The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

headset that connected him to Lieutenant Ryskov.
'Yevgeniy Nikolay'ch, this must be done well, and done quickly. I will drop
below the layer just as the American goes over it . . .'
'No, captain, you can wait. His array will hang below briefly, as ours would
do!'
'Damn!' Dubinin almost laughed. 'Forgive me, Lieutenant. For that, a bottle of
Starka.' Which was the best Russian-made vodka.
'My wife and I will drink your health . . . I'm getting an angle reading . . .
Estimate target five degrees depression from our array . . . Captain, if I can
hold him, the moment we lose him through the layer . . .'
'Yes, a quick range estimate!' It would be crude, but it would be something.
Dubinin rasped quick orders to his tracking oflicer.
'Two degrees . . . hull noises are gone . . . this is very hard to hold, but
he's occulting the background a little more now – GONE! He's through the layer
now!'
'One, two, three . . .' Dubinin counted. The American must be doing a missile
drill, or coming up to receive communications, in any case he'd go to twenty
meters depth, and his towed array . . . five hundred meters long . . . speed
five knots, and . . . Now!
'Helm, down five degrees on the bow planes. We're going just below the layer.
Starpom, make note of outside water temperature. Gently, helm, gently . . .'
Admiral Lunin dipped her bow and slid below the undulating border that marked
the difference between relatively warm surface water and colder deep water.
'Range?' Dubinin asked his tracking officer.
'Estimate between five and nine thousand meters, Captain! Best I can do with the
data.'
'Well done, Kolya! Splendid.'
'We're below the layer now, water temperature down five degrees!' the Starpom –
executive officer – called.
'Bow planes to zero, level out.'
'Planes to zero, captain . . . zero angle on the boat.'
Had there been enough overhead room, Dubinin would have leaped off his feet.
He'd just done what no other Soviet submarine commander – and if his
intelligence information was right, only a handful of Americans – had ever done.
He'd established contact with and tracked an American Ohio-class fleet
ballistic-missile submarine. In a war situation, he'd be able to fire off
ranging pings with his active sonar and launch torpedoes. He'd stalked the
world's most elusive game, and was close enough for a killing shot. His skin
tingled from the excitement of the moment. Nothing in the world could match this
feeling. Nothing at all.
'Ryl nepravo,' he said next. 'Right rudder, new course three-zero-zero. Increase
speed slowly to ten knots.'
'But, Captain . . .' his Starpom said.
'We're breaking contact. He'll continue this drill for at least thirty minutes.
It is very unlikely that we can evade counter-detection when he concludes it.
Better to leave now. We do not want him to know what we have done. We will meet
this one again. In any case, our mission is accomplished. We have tracked him,