Echo Class (5 page)

“They have no ASW forces within a hundred miles of us. This was pure dumb luck. What they did was fire in the blind with their devices, putting noise in the water, hoping that we would continue away, and when their P-3 ASW Orion aircraft showed up, it would drop a few sonobuoys, detect the clapping, and ergo simulate a sinking.”

Everyone looked at Bocharkov.

“We will use established Soviet Navy doctrine,” he said.

Ignatova and Orlov looked questioningly at him.

“We stay put until nightfall, then we surface, rush out on deck, pull the little
zasranecs
off,” he announced, using the colloquial expression for “asshole,” “and then we continue our closure of the American battle group.”

Laughter filled the compartment

“Toss them overboard,” Orlov added to the humor.

Ignatova shook his head. “No, we bring them aboard for our scientists to assess.” He looked at the captain.

“Probably a good idea. I suspect they already have a pot of them, but I would like to see what they look like also.”

He turned at the sound of someone opening the aft watertight hatch to the control room. Lieutenant Motka Gromeko stepped into the compartment, wearing his dark Spetsnaz utilities. For the last six months, submarines heading to the waters of Vietnam had begun carrying a team of Soviet Naval Special Forces. Bocharkov nodded at the lieutenant, who stepped away from the hatch and pressed himself against the nearby bulkhead, away from the ongoing activity.

Five minutes later, after Bocharkov finished giving further instructions on what to do if American forces were detected in the area, he departed through the aft hatch, toward the radio shack. Gromeko followed him, causing Ignatova to scratch his head, wondering what was going on. An XO should always know before the skipper what was happening with the boat.

Bocharkov wondered what type of super-secret message Pacific Fleet would have sent for his eyes only. His mission was to track the
Kitty Hawk
until the carrier reached the Vietnamese waters, then they could return to Kamchatka.

Minutes later, Bocharkov discovered how wrong he was.

“CAPTAIN
on the bridge!” the boatswain mate of the watch shouted as MacDonald walked through the port inside hatch that led from the combat information center.

At the navigator table directly ahead of him, the signal-man on duty made a notation in the ship's log.

“What you got?” MacDonald asked, looking at the officer of the deck, Lieutenant Sam Goldstein, who was looking over the shoulder of the quartermaster, making sure the petty officer was making the proper notation. Goldstein was the
Dale
's administrative officer and navigator.

Goldstein smiled. “Sir, Admiral Green wants you to contact him. He intends to detach us from the battle group to lead an antisubmarine surface action group.”

MacDonald nodded, crossed the bridge, and crawled up in his chair on the starboard side. “I know,” he replied. The combat information center watch officer told me on the way to the bridge.” From the darkness lit by blue light in Combat to the bright sunlight of the bridge. Enough to ruin your eyes. He crossed his legs. Give him the bridge any day to fight his ship, rather than this high-brow concept of where the captain hides in the darkness to launch his weapons.

“Lieutenant Burnham has the watch,” MacDonald said, his voice slow and methodical.

“Aye, sir. Does the captain want to go to general quarters?”

MacDonald shook his head. “No, the captain does not want to go to general quarters. If we have a submarine out there two hundred miles from us, it will be tomorrow morning before we reach the vicinity of last sighting. What would our condition be if we kept the men at GQ for . . .” He looked at Goldstein. “Quick! Tell me how long we would have to keep the ship at GQ before we reached the area.” He put both hands on his hips. “Well, anytime this afternoon would be fine, Mr. Goldstein.”

“Twelve hours, sir.”

“Twelve hours is wrong,” MacDonald said calmly. “But it would bring us to within the horizon of where the suspected submarine was last seen.”

“I was told the reconnaissance aircraft out of Guam saw it.”

“Airdales see what they want to see. They have been known to be wrong, but don't ever try to get one to admit it; it is like pulling teeth. Did I ever tell you about my niece who had a blind date with one?”

“No, sir.”

