“Can this valve be replaced?” Park asked.
“Captain, not in the prescribed way. The liquid hydrogen is under great pressure, and any unchecked opening of the system will cause a blow-down. The hydrogen will gasify and flood the compartment. The mixture will be explosive and—”
“What will happen if the welded joint bursts under pressure of the ice buildup? Will it not cause a blow-down?”
“Yes, definitely.”
“Can the valve and line be bypassed?”
“Not with the materials and tools we have onboard. And not in the position we are currently in…”
“Hunted by a Chinese boat.” Park ran his hand over the weld and around the pipe like a doctor diagnosing a sick patient’s chance of surviving major surgery. The bulge felt even fatter than it had moments ago. “Can you apply more heat to the valve to melt the ice so we can purge the seat? If we can close the valve and tap into the feed line, we can possibly rig a diverter to the hydrogen burner.”
Kang said, “Captain, I can try…”
Park looked up, distracted by the flashing Captain’s Light that shouted he was needed in the control room.
Park’s attention was back on Kang. “Well?”
“Sir, we have a gas cutting torch, but using it to heat the valve is out of the question, it’s… it’s too dangerous…”
“More dangerous than having the line split and cause a blow-down?”
Kang swallowed hard.
“Do it.”
Park threw down his work gloves and went forward.
The first officer directed Park’s attention to the sonar monitor. “Contact, sir,” he said. “Submerged target. Speed appears to be near zero. Turn count almost inaudible. Sonar heard a transient, perhaps water flow over a hull appendage.”
The Red Shark’s ultra-sensitive spherical bow array, aimed directly at the target, had missed nothing, not even the ruffle of seawater around a hull fitting.
“What is our present speed?”
“Four knots, Captain.”
“Sounding?”
“Twelve fathoms.”
“Stop and secure main propulsion and trim pumps.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Park watched the needle on the pit log at the diving station swing left and come to rest, pegged on zero. He knew they could coast for a while on momentum. But with both sound-mounted trim pumps secured to reduce noise levels, they would not be able to hover. In time the boat would require an ever steeper up-angle to prevent her sinking stern-first into the littoral shallows. Yet Park was willing to gamble that by running ultra-quiet, sonar would positively identify the target and its position, which would then allow for evasive action.
Park waited, his stress building to a climax, like a bomb with a sputtering fuse. He watched the combat system cycle through its target identification programs, various program keys flashing brightly on the monitors like heat lightning.
Park gripped a stanchion and held on as the deck under his feet tilted ever steeper upward. He eyed the silent laser Fathometer display and saw it tick down to ten fathoms: only sixty feet of water separated the Red Shark’s rudder bottom from the seabed.
Something caught his eye: The words KILO 636-CLASS TONAL appeared on the upper sonar monitor. Below it was a side-by-side comparison of the old and new tonals, which Park saw at once were identical.
“Our friend,” Park said, “is back.” He gave the Fathometer a look. Nine fathoms.
Like a mountain climber ascending an icy north face, he hand-over-handed it out of the sonar room to the control room. The first officer, also scrabbling for handholds, followed.
“Rudder hard a-port,” Park commanded. “Ultra-slow start on Permasyn motor; three beats then secure. Maintain current depth. Perhaps we can pinpoint him.”
“Aye, sir,” responded the officer of the watch, who, struggling to hang on, repeated the orders.
A subdued hum and the Red Shark lurched ahead, gained momentum, and leveled out.
Park counted down three beats of ten seconds’ duration and nodded approval when the officer of the watch rang up Full Stop on the propulsor control. Tonals from Park’s start-and-stop, sprint-and-
drift technique, even if detected by the Kilo’s sonar, wouldn’t necessarily give away their position. Park counted on littoral irregularities to partially cover their movements. He gambled, too, that even if the Chinese skipper heard them, he would have a hard time pinning them down.
“Sonar report,” Park commanded, impatient.
“Steady contact, Comrade Captain,” said the sonar officer, leaning into the control room from the sonar room to make his report.
The Red Shark coasted, her deck slowly tilting up, up, up as the planesmen compensated for the sub’s gradual loss of speed. A loose technical manual slid across the top of an electronics cabinet; the first officer grabbed it before it crashed to the deck.
“Sonar report.”
“No change, sir.”
Park nodded approval. “He is still looking for us where he thinks we should be, waiting for us to fall into his arms. Instead we will open out to the east and work around him.”
The Red Shark’s bow continued its steady rise as she lost more way, making footing ever more treacherous, the deck tilting up at an alarming thirty-five-degree angle.
“Officer of the watch, I want six beats, then secure,” Park ordered. “Maintain current depth.” He looked at the first officer and allowed a small smile to soften his hard features. “I think he has lost us.”
45
“Conn, Sonar.”
“Conn, aye,” replied Scott.
“Captain, we have a new contact bearing three-one-zero. Range just a tick under forty thousand yards. No tonal matches, and we only have blade-turn information. Could be a submarine, sir.”
“‘Could be,’ Chief?”
“Can’t say for sure, Captain. You might want to take a look at this baby.”
Scott turned the conn over to Kramer and entered the sonar room.
“That there’s Sierra One, the Kilo,” the chief said. “She ain’t hardly moved in the last half hour, not since we picked her up. It’s this other one, Sierra Two, what’s got me. She’s sprintin’ and driftin’ in a regular six-cycle pattern, each interval between cycles is about ten minutes duration. Pretty sure it’s a sub, but what kind, I don’t know. Want to give a listen, sir?”
Scott took the sonar officer’s seat at the console next to the chief, donned headphones, and heard the tonal pattern the chief had described, even as he watched the upper monitor’s display of what the bow array was hearing.
“I hear it,” Scott said.
“It’s nothing we have archived,” said the sonar officer over Scott’s shoulder, pointing to the weak tone line crawling down the monitor.
Scott heard the cycle start again: a pulse from the target’s seven-bladed screw.
“Definitely a sub,” said Scott.
The chief turned his gaze on Scott. “Maybe a German Type 213?”
“Bet on it. But what’s this Chinese Kilo up to?”
“Maybe he’s as curious as we are,” the sonar officer said.
“Or maybe he found the Red Shark and doesn’t know it,” Scott said, vacating his seat at the console. “No sign from either of them that they hear us, so we’ll take advantage of that as long as we can. We’ll run on up there and see what’s what.”