“No tonals, Captain.”
“Focus your narrowband search in the westward cone,” Alexeyev said.
“Weapons Officer, line up your transient module,” Lebedev said, standing to Alexeyev’s right.
“Understood, Madam First, and the transient module is engaged, also narrow cone at bearing two seven zero.”
“Weapons Officer, send the contact bearing and range to the navigation plot and battlecontrol. Navigator,” Lebedev said, glancing at Navigator Maksimov. “Plot the contact on your nav plot and show our past course and the target ice position.”
“I’ve got transients,” Sobol reported. “Sounds like his hull is compressing. He must be going deep. Hull pops and water noise, maybe flooding a tank. I have a thump, Captain. Water noise stopped, hull popping is stopped. He may have hit the bottom.”
“Depth here?” Lebedev asked.
“Shallow. Two hundred fifteen meters, Madam First,” Maksimov said.
“He’s got to be hiding on the bottom,” Alexeyev said to Lebedev. Alexeyev glanced over Lebedev’s shoulder at Kovalov, who had crossed his arms over his chest, frowning deeply. “How long do you think he’s been following us?” he asked.
“He had to have picked us up as we left Zapadnaya Litsa,” Lebedev said quietly. “No way he’s just randomly patrolling the Arctic Ocean just in case he finds a Russian submarine.”
“Any chance it’s one of our own? Maybe Zhigunov sent a Yasen-M sub to escort us out?” Alexeyev tapped his wedding ring on the back of Sobol’s seat.
“And make sure we perform the mission?” Lebedev seemed deep in thought. “There’s no way to tell without narrowband contact on him. Or until he transmits active. Or we hear a torpedo sonar that allows us to classify him.”
“If he were Russian, after hearing that sonar ping, he’d reply on Bolshoi-Feniks and identify himself,” Alexeyev said. “Not sneak to the bottom to hide.”
“Sonar Officer, you have any contact on Bolshoi-Feniks?” Lebedev asked Palinkova. The Bolshoi unit functioned as an underwater communication device between them and other Russian submarines. It transmitted pulses that would resemble the sound version of a bar code, unable to be interpreted by a foreign sub.
“No contact on Bolshoi-Feniks, sir,” Palinkova reported.
“So, here’s what we know,” Alexeyev said to Lebedev and Kovalov. “He’s under ice. That means he’s nuclear powered. So, American or British or French. Or Russian, but without contact on Bolshoi, and with him evading us, I suggest we drop the idea he’s Russian. I think we can safely rule out the Red Chinese. And the Indians.”
“I think the odds favor this sub being an American, Captain,” Lebedev said. “They have many more nuclear attack subs than the British or French. Plus, unlike the British or French, they have a stake in keeping an eye on this mission. What is their expression? Yes, they would say they have a dog in this fight. Plus, he’s so ghostly quiet, we didn’t detect him until we pinged at him. He’s state-of-the-art, late flight. I think it’s reasonable to assume this is an American sub. Virginia-class.”
“I agree,” Alexeyev said, his mind drifting back to the last time he had faced an American Virginia-class. That episode had ended very badly, he thought. He forced the memory from his mind and looked at the central command posts’ watchstanders. “Attention in central command. Designate this contact as ‘Hostile One.’ Now, Madam First, what do you suggest we do about this?” Alexeyev stared at the sonar plot.
Lebedev bit her lip and glanced at the active display, the contact still lit from the returned sonar ping. “We won’t see him on active sonar with him on the bottom, Captain. We have his position charted. So one option is to keep going with the plan to open up the ice with a Gigantskiy. The other option, Captain,” she paused and looked into Alexeyev’s eyes, “is to use the Gigantskiy in command detonate mode and shoot him.”
Senior Chief Sonarman Albanese dropped his headphones to the deck and clamped his hands over his ears, muttering, “Oh fuck.” He looked up at Seagraves. “I’m okay, sir, just got my bell rung by Master One’s first sonar ping.”
Pacino looked at Seagraves. “He’s lit us up with active,” he said. “It’s a fair bet he knows we’re out here.”
“Depth seven hundred,” Dankleff called.
“Ease your depth rate to negative three,” Pacino replied.
“Negative three, aye.”
“Coordinator, Navigator, recommendations?” Seagraves said.
Quinnivan shook his head. “We’re awfully close to him, Captain. We might be inside minimum range. If his sonar is like ours, it will screen out anything closer than a few hundred yards to avoid near field reverberations.” An active pulse could actually boil water at the sonar dome, and the rising bubbles could interfere with interpreting an active signal, and even if there were no bubbles, the near-field effect of the impurities in the water close to the transmitting sonar would make interpreting a close contact unlikely. “He might not have seen us.”
The hull settled on the bottom with a lurch, the deck inclining slowly to a slight starboard list.
“Bottomed out, OOD,” Dankleff said. “Depth seven one five feet.”
“I say we play possum and just hide here on the bottom,” Lewinsky said. “If he snapped us up, he’ll hit us with active again.”
“Or shoot at us,” Quinnivan said.
“No,” Seagraves said. “No way he has rules of engagement to fire on a trailing submarine. And if he transmits active again, we’re invisible. He won’t make us out down here. He can’t distinguish us from a bounce off the bottom.”
“He’s on a war mission, Captain,” Quinnivan said. “Based on a good sonar detect, he wouldn’t have to hear us on active again. He could just shoot with a command detonate at our position. If he used a Gigantskiy torpedo, a one megaton blast wouldn’t have to be accurate. We should spin up two torpedoes in countermeasure mode and open outer doors. And spin up two in offensive mode.”
“Opening a muzzle door — if he hears that — is like drawing down on him,” Seagraves said, looking down at the deck, his chin in his hand. “That might justify him shooting at us. Let’s not provoke him.”
“Can we at least spin up the torpedoes?” Quinnivan asked.
Seagraves nodded. “Spin up Mark 48 ADCAPs in countermeasure mode in tubes three and four and flood down and equalize. Spin up Mark 48 ADCAPs in offense mode in tubes one and two, and flood them down and equalize.”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t pick up transients from us doing that,” Pacino said. “He’s still hovering in place, barely four or five hundred yards out. It’s been a couple of minutes since he pinged.”
“Recommend firing point procedures,” Quinnivan said. “Just in case.”
“Wait on that, XO.” Seagraves shook his head. “If he decided to launch a Magnum torpedo — I can’t bring myself to call it a ‘Gigantskiy’—he’d have to clear datum by miles before firing. Let’s just stand pat and wait here on the bottom. Everybody just calm down. No need to hit the panic switch. Let’s just hold our breath and see what he does.”
Lewinsky looked at Seagraves. “We could go to absolute sound quieting, Captain. We could scram the reactor.”
“Scramming the fookin’ reactor? Under ice? Have you lost your mind, Nav?” Quinnivan said, his eyebrows raised.
Seagraves shook his head, deep in thought. “What is he doing?” he asked, more to himself than to his officers.
“No further contact on Hostile One, Captain,” Sobol said to Alexeyev.
“What now, Captain?” Lebedev asked. “Are we still going to target the ice with a Gigantskiy?”
Alexeyev shrugged. “We pretty much have to. We got the order from Northern Fleet.”