Dominic Conlon - Silent Warpath

Captain Armstrong shook his head. ‘They weren’t exactly in a cooperative mood.’

‘Well we know the area we have to search’ said Sean.

‘I don’t want to spoil your enthusiasm’ responded McIver. ‘But it’s still a huge area — something like 600,000 square miles of ocean.’

‘Suppose they tell us roughly where the Kougar is, how do we stop our sub from making it into a pile of scrambled egg?’ asked Sean.

Louis pulled a table napkin towards him and brought out a Biro. DD watched over his shoulder as he drew an outline picture of their ship in the middle and one of Cetus near the edge. ‘There’s another way to communicate with Cetus. It’s our engineering method of controlling the sub — completely different to the normal methods the programmers developed. We can use Wi-Fi.’

‘You mean, like computer Wi-Fi signals?’ asked Natasha sceptically.

‘Exactly like Wi-Fi signals’ responded Louis.

‘Whatever for?’ queried Natasha.

‘We wanted a way of diagnosing problems without relying on a fixed line to the sub. Standard Wi-Fi signals can be received up to three hundred metres in clear air, maybe more provided there is nothing in the way.’

Louis started to draw a series of concentric circles around the ship in the middle of the napkin.

‘But Cetus will be underwater’, said Natasha. ‘Surely that would reduce the contact distance?’

Louis acknowledged the point. ‘Correct, Natasha. We will keep trying on all the normal communications channels as well. Every method we can use should be used.’

‘Could we broadcast Wi-Fi signals underwater? ’ asked DD.

Louis looked towards McIver. McIver looked at Captain Armstrong. ‘What do you think Jim?’

‘We might be able to use our sonobuoys. Take out the electronics gear and replace it with a Wi-Fi router.’

‘Assuming that we can do that, how far can they be picked up?’

Louis frowned. ‘To be truthful, I don’t know the answer to that — possibly as little as 20–30 metres.’

Natasha sat back, suddenly overwhelmed by the thought that this could not possibly work.

Louis saw the look of disappointment. ‘It was never meant to be used underwater,’ he said. ‘I’m just suggesting this way, because it’s the most direct.’

McIver tossed a pen onto the table. ‘Doesn’t seem feasible to me’ he said.

Sean picked up the pen. ‘But I think you had an idea Louis?’

Louis nodded.

‘Well, let’s hear what you have to say before we start pouring cold water over it.’ Sean passed the pen to Louis.

Louis began to draw a series of zigzag lines on the napkin, radiating out from the centre. ‘If we can get enough Wi-Fi base stations to transmit certain codes I can give you, the sub will pick them up and obey.’

Natasha looked doubtful. ‘Why should it do that when we know it has ignored all the other codes we sent telling it to stop?’

Louis looked offended. ‘I told you, it’s an engineering solution. No-one else really knows about the Wi-Fi method — it’s a bit like text messaging — before it was hi-jacked by the marketing departments.’

‘OK’ Sean intervened smoothly. ‘What do we need to do?’

‘Well, we would need the helicopters to dip the sonobuoys in the water — like they do when hunting submarines. The base stations would need to be broadcasting all the time. The helicopters would drag them through the water in a line.’

‘I can think of at least one problem with that’ interjected McIver. ‘Helicopters are fine at dunking sonobuoys in the water at a fixed depth. We don’t know what depth your sub might be at. We could still miss it by passing well above it.’

Louis turned to look at McIver. ‘Unfortunately I don’t have a plan to deal with that — we would just have to hope the base stations were at the right depth.’

DD looked thoughtful. ‘If we had enough base stations, we could string them together in a vertical line, say four placed 20 metres apart. We could drag one set from a boom on the port side of the helicopter and another set from starboard.’ He looked at McIver for confirmation. ‘We could have, say, four helicopters in line together. They would mark out a search area, north to south. When they reach the end of the box, they would all turn and travel back along the same line, just shifted over by 10 metres. That way, we could cover a depth of up to a hundred metres — twenty metres above the top and twenty metres below the bottom base station.’

‘I don’t want to rain on your parade, ‘ said McIver. ‘But where do we get so many Wi-Fi base stations? We’re miles from shore.’

‘Do you have Wi-Fi aboard your ship?’ asked Louis.

McIver thought for a moment. ‘I think we do — but I’ve no idea how many we have. Even if we could find a few, how can they be made to work underwater?’

DD turned to McIver. ‘Let me talk to your tech guys. I’d like to look at how your sonobuoys are put together — perhaps we could use the casings to enclose the base stations and deliver the necessary power.’

McIver looked uncertain, thinking that the idea had gone way past the bounds of credibility. But even if there was only a slim chance, he would have to take it.

‘You could also order some from the mainland and get a jet to pick them up and drop them off — shouldn’t take more than a few hours’ said Sean.

Everyone looked at Sean, surprised they hadn’t thought of the idea.

‘Right’ said McIver. ‘Let’s get to it.’

‘Con, sonar. I can hear dipping buoys in the water’ yelled the young sonar operator.

Captain 1st Rank Vasily Toporov was astounded. He had been patrolling this area of arctic ice and water for the last two months without incident. It was boring. But in the space of the last sixty seconds all hell broke loose.

It began with a distant booming noise travelling up and down the length of the boat. Sonar were unable to give him an exact fix on the source of the noise. He felt a deep pulse inside his own chest and he looked at the officers close by. They looked apprehensive and he knew they all felt it too.

‘Hull integrity risk!’ shouted the Chief Of the Boat.

In the warfare control section Starshina Polichev tried to ignore the loud caroming noises coming straight off the outer hull of the boat. He checked his screen. The direction of target designated SG-3, determined by the sonar array, was woefully inaccurate. The actual source of the vibration did not show up on any of his sonar screens. He could see a collection of shadows some 10 km distant and although this tallied with the general direction of the source, he couldn’t be sure it was SG-3.

‘Source designated SG-3, distance unclear, general direction 127 degrees’, Polichev read off his instruments.

‘Make your best guess at a firing solution!’ commanded Toporov.

Any of the shadows could be SG-3, Polichev thought. He chose the largest and patched it into the firing solution computers. ‘Firing solution committed’ replied Polichev.

‘Rise..’ commanded Captain Toporov. Before he could complete the order a loud crack like thunder boomed down the length of the sub.

‘Outer hull breached!’ shouted the Chief of the Boat.

Captain Toporov gripped the table. ‘Dive and make evasive turn to port.’

Several heads turned towards the Captain. It was unheard of to order a dive when the hull had been breached. But such was the discipline amongst the crew, not one person raised an objection.

Immediately the Kougar went into a steep descent and papers from the captain’s table slid to the floor. Toporov’s knuckles grew white as his grip on the table tightened.