Barracuda: Final Bearing mp-4

by Michael Dimercurio

  “Standby,” the weapons officer said from the weapons console, taking the large silver trigger all the way to the left.

  “Shoot,” Phillips ordered.

  “Fire!” the weapons officer said, his voice excited as he pulled the trigger to the far right.

  Nothing happened. Pacino now realized what had been wrong when he had first walked into the room.

  The crew around him seemed not to notice.

  “Tube one fired electrically. Captain,” the weapons officer said.

  “Unit one, normal launch,” sonar reported. “Unit is active.”

  “Let’s get out of here, Coordinator. Sonar, prepare to monitor the caboose array, we’re putting the target in the baffles. Helm, all ahead flank, right ten degrees rudder, steady course south.”

  Pacino waited for the deck to tremble from the power of the main engines running at flank speed, but the deck was whisper-quiet.

  “Sonar, Captain, what have you got on the caboose array?”

  “Captain, own ship’s unit is still in search mode. We no longer hold Target One on the caboose array. He’s also dipping below threshold on the towed array endbeam. Loss of contact. Target One.”

  Phillips and Whatney shared a dour look. There was nothing now for them to do but get away from the Destiny and hope the torpedo hit him before he realized what had happened.

  “Conn, Sonar, torpedo in the water! Rough bearing one two zero.”

  Pacino felt the acid hit his stomach. The Destiny had just fired a torpedo, a large-bore Nagasaki Mod Alpha.

  They had almost no chance of evading the torpedo. It would be easier to outrun a bullet aimed at your head from a foot away. Pacino concentrated on Phillips to see if he would continue to function.

  Phillips reached up to the sonar-repeater monitor and repeatedly stabbed a fixed function key, the monitor view changing with each button press until the caboose-array display flashed up. The caboose array was a recent innovation designed to allow the sub to hear contacts directly behind, since the machinery and screw made too much noise for the spherical sonar array in the nose cone to listen astern. The towed array, a long cable towing a rope-like set of sonar sensors designed to pick up narrow-frequency sound energy, was some help but was not intended to hear broadband irregular noises such as the screw vortex from a torpedo running due astern. The caboose array was installed to fill the gap. The teardrop-shaped sonar hydrophone assembly was about a half-meter across, big enough to detect some noises but not accurate in bearing because of the wiggling it did at the end of the towed array cable. And pulling the caboose caused drag on the ship, slowing her down.

  Phillips would now need to make a decision — to continue to “drag the onion,” as pulling the caboose array during a flank run was called, or get rid of the unit and go deaf, unable to know if the torpedo was still on his tail but at least speeding up the ship.

  “Sonar, Captain, jettison the caboose and retract the towed array. Maneuvering, all ahead emergency flank at one four zero percent reactor power. Weapons officer, shut the outer doors to tubes one and two.”

  “We’ll have to cut the wire. Captain. We won’t know if the torpedo detonated on Target One.”

  Phillips made a sour face. “Cut the god damned wire.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Conn, Maneuvering,” a new voice said on the headphones! “making emergency flank turns now and one three seven percent reactor power, limited by overheating port and starboard main engine forward bearing temperatures.”

  “Cut in more aux seawater to the lube oil cooler,” Phillips ordered.

  “Sir, the valves are wide open, we’re at max cooling.”

  “You got electrical loads running on the battery?”

  “Motor generators are at max. Captain, we can’t pick up any more kilowatts.”

  “Attention in the firecontrol team,” Phillips said, his forehead beading up with sweat. His armpits were stained now, the cigar gone, a rivulet of sweat gathering liquid as it ran down his brow to his nose. “The Destiny has counterfired a torpedo. We’ve done everything we can to run from it at max speed. There is nothing more we can do except hope the Japanese torpedo runs out of fuel. Meanwhile, at least we have the pleasure of knowing our own Mark 50 is chasing the Destiny just as his weapon is chasing us. Even if he gets us, he’s going down.” Phillips stared at the room, the watchstanders staring at him, waiting for him to say the words that there was some way out of this.

