RITES
OF
WAR
C.A. Mobley
PART I
WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS
Fundamentally, the part of the submarine in naval tactics is to operate alone, in accordance with its character and its principal task of carrying out, unseen, its annihilating attack on an adversary of considerably superior fighting strength.
-THE U-BOAT COMMANDER'S HANDBOOK Section I.A. 12 (1943) (translated by U.S. Navy)
17 NOVEMBER 2001: THE YELLOW SEA
DPRK SUBMARINE 12
Captain Kanko had no reason to suspect his submarine was in danger. The Korean Romeo-class diesel boat lurched from crest to trough like a drunken pig, sucking down air through her snorkel mast, running her engines at high rpm, and recharging her massive bank of batteries. Uncomfortable, running on the surface in rough seas, but hardly dangerous.
The twenty-year-old submarine had only rudimentary sensors and fire-control systems, but she was sturdy and seaworthy. Five hours out of port, thirty miles west of Korea, she was in the familiar waters of the Yellow Sea. She was returning to port for resupply after two weeks of surveillance on the American battle group conducting amphibious operations off the coast of South Korea.
Forty minutes earlier, Captain Kanko had yielded to the inevitable. A winter storm had made recharging the batteries at snorkel depth impractical. Each time the sea washed over the buoyant flotation ball in the snorkel mast, the diesel sucked air from the interior of the boat, creating an earpopping pressure drop inside the boat and stalling the engine. He'd finally surfaced the boat, given up on staying on course and settled simply for keeping her bow pointed into the rough seas and the snorkel mast above the waves.
The batteries were now fully charged. And none too soon. Half of the control room crew was already retching from seasickness. He grimaced, trying to ignore the sounds and smells.
The Romeo barreled headlong down into the depths without so much as a worried look at the water below her. One minute after submerging, as she passed the fifty-meter mark, the first active sonar pulse rang her hull like a bell. That was her first hint that she was not alone in the sea. The spiraling acoustic signature of a torpedo followed seconds later.
With all of her kinetic energy committed to her oblivious dive, the Romeo didn't have a chance to maneuver. The torpedo caught her on the forward quarter, killing the control room crew instantly, then blazing a trail through the ship for tons of foaming ocean. Frigid seawater filled the forward half of the boat, dragging her bow down.
Two engineers in the battery compartment had time to dog down the hatch before the water reached them. One of them was crushed as the metal battery frame broke loose from the deck and slid forward. The other scrambled back against the far bulkhead for something solid to hold on to, screaming, knowing already it was too late.
As the forward part of the submarine twisted and warped, the battery room hatch sprung loose from its waterproofing gasket. Seawater followed, forming chlorine gas as it churned the battery acid spilling across the deck. The second man died.
Farther aft, cold water on hot engines finished what the torpedo's warhead started. The diesel engines splintered and cracked, shredding the rest of the crew members before they could drown.
U-504
The sea was rarely silent and never entirely safe. Kapitan Karl Merker kept his palm pressed flat against the submarine's sonar speaker. The thin-gauge metal quivered under his skin. The broad spectrum noise of the Romeo's diesel engines was gone, replaced by short, fat blips of transient noise, hard pops, and groans of old metal taking the men inside it below the surface of the ocean for the last time.Four thousand meters south and one hundred meters below the Romeo, U-504 slipped quietly through the ocean. Shock-mounted, closed-cycle engineering allowed the German boat to run her diesel engines while submerged, freeing her from the need to come shallow and snorkel. Running on battery power as she was now, the Type 215 submarine was a ghost.
Ancient metal cracking, another explosion. The last sounds of the Romeo breaking up, then the normal sounds of the sea. Then rasps from merchant ship propeller shafts, chirrs of shrimp, and the dark counterpoint of distant sound-suppressed military vessels. A drilling rig hammered away in the background, adding noise across the entire spectrum. The chattering complex waveform of sound flooded the submarine's small control center.
Touching the speaker was Merker's own daily ritual, a private reminder of what was outside their thin hull. On long deployments, men caught up in the endless cycle of watches, meals, and sleep began to see the U-boat's narrow passageways and equipment-packed compartments as a self-contained, invulnerable world. It wasn't, and would never be. The Romeo's captain had known that in his last moments.
Even if the Korean diesel boat had possessed advanced passive and active sensors, noise suppression and counterdetection equipment, her self-noise would have blinded her.
Not that the Romeo could have detected this U-boat on her best day.
No one could.
Merker glanced over at his executive officer, Frederick Kraeken, who was poised at the bottom of the ladder that led to the conning tower, an automatic weapon cradled in his arms. Three enlisted men similarly armed clustered around him, crowding the cramped command center. "You heard it-she had no warning. No one could have made it out alive."
"Our orders say no survivors." A dark flush spread up under Kraeken's skin from his throat to broad, flat cheekbones, almost black under the red lights of the control room. The XO's eyes seemed to catch shards of the ambient light, concentrating them into blue sparks.
"No. Stow your gear and return to your stations," Merker said.
"But the-"
"No. It is not operationally necessary." Merker turned back-to the officer of the deck, the OOD. "Find the Americans."
Merker turned back to the plotting table and stared down at the track lightly penciled on the tracing paper. On the opposite side of the chart, the navigator, Leutnant dur See Ehrlich, was meticulously inking in a red X to mark the Korean submarine's grave.
"Sunset?" Merker asked.
"In ten minutes, Kapitan."
"Good." He straightened and stretched, hearing the small bones in his spine crack and complain. A long day, and one that wasn't over yet. Years from now, he'd probably forget the seeping weariness that was creeping into his mind, the result of too many hours without sleep. All that would remain would be the memory of his first kill. He grimaced. It was different from what he'd anticipated.
Earlier that morning, he'd studied his face carefully in the small mirror in his cabin, wondering if the next twentyfour hours would mark him in some way. His hair, almost colorless under the fluorescent lightbulbs, had grown slightly too long and curled uncomfortably under his collar, and his eyes were unexpectedly dark and thoughtful in an otherwise classic Aryan face. His beard was full and thick, a shade darker than his hair.
