“It’s not safe now, Captain,” Lebedev said. “Shooting that torpedo, if Hostile One is between us and the ice target, he could interpret that as us shooting at him. And then he’d have cause to shoot at us. Or the blast could destroy him unintentionally. If the American sinks, it should be because we targeted him.”
“Captain Alexeyev,” Sergei Kovalov said, speaking up for the first time since the sonar detection. “If I may be so bold as to make an observation.”
“Go ahead, Captain Kovalov,” Alexeyev said formally.
“It occurs to me,” Kovalov said, “that if we’ve been detected and trailed by a hostile American submarine, our stealth is gone. And evading American knowledge of our mission was the reason to go to the Pacific by way of the Arctic Ocean, yes? And if our secrecy is compromised, we no longer have to go all around North America and South America to get to the Status-6 placement points on the American east coast, right? Which means we can abandon this whole eastward path and just go westward past Great Britain and Iceland into the North Atlantic, their sonar trip wires be damned. It would shorten the mission by months.”
“He makes a good point, Captain,” Lebedev said.
Alexeyev thought for a long moment. “We could still lose him in the sonar blue-out from the nuclear detonation. He might lose contact on us.”
“And we’ll lose contact on him for the same reason, Captain,” Kovalov said. “Once you blow a one megaton hole in the ice, sonar will be useless for hours. We’ll have to wait hours for it to calm down enough to see if there’s a viable path through the ice, if we made a hole big enough.”
“True. Let’s do this for now,” Alexeyev said. “Let’s put on revolutions and keep driving west to establish a maximum straight line path to the ice target. Odds are, Hostile One will come off the bottom and follow us. When we’re at the maximum straight line distance from the ice target or ten miles, whichever comes first, we’ll hover and spin back to the east and prepare to fire the Gigantskiy at the ice wall. We’ll pulse active again and see if we can pick up Hostile One. We’ll attempt to get him to bottom out again. When he does, we’ll drive farther east until he’s behind us. Once we’re fairly certain he’s behind us, we can shoot the Gigantskiy at the ice target, and Hostile One won’t interpret it as an incoming torpedo. It’ll be outbound from both of us.”
“It will work if he behaves the way you think, Captain,” Lebedev said. “Why do you think he’ll do that?”
Alexeyev shrugged. “It’s what I’d do.”
“Master One has started up again,” Albanese reported from the sonar stack. “Increasing revolutions, speeding up.”
Pacino looked at the periscope display. It was at maximum elevation and the optronics could only look up to an eighty-degree angle from horizontal. He rotated the view, but Master One was not visible. He must be directly overhead, Pacino thought.
“Master One is at three zero RPM,” Albanese said. “I hold him at maximum D/E but D/E is decreasing. SNR is fading. I hold Master One at bearing two seven five.”
“Captain, I recommend we come off the bottom and follow him,” Pacino said.
“He could be messing with us,” Quinnivan said. “Seeing if we come back up. Then he spins around and hits us with active again.”
“Signal-to-noise is fading,” Albanese said.
“I hold Master One on the scope,” Pacino said. “He’s bugging out heading west. But my image is fading. We follow him now or lose him, Captain,” Pacino said.
“Officer of the Deck,” Seagraves said. “Take us up and get back in trail of Master One.”
“Pilot,” Pacino commanded, “take us up, forty feet per second positive rate, report depth six five zero feet.”
As Dankleff acknowledged, Pacino looked at the periscope display. He could barely make out the hot spot of the Omega.
“Depth six five zero feet, sir,” Dankleff said.
“Pilot, all ahead two thirds, turns for six, steer course two seven five.”
For ten long minutes the New Jersey pursued the receding contact on the Omega. Finally, Master One was back on the periscope’s display, though still distant.
“Sonar Officer, what’s the path ahead westward look like?” Alexeyev asked.
“I have a clear path ahead,” Palinkova reported.
“Calculated range to the ice target?” Alexeyev asked the Navigator Maksimov at the chart.
“Four point six nautical miles behind us, Captain.”
“Keep going west, Watch Officer,” Alexeyev said to Captain Lieutenant Shvets.
They waited tensely, the range to the ice pressure ridge opening up as they steamed away from it.
“Five nautical miles from ice target, Captain,” Maksimov said.
“Do you think we’re good at this range?” Alexeyev said quietly to Kovalov.
Kovalov shook his head. “The hull might survive, but we’d be in bad shape.”
“At least the explosion will open up a polynya overhead. There’d be open water. We could surface if we had to,” Alexeyev said. “Ping active, Weapons Officer. Let’s see how much room we have ahead.”
The dual blasting active sonar pings sounded.
“I’ve got pressure ridges ahead, Captain,” Sobol said, sounding disappointed.
“Range to the pressure ridges?” Alexeyev was annoyed. Sobol should have reported that automatically.
“Two nautical miles, Captain.”
“Watch Officer, slow to two knots and approach the pressure ridge ahead of us,” Alexeyev said. The room was silent for several minutes as the ice ridge became closer.
“Pressure ridge ahead is at half a nautical mile,” Palinkova finally said.
“Watch Officer, when under-ice sonar has us three hundred meters from the ice wall, stop, hover and spin us back to the east.” Alexeyev looked at Kovalov, who was frowning over the navigation display.
“Boatswain, all stop. Slowing, Captain,” Shvets said. “Boatswain, hover at this depth, take control of your thrusters and twist the ship to the right to heading zero nine zero.”
After a long moment, the boatswain reported the ship hovering at the new heading of due east.
“Range to the ice target, Navigator?” Alexeyev asked.
“Six point nine nautical miles, Captain,” Maksimov reported.
Alexeyev looked at Kovalov and Lebedev. “Almost seven miles. Do you two think this is safe standoff?”
Lebedev took a deep breath. “It’s close, sir. It’s a risk.”
“Captain Kovalov?”
“I don’t like it, Captain,” Kovalov said. “The shock is going to be severe.”
“I guess we’ll find out how well Sevmash Shipbuilding did their job,” Alexeyev said. “Weapons Officer, ping active.”
Back on the bottom for the third time, the USS New Jersey’s control room crew waited tensely for what would happen next.
Albanese spoke up from the sonar stack. “Master One’s hovering and his thrusters are back. He’s spinning. Definite aspect change.”
“What’s your interpretation of the periscope image, OOD?” Seagraves asked Pacino.
“He’s turning to face us again. This time we got to the bottom before he could catch us with a sonar ping.”
“This is turning into a PCO waltz,” Seagraves said to Quinnivan.
“What’s that, Captain?” Quinnivan said.
“I forget, you haven’t attended the U.S. Navy’s Prospective Commanding Officer school. A ‘PCO waltz’ is when two submarines are engaged, both know the other guy is out there, and the simulated battle turns into a chaotic melee. There’s no such thing as a dogfight between submarines — too much information on the opposition’s location, course and speed is unknown, and it changes too fast to get a hit with a torpedo. You shoot a torpedo into that fog of war? Odds are, the weapon will come back to hit you. So, in technical terms, a PCO waltz is a cluster fuck.”