Voyage of the Devilfish

“Gentlemen, this is the Arctic Ocean, and this is the Russian OMEGA-class attack submarine.” Christman loved a dramatic opening. “Our mission this run is to find this son-of-a-bitch, just completed this week and now submerged for sea trials. Once we find it we get an SPL and bring it home to the geniuses at COMSUBLANT for analysis. The plan is a little complicated so listen up. Our sonar search has a problem… no boat has ever heard the OMEGA before. Our tonal search gates are configured for the AKULA class. We hope the propulsion-plant configuration is at least similar…”

“Yo, Nav,” Stokes interrupted to Christman’s annoyance. The contrast between the hyper Christman and Stokes’ southern calm made for constant friction between them. “If we can’t hear this bad boy with our tonal gates, how do we’xpect to snap his ass up? We could sail right by him’n’ never know he’s there.” Hick or not, he’d made a crucial point, Pacino thought. Christman frowned at him. “The truth is that we may never find him during our allotted mission time. But we may get a hint of him from a careless transient noise. We may get lucky and detect a torpedo exercise… several other Russian attack submarines in the area, each of which will be detectable in our search gates. Or we could get a radio message from COMSUBLANT that he’s been detected by SOSUS. Not likely, I admit. SOSUS won’t be much use for a quiet contact, and this far north the position uncertainties could put a good detect in a thousand square mile area. Our last card is PHOTOINT. You know, satellite surveillance. Maybe we can pick up a surfacing with an infrared scan from the polar orbit KH-17.”

“Odds are,” Stokes drawled, “this here boy won’t be surfacing at all. Why would he?”

“Might not, but then, if there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Russians, it’s that they’re unpredictable.” Even Stokes had to nod at that. “Our track is marked in black, taking us to our search position here. We’re scheduled to transit under the ice in three days. Our search position grid is located at the operation area where COMSUBLANT expects the OMEGA to be doing its sea trials.” Christman pointed to an area marked in red far north of the bananashaped island of Novaya Zemlya. “As you can plainly see, it’s a large area and not much help to us in finding the OMEGA. Okay, so much for the search phase. Now, assume for a moment that we have a good detect on the OMEGA. This is where we start the SPL. I hate to break this to you first-tour officers but against the Russians, an SPL is a hell of a lot different than the exercise we did against Billfish in the Med. We’ll be less than five yards away from the Russian’s hull, circling him and recording him. And unlike our exercise with the Billfish, the Russian is not under orders to be nice and control his course and speed for us. He could go nuts at any moment, smash right into us and breach the hull. Or worse, shoot at us.” Pacino cut in. “This next is Special Compartmented Information, Top Secret — Tophat. A few years ago one of our boats, a Piranha class, ran into a Russian attack sub during an SPL. The Russian launched two warshot 53-centimeter torpedoes at her. A nasty way to end a northern run…”

“What happened, Cap’n?” Brett Fasteen, the Electrical Officer, asked.

“Our boat had gone to flank, and by luck it managed to avoid running into an icepressure ridge. One torpedo was a dud, the other ran out of fuel after a twenty-minute pursuit. But let me tell you, twenty minutes is a long time to spend on the business end of a Russian warshot torpedo. The commanding officer hung up his dolphins after that run.” Pacino looked around the room. If there had been any lingering doubts about the importance and the danger of this OP, they had disappeared. And they still didn’t know the half of it… Pacino, in his stateroom, looked at the briefing sheets of the OMEGA that Donchez had sent over before Devilfish got under way, thought about that other half… somehow avenging his father’s death by confronting and destroying Novskoyy, the man who had sent him to the bottom, the man who Donchez had told him was on the OMEGA. But how? How…? Fantasy took over… If he could collide with the Russian, maybe the OMEGA would shoot first. If a torpedo was screaming in at them, no one would question the captain’s order to fire back, the only problem would be evading the Russian torpedo— An insistent buzzing sound broke him out of his farfetched reverie. Farfetched…? It was the phone from the Conn.

“Captain,” Pacino said, sweat pouring off him.

“Offsa’deck, you asked for a wakeup call, sir.”