“Unfortunately, I lined it up. She came back from the date just shaking her head. Brenda met her at the door, wanting to know how it went. My niece said the first half of the date all the airdale did was talk about himself. Then, about halfway through dinner he said, ‘Well, enough about me, let's talk about flying.' ”

Goldstein chuckled. “Aye, sir.”

“Did we get any intelligence from the VQ-1 Willy Victor that overflew the submarine?”

“Not much, sir. They sent an operational report, but the OpRep only gave the coordinates of the submarine with the direction in which it dived.”

“We can expect the submarine came to a different course as soon as it was out of sight.”

“They dropped some clappers.”

“Useless piece of shit those clappers. I don't think any submarine has ever been tracked or detected because of those cheap things. We drop them and somewhere on the bottom of the ocean are growing beds of clappers, clapping away as the current swifts through them. Keep this up, by the time you and I have grandchildren, we'll have an ocean that's transmitting a continuous cacophony of clapper symphony.

“As for GQ, Mr. Goldstein, you keep offering advice when I ask it. If you don't and I make a wrong decision and you knew the correct answer, then you will have let me and the ship down. Meanwhile, let's keep the crew doing the day's work.” He leaned forward, out of the shadow offered by the forward top bridge structure, letting the sun hit his face. “Might even be able to have the movie topside tonight if this weather holds,” he said, leaning back into the shadow.

“Some new ones came aboard during the under-way replenishment yesterday, Skipper.”

MacDonald pointed at the navigation table. “You need to have your watch work us a path out of the battle group. We're going to be heading southwest toward the datum.”

“Datum” was the naval term commonly used to identify the last known location of a submarine. Whatever happened to the good old terms such as “enemy,” “submarine,” “contact,” or even “sneaky bastard”? No. Somewhere there was an academic think tank laughing, drinking their martinis, and throwing all the dollars they'd made into the air, to let them rain down upon them because they came up with this new way of sinking subs. MacDonald sighed.

“Sir?”

He shook his head. “Nothing, Mr. Goldstein.”

“Sir, the admiral?”

“Did you talk with him?”

Goldstein's eyes widened. “Yes, sir. He asked for you, and then asked for the officer of the deck.”

MacDonald smiled. Green and he were old navy. When they wanted to talk with the senior officers, it was to the bridge they deferred.

The assistant boatswain mate of the watch brought him his first afternoon cup of coffee. MacDonald grunted as he took it, sipped, and calculated the coffee was leftover in the urn from this morning. He grimaced as the tannic acid burned when he swallowed. He put the cup in the nearby holder. It would remain there until the watch changed and the BMOW tossed the coffee out—if it hadn't eaten through the cup by then.

“Did he say how many ships he intended to put into this surface action group?” Before Goldstein could answer, MacDonald raised the palm of his hand at the officer. “And did he say who would be in charge of the SAG?”

“No, sir. He did not. He just asked to have you call him and for us to prepare to go after a submarine.”

“Submarine? He called it a submarine?” MacDonald chuckled, his breath coming out more as a guffaw. It was nice working with Green again.

“Yes, sir. He said probably submarine. Said the—pardon me, sir—he said, ‘the son of a bitch was targeting him.' ”

“Well, he is on the carrier. Can't see a Forrest Sherman class destroyer like the
Dale
being the sub's high-valued target.”

One moment he was grabbing forty winks and the next he was going after submarines. If the ocean had as many submarines as Green thought it did, then the marines could walk to Vietnam across their backs instead of sailing there.

He took a deep breath and let out an audible sigh. He knew Goldstein and the others on the bridge were wondering why he was waiting to return the admiral's call, but it was good for the crew to see the “Old Man” act as if events of a non-routine nature were normal. He believed strongly that to act otherwise promoted a condition much like Pavlov's dogs, where no one knew what to expect. It created a bedlam of confusion when your skipper was mercurial and unpredictable. He knew. He had served under such a man on his first ship as an ensign.

