Now, over a day later, in the Control Center, the captain, Sr. Lt. Mostovets, and two deck officers stayed near the plotting table, watching the indicators and listening to the reports.
The plot had the search grid ordered by Commander in Chief of the Navy Grigori Orlov imposed upon it. A series of parallel lines, each running north and south, were 1,000 meters apart. The western edge of the grid, the first line, was located one kilometer west of the point of impact of the rocket. Each of the first lines was two kilometers long, but they became longer as the grid moved to the east, allowing for a longer glide path of the rocket, if it had indeed veered north or south and continued to glide.
“Control Center, Sonar.”
“Proceed, Sonar,” Gurevenich said as he depressed the intercom key.
“The Tashkent is making its turn, Captain.”
“Thank you.”
Mostovets leaned over the charting table and drew an X at the end of Tashkentʼs line, to the south of them, and 1,000 meters to the east. The two submarines were alternating on the lines of the search, with Winter Storm moving in the opposite direction. She was nearing the end of the current search line, still headed directly north.
“Let us come to a heading of zero-nine-zero,” Gurevenich ordered.
The order was passed to the helmsman by the navigation officer, Lieutenant Smertevo, who currently was in command of the submarine. Gurevenich had not relieved him, nor would he alter the standard rotation of watches, since he thought that this search would require many hours.
The submarine began a slow turn to the right. All maneuvers were made with deliberate slowness because of the thousand meters of cable trailing behind and below them. At the end of the slanted line, the deep-tow sonar was at 1,600 meters of depth. It was designated multiarray, but was primarily a side-looking sonar, with some capability for down-looking. Because of its downward limitations, the 1,000 meter limit had been set for the search lines. That provided a downward facing cone for the sonar which overlapped at the sides as the two submarines passed each other, but which reached down almost 3,000 meters.
Not far enough down. They were charting a few seamounts and occasional slopes, but the very bottom was as elusive as poltergeists.
In over twenty-four hours, they had yet to see bottom with the sonar. To the southwest, the sea floor rose to a small seamount, which had registered on the sonar scan, but which was outside of the search area.
They had yet to see anything man-made at those depths either, except for the Tashkent.
They heard things. They heard the creaking of the Winter Storm’s hull plates as they tried to deal with the tremendous pressures of the ocean at that depth. One seawater pipe had burst, but it had been quickly shut down, isolated, and the damage contained. A party from engineering was working on a replacement.
Gurevenich waited until they were headed south again, from a position to the northeast of the rocket’s impact point, then called the galley on the intercom and ordered sandwiches and iced tea.
The minutes dragged by.
He munched a salmon sandwich and waited.
They turned again on the south end, sailed 2,000 meters, then again turned to the north.
The sonar room was quiet.
Mostovets said, “Captain, if we could but dive another five hundred meters, we might pick up the bottom.”
“Would you like to make that decision, Ivan Yosipovich?” Gurevenich was afraid that he sounded a little testy.
Mostovets thought about it, then shook his head. “No, Captain, I would not.ˮ
Quiet.
Tension.
“Control Center, Sonar”
Mostovets responded, “Proceed.”
“We have an American submarine.”
“You’re certain?” Mostovets asked.
“Yes, Senior Lieutenant. By propeller signature, it is the Houston. Twelve thousand meters, bearing one-six-nine, depth two hundred meters and diving, speed two-two knots.”
Mostovets looked at him, and Gurevenich said, “Lock it into the firing computer, but take no further action. We want to track it, but that is all.”
Mostovets passed the information to the fire-control officer. Creaks. The titanium hull protested mutely from time to time.
More quiet.
Mostovets crossed the deck to stand beside Gurevenich at the plotting table. “I think we should wait for the submersible to arrive.”
Gurevenich smiled at him. “We serve our purpose, Ivan. We will prove that the rocket is not located between the surface and forty-five hundred meters.”
His senior officer grinned back at him. “You are laughing at the land-based commanders, Captain.”
“Not aloud, Ivan Yosipovich.”
“Our orders from the Olʼyantsev were to strain our limits.”
“So they were,” Gurevenich agreed. “My interpretation is that we are to go to the design depth. That is what we are doing.”
More watch and wait.
At close to midnight, Sonarman Paramanov reported, “Tashkent on approach course. Oh, Captain! It is at seven-three-two meters depth!”
“Foolish,” Gurevenich said to Mostovets.
“The captain may want to be a Hero of the Commonwealth, which is certain to be awarded to the one who locates the debris,” Mostovets said.
“It could be awarded posthumously,” the captain told him.
He closed his eyes and pictured the two submarines coming together, the Tashkent thirty-two meters lower and a thousand meters to the east. A submarine captain had to have the mind for imagining ship positions and anticipating their movements.
They slipped by each other without acknowledgment.
One minute later, Paramanov yelled, “Implosion!”
The Winter Storm rocked violently when the concussion waves struck it.
September 4
Chapter Ten
“Goddamn!” one of the technicians yelled.
Unruh jerked his head up. He was refilling his mug at the coffeepot for the second time since coming back to the Situation Room at five o’clock. He had slept on a folding cot with no pillow in an office down the hall. He felt over beveraged and under nourished.
Most of the agencies and the pertinent congressional committees had a representative in attendance, ready to alert their bosses if something terrible happened, or when something terrible happened.
“What’s up?” Unruh asked.
An Air Force captain had gone over to lean across the technician’s shoulder. “Two of the sonobuoys picked up an explosion, sir. They’re interpreting now.”
Navy Lockheed P-3s had deployed sonobuoys over a fifty-square-mile area and had been orbiting, tracking the sounds picked up by the sensors. There had been complaints. A couple of the civilian boats had recovered two of the buoys and run off with them. The number of screws operating in the region had interfered with data collection for a while, until the computers identified and straightened out all of the noise.
Primarily, the P-3s had been tracking two CIS submarines on a search pattern. The subs were identified as the Winter Storm and the Tashkent.
Unruh looked up at the display board. The Houston had identified herself to the plotters, and probably the sonobuoys, and was now shown in the area of operations.
The Air Force officer held a headset to one ear and listened. His face paled suddenly.
“What?” Unruh asked.