The screen was relatively clear again. The sonobuoy signals remained. Boston and Providence had reduced power and disappeared-but so had the Russian sub signals.
What are they doing? What is their plan? the captain asked himself. What submarines are out there?
Tangos, has to be Tangos. They cut their electric motors back, slowed to steerageway, and that’s why they disappeared off the scopes. Okay, they’re not coming in after us anymore. They stopped moving when the aircraft detected Providence and Boston. They’re coordinating with the Bears! That means they have to be at shallow depth, and their sonar performance is down because they’re close to the surface.
“Chief, assume that these two contacts you had were Tangos doing about ten knots. The figure of merit gives us a detection range of what?”
“These water conditions . . . ten to twelve miles. I’d be real careful using that number, sir.”
Three more sonobuoy lines began to appear north of Chicago. McCafferty went aft to see how they were plotted out. They assumed about a two-mile spacing on the sonobuoy lines, and that gave them range figures.
“Not being very subtle, are they?” the exec observed.
“Why bother when you don’t have to? Let’s see if we can pick our way through the buoys.”
“What are our friends doing?”
“They’d better be coming north, too. I don’t want to think about what other assets they have moving in on us. Let’s head right through here.”
The executive officer gave the orders. Chicago began to move forward again. Now they’d really find out if the rubber tiles on the hull absorbed sonar waves or not. The last bearings to the Russian submarines were plotted also. McCafferty knew that they too could be moving behind that wall of noise. When he detected them again it would be at perilously close range. They went deep. The submarine dove to a thousand feet and cruised toward the precise midpoint between a pair of pinging buoys.
Another torpedo appeared in the water aft, and McCafferty maneuvered quickly to evade, only to realize that it was aimed at someone else, or nothing at all. They listened to it run for several minutes, then fade out. A perfect way to break a man’s concentration, McCafferty thought, bringing his sub back to a northerly course.
Bearings to the sonobuoys changed as they got closer. They were almost exactly two miles apart, a mile on either beam, as Chicago went through the first line, crawling just above the bottom. They were set on a frequency that could be heard clearly through the hull. Just like the movies, the captain thought, as the crewmen not directly involved in navigating the boat looked up and outward at the hull as though it were being caressed by the noise. Some caress. The second line was three miles beyond the first. Chicago turned slightly left to head for another gap.
Speed was down to four knots now. Sonar called out a possible contact to the north that immediately faded away. Maybe a Tango, maybe nothing. It was plotted anyway, as the submarine took nearly an hour to reach the second line of pinging buoys.
“Torpedo in the water, port side!” sonar screamed out.
“Right full rudder, all ahead flank!”
Chicago’s propeller thrashed at the water, creating a bonanza of noise for the Russian aircraft who’d dropped a fish on a possible contact. They ran for three minutes while waiting for additional data on the torpedo.
“Where’s the torpedo?”
“It’s pinging sir-but it’s pinging the other way, bearing changing south, left to right, and weakening.”
“All ahead one-third, rudder amidships,” McCafferty ordered.
“Another one-torpedo in the water bearing zero-four-six.”
“Right full rudder, all ahead flank,” McCafferty ordered yet again. He turned to the exec. “You know what they just did? They dropped a fish to spook us into moving! Damn!” Beautiful tactic, whoever you are. You know we can’t afford to ignore a torpedo.
“But how’d they know we were here?”
“Maybe they just guessed well, maybe they got a twitch. Then we gave ’em the contact.”
“Torpedo bearing zero-four-one. The torpedo is pinging at us, don’t know if it has us, sir. Captain, I got a new contact bearing zero-nine-five. Sounds like machinery noises-possible submarine.”
“Now what?” McCafferty whispered. He put the Russian torpedo on his stem and hugged the bottom. Sonar performance dropped to zero as Chicago accelerated past twenty knots. Their instruments could still hear the ultrasonic pings of the torpedo, however, and McCafferty maneuvered to keep the weapon behind him as it dove down after the American sub.
“Bring her up! Make your depth one hundred feet. Shoot off a noisemaker.”
