She had one hand pressed to her earphones and the other danced over her keyboard. Above her was the electronic green wash of the waterfall display. “Still working on it, but I definitely have prop noises. Okay. Hold on. Got you. She’s at one hundred and twenty feet. Still bearing two seventy-one.”
No change in her bearing meant they were heading straight for the Oregon.
“Helm, full emergency stop, then turn us with the thrusters until we’re at ninety-one degrees,” Cabrillo ordered. That would take them directly away from the sub and minimize the time her flank was exposed. The Chinese wouldn’t know what to make of a contact that could pull off such a maneuver. He wondered if the Argentine aircraft had gotten a good enough look at them to know their target was a merchantman and not a naval vessel.
The magnetohydrodynamics wailed as Stone brought up full power and reversed the variable-pitch impellers in the drive tubes. As the speed bled off, the ocean swells attacked the Oregon as if angered that their power was being challenged. The ship heeled over nearly forty degrees when they were broadside to the waves, and water swept her decks from stem to stern.
Using the bow and stern thrusters, they turned as tightly as a bottle cap, and as soon as they were on the correct heading, Eric changed the impellers again and kept the engines firewalled.
“Range?” Cabrillo called out.
“Four thousand yards.”
The sub had gained almost a mile on them as they were turning. Juan did a quick calculation, and said, “Mr. Stone, just so you’re aware, the Kilo’s coming at us at twenty-three knots.”
In response, Eric dialed in emergency power.
The ride was brutal, like being on a bucking bronco. The ship shuddered so badly that Juan feared his fillings would loosen, while each climb up a wave was a vertiginous journey surpassed only by the gut-wrenching descent. Cabrillo had never called on his ship to give him more.
“Range?”
“Four thousand one hundred.”
A cheer went up. Despite it all, they were pulling away from the submarine. Juan patted his armrest affectionately.
“Contact,” Linda cried. “Sonar. New transient in the water. Speed is seventy knots. They’ve fired! Contact. Sonar. Second torpedo in the water.”
“Let go countermeasures,” Cabrillo ordered.
Mark Murphy worked his magic on the keyboard, and a noise generator was released from a pod under the keel, though it remained attached to the ship on a lengthening cable. The device emitted sounds like those the Oregon was making and was designed to lure the torpedo away from the ship.
“The first torpedo’s coming strong. The second has slowed. It’s going into stand-by.” The Chinese captain was keeping one of his fish in reserve in case the first missed. It was good naval practice. “Range is two thousand yards.”
In combat, time has an elasticity that defies physics. Minutes and seconds seem interchangeable. The tiniest increments can go on forever while the longest duration is gone in an instant. It took the torpedo a little over two minutes to halve the distance, but for the men and women in the op center it seemed hours had elapsed.
“If they go for the decoy, it should happen in about sixty seconds,” Linda announced.
Juan caught himself clenching his muscles and forcibly willed his body to relax. “Okay, Mr. Stone, cut power and go quiet.”
The engines spooled down evenly, and the ship began to slow. It would take at least a mile to come to a stop, but that wasn’t the goal. They wanted the torpedo to concentrate solely on the decoy they were towing.
“Thirty seconds.”
“Take the bait, baby, take the bait,” Murph urged.
Juan leaned forward. On the big monitor, the sea behind the Oregon looked as dark and ominous as ever. And then a geyser, a towering column of water, erupted from the surface and rose nearly fifty feet, before gravity overcame the effects of the explosion and the geyser began collapsing back in on itself.
“Scratch one decoy,” Mark crowed.
“Eric,” Juan said calmly, “turn us about with ten percent power on the thrusters. The acoustics are going to be scrambled for a while, but keep it quiet. Wepps, open the outer doors.”
Mark Murphy opened the ship’s two torpedo doors, as they came about and pointed their bow at the approaching submarine.
“Linda, what’s he doing?”
“He’s slowed down so they can listen, but he’s maintaining his depth. And that second torpedo’s still out there someplace.”
