Orlov continued typing in his assumptions, that the Panther had continued east-southeast after being captured for some time, then turned to escape the Arabian Sea with a bias toward sailing in the general direction of the Cape of Good Hope and the Atlantic Ocean, then inserted the high-speed run for half an hour, starting 0315 Moscow time until 0345, then slowing back down to a six-knot battery-conserving crawl. Finally he finished by typing:
Display the probability distribution of Panther’s present location.
A view of the Arabian Sea flashed on the main screen, looking down from high overhead, the image from a satellite composite with cloudcover removed. The sea was a glistening deep blue, almost black, the Arabian peninsula a bright sand-color, the coast of India light green in the north and a more lush green farther south.
A red dot flashed at their present location, off India’s Gulf of Khambht, a few hundred kilometers west of the city of Surat. Soon the second captain started sprinkling white spots into the Arabian Sea, each dot representing a probability calculation. As the dots filled the sea, they formed a narrow, oblong oval running north-to-south, the oval perhaps three hundred kilometers long and perhaps thirty wide. Oddly, as the probability dots littered the sea, a smallish triangle formed north of the oval, the point of it pointing southward, the overall impression of the white probability dots forming what looked like a fish sailing due south. The probability distribution was heaviest in the center of the oval, the probabilities becoming lower as the dots grew less dense toward the fuzzy edges of both shapes. The center of the oval was due west of their present position by about five hundred kilometers.
Orlov typed into the screen, a third window flashing up on the screen showing what he was typing.
Display dimensions of probability envelope and bearing a distance to its center.
The typing screen vanished and the view of the Arabian Sea took up the display again, but now there were dimensions noted in slender yellow lines. North-to-south, the probability oval was 286 kilometers long and 36 kilometers wide, not counting the fish tail. The display showed the oval’s center to be at bearing 274 from their present position, at a distance of 487 kilometers. Orlov typed again.
Display the course and speed-of-advance of probability envelope.
The display at the center of the oval formed by the white dots flashed in bold red:
Course 177
Speed 6 knots
Novikov considered for a moment. A transit speed of six knots meant they were running on batteries to keep silent and conserve battery amp-hours. And instead of having to come to periscope depth and snorkel on the diesels to charge the battery bank, they could restart the fast reactor and charge the batteries with the nuclear turbine-generator. Odds were, the reactor at low power levels was quieter than the loud clanking, banging and rumbling of the diesel.
“So we should calculate an interception course from here to the southwest,” Novikov said. “We’ll position ourselves farther south of the probability oval, and Panther—and his escort, if he has one — will drive right into our trap. Then we take him down, and whatever is escorting him. We could be home in three weeks.”
“You’re half right, Boris,” Orlov replied. “One of us is going southwest to lie in wait for the probability oval to drive into a barrier search, but a barrier search formed by one of us, not two. Whoever doesn’t go to the southern intercept hold point will be pursuing a course to arrive at a point north of the probability oval, then turn south to overrun the oval from the north. Submarine one catches Panther from the south while submarine two attacks him from the north. A rundown, if you are a fan of American baseball.”
“I don’t know American baseball, Yuri, but this sounds like a circular firing squad. Any torpedo fired by the northern attack submarine at the Panther to the south could home in on and destroy the southern submarine. One of us could perish by friendly fire.”
“That won’t happen, Boris,” Orlov said confidently. “And even if it does, the Futlyar torpedoes have a TCM feature.”
TCM stood for torpedo countermeasure. On the video screen, Novikov made a sour face. Dobryvnik knew what he had to be thinking, that the TCM mode had never worked in submarine vs. submarine testing, never, but the bureaucrats in the weapons testing labs swore with the new software upload, it would magically gain the capability to intercept and destroying incoming American, Chinese and French torpedoes — assuming that software upload wasn’t as hacked as the compromised surface and air force computer systems. And on this mission, they might well be facing an attack from Russian torpedoes, the older UGST units loaded onto the Panther. Well, Dobryvnik thought, this mission might well bring those lab-jacketed idiots the evidence they lacked. Of success or failure, although if the TCM subroutines failed, who would live to tell the tale?
“So who goes north and who goes south?” Novikov asked. Obviously the plum combat position was lying in wait to the south, waiting for the Panther and her escort to drive up on them. The boat to the north would be in a tail-chase. Odds are, detecting Panther on her stealthy transit on her batteries would be insanely difficult, and if she were escorted by a Virginia-class U.S submarine, that ship would be even more quiet — although the nuclear-powered escort would emit tonals detectable by the MGK-600’s narrowband processors. In a world of loud ocean noise, detecting a diesel boat on her batteries and a stealthy nuclear attack submarine would be an impossible mission. Unless, Novikov thought, the Panther lit off his fast reactor, in which case he’d blast out transients and narrowband tonals — the Kilo’s fast reactor module was not sound-mounted for stealth. It was just a test platform. Detection might be aided if Panther fired torpedoes — or God help them, the Americans fired torpedoes. Submarines might well be stealthy, but torpedoes were loud. The technicians had worked on quieting them for decades and come up with nothing. If one wanted a weapon to travel fast, one gave up on stealth. There was a ‘stealth mode’ for the new Futlyar torpedo, but all it had turned out to be was making the weapon crawl at fifteen knots instead of screaming in at fifty. But an ultra-slow torpedo had a higher chance of missing, giving the target too much time to randomly maneuver or counterdetect the incoming torpedo.
Still, there were ways around the impossible problem. A cruise missile dropping a depth charge from overhead was one way. A supercavitating torpedo was another — it was indeed much louder than a conventional torpedo, being an underwater rocket, but it traveled so fast that transit time was minimal, meaning that evasion time was also reduced.
There was no doubt, though, the northern position would go to the lesser of the submarine captains.
“We should go to the south,” Novikov asserted, clenching his jaw. “We made the initial detection.”
Orlov made a dismissive noise and rolled his eyes. “You also failed to realize it until, what, an hour later, and then you failed to analyze it properly — that all fell on us. No, Boris, you’ll go to the north and we’ll go south. And for God’s sake, don’t launch torpedoes at ghosts or shadows. You make damned sure you’re shooting at the Panther or the American and not at us. You got that?”