“Repeat the message and add ‘Response imperative.’ ”
The Ru-ling typed. Jeffrey waited another five minutes. The four UGSTs closed the distance to Carter faster than ever, making fifty knots while she sat still.
This was getting dicey, but Jeffrey realized he needed to pull off another subtle, dangerous sleight of hand to set up the Russian captains for later. “Ru-ling, response?”
“None yet, sir.”
Jeffrey gave them five more minutes; the UGSTs would now be very close to where Carter went quiet and stopped. “That’s it. As far as they’re to know, they’ve gone too far and they’re ruining everything. Captain Bell, make flank speed and cut back and forth in front of Wild Boar and Cheetah, at one thousand feet below their present depth. I want to teach them who’s in charge here, and get them to behave themselves, but I do not want to break the wires to their torpedoes or we might lose Carter.”
Bell acknowledged and issued helm orders. Patel acknowledged and dialed up flank speed. Bell ordered rudder turns and Patel put them into effect. Challenger vibrated and banked steeply into each turn, first to starboard and then to port and then back again. Jeffrey knew Harley would be kicking Carter up to her own flank speed, which slightly exceeded that of the UGSTs. He’d outrun the torpedoes until they ran out of remaining fuel. Meanwhile, Jeffrey anticipated that his own flank speed noise and maneuvers — his angry reminder of Challenger’s tactical and sonar superiority over the Akulas — would mask Carter’s actual signature.
Using their own rebelliousness to outfox them. I hope.
For Jeffrey’s basic deception scheme to keep holding up, and for his gradually gelling final-engagement strategy to have any chance to work, it was vital that the guidance wires to the UGSTs not break, and that the Russian captains from now on did exactly what he said. Neither was guaranteed.
“Ru-ling, make signal to Wild Boar and Cheetah. ‘Have lost contact with target, unable to regain, believe it hovering under ice to evade UGST homing sonars. Reduce your own-ship speed to five knots to retain separation against a German counterambush. Engage gravimeter sensors and steer your weapons to search area near last known location German vessel. And maintain task force discipline or I will personally tell Russian president to reprimand you.’ ”
The chief, as he typed all this in Russian, couldn’t help chuckling at the tart tongue-lashing Jeffrey was giving to the captains of Wild Boar and Cheetah.
Jeffrey told Bell to maintain flank speed, while he kept an eye on the chronometer. If the Russians followed Jeffrey’s orders, the UGSTs would search in vain near one place for an Amethyste reactor compartment that wasn’t there. If they disobeyed, or had a fire-control malfunction, or the wires to one or more of their weapons broke, Harley could survive by outrunning the errant torpedoes — and would end up almost back where he started, as if he’d been an Amethyste, hiding, hovering all along and the Russian warheads had failed to find him.
Except. If a Russian captain’s UGST somehow made, and held, active and passive homing acoustic contact on Carter, with the guidance wire to his weapon still intact so he knew what his weapon and Carter were doing, he’d realize that something was way too fishy. The Amethyste would have seemed to go quiet only temporarily and then started racing around at twice her possible flank speed. The Russian couldn’t dismiss this as just bad sound propagation — not when his UGST held a lock on the target.
Jeffrey began to sweat, despite the chill of the air fans. He told Bell to charge ahead, east, as if getting ready to deliver a coup de grace to the German from below, after she’d been hit by the gravimeter-homing UGSTs. Using UGST engine-noise data from O’Hanlon and Finch, Torelli confirmed that the Russians were doing what they’d been told to with their weapons.
The clock ran down; the UGSTs ran out of fuel and shut down. By now Carter would have reverted to being quiet and slow, so Challenger reduced her speed from flank to twenty-five knots. He told Harley to resume fleeing east, as a German sub once more.
It had been one of the most nerve-wracking half-hours Jeffrey ever spent in undersea combat — and this wasn’t over.
Jeffrey ordered Bell to reverse course and steer toward the Akulas, to keep a better chase formation with them — if he drew too far ahead, he’d be vulnerable to fire from the Amethyste, including nuclear fire, without adequate Russian backup. And to any real German, Challenger identified as who she was, by the noise she’d made, would be a prize of such high value that going nuclear would be justified, even at the risk of self-destruction.
Challenger neared the Akula-IIs. The Ru-ling finally spoke up. “Sir, Wild Boar signals, ‘Misunderstood rules of engagement. Weapons launched in error.’ ”
“Yeah, right,” Meltzer murmured.
“Cheetah signals, ‘Misunderstood actions Wild Boar.’ ”
“Ru-ling, make signal, ‘Task Force Commander expects and insists that rules of engagement now clear.’ ”
“New passive sonar contact on the port wide-aperture array,” O’Hanlon called out. “Tonals match Amethyste-Two class.”
Torelli’s target tracking team used the range and bearing data from Sonar to plot the contact’s position and course. “Captain Harley is accelerating to Amethyste-Two’s flank speed,” Torelli said. “Course is due east.” The tactical plots marked Carter’s new position; one plot showed Carter as friendly, and the other as enemy. She was slightly south of where she’d been at the start of her wide circling turn, and the maneuvers had cut target separation from fifteen miles to twelve, thus seeming to increase task force pressure on the German sub — Jeffrey’s goal.
Both plots showed the Russians, on one as enemy and on the other as friendly. Jeffrey questioned, from the Akula captains’ transparently disobedient behavior, which in the end they would turn out to be. “Ru-ling, make signal to Wild Boar and Cheetah. ‘Contact regained. Resume chase.’ Get the data from Weps and relay it. Then say, ‘Target undamaged. You wasted ammunition and betrayed new UGST capabilities. Obey orders in future.’ ”
Chapter 35
For another day the grueling stern chase continued. From time to time Harley would fake another dash north, and Jeffrey would force him back east with the threat of a two-to-one advantage in torpedo tubes and speed, and a great advantage in crush depth. Jeffrey’s behavior, by closing the separation menacingly if the Germans didn’t turn away fast enough, was supposed to make it clear to the German captain that, at this point — frustrated or egged on by the Akulas’ impetuous conduct — Jeffrey was willing to risk destruction in order to also destroy the Amethyste-II, a double kill acceptable for reasons of higher statecraft. This was consistent with his prior nearly suicidal tactics against real German subs, so if the Akulas had any intel reports from the Axis on Jeffrey’s warfighting style, it would all be believable. If they didn’t have such intel reports, they were finding it out for themselves, and he wanted them to know, to strengthen his psychological domination.
Wild Boar and Cheetah also continued the pursuit, and the combined task force gradually neared the eastern end of the Canada Abyssal Plain.