“He’ll want to hear us sinking,” Juan said, “rather than surfacing. Mark, oblige him.”
“Roger that.” He typed in commands on his computer, and an electronic track began to play. The speakers were attached to the hull and they pumped out the sounds of a ship in its death throes.
“It just occurred to me,” Cabrillo said. “We should have the speakers on a wire we can lower from the hull. It’d be more realistic.” He looked over at Hanley. “Max, you should have thought of that.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I just did.”
“A little late to help us now.”
“You know what they say—”
“Better late than never.”
“No. They say, Wepps, fire both tubes.”
Mark hadn’t been fooled by the repartee, and he launched the torpedoes the instant the order came.
Jets of compressed air blew the two-ton weapons from the tubes as their electric motors came online. In just a few seconds, they were homing in on their target at sixty-plus knots. Cabrillo used the keypad on his chair to switch the view screen to the forward camera. The torpedoes left twin wakes of white bubbling water that streaked away from the ship.
“That second fish will be after us in about three seconds,” he said. “Open the forward redoubt for the Gatling gun, and crank it up.”
A cleverly hidden door at the bow crashed open, and the multi-barrel snout of the Gatling emerged. The cluster of barrels was spun up until they were just a blur. Capable of firing four thousand 20mm tungsten rounds a minute, the weapon had the capability of tearing through enough water to reach the torpedo as it homed in on the ship. They had stopped a similar attack in the Persian Gulf when an Iranian submarine had taken a shot at them.
“Contact. Sonar. Their fish has gone active. Oh, no!”
“What?”
“She’s at three hundred feet.”
Juan understood the implications immediately. Unlike their last fight with a Kilo-class, where the water had been shallow, here the Chinese captain had the sea room to order his torpedo deep and come up on them where a ship is most vulnerable—along the keel. A modern vessel can survive a massive explosion along her flank—witness the USS Cole—but a blast under the hull will snap its spine and usually result in it breaking into two pieces and sinking within minutes.
“Who’s going to win the race?” Cabrillo asked.
“Their fish is inside ours by a hundred and fifty yards and coming at us four knots faster. It’ll hit us a full minute before ours hits him.”
Juan considered and rejected option after option. There simply wasn’t enough time to maneuver away, and the seas were too rough for the Oregon’s unparalleled speed to be a factor.
“Wepps, sound the collision alarm. Eric, I’m transferring helm to my station.”
Over the electronic warble of the alarm came another mechanical sound.
Max, who knew the ship better than anyone, was the first to realize that Juan had opened the big moon-pool doors. He quickly grasped what the Chairman intended. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Got a better idea? So long as that torpedo uses a contact fuse rather than a proximity signal, there’s a chance we can pull it off.”
“And if he does detonate just under the keel?”
“Having the doors open or closed won’t change a thing.” Cabrillo turned to Linda. “You’re my eyes. Guide me into position.”
“What do you want me to do?” She still didn’t understand.
“Thread the needle with that torpedo. I want it to come up directly below the moon pool. With a little, no, with a lot of luck, that thing will fly clear when it broaches. That should snap its guy wires. After that, it’s nothing but a big paperweight.”
“You are nuts,” she said, and looked at Max. “He is.”
“Yes, but it actually might work.”
She returned to her display. “Depth is still three hundred. Range, one thousand yards.”
The torpedo maintained its track, staying deep as it raced for the Oregon. Because of the guy wires running back to their sub, the Chinese couldn’t take evasive maneuvers against the two torpedoes tracking them. Juan had to hand it to the Chinese captain. If the roles were reversed, he would have gotten out of there as soon as he heard he was under attack.
“Range, four hundred yards. Depth, unchanged. Time to impact, about forty seconds.”
The Chinese commander wouldn’t alter the torpedo’s depth until it was directly under the ship, and then he would send it straight up on its killing charge.
“Range, one hundred yards. Depth, unchanged. Juan, it’s about twenty feet to starboard of our center line.”
