Graves wiped the sweat from his brow and spoke to Kristen, “How’re you feeling?”
“I’m okay, sir.” Kristen replied, a bit tired but well aware that everyone else in the room was equally so. She could hardly complain.
“Do you think you’re up to getting back on a stack and seeing if you might reacquire the second Akula?” Graves asked.
“Aye, sir,” she replied and headed back to sonar.
Chief Miller had lit a cigarette and several other men were smoking as she entered. A thick, acrid cloud hung in the air, and she wrinkled up her nose as soon as she entered.
“Smoking lamp’s out, boys,” Miller said as soon as he saw her, precluding her having to protest. He dropped his own butt to the deck and crushed it out with his boot. “Welcome back, Miss,” he offered.
“Thanks, Senior Chief,” Kristen said as she entered. “Do you think we might leave the hatch open for a few minutes to get some fresh air in here?” she asked in a soft whisper, noticing several men look up from their stations at her.
“Sure,” Miller replied. “Are you up for another spin on the analyzer?”
“Just as long as I can breathe,” she replied as she made her way through the throng jammed into the small space.
Seated at the spectrum analyzer was a 1st class petty officer with slightly graying hair. Miller leaned over and tapped the man’s shoulder to get his attention. The man looked up as Miller unceremoniously jerked a thumb at him, directing him out of the chair. “Give the lady a crack at it, Owens,” he ordered briskly.
Kristen sat down and got right to work. The Alvand class frigate was still cruising back and forth across the Strait providing a visible deterrent to anyone who might want to force their way through the passage. But the Alvand was a ship built for a different time and would be totally outclassed if the shooting started. Kristen could also hear the Kilo class submarine running shallow on her diesel engines which sounded like an old bicycle with a bunch of cans dragging behind it. The Kilo was as good as any diesel electric submarine, but she too was old and noisy when not on her batteries. She wouldn’t cause the Seawolf any grief.
Kristen tuned these two distractions out and resumed searching for the other sounds she knew were out there. The Seawolf was hovering in about three hundred feet of water and pointing back toward the Gulf of Oman, and Kristen hoped to use the Seawolf’s extremely powerful hydrophones built into the massive bow sonar array to help reacquire the other targets. She readjusted her system to her preferred settings, allowing more sounds through the computer filters so she could, for herself, discriminate the useful information from the clutter.
She knew the general direction where the Audacious and the second Akula had been operating and began moving her joystick to slowly and methodically search every bearing for any sound. But she’d barely started when off to her left she heard Greenberg on the broadband stack nearly shout, “Submerged contact! Bearing zero-three-eight. Sounds like a single propeller.”
Kristen turned onto the new bearing and adjusted her controls as others began picking up the sounds.
“Single screw. Definitely a sub,” Goodman offered.
Kristen listened closely, but heard no plant sounds or rushing water indicating a cooling pump. She focused on the blade noise and looked up at Miller. “It’s another Kilo.”
The others began working the contact while she resumed searching for other contacts, and Miller reported the second Kilo submarine, this one submerged, to the control room. The Kilo on its present course would pass dangerously close to the Seawolf, and Brodie increased speed slightly, maneuvering away silently. It was growing increasingly crowded in the narrow channel with too many submarines and not enough sea.
It was just a matter of time before someone made a mistake.
They’d just started moving to get clear of the approaching Kilo when Kristen, while sweeping the area to the front of the Seawolf, picked up a gentle rushing sound, as if water moving through a tube.
“Submerged contact. Bearing three-five-eight. Possible cooling pumps. Probable nuclear submarine,” she reported and began refining her search.
“Con, sonar. Submerged contact bearing three-five-eight, possible submerged nuclear submarine designate contact as Sierra Twelve,” Miller reported.
Kristen recognized the sound; it was faint however, and she nearly lost it in a school of fish swimming through the Strait. “It’s the Audacious, Chief. She’s moving,” Kristen reported and began looking for the Akula in the vicinity of the British submarine.
The Seawolf was still moving slowly, like a ghost cloaked in a deep fog on a dark night. She was invisible, her own plant noises so slight the chances of detection were nearly impossible. Kristen knew Brodie wanted to avoid a fight if possible and was trying to move them away from the Kilo as the unsuspecting Iranian submarine came too close for comfort. But Kristen felt like their painstaking approach and successful launch of the drones would be spoiled as it looked increasingly clear that the nest of Russian and Iranian submarines were awaking to the intruders in their midst.
“Submerged contact,” Greenberg reported anxiously from the broadband stack, “bearing three-four-zero.”
“Jesus,” Miller whispered echoing everyone else’s thoughts.
When they’d initially approached the minefield, they’d detected multiple submarines, which had all been sitting quietly. But while the Seawolf had been facing the minefield and her baffles had been facing the other submarines, something had happened to start the entire group moving. Kristen could almost feel the numerous itchy trigger fingers around them.
“Con, sonar. New sonar contact bearing three-four-zero. Probable submerged submarine. Designate contact as Sierra Fourteen.”
Kristen moved onto the new contact, adjusting her glasses as she stared at the green waterfall before her and listened intently on the bearing. It took her a few seconds to hear it. “She’s the Akula,” Kristen said with a bit of excitement in her voice. “She’s picking up speed and has engaged her propeller. Her plant noise is picking up, too.”
She was beginning to understand what may have occurred to start things moving.
The Akula had been lying in wait and had probably not picked up the Audacious. But the Audacious had been forced to move as the Kilo came too close to her, just as the Kilo was now coming too close to the Seawolf. As the Audacious increased speed, the Akula heard the Brit and was now maneuvering to get another bearing on the British boat they might use to triangulate a firing solution.
Information was now coming fast and furious. The computer took over monitoring the Alvand and the snorkeling Kilo, both of which were so loud they couldn’t have heard a freight train passing by them. Meanwhile, the Seawolf changed course in order to get its own second bearing on the Akula in the event they had to shoot. With the squawk box on, the sound from the control room was constant as the Seawolf moved closer and closer to firing her weapons. Kristen knew the situation was rapidly spinning out of control as the Akula increased speed slightly and changed course again, having managed to get a second bearing on the Audacious.