  “That is all. Carry on.”

  Pacino looked down. The ride was still whisper quiet.

  Quiet until the sound of the incoming torpedo sonar beeped into the room. The enemy torpedo sonar was a high-frequency screamer, the pulses pounding into the skull of every crew member, the sound a terrifying screech. Suddenly the pulses changed to a siren tone, wailing upland down in frequency, getting louder.

  Soon there was another sound — of the torpedo’s screw whooshing through the water, the torpedo incredibly close to be able to hear that. There were perhaps only ten seconds to detonation.

  “Conn, Sonar, torpedo is close, detonation any minute.”

  A loud, resounding boom roared through the room.

  Bright fluorescent lights flashed, clicked and held, the light flooding into the control room. The firecontrol consoles, sonar repeater, chronometer and ship control instruments all went out. A huge voice spoke from the overhead.

  “TORPEDO IMPACT. OWN SHIP DESTROYED. END SIMULATION. COMMANDER, WE’RE READY FOR YOU IN THE DEBRIEF THEATER.”

  CHAPTER 3

  UNIFIED SUBMARINE COMMAND TRAINING CENTER

  IMPROVED 688-CLASS ATTACK SUBMARINE CONTROL ROOM SIMULATOR

  NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

  Phillips was soaked in sweat, blinking in the light, the sudden fracturing of his reality confusing even though he knew it had been an exercise. Slowly, as if emerging from a darkened movie theater to bright daylight, the watchstanders left the room through the aft door, down a cinder block corridor to a small projection room. As they left it finally came to Pacino what had been wrong with the control room during the exercise — the noise was wrong. It just hadn’t sounded like a real submarine. And the deck had never shaken during the high-speed maneuvers when it should have been trembling violently. He would have that changed later. The new attack simulator was another of his projects. Before, there had been attack trainers but they were just firecontrol consoles in a dark room. This simulator had the cramped arrangements of all the panels, the pipes and valves and feel of the real thing, but until he could pipe in the sound of a real control room and install vibration cells under the deck it would still just be another attack trainer.

  When the men were seated, Pacino standing in front of the screen, the lights went out and the screen flashed up the view of Tokyo Bay. A blue dot appeared at the bottom southwest of the traffic entrance, a blue line trailing behind it showing where it had been. “The blue dot is own ship,” Pacino said, standing at the screen with an electronic pointer arrow indicating the dot. “While you were waiting here the orange dot makes its way southwest out of the bay. As you suspected, it was a Destiny II class. Nice work in sonar, by the way. Commander Phillips was correct to attempt to get a shot out at the outbound unit when it was on the surface, since Destiny would have been deaf to an incoming torpedo, but I had her pull the plug early. As you can see, once Destiny is at sea submerged she is very quiet.”

  “I should have gotten the shot off earlier,” Phillips said.

  “Maybe,” Pacino said, “but that wasn’t the purpose of the exercise. I wanted you to see what you’re up against when that unit goes under. It’s quiet as a ghost. Anyway, you reacquired the Destiny here. Freeze frame, Chief.” Pacino’s arrow pointed to the orange dot, much closer, its history track longer now. “Give me an elapsed time. Chief, and pipe in the control-room conversations.” The view froze and an elapsed time came up on the screen, showing 00:00:00. “Okay, let’s watch and then analyze it when it’s over.” Pacino stepped back
, watching the subs maneuver, the orange Japanese Destiny continuing southwest in a line, the blue US sub going west, Phillips’s voice commencing leg one when steady. Coordinator you’ve got thirty seconds.

  The blue sub turned to the east, taking some time to come around, while the Japanese sub got closer and closer. Shoot on generated bearing… set… standby… shoot… fire! Tube one fired electrically. A new black track emerged from the blue dot, the fired torpedo, heading north to the Japanese orange dot. Almost immediately a red track came from the orange dot and pointed to the blue dot — the Nagasaki torpedo. The blue dot turned to run while the orange dot began to drive due east. Pacino watched, seeing that the red Japanese torpedo was dramatically faster than the black American one. The red track rapidly caught up with the blue dot until the blue dot flashed, pulsed and vanished. “Own ship sank at time 6:41,” Pacino deadpanned. The screen view continued as the orange sub kept going east, the black American Mark 50 torpedo going north to where the Japanese sub once had been. The two tracks made a cross as the black trace kept going north, the Japanese sub now miles to the east.