Cabrillo kicked on the thrusters to push the Oregon laterally through the water. With the sea heaving so much, it was going to take more than the lot of luck he’d mentioned. It was like threading a needle, only the hand holding the needle was wracked with tremors.
“That’s good. Okay, she’s coming up. Depth, two-fifty. Range, twenty yards.”
The sonar dome on the underside of the hull was thirty feet back from the bow. Cabrillo had to keep that in mind. The torpedo was twenty yards from the sonar but ten from his ship. The moon pool was directly amidships of the five-hundred-and-sixty-foot freighter.
“Depth, one-eighty feet. Horizontal range from the bow is five yards.” A second later, she amended, and said, “Depth, one-fifty. Range, three yards.”
Juan ran the vectors in his head, calculating the torpedo’s glide slope as it arrowed in on them, his ship’s speed and position, and how the waves were affecting her. He had one shot or they were all going to die. There was no margin for error. And there was no hesitation. He slammed on full power for less than two seconds and then threw the impellers into reverse. The ship lurched forward, shouldered aside a big breaking wave, and slowed once again.
“Depth, fifty feet. Range is zero.”
Eric keyed on a fish-eye camera attached high up on a bulkhead, overlooking the moon pool. Water surged from the hole in the ship in black glossy mounds that spilled over onto the grated floor and sank to the bilge.
“Depth zero,” Linda said in an emotionless monotone.
Like Leviathan rising from the deep, the bulbous nose of the Chinese torpedo exploded out of the moon pool. Meeting no resistance, its motor thrust the weapon fully out of the water. Its quick last-second acceleration was enough to snap the two guy wires trailing miles back to the sub. It crashed back into the water, ringing like a bell when it hit the edge of the pool. And then it sank from sight. With no control inputs coming from the mother ship, the onboard computer shut the weapon down.
A victorious roar filled the op center and echoed throughout the ship, where other crew members had been watching video monitors. Max slapped Cabrillo on the back hard enough to leave a red handprint. Tamara hugged Juan briefly, and then Max much longer.
Cabrillo made to leave the room. “Chairman,” Linda called to stop him. “What about the sub? Our torpedoes hit in forty-five seconds.”
“I’ll be in the head if they need me.”
He was in the restroom, sighing contentedly, when another cheer went up. The fish had done their job, and the route to Antarctica, and the end of this affair, was open.
TWENTY-FOUR
A light touch on the shoulder woke Jorge Espinoza. Like any good soldier, he was awake instantly. His aide, Corporal deRosas, stood over him, holding a mug of what he hoped was coffee.
“Sorry to wake you, sir, but a large ship has appeared at the mouth of the bay.”
“A warship?”
“No, sir, a freighter. It’s beached.”
Espinoza threw off the thick sheaf of blankets and regretted it immediately. Though the overseer, Luis Laretta, had boasted that fuel wasn’t a problem for the facility, the air in the building they used as a billet had a perpetual chill that seeped into everything. Espinoza pulled on two pairs of long johns before donning fatigue pants. On his feet went three pairs of socks.
“Has anyone aboard tried to make contact?”
The aide opened the metal blinds to let in what passed for sunlight in this godforsaken deep freeze. The room was barely big enough for the bed and a dresser. Its walls were painted plywood. The single window overlooked the back of another building just three feet away. “No, sir. The ship appears abandoned. One of its life rafts is missing from the davits, and, judging by how beat-up it is, it looks like it was deserted some time ago. Sergeant Lugones scoped it with a thermal sight. Nothing. The ship’s stone-cold.”
Espinoza took a swig of the strong coffee. It didn’t go well with the film in his mouth, and he made a face. “What time is it?”
“Nine A.M.”
Three hours of sleep. He’d survived on less. He and Jimenez and a couple of Sergeants had been out most of the night, scouting the hills behind the base for ambush sites. The fractured terrain was a natural fortification, with hundreds of places to position fire teams. The only problem was keeping them warm. Today was going to be dedicated to seeing how long the men could stay in position and still maintain combat efficiencies. The Sergeants guessed four hours. His estimation was closer to three.