He rubbed one cheek thoughtfully, considered shaving the beard as a rite of passage. From what he could see of his ghostly green reflection in the sonar screen, there was no magic to first blood, no visible tattoo of a warrior.
He understood now what the old World War II U-boat captains had left unsaid in their diaries. The fear, the urgent compulsion to get away from the scene of the attack overrode everything else. The final emotion was not triumph, but sickening relief that nothing had gone wrong and gratitude that the hours of waiting to attack were over. It was not a reaction that could have been explained-or justified-in the company of other warriors. Nor a trait that any man wanted to show on his face.
Merker measured off the space between the coast and their position with his fingers, looked across at the navigator, and pointed at the overhead. The young Leutnant dur See, already inculcated into the traditions of silence that marked the routines of a submarine, nodded enthusiastically instead of speaking.
Merker sighed. The navigator was still too inexperienced to anticipate what was to come. A mild winter storm was a sickening roller coaster for a submarine at periscope depth. In the close confines of a submarine, queasiness and headaches would bloom into a virulent seasickness far more contagious than the milder strains suffered by deep-draft surface ships. One stifled retch, and in seconds the entire crew would be puking.
There was no help for it, though. According to the last message they'd received, they should be within hunting distance of the American forces.
"Periscope depth," he ordered quietly. He reached for a package of dry crackers as insurance against the rough weather.
Thirty minutes later, Merker's palms were rubbed raw from rasping on the line-wrapped stabilizer bar running overhead. Barely submerged, U-504 rolled and lurched in the heavy seas. Her rounded hull was built for fast, silent running out of reach of the surface, not stability at the alien boundary between air and water. He felt a fleeting surge of sympathy for the Korean submarine commander who'd had to endure this in his final hours.
Still, along with the darkness, foul weather provided some measure of safety for the submarine and her nearly retching crew. The wind-lashed waves hid her periscope from any casual observers wandering the rain-soaked decks of the warship and generated enough ambient noise to hide the U-boat from the passive sonars on board the ships. It would have been better had the night been moonless, but the operation couldn't be delayed until the lunar cycle.
The angle to port on the deck decreased slightly. He waited for a moment, timing his command to coincide with the point in the roll at which the deck was almost level. "Up periscope."
The silver column slid up from the deck noiselessly. In one fluid motion, Merker released the overhead bar, crouched, and pulled the black plastic handles down from their recessed slots in the rising cylinder. As soon as the periscope cleared the waves, he spun it around quickly, surveying 360 degrees. Two video monitors, one in the control center and one in sonar, were slaved to the periscope.
One second: The American amphibious ship USS Wasp filled the scope, nailed to the monitor by the crosshairs and silhouetted by the sun setting behind her.
Two seconds: A frigate, the USS Lewis B. Puller, followed 40 degrees later by the boxy profile of an Aegis cruiser. He envied their fore-and-aft pitch in the waves, a sharp contrast to the sickening yaw and roll of the submarine's round hull.
"Down scope!" Merker reached for the overhead bar again and glanced at the figures in the lower right-hand corner of the monitor. Total exposure, three seconds. A good time-not an excellent one, but still acceptable under these conditions.
Wasp was only five thousand meters away, well within torpedo range. He concentrated on the details of the attack, trying to ignore his churning stomach. To be ill now-no, unacceptable. Too much depended on the next ten minutes, not the least of which was the survival of this boat and its crew.
This time it would be different. The Romeo-well, what had there been to see except green lines and blots on the sonar screen? This time he would watch the ship shiver as the torpedo plowed into her, see flames burst suddenly from one small spot to run up the superstructure and down the sides of the ship. The crew would drop into the cold ocean like ants into beer, desperate to escape before the sea claimed their ship. There would be time-a few seconds,perhaps, but enough-to enjoy the final exultation of the kill.
The amphibious ship was so large that tactical elegance was hardly required for the attack approach. Nor was a killing shot necessary.
Indeed, it made little difference whether the Wasp was hit at all.
USS WASP
On board Wasp, most of the crew was lined up for the evening meal. While all combat systems and watch stations were manned, the ship was secured from daily routine. On the bridge, duty section three was waiting impatiently for section one to finish chow and relieve them.
Petty Officer Pratt traded a look of disgust with the boatswain's mate of the watch (BMOW), then looked down at the chart spread across the quartermaster's table. He picked up a pencil and pretended to work on the dead reckoning course laid out for the ship. Of all the watch sections on the ship, Pratt hated this one the most.
Suddenly the bridge seemed confining. He picked up a pad of forms and strolled over to the starboard hatch that let out onto the bridge wing.
"Time for your coffee break?" the OOD asked. "Weather observations, sir." He held up the pad, fairly confident that the officer wouldn't remember when he'd last been out on the bridge wing.
"Very well," the OOD said perfunctorily. "Go ahead." "Aye, aye, sir," Pratt said. A little too loudly, the tiniest bit over the line. His tone earned him a sharp look from the junior officer of the deck, the JOOD, but the OOD appeared not to notice.
Pratt swung the long lever that dogged the hatch down and shoved the heavy metal door out. He kept one hand on the metal bracket door handle to prevent the wind from slamming it back against the skin of the ship.
The wind tore at the pad, ruffling the sheets back over his hand. He leaned back against the steel hatch, holding it in place while he dogged it shut.
He peered out at the sea, estimating the height and direction of the waves, thanking his luck that he wasn't assigned to the frigate or the cruiser. Both plowed through the waves, taking green water across their weatherdecks, their bridges obscured occasionally by flumes of spray.
Sea state four, Pratt decided, cumulus clouds with tops at least forty thousand feet. Forty knots of wind. He'd get the barometer readings and the exact wind speed when he went back inside. Converting the readings from the anemometer mounted high on the ship's mast from relative readings to true wind would kill another ten seconds of the watch.
Pratt muttered a quiet oath at the sea and sailors in general, and the bridge crew of the Wasp in particular.
