Castillo took a moment to absorb that — but only a moment. He turned to find Green standing right behind him. “Officer of the Deck,” he snapped. “Bring us to periscope depth. Inform Radio we have flash message traffic for the national command authority. And sound battlestations.”
“Periscope depth, aye aye, Captain,” Green repeated smartly and then he was pushing back into Control.
Castillo paused for a second before following him, watching the hash the explosion had made of the Petty Officer Pham’s waterfall display, the bright emerald light coloring the faces of the boys in Sonar a pale, unnatural green.
He had just lost the chance to write the book on the new Typhoon.
He’d have to run up on the Victor and the boomer would hear his flank bell, hear it and fade away into the ocean like a ghost. But Castillo didn’t have any choice. He didn’t like the Russians, didn’t trust the Russians. But a sinking submarine—
(My dear God!)
That was a nightmare.
Silence reigned in Main Control, but this silence was different from the one Castillo remembered from their hunt of the Japanese destroyer. That had been a taut silence born of tactical necessity, the ship control team leaning forward in their chairs, muscles tight, eyes glued to their gages and displays, minds racing furiously as they stalked Kirishima like a mountain lion stalks a deer.
This silence was entirely different. It was a nervous, jittery silence, grating an uncomfortable. It stank like sweat. It tasted foul and metallic. It was the kind of silence that settled over the family of a father who’d had a heart attack as they sat or paced in a hospital lobby, waiting to know.
As a submariner, silence had always been Castillo’s friend.
But this silence he hated.
He leaned over the chart table, studying the Russian coast, eyes locked on the contour that separated the pale blue of the continental shelf from the royal blue of the abyssal depths. They’d had a pretty good fix on Vic-18 when the casualty had sent her to the bottom, but a sinking submarine did not fall like a stone. The hull breach would have flooded at least one compartment to sea, but if her crew had managed to close her watertight hatches—
(Please God, please.)
— then the rest of her spaces would still be filled with buoyant air, which meant her fore-and-aft trim had gone straight to hell. The submarine would have gone down unbalanced. No, she hadn’t gone down like a stone. Daniil Moskovskiy would have fluttered down like an autumn leaf.
No telling where she ended up.
If she had come down on the continental shelf, there was a chance, a chance that survivors could be rescued. But if she’d plunged into the abyssal dark—
Castillo shook his head.
“Officer of the Deck,” he said softly, “time to station?”
“Seven minutes, Captain,” Glazer answered in the same low voice.
The math was brutal — and undeniable. Vic-18 had been sixty thousand yards out when she’d gone down. Castillo had a flank bell on, his submarine running flat out at 32 knots submerged. That meant 55.6 minutes to arrive at the posit where the Russian went down. An hour. It was like watching someone get hit by a car and having to wait an hour to help.
In his left hand he held a crumpled strip of paper which was stupid because he’d already read it so many times that he had it memorized. But for some reason he just couldn’t bring himself to put it down. It was a response from CINCPACFLT and it included in the disbo list both the chief of naval operations and the president. Castillo took it out and read it again.
Z 180916OCT12
FROM: CINCPACFLT PEARL HARBOR HI
TO: USS PASADENA
CC: NCA WASHINGTON DC
CNO WASHINGTON DC
COMSEVENTHFLT
COMSUBPAC PEARL HARBOR HI
COMSUBGRU SEVEN
COMSUBRON SEVEN
TOP SECRET//N03130//
SUBJ: RUSSIAN SUBMARINE DOWN
1. USS PASADENA DETACHED FROM NORMAL DUTIES TO CONDUCT SEARCH AND RESCUE (SAR) OF CREW OF RUSSIAN VICTOR-CLASS SUBMARINE DANIIL MOSKOVSKIY.
2. JMSDF RESCUE SHIP JDS CHIHAYA (ASR-403) EN ROUTE FROM KURE AT BEST SPEED. ETA 0300Z 19 OCTOBER. CHIHAYA WILL ASSUME ON-SCENE COMMAND OF SAROP UPON ARRIVAL. PASADENA WILL PROVIDE ALL REASONABLE SUPPORT.
3. PASADENA WILL DEFER TO RUSSIAN FEDERATION FORCES IN CONDUCT OF SAROP AND WILL NOT RPT NOT ENTER RUSSIAN TERRITORIAL WATERS WITHOUT EXPLICIT PERMISSION FROM RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES.
GOOD LUCK, PASADENA, AND GODSPEED. ADM HAROLD JOHNSTON SENDS
BT
Castillo’s orders, which he read as: Do all you can to rescue the Russian sailors but do NOT cause an international incident, were exactly what he had expected when he’d reported the loss of Vic-18. Really, what else could the chain of command say?
But he couldn’t help but worry about that third paragraph.
He had to “defer” to the Russians in the conduct of the SAR operation. When the Oscar-class Kursk had gone down in the Barents Sea in 2000, both the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy had immediately offered use of their DSRV’s to rescue the trapped sailors. For four critical days the Russians dithered, Ivan’s pride preventing him from accepting the offered assistance. On day five, the Russians finally accepted the aid of the Brits and the Norwegians.
But by then it was already too late.
One hundred eighteen men had died aboard Kursk.
“On station, Captain,” Glazer reported. “Recommend yankee search.”
Castillo thought about that for a moment. Yankee search was shorthand for the use of active sonar. U.S. submarines normally used passive sonar to listen to the sea and carefully tease out the sounds of their opponents. If submarine warfare was like a gunfight in a pitch black room, using active sonar was like turning on a flashlight. It would help you see — but it would help your enemy see even better.
In this case, tactical considerations were secondary — but Castillo didn’t think a yankee search would be much help. They were trying to find a sub on the sea floor — and this patch of ocean covered a rocky, irregular surface. Even if he went active, there was a good chance that bottom scatter would hide Vic-18.
And there was something else to consider.
“Quartermaster, are we in international waters?”
“Yessir,” said QM3(SS) Williams. “Based on dead reckoning from our last fix, I hold us six hundred yards outside the line.”
Six hundred yards. Castillo turned to look at his QM.
The petty officer looked back at him placidly.
Estimating position based on dead reckoning added error — especially since his submarine had just come off a high speed run.
“All right,” he said. “Once we localize Vic-18, we’ll come to pee dee. Quartermaster, I want a satellite fix right away.”
“Yessir,” said Williams.
Castillo turned to Glazer. “One ping only,” he said. “Tell Sonar, full power.”
“Aye aye, sir,” said Glazer. The OOD pulled a sound-powered phone off the bulkhead, adjusted the selector, and gave the crank a quarter-turn, producing a little whoop. “One ping, full power,” he said into the mouthpiece.
There was a moment’s pause and then a high-pitched tone echoed through Pasadena’s hull. Castillo’s people looked around at the eerie noise. No submariner liked the sound of active sonar.