As the display lit up, I could see the bottom was dropping away. "Right full rudder, I ordered to clear our baffles. "Check the baffles, Sonar."
As the boat swung, Sonar reported nothing. Apparently the warship had turned the corner for home. "Rudder amidships. Make your depth sixty feet."
I raised the scope and checked the landscape as we leveled at sixty feet. "There's a glow in the sky — mark this bearing," I said as I saw an eerie glow low on the horizon.
"Two-six-five," Parrish reported. He went back to his chart table. "I think that's the Alaid Volcano on Atlasova."
"That's a pretty healthy glow," I said as I handed the scope to the Skipper so he could take a look. "How far is it?"
"The base is about fifty-five miles away, but it's over a mile high, so you should be able to see the glow if it's bright enough."
"Sounds like it," the Skipper said as he made a full sweep.
And that was it for the night. We turned toward the west for a bit to gain a bit of clearance around the tip of Kamchatka, and then set a course just west of north, paralleling the western Kamchatka coast. We moved slow and easy, because the Skipper wanted to start looking for tell-tale coastal signs of a marine cable at dawn, and he didn't want to get too far north before commencing our search.
CHAPTER TWELVE
As dawn climbed up the eastern slopes of the Kamchatka central ridge, I approached the chart table in Control where the boat's Navigator, Lieutenant Commander Larry Jackson, and the Skipper were poring over the annotated Admiralty chart of the Sea of Okhotsk we had received from NSA — the National Security Agency. Each corner was prominently stamped in red: TOP SECRET — SPECIAL PROJECTS. A couple of temporary curtains shielded the chart table from curious eyes, and draped over the table edge was an opaque cover sheet that could be flipped over the chart when it wasn't in use.
Our track during the night traced back to the strait we had entered on my watch several hours earlier. For the last two hours we had been angling toward the coastline. I could see that the bottom was shallowing. The Skipper wanted to remain outside the three-mile limit — just in case. We were there, three miles from the beach, three miles off the small community of Ozernovskii. The sidescan was running. It showed the bottom about 300 feet beneath us. We were at 100 feet.
The Skipper had the Conn, while leaving the Deck in Weaps' capable hands — Josh Friedman (Weapons Officer).
"Exactly what are we looking for, Skipper?" I asked, leaning over the chart with them.
The Skipper grinned at me. "We're looking for a sign in Russian that is the equivalent of the signs you see all over Chesapeake Bay that say, "Don't anchor here! Underwater cable!" The Skipper was from Tidewater, Virginia, and knew the bay like the back of his hand. "The only problem is, in the morning we're looking east, and the sun can glint off our optics, giving us away to any observer. Nothing high-tech about it," he said with a smile, and stepped into the Conn.
"Give me a heading, Nav," the Skipper asked.
"Three-five-zero, Conn."
"Contacts, Sonar?"
"We're clean, Conn."
"Make your depth sixty-five feet." The Skipper didn't want any more scope sticking out of the water than necessary.
"Mark your depth"
"Seven-five feet — rising slowly."
"Easy, Diving Officer, easy. Up scope." As the scope came up, the Skipper commenced a full sweep.
"Seventy… sixty-nine… sixty-eight…"
"Easy…"
"Sixty-five feet and holding."
"Sun's still below the peaks. One-foot waves. Bring her up a foot."
"Sixty-four feet, Sir."
"OK — hold that. Go down if you have to, but not above sixty-four." The Skipper made another sweep. "Horizon clear." Then he concentrated on the shore off the boat's starboard side, sweeping slowly from stern to bow. Then he started back. Suddenly he flipped up the handles. "Down scope!" He stepped back from the scope as it lowered into the well. "Take her down to a hundred feet," he ordered, and added, "Sun's up."
"Batman to Control," the Skipper ordered on the 1MC.
"Yes Sir." Lonie arrived in Control slightly winded.
"How quickly can you launch the Fish?"
" 'Bout fifteen minutes, Sir."
"OK — prepare the Fish, and let me know when you're ready."
The Skipper and Nav hunched together over the chart table. The Skipper was moving his finger parallel to the coast for several miles, then back. "Five knots," the Skipper said. Nav picked up his pencil and parallel rule and laid out a series of courses. Twenty minutes later Lonie notified Control that they were ready to launch the Fish.
"Commence Fish ops," the Skipper announced on the 1MC. "Sonar, secure the sidescan." The Halibut's sidescanning sonar would interfere with the higher definition, more accurate sidescan on the Fish.
As the Fish winched out from the reel in the Aquarium lower lock, an image began to appear on the monitor. We were looking for a straight line that crossed our path at right angles. The Fish also contained a video camera and a high-speed film camera, but there was no need to use either of these until we knew we had something to look at.
We sailed several miles north, and then made a slow turn so the Fish could track behind us, then moved a mile further out, and headed back south. About noon, as I was coming on watch, the Skipper ordered the sub to periscope depth again to check the position of the sun.
"We're good to go," he announced, and turned the Conn over to me. I had already assumed the Deck from Josh.
"Make your depth one-hundred-fifty feet," I ordered. As we settled at depth and while the Fish was still reeling back onboard, I said to Gunty, who now had the Nav Watch, "Take me back to where we left off this morning, Nav." As soon as the Fish was aboard, I pointed the sub in the right direction, cranked on a few extra turns, and headed for the point offshore from Ozernovskiy that we had abandoned when the sun came up. I activated the sidescan as a precaution, since we really didn't have good bathymetric information on this area.
As we approached, I checked the contacts with Sonar, and then ordered, "Make your depth sixty-five feet." Since I didn't know the surface conditions, I wanted the scope as low as possible. I swept around as we came up, broke the surface, and saw nothing. I set a course parallel to the coastline and commenced a careful scan of the area from the water to the back of the beach. There was virtually nothing to see. The beach was bare, even close to Ozernovskii. The plant life beyond the rocky beach was mostly a scrappy tundra bush not unlike sage interspersed with short, spiky green grass. It was a lot greener than I had expected.
But signs announcing an underwater cable… nada… zippo… nothing.
By the end of my watch we had moved some twenty miles up the coast, and seen nothing. We passed the mouth of a small river, but no boats, no people, no animals, no nothing…
I got relieved from watch, decided to have some well-deserved shut-eye, and the next thing I know it was dinner time, a movie in the Wardroom, and then back on watch again. I had gotten into a routine that kept me either in Control, in the Wardroom, in the Dive Locker, or in my rack, not necessarily in that order. During afternoon hours, the Skipper let some of the senior crew members take turns on the scope. No harm done, and maybe one of them would be the hero who spotted the telltale sign.
After dark we towed the Fish, back and forth… back and forth… back and forth…
We kept up this routine for several days, and were making pretty good progress up the coast, especially since the weather had turned, and the skies were cloudy. This meant we could start scanning the beach at daybreak without fear of the sun reflecting off the periscope lens, and could continue all day. By the end of daylight on day five we were 500 miles up the coast as I took over the watch from Josh.