Armageddon

Chapter 13

The death struggle Karpov spoke of was about to begin, though he could not know that from where he sat. The outcome of that struggle would determine much, for Anton Fedorov was, indeed, a very resourceful and determined man. Kazan moved southwest as Fedorov suggested, until they were about twenty kilometers off the coast of Wonsan harbor. Dobrynin said the interference seemed to diminish somewhat, but kept asking that they continue west.

“Just a little farther,” he said. “I think things are starting to clear up and we can begin our operation soon.”

“Yes, well we will soon cross into North Korean territorial waters, Chief, so we can’t go much farther west. This is a fairly dangerous area. We will have to go south.”

They picked up a few North Korean diesel subs on sonar, but there was no indication that they had been detected in turn. Then something quite unexpected happened. The boat’s sonar man Chernov had been listening to a small surface flotilla that had deployed from Wonsan as Kazan approached. They were very close to it now, and Gromyko even took the risk of sneaking a peek at it from shallow depth.

“Looks to be a couple of trawlers and one large merchantman,” he said to his Starpom, Belanov.”

“What are they doing out here?”

“Who knows? Perhaps they are fishing, eh?”

There was no evidence that they were up to anything that might cause alarm, until Chernov heard something in the water he could not quite recognize.

“Con. Sonar. I have an undersea contact now, very close, very small, on that same heading, bearing 270 true. It’s moving, but very slow.”

Gromyko scratched his head. “Too slow to be a torpedo, eh?”

“Too small to be one of their diesel boats, sir.”

“It doesn’t sound like they are fishing either,” said Belanov. “Could they have seen our periscope?”

“I doubt that,” said Gromyko. “Could it be a submersible? Do you have any transients from the sea floor?” He was thinking there may be some kind of salvage operation underway, as he had noted cranes on the larger commercial vessel in the flotilla”

“No sir, no transients, but I’m on passive systems now.”

“You should have heard it well before this, Chernov. Is something wrong with your ears?”

“No sir. I think it was just launched from that flotilla.”

“From one of the surface ships?”

Gromyko was running down the possibilities in his mind. Was it possible that the North Koreans had detected them and floated a mine or depth charge? Could it be a torpedo that misfired? Neither seemed likely, but something occurred to him that made more sense.

“This might be one of those damn min-subs of theirs,” he said aloud. “Chernov, look that up in the database.”

“Aye, sir. I have it now… Yono Class. Twenty-two meter length and just 130 tons. Maximum speed 8 knots. They use those for special forces operations, sir.”

“Could be a training mission,” Belanov suggested.

“Could be a pain in the ass,” said Gromyko, running his hand over his short cropped hair. “Very well, ease us away from this flotilla. Helm, come right five by five degrees. Make you depth 100 meters.” He wanted a gradual turn to starboard with a five degree down bubble to slowly descend to the new depth.

“And just in case they get lucky, the boat will come to battle stations. Quietly please.”

“Aye sir,” said Belanov. “Battle stations. Our red lights are on.”

There were no longer loud claxons or alarm bells on the stealthy submarines of 2021. Alert conditions were signaled visually by lights. In the torpedo rooms very near the main operations center the crews now stood ready to load tubes if ordered.

Then it happened.

A maintenance crew had been competing a routine repair operation aft near the turbines. The engineer finished reinforcing a small weld in the turbine room where a piece of equipment threatened to come loose from the deck with a bad bolt. It was very near the turbine itself, which made it careful, dangerous work. He was using a small acetylene torch and when he went to shut it down the valve stubbornly refused to close. As he moved his other hand to assist, the red lights came on indicating battle stations and he glanced away just long enough to cause him to misjudge what he was doing. His elbow struck a shielded pipe in the confined space and the torch slipped from his hands, still on as it fell to the deck with a harsh clatter. The hot blue jet of was pointed right at a bearing housing and the lubricant suddenly caught fire.

Seeing what he had done, the man cursed his bumbling stupidity and called out the alarm. “Fire crews! Turbine room! Now, now, now!”

