Echo Class (11 page)

“How close are they going to pass and how long until we reach the point where we see them?”

“One is going to pass about two thousand yards off our bow. Unless the second one changes its speed or course, it will be a CBDR.”

CBDR stood for “constant bearing, decreasing range.” A ship said to be CBDR was one you would collide with somewhere along the way, as the range between the two of you decreased and neither of you changed your course or speed.

“Time?”

Goldstein cleared his throat. “Sir, we can see the closest one. He's about twenty thousand yards off our port bow. The second one radar has just over the horizon, about twenty nautical miles out.”

MacDonald stepped down from the chair and strolled to the port bridge wing. Goldstein trailed along the left side of him a couple of paces behind.

MacDonald stepped through the opened hatch into the glare of the sun, realizing he'd left his cap beside his chair. His wife had warned him to keep his face covered because of his proclivity to sunburn. It was that Irish-Scot pigment, she kept telling him.

“Merchant,” MacDonald mumbled.

“Yes, sir. Out of Hong Kong.”

“British.”

“Flying the British Hong Kong flag, sir.”

“How much will it upset our ASW team if we turn or change speed?” MacDonald asked.

“Mr. Burnham didn't say, sir.”

“Mr. Burnham has the watch?”

Goldstein nodded.

“Have you tried bridge-to-bridge with the merchant?”

“No, sir. You said radio silence.”

“What's your recommendation?”

“I recommend we alter course twenty degrees to starboard, sir. It'll open up our passing range to eight thousand yards, then once passed, we can return to base course of two-two-zero.”

“When?”

“When?”

“Yes, Mr. Goldstein. When should we turn?”

“Captain, as soon as possible.”

“Tell Combat what we are doing, then do it.”

Goldstein disappeared back into the bridge. MacDonald stood alone, watching the merchant vessel, scanning the empty ocean surface. He was more surprised over the lone merchant occupying their space than over the closeness of approach. In this part of the China Sea merchant traffic was usually heavy. But nothing was as heavy as ships transiting the Strait of Gibraltar.

He had made the mistake once of transiting the mouth to the Mediterranean during the evening, figuring the traffic would be lighter. It was worse. And it was at night. During the night, the Moroccan drug runners joined the fray in their dash to the Spanish coast with hashish. Two ships in the middle of the morning in the middle of the China Sea were barely worth bothering about.

“Combat concurs, Skipper.”

MacDonald turned. Goldstein stood straddled-legged across the hatchway, one leg on the bridge wing and the other inside the bridge. MacDonald realized how thin Goldstein was as the man stood there, his long neck giving him a flamingo appearance. Like those pink flamingos MacDonald's mom thought looked so attractive in her flower beds back in Middletown, New Jersey, home of AT&T. “Then let's do it.”

He turned back to the merchant. Inside, Goldstein issued orders for a ten-degree rudder to port.

MacDonald gripped the railing lightly as the
Dale
tilted slightly to the left and changed course. Ten degrees wasn't much, but changing course and speed was the easy way to ensure distance between the two vessels increased. Two thousand yards was a nautical mile, which for a landlubber might seem a lot, but at sea two thousand yards was a small distance that disappeared rapidly if two ships discovered themselves suddenly on a collision course. More distance meant more time to react.

“Distance to contact?”

Goldstein shouted from his position behind the navigation plotting table, where the quartermaster of the watch was taking bearings from the radar repeater, “We show sixteen thousand yards.”

MacDonald glanced inside the bridge. The second-class quartermaster was doing a quick maneuvering board calculation to see how the course change would affect their distance. Quartermaster was one of the oldest ratings in the navy. That and boatswain mate. Quartermasters served the navigators, ensuring the ship arrived at the right port at the right time, while the boatswain mates did the work of keeping the ship shipshape. Ratings from the days of sail that kept the navy moving, through the decades of coal, to today's modern steam-driven plants and growing number of nuclear-powered ships.

