Kirov Saga: Armageddon (Kirov Series) (7 page)

“Excellent,” said Volsky, and the Captain led the way forward.

Twenty minutes later the AS-28 had disengaged and was wallowing
slowly back towards the
Sayany
to continue the theater. A small diesel
sub taken from fleet reserve was waiting to surface shortly after it reappeared
topside. To any watching eyes above, the Russians would seem to have just
completed a minor rescue operation for a wounded diesel boat. But there were
some very good eyes watching from space, and an eager young analyst thought he
saw something that did not seem quite kosher that night as he processed the
latest image feeds.

*
* *

“Have
a look at this, sir.”

“What is it this time, Mister Keats?” Watch Lieutenant Dickson
looked up from his desk, eying the young Ensign in front of him with some
impatience.”

“It’s that sub tender operation up north in the Tartar Strait.”

“Sub tender?”

“With the
Admiral Kuznetsov
, sir.”

“What in god’s name would an aircraft carrier need a sub tender
for, Ensign?”

“Well it’s really not a tender, sir. This is a
Pioner Moskvy
class submersible salvage and support ship. I was able to see the hull number
and I just looked it up—the
Sayany
. We had it in Vladivostok a week ago,
but they must have moved it out in the last few days.”

“That’s not surprising. They pulled most of their diesel boats in
tight, and it’s probably out on a replenishment run.”

“Well they
would
use a tender for an operation like that,
sir. This ship carries a deep sea submersible, you can even see it in the image
here. These boats are used for undersea salvage and rescue operations.”

“That doesn’t surprise me either. We took down both their
Oscars
after that engagement with the
Washington
. They got their stuff off and
scored hits, but that was like sending
Seawolf
their location via GPS.
They were gone three hours later.”

“Has that
Yasen
class boat been found yet, sir?”

“You mean
Kazan?
Not yet, but we’ll find it. Intel thinks
the boat is up in the Sea of Okhotsk to replenish.”

“They’d have to put it in the tube to do that, sir.” Keats was
referring to the deep underground submarine pens built by the Russians for just
this purpose. They allowed a stealthy submarine to slip into a secure location
and never be seen coming or going.

“That they would…Probably in and back out by now, which is why
PACCOM is so hot to find the damn thing.”

Keats thought about that. “What would they use a boat like that
for LT? Isn’t
Kazan
suppose to be one of their sub killers?”

“Carrier killer too. It was a multi-purpose design, built to
replace both their
Oscar
SSM missile boats and the
Akula
attack
subs. Sucker has a raft of missiles aft of the sail in VLS tubes and also packs
ten torpedo tubes that can put a lot of mean fish in the sea.”

“Yeah, if they can find anything to shoot at.”

“That’s always the great game, Keats. Whoever hears the other
fellow first gets that first shot. Then it really doesn’t matter how much heat
these new Russian subs are packing if you put the damn thing on the bottom of
the sea before they can fire anything.”

“We didn’t do that with those two
Oscars
, sir. They hurt
Washington
pretty bad before
Seawolf
got to them.”

“Tanner got whacked because he was stupid…but you didn’t hear me
say that, Ensign. He had no business launching his strike without coordinating
with
Nimitz
. The Russians threw everything they had at him—
Backfires
,
all their missile subs, and anything that surface action group had that could
make the range. With
Nimitz
in support they would have to divide those
strike assets between our two carrier groups, and our counterpunch would have
been much heavier too. As it was they lost most everything they had out there
when that volcano blew its top. Now they’ve just got the
Kuznetsov
.”

“So that’s where I’d put
Kazan
, sir.”

“Say again, Keats?” The Lieutenant was fixated on creaming his
coffee, and lecturing more than listening to the younger officer.

“
Kazan
, sir. If all they have left is that single carrier,
I’d pull everything in there to protect it.”

“Makes sense, I suppose.”

“Well from this image I think they had to mount a rescue operation,
sir. Look here, a diesel boat came up about two hours after they sent that
salvage vessel out. So it was no replenishment operation, sir. That’s B-345, the
Mogocha
.”

“How can you know that from that image, Keats? The damn photo was
taken from outer space, for god’s sake.”

“It hit a tug two years ago and they never did repair that ding
there on the right side of her nose.”

“Ahh…Good eye, Ensign.”

“Thank you, sir. But this boat shouldn’t be out here now.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, is was scheduled for refit and they were going to pull all
her teeth. Intel says they wanted to make a modification test on this boat to
see if they could fit some of the newer torpedoes and maybe extend the life of
the remaining
Kilos
a few more years. At least that’s what the group
concluded when we saw them off-loading the ordnance last month. There’s no way
they could have it combat ready.”

“Is that so…” The Lieutenant was stirring his coffee slower now,
his attention finally focused on what the Ensign was telling him.”

“Yes sir. That baby should be fast asleep in the old Pavlovskoye
underground shelter. They must be scraping the bottom of the barrel.”

“Let me see that photo, Keats.”

The Lieutenant was very interested now.

Chapter 5

Mississippi
was not an old boat ready
for retirement, but one of the newer
Virginia
class hunter killer subs
on patrol that day—and
Mississippi
was ready. It had moved west as part
of the
Nimitz
group undersea screen, but that job was handed over to two
Los Angeles
Class boats out of Apra Harbor, Guam under Task Force 74.
This freed up the newer subs to get out and hunt enemy assets that might pose a
grave threat.
Seawolf
was now looking for the Russian and Chinese
Boomers, particularly the boat that had actually fired a sub launched missile
over the continental US. It had good company from units out of San Diego, and the
US was slowly scouring the Eastern Pacific throughout 3rd Fleet’s area of
responsibility.