The men were already up for battle stations and now they came running quickly into the turbine room in their bright orange suits, one man still pulling on gloves and trying to fasten his rebreather mask. They each carried fire extinguishers, and though the fire was very small, it was in a difficult spot, and the engineer was wedged into a narrow space, the flames blocking his only means of egress. They were forced to deploy a hose, which made for very noisy business the next five minutes as they struggled to knock down the flames and cool the bearings that had been briefly involved.

Back in the main operating room Gromyko saw the fire light, his eyes registering surprise. “What’s going on aft?” He looked at Belanov as the information registered, and the Starpom was quick to the comm system to find out what had happened.

“We’re making a good bit of noise, sir,” said Chernov.

Gromyko could hear it now, a dry squeal where the bearings had lost their lubricant and metal on metal doused by water and fire retardant was causing a real mess.

“Captain,” said Belanov. “Fire in the turbine room. The number six bearing housing was involved. They had to deploy a hose!”

“Damn!” Gromyko swore. Just what they needed now, slinking about beneath a flotilla of North Korean boats out for special operations training. Then it got worse.

“Con. Sonar torpedo in the water! Range 3,000!”

It was just their bad luck that the special operations deployment in the mini-sub was there to set up sonobuoys on the seafloor to protect the approaches to the harbor. They had already set down three, and this was buoy four, though they had been unable to hear Kazan in the water until her turbine bearings started singing. The mini sub carried two 533mm torpedoes, both armed and ready, and they fired one down the direction of the sound bearing, thinking they may have already caught a Japanese or even an American submarine trying to penetrate their defensive perimeter.”

“Countermeasures! Launch decoys, both to starboard side!”

“Sir, launching countermeasures!”

“Left full rudder! Ten degree down bubble!”

“Sir, my rudder is left full and we are diving.”

Their luck was not all bad. The North Koreans had been startled by the sudden discovery of a potentially hostile submarine close by. They did not yet have a good fix on the location, in spite of the noise, which was now abating and the engineers quickly got control of the situation aft. Their torpedo was wide of the mark and when it tried to home in all it would find was noisy sound decoys.

“Load tubes one and two!” Gromyko did not know what the enemy knew. But what he did know is that he wasn’t going to give them an opportunity to fire that second torpedo. The North Korean training exercise was now dangerously real, and he was going to take no chances.

He fired, and he would hit the target dead on, ending the spec-ops training mission and setting the entire North Korean Eastern Sea Command into an uproar.

“That was probably not the best choice,” said Belanov.

The Captain nodded in agreement. “Unfortunately it was the only choice. Their second torpedo might have been a winner for them. I wasn’t about to let that happen.”

“Well we’ve just poked a stick into the beehive. Everything in Wonsan will be out to sea in no time-helicopters, aircraft, and anything they can float. It’s going to draw a good deal of attention to this entire sector.”

“Sir,” said Chernov. “I’m getting active sonar pings!”

“Active sonar? From what?” Gromyko could not believe the trawlers he had seen could be ASW boats.

“It sounds like sonobuoys, Captain, at least three.”

“That’s what they were doing here,” said Gromyko. “They were setting up a goddamned sonobuoy field and we sailed right into the middle of their operation!” The spider had been slowly spinning out its web and they had been the witless fly. They might have simply moved off undetected, as was Gromyko’s intention, but the mishap aft had changed all that, a split second distraction, an elbow that had bumped a shielded pipe, and the dominoes began to fall. One would tip another, then another, until the situation cascaded to a place no one had intended and no one could foresee. That was the way it always happened, a feather light touch that became a push-point to tip some delicate, unseen balance in the universe and change everything.

Gromyko did not know it yet, but they had just sailed across some intangible barrier, past a tipping point that would have grave consequences for all aboard.

“Head southeast,” Gromyko said grimly, steering the only place that seemed reasonable given their planned destination. “Right standard rudder. Come to one-four-zero degrees. Make your depth one-fifty.”

“Helm answering, right standard rudder and coming to one-four-zero southeast, depth one-fifty, aye.”

