D. M. Ulmer 01 - Silent Battleground (35 page)

“What do you see as my alternatives, Senator?”

“Stop this madness.  We’re losing far too many American lives for no purpose.  Unless a clear path to victory is identified, continuing the war is an emotional, not an intelligent alternative.”

The President sighed, “What do you recommend then?”

Manning considered out-dueling the ineffectual Andrew Dempsey as hardly a triumph and felt no elation at this sign of the President weakening.  “I recommend you contact the Soviet Premier and inquire of his terms for ending this war.  I know how difficult this is but you have nothing to offer the American public except defeat at the hands of the Soviets.  You have no other choice.”

“Such an inquiry to Premier Rostov is tantamount to surrender.  It signals we’re helpless and have nothing left to bargain with.  We need more time to at least show the Premier there might be something important he must lose in order to defeat us.”

The senator asked, “And what might that be?”

“Success in the coming Battle of the Bering Sea.”

Responding to the President’s answer, Manning shook his head and asked.  “You’d hang your hat on that flimsy peg?  I demand you perform your duty, sir.  I shall return in a week’s time to hear your answer.  I will not sit idly by and permit the issue to remain unanswered after that time.”

Chapter 18

Commander Buchanan quickly
adapted
Denver
to her assignment as flagship for Operation MACEDONIAN.  With no staff aboard, Eric Danis looked upon the new skipper as his Chief of Staff officer, with
Denver
Operations Department doubling up to perform both staff and ship functions.  Brent Maddock devoted a lot of his efforts to tactical planning.

With the little time he could spare, Buchanan walked about the ship, meeting his crew and familiarizing himself with the general material status.  He found both men and equipment to be in good shape.  His efforts also elevated the crew’s confidence in him.  Buchanan led by precept and example, not by fear as did his predecessor.

In the Attack Center on Brent’s and Henri’s watch, the new skipper greeted the two men with a cheerful, “Good morning, Petty Officer Henri.  Are you keeping Mr. Maddock on the straight and narrow?”

Henri answered, “Good morning, Captain.  Matter of fact I am, sir, but he’s a slow learner.”

The captain asked his conning officer, “Going okay, Brent?”

      Brent answered, “Just fine, sir.  We’re right where we’re supposed to be and so far haven’t missed a radio broadcast.”

Buchanan said, “I almost wish we
would
miss a few.  Maybe the Soviets plan to win by giving us more information than we can possibly read before the war is over.”

Ever apprehensive, Brent asked, “Should this make us suspicious, Captain?  Seems like we’re getting an awful lot of detail.  Luring us into a trap, maybe?”

“So far, their actions confirm what we’ve learned about Soviet Naval operations.  They use their new technology to tighten control from ashore.  We watched this during their fleet exercises.  They don’t leave engagement details to their commanders at the scene.”

Buchanan thought,
Lucius Aemilius Paulus didn’t know how lucky he was
not to have all this technology back in his day.

Brent replied, “Guess that was
a dumb question, sir.”

“There are no dumb questions in this business, Brent.  And none of us have all the answers.  Everybody tosses what he knows into the pot.  Most of this is being tried for the first time and needs all the devil’s advocating it can get.”

Henri spoke after the captain left.  “Different kind of wind than the one that used to blow through here, sir.”

Brent did a poor job of masking his pleased expression.  “Don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about, Henri.”

Later, Dan Patrick, MACEDONIAN Operations Officer, briefed the attack plan to the
Denver
officers at a wardroom meeting.  Commodore Danis wanted a final review before transmitting it via the new laser system to a communications satellite for rebroadcast to all other MACEDONIAN units.

Dan opened with, “Twenty-three SUBPAC units are proceeding to the area.  Fifteen Atlantic Fleet units from SUBLANT are heading this way under the polar ice cap but won’t be here in time to make the rendezvous.  No plans for them yet.”

He moved a pointer over a collage of charts covering the planned engagement area then continued.  “MACEDONIAN will be carried out in this big triangle.  To orient you, here’s Severo Kuril’sk atop of the Kuril chain and the southwest corner of the area.  The southeastern corner is at Kiska here in the Aleutian chain.  Then we go north to Saint Lawrence Island just below the Bering Strait.  This landmass running from Saint Lawrence back to Severo K is Koryakski and the Kamchatka peninsula.  And here is the port city of Petropavlovsk.”

