Under the Ice

Because the cockpit voice recorder they had been sent to retrieve was Soviet in origin, there was still some question as to the exact frequency it would be transmitting on. Thus Thornton was forced to monitor a wide variety of channels in the hope that the proper one would eventually be chanced upon.

With a pair of bulky headphones covering his ears, the senior radioman hunched over his console. As he routinely flipped through the frequency selection knob, he closed his eyes in order to focus his attention solely on the static-filled signals that were being sucked into the receiver.

For as long as he could remember, radios had always fascinated him. As a Cub Scout he had built his own crystal set, and by his eighteenth birthday Jules was a licensed ham operator. To further follow his fascination, he got a job at an FM radio station based in Glenview, Illinois. There he could indulge himself to his heart’s content on a wide variety of excellent equipment, the upkeep of which was his responsibility.

It was during a radio interview that he met a commander stationed at the nearby Glenview Naval Air Station. Already looking for additional challenge, Jules followed up on the officer’s invitation and visited the base on his first day off. As it turned out, the sophisticated radio gear he was soon introduced to was the type of equipment he had always dreamed about. And a week later he had enlisted, and was soon in basic training.

Jules picked submarine duty because communications were such a vital part of such a warship’s operations.

The very nature of seawater refracted and diffracted the majority of radio signals sent into it.

Since only signals of a very low frequency could penetrate the depths, the systems were geared to utilize these. To cover depths of up to fifty feet, the VLF-very low frequency — bands were put into use, while deeper operations necessitated the use of the ELF (extra low frequency) channels. Since submarines desired to initiate their patrols as deep as possible to avoid detection, these latter ELF bands were ideal.

Yet there was one major problem: such frequencies transmitted data at a very slow rate, with some three-letter codes taking up to fifteen minutes to go from sender to receiver.

In addition to land-based communications, the submarine could also be contacted by TACAMO, take charge and move out, a Lockheed EC-130A aircraft that served as an airborne relay station. In the wake of such a plane trailed a six-and-a-half-mile-long antenna that could broadcast on a variety of wave lengths. Communications buoys were yet another method of establishing contact, and could be dropped from a passing ship or a suitably equipped aircraft.

While in Navy radio school, Jules learned about an experimental system that could someday revolutionize his chosen field. This technology used blue-green lasers to penetrate the ocean’s depths. Such a communications system was dependent upon a considerable power source, and it was hoped that this problem could be solved by basing the transmitters on land and using a space-based satellite to reflect the signal back down into the sea.

Though his current duty didn’t involve any such exotic, high-tech machinery, it was stimulating nonetheless.

For somewhere on the surrounding icepack, lay the wreckage of a plane that had been carrying the Premier of the Soviet Union. And the key to finding this debris was the emergency signal being broadcast from that aircraft’s black box. The entire world was anxiously waiting for this device to be recovered and analyzed so that the cause of this tragic crash could be determined. Jules was quite aware of the importance of his present assignment, and applied himself diligently.

It was on a pure hunch that the twenty-four-year-old petty officer switched the dial over to the ultrahigh frequency bands. Such a channel was infrequently used, especially by emergency equipment.

Yet knowing the Russians’ paranoia when it came to such matters, Thornton figured it would be just like them to assign such a band to the cockpit voice recorder’s transmitter.

A throaty blast of static immediately met his ears, and as he reached out to activate several filters that he had available to him, a barely audible, high-pitched tone arose from the clutter. Unlike any signal that he had ever received before, the alien tone seemed to pulsate with a throbbing regularity, and he was certain that it was man-made and not an atmospheric anomaly.

Jules Thornton’s pulse quickened as he urgently accessed his computer to determine from which direction the signal was emanating.

While the senior radioman initiated this task, his commanding officer was in the nearby control room, an intercom handset snuggled up to his ear and a wide smile turning the corners of his mouth.