U-504
The last digit on the clock over the navigator's plotting table flickered, then rearranged itself into the next higher number. "Two minutes," the navigator murmured, his voice carrying throughout the silent compartment. Half an hour earlier, the weapons stations had opened the outer doors to the torpedo tubes and flooded the chambers.
"One thousand meters," sonar announced quietly. "Very well," Merker acknowledged. The ship pinned in the crosshairs of his periscope was partially obscured by mist and rain, although her size and flat deck made the identification easy. He tweaked the handle, sharpening the image, and waited impatiently for the feeling of anticipation. But moments from firing, his mind insisted on noticing the pain in his hands and a cramp creeping into his left foot.
"Fire one. Fire two," he ordered. The submarine shivered as high-pressure compressed air blew the torpedoes out of the tubes. He heard one sonarman mutter an oath at the noise the air bubbles made.
"On straight run," sonar reported.
At fifty knots, the torpedo could cover the distance to the Wasp in a little less than five minutes, but U-504 had less time than that. Sound traveled faster than any undersea weapon could, almost fifty miles every minute. Within seconds, the high-pitched whine of the torpedo propeller would reach the sonarmen on the other ships. U-504 had just ripped off her own cloak of invisibility as surely as if she'd surfaced in front of the battle group.
"Make your depth fifty meters, speed twenty knots," Merker ordered.
USS WASP
Pratt pressed his back against the superstructure. The wind was coming from the other side of Wasp, and the metal shell that contained the bridge carved a dry spot out of the storm on the leeward side of the bridge.
Even with nasty weather, the natural climate was preferable to the squalls inside the bridge. He stared out at the churning water and wondered why he'd ever left Tennessee.
The rain stopped for a moment, and something caught his attention. A narrow streak of disturbed water, the foamed wake barely visible against the thrashing sea. He stared at it, trying to decide what peculiar combination of wind and weather could have produced a trail that looked so much like-oh, Jesus.
He yanked the heavy hatch open and shouted, "Torpedo! I saw a torpedo wake, starboard-" The blare of the sonar warning buzzer cut him off.
"Torpedo starboard side, three thousand yards!" a sonarman screamed over the circuit.
The OOD stared at Pratt for a second, as though he'd seen a ghost. "No," he said softly. Remembering his duty, he snapped, "Hard left rudder, all ahead flank! Boats, the collision alarm! No time for general quarters."
The massive amphibious ship responded slowly to maximum rudder and heeled slightly into the driving wind and rain. Pratt saw Puller start to turn toward them.
He heard a small noise. The ship shuddered slightly, as though taking a rogue wave at a bad angle. For a moment, he was convinced the torpedo had missed.
The deck shot up from under his feet and the ship rolled hard to port. The motion catapulted Pratt fifteen feet across the bridge and pinned him against the glass window four feet above the deck. Loose pencils, plotting tools, and books pelted his back. Pratt stared down at black water, closer to the bridge than it had any right to be.
A body slammed into the glass beside him, then slid down, held against the bulkhead by the roll of the ship. Suspended between air and water, Pratt saw the OOD crumpled beside him, blood streaming down his face.
The ship hung at an angle, hesitating, as though deciding whether her metacentric height would permit her to do anything besides continue her arc down toward the sea. Pratt started praying, aware that the deck behind him was slanted too much for him to clamber away from the ocean.
The angle on the deck decreased almost imperceptibly at first. Wasp rocked first to starboard, then back to port. Every time she started to settle back down into her natural orientation to the water, a secondary explosion shook the ship.
Pratt slid down to the deck and started crawling toward his plotting table. The OOD lay motionless on the deck, and the boatswain's mate was struggling to his feet and reaching for the 1 MC mike. The JOOD-Pratt finally spotted him draped over the SPA-25 radar repeater, his forehead and cheeks slicked with blood from a gash on his forehead but still conscious.
"General quarters, general quarters," the JOOD rasped before he slid off the repeater and onto the deck.
Pratt heard Puller order off a torpedo before his vision faded away. He crumpled unconscious on the deck moments later.
U-504
The submarine dove steeply through the thermocline. Even though her deck was pitched downward, the three-axis motion died out within moments of submerging. Merker breathed a sigh of relief when he was finally able to release the overhead support bar. His nausea faded to a background sensation of discomfort. All that remained was to escape.
"Torpedo inbound!" the sonarman said.
The frigate, it had to be. He'd thought he'd be more afraid at this moment than any other, but the strength of adrenaline and his survival instinct blanked out everything except the need to escape. His training overrode his emotions, and he assessed the incoming torpedo for what it was-a desperate blind shot down the line of bearing of U-504's torpedo. It was intended to panic the submarinehim-into making a mistake.
"Classification?" he said, the question cut off by the answer from sonar.
"Acoustic! Speed, thirty knots!"
"Decoys. Make your depth one hundred meters. Hard left rudder," he ordered automatically. A hard turn coupled with a speed and depth change would create a churning mass of bubbles in the water, what submariners called a knuckle. He glanced at the equipment status board, checking to make sure the sophisticated noise cancellation electronics were still on-line. Sea trials in their home waters had consistently proved that a torpedo would either home in on the decoys, specially crafted devices that mimicked the acoustic sounds of a submarine, or fail to acquire any target at all.
Four months ago, when they'd left German waters, he would have been reluctant to bet his life on those systems. Now he had no choice.
Merker heard Ehrlich mutter a frightened prayer. He spared an instant to glare at the younger officer, then fixed his gaze back on the instrument board. Green lights, green lights, green-he kept up his scan, trying to keep his attention on every single indicator at once.
U-504's deck pitched down thirty-eight degrees, as steep a descent angle as she dared. The narrow boundary beneath the ocean's acoustic layers was her safe haven. Deeper, and her sound would radiate farther to sonobuoys or a ship's array dangling below the layer. Shallow was equally dangerous. The region between acoustic layers provided the best chance of masking her high-speed dash away from the American ships.
