Echo Class (2 page)

In this story, none of the personalities on the Soviet boats or the American warships are real. They are fabrications of my imagination, and as with all works of fiction, this one carries a disclaimer inside the cover. As for the Soviet submarines, I have no knowledge of who the skippers were, or the Navy souls who manned them. It has been my intention in writing this series to capture the professional life of both navies, the humanity of the characters, and the challenges of the Cold War that catapulted our forces against each other.

Some literary liberty is taken in the story. For example, throughout the book, local Subic Bay time is used for both navies even though the Soviet Union always used Moscow time for its fleet. Trying to coordinate two different time zones was too confusing for the writer to keep track. Both navies show knots for speed, but the Soviet Navy used the metric system while the U.S. Navy used the English system of inches, feet, yards, and nautical miles. A nautical mile is two thousand yards, for the landlubbers among you.

CAPTAIN
Second Rank Kostenka Bocharkov spun the search periscope in a complete three-sixty circle. Not a damn thing in sight. An empty ocean stretched for at least fifteen miles in each direction. The Pacific waves were calm, barely lapping against the scope, but then the K-122 was barely making way at periscope depth. Too much speed at this depth created a wake behind them that the Americans could see.

Bocharkov released the handles for a moment and rubbed his thumb across his fingers before grabbing the handles again. The Soviet captain second rank stopped the scope when it was aligned forward with the bow of the K-122. For nearly a minute he observed the direction of the swells.

“Course?” he shouted.

“One-one-zero, Captain!”

He squinted, watching the swell of the waves again. It was amazing how easy it was to determine wind direction with heavier waves—not sea state five and above. Those waves were too rough and would have kept him down a hundred meters in the relative calm of the seas beneath. The Pacific was a calm ocean in comparison to the violent North Atlantic where he started his career.

Finally satisfied, he took one last full-circle glance around the ocean before leaning away from the scope.

He looked around the control room. “All clear. Sea state is one. Wind is north by northeast. Report.” He glanced at the navigator, who had leaned up from crouching over his charts. An unlit cigarette drooped from the man's lips. As if feeling Bocharkov's gaze, Tverdokhleb looked up at the skipper and pushed the heavy black-rimmed glasses up off the tip of his nose.

“Sonar reports passive detection,” Lieutenant Commander Orlov, the operations officer, announced, bringing Bocharkov's attention away from the navigator.

“Comms, Comrade Orlov? We still have comms with the
Reshitelny
?”

Orlov looked at Chief Starshina Volkov. “Chief, hit
Boyevaya Chast'
1 and ask the communicators the status of our secure communications with the Kashin class destroyer trailing the Americans.” Internal communications within Soviet warships were the same, with BCh-1 allocated to the communicators, 2 for surface ships, 3 for sonar, and so on down the list.

Nearly thirty seconds passed before the officer of the deck, also the operations officer, replied to Bocharkov's question. “The destroyer is still with the American carrier
Kitty Hawk
, sir. We are receiving a constant stream of targeting data from it. It is being inputted into the firing panel.”

Bocharkov looked at the panel located on the aft port side of the K-122. Chief Starshina Diemchuk stood near the panel. Red and green lights, some steady, most flickering, readily told any observer why submariners referred to the firing panel as the Christmas Tree.

Bocharkov brought his eyes back to the periscope and did another search. The Kashin class destroyer had been tailing the American aircraft carrier for two weeks—ever since the
Kitty Hawk
departed its homeport of Yokuska, Japan.

He leaned away from the periscope, looked at Diemchuk, but spoke to Orlov. “And what is Weapons doing with the targeting data?” He caught the sideways glance exchanged between the chief of the boat, Chief Ship Starshina Uvarova, and the planesman he was always hovering near. Bocharkov smiled. He had yet to meet a chief of the boat who did not believe he was the real owner of the submarine. That was what made the COB so almighty important.

“They are refining the firing solution, Captain. We will be prepared to surface and simulate firing at your command.”

“Very well.” He let out a deep sigh. “Continue with the exercise. Remind everyone that no missile doors are to be opened when we surface,” he warned. There would be no accidental launch, and if the Americans did stumble across them, there must be no misinterpretation of the K-122 intentions.

The Americans knew that to fire the missile required the Echo I submarine to surface. The Americans called the missile Shaddock. He wondered why. The Soviet nomenclature for the missile was the P-5.

Surface he would do. Firing also required that they open the missile hatches. That he would not do. If the Americans spotted the K-122, the closed missile hatches would ensure they understood this was an exercise. If a war were to start between the imperialists and the great Soviet Union, let it begin elsewhere. Not here in the South China Sea between the Philippines and Vietnam.

He glanced at the clock on the aft bulkhead of the control room. It was always night in a submarine until the periscope broke water. Four o'clock in the afternoon and barely a cloud in the sky. Why could they not do their exercises at night? A surfaced submarine was anathema to everything a submariner trained to do, especially during daylight hours.

“Sir, we have the targeting data refined.”

Soviet doctrine showed that the Americans never engaged in two wars simultaneously. They were a one-war nation. They had never had to fight a modern enemy on their own soil as the Soviet Union did during the Great Patriotic War. When the Great Patriotic War ended, the Americans started a war in Korea. When they had enough training there, they jumped into the war between the Vietnams. It was only a matter of time before they decided they were ready for the Soviet Union.

“Engine room reports reactor coolant pump number one is acting up again, Captain. They have shut it down for repairs,” Chief Diemchuk, the chief of the watch, reported.

