Undetected (3 page)

Back on base they would run the fire drills at the Trident Training Facility with real flames, heat, and suffocating smoke. But at sea they would simply use waving red flags. The alarm would sound, the rush of the fire crew from all locations in the boat would jam ladders, fire suits would be donned, equipment would be hauled in, and tight places to work in would get even tighter as others in the crew raced to get the boat to the surface to vent the invisible smoke.

As the fire took out communications and navigation controls, the crew would find conditions rapidly deteriorating. With actions they needed to take no longer available by turning a knob or setting a switch on a panel, they would have to revert to coordinating manual overrides with crewmen elsewhere in the boat to conduct operations—all while the drill was running against the clock. Men would be sweating and adrenaline would be running high before it was over. In
the after-action assessment, Bishop and the drill coordinator would declare the submarine lost or saved based on the speed and sequence of the crew's actions.

The drills were intense for a reason. Bishop worried as much about fire as he did flooding. A fire became very hot, very fast, inside the confined circular construction of a submarine, the heat and smoke forced into a swirling, expanding inferno that would make it impossible to breathe in a matter of minutes. Fire was one of the nightmare scenarios, and when it hit the control room, the switch you needed to save your life could be on the panel that had just lit up in flames. Submarines were basically computer hardware, electrical equipment, audio equipment, power plants, missiles, rocket fuel, batteries—with a few people fit in around them. Unlike a pipe, where age and corrosion could be inspected and repaired, not much that was a fire hazard on a sub was visible before it failed.

The phone on the wall to his left buzzed. Bishop reached over to answer it.

“Captain, sonar. New contact, sound signature USS
Seawolf
.”

“Very well.”

He headed up to the command-and-control center. They were four days out from Bangor. The tempo of this day and the next three was destined to get progressively faster, even without the drills.

The officer of the deck gave him a summary of the current situation on the boat, and the chief engineer added details to the nuclear-plant update. Bishop paused by the navigation table to check the chart overview. “The captain has the deck,” he announced.

“The captain has the deck,” the weapons chief confirmed, passing back authority.

“Sonar, control. Where's the
Seawolf
?”

“Control, sonar.
Seawolf
is bearing 076 degrees, range 41 miles, depth 520 feet.”

“Sonar, report all other contacts.”

“Eight surface ships, all distant. A tanker and four cargo ships to the north, three fishing vessels to the west.”

Bishop wanted to pass near the
Seawolf
—under the command of his friend Jeff Gray—coming in on her port side and below her. But he didn't want to sail directly toward her. They would both be trailing towed sonar arrays that water currents would be pushing around, and if the Russian or some other sub was out there, they would need maneuvering room.

“Conn, come to heading 095 degrees, make your depth 825 feet.”

“Come to heading 095 degrees, depth 825 feet, aye, Captain,” the conn officer confirmed. He then handed the same order on to the helmsman and planesman.

“Passing 280 to the right, sir,” the helmsman called out, marking the turn. “Passing 045 . . . steady on course 095, sir.”

The planesman called out the increasing depths, “650 feet . . . 750 feet . . . leveling out at 825 feet, sir.”

Bishop looked over at his executive officer. “XO, give me all-quiet on the boat. I'd like the
Seawolf
to appreciate just how difficult we are to hear coming.”

Kingman smiled his appreciation. “All-quiet, aye, Captain.” He reached for the intercom and set it to 1MC to broadcast throughout the boat. “
Nevada
, this is the XO. Rig for all-quiet. We're going to snuggle with the
Seawolf
. Let's remind them who's the better boat.”

Discretionary sources of noise like the trash compactor would be shut off, routine maintenance which might cause a pipe to be struck or a tool to be dropped would be postponed, men not needed on station would slip into their bunks to minimize movement, and all casual conversations would cease. The already quiet boat would turn into a silent ghost in the water.

Bishop walked forward to the sonar room.

Sonar Chief Larry Penn said quietly, “Our noise profile is dropping, Captain.”

The boat's sonar was powerful enough to pick up the sound of snapping shrimp when they were in Dabob Bay, and in the ocean they used that same power to listen for changes aboard their own boat. It wasn't uncommon for sonar to report a valve problem in the torpedo room moments before Weps called forward to report the same issue. Noise was a diagnostic tool in a sub designed for quiet.

With the
Seawolf
and the
Nevada
coming together on similar tracks, the distance between them closed quickly. When the two vessels had come to within 15 nautical miles, Bishop said quietly, “Let them know we are here.”

Penn typed in a command at the right console and turned on cross-sonar.

On the
Seawolf
a sonar technician likely hit his knee on the terminal rack and said a few words he would be glad his mother could not hear. He was, however, quick to report the new contact to his command-and-control center, for the
Seawolf
's forward speed dropped abruptly.

“Link us,” Bishop directed.

Penn entered the command.

Bishop saw the cross-sonar link establish and watched as
the radar screen display mapped out parts of the ocean the
Seawolf
had passed through recently, giving them a first look at the waters around the Strait of Juan de Fuca. All looked calm over the last 24 hours.

Cross-sonar was a set of elegantly simple ideas that, when put together, allowed two subs to share sonar data with each other while not being overheard. Their conversation couldn't be distinguished from the ocean noise because it was based on and built into the ocean noise.

“Start the cross-sonar search.”

“Start the cross-sonar search, aye, Captain.” Penn entered the command.

