Vlasenko stood, turned and left. Novskoyy returned to his message from Colonel Dretzski in Moscow:
1. KREMLIN IS SUSPICIOUS.
2. TODAY I BRIEFED THE KREMLIN AND DEFENSE MINISTRY PERSONNEL, INCLUDING PACIFIC FLEET COMMANDER ADMIRAL MIKHAIL BARISOV.
3. ALL EXCEPT BARISOV SATISFIED FOR THE MOMENT THAT YOU ARE CONDUCTING AN EXERCISE. TIME OF THE ESSENCE. ADVISE YOU COMPLETE OPERATION SOON OR THEY WILL WONDER WHY PIERS STILL EMPTY.
4. BARISOV VERY INTERESTED IN FLEET DEPLOYMENT. ASKED QUESTIONS, WANTED SPECIFICS. MENTIONED POSSIBILITY OF EMULATING OPERATION TO SEE HOW WELL HIS SUBMARINES COULD SCRAMBLE TO SEA. I TOLD HIM IT HAD TAKEN MONTHS OF PREPARATIONS, GREAT COST. THAT MAY HAVE PUT HIM OFF OR MADE HIM MORE SUSPICIOUS OF YOUR MOTIVES. HE SAID NOTHING.
5. BARISOV REMAINS IN MOSCOW. MEANWHILE PACIFIC FLEET HEADQUARTERS IN VLADIVOSTOK BUSY. BARISOV MAY BE PLANNING SOMETHING. MORE REASON TO CONCLUDE OPERATION
6. NEW INTELLIGENCE — U.S. ATLANTIC FLEET ATTACK SUBMARINES SCRAMBLED TO WEST ATLANTIC. OVER 60 VESSELS. SUGGEST RETHINK OPERATION IF THEY ARE ABLE TO TRAIL OUR SUBMARINES. THEY MUST BE PRESUMED TO CARRY JAVELIN CRUISE MISSILES. PROVOCATION COULD BRING DANGEROUS CONSEQUENCES.
7. MORE INTELLIGENCE — A U.S. ATTACK SUBMARINE, PIRANHA CLASS, IS ENROUTE NORTH ATLANTIC, POSSIBLY TO ICECAP.
8. U.N. CREW WITNESSED DESTRUCTION OF 120 “WARSHOT” SSN-X-27 CRUISE MISSILES TODAY. WORLD BELIEVES WE NOW HAVE NONE.
9. FISHHOOK, AS ORDERED, TRYING TO CONVINCE U.S. LEADERSHIP THAT NORTHERN FLEET DEPLOYMENT IS EXERCISE.
10. RAPID REPEAT RAPID CONCLUSION OF THIS OPERATION VITAL. GOOD LUCK.
Novskoyy read the message again, then shredded it in Vlasenko’s shredding machine. He consulted his calendar. With a decent speed-of-advance, his fleet should be off the coast of the U.S. in two days — by the 20th of December. What remained was for Agent Fishhook, General Tyler, to hold off the U.S. submarine force long enough for his ships to get in position.
CHAPTER 14
The periscope video-repeater showed the dark water, the ridge of ice ahead and the low arctic sun shining coldly in the local morning. This far north, in the marginal ice zone, where the sun lingered low on the horizon most of the days, the MIZ was a dangerous area of icebergs and drift-ice, the transition between open water and the cover of the polar icecap. Submarines usually avoided going to periscope depth in the MIZ. The risk of collision was great, and the hull could easily be torn open by an iceberg. But Pacino had insisted on one last look and for twenty minutes had trained the scope around in slow circles. What Pacino saw looked like snow-covered, mountainous terrain on the horizon. Cold, deserted, desolate, dead.
Still, at least it was the surface, complete with the sun and the sea and the ice. And fresh clean air not filtered by charcoal, not scrubbed of carbon dioxide by an amine bed, not fed through carbon-monoxide burners, not electrified by the precipitators. Not the dry coppery artificial air generated by the “Bomb,” the oxygen generator that split water into hydrogen and oxygen, storing the oxygen and discarding the hydrogen, the mixture of gases dangerous enough to breach the hull in a violent explosion should it fail, and giving the machine its nickname.
