on the smoke floats, which were almost perfectly in a row. He passed over the first, then the second, then the third…
“Dropping now-now-now! Torp away!” The pilot added power and climbed a few hundred feet.
The Mark 50 ASW torpedo dropped clear, retarded by a small parachute that automatically released when the fish hit the water. The new and very sophisticated weapon was powered by an almost noiseless propulsor instead of a propeller, and had been programmed to stay covert until it reached the target depth of five hundred feet.
It was just about time to slow down, Dubinin thought, another few thousand meters. His gamble, he felt, had been a good one. It seemed a wholly reasonable supposition that the American missile submarine would stay near the surface. If he'd guessed right, then by racing in just below the layer — he was running on one hundred ten meters — then surface noise would keep the Americans from hearing him, and he could conduct the remainder of the search more covertly. He was about to congratulate himself for a good tactical decision.
“Torpedo sonar on the starboard bow!” Lieutenant Rykov screamed from sonar.
“Rudder left! Ahead flank! Where is the torpedo?”
Rykov: “Depression angle fifteen! Below us!”
“Emergency surface! Full rise on the planes! New course three-zero-zero!” Dubinin dashed into sonar.
“What the hell?”
Rykov was pale. “I can't hear screws… just that damned sonar… looking away — no, it's in acquisition now!”
Dubinin turned: “Countermeasures — three — now!”
“Cans away!”
Admiral Lunin 's countermeasures operators rapidly fired off three fifteen — centimeter cans of gas-generating material. These filled the water with bubbles, making a target for the torpedo, but one that didn't move. The Mark 50 had already sensed the submarine's presence and was turning in.
“Coming through one hundred meters,” the Starpom called. “Speed twenty-eight knots.”
“Level off at fifteen, but don't be afraid of broaching.”
“Understood! Twenty-nine knots.”
“Lost it, the curve in the towed array just ruined our reception.” Rykov's hands went up in frustration.
“Then we must be patient,” Dubinin said. It wasn't much of a joke, but the sonar crew loved him for it.
“The Orion just engaged the inbound, sir, just picked up an ultrasonic sonar, very faint, bearing two-four-zero. It's one of ours, it's a Mark 50, sir.”
“That ought to take care of him,” Ricks observed. “Thank God.”
“Passing through fifty meters, leveling out, ten degrees on the planes. Speed thirty-one.”
“Countermeasures didn't work…” Rykov said. The towed array was straightening out, and the torpedo was still back there.
“No propeller noises?”
“None… I should be able to hear them even at this speed.”
“Must be one of their new ones…”
“The Mark 50? It's supposed to be a very clever little fish.”
“We will see about that. Yevgeniy, remember the surface action?” Dubinin smiled.
The Starpom did a superb job of maintaining control, but the thirty-foot seas guaranteed that the submarine would broach — break the surface — as the waves and troughs swept overhead. The torpedo was a scant three hundred meters behind when the Akula leveled out. The American Mark 50 anti-submarine torpedo was not a smart weapon, but a “brilliant” one. It had identified and ignored the countermeasures Dubinin had ordered only minutes before, and, using a powerful ultrasonic sonar, was now looking for the sub in order to conclude its mission. But here physical laws intervened in favor of the Russians. It is widely believed that sonar reflects off the metal hull of a ship, but this is not true. Rather, sonar reflects off the air inside a submarine, or more precisely off the border of water and air through which the sound energy cannot pass. The Mark 50 was programmed to identify these air-water boundaries as ships. As the torpedo rocketed after its prey, it began to see immense ship-shapes stretching as far as its sonar could reach. Those were waves. Though the weapon had been programmed to ignore a flat surface and thus avoid a problem called “surface capture,” its designers had not addressed the problem of a heavy, rolling sea. The Mark 50 selected the nearest such shape, raced towards it—