Echo Class (26 page)

“Damn.” He grabbed a nearby rag and started wiping away the stuff before it dried to a crusty spot, which the chief would spot in a minute and keep him away from Olongapo for two nights instead of one.

As he wiped, he noticed a slight noise spoke on the number four hydrophone. He pressed the headset tighter against his ear because the noise was in the same frequency range as the Echo submarine he had tracked for two days. Oliver wondered what noise from one of the navy's ships in port could be almost—no, absolutely—identical to a Soviet submarine electrical generator. Could he also just barely detect a sound behind this fifty-hertz noise?

He shut his eyes. His stomach growled. Fifty hertz! Soviet and Warsaw Pact nations' electrical sources put out fifty hertz to American sixty hertz.

Why would he be hearing “his” submarine inside the harbor—No! He lifted the headset off his ears. Must be some sort of convergence zone peculiarity causing the submarine noise to bounce into the harbor. Oliver looked around. He licked his lips, aware of the dryness, and took a deep breath. What he should do is get the chief up here, but the chief would never get out of his rack. Lieutenant Burnham was the command duty officer, but by now he was in his stateroom.

He slid out of the seat and stood. The spike coming from the hydrophone showed the noise originating off the starboard side of the
Dale
. What was anchored behind them? He dashed out of the sonar space, through the dark confines of Combat, toward the hatch that separated the war-fighting heart of the ship from the bridge. Quickly he undogged the hatch and stepped onto the bridge for a brief moment before running out onto the starboard bridge wing, where he leaned against the railing.

Nothing! As far as he could see there was nothing between the
Dale
and the starlit natural barrier that curved back toward the entrance. He checked to see that the logistic ships anchored off the stern were nowhere near the noise spike, even though he knew it was a Soviet submarine he was hearing. To the left, the huge lighted silhouettes of the
Kitty Hawk
and
Tripoli
blocked his view of the guarded pier.

Oliver shut his eyes, swallowed. He looked at the waters, his eyes scanning back and forth along the line of bearing where the noise spoke originated. A minute later his eyes crossed the natural barrier. Somehow, if that noise was coming through the entrance, it had to be bouncing off something in the harbor to change its direction.

“What you doing, Matt?”

Oliver turned and looked up. It was Seaman Cleary. Oliver looked back at the water, then up again.

“You ain't about to jump, are ya?” Cleary laughed. “ 'Cause if you do, I ain't jumping in to save you. Not with ole hammerhead patrolling the harbor.”

Oliver shook his head. “Naw. I'm not about to jump, Tim. What are you doing on board?” he asked casually, turning his attention back to the dark waters of Subic. His mind roared over the possibilities of how he could be detecting a Soviet submarine while tied up pierside.

“Damn good thing you're not jumping, because I got the watch.”

He should tell someone. Doctrine called for any contact that an operator was unsure of to be reported. But Oliver would be a laughing stock because no way he should be picking up a Soviet submarine.

He looked up. “Where's your sound-powered phone?”

Cleary lifted an arm from the railing and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Can't wear those things in this heat. Makes your ears sweat and I break out in a prickly heat. Besides, you can't hear the command duty officer when he's trying to sneak up on you. Ruins a good nap on watch,” Cleary joked.

The noise of a liberty launch drew their attention. Laughter from sailors returning from a night on the wild side of Olongapo City reached their ears. A group were shouting, “Shit Man Fuck!” at the top of their lungs like rowdy cheer-leaders celebrating an unexpected win. Raunchy laughter from the chorus followed each rendition.

“Lucky bastards,” Cleary said. “If I had not had a physical discussion with some fucking chief off the . . .” He stopped, then added, “Damn. I forget, but it was one of the ships in the harbor. But I showed him. I took my face and beat the shit out of his fist.”

Oliver looked up again. “Don't move! I'll be right back.” He dashed through the hatchway.

Behind him, Cleary's voice carried. “Why? Why can't I move?”

Oliver dashed through the bridge, ducked as he ran through the hatch, and used his hands as he dodged around the equipment in Combat to get to Sonar. Breathing heavily, he pulled the curtains apart and stared at the display. The noise spike was still there.