When
Key West
went down on close in reconnaissance of the
Russian surface fleet, it left a big hole in Western Pacific coverage.
Mississippi
was reassigned to fill that hole, and was now on the prowl for anything the
Russians might have left behind after their hasty withdrawal to the Sea of
Okhotsk. Aside from the state for which she was named, the boat was also proud
to bear the name of the old battleship that had been reputedly killed by a sub
to begin the Second World War for the United States, BB-41.

But the new
Mississippi
(SSN-782) was nothing like the old
battlewagon she was named for. She was commissioned into the navy in June of
2012 with a host of new technology that made her an evolutionary leap in
undersea warfare. While not as fast or even well armed as the more powerful
Seawolf
,
the
Virginia
class was much less expensive, and went on to become the
primary replacement for the
Los Angeles
Class boats and the mainstay of
the US undersea attack sub fleet.

It was one of the first submarines to forsake the time honored
periscope for a newer “photonic mast,” which utilized an array of sensors,
including thermographic and laser-based range finders, and high-definition
low-light cameras. With no eyepiece, the old classic role of the sub Captain
peering through his periscope and ‘dancing with the grey lady’ was now a thing
of the past. Instead the mast was controlled by a joystick to pivot and present
visual data relayed directly to several banks of computer monitors displayed in
a large control room.

The workhorse of the sub’s sensor suite, of course, was her sonar,
mounted in a spherical bow array with additional sensors in the sail and keel
of the sub. These could be further augmented by both low and high frequency
towed sonar arrays, and the equipment was so advanced that good operators
claimed they could actually detect the sound of Russian sub crews talking to
one another inside their old
Kilo
class boats, once called “the black
holes of the sea” because they were so quiet.

The
Kilos
may have been quiet in their day, but that day
was now long past. Advances in US sonar technology had now made any boat
conceived and built before the 21st Century obsolete. Now the sonar operators
would sit before wide panel computer monitors and watch a waterfall of green
signal data tumbling down their screens, combining the visual sensory information
with anything they might hear, just like old radar operators would monitor
signals on their screen. Human eyes now joined ears in the assessment of the undersea
environment. The waterfall of data would indicate noise for potential contacts
as enhanced white areas within the falling green signal matrix, allowing the
operator to watch the contact as much as he might hear it.

Information from all the ship’s systems became a data fusion that
painted the overall picture of what was happening outside the boat. The net
effect of all these listening arrays was to collapse the uncertainty factor,
and winnow down the information to answer the same old questions. What was the contact?
Where was it? What was it doing? The information was distilled into range,
speed, bearing and heading, and the system was so good that operators could
even hear sound from a ding on a ship’s propulsion blade. A library of sounds
was recorded and stored on all contacts made, and various ships or subs could
be quickly identified by their sonic “signature.”

 Situated on the port side of the boat, the sonar operators now
shared data with the combat system screens on the starboard side of the control
room. Together they combined to give operators an overall “situational
awareness” of the undersea environment around them that was unsurpassed.

At the same time,
Mississippi
was one of the quietest subs
in the world, with new anechoic coatings, noise canceling technology, isolated
deck structures and a novel design for a pump jet propulsor that did not use a
rotating propeller and reduced noise from cavitation. It also removed the need
for a long rotating drive shaft extending all the way to the boat’s reactor. The
old hydraulic systems that once controlled rudders and fins were now replaced
by a “fly by wire” electronic control system, further reducing noise. Inside
the nuclear reactor that drove the ship, water was circulated without the need
to rely on noisy pumps, adding additional stealth. All told, it was said by
some that the new boats were quieter running at their flank speed than an older
Los Angeles
class boat was sitting idle at a berth in the harbor.

The business end of the boat when it came to war fighting was a
set of four torpedo tubes firing the Mark-48 Mod 9 Torpedo. An old warrior from
the late 1980s, the Mark 48 held on with many updates and modifications that
now saw it capable of delivering a 650 pound warhead to a target well over 20
miles away at a speed of 40 to 55 knots. The boat also had 12 BGM-109 land
attack Tomahawk cruise missiles.

So when war came to the Pacific,
Mississippi
was ready for
anything the enemy could put in the sea. Her officers and crew were equally
ready, and today she was commanded by Captain James Donahue, gliding silently
through the waters off the southern coast of Hokkaido. The boat was beneath the
big ash plume that had been blowing south from the Demon Volcano, snooping out
any potential Russian sub activity there when it received new orders on its
secure comm-link channel.

“What’s up, skipper.” The XO, Chris Chambers, was just getting the
word now.

“COMSUBRON 7 wants us to transit the Tsugaru Strait tonight and take
up a position here.” The Captain pointed at a location on the digital map, just
west of the strait, out in the Sea of Japan. “It took them three tries to get
us the message too. Communications have been a bear with that eruption still
ongoing. In any case, we’re supposed to operate in loose cooperation with a
Japanese task force coming out of Maizuru… a couple subs and a small surface
action group.”

“Maizuru? That far south?”

“Chitose and Hachinohe have been forced to shut down operations,
just like Misawa. That damn ash fall has practically blanketed all of Hokkaido.
Magnetic disturbances have practically shut down most of the comm spectrum as
well, so you can forget reliable sensor data from any land based facility
there. The base at Maizuru is now top of the list for operations in the Sea of
Japan. It’s far enough south and the airwaves are clear down there.”