  “The Destiny drove off the track of the Mark 50 and has lived to tell the tale,” Pacino commented.

  “Dammit,” Phillips muttered, “we should have shot quicker.”

  “Let’s spin it back to the initial detection. Chief. As you can see at the elapsed time of 00:50, the first leg is done and you’re steady on the second leg. Nobody in this trainer has ever done that in less than one minute thirty.” Pacino didn’t mention the previous record was his own.

  “You did a great job on speed. Commander Phillips, going just fast enough to get the boat through a maneuver but not so fast that own ship noise would eliminate the signal from the target. Here at time 01:14 you’re ready to fire. Torpedo is fired at time 01:27. That’s thirteen seconds. Commander, if you had been in snapshot mode you could have launched in three seconds, which would have saved you ten seconds. Getting formal reports of ‘ship ready,’ ‘weapon ready’ eats time you don’t have. Just command ’snapshot tube one’ and the weapon’s away.”

  “You’re right,” Phillips acknowledged.

  “Chief, show us what happens if one ship fires ten seconds earlier,” Pacino called out. The image reversed to time 01:14, and the torpedo emerged at time 01:17. The men watched the scenario as the same thing happened. The Japanese sub escaped, the American sub sank.

  Phillips sat up in his seat.

  “You’d have died anyway,” Pacino said. “And those are my only comments. Well done, men.”

  “Admiral? Sir?” Phillips had raised his hand like a schoolboy in class. “Are you saying that the only thing we did wrong was shooting the Mark 50 ten seconds late, and even if we had fired earlier we’d be gone?”

  “Looks like it. Captain.”

  “Then how the hell can we go to sea against the Destiny submarine and survive?”

  Pacino paused. “This simulation assumes the Japanese crew to be nearly perfect, which, of course, they aren’t.”

  “So in real life we might have won.”

  “Maybe. Have you heard of the Destiny III class?” Phillips shook his head. “It’s completely computer controlled. A robot sub. There will be no inattention, no distracted captains. That’s what you might be up against. And by the way, that’s top secret, so you didn’t hear it from me.”

  Phillips frowned and fished out a fresh cigar from his shirt pocket.

  “Captain Phillips, I’d like to talk to you after you dismiss your crew.”

  “Aye, Admiral. XO, dismiss the men.”

  The watchstanders filed out until only Pacino and Phillips were left. Pacino’s face grew serious. “I didn’t want to tell you while your crew was here,” Pacino said, his voice a monotone. “How long have you been in command of the Greeneville?”

  “Two years. Admiral.”

  “Well, Phillips, you’re relieved of command of the Greeneville.”

  * * *

  When Philips had gone, Pacino had the chief turn out the lights and return the scenario to the time before the American sub heard the Destiny.

  “Chief, can you reconfigure own ship to be a Seawolf class?”

  “We think the program is almost right, sir, but I can’t guarantee the results yet until we field calibrate.”

  “Can you reconfigure?”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  “Then do it.” Pacino waited as the chief changed the computer simulation to make the American ship a Seawolf class instead of the Improved Los Angeles class.

  “Admiral, own ship is now the USS Barracuda, Seawolf class.”

  “Begin simulation with the same signal-to-noise ratio.”

  The scenario began to run, almost the same as before, except the Japanese sub was detected at a range of 14,000 yards instead of 7000 yards. Pacino maneuvered the ship, calling commands into the overhead to the chief at the computer-control console. He couldn’t help noticing that the fastest he could get a firing solution was two and a half minutes, sixty seconds longer than Phillips. He shot the torpedo, the Japanese sub moved off to the east and counterfired, and soon own ship sank and the Japanese Destiny emerged unscathed.

