Having served in the navy himself, he promised his son that the three years would go all too quickly. Wait till he visited his first exotic port — that would make the training all worth it.
Neither father nor son could have foreseen that Valeri would receive duty aboard a missile-toting submarine. In a way, the assignment was a compliment.
Only the most intelligent and promising conscripts were trained for the undersea service.
Certainly, the job was of extreme importance, but it would bring them to no foreign ports. Submerged beneath the sea for months on end, the submariner learned to share what little vacant space there was with one hundred and thirty-two fellow sailors.
After a while, this crowd got on Balashikha’s nerves. He was even forced to share his own bunk.
The Siberian who was presently using the mattress was a foul-smelling creature. Raised on goat’s milk and venison, he apparently didn’t know what it was to shower or wash one’s uniform. The odor wasn’t very conducive to a sound sleep.
Valeri had completed servicing eight of the sixteen missile tubes. The thick, black grease had already spotted his clothing and gotten under his fingernails.
Though he had another eight tubes to go, he stopped to wipe his hands clean for some temporary relief.
He sought some solvent and a clean rag from the storage closet in the taiga’s rearmost corner. It was unlikely that anyone else would be there. Still, he feared the possibility of bumping into Chief Chuchkin. In his current mood, there was no telling what he’d do to Valeri if he caught him there.
The cool, creamy solvent effectively stripped the grease from his hands. Feeling like a new person, Valeri went on to find a clean rag.
As he reluctantly prepared to return to the launch tubes, he heard someone approaching. Alertly, he hid behind the door and cautiously peeked through the crack to see who it was. He was totally surprised to find the quickly moving figure of which man Stefan Kuzmin.
The blond-haired warrant officer was known to be quite personable, although Valeri had had little contact with him. Seeing the which man here was shocking, but not because it was a part of the ship restricted to those who worked there. Rather, it had to do with the recent announcement by the senior lieutenant. An unusual broadcast had informed the crew that both the which man and their captain were being quarantined with infectious hepatitis — an extremely contagious liver disease.
If this was the case, what was Stefan Kuzmin doing here in the taiga?
Valeri could think of only one thing:
Somehow, the which man had escaped his voluntary confinement and was wandering through the ship completely delirious with fever.
Fearful for his health, Valeri Balashikha instinctively held his breath. He peeked out to make certain that the warrant officer had passed, then sprinted toward the intercom. The seaman third class exhaled only after making certain that the Vulkan’s senior lieutenant was personally on the other end of the line.
Chapter Twelve
“All stop! Callahan, she’s all yours.”
Michael Cooksey’s orders barked out loud and clear. In response, the Triton’s propulsion shaft came to a halt and the sub glided forward in almost total silence. The sonar officer took advantage of this quiet to fully concentrate on the vessel’s sensors.
The sub was using a tactic called sprint and drift. In order to cover as much territory as possible, the sub would sprint at all-out flank speed for a period of time. Then the captain would call for the engines to halt and the drift portion of the operation would begin.
Because the sound of their own engines would be absent, it was at this time that the sensor operators would have their best chance of picking up the signatures of any nearby bogeys.
As Charlie Callahan and his two assistants leaned over their monitor screens, the captain and his XO positioned themselves behind the brass railing set to the rear of the sonar station. Both officers looked on as the head phoned sensor operators activated the tools of their trade.
These included a wide array of powerful hydrophones mounted on the ship’s hull.
Such sensitive microphones could pick up the most minute sounds, from the click of a tiny crab to the mournful cry of a passing whale. In the midst of the ocean’s natural symphony, the relatively loud, alien noise produced by a manmade device was hard to miss. Callahan and his crew also had the use of a towed array sled that was reeled out from the Triton’s stern.
This not only carried hydrophones, but also a thermometer capable of determining unnatural changes in the ocean’s temperature. Such an anomaly would be produced when a passing sub stirred up a layer of water from a different depth. This could be of extreme significance, since the temperature of seawater drops at least one degree centigrade with each meter of depth.
Also in front of the men was a large glass screen belonging to the ship’s BQQ-5 active sonar system. Mounted in the sub’s bow, it transmitted a concentrated acoustic pulse into the surrounding waters.
In the headphones, this pulse was recognizable as a quavering note, followed by the distinctive plink of a returning echo. The presence of any alien object crossing in the path of the surge would be instantly reflected back to the operator. One of the drawbacks to this device was that the hunted can detect an active sonar transmission earlier than the hunter can pick up the target.
Aware of each passing minute, Cooksey studied the sensor crew at work and stirred impatiently. Beside him, Richard Craig pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped a line of sweat from his forehead.
Both men looked on hopefully when Callahan suddenly bent forward and pushed his headphones closer to his ears.
“I’ve got one of the task force’s choppers, Captain!
The signal from the interface with the Ticonderoga is weak, but it sounds as if their dunking hydrophones have tagged something.”
“Have the computer boost the signal to maximum and filter the resulting distortion. Then maybe we’ll have something to run a signature I.D. on,” ordered the captain. He then turned to address the Triton’s navigator.
“Smitty, how far are we from the Ticonderoga now?”
Chief Petty Officer Warren Smith looked at his plotting table and said, “They’re approximately eight-five nautical miles to the northeast, sir.”
As Cooksey chewed this over, Callahan spoke out excitedly.
“I’ve made the boost and Big Brother has been most cooperative. It’s a bogey submersible, all right! Jesus — even from this distance you can hear it churnin’ up the water something fierce. Still waiting on that positive I.D.” sir.”
Cooksey reached out to put on an auxiliary set of headphones. It didn’t take him long to pick out the characteristic hissing sounds produced by a myriad of collapsing air bubbles generated at the swirling tip of a submarine’s propeller. Cooksey managed a relieved smile as he pulled oft the headphones and handed them to his XO.
“We’ve got the bastard. Rich! I just know it’s that Delta.”
The exec put the phones to his ears and heard the alien racket for himself.
“Whatever it is, it sure has a bone in its teeth. What’s next.
Skipper?”
Cooksey’s eyes remained locked on the computer monitor screen as he replied, “First, we wait for a definite verification indicating that we’ve tagged the right sub. Then, we’ll a need a targeting solution.
We’re well within range of that new ASW/SOW device. I’d like to get close enough to them to use our active sonar.”
“But won’t our ping give us away?” the XO asked.
“That’s the way I want it. Rich. It’s time to let that Soviet captain know he’s been tagged. Maybe then he’ll have serious thoughts about continuing with this madness.”