Christman’s voice, edged with uncertainty, interrupted Pacino’s thoughts.
“Captain, range to the ice raft ahead is nineteen-hundred yards by SHARKTOOTH sonar.”
Lieutenant Commander Christman, Officer of the Deck, stood at the underice sonar, the SHARKTOOTH, a console with a joystick and a vertical video readout. At the top panel was a stripchart used to record the depth of the ice overhead. The display on the center panel looked very much like a radar, was generated by a hydrophone on the forward edge of the sail that transmitted a faint high pitched tone in a pattern like a police siren. If the sound pitch was plotted against time on a graph, the waveforms looked like shark teeth. With the changing transmission frequency, it could transmit and interpret the echo simultaneously, giving continuous ranges and bearings to ice-shapes ahead, which now formed a solid bank less than a mile away.
For a moment Pacino had a sense that this might be the last time he would see the surface and the sky and the sun… not an unheard of thought among submariners… and quickly censored the thought as he snapped the periscope grips up and rotated the hydraulic control ring. As the scope optic-module descended into the well the stainless steel pole felt extremely cold brushing Pacino’s arm.
“Take her deep,” he said without looking at Christman, then moved forward on the periscope stand to the pole of the number-one periscope, the World War II relic used only for surface navigation, and stared at the Conn sonar console on the port side. The TV screen was red to keep the OOD’s eyes night-adjusted. The display was a waterfall cascading downward. The horizontal axis was bearing — north on the left, south in the center and north-northwest on the right. The vertical axis was time — the top now, the older data lower. All the data fell downward on the screen like a “waterfall.” Like the moon “following” a moving car, a distant contact would show up as a vertical trace on the display, its bearing constant, but a close contact would have a slanted slope, showing it moving from one true bearing to another. At the moment the displays were only filled with static. Then a definite sloping trace appeared on the short-duration display. High-bearing rate, a close contact. Pacino reached for the microphone.
“Sonar, Captain, report the contact at zero four zero.”
“CONN, SONAR, AYE, CONTACT NOW BEARING ZERO SIX TWO IS BIOLOGICS.”
Pacino frowned. A whale or a school of fish.
“Sonar, Captain, select the narrowband beam on the trace’s bearing and integrate on narrowband time-freq.”
“CONN, SONAR, AYE.”
Pacino pressed a selector-pad button below the display. The waterfalls disappeared, replaced by six graphs, each a plot of intensity on the vertical axis versus sound frequency on the horizontal axis. Fed by the towed array, the narrowband processors listened for specific frequencies known to be emitted by most Russian submarine classes, from such as their turbine-generator resonance, a 300-cycle-per-sec- and sound. One of the graphs was centered on the anticipated 300-hertz tonal. If the contact was a Russian there was a high probability it would get a narrow vertical spike centered near 300 hertz. The time-frequency data took about five minutes to come up with a meaningful display. Like the camera taking an evening-time exposure photograph, the sonar system “integrated” the sound data over a long-time period to make sure tonals weren’t just background noises. For a full five minutes Pacino stared at the 300-hertz graph, not aware of Christman staring at him. The graph was flat. No spike anywhere near 300 hertz. Pacino shook his head, pushed a button on the selector pad and the broadband waterfall display returned.
“Sonar, Captain, return to your search.” The trace had definitely been biologies.
“CONN, SONAR, AYE.”
The short-duration display began to fill with traces. Noise from rafts of ice shifting and grating against each other. Soon it would be audible to the naked ear.
Pacino moved through the gap between the port Conn console and the aft telephone-communications bulkhead, squeezing past the radar console, which was shut down and useless when submerged. On the other side of the radar was the SHARKTOOTH underice sonar. Pacino looked down at the forward scan screen. The ridge of ice was now astern, and ahead were some more ridges, stalactites of ice hanging down from the ice canopy overhead. Just gentle ridges now, but soon they would stab down deeply enough to smash into them if the OOD made a mistake. Dimly Pacino heard Christman giving slight rudder adjustments to avoid the ridges. For the rest of their time under ice the OOD or his assistant, the Junior Officer of the Deck, would stand here at the underice sonar steering the ship. The JOOD would also help with underice navigation or man the fire-control computer, ensuring a weapon was programmed and ready. In case.