Peter Sasgen - War Plan Red

“Mind your depth!” Scott barked.

He'd assigned his most experienced planesmen and helmsman the task of controlling the K-480 while steaming in the Sea Eagle’s wake. At the diving station these men took a firmer grip on the joysticks.

Minutes later they entered the mouth of The Sound at Hornbæk. Scott noted the flashing lights at mid- channel and onshore, warning of sandbars, which meant tight quarters in the channel. But without incident they passed another landmark ashore, a tall commercial radio mast with a blinking red light at its tip.

Scott, at the periscope, monitored their progress to ensure they kept station on the Sea Eagle’s stern light. At first it proved difficult to balance speed and maneuver, to not creep in under her stern and into the heavy rudder post and massive thrashing propeller, or fall behind and shed the cover that the Sea Eagle’s mass and turbulent wake provided. Soon after they entered the chute and proceeded south, keeping station proved as easy as driving a car on a superhighway behind an eighteen wheeler.

“Kapitan, we’re approaching the first buoyage line,” the starpom announced. “Ålsgårde lies to starboard.”

“Very well.” Scott spun the scope toward land and saw the coastal town of Ålsgårde. Yards from shore he spotted the lit-up factory and parking lot, which on the chart, served as a point of reference to the buoyage line bisecting the channel, its string of flashing lights warning of dangerously shallow water.

Scott stepped back from the scope. “Starpom, you have the conn. Hold our position.”

The young officer hesitated for a moment, then did as he was ordered, proud that Scott had confidence in his abilities. “Aye, sir. I have the conn.”

“Keep a seaman’s eye open,” Scott said, “in case the Polski suddenly slows down. Don’t run up his ass.”

“Aye, Kapitan. I mean, no, Kapitan.”

Scott stepped to the navigation table and placed a tick mark beside the first buoyage line they'd passed. Soon they would cross another line of buoys, then a cable crossing. After that, a pinched dogleg where the chute turned southeast at Kronborg Pynt. Several kilometers below Kronborg Pynt, they’d pick up Ven, an island off the coast of Sweden where the ship channel split into eastern and western halves. Scott remembered from his earlier incursion into the Baltic Sea in the Chicago that during his transit around Ven, he’d had to dodge numerous ships as well as ferryboats and while doing so had almost run aground twice.

After crossing the second buoyage line a BP oil tanker, which the starpom estimated to be over 250,000 deadweight tons, churned through the adjoining channel in the opposite direction. Her sheer bulk and massive wake affected even the giant Sea Eagle, which threw her and several smaller ships and the K- 480 off course.

Alex sidled up to Scott after he finished lauding the planesmen and helmsman who had fought to keep the ship under control during the tanker’s passage.

“How long will this take?” she said.

“Not long. Nervous?”

“Very. It’s worse than the reactor SCRAM.”

“Nothing’s worse than a reactor cooling problem on a submarine. But I admit, this is hairy.”

“I'm also worried about the ELF transmissions. What if they’re trying to reach us to tell us they’ve found the K-363 and that this is all for nothing?”

“They’ve been trying to communicate with us for hours, but there’s nothing we can do until we clear The Sound and can stick up a mast. If they've killed the K-363, we'll congratulate them and turn around and go home. If not, well, we’re where we need to be to do the job.”

She looked at him and for a moment he had the impression she didn't approve of the way he'd conducted himself and the mission. But like it or not, it was the way it had to be. Later, when it was all over, there would be time to make her understand. But there was something else in her look, too, something deep and troubling.

“What is it, Alex, Botkin?”

“Yes…well, no….”

“What?”

“We need to talk. I’ve done the calculations and—”

“What calculations?”

“Radiation dispersal downwind and—”

“Kapitan!”

Scott sprang to the starpom’s side at the periscope stand.

“Kapitan, the Sea Eagle is slowing down.” The starpom turned the scope over to Scott.

Scott said, “You’ve got the conn, Starpom. Stay with it.”

“Aye, Kapitan. Helm, give me turns for eight knots. Stand by to back down emergency full on both engines.”

The K-480 slowed but maintained a safe distance from the Sea Eagle. Turbulence flowing past the submarine’s partially exposed hull and around her sail decreased, and along with it the sibilance of tumbling water.

“What’s happening?” Scott said. “Can you see anything?

Running awash in the Sea Eagle’s wake had badly degraded sonar reception. They were deaf but, with the scope up, not blind.

“A ferry is crossing ahead of the Sea Eagle… Sweden to Denmark…cutting it very close. The Sea Eagle could have run the ferry down if she hadn’t slowed.”

The starpom did a quick 360-degree sweep. When he didn't swing back for another look at the ferry crossing to port, Scott sensed trouble.

“Something…” The starpom’s knuckles tightened on the periscope training handles. “A patrol boat…

closing from astern…. Danish, I think Range…under a kilometer…. Big bow wave…. He’s in a hurry…. Searchlight’s on.” He looked away from the scope to Scott. The young lieutenant’s sweaty face shimmered like polished bronze Scott had two choices to escape detection by the Dane, and neither was good: break off from the Sea Eagle, fall back, and submerge in shallow water and risk bottoming and damaging the hull; or speed up and pull abreast of the Sea Eagle and hope that her great bulk would provide cover in which to hide.

Scott had only minutes to make a decision, but his instincts told him to wait, that the Danish patrol boat’s skipper might have something else on his mind other than a submarine trying to sneak through The Sound.

Alex’s gaze alternated between the starpom at the periscope and Scott standing in the middle of the CCP. Abakov, nodding, seemed to have grasped what Scott had intuited.

“He’s not after us, Starpom, he’s after that ferryboat for cutting ahead of the Sea Eagle. The ferry’s captain violated the rules of the road. The ferry is the burdened vessel and is forbidden to cross ahead.”

Alex looked frightened. “Jake, are you sure?”

“Starpom,” he said, “what’s that patrol boat doing now?”

The starpom had his eye to the scope. “Kapitan, you are right. He’s signaling with his searchlight. And he’s…he’s sheering to starboard… to catch up with the ferry at Helsingør.”

Scott wiped his face on a shirtsleeve. He caught the look of relief on Abakov’s face.

The K-480 exited the southbound channel at Helsingør Red and dropped from behind the Sea Eagle, which continued on her way, unaware she’d had company for the last two hours.

Still submerged, Scott began to ease the K-480 toward deeper water on the eastern side of Ven. Surprisingly little traffic came their way and Scott let the starpom conn the boat around Ven, then farther south to Saltholm, where a tunnel under The Sound connected Malmö, Sweden, to Copenhagen, Denmark.

At Falterborev, a hook of land protruding into the Baltic from Sweden, a pair of Stockholm-class guided-missile patrol boats passed within a kilometer of the K-480 but didn't react. A German naval oiler headed west toward Bornholm, which Scott had marked on the chart as their next objective, overtook them and steamed on by overhead.

“Once we get past Bornholm,” Scott explained to the starpom, “we'll start our search for the K-363.”