Black Sea Affair by Don Brown Page A

senior chief in the eye, and eyed every crew member standing before him. "Gentlemen, the senior chief asks a great question. Frankly, I should've covered this. But then again, that's why God created chiefs and senior chiefs and master chiefs -- to make sure the old man's backside stays out of a sling. Right?"
    A wave of laughter followed that comment. Old man was an endearing term used in the Navy to refer to a commanding officer of a ship, submarine, or shore station, and had nothing to do with an officer's chronological age.
    "Thank you, Senior, for keeping this old man's rear out of the tar pit, even before we set sail." More laughter.
    "No problem, Captain, " the senior chief torpedoman said.
    "I want you all to understand that we may never find the Alexander Popovich. This is , in a sense, like looking for a needle in a haystack. Even in this smaller section of the Black Sea, we are still dealing with thousands of square miles of water. We may be trying this dangerous docking maneuver for nothing. We are risking our lives on a lark that our satellites are good enough to track her down, to feed us her coordinates, and let us hunt her down and kill her.
    "But here's how we're gonna try to find her. Our intelligence has picked up rumblings that the ship will be sailing from the Russian port of Sochi to Odessa in Ukraine. And from there, probably out of the Black Sea and who knows where.
    "So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna sneak through the Bosphorus under the freighter Volga River , and when we make it into the Black Sea, we will disengage from the Volga River. From there, we will sail to the entrance of the shipping lanes leading to Odessa. We will stay there, submerged, waiting. We will set an underwater steel trap. If Alexander Popovich shows up, we will spring that trap with two MK-48 torpedoes under the midsection of her hull. That should do the trick.
    "And as she sinks to the bottom of the sea, we will engage in full power and get the heck out of there." There were multiple instances of head nodding. The answer seemed to have done the trick. "Any other questions?"
    There was no response. "Gentlemen, you've given your lives to the Navy, and you've volunteered for this mission. You're the best that this country has to offer. You have a right to ask questions."
    A chief petty officer raised his hand.
    "Chief?"
    "Well, sir. I think we're all either divorced or never married. The Navy is our lives, but we do have families back in the States. Many of them depend on our Navy salaries. If those salaries were gone . . ." The chief hesitated, searching for his words. "We all know that this business may bring death at any time. We knew that the day we enlisted. But I guess what I'm asking is . . . are we going down with the sub, sir?"
    A large cloud cast a shadow over the sub and her prospective crew. "Fair question, " Pete began. "No, chief, we won't ask you to go down with the sub. We will abandon her, if possible, and the crew will board life rafts. Before abandoning ship, we'll arm all sensitive equipment with plastic explosives. We will trigger automatic timers that will flood the ballasts. All computers, data storage, et cetera, will be destroyed. We'll have thirty minutes at most to paddle away from the sub before she sinks."
    Another hand shot up. "Yes, petty officer?"
    "Skipper, are we going to try and transit the Bosphorus submerged?"
    "A freighter has been retrofitted and is somewhere out there right now." Pete nodded his head to the south, toward the open waters of the Mediterranean. "The plan is to come up under the bottom of the freighter and surface, partially. We'll bring the sub's sail into a watertight compartment under the bottom of the freighter, where large O-Rings attached to the hull of the freighter will retract around the bow and stern of the sub.
    "We'll have the element of surprise going in. Hopefully, no one will suspect what we're doing. Coming back out, that won't be the case. When the