more urgency now. Tombstone cocked his head, listening, as Penhall
switched the map display back to a view centered on the Jefferson. “This
is Sierra One-five. We’re over the target area at seven-five feet and
we’re trolling for big ones, over.”
“Ah, roger that, Sierra One-five. Commence active sonar.”
“And a one, and a two. ..”
The sonar pings weren’t transmitted over the open communications
channel, but Tombstone could imagine what it must sound like aboard the
Russian sub. That SH-3 was hovering just above the sub’s location, its
sonar dangling at the end of a long cable, dipping beneath the surface
of the water like bait on the end of a line. When the sonar started
broadcasting–“going active,” as opposed to passively listening–every
man aboard the sub would hear it as a sharp, ringing chirp transmitted
through the bulkheads of their tiny, enclosed world, proof positive that
they’d been spotted and were in someone’s gun sights.
“Any idea yet whose sub that is?” Tombstone asked.
“Not really,” Penhall replied. “Our best guess is that it’s Russian.
The signature matches a Victor III that’s been operating out of their
sub pens at Balaklava for some time now. It’s not conclusive, but. ..”
He shrugged.
“Understood. Hardly matters, anyway. Nobody out here likes us much.”
“They might like us even less after this,” Penhall said. “We’re telling
them, in effect, “Go away!’ Not exactly neighborly, you know?”
“More neighborly than an ADCAP torpedo,” Tombstone said. He hesitated,
watching the unmoving graphics symbols, green and red, on the screen. He
grinned. “Wonder how they’re enjoying the concert down there?”
1757 hours (Zulu +3)
Control room, Russian Submarine Kislovodsk Ping!. ..
Scowling, Captain First Rank Aleksci Aleksandrovich Vyatkin looked up
toward the control room’s overhead, past the maze of conduits, wirings,
and piping that ran fore-and-aft through the compartment like a writhing
bundle of spaghetti.
Ping!. ..
Louder this time, loud enough to hurt sensitive hearing. Kislovodsk’s
sonar officer, Valery Sofinsky, had already pulled off his headset and
was ruefully rubbing his ear. Even at a depth of four hundred feet, it
sounded as though the American helicopter-mounted sonars were right on
top of them, scant meters from the outer hull.
It hadn’t taken the bastards long to find them, either. Another Russian
sub, the Krimsky Komsomolets, had been shadowing the American battle
group up the Aegean; orders had come through from Balaklava just hours
ago for the Kislovodsk to pick up the group and continue shadowing it
inside the Black Sea. Their orders were to remain unobserved, but to get
as close to the major ships of the CBG as possible–especially either
their Aegis cruiser command ship or the carrier itself.
Ping!. ..
“They have us bracketed, Comrade Kapitan,” Captain-Lieutenant Yuri
Aleksanyan, the boat’s first officer, said. “I think they must have
known we were here all along.”
“The bastards have the devil’s own ears,” Vyatkin spat. But it was more
than the vaunted American technology. He knew that.
In the old days, in the Soviet days, Russian crews had not quite been
the match of their American counterparts. Now, with morale at rock
bottom, with machinery falling apart and no spares to be had anywhere
save, just possibly, on the black market, things were much worse. His
crew was sullen to the point of mutiny, and as likely to drop a heavy
metal tool in protest to some unwanted order as out of stupidity or
neglect. Equipment designed to run quietly didn’t. Sensors designed to
monitor sound aboard the submarine didn’t. Officers supposedly trained
in the skills necessary to navigate efficiently and silently while
submerged weren’t. Service aboard a Russian submarine, always both
dangerous and uncomfortable, was fast becoming a nightmare.
Ping!. ..
“That was from directly ahead, Comrade Captain,” the sonar officer said.
He didn’t even need his headset, so loud and bell-tone clear was the
American transmission.
“They are warning us, Captain,” the first officer added.
“They are telling us they want us to come no closer to their precious
nuclear carrier,” Vyatkin said.
PING!. ..
“Comrade Captain-”
“We will fox them, Yuri Aleksanyan,” Vyatkin said. “Ready Kukla.”
“At once, Comrade Captain.”
The submarine known to the West as a Victor III was the oldest class of