But this particular attack sub wasn’t running silent, deep and deadly under pack ice at the very bottom of the world so that it could fire a surgically accurate cruise missile at an unsuspecting target. The Barracuda was tasked with a different mission altogether as it slipped silently through the dark waters below the arctic ice shelf, much to the annoyance of the captain, Frank Jameson, who was used to commanding a sub armed to the teeth with ADCAP Torpedoes and Tomahawk missiles.
Looking to the starboard side of the Command Center, he surveyed the motley crew of geeks who occupied what was once the most mission critical station on the boat — Combat Systems. Not only had the Barracuda been stripped of its vertical launch tubes and torpedo tubes to make way for a hoard of scientific equipment, even the weapon system consoles had been virtually torn out by the roots to make way for the geek squad and their all-important research computers. It wasn’t anticipated that they would engage an enemy on what was, for all intents and purposes, a peaceful scientific mission. The Antarctic was also subject to the 1961 Antarctic Treaty banning all military activity on (and under) the continent. Only Sonar Systems on the port side of the Command Center remained intact with its wrap around monitors scrolling a continuous display of data fed from the hundreds of highly sensitive hydrophones mounted on the subs bow and fed through some of the most advanced computing algorithms available.
“We are in position Dr. Anderson. Let me know when you’re ready to deploy the AUV.” Jameson spoke crisply and without making eye contact, his attention fixed on the bank of monitors at all times. The Barracuda was no longer a silent hunter of the deep but a taxi service for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle or AUV while his small crew played nursemaid to a high school science experiment.
Leah Anderson barely heard the captain. She was too intent visualizing herself being entombed in a steel tube, frozen for eternity below fifty feet of pack ice. It almost felt as if the grey steel bulkheads and low ceiling, covered in conduit and pipe, was closing in on her. With each jolt from the swirling currents she cringed and waited for the near freezing water to start gushing in. She wasn’t sure what would kill her first, the 30 degree water or drowning. She preferred the former, hoping it would be quicker and far less traumatic. Her large steel-blue eyes darted around the sub interior looking for the first signs of leakage but found instead the piercing gaze of the young captain.
Leah still couldn’t get her head around him looking way too young to be commanding a nuclear submarine. Only the hint of gray at his temples, against the otherwise natural darkness of his hair gave any clue to his age. With his perfect white teeth and dimples in all the right places Frank Jameson looked like he’d be more at home at a Tommy Hilfiger photo shoot than the harsh, utilitarian environment of a warship. But his mood and demeanor certainly matched the cold, grey interior of what had previously been one of the U.S. Navy’s prize attack subs.
“Relax Dr. Anderson. Geothermal currents from the subglacial volcanoes. Nothing more. Well, at least I hope so.” A telltale grin tugged at the corners of his mouth, as if he knew what she was thinking. “We’re not quite at hull crush depth… yet.” He broke into a full smile after returning to his instrument screens. There was no margin for error this deep. If they collided with a submerged ice island, the pack ice was too thick for them to surface. Rescue simply wasn’t an option.
“Hull crush depth? Do I even want to know what that is?” She’d given up asking him not to call her Doctor.
“Don’t listen to him, ma’am, we’ve still got another twelve hundred feet to go before we reach our ‘never exceed’ depth. Crush depth is even deeper than that.” The Executive Officer or XO, Peter Durand tried to reassure her but from the furrowing of her brow, he doubted he was having much success. A last minute addition to the crew when Jameson’s regular XO became ill, Durand was new to both the captain’s sense of humor and dealing with civilians on board a navy boat.
He threw Leah a reassuring smile. Then again, he’d been doing that a lot recently and his interest in the attractive young doctor had not gone unnoticed. A heat began to rise in Leah’s cheeks.
Juan Alvarez, her software engineer and Dave Sutton, the AUV’s robotics and sonar tech both smiled at her, making her feel like she was back in high school again. Grow up, she mouthed at the smirking pair as she pulled her shoulder length blonde hair back into a ponytail and twirled and elastic to hold it in place. It was time to go to work.
She responded to the captain. “I’m ready to start the deployment procedure for the AUV now, thank you captain. That is, if my team is actually ready to do some work, for a change.” She stared down hard at the pair of them and at once felt a twinge of guilt. They’d both worked tirelessly on the project and had stuck by her for the past three years. Even when funding had dried up, they continued working as hard as if they were still drawing a pay check. She felt they deserved a little slack.
“All systems are in the green and good to go, Doctor Anderson,” Juan reported, adding emphasis to her title for a little payback. Juan knew how much she hated people drawing attention to her academic credentials.
“Sonar has completed diagnostics and is ready to fire some pulses, Leah,” Dave concurred. Leah had given the lanky postgrad student a once in a lifetime opportunity to work on what could be a career making project, when he had virtually no field experience to speak of and he treated her accordingly. His spiky blond hair gave him a look more like a freshman than a graduate with years of technical training in sonar and robotics.
The Barracuda’s silent propulsion together with its unique sonar absorbing outer hull renders it all but invisible to both active and passive sonar and ten times more sensitive when detecting other submarines. Dubbed the Silent Assassin, the Barracuda showcased the very latest in submarine stealth technology, making it a perfect weapon against both sea and land based targets. Those same attributes also made it the perfect research vessel to host the Antarctic Ice Shelf Profiling Survey (AISPS) team, a U.S. navy funded oceanographic research team tasked with measuring and mapping the thickness of the Antarctic sea ice. The purpose of the survey was to provide a baseline from which to assess the future effects on the ice sheet and Antarctic glaciers as a result of both climate change and subglacial volcanic activity. It was one of the most extensive, and expensive, studies of its type ever conducted in the Antarctic.
The U.S. Navy was keen to be the first nation to map the entire region below the polar ice cap, regardless of the expense. During the Cold War, they’d learned first-hand how easy it was for the Russians to park a sub with nuclear missile capability undetected and within striking range of U.S. cities once they’d mapped the channels beneath the Arctic ice. The U.S. military were determined to be the first to map the previously unexplored sub ice oceanography of the planet’s South most polar ice cap.
Civilian oceanographer, Leah Anderson was the team leader of the small but dedicated group who had first proposed using an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle or AUV to fire sonar pings from below to survey the ice shelf, using military grade high frequency sonar originally designed to hunt enemy submarines. The anechoic or sonar absorbent skin covering the Barracuda’s hull prevented the sub, which was the length of a football field, echoing and distorting the pings fired from the small unmanned submersible.