The acoustic counterdetection equipment should be detecting the active sonar signals assaulting the hull and generating a signal exactly out of phase with the sonar. If it worked as advertised, it would cancel out the acoustic energy that should have been reflected off the submarine back to the searching surface ship.
"Torpedo has acquired the decoy," sonar reported.
Close, too close! "Flank speed," he ordered. If the torpedo exploded on the decoy at this range, the resulting pressure wave could do serious damage to the submarine.
"Cavitating," sonar warned. Shallow depth and high speed created areas of low pressure behind each blade of the propeller. Air dissolved in the seawater leeched out and formed bubbles that streamed out behind each blade. As the propeller turned, the area of low pressure moved, and the bubbles collapsed, generating detectable noise.
"Explosion!" the sonarman screamed. Seconds later, the deck careened down and the submarine shook violently as her stern shot upward on the leading edge of the pressure wave. Merker hung on to the overhead bar and waited, dangling from his bleeding palms. Just as abruptly, the bow moved up. A few minutes later, the shaken planesman had the bow tipped down again, executing the last order given. "Still cavitating," sonar reported.
Merker shook his head. Cavitation was the least of his worries during depth changes. The thin hull popped and groaned like a tin roof in a hailstorm from the changing pressure gradient on the hull. Water rushing over the limber holes on the hull also caused highly detectable flow tones, as did the hydraulic systems operating the diving controls.
"All stations, report status," he ordered. Terse replies crowded the sound-powered phone circuit. A small leak around the main shaft bearing, a few bruises, and one broken arm. U-504 had suffered no major damage, although the leak on the bearing would need close watching.
Three minutes later, the deck leveled off and the transient mechanical noises stopped. "Fifty meters, sir," the planesman announced.
He acknowledged the report. Even at depth, they were far from safe yet. He debated briefly decreasing his speed to eliminate the final acoustic beacons to a passive sonar, the churning propeller and the electric motor that drove it, and decided against it. Since the earliest days of German submarine operations, speed had always proved to be the most effective tactic in escaping, and the propeller design they'd pirated from the British Swiftsure-class submarine was far quieter than a standard propeller, more like a small jet engine. Twenty-four blades instead of the standard four to seven, with thirty stators guiding the flow of water over them, produced an exceptionally low turns-per-knot ratio. Fewer rotations of the central shaft per knot of speed meant less noise.
Once they'd cleared the area, they'd drop down to five knots and become a virtual black hole in the ocean. He looked at the clock over Ehrlich's table, then snapped his fingers at the chart and pointed at the navigator. Ehrlich started, then picked up his pencil, his face still pale and his fingers shaking slightly. Merker ignored him.
Six minutes since the attack, a little less than thirteen hundred meters from their firing location. With any luck, it would take the helicopters at least ten minutes to launch. In another twelve minutes, U-504 would be almost four thousand meters from the ships.
USS PULLER
The frigate snapped off another torpedo down the line of attack and then hesitated, tom between chasing the sub and standing by to rescue the Wasp's crew. Her active sonar was holding solid contact on both the decoy and the submarine. The decoy grew louder and closer, and the submarine faded off the scope. After a hurried conversation with the one officer still conscious in Wasp's combat direction center, the frigate turned into the wind to launch her SH-60F helicopter.
"Chip light," the tactical action officer announced. Puller's captain groaned. The small magnetic detector in the helicopter's compressor casing thought it had found slivers of metal in the oil sump. "How long?"
"Five minutes, the pilot says," the TAO replied.
The captain nodded, stifling his next question. It usually took the helicopter at least twenty minutes to check the sensing probe, drain the oil, and inspect for internal damage to clear a chip light gripe. Shortcuts-he didn't want to know. "Tail depth?" he asked instead.
"Sixty feet. We'd like to slow down, get it below the layer." The frigate controlled the deployed depth of its passive sonar array by varying its own ship's speed.
"Do it. That's where I'd be, if I were her. Or in the layer."
The TAO murmured into his headset. Almost immediately, the captain felt the deck shift slightly as the frigate dropped her speed. The small ship was superbly responsive to the two aircraft jet engines that drove her propeller. "Status on the helo?" he asked.
"Requesting we put some speed back on to get some more wind over the deck, and asking for a green deck," the TAO responded.
"Get them their wind and get 'em airborne."
Two minutes later, he heard the roar of the helicopter crescendo, then deepen. He glanced at the closed-circuit TV next to the blue tactical screen. The Seahawk lifted off the deck, wobbled, then gained altitude and veered away from the ship.
U-504
"Elapsed time, twenty-five minutes," the navigator announced.
"Sonar, report all contacts," Merker demanded. "Active sonar, bearing two-five-zero, range seven thousand meters, probable Perry-class frigate. Omni-directional. She doesn't have us, sir."
"Is she maneuvering?"
"She made one turn fifteen minutes ago, probably to launch aircraft. We picked up a helicopter right after that." Merker nodded. Every minute that went by increased the area the helicopter would have to search.
"Five knots," he ordered.
Two hours later, Merker finally drew in a deep breath. There was no indication that they'd been detected, and every minute that passed increased the margin of safety. He let himself relax, and took a sip from a cup of cold coffee.
He knew the moment he swallowed it that it was his first mistake of the day. The few minutes spent at periscope depth had taken their toll on his inner ear. Seasickness could be delayed indefinitely by the judicious consumption of crackers and antiemetics, but the slightest deviation from preventive measures brings immediate and disastrous results.
Merker left the command center abruptly and sought the relative privacy of his cabin immediately aft of the spaces. He slammed the sliding door shut, grabbed a pillow, and bolted for the toilet. Cupping the pillow around the back of his head and pulling the edges down to touch the sides of the toilet to muffle the sounds, he gave in to the only sure and certain cure.
USS WASP
The senior quartermaster took the pencil out of Pratt's hand and gently shoved him back into the corner behind the plotting table. The BMOW had slapped a piece of gauze and a strip of tape over the cut above Pratt's eye-for now, that would do. Pratt stared at the chart, wishing that the lines and position marks would come into focus.