MacDonald's forehead wrinkled. He looked at his wristwatch. An Omega his wife gave him on their tenth wedding anniversary five years ago. At the time, they could not afford it and he wanted to return it, but she insisted. “Fifteen to eight,” he mumbled quietly. Her pert smile. The twinkle in her eyes when she was happy. She had been right about how every time he looked at the expensive watch he would remember her. If Goldstein had left him alone in his chair, he could have visited longer with her.

“I thought you said twenty thousand yards?”

“Yes, sir, but . . .”

“But what?” he asked sharply when Goldstein failed to finish his sentence.

“Sir, I think it has changed course also.”

MacDonald turned his attention back to the merchant. “Bring me my binoculars!”

A few seconds later the boatswain mate of the watch handed them to MacDonald. He quickly raised them, spotted the merchant in his lens, and swept the glasses to the stern of the ship. The wake came into view. He followed the wake. “The merchant is turning to starboard!”

“Sir, it's turning into us!” Goldstein said.

“Distance?”

“Twelve thousand yards.”

Six nautical miles. Still plenty of maneuvering room.

“Sir, we have CBDR!” the quartermaster shouted to Goldstein, the words reaching MacDonald.

MacDonald kept telling himself,
Plenty of time, plenty of time. Give Goldstein a chance.

“Captain, recommend increase speed to twenty knots, maintain course.”

“Solution?”

“Merchant will pass astern of us.”

MacDonald lifted his glasses and looked at the wake again. The merchant was still turning. He dropped the binoculars and looked at the midships bridge of the merchant. He could see the starboard side of the ship, angling its bow as it turned. He looked at the wake again. No sign the ship had quit turning, then the wake was blocked by the port bow.

“The merchant is still turning, Mr. Goldstein, and he is turning so his direction will take him toward us.”

“Yes, sir, but his speed is about eight knots. If we kick her up to twenty for about ten minutes, then . . .”

“You're assuming she is going to retain constant speed.”

“No, sir,” Goldstein answered.

MacDonald detected confidence in the officer of the deck's reply. “Why?”

“Distance eleven thousand yards, slight right-bearing drift,” the quartermaster of the watch announced. “Will cross in front of us, less than one thousand yards!”

Still too close.

Still closing, but the bearing drift meant they were no longer on a collision course, unless the merchant took the bow of the
Dale
off.

MacDonald raised his glasses. The wake was visible again and now it was twisting left behind the merchant. So the merchant captain had realized the dilemma both ships had placed themselves in in their efforts to avoid each other and had shifted his rudder. The merchant was tilting left as it came about smartly to port. This would open the separation even farther. Even as he watched, MacDonald saw the left-bearing drift of the merchant begin, meaning that even at this speed the merchant would pass close down the port side of the
Dale
.

“Twenty knots is going to cause our ASW teams to have to start over,” MacDonald said, his voice raised.

“Yes, sir, but it's either restart TMA in a few minutes or find ourselves changing course again, and the TMA solution will be even more garbled.”

He was impressed. Goldstein had stood up to him, even if he did detect a slight tremor in the voice.

“Mr. Goldstein, seems to me you have the deck.”

“Helmsman, ring up bells for twenty knots!” Goldstein shouted. “Ten-degree starboard rudder.”

Several seconds passed before MacDonald felt the power of the
Dale'
s steam engines as they kicked in. The destroyer seemed to leap out of the water. The motion drift to port of the merchant ship increased. MacDonald smiled. Another officer had passed his standards. Goldstein was still a little rough around the edges for his liking, but with the trait of self-confidence combined with more time on the bridge, the junior officer might turn into a good officer of the deck.

Below in Combat, the Blue ASW Team were ripping the edges of the trace paper away from the tape, folding the penciled calculations to one side, and putting on new paper. At twenty knots, they would have to start over.

 

 

BOCHARKOV
hiccupped.

“It's the cabbage,” Ignatova offered.