Hesitating for a moment, Dan let the geography lesson set in.  “First, the Soviet’s plan.  A hundred sixteen submarines from their Northern Fleet will attempt to transit the Strait en masse then fan out to establish control of merchant shipping in the Pacific.  These are old
Hotel
,
Echo
and
November
classes, along with
Yankee
and
Delta I
ballistic missile submarines converted to attack class in compliance with SALT II.  They’re noisy.  If we get to them before they reach the open ocean, we’ll clean up big time.”

Woody Parnell asked, “Why do they need so many submarines?”  The young officer had fully
mended and stood watch as Brent’s assistant conning officer.  “Long-range anti-ship missiles oughta do the job for them with what they got right now.”

 “Too hard to separate the good guys from the bad,” Dan replied.  “The Soviets believe the war’s in the bag and they want to capture some hearts and minds.  Additional submarines are needed to do proper target discrimination.  Okay?”

Woody nodded.

Dan glanced at the commodore and Buchanan, but neither provided anything in the way of expression.  The new skipper’s ever-pleasant expression gave Dan more encouragement than he had heretofore been accustomed to.  “Their screen consists of top Pacific assets:
Akulas
,
Victor IIIs
,
Mikes
and
Sierras,
all pretty hot ships.  They equal or exceed our 637s.  But we know where they are and where they’ll be deployed.  I can’t tell you how we know this;
just that it’s the straight dope.  Most of us have been on SPEC-OPS and know how that goes.  The Soviets have a three-stage plan.  First, form a screen between Komandorskiye and Attu north of and parallel to the southern MACEDONIAN boundary.  A column of submarines will move along here.”  

He ran his pointer along the Soviet landmass.  “Larry, a nickname for Saint Lawrence Island, is at the pack ice boundary.  They’ll be hard to detect until they’re ten miles from there
. 
Background noise can be almost deafening and we can’t pick targets out of it.”

An officer asked, “Why do they send their screen under the ice, then?”

“We really
don’t know,” Dan answered.  “Probably
think we’re a lot better than we really
are.  With an offshore screen in place, the mass exodus from the Arctic begins with the units moving close to shore as they dare.  When they reach this point,” said Dan, indicating a spot marked on the chart fifty miles above Komandorskiye, “the screen guarding the southern approach pivots east and opens the end of a funnel to protect the transits as they move into the Pacific.  Everyone understand?”

All nodded.

“Good,” said Dan.  “Now here’s the plan.”

The chief engineer asked, “Who in hell opened this cookie jar?  This stuff is so hot, it’s smoking.”

Dan replied, “Like I said earlier, need to know, but if you like that, we got tracks, intended positions and estimated times of arrival of the southern screen.  It’s like the Kremlin is directing a parade.  A 688 is assigned to each screen unit with a 637 backup.  Intercepts are scheduled concurrently
as we can make them.  This prevents a missed attack from creating an alarm for the others.  We scheduled intercepts to occur here,” he said, sweeping his pointer along a line thirty nautical miles south of the screen intended position.  “It’ll be during daylight hours.  Our erstwhile Cannon Cocker will explain.  Brent?”

Brent took the pointer from Dan.  “Cannon Cocker?  Remember, the only
purpose for the rest of this junkyard is to get my bullets into firing position.  So look upon yourselves as my chauffeur.”

Laughter filled the wardroom while Brent stole a glance at the new skipper. 
Damn
, he thought, that unreadable expression.  He made a mental note not to get in a wardroom poker game with the captain.

He went on, “We’ll use what we learned on the last patrol.  One, we know he’ll shoot back if we fire a torpedo at him; and two, we know he’ll surface to evade.  He has no reason not to ’cause he owns the surface and air here.”  Brent spread out a chart depicting the plan for individual attacks and used the pointer to aid explanation of each planned tactic.  “We solve problem one with a Sealance.  After initial contact, we’ll track him out until he can’t hear our launcher and then let him have it.  A 637 stationed ten miles up range from the target will listen for the Sealance payload, an MK-50 torpedo.  When they hear it, they’ll come to periscope depth with a pair of Encapsulated Harpoon Anti-ship Missiles at the ready.  That’s how we solve problem two.”