“Have the chief engineer report to me when repairs are done,” Bocharkov replied. If it wasn't the number one coolant pump, it would be something else. As long as one of the three coolant pumps functioned, the graphite-water reactor would keep its temperature within parameters.

“Aye, Skipper,” Diemchuk acknowledged.

“Officer of the Deck, last chance: Ask Sonar if they have any contacts closing us.”

Bocharkov left the periscope unmanned and walked over to the sonar area just as Diemchuk finished relaying his orders to the engineering room. “Chief Diemchuk, make sure you do not hit the firing mechanisms, okay?”

“No contacts closing us, sir,” Orlov reported

Diemchuk straightened. “No, sir, Captain.” Diemchuk reached up and tapped the clear plastic covering the red firing buttons. “I have no intentions of lifting these covers, sir.”

Bocharkov stroked his chin for a moment, then chuckled. He looked around the control room. “Looks as if we may have a successful exercise, comrades.”

They laughed with him.

“Remember,” he told them, raising a finger, “we practice for the day when we may have to actually do this. We do not practice for the sake of practice.” He gave a curt nod. “Right?”

“Right!” they replied in unison.

“Good. Let's do this right and then we can head for the deep Pacific and have some of the great chow the K-122 is famous for. Right?”

When no one immediately answered, Bocharkov continued, “Okay, at least the food is plentiful. Right?”

“Right!” they shouted in unison, laughing afterward.

The moment of levity made Bocharkov think of his family in Kamchatka, bringing a brief moment of longing washing across him. He shook it off, his mind back on the exercise as he returned to the periscope. The navy had rewarded his less than zealous Party afflilation by giving him the honor of serving his country as the commanding officer of one of its nuclear attack submarines. Few others could claim such an honor. A wave of patriotic ardor swept over him.

“High-value target bearing one-one-zero degrees, distance three hundred twenty kilometers. Target course remains zero-three-zero degrees, speed ten knots,” Lieutenant Orlov announced.

“Very well. And its direction of travel?” Kostenka Bocharkov asked.

“The American carrier is on course one eight five degrees, Comrade Captain.”

“How old is the information?”

“The surveillance ship reported this less than a minute ago, sir.”

“Then it must be so,” Bocharkov answered, his voice trailing off. “After all, sometimes we must trust our surface comrades, right?”

“Yes, Captain,” Orlov replied.

“Of course, it is right. After all, the
Reshitelny
is sailing with them.” Bocharkov paused. He motioned the operations officer to him. When Orlov reached the periscope, Bocharkov said in a low voice, “Well,
Reshitelny
is near them, so he is our eyes. So, now what would you do, Lieutenant Commander Orlov? When should we surface?”

“I would input three more targeting solutions, sir. I would refine the targeting solution as much as possible.”

“Why?”

“Sir, because once we fire our missiles, the Americans will know where we are. We will have to go deep to evade. We may not know the success until we are able to successfully evade their attack. So, we must make our first punch hard.” Orlov raised a fist and shook it. “And, it must be on target.”

“How many missiles does doctrine call for in this situation?”

Bocharkov's mustache stretched slightly as his lips spread in a tight smile. He liked his operations officer. Lieutenant Commander Orlov would go far in the submarine service.

The young officer rocked on his feet for several seconds. Bocharkov was sure that if they had had the space in the control room, Orlov would have paced instead of rocked. He had the look of a pacer to him. Bocharkov knew what the operations officer was thinking—weighing the tactical picture only visible on the charts across the plotting table and within the minds of the men who would fight the boat.

“There will be few times in actual combat when you will have the time to ponder a solution, Commander Orlov.”

Orlov nodded, but said nothing. Several seconds more passed before Orlov stopped and looked at Bocharkov. “I would recommend six cruise missiles fired one after the other.”

“Two questions,” Bocharkov replied. “One, tell me why? And, two, why did it take you nearly a minute to reach a decision that is doctrine?”

“Because six missiles coming at sea level toward the American battle group would keep their ships maneuvering to avoid. It would keep the aircraft carrier from launching until after our attack. And doctrine shows that at least fifty percent of the missiles will survive their NATO Seasparrow missile systems.”

“And the number two?”

Orlov's forehead rose for a moment before relaxing. “Six is all we have.”

Bocharkov grunted. “Six is all we have, Commander, but you knew the answer without having to give this an hour of thought,” he exaggerated. He leaned his head down as if sharing a secret. “You must know it instinctively. You must have thought about it long before the time comes for making the decision. You must have given thought to anything that can happen to a submarine, whether it is planned, an exercise, or, worst case, an emergency that requires immediate decisions to save the ship. Regardless, your decision must be viewed by the men as the right decision even if you are unsure.” He leaned away. “Plus, you've got to stop this rocking on your heels whenever you are weighing various options. It gives the impression of uncertainty.”

“I am sorry, Captain. Was I rocking again?”

Bocharkov smiled. “I think it is only because you are unable to pace. You strike me as a pacer. Let's say you were twisting from right to left, then back again left to right—more a Cossack wedding dance than a pace. So now tell me, Burian. Tell me why we only have six missiles in this class of submarine.

“As the captain so rightly pointed out our limitations, six cruise missiles are what navy doctrine says are necessary to sink an American aircraft carrier. We fire all of them at the American carrier and then, once the missiles are gone, we shift to our secondary mission as an anti-ship submarine until our torpedoes are gone.”