Zhdanov frowned, rubbed his chin, and said, “We can’t afford to snag an anchor line or run aground. It’s a very tight space on either side, sir.”
The captain studied the nautical chart, looking for the deeper of the two sides. “True, but we can’t stay here.” Making his decision, he added, “Ahead slow, right full rudder.”
There was a pause before Zhdanov said, “Ahead slow, right full rudder, aye.”
Sergeyev knew his men were concerned, probably even questioning his orders. And that was fine, so long as they didn’t question him aloud.
He planned to attempt a daring maneuver: bypassing the anti-submarine vessel on its starboard, or right side, without running aground in the shallow water on that side of the canal. He glanced at the chart again. “Rudder amidships.”
“Rudder amidships,” Zhdanov said mechanically.
All hands were watching the captain as the depth of the water under the keel continued to decrease. He looked calm, but his pulse raced.
Popov, sitting at his sonar station, began to breathe faster, headphones on his bald head, perspiration running down the back of his neck. He kept his eyes closed, listening. Then, “Eleven feet, Cap’n.”
Masking his doubts, Sergeyev nodded.
“Seven feet,” Popov muttered.
The crew began exchanging frightened looks. Some of the men braced for a collision.
“Three feet. Captain, we’re going aground,” Popov said in a loud whisper, eyes wide open as he stared at his commander.
“Left standard rudder,” Sergeyev ordered, knowing they had to be very close to the starboard anchor chain of the Singaporean cutter.
“Left standard rudder,” Zhdanov uttered in a hoarse whisper.
The submarine made soft contact with the sediment at the bottom of the basin on its starboard side. Hanging on to anything within reach, the crew prepared for another impact.
But it never came.
Popov let out his breath. “Four feet,” he said with obvious relief. “We missed the anchor chain.”
“Rudder amidships,” Sergeyev ordered as K-43 snuck out through the narrow space between one side of the basin and the anchor line of the Singaporean cutter without catching it.
Taking a deep breath, Zhdanov repeated the order.
“Seven feet,” Popov said with a slight grin.
Watching the depth of the water increase, Sergeyev waited until they were no longer in danger, then turned to Popov.
“Leonod, find us a fast ride out of here,” he said, realizing he had been gritting his teeth so hard, his jaw hurt.
“Got three already, Cap’n. All bearing zero-four-zero. Range zero-five miles. Big, fat bastards. Accelerating to one-zero knots.”
Sergeyev did the math in his head, then said, “You know the drill. Ahead two-thirds. Bearing zero-seven-zero to intercept. Set your depth one-eight-zero feet.”
Zhdanov repeated the command.
K-43 cruised toward two massive oil tankers and a container ship leaving the Port of Singapore headed for the wide-open South China Sea.
“Contact still bearing zero-four-zero. Zero-two miles. One-five knots,” Popov reported.
Sergeyev nodded, hoping like hell that the closest tanker didn’t go beyond twenty knots, the maximum submerged speed of K-43’s air-independent propulsion system powered by the ultra-silent hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells.
“Contact bearing zero-four-zero. Three thousand feet. One-five knots.”
“Match bearing and speed,” Sergeyev ordered.
Zhdanov relayed the order as Popov reported, “Turning into her baffle, Cap’n. Speed holding at one-five knots.”
Nicely done, Sergeyev thought. At fifteen knots and while operating in the tanker’s baffle, they were pretty much invisible to any of the vessels that might still be looking for them.
Safely behind the noisy tanker and in open water, Sergeyev left the control room in the capable hands of his crew and went one level down to his small stateroom.
His submariner’s instincts tempted him to go after the badly damaged Stennis and fire a final torpedo. However, Omar Al Saud had different plans.
And that meant replenishing before tackling the second half of his daring mission, which further meant leaving the crippled carrier alone and heading straight to his assigned rendezvous coordinates.
The Russian captain splashed cold water on his face before settling into his narrow bed. As his head sunk in his pillow, his eyes gravitated to the photo taped to the wall. The smiling faces of his wife and their three girls filled his view.
“I’m halfway there, Katrina,” he whispered. “Halfway there.”
His family now lived peacefully on a patch of land nestled in the hills north of Coquimbo, Chile, where Sergeyev planned to start a vineyard and live the rest of his days in peace — courtesy of Omar Al Saud.
As long as I fulfill my promise, he thought.
Petty Officer Second Class Marshon Chappelle sat in a trance.
In the middle of his midnight shift, he listened to the sounds of the sea while staring at the dozens of tracers flickering down the two stacked thirty-two-inch flat-screen monitors that washed his dark features in hues of wan yellow and green.
To the untrained ear, the audio captured by the revolutionary BQQ-10 bow-mounted spherical active/passive sonar-array sounded like random noise.
But to Chappelle it represented the symphony of the sea, enhanced by the complementary wide aperture of fiber-optic sonar arrays mounted along either side of the hull. It resulted in a masterful and rich performance composed of many separate sources, harmonizing the music that also vibrated to life on his high-definition screen.
The language of the sonarman.
He could hear the discrete cavitation of a fishing boat to the south.
Bearing one-seven-six. Range nineteen miles. Speed one-three knots.
It sounded like a flute, hovering in the distance, distinctively alone, almost fragile, represented by the narrow trace traveling down the far-left side of his upper screen.
Then there was the richer sound of a clarinet, clear, simple, a slightly larger boat dancing with the waves, its small twin four-blade screws stirring tranquil waters on the surface as it traveled west.
Bearing two-six-seven. Range two-six miles. Speed zero-seven knots.
Chappelle enjoyed most the mellow tunes of the various saxophones, from sopranos and altos to tenors and baritones. They represented the middle spectrum of the music of his soul, smooth and ripe, capturing the cavitation of the young adults of the sea, from larger fishing rigs and pleasure cruisers to midsize merchant vessels. He heard them and saw them in complete harmony, rising and falling, their signals strengthening or fading, some lasting hours, while others played for a short time before vanishing in the background.
Then came the French horns and tubas, the big girls of the ocean, deep and beautiful, their traces dominating the low end of the spectrum, forming the canvas on which all other instruments performed.
Chappelle felt their combined power as he sat back, alone in the sonar station, hands open, palms up, fully in a meditative state as he listened.
And that’s when he heard it: a tenor sax, faint, almost imperceptible, but definitely the cavitation of a large seven-blade screw underwater. Too deep to be a surface vessel and lacking the accompanying sound of a diesel.
Hello.
Chappelle now closed his eyes, tuning in, but he could not hear the subtler hissing sound of the batteries, which could only mean—
Submerged and running on an electric motor powered by—
What the hell?