An officer asked, “What happens if the target doesn’t surface?”

“The MK-50 should get him, Brent replied.  “If it doesn’t sink him, it’ll make him noisy and the 637 will move in and finish him with an ADCAP.”

Another officer asked, “What if he doesn’t surface and the MK-50 misses?”

“Then we find out why we collect submarine pay.  We’ll have to sneak in and go one on one.  I don’t have to tell anyone who made the last patrol how hairy that can be.  Questions?  None?  Okay, back to you, Dan.”

Dan resumed, “A sub-task group of one 688 and three backup 637s will provide a similar welcome for the offshore screen.  They’re spaced far enough apart so they can be taken one at a time.  The intended tracks we have on them are tight also.  Maybe Ivan believes this whole war is nothing but a fleet exercise but we’ll take what he gives us.  The rest of MACEDONIAN forms a gauntlet for the Northern Fleet submarines to run.  We should really
clean house if this thing goes as planned.  Questions, comments?”

“Yes, Dan,” Brent replied.  “What about our brother submariners from the Atlantic?  If we’re successful in turning the Reds back, SUBLANT units will be well positioned to attack the retreat.”

Looking over to the commodore, Dan said,  “Nothing like this is planned.”   Then asked, “Is there, Commodore?”

Commodore Danis replied, “No, but it should be.  Good thinking, Lieutenant Maddock.  We’ll work something up and pass it along with our next transmission.”

Lieutenant Vasiliy Baknov said to his commanding officer, Captain 1
^st
Rank Igor Sherensky, “Finally
we take the American submariners seriously.” 

He fully
agreed with new orders re-directing
Zhukov
from screening the Northern Fleet transit to land strikes against the new American submarine bases. 
Zhukov
proceeded east toward America.

Vasiliy discussed such matters with Sherensky only with the zampolit out of hearing. “It is well we do this, Comrade Captain.  Otherwise, the lessons of World War II are ignored.  The attack on Pearl Harbor achieved nothing for the Japanese but unite the Americans in a common cause.  Their planes over-flew the submarine base to attack a row of overage battleships that would have little effect on the war’s outcome.  American submarines went on to strip Japan of the sea power she needed to succeed.  Despite outward appearances, history shows the Americans to have won at Pearl Harbor.”

The captain chided, “Ah, the ever-serious Vasiliy.  What shall you do when there are no more Americans to fight?”

“I worry over permitting the enemy to recover his ability to refit submarines.  The World War II analogy fits well.”

“I am more in the mood to hear you confirm rumors of you and the delightful young nurse at Vladivostok Naval hospital.”

Vasiliy smiled but a sounding alarm spared him from providing Sherensky his tidbits.

An excited voice over the general announcing system ordered, “Man action stations!”

Both men raced to the Attack Center and heard the
michman report a contact to the northeast, closing rapidly.

Sherensky ordered, “Stop engines.”  The target would pass close aboard and he had no wish to be counter-detected before attacking.  As the crew readied the ship for combat, the target roared toward
Zhukov’s
starboard side at a range of five hundred meters.

The michman reported, “A submarine of the 688 class.”

Sounding extremely eager, Vasiliy said, “Here is the target we must kill, Comrade Captain.”

With a steady voice the captain said, “Make ready two launchers.”

Then Sherensky recalled the counsel of his own captain when he served at the grade of junior lieutenant in his first submarine,
Beware of the first impulse.
  Sherensky’s mind raced. 
Think this through.
 
What are the odds?
 

He estimated one in a million that one of these ships would pass by so close within the vast size of the Pacific Ocean.  Yet, this near impossible probability occurred during the 688’s most vulnerable period; the sprint leg of her sprint-drift transit tactic employed so successfully
by U.S. submarines. 
Zhukov
found the target through pure luck.

Later, he would dwell on this. 
This is too good to be true. 
Then it came to him. 
A great prize, the 688, but what of counterattack?  Worth the risk?
 
Zhukov stalks much bigger game, the submarine refit bases.  Destroying one of those meant neutralizing all the units that subsisted there.  Risk of getting killed by this lone 688 must not be taken.