“Good point, General,” Foster said.
“Gentlemen, I think we need time to consider this. Okay, we still have time, but right now let’s tell Dallas to sit tight and track the bugger,” Harris said. “And report any changes in course or speed. I figure we have about fifteen minutes to do that. Next we can get Pogy and Invincible staked out on their path.”
“Right, Eddie.” Hilton turned to Admiral Foster. “If you agree, let’s do that right now.”
“Send the message, Sam,” Foster ordered.
“Aye aye.” Dodge went to the phone and ordered Admiral Gallery to send the reply.
Z141030ZDEC
TOP SECRET
FR: COMSUBLANT
TO: USS DALLAS
A. USS DALLAS Z140925ZDEC
1. CONTINUE TRACKING. REPORT ANY CHANGES IN COURSE OR SPEED. HELP ON THE WAY.
2. ELF TRANSMISSION “G” DESIGNATES FLASH OPS DIRECTIVE READY FOR YOU.
3. YOUR OPAREA UNRESTRICTED BRAVO ZULU DALLAS KEEP IT UP. VADM GALLERY SENDS.
“Okay, let’s look at this,” Harris said. “What the Russians are up to never has figured, has it?”
“What do you mean, Eddie?” Hilton asked.
“Their force composition for one thing. Half these surface platforms are antiair and antisurface, not primary ASW assets. And why bring Kirov along at all? Granted she makes a nice force flag, but they could do the same thing with Kiev.”
“We talked about that already,” Foster observed. “They ran down the list of what they had that could travel this far at a high speed of advance and took everything that would steam. Same with the subs they sent, half of them are antisurface SSGNs with limited utility against submarines. The reason, Eddie, is that Gorshkov wants every platform here he can get. A half-capable ship is better than nothing. Even one of the old Echoes might get lucky, and Sergey is probably hitting the knees every night praying for luck.”
“Even so, they’ve split their surface groups into three forces, each with antiair and antisurface elements, and they’re kind of thin on ASW hulls. Nor have they sent their ASW aircraft to stage out of Cuba. Now that is curious,” Harris pointed out.
“It would blow their cover story. You don’t look for a dead sub with aircraft — well, they might, but if they started using a wing of Bears out of Cuba, the president would go ape,” Foster said. “We’d harass them so much they’d never accomplish anything. For us this would be a technical operation, but they factor politics into everything they do.”
“Fine, but that still doesn’t explain it. What ASW ships and choppers they do have are pinging away like mad. You might look for a dead sub that way, but October ain’t dead, is she?”
“I don’t understand, Eddie,” Hilton said.
“How would you look for a stray sub, given these circumstances?” Harris asked Foster.
“Not like this,” Foster said after a moment. “Using surface, active sonar would warn the boat off long before they could get a hard contact. Boomers are fat on passive sonar. She’d hear them coming and skedaddle out of the way. You’re right, Eddie. It’s a sham.”
“So what the hell are their surface ships up to?” Barnes asked, puzzled.
“Soviet naval doctrine is to use surface ships to support submarine operations,” Harris explained. “Gorshkov is a decent tactical theoretician, and occasionally a very innovative gent.
He said years ago that for submarines to operate effectively they have to have outside help, air or surface assets in direct or proximate support. They can’t use air this far from home without staging out of Cuba, and at best finding a boat in open ocean that doesn’t want to be found would be a difficult assignment.
“On the other hand, they know where she’s heading, a limited number of discrete areas, and those are staked out with fifty-eight submarines. The purpose of the surface forces, therefore, is not to participate in the hunt itself — though if they got lucky, they wouldn’t mind. The purpose of the surface forces is to keep us from interfering with their submarines. They can do that by staking out the areas we’re likely to be with their surface assets and watching what we’re doing.” Harris paused for a moment. “That’s smart. We have to cover them, right? And since they’re on a ‘rescue’ mission, we have to do more or less what they’re doing, so we ping away also, and they can use our own ASW expertise against us for their own purposes. We play right into their hands.”
“Why?” Barnes asked again.
“We’re committed to helping in the search. If we find their boat, they’re close enough to find out, acquire, localize, and shoot — and what can we do about it? Not a thing.
“Like I said, they figure to locate and shoot with their submarines. A surface acquisition would be pure luck, and you don’t plan for luck. So, the primary objective of the surface fleet is to ride shotgun for, and draw our forces away from, their subs. Secondarily they can act as beaters, driving the game to the shooters — and again, since we’re pinging, we’re helping them. We’re providing an additional stalking horse.” Harris shook his head in grudging admiration. “Not too shabby, is it? If Red October hears them coming, she runs a little harder for whatever port the skipper wants, right into a nice, tight trap. Dan, what are the chances they can bag her coming into Norfolk, say?”
Foster looked down at the chart. Russian submarines were staked out on every port from Maine to Florida. “They have more subs than we have ports. Now we know that this guy can be picked up, and there’s only so much area to cover off each port, even outside the territorial limit… You’re right, Eddie.
They have too good a chance of making the kill. Our surface groups are too far away to do anything about it. Our subs don’t know what’s happening, we have orders not to tell them, and even if we could, how could they interfere? Fire at the Russian subs before they could shoot — and start a war?” Foster let out a long breath. “We gotta warn him off.”
“How?” Hilton asked.
“Sonar, a gertrude message maybe,” Harris suggested.
Admiral Dodge shook his head. “You can hear that through the hull. If we continue to assume that only the officers are in on this, well, the crew might figure out what’s happening, and there’s no predicting the consequences. Think we can use Nimitz and America to force them off the coast? They’ll be close enough to enter the operation soon. Damn! I don’t want this guy to get this close, then get blown away right off our coast.”
“Not a chance,” Harris said. “Ever since the raid on Kirov they’ve been acting too docile. That’s pretty cute, too. I bet they had that figured out. They know that having so many of their ships operating off our coast is bound to provoke us, so they make the first move, we up the ante, and they just plain fold — so now if we keep leaning on them, we’re the bad guys. They’re just doing a rescue operation, not threatening anybody. The Post reported this morning that we have a Russian survivor in the Norfolk naval hospital. Anyway, the good news is that they’ve miscalculated October’s speed. These two groups will pass her left and right, and with their seven-knot speed advantage they’ll just pass her by.”
“Disregard the surface groups entirely?” Maxwell asked.
“No,” Hilton said, “that tells them we are no longer buying the cover story. They’d wonder why — and we still have to cover their surface groups. They’re a threat whether they’re acting like honest merchants or not.”
“What we can do is pretend to release Invincible. With Nimitz and America ready to enter the game, we can send her home. As they pass October we can use that to our advantage. We put Invincible to seaward of their surface groups as though she’s heading home and interpose her on October’s course. We still have to figure out a way to communicate with her, though. I can see how to get the assets in place, but that hurdle remains, gentlemen. For the moment, are we agreed to position Invincible and Pogy for the intercept?”
The Invincible
“How far is she from us?” Ryan asked.
“Two hundred miles. We can be there in ten hours.” Captain Hunter marked the position on the chart. “USS Pogy is coming east, and she ought to be able to rendezvous with Dallas an hour or so after we do. This will put us about a hundred miles east of this surface group when October arrives. Bloody hell, Kiev and Kirov are a hundred miles east and west of her.”
“You suppose her captain knows it?” Ryan looked at the chart, measuring the distances with his eyes.
“Unlikely. He’s deep, and their passive sonars are not as good as ours. Sea conditions are against it also. A twenty-knot surface wind can play havoc with sonar, even that deep.”