“Full rise on the planes!” The diving officer ordered a short blow on the forward trim tanks to effect the maneuver. Along with the noisemaker, it created an enormous disturbance in the water. The torpedo raced in after it, missing below Chicago. A good maneuver, it was also a desperate one. The submarine rose quickly, her elastic hull popping as the pressure on the steel diminished. There was an enemy sub out there, and he now had all sorts of noise from Chicago. All McCafferty could do was run. He was confident that the other sub would chase after him with a homing torpedo circling below, but didn’t understand why the other sub was there at all. He slowed Chicago to five knots and turned as the torpedo ran out of fuel below him. Next problem: there was a Soviet submarine close by.
“He’s gotta know about where we are, skipper.”
“You got that one right, XO. Sonar, Conn, Yankee-search!” Both sides could use unusual tactics. “Fire-control party, stand by, this one’s going to be a snapshot.”
The powerful but seldom-used active sonar installed in Chicago’s bow blasted the water with low-frequency energy.
“Contact, bearing zero-eight-six, range four six hundred!”
“Set it up!”
Chicago’s steel hull reverberated three seconds later with Soviet sonar waves.
“Set! Ready for tubes three and two.”
“Match bearings and shoot!” The torpedoes were fired within seconds of one another. “Cut the wires. Take her down! Make your depth one thousand feet, all ahead flank, left full rudder, come to new course two-six-five!” The submarine wheeled and sped west as her torpedoes raced toward their target.
“Transients-torpedoes in the water aft, bearing zero-eight-five.”
“Patience,” McCafferty said. You didn’t expect us to do that, did you? “Nice job, fire-control! We got our shots off a minute faster than the other guy. Speed?”
“Twenty-four knots and increasing, sir,” the helmsman answered. “Passing four hundred feet, sir.”
“Sonar, how many fish we got chasing us?”
“At least three, sir. Sir, our units are pinging. I believe they have the target.”
“XO, in a few seconds we’re going to turn and change depth. When we do, I want you to fire off four noisemakers at fifteen-second intervals.”
“Aye, Cap’n.”
McCafferty went over to stand behind the helmsman. He’d just turned twenty the day before. The rudder indicator was amidships, with ten degrees of down angle on the planes, and the submarine was just passing through five hundred feet and hurtling down. The speed log now showed thirty knots. The rate of acceleration slowed as Chicago neared her maximum speed. He patted the boy on the shoulder.
“Now. Ten degrees rise on the planes and come right twenty degrees rudder.”
“Yes, sir!”
The hull thundered with the news that their fish had found their target. Everyone jumped or cringed-they had their own problems chasing after them. Chicago’s maneuver left a massive knuckle in the water that the executive officer punctuated with four noisemakers. The small gas canisters filled the disturbance with bubbles that made excellent sonar targets while Chicago sped north. She raced right under a sonobuoy, but the Russians could not put another torpedo down for fear of interfering with those already running.
“Bearing is changing on all contacts, sir,” sonar reported.
McCafferty started to breathe again. “Ahead one-third.”
The helmsman dialed the annunciator handle. The engineers responded at once, and again Chicago slowed.
“We’ll try to disappear again. They probably aren’t sure yet who killed who. We’ll use that time to get back down to the bottom and crawl northeast. Well done, people, that was sorta hairy.”
The helmsman looked up. “Skipper, the south side of Chicago ain’t the baddest part of town anymore!”
Sure as hell is the tiredest, though, the captain thought. They can’t keep coming at us this way. They have to back off and rethink, don’t they? He had the chart memorized. Another hundred fifty miles to the icepack.
39 – The Shores of Stykklisholmur
HUNZEN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
They’d finally defeated the counterattack. No, Alekseyev told himself, we didn’t defeat it, we drove it off. The Germans had withdrawn of their own accord after blunting half of the Russian attack. There was more to victory than being in possession of the battlefield.
It only got harder. Beregovoy had been right when he’d said that coordinating a large battle on the move was much harder than doing it from a fixed command post. Just the effort of getting the right map opened inside a cramped command vehicle was a battle against time and space, and eighty kilometers of front made for too many tactical maps. The counterattack had forced the generals to move one of their precious A reserve formations north, just in time to watch the Germans withdraw after savaging the rear areas of three B motor-rifle divisions, and spreading panic throughout the thousands of reservists who were trying to cope with old equipment and barely remembered training.