The sonar dome and the towed sonar array on the
Nevada
paired up with the sonar dome and towed sonar array on the
Seawolf
. The effective range expanded as four hydrophone sets listened in concert to the ocean. Contacts began to appear at distances substantially greater than either sub could hear on its own. Most were surface ships.

“New contact, bearing 276 degrees, looks deep,” the spectrum sonarman in the far left seat said, excitement in his voice. He typed fast, running the search to match the sound and pin down the exact name. “Identified as Akula, class II, K-335. It's the
Cheetah
, sir.”

“Go get him, Jeff,” Bishop murmured to himself.

The
Seawolf
had seen the Akula too. Cross-sonar dropped. The screen showed the
Seawolf
's abrupt acceleration in speed on a direct vector for an intercept. The
Seawolf
was a fast-attack submarine designed for combat with just such an opposing submarine. The
Cheetah
's captain was about to have a very bad day.

Bishop breathed easier. The obstacle he'd worried about
for the return home was now a known quantity—and the
Seawolf
's focus. Jeff would be on the Russian sub until he was driven well out to sea.

“Bring up the data replay.”

Bishop watched cross-sonar paint in the Akula again. It was out at the edge of the range of what even cross-sonar could find. The Akula had never heard either the
Nevada
or the
Seawolf
, of that Bishop was certain. All the Russian captain would know was that he had a U.S. fast-attack submarine coming into firing position in his baffles. No shots would be exchanged, as both sides during peacetime used these skirmishes as interesting training exercises, but the Russian captain would still be smarting. He would have been slowly and carefully maneuvering for days to work his way into that trench off the continental shelf as a place to hide.

Allies and enemies alike were trying to figure out what the U.S. was doing that had increased the sonar range to such a degree. The assumption would be that new, more sensitive hardware had been deployed. Bishop thought cross-sonar might survive a decade unmatched before someone decoded what they were doing. Cross-sonar was just software and some very elegant reasoning. Espionage was the real threat. Someone on the U.S. side giving away the secret, someone stealing it by hacking into a server or physically making a copy of the algorithms were the more likely ways it would become known by other nations.

Bishop had been stunned when he got his first detailed, classified briefing on how cross-sonar functioned. It gave them a priceless advantage at sea and seemed so obvious once he saw the individual pieces and how they fit together. But it had taken a 20-year-old college student working on a Ph.D. sonar
thesis—her brother in the submarine force having sparked her interest—to come up with the ideas and put them together into a powerful and operationally useful combination.

Bishop walked back to the command-and-control center. He'd take full advantage of the tactical advantage cross-sonar gave him, and be very grateful the U.S. had the capability before anyone else. “Conn, bring us to heading 010. Make our depth 400 feet.” He would turn the boat north of the shipping channel into water that would have less surface-noise clutter.

As the order was acknowledged and implemented, Bishop picked up the intercom and switched it to 1MC. “
Nevada
, this is the captain. We just nudged an Akula away from the coast, and the
Seawolf
is giving chase. We're turning toward home. Secure from all-quiet.”

Crewmen began discussing the sequence of events of the watch, in good spirits and laughing occasionally. Bishop pulled the notepad from his left shirt pocket, scanned the original plan for this day. Engineering wanted to run a test on the batteries, he'd penciled in a fire drill, and a second watch meeting with his senior chiefs would review the repair and maintenance situation on the boat in preparation for homecoming. A missile drill prompted by a flash EAM—Emergency Action Message—was scheduled during third watch to pull together the entire crew on their primary time-critical mission. A rather routine day had started with an unexpectedly nice opening move, compliments of the Akula.

Bishop put the list back into his pocket. “XO, would you like the deck?”

“Yes, sir.”

The executive officer checked with every chief in the control room, conferred with the weapons officer the longest,
studied the navigational chart, scanned every status board, then looked to Bishop. “I am ready to relieve you, sir,” Kingman stated.

The XO was going to be ready to command a boat as his next duty station if Bishop had anything to do with it. Hours in control mattered. And toward the end of this watch, the boat was going to get hit with a fire drill, a good experience for his second-in-command.

“I am ready to be relieved,” Bishop said.

“I relieve you, sir.”

Bishop picked up the intercom. “This is the captain. The XO has the deck.”

Bishop stepped back from the captain's chair as the ship log was updated to show the change in command. Rather than leave the command-and-control center, he settled in next to the weapons officer and out of habit checked the pressure status in every missile tube. Bishop would offer quiet counsel, suggestions, watch for trouble, step in if needed—he had his XO's back. He doubted it would be needed. Kingman was learning fast. As his experience in the job grew, the list of events he'd already handled successfully was getting longer.

When the XO's first order of business was to contact sonar, ask for an update, then contact the chief engineer, Bishop relaxed even more and changed his plan. “Officer of the deck, a visual confirmation of the weapons board status seems prudent.”

The boat was a lot more than what could be seen from this room. It was also conversations with those who had their hands on the parts that made up the whole. Over-reliance on what was visible from here could leave a captain vulnerable to a stuck gauge or a misreading indicator light.

His XO took the suggestion immediately. “I concur. Petty Officer Hill, please join the commander for a visual inspection of the missile firing system.”

Petty Officer Hill, who had managed to avoid one-on-one time with Bishop so far during the patrol, paled as he stood. “Yes, sir.”

Bishop only smiled, sympathizing with the young man's obvious nerves but not giving much allowance for them—or for the fact that the petty officer would turn 22 a few days after this patrol ended. This crew was young, but well trained. The pop quiz was going to last until they returned. Once Hill got a few answers right, his confidence would find its footing.