Kirov Saga: Armageddon (Kirov Series) (8 page)

“So they’re giving us the inside channel this time? I like it much
better out in the deep blue.”

“They don’t think the action there is likely to heat up after that
last engagement. Now everything seems to be focused on the Sea of Japan and
points south. We’ll be playing flank guard on this team. The Japanese want to
move up a sea interdiction patrol from Maizuru to monitor the corridor and
watch for any new Russian sub deployments out of Vladivostok. Someone at Navy
Intel got a hair up his ass and thinks that new Russian boat has slipped away.”

“Kazan?”

“That’s the one. It participated in that missile barrage against
Tanner’s group on
Washington
. Then it seemed to sail into a black hole.
They thought it might be up replenishing, which is a pretty good bet, but the
Russians have moved their carrier south through the Tartar Strait off Sakhalin
Island, and that raised a few eyebrows at Naval Intel.”

“How so, skipper?”

“Who knows. Maybe they think the Russkies will put all their good
chips on the
Admiral Kuznetsov
now that
Kirov
has gone down.”

“That must have been a hard blow for them.”

“Yeah? Well they delivered a few haymakers themselves. Word is
Washington
is going to have to be moved from Guam to Pearl. They’re offloading her
remaining strike aircraft and ordnance at Guam according to the report I got
yesterday.”

“What about the Chinese, sir? It seems to me we have more to worry
about with them than we do with the Russians now.”

“If they have anything in the Sea of Japan it will be ours for
breakfast if we run into them. Most everything they’ve deployed recently is
coming out of the Yellow Sea, so it will be in the East China Sea or standing
off the Tsushima Straits. That’s the real hot zone. This duty here is probably
going to be low and slow. I think we’ll just sit tight off Oshima Island under
a nice thermocline and bide our time.”

“Campy says his waterfall looks positively ugly.” He was referring
to the boat’s chief sonar operator, Ensign Eugene Campanella. The visual data
waterfall had been very disturbed by the eruption. It wasn’t just the constant
rumble of migrating magma, but a range of other disturbances as well.

“What’s Campanella’s problem?”

“Spectrum is all fouled up, sir. We may want to move south away
from that Demon Volcano and have the Japanese cover the strait with a couple
diesel boats.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said the Captain. “If we go after this sub
we’ll need the wax out of our ears, that’s for sure. Let the Japanese bird-dog
the area and we’ll back them up if anything develops.”

“I’d be willing to bet the Russians will stand pat where they are
now, sir. Without
Kirov
they’ve lost their real offensive threat on the
surface. The atmosphere is just too dirty for air operations off the
Kuznetsov
.
In fact, I’d say that ship is just a liability for them now—just a nice fat
target for air or sub launched cruise missiles. If that Navy Intel report is
accurate, it will tie up all their really good undersea assets.”

“Probably so. But if they do have anything left with a mind for
blue water, it will be incumbent on us to find and flame the SOB. COMSUBRON 7
wants this new Russian boat located as soon as possible.”

“We have a kill order, sir?”

“That remains to be seen. Things have been on a hair trigger the
last few days. Right now our mission is to run this patrol and make sure they
don’t get curious out here.”

“Well enough, sir,” said Chambers. “I’ll brief the department
heads.”

*
* *

Out
in the Sea of Japan, Captain Sato was having the same
conversation in his own head aboard the destroyer
Onami
. He was leading
a small flotilla comprised of his own ship and two smaller and older ASW
destroyers, the
Amagiri
and
Abukuma
, which were really frigate
sized vessels under 4000 tons full load.
Onami
was a real destroyer at
6300 tons, and had been assigned to duty in the Tsugaru Strait out of Ominato
until the Demon Volcano made that watch fairly hazardous. When you can’t
breathe the air over the sea, you just move elsewhere, so Sato found himself pushed
west through the strait to the Sea of Japan to take command of an ASW patrol
out of Maizuru.

Submarine watch was his stock in trade, and all the ships in his
task group were optimized for ASW warfare, even though they were well past
their prime, with every ship dating to the late 1980s except Sato’s flagship
Onami
,
which had been commissioned in 2003.

Even as Admiral Volsky and his party boarded
Kazan
far to
the north, the remainder of the Japanese task force had put out from Maizuru
naval base, an installation dating back to the years immediately following the
Russo-Japanese war, and a base built with the idea of keeping a watchful eye on
the Russians at Vladivostok. They would be steaming north for the next day,
intent on mounting a routine anti-submarine watch in the Sea of Japan. A short
week ago the Russian surface fleet would have posed a dire threat here, but now
they were a beaten force, licking their wounds in the cold northern seas. Sato
did not expect to encounter any Russian surface vessels here, but submarines
were another matter, which is why he would have his SH-60J
Seahawk
helicopters up on regular patrol. He was carrying a single chopper, as was
Amagiri
.
His third ship had no helicopter support,
Abukuma
, a frigate in the
range of 2500 tons, but it would weigh in with an octuple ASROC launcher and a
pair of triple HOS-301 torpedo tube mounts for some good ASW punch if needed.

Keeping the
Seahawks
up was always a risky proposition
given their close proximity to Vladivostok. There was a very real threat of
Russian fighter patrols, as the skies over the Sea of Japan were still
relatively clear of ash and soot from the Demon Volcano. In this event, Sato
was told he could call on a squadron of JF-35 fighters from the mainland, which
made him rest just a little easier that morning.

The last two fingers on Sato’s mailed fist that day were under the
sea, SS-503
Hakuryu
, the
White Dragon,
and SS-596
Kuroshio.
As
per normal routine, they were already out in front of his small surface group, a
pair of diesel electric boats creeping along at a sedate 10 knots for their
assigned patrol runs.