He finished dressing and downed the rest of the coffee. His stomach rumbled, but he decided to investigate the mystery ship before breakfast. “Wake Lieutenant Jimenez.”
It took just fifteen minutes in one of the workboats to cross the bay. The effect of the warm air bubbler was amazing. Not only was the bay ice-free, the air directly over it was a warm fifty degrees, while at the base it had been a bone-chilling ten below. Beyond the bay, a crust of ice rose and fell with the waves as the first inkling of summer tried to melt it away. There was a clear path out to the open ocean, where an icebreaker continuously plied back and forth to maintain a vital link back home.
The workboat passed close enough to one of the oil platforms to see that its camouflage was thin sheets of riveted metal designed to make it look like an iceberg. From fifty yards away, the only way to know it wasn’t the real thing was the massive steel support columns that peeked out from under its white skirt.
At the narrow entrance of the bay, they passed over an area of agitated water. This was the curtain of warm air rising up from the pipes that prevented ice from flowing into the harbor. For the few seconds it took to cross, Espinoza was warm for the first time since arriving in Antarctica.
He turned his attention to the ship. It was old, that was for sure, and possessed a haunted quality even if he hadn’t known it was abandoned. The hull was a mishmash of marine paint, blotchy and streaked, as if applied by children. Her upper works were mostly white, and her single funnel a faded red. She had five cranes, three fore and two aft, making her what seamen call a “stick ship.” Since containerization had taken over maritime commerce, such ships were considered outdated, and most had long since been turned to scrap.
“What a rust bucket,” Lieutenant Jimenez commented. “I bet even the rats abandoned her.”
As they got closer still, they could see that she wasn’t a small ship. Espinoza estimated her length at well over five hundred feet. Her name was difficult to make out because the paint had faded and was streaked with rust, but he could see she was called the Norego. Twenty feet of her prow was hard up on the pebbled beach. There was another workboat pulled up next to the massive bows, and a group of men standing around. One was erecting an aluminum extension ladder that looked tall enough to reach the rail, barely.
Espinoza’s boa
t pulled up alongside the first, and a crewman threw a line to one of the soldiers. He heaved the boat in as close as he could while another crewman lowered a gangplank that was nothing more than a twelve-foot piece of lumber.
Sergeant Lugones snapped a salute as soon as the Major’s padded boots touched the rocky beach. The sky was clear, for once, and the temperature was a relatively balmy ten below zero.
“Quite a sight, eh, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. We spotted it at first light and came out to investigate. Begging the Major’s pardon, but I thought it best you stay in bed and get some beauty rest.”
From anyone else, that would have been gross insubordination, but the gristly Sergeant had more than earned the right to tease his commanding officer from time to time.
“You’d need a thirty-year coma to help that mug of yours,” he called back, and the men who heard snickered.
“All set, Sarge,” the soldier working the ladder called over.
Espinoza was the first to climb up, with two men bracing the base in case of a wind gust. He had modified his outer gloves so he could peel back the index finger, and when he unholstered his pistol he could get his finger through the trigger guard. He peered over the gunwale. The deck was a mess of loose clutter, oil drums, and scrapped pieces of nautical gear. He saw no movement, so he climbed over and signaled for the next man to join him.
Wind moaned though the crane’s rigging, a warbling keen that sent shivers down his spine. It sounded like a dirge. He looked up at the bridge windows but saw nothing but the reflection of the sky.
Raul was at his side a moment later, followed by Lugones. The Sergeant carried a machine pistol with a powerful flashlight secured under the stubby barrel. They crossed the deck, moving carefully, and with one of them always covering the advance of the others. There were no hatches on the forward bulkhead under the bridge, so they moved to the starboard rail and proceeded aft. Here, they found a door just a few feet away. Above them were the two skeletal arms of the empty davit. A steel cable hung from each.
Jimenez undogged the latches, and when he glanced at Espinoza, who nodded, he pulled open the door. Sergeant Lugones had his weapon at the ready.
The Silent Sea Page 27