“If it was the cabbage, I'd be farting like the rest of the crew,” he whispered back, waving his hand in front of his face.

They laughed.

“Passing one hundred meters!” Lieutenant Yakovitch, the officer of the deck, shouted.

“I think with Yakovitch on duty, the noise of the sump pump below will be the second thing the Americans detect.”

Bocharkov grunted. “Noise in the water is the curse of submariners. How else would we be so successful against the American submarines?”

“Give them our cabbage.”

“Passing ninety meters!”

“Lieutenant Yakovitch!” the XO called. “Could you lower it a little? That operatic bass voice of yours is shaking the bulkheads.”

Yakovitch smiled. He was proud of his amateur opera career. He cleared his throat to the amusement of the men in the control room.

Chief Ship Starshina Uvarova turned from his position of hovering over the helmsman, rolled his eyes, and nodded at Bocharkov.

“Even my senior enlisted man approves of your command, Vladmiri,” Bocharkov added softly.

“Aye, sir!” Yakovitch replied, his booming voice not one octave lower.

Bocharkov smiled, the right side of his lip turning upward. “XO, I haven't heard a report from
Boyevaya Chast'
4 in a few minutes. Hit them and see if our communicators still have underwater communications with the K-56.”

Ignatova nodded and stepped to the sound-powered phone talker. “Give Communications a check and tell the communications officer to give me a call.”

Almost immediately the internal communications box squawked. Ignatova looked down at the buttons and pushed in BCh-4. Across the small control room compartment, Bocharkov listened as the XO chewed the communications officer's butt about not keeping the control room informed on the communications ongoing between the K-122 and K-56 Echo submarines. Here they were surfacing simultaneously with another submarine—neither quite sure where the other was—and Bocharkov needed to know exactly what was happening around them. Oceans were so big that seldom did submarines collide with other ships and subs, but every so often, it did happen.

One of the sound-powered phone talkers pressed his headset to his ear, acknowledged the unseen talker on the other end, and then lifted the right side off his ear.

“Lieutenant Yakovitch, Bch-3 reports they believe they have faint noise of an American warship.”

BCh-3 was the communications channel for Sonar and the torpedo rooms.

Bocharkov straightened off the bulkhead and walked toward the far end of the control room, where Sonar was located.

“Sir! K-56 is surfacing. The K-56 has us located off their starboard side.”

“Starboard side?” Uvarova said briskly. “What does that mean? Starboard side—how far starboard side?”

Bocharkov had been going to ask the same thing, but his senior enlisted sailor had beat him to it. Ignatova looked at him. Bocharkov nodded. It was the right question, but one the chief ship starshina should have known the answer to.

“If they can hear us, then we have to be a couple hundred yards minimum, Chief Ship Starshina Uvarova,” Ignatova answered. “How else would his sonar array be able to pick up a directional noise?”

Bocharkov reached up and grabbed a handhold as the K-122 continued upward toward the surface.

“Sorry, XO!”

“An American destroyer, Captain,” Yakovitch said as he walked uphill toward Bocharkov. “Sonar is sure now. They have an American destroyer making high speeds, sir.”

“I'm heading to Sonar now. What direction? Range?”

“Bearing is zero-four-zero, sir. Range unknown.”

“It's coming from the direction of the American carrier battle group. Means the Americans have not given up on us,” Ignatova added.

“Also means we need to know how far away they are. If we are picking them up now, then they cannot be too far from us,” Bocharkov said, stroking his chin. “Have we set the anti- surface warfare team, XO?”

“With your permission, sir?”

Bocharkov grunted without answering. He continued toward Sonar. Behind him, Ignatova gave the orders bringing the submarine to general quarters. Neither officer expected the Americans to attack them, but if they had to make emergency maneuvers, they would need the crew prepared to react immediately. Bocharkov did not want to surface if they were detecting enemy presence, but his orders were explicit and they would not be on the surface long.

“XO, make sure the K-56 knows about the contact.”