The conn phone buzzed again. “Officer of the Deck.”
“Captain,” Seagraves’ baritone came over the circuit. “I’m sending the flash message to your pad computer. Get the engineer to relieve you on the conn and come to the wardroom. Emergent op brief.”
“Yessir,” Romanov said. She hung up the phone and turned to see Lieutenant Commander Lewinsky standing behind her. “What took you so long, Feng?” she said, smirking. She gave him a brief on the tactical picture.
“I’ve got it. I relieve you, ma’am,” the engineer said.
“I stand relieved,” Romanov replied. “Pilot, Nav-ET, Lieutenant Commander Lewinsky has the deck and the conn.” She was already out of the room as they acknowledged her. She hurried aft in the passageway to the wardroom while scanning the incoming flash message. As she reached the middle of the message, she stopped and read the remainder. “Holy shit,” she gasped.
The wardroom was crowded. Seagraves and Quinnivan were already seated. She made her way to her seat, since she wouldn’t be presenting.
“Okay, quiet, everybody,” Quinnivan said, frowning at his computer. He projected his tablet’s display onto the large flatpanel screen, showing the text of the incoming message.
“As all of you can see,” Seagraves began, “we have a change to the rules of engagement. We are not only authorized but ordered to use all quote, necessary force, unquote, to accomplish this mission, including the tactical use of nuclear weapons, all at the complete discretion of the commanding officer.”
There was a shocked silence in the room for a moment. Romanov spoke up. “Captain, if that’s the case, we need to get back to the simulation war games. At the time we did them, we considered Russian or Iranian opposition forces to be unlikely or something that would cancel the operation. Any simulated battles we did with those forces were somewhat whimsical.” And ended with mission failure or worse, the sinking of the Kilo or Vermont herself, Romanov thought. “With this ROE change, we need to practice in earnest against attacks and counterattacks from a Russian attack boat or an Iranian destroyer.”
Seagraves checked his watch. “You have less than forty hours before we reach barrier search Point Hotel,” he said. “I suggest you all get busy. XO, my stateroom, if you please.”
Quinnivan shut the door and sank into his usual seat at the captain’s table.
“What do you think, XO?” Seagraves’ arms were crossed across his chest.
“I think there’s more to this mission than stealing an Iranian modified Kilo submarine. Maybe there’s something on that sub that the brass aren’t telling us.”
“I don’t think so. This order,” Seagraves slapped the display of his pad computer, “almost makes it seem like the NSC and the president want us to pick a fight with an opposition force. And sink it. As if this is some type of demonstration of capability. Or a message to Tehran or Moscow. Or both.”
Quinnivan thought a moment. “That’s one thing if it’s a submarine we’re up against. Sinking a sub doesn’t leave much of an immediate forensic trace. Submarines are lost at sea every year. Too many bad things can happen deep underwater, yeah? But a surface ASW force? Sinking an antisubmarine warfare destroyer is going to make for a juicy headline. Satellite News Network will be blasting that all over the globe within minutes. Every swingin’ dick out there owns a satellite-synched cell phone with video capability now. There’s a good chance a destroyer sailor could film the whole thing, or even live-stream it, while it’s attacked from an apparently empty ocean. Worse if we use a Tomahawk cruise missile. A flame trail would lead right down to the launch point. And to us.”
“That last doesn’t worry me,” Seagraves said. “If I have to attack by daylight, I’ll use the delay function on the cruise missile capsule. It’ll just float there until the timer goes off, then launch, and by then we’ll be a mile away. What does worry me is if a Russian Akula III or, God help us, a Yasen-M-class attack sub shows up. No one’s very certain back in the hallowed halls of Submarine Force HQ whether, on an even playing field, we could take them down.”
“Bah,” Quinnivan said dismissively. “The fookin Severodvinsk was dreamed up in the late 1980s. They laid the keel in, what, 1993? Then it rusted till they found the money to complete it in the teens. Sub didn’t get operational till 2013. And I’d remind you, for the last ten years, it’s been at the bottom of the Atlantic, in a million pieces, put there by an American torpedo. The Yasen-class are an old, obsolete, hunk of junk design, Skipper. We’d take a Yasen to the bottom before it even had a sniff of us on its sonar.”
“Severodvinsk was a Yasen class,” Seagraves said, paging his computer to an intelligence file. “The only one. The Yasens after that are ‘Yasen-M,’ for modernized. An understatement. Everything is new. You can hardly compare the Yasen-M to the old rustbucket Severodvinsk. The Yasen-M should probably have been given a new class name, but the Russians were doing something funny with their budget office, wanted to make it seem like they were just cost-effectively building the next unit of the model, but the M-class is new from the propulsor to the sonar dome. All new electronics, with a high level of automation. From a tonnage standpoint, the M is twice our size, almost fourteen thousand tons to our eight thousand. Her reactor is a two-hundred-megawatt monster to our mere ninety. Her crew is all of sixty officers and enlisted, less than half our hundred and thirty, a sure indicator of automation and the incorporation of AI systems. The M can do thirty-five knots to our thirty-two, and in silent mode with natural circulation, it’ll do twenty-eight to our twenty-five. XO, our test depth is twelve hundred feet. Yasen-M can take it down to over two thousand, and do I need to remind you, that depth is knocking on the door of the crush depth of the Mod 9 ADCAP torpedo? If we ever got into a hot war with the Russians, hell, they’d just take her to test depth plus a little more and wait till our torpedoes implode, then shoot us out of the water. We’re still guessing how many weapons she carries, but I’d lay you odds she’s got the jump on us in sheer number of torpedoes. And don’t get me started on the hellish weapons she has. And acoustically? Should I remind you that we’ve never yet been able to trail a Yasen-M submarine? Our Virginias have lurked outside the Zapadnaya Litsa Northern Fleet submarine base for the M-class and fell in trail for all of half a mile before the target would vanish. For all we know, they can hear us before we can hear them. Our so-called acoustic advantage may have flipped in favor of the M-class. Let’s just admit it, XO, we wouldn’t want to run into a Yasen-M-class in a dark alley.”
Quinnivan whistled as he paged his own tablet through the intelligence. “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” he said after a moment. “Maybe there won’t be an opposition force. Maybe the Panther will go out alone to do his reactor test. It’s dangerous, so going out there alone without an escort is a damned good probability.”
“Yeah,” Seagraves said. “I’m sure you’re right.”
Captain First Rank Yuri Orlov stood on the pier looking at the seemingly combat-ready Yasen-M-class attack submarine K-573 Novosibirsk of the proud Russian Federation Pacific fleet.