John Schettler - Armageddon

“Open the outer hatch on my hack… Three… Two… One… Engage.”

The securing pins rotated and Fedorov heard the muted whir of a small motor as the hatch to the submarine slowly elevated. A faint red light appeared beneath his feet-red emergency lighting from the interior of the boat below him. The oval of the portal beneath him fattened into a circle as the hatch cap opened. Then he slowly climbed down through the opening into the dim airlock of the submarine below.

He waited to assist Admiral Volsky and Kamenski as they climbed down the narrow cylinder. As soon as Volsky’s foot touched the deck of Kazan, a Mishman piped him aboard.

“Admiral on the boat!”

“You can tell that I am an Admiral, even in my Lieutenant’s uniform?”

“Sir, I recognized you at once. We all know you.”

The three of them exited the airlock hatch first as the other passengers descended into the sub. They found that the main compartment outside the airlock was a diving station where men were standing by in wet suits with reserve oxygen, just in case anything had gone wrong. It was not common for a submarine to receive a visit from the Admiral of the Fleet, particularly under these circumstances, or in this manner. An officer soon appeared, Captain Gromyko himself come to greet them.

“Welcome aboard, Admiral.” He offered a firm handshake as the Admiral began to introduce his party.

“This is a special advisor, Pavel Kamenski,” he began, agreeing not to dwell on the man’s older KGB affiliations. “And here is our former navigation officer and now Captain of the Second Rank, Anton Fedorov.”

Volsky looked to see Orlov enter the compartment, eyes averted and quickly stepping aside as the Marines and engineers came in behind him. But the Admiral raised a hand, calling him from the group. “Here we have Captain of the Second Rank, Gennadi Orlov. This man was Chief of Operations aboard Kirov, a most capable officer.”

Orlov forced a smile, inwardly pleased that the Admiral had singled him out, though he thought the praise was undeserved. He had not expected that to happen, and was not aware that Volsky had confirmed the restoration of his rank. Up until that moment, the two men had not spoken, and the breaking of the long silence between them was a relief.

Gromyko was a clean cut officer, thirtyish with close cropped hair that was close to a buzz cut. He was in a dress white shirt with Captain’s insignia on shoulder boards. “Well gentlemen, we have a light meal prepared in the officer’s mess, and then I suppose we can hear your briefing.”

“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.”