The Captain looked at his Starpom now. “We can go no farther west under these circumstances. So we’ll have to skirt south. Maybe the waters will be quiet enough there for that reactor engineer. And speaking of engineers, I’m going aft to see what in God’s name happened back there. You have the boat. Get us southeast to safe water.”

They really had no other option now and, as soon as the situation in the turbine room was corrected and they could make speed without noise, Kazan moved out, as far and as fast as Belanov deemed prudent.

Yet it did not take long for the bee keepers to notice the hive had been stirred up near Wonsan harbor. US satellites soon spotted the engine heat bloom in two North Korean destroyers on infrared, and saw them putting out to sea with three coastal patrol boats and a corvette. They also noticed the frenetic activity at airfields near Wonsan. The North Koreans were reacting to something that had happened off shore, and word soon started to circulate, with speculation as to just what it was that had Kim’s mariners all in a tizzy fit. Photos and analysis went from one desk to another, and orders followed soon in their wake.

Those orders landed right on Captain Sato’s bridge aboard the destroyer Onami in the Sea of Japan where he was keeping his watch with two smaller and older ASW destroyers, the Amagiri and Abukuma. They were out from Maizuru, sailing past the Oki Islands when the orders came in. Without knowing it, their wakes had just crossed that of the battlecruiser Kirov, where Karpov had ordered a turn southwest, all of a hundred and thirteen years ago.

As Sato looked out on the relative calm of the sea, it was as if he could perceive that passage, the unseen movement of some dark shadow on the sea, a presence…a feeling of unease and disquiet that stirred in his mind. He was not surprised when a signalman came up, saluting as he handed him a decrypt from the secure EAM channel. It was an Emergency Action Message-what else in these waters? He took it with a sullen feeling of foreboding and read it quietly, his brow betraying concern.

“Looks like the North Koreans think they found a hostile submarine,” he said to his Executive Officer Onoshi.

“One of our boats, sir?”

“Not that I know of. We are the only Japanese force in these waters at the moment. Everything else is down south.”

“An American boat?”

“Not from the information I’ve received. The Mississippi is supposed to move southwest to cooperate with our patrol, but they could not be that close to North Korea. They came through the Tsugaru Strait last night.”

“What would be there, sir?”

“Possibly a Chinese boat that failed to sign in as it approached Wonsan. It could even be a Russian boat.” The process of elimination was very simple math.

“Russian? That’s our duty call, Captain.”

“Yes, and that’s what these orders say as well.” He handed his XO the recent decrypt. “We’re to move northeast and approach Ulleung-do island. They want us to investigate.”

“Dangerous waters, sir. That will put us well within range of North Korean shore based aircraft, and we have no carrier support.”

“Read the rest. The South Koreans are supposed to put up fighter cover for us.”

“Well what do they think this is all about, sir?”

“You want my opinion? I think it’s that Russian submarine they were looking for. There’s no reason for the Chinese to be up there, but the Russian would hug that coastline heading south if they wanted to slip a boat through the Sea of Japan. That’s why we’re out here in the first place. That boat was thought to be in the Sea of Okhotsk for replenishment, but no one knows for certain. The Americans want to know where it is, and we are their eyes and ears out here. If it comes south it would very likely hug the Koran coast, neh? And I don’t think they would make reservations with the North Koreans any more than the Chinese would.”

“Then the North Koreans found this boat, sir? That seems hard to believe.”

“Yes… It does. This submarine would be very quiet. The North Koreans would have to be very lucky to stumble upon it, but that would be very bad luck. The report indicates a possible sea engagement.”

“The Russians and North Koreans? Why would they tangle with one another?”

“Even two old friends might bump heads in the dark while drinking tea, Onoshi. It was probably happenstance.”

“Now it falls to us, sir.”

“That it does. I’m going to the chart room. Take us northwest at 25 knots, and see that the other two destroyers are notified. Get the Seahawks ready. I want them all available for ASW search in thirty minutes. And one other thing, send a coded message to White Dragon. They probably received those orders as well, but they are technically under my command. Inform them of our intentions and tell them to coordinate.”

“Aye sir. Right away.”