Besides, when all was said and done, it was his goddamn ship and not anyone else's. Might be his first. Might even be his last, if he screwed up this first command, but god damn it, it was his ship. He smiled.

The Navy Red secure communications squawked overhead; the bagpipe sound of the cipher keys synchronizing screamed for a couple of seconds before the normal white noise of the radio band filled the speaker. Then the call sign for Commander Task Force Seventy came from the voice on the speaker to every ship in the battle group, cautioning them that the
Kitty Hawk
was changing course.

Sailing with a carrier was dangerous. One wrong maneuver, one navigational error, and one ship's engineering casualty became another ship's navigational hazard, and a warship like the
Dale
would become fodder for the largest warship in the world—the American aircraft carrier.

The navigational rules of the road on the open ocean seldom applied to an aircraft carrier. The unwritten rule was that when an aircraft carrier was maneuvering, all others stood clear. It was the law of gross tonnage, and MacDonald did not want his last sight in life being the bow of an aircraft carrier hitting the
Dale
as those aboard the carrier wondered what that slight bump was they'd sailed over.

“How far are we from the
Kitty Hawk
?”

“Sir?”

“I said, Mr. Goldstein, how far are we from the
Kitty Hawk
?” he asked again, enunciating each word loudly and carefully. “A captain should not have to repeat himself.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Then how far are we?”

The quartermaster leaned toward Goldstein and whispered something.

“We are five miles, sir?”

“We are not five miles, Officer of the Deck. We are ten thousand yards. Not five miles,” MacDonald rebutted. “Besides,” he added, “it's five nautical miles, not five miles.”

“Yes, sir.”

MacDonald motioned Goldstein to him. When the young officer reached his chair, MacDonald leaned over toward him, putting his weight on his left elbow, resting on the arm of the captain's chair. “If you want to be a good officer of the deck, then you must own the bridge. Not depend on your sailors to cover your ass, Sam.” He shook his head, his voice rising slightly. “Lieutenants should know the language of the bridge. Shit! I expect them to know the language of the navy. You should know . . . No—you
must
know everything about the condition of the
Dale
, and you must know every navigational detail about our destroyer and the ships surrounding it. Not wait until I ask you. Everything must be on the tip of your tongue. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Goldstein answered, his voice shaken.

MacDonald saw the sweat inching down the junior officer's face, tracing a path across sunburn earned from standing the grueling four-hours-on, four-hours-off watches on the bridge. Shit! Couldn't any of these new officers take a little criticism? “You're doing well, Sam. You're going to be one of my best. Not your fault you were a supply officer for a few years before seeing the error of your ways and switching to the surface warfare navy. But that also means you're behind others of your year group in learning how to do battle group steaming.”

“I am standing double OOD shifts, sir.”

“I know. I think that is admirable and can only lead to improvements. Now, go back and get us a course safely out of this battle group toward the submarine's last location and a course that will ensure we don't get run over by the
Kitty Hawk.
Can you do that for the old man?” Thirty-seven and he was calling himself the “old man.”

“Yes, sir.”

MacDonald picked up the red handset in front of him. He looked at Goldstein, who seemed riveted in place beside his chair.

“Go,” he motioned away, and watched Goldstein hurry back to the navigation table. MacDonald turned his attention forward, leaning back in his chair, failing to see the silent glances exchanged among the sailors of the bridge.

Maybe he was too rough on his wardroom. But at the academy they taught you that command was a lonely position. Better he train them while they had some modicum of peace with the Soviets, before the eventuality of having to fight them occurred. Who knew when and where the at-sea battle would begin with the Soviet Navy, but when it did he wanted his ship battle-ready.

MacDonald pushed the small button in the center of the handset and listened to the cryptographic keys bagpipe synchronization with the secure network between the battle group ships. He glanced through the open hatch to the port wing. The USS
Kitty Hawk
was visible.