The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

did on Dallas.'
Jones turned and laughed. 'Okay, you got me there. I have the sonar analysis in
my briefcase. I need to see his course tracks, depth records, that stuff. I
think there's a good chance Maine had a trailer, and that, Bart, is no shit.'
Mancuso lifted his phone. 'Find Lieutenant Commander Claggett. I need him in my
office at once. Thank you. Ron, how sure – '
'I did the analysis myself. One of my people looked it over and caught a whiff.
I spent fifty hours massaging the data. One chance in three, maybe more, that
she was being trailed.'
Bart Mancuso set his coffee cup down. 'That's really hard to believe.'
'I know. That very fact may be skewing my analysis. It is kinda incredible.'
It was an article of faith in the United States navy that its fleet
ballistic-missile submarines had never, not ever, not once been tracked while on
deterrence patrol. As with most articles of faith, however, it had caveats.
The location of American missile-sub bases was not a secret. Even the United
Parcel Service deliverymen who dropped off packages knew what to look for. In
its quest for cost-efficiency, the Navy mainly used civilian security officers –
'rentacops' – at its bases. Except that Marines were used wherever there were
nuclear weapons. Wherever you saw Marines, there were nukes about. That was
called a security measure. The missile boats themselves were unmistakably
different from the smaller fast-attack subs. The ship names were on the Navy
register, and the sailors of those ships wore ballcaps identifying them by name
and hull number. With knowledge available to anyone, the Soviets knew where to
station their own fast-attack boats to catch the American 'boomers' on the way
out to sea.
At first this had not been a problem. The first classes of Soviet fast-attack
submarines had been equipped with 'Helen Keller' sonars that could neither see
nor hear, and the boats themselves had been noisier than unmuffled automobiles.
All that had changed with the advent of the Victor-III class, which approximated
a late American 594-class in radiated noise levels, and began to approach
adequacy in sonar performance. Victor-IIIs had occasionally turned up at the
Juan de Fuca Strait – and elsewhere – waiting for a U.S. missile sub to deploy,
and in some cases, since harbor entrances are typically restricted waters, they
had established contact and held on tight. That occasionally had included active
sonar-lashing, both unnerving and annoying to American sub crews. As a result,
U.S. fast-attack subs often accompanied missile submarines to sea. Their mission
was to force the Soviet subs off. This was accomplished by the simple expedient
of offering an additional target for sonar, confusing the tactical situation, or
sometimes by forcing the Russian submarine off-track by ramming – called
'shouldering,' to defuse that most obscene of marine terms. In fact, American
boomers had been tracked, only in shallow water, only near well-known harbors,
and only for brief periods of time. As soon as the American subs reached deep
water, their tactics were to increase speed to degrade the trailing sub's sonar
performance, to maneuver evasively, and then go quiet. At that point – every
time – the American submarine broke contact. The Soviet sub lost its track, and
became the prey instead of the hunter. Missile submarines typically had
highly-drilled torpedo departments, and the more aggressive skippers would have