As Dawson watched, the graph slowly grew a narrow hill in the center. The minutes clicked by, and the graph’s peak, the hill, became a mountain, then a pillar, then a thin sharp spike. 314.0 hertz. Exactly. Too clear and sustained to be a natural phenomenon. Dawson flipped through the other displays. One harmonic of 154 hertz was also spiking. With a 314 and a 154, it had to be an AKULA class. Dawson selected the LOFAR display, the low frequency analyzer that examined a contact’s screw pattern. The lines of frequency were showing the repetitious vibrations of an eight-bladed screw. It all added up to a Russian AKULA-class attack sub where it had no business being — 150 miles east of Norfolk, Virginia. Dawson keyed his microphone.
“Conn, Sonar, narrowband contact Sierra One, bearing either three five zero or one seven zero, is a submerged contact, Russian nuclear type four, probable AKULA class, making three zero turns on one eight bladed screw. Recommend coming to course… zero three zero to resolve the bearing ambiguity.”
“SONAR, CONN, AYE, WAIT.”
Dawson switched the display to the broadband waterfall, the display of all frequencies in the ocean around them. He concentrated on the two possible bearings to the narrowband contact. There was the beginning of a trace at 350. He put his palm on the cursor ball set into the horizontal section of the console and rolled it, moving the computer cursor to the trace, thereby tuning his audio set to that direction and that direction only. He shut his eyes, listened. What he heard was static, white noise, like rain, or water flowing in a creek. Broadband noise. He cut in a filter, removing the lower frequencies. He selected higher and higher frequencies and waited. Finally he heard it. poosh… poosh… poosh… He dialed in a higher frequency and listened. roosh… roosh… roosh… Still higher. floosh… floosh… floosh… He turned up the volume. The new Russian reactor coolant pumps on the AKULA class made that sound. FLOOSH … FLOOSH … FLOOSH … He keyed his mike.
“Conn, Sonar, trace on broadband bearing three four seven is definite AKULA class, bearing rate left and picking up. Contact is closing, approaching CPA. Recommend course one eight zero to get a second leg.”
“Sonar, Conn, aye,” Culverson replied in his headset. “Designate the new contact Target One. I’m coming around now to one eight zero to the left.”
“Conn, Sonar,” Dawson said to his microphone, “recommend coming around to the right. You’ll be pointing at the contact. Otherwise you could hit him—”
“No, we’re coming around to the left. Better to hit him than loose him in the baffles. Skipper’s orders.”
Dawson shook his head; this was how underwater collisions happened.
The word to man tracking stations spread throughout the ship by the watchstanders. The tracking teammembers hurried to their stations. In the control room Culverson was programming the fire-control solution to Target One into the weapons in tubes three and four when Captain Harrison Toth IV arrived and looked over his shoulder. Culverson looked up at Toth, in his late forties, portly and bald. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but after coming up through the ranks as a former sonar chief he knew more about submarines than just about anyone in the fleet. He also never let his officers forget it. But for all Culverson’s gripes about Toth, he felt relieved to see him on the Conn this day.
Captain Dmitri Krakov held onto the handrail of the periscope well as the AKULA-class fleet submarine Vladivostok tossed in the sea off the continental shelf of the United States. Vladivostok had been at her hold-coordinate off the city of Norfolk, Virginia, for some twenty hours, rolling and pitching at periscope depth, waiting for any further mission directive. During the last week the crew had become increasingly edgy, and no wonder. So far Krakov had been unable to tell them exactly what their mission was. He wasn’t sure himself.
Now he tapped the deck officer on the shoulder to ask for the periscope. The junior lieutenant quickly moved away from the scope, and Krakov grasped the horizontal periscope grips somehow reassured by the feel of the antiskid etching on the cylindrical grips. He put his eye on the rubber of the eyepiece, still warm from the deck officer’s face, and looked out at the waves splashing and spraying over the periscope-view. If it was sickening to stand in the control compartment in these tossing seas, it was worse looking out the periscope. A queasy stomach was a hell of a condition for a submariner, but there it was.
Krakov waved the deck officer to take the periscope back. He was as impatient as his crew. More so. Like Vlasenko, he had been aboard the Leningrad in 1973, but unlike Vlasenko he had not felt in conflict over the sinking of the American submarine. He was, after all, a military man, raised and trained to destroy the enemy, and the enemy had been… how soon some forgot… the Americans. The politicians had had their way and now the country was being disarmed, destroying its capacity to defend it self. He had long had such feelings, but under the tutelage of Admiral Novskoyy his feelings had not only been kept alive, they had been hardened. It was thanks to Novskoyy that he had risen through the ranks to gain his own command the previous year. The admiral was the man he most admired, most trusted to do what was best and right for him, and for the future of his troubled country. Indeed, he felt very much toward the admiral as a son might toward a father his own having died when he was just entering his teen-age years. It was because of his admiration for Novskoyy that he had chosen the navy and submarine service. If Admiral Novskoyy wanted him here, he had his reasons, and that was good enough for Captain Krakov. Captain… he relished the sound of it, and the responsibility that went with it. He loved it, all of it… except, of course, the secret miseries his stomach still underwent. Well, nothing was perfect…
He thought now of the ultrasecret loading of the SSN-X27, listed on the inventory as an “exercise unit,” loaded in its canister in the number-four torpedo tube. He thought of the nursing of the ship’s mechanical and electrical system in the months prior to this sudden deployment. He thought of the deployment itself, so obviously planned with their food loadout and equipment maintenance, but without immediate warning in the hours before the order to depart the pier. Krakov felt sure that the long, tortuous hours at periscope depth would soon be rewarded. And in a special way that along with the legendary Admiral Alexi Novskoyy, he would be called on to play an historic role. The thought of it was strong enough to overcome even his rebellious stomach.
Devilfish had arrived at coordinate A21.2-53.6 on top-secret Chart Zl, the position relayed by Donchez. Her position was drawn on the chart on the navigation table. The anticipated coordinate of the OMEGA was shown as an orange dot. Pacino leaned over the chart in the navigation alcove, aware of the ghostly moan of the SHARKTOOTH sonar beams illuminating their way in the ice rafts and stalactites ahead, OOD Stokes giving slight rudder orders to the helm to steer the ship around the pressure ridges, and the creaking of the ice around them as the masses of ice rafts shifted and ground against each other.
The position report from Donchez had given the OMEGA’s approximate position, but even drawing a 30-mile circle around the reported position had not led to a detection. The satellite coordinate must have been subject to some kind of error. There were no sonar detects on the OMEGA on broadband, and none on any of the guessed narrowband frequency gates they were searching in.
Was the OMEGA gone? Or was he going about this the wrong way? Instead of searching for the OMEGA, should he be searching for a polynya? Pacino walked to the SHARKTOOTH sonar console.