Alex waited for him to respond to what she’d said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Message for you, Captain Scott.” Botkin had a decrypted printout.
After Scott read the message, he announced to Alex and Yuri Abakov, who had joined them in the CCP,
“It’s from Admiral Grishkov in Severomorsk. He says that all the SS-N-21 cruise missiles and nuclear torpedo war heads have been accounted for. He states categorically that there are none aboard the K-363.”
Alex said, “Then that changes everything.”
11
“The bastards have deployed their towed sonar arrays. Listen to them.”
Litvanov snapped on a speaker. The K-363’s exceptionally sensitive MGK-503 sonar had captured not only the kish-kish-kish-kish of props but the overlaying and sibilant shhh-shhh-shhh of the towed body receptor.
“It’s at the end of a cable attached to a crane and hydraulic winch mounted on the frigate’s fantail. Very complicated.”
“Can they hear us?” Zakayev asked.
“Depends. Those arrays aren’t affected by noise from the towing ship, and they have long detection ranges. But the array flexes as it’s towed through the water and can give false contacts.” Litvanov snapped off the speaker. A tomblike silence returned to the CCP. “Also, it’s very hard to locate a quiet-running submarine in littoral waters: too many bottom anomalies and background noises to sort out.”
Litvanov studied the track of the two Norwegian frigates as it developed and was marked by Veroshilov in grease pencil on the chart overlay. The frigates had cleared the tip of Lofoten and turned northeast.
“Sonar, report,” Litvanov ordered.
“Contacts bearing one-one-zero.”
“Base course?”
A hesitation, then: “Zero-five-two, Kapitan.”
“Steer two-two-zero,” Litvanov ordered.
The K-363 turned slowly right onto an approximate reciprocal of the course steered by the two frigates.
“Fire Control, can you estimate their separation?”
“Yes, Kapitan…approximately six thousand meters, staggered forty-five.”
“Starpom, sounding?”
Veroshilov sweated heavily. “Chart soundings only, Kapitan….”
“I know that, damnit.”
“Thirty-six meters and shelving.”
Litvanov spoke to Zakayev. “The Norwegians are steaming in a forty-five-degree formation, the seaward frigate out ahead. I think perhaps they are chasing ghosts, not us. If we ease on by them and they don’t react, we’re clear.”
“We are in very shallow water, eh?” Zakayev said.
“Yes. Our charts are not up to date and it’s risky to drive in so close to the beach, but that’s what will make it hard for them to find us.”
“And if we run aground?” Zakayev said.
Litvanov pretended that he didn’t hear him.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Jack Webster, at the Pentagon, and ComSubLant Carter Ellsworth, in Norfolk, appeared on the video monitor’s split screen.
Paul Friedman said, “Morning, gentlemen.” Then: “Admiral, Webster, care to comment on the latest Russian communiqué?”
“We dodged a bullet. The Russians too. That Akula up in the Barents Sea is essentially toothless. Sure, she’s armed with torpedoes, but they can’t hurt us. Now it’s up to Russian NorFleet to find her and decide what they want to do.”
“Admiral Ellsworth?” said Friedman.
“I agree: There’s nothing Litvanov and the terrorists can do. Maybe threaten a few merchant vessels, give the Russians a good workout, but that’s about all. I really don’t see what they hope to accomplish.
As Jack said, they’re toothless.”
“Admiral Webster, you have no doubts that the cruise missiles are all accounted for?” Radford asked.
“Yes, sir, I’m satisfied that they are. I spoke to Grishkov — Carter and I both did — and he was totally forthcoming about the storage and securing of their SSN-21s, and nuke warheads for their torpedoes.”
Ellsworth said, “Grishkov’s report on their missile inventories included the individual weapon serial numbers and chain-of-custody documents.”
“Their record-keeping isn’t as sophisticated as ours,” Webster said, “but there’s no reason to doubt them. After all, they’ve got as much at stake in this as we do.”
Radford said, “Jack, what’s the current Russian deployment look like?”
The monitor screen went to blue, then to a full-color large-scale trapezoidal view of the northern Atlantic region, the Barents Sea, and most of eastern Europe. Red deltas representing Russian ASW forces were scattered like confetti in the Barents Sea.
“As you can see, General, Russian ASW forces are deploying from northern bases into the Barents Sea.
The graphic changed to an enlargement, the red deltas organized in a drooping semicircle from Spits bergen to Novaya Zemlya.
“The Russians are trying to put a noose around the K-363 and pull it tight,” Webster said. “They’re not deployed as efficiently as they could be, but I think they stand a better than even chance of finding that sub. Mind, it’ll be like cornering an animal who doesn’t want to be captured, so don’t be surprised if Litvanov strikes first. If he does, the Russians will have a good idea where he is and then can go to work on him.”
“What about Scott?” Friedman said. “What role can he play now that the immediate threat to the summit has been eliminated?”
“Nothing’s changed, Mr. Friedman,” said Ellsworth. “The Russians still need all the help they can get.
Scott is their backstop if the K-363 tries to break out of the Barents Sea — assuming he doesn’t find her first.”
“But now that the threat has diminished, won’t the Russians decide to recall Scott in the K-480? They may not want him looking over their shoulder, evaluating their capabilities in detail.”
“Yes, sir, that’s a definite possibility,” Ellsworth said. “But until they do, Scott, as you suggest, is in a position to provide us with the answers to questions we’ve been asking for years. For instance, how vulnerable are those Akulas to detection, and can they be knocked out by the new homing torpedoes the Russians have developed for use against us? We’ve heard they had problems with them being able to discriminate between U.S. and Russian decoys. We may never have a chance like this again.”
The Barents Sea graphic collapsed, and Ellsworth and Webster reappeared on the monitor.
Friedman beat a tattoo on the conference table with a gold pen. “Admiral Ellsworth, a moment ago you said that you wanted to know if a Russian Akula can be knocked out — sunk — by these new torpedoes the Russians have.”
“Yes, sir. I did.”
“I take it, then, you believe the Russians will sink the K-363, not capture her and arrest Litvanov and Zakayev.”
Ellsworth put his fine china coffee cup into its matching saucer and touched the corner of his mouth with a fingertip. “Capturing the K-363 is a tall order, Mr. Friedman. A nuclear sub’s endurance is limited only by the amount of food she can carry. Even if they find her, I don’t see how they can capture her or make the terrorists surrender. If they’re as dedicated to their cause as it appears they are, I believe the Russians will have no choice but to destroy that boat.”
“They couldn’t drive her aground and board her?”
“Even if they trapped her in shallow water, which is not likely, they’d have to devise some method to blast their way inside. I don’t know that they could without killing everybody aboard and maybe the commandos who’d have to do it.”