They had not seen or heard anything of the Russian Navy for two
days now, and did not expect to see anything today either. Yet word came in to
be especially vigilant. Apparently the Americans believed the Russians might
try to slip a fast new submarine into the Sea of Japan and, as that body of
water bore the name of their homeland, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force
would stand the watch.

Sato was told to expect American submarine support, but he did not
yet know the name or character of the boat that was coming. A
Los Angeles
class boat would be most likely, he thought, as this is a backwater now to the
main action further south where the tense standoff against the Chinese was
winding up tighter and tighter every day. Soon the American carriers would
begin their big counter operation there to retake the airspace over Taiwan. The
Chinese were quick to get in those hard first punches, and their new J-20s had
soon become masters of the sky, but now they would have to duel with two highly
experienced air wings off these carriers backed up by the best squadrons of
land based F-22 and F-35 fighters in the Pacific.

The last time we flew land based fighter support off Okinawa the
Chinese answered with six ballistic missiles at Naha. Now the island was
bristling with new anti-missile defenses, receiving three more
Patriot
batteries in the last few days. We shall see what happens should the Dragon be
so bold as to breath its fire our way again.

Yet it would not be the Chinese Sato would have to worry about on
this watch. His back was well covered. The navy was watching the strategic
Tsushima Straits very closely, and Korea had nothing of consequence to put in
the water but a few old
Romeo
or
Whisky
class diesel subs. He
doubted if they had anything more than 50 miles from their own coastline, but
if found, he had orders to sink any North Korean boat he encountered.

His real nemesis that day was still far to the north, where the
chairs were just starting to warm in the briefing room aboard the submarine
Kazan
.
There Admiral Volsky was thinking how to outline the desperate mission that
would soon add thunder to the quiet of Sato’s morning. The Russians were coming
south, and they were going to stop at nothing to achieve what they now set out
to do.

Ironically, the heart of that mission would mean they were now
sending the very best submarine they had to find and possibly engage and sink the
former flagship of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet! Sato knew nothing of this that
day, but his ships were in the way of that plan now, and he would soon learn
the truth behind the rumors of a fast new Russian sub in these waters.

Chapter 6

“Well,
Admiral,” said Captain Gromyko as he finished his tea. The easy
route south would be to hug the coast all the way to Vladivostok, and then head
south from there into the Sea of Japan.”

“Won’t the Americans expect us to take this route?” Volsky folded
his arms over a well satisfied gut, the meal just concluded, along with the
pleasantries, as the briefing began in earnest now. The Admiral was there, with
Gromyko and his Executive Officer Belanov, along with Kamenski, Fedorov,
Dobrynin and the others.

“I suppose they would, but it is still much safer than trying to
go through the Kuriles and then transiting the Tsugaru Strait from the East.
That area is very likely being watched by American submarines, and the strait
itself could be mined. If we take the route I suggest, we will most likely only
have to deal with the Japanese.”

“Yes, this is the only route that makes any sense. Captain, what
do you think our chances are of getting well south without being detected?”

“
Kazan
is very quiet,” said Gromyko, “as long as the crew
itself is quiet. We have many new features built into this ship to make it one
of the stealthiest submarines in the world. I will give you a tour after we
finish, and you will see that our torpedo room is not forward as one might
think. The tubes are mounted on the port and starboard side of the ship, on
either side of the forward sail. This leaves the nose of the ship acoustically
isolated for the new spherical sonar array there. We are the only sub in the
world configured this way.”

“But can we break through the Japanese patrols undetected?” The
Admiral pressed his question again.

“I give us very good odds on that, and if they should discover us by
chance, then we can put those torpedo tubes to good use.”

Volsky nodded, though his heart was heavy with the thought of more
combat, and more lives lost at sea. He had seen more than enough in recent
months. Yet now he knew there was another matter at the heart of this mission
that needed to be discussed, and he considered how to best broach the matter.

“Well then… Captain Gromyko, every man in this room is aware of
something that must now be disclosed to you and your
Starpom
if you are
to remain an able Captain of your submarine here. You may have been curious as
to what this visit was for, and why you should have the Fleet Admiral and these
other gentlemen here asking you about a stealthy trip out into the Sea of Japan.”

“That thought has crossed my mind, sir.”

“No doubt.” Volsky took a long breath. Where to begin? “Captain…as
you may have heard I was aboard the battlecruiser
Kirov
last July when
we went out for live fire exercises in the Norwegian Sea. What you have
not
heard is what actually happened to that ship, though I am sure there have been
rumors.”

“We heard there was some kind of accident aboard
Orel
, sir.
Those old
Oscars
have served their purpose and should be retired. They
are all accidents waiting to happen.”

“That may be so,” Volsky agreed. “Well there
aren’t many left. The Americans have recently retired the last two assigned to
the Pacific.”

Gromyko made a grim nod now, waiting to hear more.

“Captain, that accident involved a nuclear warhead, and the detonation
had a very strange effect on the ship—on
Kirov
. Perhaps mister Kamenski
here can attest to these effects as they are associated with such detonations.”

Kamenski cleared his throat. “That I can, Admiral. But it would
take much more time than we have to explain it all in detail. Suffice it to say
that in 1961 we discovered that the detonation of a nuclear device caused some
rather dramatic effects beyond the obvious physical chaos of the explosion
itself. We knew about radiation since the 1940s, but it wasn’t until the high
altitude tests between 1958 and 1962 that we discovered other effects, like the
EMP burst that darkened parts of Hawaii nearly 1500 miles away and knocked out
one third of low orbiting satellites with its residual radiation. The Chinese
have just recently demonstrated their mastery of this same trick over the
Pacific coast of the United States. Well, one other effect was discovered in
October of 1961 with the detonation of the Tsar Bomba, and it was very strange
indeed. The detonation ruptured the time continuum.”