Northern Fury: H-Hour by Gauvin Bart & Radunzel Joel

Author:Gauvin, Bart & Radunzel, Joel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ursus Rising
Published: 2019-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 46

1448 MSK, Sunday 13 February 1994

1148 Zulu

USS New York City (SSN 696), western edge of X-Ray Station, eighty miles west of USS Connecticut, Barents Sea

GOD HELP US, thought Captain Alan Jones.

The half-prayer sprung from his half-remembered childhood, enduring long, cold services in his family’s drafty Catholic parish in Cape Cod.

“Con, sonar,” came the latest call from the sonar room, “new contact near aboard, active sonobuoy bearing zero-seven-seven! Designate this contact as Alpha Two-Two.”

Jones, USS New York City’s shave-headed skipper, winced. He and his boat were in a bad spot, and he knew it. The waters of the Barents Sea were already claustrophobically shallow for big nuke-boats like his Los Angeles-class submarine, and his proximity to the Soviet coast of the Kola made it even more so.

“XO,” Jones said, tension creeping into his voice as he walked over to his executive officer standing at the map table, “what’s the plot look like?”

“Not good, Captain,” was the response. “That makes four active buoys in the last half hour,” the officer moved his finger to the map, indicating locations, “this latest contact makes two to the east, one directly north, and the fourth is to our south. Along with that dipping sonar that’s been working to the west, we’re pretty well boxed in.”

“What about surface contacts?” asked the captain.

The XO traced his finger across the chart to the southeast of the line marking the sub’s course. “Sir, we’re tracking four skunks right now, bearing is about zero-eight-zero. They’re in a group, diamond formation. One is a Grisha-class frigate for sure, one may be a Pauk, but no ID on the other two yet. They’re closing on our location at twenty-two knots.” That was an ASW hunter-killer group if he’d ever seen one, thought the captain. Looks like they know where we are.

“What about that Victor we got a sniff of a few minutes ago?” prompted Jones, asking after a faint submarine contact the sonar room had reported to their east.

The XO shook his head, saying, “We lost him. He was closing in our direction, doing about twelve knots. Assuming no change in course or speed, he should be right here.” The XO pointed to a spot very close to theirs.

Aircraft, surface ships, and a submarine all hunting us, Jones considered. How am I going to get us out of this one? The skipper wiped his brow. He’d been in some tense spots before, but he’d never been boxed in and hunted like this, never seen the Russians put so many resources into such a small space. They can’t be doing this everywhere, can they? Did we stumble into some sort of major exercise? The DEFCON Four warning, however, indicated that they should expect some trouble. Regardless, he thought, settling on a course of action, this is too much trouble already. We need to get out of this fix.

“We’ll bring her up into the layer.” he announced. “Helm, make your depth one-five-zero feet, speed six knots, course three-two-zero. We’ll try and squeeze between that northern buoy and the dipping sonar, see if we can get out of the way of that ASW group.

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