He was back on the bridge wing in seconds, looking up at the signal bridge. Cleary was gone. He started up the ladder.

“Hey, man! Why can't I move?”

Oliver stepped off the rung back onto the deck of the bridge wing. He cupped his hands and looked up at Cleary. “Tim! I need you to call Mr. Burkeet and tell him to come to Sonar.”

“Why?”

“Because I need him, Tim. I don't have time to explain.”

Cleary snorted. “Shit, man, we're in Olongapo and stuck on board while every sailor in the fleet is out there enjoying the beer, flesh, and tossing quarters into Shit River.”

“Tim, if you don't—”

Cleary raised his hand. “I can't call the lieutenant. I only have comms with the quarterdeck and Mr. Marshall is the in-port officer of the deck. You know what a dickhead he can be. You come up and call him.”

“Who is the junior officer of the deck?”

Cleary's lips pursed as he concentrated. “I'm not sure,” he said after a few seconds. “I think it is Boats Lowe.”

“Tell Manny to come to Sonar.”

Cleary smiled and threw a thumbs-up at Oliver. “That I can do.”

Oliver disappeared off the bridge wing.

Moments later he was back in Sonar, his headset on his ears, when a sound like a quick flood of water rode across his ears then stopped. He concentrated. Only thing that could make an underwater noise such as this was an outer door opening, like the outer tube on a torpedo. He shivered. This was getting weird. His instructors had told him the oceans played havoc with noise sometimes, sending it hundreds of miles before someone heard it. Other times, you could be on top of a submarine with it making all kinds of noise—their sailors could be banging steel wrenches against the hull—and you wouldn't hear a peep.

 

 

GROMEKO
waited outside the escape trunk, slowly moving his flippers to remain stationary. The hatch opened and the last member of the team, Lieutenant Dolinski, emerged, turned, and dove back into the escape trunk to pull the remaining bag free.

When he pulled it out, Gromeko leaned forward and secured the hatch. He made the thumbs-up sign to the other four, received same, and then looked at his fluorescent compass. He pointed in the direction they needed to go.

Chief Fedulova and Starshina Malenkov grabbed a handle each on their bag and started in the direction Gromeko pointed. Gromeko hovered. He looked in Dolinski's direction as the officer and Zosimoff grabbed the handles of the other bag. Then he turned and swam quickly to get ahead of Fedulova and Malenkov.

Behind him the submarine waited at periscope depth. Ahead, less than a hundred meters, was the shore and the thrill of doing a mission. Gromeko had no doubt they would do this without ever being detected. After all, who would believe a Soviet Spetsnaz team was skipping and jumping around the U.S. Naval Base at Subic Bay?

A long, dark shadow swam past between them and the submarine, its Jurassic-age body rippling smoothly through the nighttime waters.

 

 

“UP
periscope,” Bocharkov said. He squatted and flipped the handles down as the hydraulics lifted the scope. He pressed his head against the rubber fitting as he rode the scope to the surface. The shipboard lights seemed so close as he studied the ships. On one of the destroyers he could make out a sailor standing watch on top of the bridge.

 

 

OLIVER
heard the hydraulic noise and wondered what was making it. It wasn't ballast pumps because they were different. This sound was smooth and it disappeared after only a few seconds.

The telephone on the bulkhead rang.

He slipped off his headset. “Sonar,” he said in greeting.

“Oliver, this is Lowe. What the fuck are you doing?”

“Boats, I need Mr. Burkeet up in Sonar.”

“It's after one in the morning, Oliver. You want me to wake the young lieutenant and tell him you want his ass up in Sonar?”

“Yes. It's important, Boats.”

“So is sleep and passing a watch without a lot of officers running around loose,” Manny Lowe replied. Then he whispered, “I got Marshall up here. Ain't that enough for a sailor to have to put up with?”

“Look, Manny, I wouldn't ask this if it wasn't important.”

“Then why don't
you
go wake him up?”

