And aside from being nearly immune to incoming high-explosive fire, the Akula-IIs were very heavily armed by Western standards. They had ten reloadable torpedo tubes forward, plus six more external single-shot tubes that were loaded at a pier. Their torpedo rooms could each hold forty weapons. The Akulas’ captains told Jeffrey via the link that they each carried twenty-five of the UGST torpedoes with new under-ice gravimeter homing sensors. All ten reloadable tubes were configured to fire these weapons. In a melee, the Akula-IIs could achieve an overwhelming rate of fire. Their weak spot was their sonars. Even the Russians admitted they were a fraction as sensitive as the ones on American subs. In the pursuit of the Amethyste, the Akulas would serve as Jeffrey’s arsenal ships.
Jeffrey and Meltzer figured out, fast, that the key to Carter’s survival was convincing the Russians to keep their distance from her in her guise as the German. The reasoning Jeffrey gave Wild Boar and Cheetah, with the digital link working in effect as a three-way chat room, was twofold. If the Amethyste felt too cornered too soon — and considering what her commandos had already done at Srednekolymsk — her captain would likely go nuclear, even near land. If so, wide separation was needed to be able to take adequate countermeasures. Otherwise, even though the Amethyste had only four torpedo tubes and fourteen torpedoes maximum, Jeffrey’s combined task force could suffer serious losses. The flip side was that, because the twenty-kiloton yields on the Russians’ own nukes were so large — U.S. nuclear torpedoes used yields of a single kiloton or less — the Akulas had to stay well back or they’d be severely damaged or sunk by their own exploding fission weapons.
Wild Boar’s and Cheetah’s captains, men seen only as disembodied responses in typed text on the chat, agreed with Jeffrey that, at least for the first stage of the pursuit, they’d all stay about fifteen nautical miles away from the German, half of maximum range for their UGST torpedoes. Plus, an Amethyste’s F 17 Mod 2 torpedoes had a range of just under fifteen miles. Secretly, Jeffrey knew, for Harley’s sake this was comfortably within the reach of the better American acoustic-link system.
The arrangement made even more sense from Jeffrey’s conflicted point of view because the need to keep within Russian acoustic-link range for constant coordination — and yet maintain that adequate separation from the German — precluded a pincer movement to surround the Amethyste using the higher speeds of the three-ship task force. The Akulas and Challenger would have to spread too far apart to form the pincers, losing touch and leaving big holes in their formation that the German could easily slip through. Agreement on this was essential to the specific battle scheme vaguely forming inside Jeffrey’s head. He held his breath. The Russian captains’ replies soon appeared as Cyrillic text on the Ru-ling’s console screen: they both concurred.
Jeffrey had contrived things so the battle would stay as a stern chase, proceeding along at the Amethyste’s flank speed of twenty-five knots, and the Russians would be dependent on Challenger for meaningful target tracking data.
And nothing says I have to be honest when I answer.
Challenger had a maximum speed advantage over an Amethyste of almost thirty knots. Jeffrey would order Bell to put on bursts of speed and make end runs to the north, cutting off the supposed German each time Harley pretended he was trying to escape toward and beyond the pole.
Chapter 34
Jeffrey’s pursuit of the Amethyste with the Russians was relentless. After twenty-four straight hours they’d covered half the distance to where the final reckoning, over the debris of a real Amethyste-II, would take place.
Jeffrey was doing this on purpose. He wanted the Russian captains, their senior officers, and the remainder of their crews exhausted. Each Akula-II had a total of about seventy men, barely half the size of Challenger’s and Carter’s crews. But modern Russian submarine captains did more delegating in battle than their U.S. Navy counterparts. Jeffrey was counting on his own combat-tested, iron constitution to outlast the Russian command teams, gaining a better mental — and tactical — edge. At Bell’s urging, Jeffrey allowed modified watch rotations once the stern chase seemed to have settled into a routine. It was important, Jeffrey knew, for Challenger’s people to eat, sleep, and relax every day, so the ship would be in ideal fighting form. Over the acoustic link, Harley confirmed he was doing the same for his people — but like Jeffrey, he neither wanted nor could afford even a short catnap himself.
Challenger’s battle-stations crew roster had recently rotated on watch again.
Then Jeffrey’s plan to wear down the Russians backfired.
“Hydrophone effects,” Chief O’Hanlon shouted from his sonar console. “Torpedo in the water, Russian UGST!” He gave the range and bearing. It had been fired by Wild Boar.
“Second torpedo in the water,” O’Hanlon reported. “Also Russian UGST!” This one had been fired by Cheetah.
In moments, each Akula-II fired a second torpedo.
“Target for all four torpedoes is Carter,” Torelli said. Jeffrey eyed the new torpedo icons on the tactical plots. They quickly drew ahead, chewing up the range to the Amethyste-Carter.
Shit. I told them not to open fire without my permission.
“Ru-ling, how did they coordinate without us hearing the conversation?”
“I think there was no conversation, sir.”
Bell glanced at Jeffrey. “Wild Boar must’ve gotten trigger-happy, and Cheetah used the excuse to join in.”
“Weps,” Jeffrey ordered, “confirm speed of the UGSTs.”
“They’re all making fifty knots, Commodore. That’s their maximum attack speed.”
“Commodore,” Sessions reported, “Carter signals, ‘Torpedoes in water detected by echoes off bummocks. Torpedoes closing my ship. What are your instructions?’ ”
Jeffrey stared at the plots. They seemed to dance around, and fade in and out of focus. He’d been awake for a lot more than twenty-four hours. His plan to exhaust the Russians — while pretending they all were ganging up to exhaust the Germans — was having an effect on his own ability to think straight. He hadn’t made proper allowance for how much his delicate negotiations and bluffs in Siberia drained him.
“Sir,” Sessions stated, “Carter sends, ‘Repeat, what are your instructions?’ ”
“Ru-ling, make signal to Wild Boar and Cheetah. ‘Why have you opened fire without my prior order? By word of your own commander in chief, you are under my command.’ ”
The chief typed on his keyboard.
“Commodore,” Sessions interrupted, “Carter sends, ‘Repeat, inbound torpedoes closing on me. Will impact before their maximum range if I maintain present course and speed.’ ”
“Okay,” Jeffrey said. “Okay.” He had an idea. “Make signal to Carter, ‘Go silent and go to all stop. When you hear me making flank speed, make actual flank speed as Carter in wide circle, return to starting location after twenty minutes circling.’ ”
Harley signaled he understood. Jeffrey waited five minutes.
“Ru-ling, what reply from Wild Boar and Cheetah?”
“Nothing yet, sir.”