"Captain's on the bridge," the boatswain announced. Pratt squirmed until he got his back against the starboard bulkhead and squinted at the hatch. His neck was starting to hurt too much to turn his head. A chill water pipe bit into his back. The people darting around the bridge were no more than dark shadows, one indistinguishable from the next, giving the conversations he overhead a sense of unreality.
"How bad?" he heard the captain say. He focused on a blur that looked to be the right size and shape.
"Last count, fifteen dead, twenty in serious condition, maybe forty with minor injuries. Like Pratt there," the XO answered, gesturing toward the quartermaster's plotting table. "About the twenty-maybe five of them won't make it. Doc says that's only a guess, though."
The captain frowned. "Mostly engineers?"
"All the casualties, yes. And most of the seriously wounded, too. It hit main control."
"Damage?"
"They've got the fire out, but we've still got a hell of a hole in our side. Might be some damage to the shaft, too. Two seals are leaking. I think they can handle the flooding," the XO said. "Maybe."
"Maybe," the captain echoed. "Puller's CO claims he got the bastard. They lost contact shortly after they took a shot at him."
The XO shook his head. "Hell proving it one way or the other. You're not going to find much debris in this sea state. The waves will chum up any oil, too."
Pratt watched the shadows flit around the bridge, executing preplanned responses that they'd practiced and prayed that they'd never use. For the Koreans to do this—Jesus, they had to be insane! Didn't they realize that every American military asset would be on their soil or off their coast in a matter of months, especially with fifteen dead sailors? There was no way the Koreans could win, none. Why in the hell would they start a war they couldn't win?
Hours later, Pratt's vision started to return. As soon as he could see the chart clearly, someone slid a pencil into his hand and fled to join a damage control team. Acrid smoke from below drifted up onto the bridge. From the reports streaming into the bridge, Pratt could tell that Wasp had reflash watches set on the fires and the flooding under control. Wasp was in no danger of sinking, but in no shape to fight.
He listened to the voice reports volleying back and forth over the radio circuits. Finally, two hours later, he plotted the course change. The final OPREP-3 reports sent, Wasp started limping back to the United States, escorted only by a rabidly paranoid frigate.
Fourteen sailors and one marine were dead. Two more died the next day from smoke inhalation. Thirty-two others were injured seriously enough to be evacuated back to the United States, and another fifty-six were classified as walking wounded and retained on board Wasp. One of the MEDEVAC injured died thirty-one thousand feet over the Atlantic Ocean, twelve minutes before the flight started its final approach to Washington, D.C., and Bethesda Naval Hospital, bringing the body count up to seventeen.
Four days later, the first amphibious group left San Diego for Korea. Across the United States, battalions and squadrons scrambled to mobilize. Reserve army units flooded the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, alternately swearing at the blasted landscape of the Mojave Desert and praying that the brief refresher training would be enough to keep them alive. The USS Nimitz and USS Lincoln battle groups got under way two weeks after the Wasp was hit, fully loaded with sufficient weapons, spare parts, and provisions for a deployment of indefinite length. Tucked deep within both aircraft carriers were tactical nuclear weapons. Their cruiser escorts carried the nuclear version of long-range Tomahawk land attack missiles. Except for a few ships and battalions assigned to NATO exercises or peacekeeping operations, every American military force was either en route to Korea or preparing to join the second wave of forces deploying.
Most of the American public supported the mobilization, albeit with some degree of anguish by a generation who'd already spilled enough blood on that peninsula. The political and national security interests prayed the conflict would be a repeat of Desert Storm, already knowing it wouldn't be. Christmas came and went quietly as families were torn apart by the mobilization.
By January, a massive amphibious invasion force was massed off the eastern coast of Korea. Two regular army divisions were poised along the border, and sun-charred army reserve sustaining, resupply, and reinforcement assets were chivvying for priority at docks and airfields. Prepositioned war reserve stocks around the peninsula were staged for issue to the arriving forces.
The North Korean forces continued to mobilize to the border.
The international press reported both the United States' righteous claims to vengeance for the attack on the Wasp as well as the North Koreans' angry denunciations of the United States' attack on their submarine. Amnesty International laid a wreath of roses at the last known location of the Korean submarine and demanded that the United States admit its wrongdoing.
During the entire buildup phase of the conflict, no onenot even the National Security Agency-ever answered Petty Officer Pratt's question.
22 FEBRUARY 2002: WASHINGTON, D.C.
THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY
"Say that again." Jerusha Bailey leaned back in her chair and looked at Jim Atchinson with astonishment. Atchinson sighed. "All I'm asking for is a little cooperation. Your reserve active duty is coming at an inconvient time. Reschedule it just push it back a couple of months. We need you here."
"Jim, I can't. I would if I could, but it's just not possible. This NATO exercise has been in the works for seven months. I've been to every planning conference, every briefing-if I pull out, it would leave my unit in a bad spot, not to mention affect the navy's training. It's only for two weeks."
NSA, along with every other government organization, had eyes and assets riveted on Korea. Atchinson, director of operations and Bailey's immediate superior, had already pulled three people off her team to try to keep up with the frantic demands for intelligence and threat assessments. Her own division, Western European Issues, was barely keeping pace with Allied demands for information.
And now Jim wanted more. No matter that her navy reserve unit was due for a two-week deployment to participate in a NATO exercise. Or that she'd given Jim four months of advance notice that she'd be deploying. Evidently none of that mattered, since he hung on the door frame, gazing at her with sorrowful, pleading eyes.
More and more, she'd come to resent the peculiarly inconsistent combination of pleading and patronizing that represented Jim Atchinson's style of leadership. It was a gender thing-she was certain of that after talking to the other senior female analysts in operations. Atchinson seemed unable to see a female in terms other than as his mother or his daughter. He'd never managed to treat her just as an analyst at the world's most elite national intelligence agency.
Or as a senior officer in the naval reserve. If anything, that role seemed even more incomprehensible to him than her working at NSA.
