seriously damage the bow dome or bowplanes—or worse.
As the pump-jet propulsor strained, and internal pumps emptied the variable ballast tanks’ water into the sea, Challenger moved upward past the tips of the spires.
Jeffrey caught glimpses of their profiles: each had a slim, teardrop-shaped cross-section, with the razor-thin edge pointing at him, into the current. They showed no sea-growth fouling. He realized they bore a slippery, echo-suppressing outer sheath.
This configuration would minimize their water drag and flow noise, and make it very hard to get a return with any obstacle-avoidance sonar ping—which Bell dared not use for fear of destroying their stealth. No wonder we didn’t hear them on passive sonar. Jeffrey’s heart was racing, his breathing ragged and short. The spires’ tops bore rounded fairings that probably housed hydrophones, or sensors to measure unusual turbulence or vibrations, or all three. He badly wanted to bark out instructions, but this was Bell’s battle, not his.
“Sir,” Patel called to his captain, “my depth is one hundred feet and decreasing rapidly.”
Reported ship’s depth always meant at the keel. Challenger ’s hull was forty feet in diameter, and her sail projected twenty feet higher than that. The top of the sail was barely forty feet under the surface now, less so by the second.
Bell needed to make some very fast decisions.
“Helm, maintain depth one hundred feet on autohover. Chief of the Watch, flood variable ballast to restore neutral buoyancy. Helm, all stop. On auxiliary maneuvering thrusters, rotate our heading to westward, then translate the ship sideways north.”
Patel acknowledged, his words slurred. COB leaned over to give him help with one hand while he did things on his own console with the other.
Jeffrey watched his displays. The ship’s depth had risen dangerously to eighty-four feet before her upward motion came off. The small thrusters at bow and stern were swinging the ship parallel to the line of spires, and those thrusters and the current were moving Challenger over and past the spires.
An antisubmarine booby trap. Simple and fiendishly clever. We barely missed hitting it . . . but these movements, cavitation noise, and mechanical transients can’t go unnoticed.
Now Jeffrey understood with horrible clarity how the Russians intended to block their channel to foreign submerged submarines: they wanted unfriendly captains to think it was safest to stay deep. Who’d built this peculiar snare of a fence? Jeffrey answered his own question. Russian saturation divers. It had to be recent, since its surfaces were so clean. Why wasn’t this in the intel reports he’d been given? He definitely had a need to know. The U.S. must not be aware of it. Construction could have been achieved unobserved, given how short the acoustic detection ranges were locally, especially with Big Diomede totally blocking any hydrophones near Little Diomede.
Challenger was past the fence, slowly moving sideways further north into the strait; Bell was making the most of the current to drift quietly out of the area.
“Aspect change on Masters Nine-Five, Nine-Six, and Nine-Seven,” O’Hanlon stated. The Udaloy, the Grisha-V, and the May bomber. “Blade rate increase on Masters Nine-Five and Nine-Six. Bearings to contacts now constant, range decreasing.” The destroyer and the corvette were steering toward Challenger and speeding up. The bomber was headed their way, too.
“Helm,” Bell ordered, “on autohover, make your depth one-five feet from the bottom. On auxiliary thrusters, maintain distance four-zero feet upcurrent from bases of spires.”
Patel acknowledged more calmly. The pictures from outside showed no end to the line of spires to east or west. They were spaced evenly, twelve or fifteen feet apart, the gaps too narrow for even a small diesel boat to slip through. Challenger began to descend. Soon she hugged the sea floor, and hugged the backs of
As the pump-jet propulsor strained, and internal pumps emptied the variable ballast tanks’ water into the sea, Challenger moved upward past the tips of the spires.
Jeffrey caught glimpses of their profiles: each had a slim, teardrop-shaped cross-section, with the razor-thin edge pointing at him, into the current. They showed no sea-growth fouling. He realized they bore a slippery, echo-suppressing outer sheath.
This configuration would minimize their water drag and flow noise, and make it very hard to get a return with any obstacle-avoidance sonar ping—which Bell dared not use for fear of destroying their stealth. No wonder we didn’t hear them on passive sonar. Jeffrey’s heart was racing, his breathing ragged and short. The spires’ tops bore rounded fairings that probably housed hydrophones, or sensors to measure unusual turbulence or vibrations, or all three. He badly wanted to bark out instructions, but this was Bell’s battle, not his.
“Sir,” Patel called to his captain, “my depth is one hundred feet and decreasing rapidly.”
Reported ship’s depth always meant at the keel. Challenger ’s hull was forty feet in diameter, and her sail projected twenty feet higher than that. The top of the sail was barely forty feet under the surface now, less so by the second.
Bell needed to make some very fast decisions.
“Helm, maintain depth one hundred feet on autohover. Chief of the Watch, flood variable ballast to restore neutral buoyancy. Helm, all stop. On auxiliary maneuvering thrusters, rotate our heading to westward, then translate the ship sideways north.”
Patel acknowledged, his words slurred. COB leaned over to give him help with one hand while he did things on his own console with the other.
Jeffrey watched his displays. The ship’s depth had risen dangerously to eighty-four feet before her upward motion came off. The small thrusters at bow and stern were swinging the ship parallel to the line of spires, and those thrusters and the current were moving Challenger over and past the spires.
An antisubmarine booby trap. Simple and fiendishly clever. We barely missed hitting it . . . but these movements, cavitation noise, and mechanical transients can’t go unnoticed.
Now Jeffrey understood with horrible clarity how the Russians intended to block their channel to foreign submerged submarines: they wanted unfriendly captains to think it was safest to stay deep. Who’d built this peculiar snare of a fence? Jeffrey answered his own question. Russian saturation divers. It had to be recent, since its surfaces were so clean. Why wasn’t this in the intel reports he’d been given? He definitely had a need to know. The U.S. must not be aware of it. Construction could have been achieved unobserved, given how short the acoustic detection ranges were locally, especially with Big Diomede totally blocking any hydrophones near Little Diomede.
Challenger was past the fence, slowly moving sideways further north into the strait; Bell was making the most of the current to drift quietly out of the area.
“Aspect change on Masters Nine-Five, Nine-Six, and Nine-Seven,” O’Hanlon stated. The Udaloy, the Grisha-V, and the May bomber. “Blade rate increase on Masters Nine-Five and Nine-Six. Bearings to contacts now constant, range decreasing.” The destroyer and the corvette were steering toward Challenger and speeding up. The bomber was headed their way, too.
“Helm,” Bell ordered, “on autohover, make your depth one-five feet from the bottom. On auxiliary thrusters, maintain distance four-zero feet upcurrent from bases of spires.”
Patel acknowledged more calmly. The pictures from outside showed no end to the line of spires to east or west. They were spaced evenly, twelve or fifteen feet apart, the gaps too narrow for even a small diesel boat to slip through. Challenger began to descend. Soon she hugged the sea floor, and hugged the backs of
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