“Aye captain?”
“Are we sending, Oleg?”
“I don’t know captain, maybe someone is receiving broken text and will put the pieces together.”
Above them the sky was overcast, and the Atlantic the colour of ink, a uniform blackness that suddenly parted in white foam to admit the Kilo back into the realm of air.
Water cascaded from her plates, a dark gleaming killing machine now out of its element, vulnerable to the ships it hunted.
Below, the captain breathed in the salt air that had entered the hull as the lieutenant opened the hatch, but his eyes remained on the screen unwilling at first to accept what they told him.
“Communications, send and keep sending, our position and the following… from west to east through south, to a range of twenty-eight point seven miles, there are no, repeat no, merchant vessels!” For the number of vessels he knew to be in the convoy, they should have picked up at least some of the outlying ships, if not the majority. The only conclusion he could draw was that they had been suckered, and the merchant ships were elsewhere.
Something close to despair crossed the young communications officers face.
“Aye captain… sending.”
Lieutenant Stepov emerged into the wet and cold, stepping clear of the hatchway for his lookouts he first braced himself against the roll of the deck before raising a night vision device to his eyes. Common sense should have told him not to look first in the direction they thought the merchantmen lay, but toward the north. It would not however have affected their fate even if he had done so.
At a speed of 18knots, the bow of USS Peel sliced deep into the Kilos starboard ballast tank, just forward of the conning tower before riding up onto the Murmansk’s coaming, the screech of tortured metal drowning out the screams of the submarines look-outs. The Knox class frigate came to a halt with her bows in the air and twenty feet of keel exposed to view, and for a moment it remained in that position as air boiled from the submarines ruptured tank. Peel’s single screw still churned the water to froth and then the frigates weight, the push of her screw, and the damage already inflicted on the Kilo brought an end to the brief impasse. With a groan the Murmansk’s pressure hull gave way and the frigates crumpled bow again met the ocean. Murmansk’s bows disappeared from sight and her stern rose clear of the waves, up and up until it stood close to the vertical, its propeller a blur as it turned unchecked. Slowly at first, and then increasing in speed the submarine sank from view forever.
The USN frigate, still showing the signs of her encounter with the man-made tidal wave on the first convoy, hastily and crudely patched up at sea as she was, now quickly lost way and began to settle at the bow.
Far over the northern horizon, Potyemkin’s signaller had eventually gotten Murmansk’s position from the halting transmission. Murmansk had only managed to repeat its final message twice before going of the air, and the signaller thought he had the intended text from what had been received, but he had to replay the recording several times until he was satisfied. He handed his commander the message on a signal form.
‘Our position 43” 8’ North, 36” 35’ West // Merchant vessels 28.7 miles South’.
“Is this all?”
“Yes Captain, it was repeated twice through heavy interference, but there have been no further transmissions from Murmansk.”
The captain considered the messages content, and pondered the lack of a precise set of coordinates for the enemy shipping.
“You say that there has been nothing further from them?”
“Nothing, sir.”
Apparently their brave comrades-in-arms had sent them this vital message with their dying gasp, and the captain would ensure their sacrifice did not go in vain. Crossing to the chart table he marked the location that the Kilo had given as its own, and then went to work with dividers. To the same signal form the captain added a longitude and latitude, circling it in red before handing it back to the signaller for onward transmission to the Stalin.
One of the hardest of his own orders, that Admiral Mann had to stand by, was that of rescuing survivors. His warships and helicopters reported dozens in the water. Those downwind of the chemical warheads would have no chance, but the remainder waved, shouted and blew whistles in order to gain attention.
USS Peel’s crew were fighting to shore up bulkheads, but the only safe course of action for her was to turn her stern to the seas and put her engines in reverse, making for the Azores in that slow fashion, if a torpedo did not find her first of course.
Conrad Mann would not compromise his warships integrity by allowing seals to be broken in order for crewmen to go topside and carry out rescues. He could not allow his ships to break formation, and he could not afford to weaken his defensive screen by detaching another vessel. The same went for his rotary wing assets, he needed them hunting rather than performing SAR.
All requests to heave-to or to delay ASW operations were refused, and the winking beacons on survival rafts and immersion suits fell astern, disappearing into the cold, black Atlantic night.
Twenty-one minutes later a UH-60B from the USS Gerald Ford firmed up very quickly on a contact that was coming on too fast for caution. Within another three minutes a further two helicopters began to prosecute separate contacts, but before any could drop on the hulls they rose to launch depth and the next attack began.
The soviet hunter-killers had used well the time the helicopters had been absent, and all seven began launching within minutes of each other.
SS-N-7 anti-ship missiles burst out of the black depths in welters of spray, their solid rocket motors providing the thrust that would send them at high subsonic speed towards their victims.
Gerald Ford’s TAO saw at a glance that none of his remaining F-14s and F/A-18s would be of use, their attackers were within forty miles of the nearest US ship, and the aircraft were too far away to engage in time.
Standard 2 missiles roared from vertical launch tubes, tipping over as their ships guidance systems fed them data on the incoming attack.
High above the ships, the radar operators aboard the early warning Hawkeye watched the attackers come on, locked down their firing positions to within six feet, and fed mid-course corrections to the Standard 2s. Whilst they were doing all this they saw twenty new tracks appear two hundred and ninety-six miles out.
Placing a cursor on the lead inbound the operator was surprised, he had thought that he could judge speed pretty well, and he’d have guessed that these newcomers were coming in at mach one, give or take. However the speed was mach 2.7, and these inbounds were climbing.
Selecting the Gerald Ford’s CIC on his frequency selector he spoke quickly and clearly.
“Vampires, Vampires, Vampires… Lunch Bunch this is Eye Spy Zero Two, I have two zero Vampires, bearing 350’, Angels two five and climbing, range now at two hundred fifty-five miles!”
The TAOs reply was immediate.
“Roger, Eye Spy, we have them on the board.” A moment later the TAO came on again, this time on an air wing frequency.
“Long Knife Zero One, Lunch Bunch.”
The F-14 squadron commanders’ reply was short, and to the point. “Go.”
The TAO told them where, how high, and a one word instruction that meant they were to hustle.
“Long Knives steer 349’, make Angels Twenty and buster!”
“Roger, the Knives are in the elevator with burners on, our heading is now three four nine.”