As a commanding officer of Mobile Inshore Undersea Warfare Unit 106, Bailey had to go with her unit when it deployed. Had to. Even as she tried once again to reassure him, she knew it was useless.
"NSA's own reserve unit will be here next week to pick up the slack," she said calmly. "I know these people—hell, Jim, you know them. They're entirely capable of picking up the slack while I'm gone."
"If you worked Eastern Issues, you wouldn't be going." His pleading tone was gone, replaced with the paternal voice she detested.
Bailey tapped the rolled-up cylinder of her orders against the side of his desk. "Legally, you can't stop me. I've given you plenty of notice that my two weeks of reserve duty were scheduled. You have to let me go."
Atchinson snorted. "Having your orders canceled could happen. Faster than you think. Your work at NSA should be your priority."
Bailey stood, planted her palms on his desk, and leaned across it to glare down at him. "You've got no reason to lean on me like this."
Atchinson straightened up, toyed with the stark white collar protruding from his dark blue suit. "It's nothing personal, Bailey. Not this time. But I see no point in the navy sending you to England for a NATO exercise when the only theater the United States has any legitimate concern over at this time is Korea."
"For now."
"That's all we deal with." Atchinson tossed his pencil on the desk. "Look, maybe someday there'll be another European conflict. The odds are it won't be in our lifetime. So frankly, other than serving as a training ground for new analysts, Europe is a dead issue. As soon as you have enough field experience, I'm going to suggest that you be moved to a more productive area."
"That sounds like an excellent topic for discussionwhen I get back."
After Atchinson finally left, Jerusha felt her anger wilt. Six months at NSA and she still hadn't mastered the intricacies of working at a civilian organization that ran like the military. It should have been familiar, comforting. After all, she'd spent almost ten years in the navy, mostly on ships and in threat analysis units. Terry Intanglio, Atchinson's boss, had been interested in her expertise in submarines and ocean surveillance systems.
Interested enough to offer her a position at NSA. Interested enough to follow her career thereafter. If she told him about her difficulties, Bailey had no doubt that Terry Intanglio would do something.
It might even help. In the short run.
"Civilians don't frown like that." She looked up and saw Pete Carlisle standing in the doorway. "Save it for active duty."
"Why, have you got something special planned for me?" She pointed at the chair Atchinson had just vacated. "Come on-make my day."
Pete settled into the chair and hooked one leg over the armrest. "From the sound of it, Jim's just pegged your fun meter."
"Practicing the tricks of the trade?" she asked. "My original offer still stands. You remember."
She did. Pete headed up a section of the electronic support division, an esoteric collection of acoustic and computer experts who specialized in extracting discrete signals embedded in noise. After her first two weeks at NSA, once it became clear that Atchinson was not going to be leading her fan club, Pete had offered to have Jim's office wired for sound. At the time, she'd thought he was joking. After six months at NSA, watching and being the target in several sophisticated electronic practical jokes, she was no longer sure he had been.
Apart from a warped sense of humor, she and Pete shared one other common interest: the naval reserve. Pete had spent five years on active duty as a sonar technician on board a ballistic missile submarine. When she'd learned he'd maintained his reserve affiliation, she'd promptly recruited him to fill a vacant billet in her own unit. While Pete had more seniority that she did at NSA, he filled a senior enlisted billet in the unit Bailey commanded.
"Let's get this active duty over with first. Atchinson's ready to try to get my orders canceled. I'll go to Terry before I'll let him get away with that," she said.
Pete shook his head. "Think this through first. Chain of command and sheer brute force-there are better ways to get what you want out of Atchinson. It's not enough just to be in the right."
"What are you saying?"
"Just this. Political power works in strange ways around here. Learn to use it-or it will use you. In some ways it's not that different from the navy."
"It shouldn't be like that. There are laws about reserve duty. If anyone ought to obey the laws, it should be a government organization like NSA."
Pete stood, stretching lazily to his full height. "God save me from idealists. Would you rather be right or get what you want? Think about that."
Bailey watched him leave, felt her anger subside into frustration. It was so clear-cut this time-Atchinson had to let her go. Had to.
But maybe there's something to what he's saying. Remember why you left the navy? Sound familiar? Unfortunately, it did.
On her last ship, the executive officer had pressured her relentlessly to gundeck the readiness figures for the engineering department. She'd resisted, reported their maintenance status accurately, and been slammed in her fitness reports. As a junior lieutenant commander, she'd felt the prospect of spending another twelve years compromising her own integrity unpalatable, and at the time she'd thought that was what staying on active duty would require.
She leaned back in her chair and stared at the calendar. In less than a week, she'd be Commander Bailey again. Not Jer, not Jerusha, not even Miss Bailey. And, at least in her unit, she'd make sure that no junior officer ever went through what she had on active duty. Duty, honor, and commitment meant something to her-and she'd make sure her sailors understood that.
23 FEBRUARY 2002:
THE NORTH SEA
U-504
U-504 slipped silently across the invisible line dividing the North Sea from the rest of the Atlantic Ocean. The grueling, high-speed dash across the Pacific, refueling on moonless nights at sea from Spessart, a German Navy tanker, had exhausted the entire crew.
"There it is." Merker left the periscope exposed a second longer than he should have, letting the hazy outline of England's west coast linger on the monitor bolted into the forward corner of the control room. The thought of walking on land felt oddly daring and slightly unsettling, just as returning to port did.
It was always disorienting, those first few moments after mooring when he stared out at the pier from the conning tower, blinking in natural sunlight, his movements still careful and awkward from months of living in confined quarters. The U-boat would feel awkward and lumbering, her normal gentle motions stilled by heavy mooring lines, and the silence from the submarine's engineering plant seemed to demand immediate emergency action. By the time they returned to Germany, the first signs of spring would be in the air, compounding the confusion since they'd left during late autumn.
