The Compensation Officer started the hovering pumps, pushing water from the variable ballast tanks, making the submarine lighter. Once the desired amount of water was pumped out, Kazan rose steadily toward the surface.
“Fifty meters,” the Compensation Officer reported.
At thirty meters, the Compensation Officer flooded water back in, matching the amount pumped out, plus a few thousand pounds to halt Kazan’s ascent. The submarine’s upward momentum slowed, with Kazan settling out at fifteen meters as ordered, and the Compensation Officer pumped the extra few thousand pounds back out, restoring Kazan to neutral buoyancy.
“Periscope clear,” Urnovitz announced, reporting the periscope had broken the surface of the water.
Urnovitz did a quick safety sweep followed by a detailed search, then confirmed Hydroacoustic’s report.
“Hold no contacts.”
“Surface without air,” Plecas ordered.
Urnovitz relayed the order to the Compensation Officer, who started the ballast tank blower, which pushed air into the ballast tanks, instead of using valuable air stored in the high-pressure air banks. Although running the blower was noisy, it was far quieter than running the compressors required to replace the high-pressure air.
Kazan rose higher as the water was pushed from its ballast tanks, and the blower was secured once air began escaping from the flood grates on the submarine’s keel, indicating the ballast tanks were now empty.
Plecas relieved Urnovitz on the periscope, surveying the sea-state condition. It was a calm night with almost no waves, and the topside hatches could be opened without fear of water flooding into the submarine.
As he returned the periscope to Urnovitz, Plecas ordered, “Send divers topside.”
It was a tedious task, but the trawler net was cut free from Kazan’s screw in just over two hours. With the divers retrieved and the hatch shut, Kazan was ready to submerge and continue on its way.
Despite the delay, Plecas had nineteen hours of slack remaining in the schedule. Kazan could still slow and reach the launch point at the prescribed time. Plecas decided to slow now, however, and not reserve all of the slack for later. Proceeding at twenty knots, a high speed that reduced the effectiveness of the hydroacoustic arrays, had not turned out well, resulting in Kazan’s ensnarement.
“Watch Officer, submerge and proceed at ahead standard.”
55
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
Captain Beverly King entered the operations center at COMSUBFOR headquarters, noting the unusually high density of personnel. Leading the augmented staff was Captain Murray Wilson, who was currently reviewing the Atlantic Fleet’s East Coast ASW barrier stretching from Newfoundland to Puerto Rico. There had been no detections of the Russian submarine that King was aware of, although she wasn’t entirely in the loop. As the Submarine Force’s senior public affairs officer, she dealt with myriad mundane, and sometimes peculiar, issues.
She had stopped by the operations center to evaluate a report received this morning from a trawler captain convinced he had snagged a submarine, demanding compensation for the net he’d been forced to cut loose. Although it was somewhat embarrassing, it did occur on occasion. The thousands of nets dragged by commercial fisherman were silent and undetectable by a submarine’s sonar system, and the only way to avoid a net was to avoid the trawlers.
However, a trawler’s engine sounded similar to the multitude of other merchants and pleasure craft, and while it was common practice to keep surface contacts a minimum distance away to avoid nets they might be dragging, it wasn’t always possible in high-contact-density situations.
A glance at the operations center display told King what she already suspected; the trawler captain’s claim was false. There were no submarines south of Cuba. She queried Captain Wilson, just to be sure.
“Murray,” King said as she extended her hand. “Beverly King, public affairs officer. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
After Wilson returned the greeting, King explained the reason for her visit, then requested confirmation of her assessment.
Wilson didn’t need to check the display. “You’re correct. We have no submarines in the western Atlantic.”
“Thanks,” King replied. She was about to depart when she hesitated, then pursued the matter further. “The thing is, the trawler captain knows what he’s talking about. He was on a trawler seven years ago when Helena snagged its net. He said the situation was exactly the same.” King paused to let Wilson evaluate the new information, then added, “Of course, he could be making it up, hoping to make a few bucks by filing a false claim.”
Wilson pondered the matter, then examined the large monitor on the front wall displaying the ASW barrier in the Atlantic Ocean. Kazan was overdue. If the Russian submarine had traveled at ten knots on her electric drive, she would’ve hit the barrier two days ago. Either she was traveling slower for some reason, or had already slipped through. But if the latter, she was now within launch range, and what was the Russian captain waiting for? Was he approaching closer to the coast, so he could hit targets farther inland?
Or maybe…
Wilson’s eyes moved down to the Cayman Islands.
He turned to the operations center watch officer. “Plot a course from the GIUK Gap — from Pittsburgh’s position starting at the time she ejected the SEPIRB buoy — around Puerto Rico to the Cayman Islands. Use a transit speed of twenty knots and calculate the arrival time just south of the Caymans.”
The watch officer entered the requested parameters and a red line appeared on the display, representing the requested track.
To King, Wilson asked, “When did the submarine snag supposedly occur?”
“Last night, around 10 p.m. local—3 a.m. GMT.”
Wilson examined the display. If Kazan had followed the track on the display at twenty knots, it would have passed by the Cayman Islands last night at 4 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time.
Son of a bitch.
While establishing the ASW barrier, Wilson had assumed Kazan would attack the densely populated East Coast cities, including the nation’s capital, launching as soon as possible. Instead, the Russian submarine captain had done an end around.
It was a brilliant plan if the goal was to strike the broadest area possible rather than a quick strike along the East Coast. From the Gulf of Mexico, Kazan’s Kalibr missiles covered eighty percent of the United States; an arc sweeping from Los Angeles in the west to the Canadian border in the north, to Boston in the east. Wilson assumed the Russian submarine captain was planning for maximum effect, and would likely approach close to shore, increasing the available target set.
Still, before he repositioned ASW assets to the Gulf of Mexico, pulling them from the East Coast barrier, he wanted to be more confident of his conclusion. If Kazan had been snagged in a trawler’s net, it would most certainly have wrapped around the submarine’s screw. The Russian submarine would have surfaced to cut the net free.
Wilson asked King, “Do you have the lat/long of the trawler incident?”
King looked up the information in the incident report.
Wilson turned to the operations officer, relaying the coordinates. “Pull up satellite imagery of the western Atlantic, zoomed in to those coordinates. I want infrared scans at ten-minute intervals starting at 3 a.m. GMT this morning.”