the screen in front of him, the “waterfall” in submariner’s parlance,
gave a visual signature to the contact frequency by frequency, but
Davies trusted his own ears and brain. His eyes were closed, his
fingertips lightly pressing the headphones against his ears. Sometimes
it was almost as though he could see that other vessel up ahead through
what he was hearing now on Orlando’s passive sonar. Loudest was the
gentle thrum of his prop, a tandem eight-bladed screw. .. but Davies,
like a blind man who’d learned to see with his ears, could distinguish
countless other noises as well, from the hiss of water flowing over the
submarine’s skin to the slight fluttering sound of a minor cavitation
due to one of the screw’s blades being slightly out of alignment to the
intermittent clink of something–a loose cable, perhaps–swinging free
inside the pressure hull and transmitting the sound of each contact with
metal through the water.
They’d picked this sub up only three hours after entering the Black Sea
yesterday, slipping in behind him as he, in turn, slipped into the wake
of the Aegis cruiser Shiloh. It was like a return to the bad old days of
the Cold War, when U.S. and Soviet submarines would play endless games
of tag and double blind man’s bluff, a game that American sub
skippers–and their sonarmen–were especially good at. The Russian’s
signatures–sonar fingerprint unique to each different vessel–was
already in Orlando’s electronic library. He was one of twenty-six
submarines of the class known to the Russians as Project 671 RTM, and to
the West as the Victor III. The oldest class of nuclear-powered attack
submarines still in the Russian arsenal, it was nonetheless reasonably
quiet, capable of making thirty knots submerged, and mounted four 650mm
and two 533mm tubes firing a variety of torpedoes and missiles, with a
total of twenty-four weapons carried aboard. .. and deadly when
skillfully used.
Submarines–even Russian submarines–were not that common inside the
Black Sea. Treaty constraints restricted the number of subs allowed to
pass the Bosporus-Dardanelles waterway each year; more to the point, the
Dardanelles were only meters deep in spots, deep enough to hide a
submerged sub–barely–but with precious little room for error. Subs
trying to pass unobserved through the straits did so with the certain
knowledge that the waterway was thickly laced with sound detector
equipment and other sub-hunting gear. .. not to mention the less
predictable hazards imposed by fishermen’s nets. Since submarines
survived in modern warfare by remaining unobserved, the old Soviet Union
had never added many submarines to its Black Sea Fleet, and the majority
of those stationed there were diesel electric boats out of the secret
pens at Balaklava–Kilos, Tangos, and aging Foxtrots.
There were a few more modern, nuclear-powered boats in the Black Sea,
however, and this Victor III was one. Obviously he’d been deployed to
keep an eye on the CBG, and it was Orlando’s task to keep an eye on him.
Or rather. .. an ear. Davies remained motionless, not straining to hear
so much as he was losing himself in the hissing, churning cascade of
sound coming through his headset.
“Davies?”
He looked up, startled. Commander Peter Lang was leaning against the
entrance to the sonar shack. “Yes, Skipper?”
“You’re sure of that heading, son?”
He took a moment more before answering, listening to the churn of the
Russian’s eight-bladed screw. Yes. .. the sound was definitely moving
off to the right now as Orlando continued forward. “Yes, sir. I make it
between one-seven-oh and one-seven-three. He’s on a straight heading
now. It’s not a crazy Ivan.”
Lang ducked out of the compartment long enough to say, “Helm! Come right
to one-seven-one. Gently, now!”
Davies heard the source of the noise drifting back to the left, until it
was coming from directly ahead of Orlando’s bow. “That’s it, Skipper,”
he said after a moment. “We’re still squarely in his baffles.”
That was where they wanted to be in this deadly game–inside the
cone-shaped area astern of the Russian sub where her own wake and
propeller noise made detection of the American sub almost impossible.
“Think we can release a message buoy without him hearing?”
“With all the racket he’s making? Sure thing.”