Their two days in port at the Piel submarine base had been barely enough time to let them reprovision and rearm. Seeing their families had been out of the question, both from a security standpoint and from sheer lack of time. Now at periscope depth, rocking gently in the unexpectedly calm water twenty miles east of the United Kingdom, it seemed to each man that he'd spent a lifetime at sea. Their lives ashore were distant memories, the familiar cycle of watchstanding, eating, and sleeping in the cramped confines of the seventy-five-meter-long boat more normal and comfortable than their two days tied up to a pier.
"If they knew, they'd kill us," Merker said. He pointed at the American ship caught in the crosshaired sight of the periscope monitor. "Ironic, isn't it? The first ship we see in our own waters-and the first close enough to run an attack simulation since Korea-is American. We're going to pass within seven thousand meters of her, and she doesn't even know we're here."
Kraeken grunted. "We could surface and still not be attacked. There's no indication that they suspect anything. At least not from the message traffic from the General Staff."
Merker turned to Ehrlich. "How much longer?" The Uboat had been ordered to lay a barrier of moored mines across the entrance to two British naval ports. The weapons consisted of a warhead in a neutral buoyancy shell tethered to a weight. The length of cable connecting the two was intended to keep the mine concealed beneath the surface and deep enough to keep small surface craft from detonating it. The planned line of mines was equally divided between magnetic-influence and acoustic-triggering devices.
While minelaying was a normal operation for a submarine, the General Staff had again complicated matters by ordering U-504 to follow a particular transit route to and from the harbors. Not unexpected, given the degree of control they'd exercised over U-504's departure from the North Sea. But this route specified multiple interception points, a circuitous trek down to the northern edge of the English Channel, then back up to British ports.
The plan puzzled him. He understood the overriding necessity for blockading the British forces in their ports. Ashore, German land forces were moving to consolidate their power in the ravaged, fragmented countries that comprised Eastern Europe. After a decade of unsuccessful U.N. peacekeeping efforts, the rest of the world had finally declared the problems resolved and pulled out. The exhausted civilian populations, equally decimated by war and foreign assistance, were in no position to resist Germany's insistent offers of help.
European wars might be fought on land, but they were won at sea.
Merker pulled the friendly force locator message off the boards and studied the position of the other naval forces crowding into the North Sea. The British ships and submarines were still in port, waiting for the other NATO assets to move into position before sortiling. Two French submarines were well to the north, playing warm-up detection games with a Dutch frigate. The American destroyer and frigate-well, there was no uncertainty as to their position. The only other U.S. asset in the theater was a small coastal surveillance unit on the northern tip of Scotland, and U-504 was well capable of neutralizing its capabilities.
After studying the operational schedule for evolutions in Northern Lights, he thought he'd divined the logic underlying the plan. The General Staff must be using the exercise to mask U-504's presence and to provide an alternative explanation for any unexplained events. Certainly the exercise played a major factor in every step of Germany's real plan-which was hardly an exercise. Just as Korea had.
"Two minutes until the first release position, Kapitan," the navigator said immediately.
"Very well."
Ehrlich looked older, Merker thought. They all did. Three months in transit to Korea, two weeks on station, three months back-that long encased in steel, living, breathing, and sweating in close quarters below the ocean changed men. Korea had tempered Ehrlich's eager exuberance into a hard aggressiveness, soured Kraeken's drive into reflexive hostility.
And what has it done to me? He stared down at the planned line of mine positions arcing across the entrance to the British harbor, still no closer to an answer than he'd been off the coast of Korea.
"Not that the mines would be of much use as a self-defense weapon," the XO continued as though Merker hadn't spoken. "You shouldn't have let us sail with so few torpedoes. It makes no tactical sense."
Merker sighed. At least the man had the sense to lower his voice. In the past four months, Merker had gone from irritation to anger to rage over Kraeken's persistent insubordination. Finally, some two thousand miles ago, he'd settled for indifference.
"How do we close the gate behind us, then?" Merker asked, more from habit than from any real desire to discuss the issue yet again. "We have two torpedoes, enough for self-defense. The rest of the space was needed for the mines. The General Staff thought this out carefully. We seal the British into their harbors, then lock the rest of the world out. The other submarines are needed to keep the NATO battle group distracted with the exercise-for now. The wolf pack forms the moment we have the entire fleet locked in the North Sea."
"Another U-boat--"
"The mutual interference problems-"
"Submarines in packs-"
"Fifteen seconds," Ehrlich said, interrupting the argument that now took place in telegraphic phrases instead of complete sentences.
"Leave it be," Merker said to the XO. "I have work to do."
"We. We have-"
"SILENCE." Merker caught himself, took a deep breath. "Give the order, navigator."
"Aye, aye, sir." Ehrlich was staring at the sweep hand on his watch. "Five, four, three-weapons, navigator. Fire one.
The submarine shivered as compressed air shot the mine out of the tube. Merker grimaced. Not as much noise as a torpedo, but still-he looked over at sonar, reassuring himself that there was no telltale spiral of a torpedo's propellers singing across the spectrum.
"Good shot, sir," the weapons officer said. "Permission to flood tube two?"
"Flood tube two." Merker watched Ehrlich ink in the penciled projected mine position.
"Fifteen minutes, steady on this course," Ehrlich said without prompting.
"Six more mines to pen up twenty warships, gentlemen." Merker tried to sound confident and calm. The crew-they'd heard him at the edge of anger too often in the past eight months. "Get these off right, and I will buy the first round when we get into port." A ragged, forced cheer answered him.
"If," Kraeken said. "If, not when."
Her mission would have been unthinkable-if not impossible-during the decades when Germany had been an occupied country, severed by the powers that invaded her during World War II. In the post-Cold War, postreunification years, Germany surged ahead of her weaker European neighbors. By the year 2000, Germany politically and economically dominated the European continent. It was time to finish what history began.
Merker's fingers felt a deep hammering sound grow stronger. A North Sea oil rig, one of the many dotting the seascape. Had he been given a choice, he would have planned a more southerly transit out of their home waters, steering clear of the noise the drilling produced. The General Staff had been adamant, insisting on this route and no deviation.
