It had been a while since anyone dared utter a word or even let out a loud breath. In the deserted aisles of the 385th Naval Unmanned Surface Vehicles Brigade’s operations base not a single step had been made for a long time. In the crowded war rooms not a move, not a stifled cough. Even the usual muffled but incessant artillery shelling on the front lines had fallen silent because of the cold winds howling eastwards. Hundreds of eyes were pointed at the closest monitors showing them precisely what those in room S-41 were seeing; hundreds of ears, too, were caught up in heeding the only voice that each time resonated in unison from dozens of loudspeakers through the three-story Soviet-era building that housed the brigade’s HQ.
“Slow… slow… easy, easy… don’t rush it”
Capt. Roman Stetsko was standing behind the pilot’s large, comfortable chair, his hands resting gently on the seatback and his eyeballs fixed on the monitor. This time, the pilot’s nerves were palpably quivering under the state-of-the-art headset he was using to steer his baby with.
“Relax, nice and clean. Here we go, nice… swerve, ok”.
If it weren’t for Stetsko’s soft voice, the whole brigade would have certainly heard the pilot’s heart pounding like a jackhammer.
“Tak, there. At 2 o’clock: can you see it?”.
The pilot’s shoulder twitched: the submarine’s aft with its propeller appeared before him, no more than 100 meters away.
“Approach… steady. Ok, lock target”.
The Sea Baby’s advanced high-resolution night vision optics rendered the Kolpino’s silhouette so sharp you’d think you could see every colour sprouting from the grayscale image.
“Tak, tak…”. The room froze still, no beeps from the computers were audible. It was like being trapped inside a fishbowl.
“Now!”
the captain exclaimed, his words resounding like thunder: “Activate! Full throttle!”.
The pilot pushed the joystick so hard that not only he thought he had broken it, but also he believed he had sprained or dislocated anything between his shoulder and his wrist. The baby slinged against the Kilo II-class’s stern at nearly 100 km/h and within a few seconds they finally lost signal. Moments later, an operator transmitted onto the monitors the glaring explosion captured by a supporting UAV, hovering at safe distance, as it showed how 800 kilograms of dynamite could make the port of Novorossiysk tremble and despair.
Stetsko’s voice flowed composed and unshaken through the speakers, barely revealing a trickle of excitement: “Payload delivered. Target down. Mission’s a complete success. Thanks to everyone. Over and out”. The Brutalist former Soviet council house erupted in a blaze of applause, cheers, and relieved laughter.
The mission was indeed a resounding success:
it was the first action of the new Sub Sea Baby, the underwater variant of the versatile all-Ukrainian Sea Baby USV project – designed and operated entirely by the SBU –, the pride of Kyiv’s R&D and a testament of the country’s industrial capabilities. The Sub Sea Baby can trace its progenitor back to the German Fernlenkboot from World War I, a cutting-edge Siemens-Schuckert design for the time (this ante litteram sea drone was remotely controlled via a wire, just like the most advanced UAVs terrorizing the fields of Eastern Ukraine: curious, innit?); we also like to imagine that the Ukrainians had in mind the infamous slow-running torpedoes, otherwise known as “pigs”, that gave Italy so many heroes during the Second World War.
In any case, once again the AFU made clear to Russia that, with so little, they could strike such devastating blows: a 500 million dollars submarine was taken out by an unmanned vessel costing no more than a couple thousand dollars. A superpower’s fleet pinned and hunted down for years, to the point of being in grave peril even in its own home ports, by a country with no navy: who would deny such a feat is a tribute to human ingenuity?
The celebrations proceeded as the SBU captain and his team exited room S-41. A big gathering awaited them outside the sealed door to greet and congratulate the heroes of the day. Among them, surely not because he wanted to, was Capt. Yaroslav Shukhevych. When Stetsko, surrounded by jubilant comrades, passed by him, Shukhevych flashed a wide, fake smile, shook Stetsko’s hand and immediately disappeared into the amassed exultant crowd.
For days, weeks
he had been obsessed with Stetsko, the SBU and those damned babies. He was jealous that the SBU was always one step ahead: they had better engineers, better projects, better intel, better missions, better everything – even submarines now! He couldn’t get Stetsko out of his mind, acclaimed as a Roman triumphator, with his haughty demeanor, his medal-covered uniform, his confident voice. Enough! He had to pull off a big one and show everybody what the HUR was capable of, something that would outshine that goody-goody once for all.