“Because I have my equipment up and operating. I can't leave it on.”

“Then turn it off.”

“That's the problem.”

“What's the problem?”

“I can't turn it off.”

“If you can't turn it off, then it's the chief you want, not Lieutenant Burkeet. Burkeet can barely turn on and off his stateroom light, much less—”

“Look! Are you going to wake the lieutenant or what?”

Oliver heard Marshall ask Lowe who he was talking to. For a good minute, Oliver had to wait while Lowe told the lieutenant junior grade engineering officer about their conversation.

Finally Lowe said, “You got a pencil?”

Oliver scrambled around a moment and came up with one of the Skilcraft black ballpoint pens the navy had in abundance. “I got a pen.”

“Here's his extension; you call him. Mr. Marshall said if you call bothering the quarterdeck again he's going to have you up to see the XO.”

Oliver wrote down the number, hung up without saying good-bye, and dialed the extension. It rang for a long time without anyone answering. He should have known the lieutenant would be ashore or at the officers club with everyone else. Finally he hung up the telephone, turned back to the sonar console, and put the headset on. Probably best thing to do was not tell anyone. They'd laugh over his concern about hearing Soviet submarine noises while tied up pierside. After a few minutes he lifted the PMS card and started doing the preventive maintenance schedule even as periodically a new noise would pass over his headset. Each time, Oliver glanced at the console. It took about ten minutes for him to realize that whatever noise he was hearing, was always on the same bearing—two seven two. The clock showed ten minutes after one.

 

 

GROMEKO'S
fingertips brushed the bottom before he saw it. He blinked a red light behind him twice, then glanced upward. Lights from the poles along the road bled into the waters. He swam upward a few meters until his head broke the surface. Behind him he heard the others surface. They were less than twenty meters from the rocky barrier that made up this portion of Olongapo Harbor.

A hand touched his shoulder. It was Dolinski. Zosimoff treaded water to the other side of the man. “There,” the GRU officer said, pointing to his left.

The dark circular shadow outlining the huge drainage pipe was about fifty meters in that direction. Gromeko nodded, looked around, and pointed in that direction for Fedulova and Malenkov, who were behind the other three. He dove, knowing the others would follow. Along the shallow waters near the shore the five Spetsnaz members moved quietly, their flippers barely stirring the surface as they inched their way to the opening ahead of them.

Less than ten minutes later, the five men were inside the pipe. A trickle of water ran through the center of the ten-foot-wide drain. Without talking, they quickly removed their tanks, flippers, and gear. Malenkov reached into the bag and pulled out the chief's uniform. He was slipping on the black leather shoes by the time Gromeko was buttoning up his dungaree shirt.

Gromeko stepped to the edge of the pipe and flashed three dots three times with his red flashlight. Then he put it away. His watch showed ten minutes after one. He snapped his fingers, drawing everyone's attention, and pointed at his watch. Everyone looked at his own and understood. They were five minutes behind schedule.

Zosimoff was the last to finish. He tucked the 9mm pistol inside the top of his pants and pulled the dungaree shirt over it. The others did the same. “Do not pull the pistols unless we have no choice. Does everyone understand?”

They nodded and said,
“Da,”
in unison. The voices echoed inside the drain, causing everyone to go silent. Gromeko wondered for a moment if the team was up to this challenge.

Dolinski walked alongside each of them, checking their uniforms, making sure the line of the shirt, the belt buckle, and the zipper of the dungaree trousers were aligned. He slipped his fingers inside the top of Gromeko's trousers. “Nice tight fit, comrade,” he whispered.

Malenkov went first, slipping around the side of the pipe and working his way slowly up the steep, dangerous side of the rocky barrier. Gromeko realized that any of them could slip and break an ankle right here. Better here than up there, he thought.

Gromeko followed. At the top, Malenkov reached over the railing of the wooden fence paralleling the road and helped him over. Dolinski followed with his bag, then Fedulova and Zosimoff were right behind him.

“We are ashore,” Dolinski said.

“Sir, no Russian, please,” Malenkov said in near accent-free English.