The Prussian passion for precision. With his free hand, Merker touched the schedule folded into a tight square in his breast pocket. If everything worked according to plan, the Continent would be theirs again by late spring.
Merker stared at the sonar speaker,, trying to decide what had caught his attention. Not a surface ship sound, no-the sonarman was still slouched in his bolted-down chair, eyes closed, listening intently. It had been an inaudible quiver of noise under his hand, even lower in frequency than the oil rig dominating the spectrum. He arched his palm away from the speaker and concentrated on his fingertips.
"Surface contact," Sonar announced. "Bearing threeten, range five thousand yards."
Merker nodded. He'd already felt the new vibrations, the high-pitched winch squeal, the shimmery pings from fishfinder sonar.
"Probably a fishing boat. Come right to avoid her. Stay at least two thousand yards away from her stern to avoid the nets. We'll resume ordered course and speed when we're clear of her."
SS ANNA LEONA
Anna Leona was one hundred fifty feet long, drawing almost forty-five feet of water. She was returning to Bristol after three weeks fishing along the Rockalls north of Scotland. Her holds were packed with cold-water fish, in high demand now from health enthusiasts and restaurants throughout Britain and continental Europe. It had been a profitable six weeks at sea, although the weather had been as foul as it normally was in October. There had been no major equipment failures, and the two eight-cylinder diesel engines deep in her hull were running smoothly.
Large steel bolts held the engines in place, dogged down to the metal deck in the engineering spaces. The rapid-fire cycle of noise-fuel injection, ignition, cylinders firing, crankshaft turning-had a clean, unobstructed path to the hull. The sounds carried for miles in the deep, cold water of the North Sea.
"Be dark before we get in." Anna Leona's master pointed at the horizon. Red and gold bands were already edging along the boundary between sea and sky. "Anna's not expecting me for another three days."
The first mate shot him a sly glance. "Too late to be going home. You don't know what you might find there, coming in like this with no warning. The ship's named Anna Lion for a reason, you said."
The master grinned. "That's what I been thinking. Might be best for all if I stay in town tonight, maybe walk the trouser snake a bit. See the better half tomorrow, perhaps."
"A gentleman you are, Danny. I've always said so."
The first mate took his hand off the helm long enough to reach for the cold mug of tea sitting on the ledge in front of him. He took a swig of it, then grimaced.
"Fancy a few pints before you go home?" the master asked.
"Hell, yes. Wash the taste of this bleeding lousy tea out of my mouth. Cheap bastard, aren't you, buying this crap?"
The master smacked him lightly on the back. "With what you'll make off this trip, you can buy your own bloody tea next cruise."
FOUR HUNDRED FEET BELOW SS ANNA LEONA
Buried under two feet of mud, slime, and debris, the mine felt the magnetic pull of a large mass of metal, as it had at least fifty times each day since it had been seeded here in 1944. The force waned, then increased again. The pressure piston moved slightly in response to each change in the electromagnetic flux, generating another small trickle of electricity as its armature cut through the magnetic lines of force. Another ship, another few more microvolts of charge. Even buried under two feet of mud and debris as it was now, the mine fed.
The nations bordering the North Sea charted the magnetic anomalies on the seabed regularly, insurance against a day when they might have to clear the heavily traveled trade routes. Decades ago, a Frenchman had pinpointed the location of this particular chunk of metal, and it was noted on all the minesweepers' charts as wreckage from a World War II German U-boat kill.
Like many early naval mines, this one was shaped like a torpedo. The titanium casing, produced during the last years of World War 11, when Germany had finally cracked the secret of shaping the capricious metal, still protected its contents from the corrosive seawater. The small magnetic generator and primitive signal transducer still worked. A high-pressure gas canister tucked into the midsection of a stripped-down torpedo contained a toxin outlawed from the armories of most civilized nations.
In the submarine's conning tower, a small transmitter siphoned off data from the submarine's inertial navigation system. At a precise point in the ocean, one that had been predetermined by the Third Reich decades before, the transmitter pulsed once.
The mine heard it. The frequency and duration-all parameters exactly as they should be. Deep inside the titanium shell, a relay in the spectrum analyzer clicked over. Electrons trickled out of the capacitor and into the firing circuits. The mine armed.
Using World War II techniques for determining an acoustic contact's depth in the water, the mine's analog circuits reached a decision. Not this one. Too deep. Acceptable targets ran shallow. The firing circuit switched into standby, still armed-but waiting.
This one. The mine shot a small spark into the propellant. A small explosion broke the torpedo free of the mine casing and spewed a cloud of silt into the water. The torpedo warhead, designed to penetrate deep into the hull of its target before detonating, raced toward the surface.
Two generations before, a Jewish prisoner had been caught in one of the torpedo factories sabotaging weapons. It had been subtle work, minor inaccuracies in machining and sloppy welding that he'd hoped would slip by the Nazi inspectors. It hadn't. The worker had been executed on the floor of the machine shop as an example to the other prisoners. Almost all of his work had been reinspected and the faulty weapons removed from the inventory. The inspectors missed one.
The sudden movement after decades of inaction was too much for the faulty weld near the torpedo's propeller. It split open, spewing the remaining fuel into the ocean. The torpedo's acceleration bled off, but its momentum carried it on toward the surface.
Two meters below the surface, the torpedo's warhead ruptured. Instead of detonating inside the hull of its target, its payload spewed out of the cracked welds. Gas bubbled up through the water, foaming the sea into a pale pink patch just forward of the fishing boat. It drifted up into the air, forming a fetid pool at sea level in front of the fishing boat.
The empty torpedo casing filled quickly with seawater. Now slightly heavier than the water around it, it sank back down to the seabed. It came to rest in thick ooze five hundred meters away from its original position.
SS ANNA LEONA
"And I ain't spending my pay on tea," the first mate answered. "Your expense, it is. Part of the contract, it being your boat and all. Not the crews or officers."
"Then wot you complaining about? It's free for you, so you can drink what I buy." The master was irritated now, wondering whether he might be better off just steaming alone that evening. Or even going on home, surprising the lass for a change.