Steve Abbott - Devil's Gambit

Miami’s screw surged in rotation to push her from a sluggish four knots up to thirty, but it was too late. A large piece of the Bear’s starboard wing sliced through the towed array’s cable, dragging both to the bottom.

“Conn, Sonar, towed array just went dead!”

Luck was not with the crew of the Miami. The remains of the Bear’s fuselage slammed across their bow before breaking in half and sliding away. Those standing clawed for any available handhold as the Miami rolled hard on its port side.

Captain Garret Billings held his seat, but his favorite mug detonated on the far side of the bridge in a spray of coffee and ceramic shrapnel. “Damn! Get us out of here. Chief! I want a damage report and I want it now!”

“Aye, sir.” The chief of the boat held the sleeve of his shirt above his left eye. Trying to staunch the flow of blood from the gash he received when Miami rolled. Piece by piece, the boat’s situation came in over his headset. “No apparent damage forward, sir, but we must have lost a bunch of tiles.”

Billings took it in stride. “Thanks COB. Launch a noisemaker. Make a hard ninety to starboard. Back us off to one quarter ahead once we’re on the new heading.”

“Coming to new heading, zero two zero. New heading, zero two zero, ahead one quarter. Aye, sir.”

Billings called over to his sonar supervisor, “Sonar! I need you up and running.”

“Sonar, aye, sir!” The supervisor turned to his men. “You heard him, get yer ears on. Get a fix on what’s out there.” Headsets were donned and systems powered up just in time to hear the depth charges and noisemakers the Bear had dropped earlier go off.

Three hundred feet beneath the Miami’s stern, the surviving depth charges in the Bear’s fuselage also went off. A huge cloud of gas bubbles soared upwards. The bubbles robbed the water of buoyancy. Miami’s stern section, caught in this saturated cloud, dropped violently. Its screw began to cavitate in the less dense mass of the infused water.

Billings, still in his seat, could not believe this was happening to him as the front of the control center shot up at a harsh angle and the sub began to move backwards. “Son of a bitch!” What the fuck was going on? With a violent jerk, the sub began to level out. “Sonar! Do you have anything?” The lights went red as the primary power shut off and the auxiliary kicked in.

The supervisor answered, “Negative, sir. Both rear lateral arrays are down and the port forward array is intermittent. Towed array is also down, presumed lost, but with the amount of noise being produced out there, it’s doubtful that our Korean friends can hear us either.”

The fire klaxon erupted. A shaft of ice shot down the back of every sailor on board. Fire is a greater fear for a submariner than even the sea. Fire lives and breathes the same air you do, only far faster. Billings turned to the Chief, who was relaying orders into his headset’s mouthpiece.

The Chief looked up, “Fire in the power-plant area, sir. It’s out. A nexus blew after that last explosion. No one injured. They’re in CHEMOX gear for the moment until the air clears a little bit.”

Billings glanced over at the remains of his mug. “Well, that’s the first good news I’ve had all day.”

“Comrade Captain! Definite metal transient bearing one zero, range indeterminate, but whatever it is, it’s under two kilometers.

The Great Leader’s Captain moved to just behind his sonar officer’s shoulder. “Can you be any more specific than that Comrade Syunmin?”

“I apologize, Captain, but the water conditions created by the storm and by our aircraft before it was shot down have made any definite solution impossible.”

“Shot down?”

“Yes sir. I heard a faint explosion over the surface noise and then the impact.” The officer shrugged. “It was very close. As I was saying, all of these factors have degraded our sonar’s passive performance greatly. We are blind.”

The Captain put his hand on his officer’s shoulder, “Very well then, Comrade. Do your utmost best to keep us alerted.”

Syunmin nodded, “Yes, Captain.” A look of consternation returned to his face as he tried to make sense of the sonic garbage outside. It was nearly impossible to hear anything, the water was so worked up. The noisemakers sent out an unending barrage of bangs and thumps. Their activation and shut down periods were totally random. The depth charges were the icing on a muddled cake. But, there had been an unmistakable, large impact; definitely metal on metal. A large explosion and multiple blade cavitation along almost the same track as the first transient had followed thirty seconds later. The operator chewed at his lip. As bad as the water conditions were now, there had been intelligence rumblings that the Americans might possess an extreme low frequency version of active sonar. Still, that transient had been definitely metal on metal. Then an explosion. Could the sub be sunk? He shook his head. No, it was still out there and probably not alone.

He turned to the Captain, “Comrade Captain. I urge caution. There is a good chance that the Yankee sub is ahead of us. I just heard a metallic transient, followed by extreme cavitation.”

Kil-Yon steepled his hands in front of his face and rested his chin on them. His dark eyes were sunken, but not tired. “Noted, Lieutenant. Plot a firing solution on that point, based on your best estimate. If the cavitation was a ruse, I want them busy, very quickly.”

The First Officer’s thin hands moved from pocket to clipboard to pocket, looking for a pen that was not there. “But Captain, there must be more than one submarine out there. A torpedo launch would reveal our position to them and we would be destroyed.”

“If the waters were in a normal condition, yes, I would be concerned, but with the amount of noise present in the water right now, it is a risk I am prepared to take.”

The First Officer gave a bow of his head. “Of course, Comrade Captain.”

The Captain gave the briefest of nods in return. “Of course, Xian, you are only doing your job.” He turned to the helmsman. “Let’s make the best of all this noise while we can.” He leaned back in his command chair. “Steer one one zero. Make turns for five knots.”

“But Captain! That will take us right towards the sonar contact.”

This time the Captain did not bother to look at his First Officer. “And precisely where that Yankee sub will not be.”

The situation on Miami was going from bad to worse. The control nexus fire in the power-plant room was bad and nothing was more useless than a deaf sub.

Their screw, an incredible piece of large scale machining, had been designed to prowl the deeps at a variety of speeds in silence. It and the shaft that turned it were a perfect pair. The delicate collection of bearings and seals that lined the length of the shaft had been compressed and flexed in the most violent manner. The shaft had been warped and the blades of the screw were damaged. A harmonic could now develop at any speed. In the slang of submariners, the sub would sing. In the silent world of the deep where every whisper is heard for miles, singing is a capital offense.

Miami drifted with the current, making the barest possible amount of turns to keep them steerable and the water flowing into the cooling ducts for the nuclear power-plant. There was no judging how much damage had been done to the passive and active sonar systems in the bow or down the sides of Miami. The sonar techs were still going over each system one at a time. After all that had happened today, Miami’s skipper wanted that North Korean sub stuffed and mounted over his fireplace.