With some effort, he managed to get General Budanov on the line. He explained the situation and shrewdly pressed on the HUR-SBU rivalry, something he knew was felt even at the upper echelons. “Thank you, General… tak… I agree… we’re no less than them – civilians to boot!… I – we are grateful… thank you again, Sir… Heroyam Slava!”. Shukhevych was pleased with how the call had gone: Budanov promised to coordinate with his brigade’s chief of staff for assigning the HUR teams a mission worthy of them. And, above all, no more tankers that take honor out of victory. For too long the operators of the military directorate had been given, in favor of the civilian intelligence – what a shame! –, secondary targets and tasks, being in the last months mainly ships belonging to the so-called “Russian shadow fleet” (the vast web of merchant vessels set by the Kremlin to circumvent Western sanctions on oil and gas), because of a purported inferiority of the MAGURAs, the HUR’s own USVs. It was time to prove the world wrong, that they were no content pirates but hardy seamen.
Capt. Shukhevych’s patience was wearing thin. Almost two weeks in that filthy and wretched sand box and still his appetite for action had yet to be met. The thrill he got when he received the news he and his crew had to pack and depart at once for a secret destination on the coast of North Africa for a high-risk mission had already faded away. Instead, what he was feeling now was nothing but disquietude and frustration. The Russian corvette he had been sent to sink to the bottom of the Mediterranean was nowhere to be seen. Besides his personal aspirations, his anxiety wasn’t totally unfounded: each day, their presence would become increasingly suspicious and more probable the risk of being exposed. How much longer before the good people of Darnah would doubt of this anonymous party of young Belarusians in the seafood import-export business?
The phone rang
The captain quickly picked up the phone: “Pryvit?”.
“The Bolky suddenly made a detour two days ago and has eluded our systems. As we speak, she is entering the Suez Canal. Pack everything. Extraction and redeployment tomorrow. Out”. The firm, metallic voice hung up before he could say a word.
“Shit, shit, shit!”, the captain punctuated each curse, slamming the receiver violently on the table and destroying the device.
While the crew was meticulously preparing for the departure, Shukhevych received word from one of his local informants that a Russian tanker, the Arctic Metagaz, had just left Tobruk. Still raging in fury, without a moment’s hesitation he decided they couldn’t leave that shithole just as they had come. His task force had three MAGURAs at its disposal – two brand-new Sidewinder-armed V7s and one kamikaze V5, enough to tear apart a modern frigate: indeed, one could be spared.
The captain rushed into the small warehouse where they kept the armory and brusquely ordered his men to get the V5 ready for immediate action and set up all the required systems. A technician tried to stammer an objection: “But, Sir… our orders were-”. Shukhevych interrupted him, bluntly stating: “You follow my orders”.
The Mi-17 had yet to take off
as the heavy and delicate load was being secured, while the more agile Mi-8 had already soared into the sky, at more than four hundred meters above ground. At that altitude, the thick red and black plume of smoke rising from the Arctic Metagaz, adrift and listed in open sea northeast of their position, was already visible. Lt. Olzhych, the leader of the extraction team, observed intrigued the far-away spectacle for nearly a minute and then said, archly choosing his words: “We’ve loaded three crates, but I may bet one is much lighter than the others. I know you don’t mind a little gambling from time to time, Captain: would you like to wager against me?”. Shukhevych smirked and nonchalantly changed topic: “Where are you taking us to, Lieutenant?”
“To the outskirts of Berbera, Somalia, on the Gulf of Aden. It’s a crap of a place, just swathes of shrubs and red-hot dirt. Hope you guys will be able to get out of there soon”.
“We’ll stay there for as long as necessary”.
“That ship is very important to you, isn’t it, Captain?”, Olzhych spoke with the tone of who had understood everything of the man sitting across from him.
Shukhevuchy slightly tilted his head and leaned toward Olzhych, fixing his eyes onto his: “If needed, Lieutenant, I would wait for that fucking ship even in the dungeons of hell, while I impassively watch my flesh slowly burn and my men cry in pain and despair as ten thousand Lucifer’s demons flog their naked backs”. Olzhych barely quelled a flinch and kept silent for the rest of the flight.
So much for glory, so much for Festung Europa.