  “Chief, rerun that simulation with Phillips’s maneuvers superimposed, with his one-point-five-minute time to solution.”

  “Sir, should I take out Phillips’s ten-second firing delay?”

  “Yes, shoot faster.” The scenario played out again. Again the US sub shot the black torpedo, the Japanese evaded and counterfired. The US sub sank. “This time increase the Mark 50 search speed to high,” Pacino ordered, thinking the torpedo was too slow. The simulation ended the same way. The American sub sank.

  “Dammit. Chief, you got the ability to program in a Vortex missile as own ship’s unit?” The Vortex missile was an experimental hybrid combination of torpedo and missile, ran underwater on solid rocket fuel and traveled at 300 knots to the target. It was the fastest underwater device ever invented, guided by a blue laser and packing several tons of Plasticpac ultradense molecular explosive. It was accurate, fast and lethal. The weapon would have been used fleet-wide if not for two problems: one, the unit was huge and would not fit into an Improved 688-class submarine torpedo room; two, the missile had to be “hot launched” to be stable, meaning it ignited its solid rocket fuel inside the torpedo tube, and so far in every test it had blown up its own launching tube. In its last test in the Bahamas test range the unit had killed the target drone submarine and the launching drone submarine. The missile program, not surprisingly, had been abandoned.

  “Admiral, we have an old program I wrote for the Vortex, but, sir, that thing’s a suicide weapon. It always blows up the tube.”

  “I know, I know, but configure it and let me try it.”

  “Aye, sir. It’ll take a few minutes.”

  Pacino waited, thinking about Phillips and the expression on his face when Pacino had relieved him.

  “I’m ready. Admiral.”

  “This scenario assumes a Seawolf class firing when Phillips got the solution, this time using a Vortex missile.”

  Pacino watched the screen, saw that the Destiny was detected at 14,000 yards, seven miles out, and that a minute and seventeen seconds later the Vortex missile was ejected from the tube. The result was dramatic.

  The firing dot, the US submarine, vanished as soon as the missile was launched, the chiefs black humor sneaking into the simulation. The missile track covered the ground to the Destiny in mere seconds. The missile hit the orange dot before it had time to fire back. The orange dot, the Destiny II class Japanese attack submarine pulsed, flashed and vanished.

  Pacino stared at the screen, wondering how he could get the Vortex to keep from blowing up the firing ship.

  * * *

  Bruce Phillips walked slowly in the rain to the old turn-of-the-century Corvette, the blue convertible clean but ready for the used-car lot. He climbed in, wiped the rain from his face, cranked the motor to get the heater going and reached for
the phone to call Abby while still in the parking lot of the USUBCOM Training Center. He had known Abby O’Neal for almost two years, having met her at an international conference on maritime law he had been assigned to in a northern Virginia resort. Abby was a successful maritime law attorney. Phillips had approached her at a reception after her presentation. Her hair was long, sleek and midnight black with a sheen to it. Her looks were black Irish, her features soft, her eyes large and brown. But taking in his crewcut and rhino build, she obviously was thinking him a muscle head who knew nothing of the sea, his ill-fitting civilian suit giving away little about his career. The next day he had given his presentation on the effect of submarine warships on maritime law, and when he had finished she had come up to him and spent the next five minutes apologizing for the day before. Phillips had asked her out and they had been inseparable ever since.

  Her secretary answered now.

  “Braddock, Samuels & O’Neal, Ms. O’Neal’s office.”

  “Hi, Sarah, is Abby in?”

  “Hi, Skipper, she’s just coming out of a meeting— here she is.”

  “Bruce, hi. How’d it go?”

  “I lost my ship today.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry, honey, but you said those simulators are hell.”

  “No, I wasn’t talking about the simulation. I got sunk in that too, but the admiral—”

  “That guy you were telling me about, the maniac?”

  “That’s the one. He relieved me of command. I’m no longer in command of the Greeneville.” His voice was a monotone, as Pacino’s had been earlier.

  “Bruce, I can’t believe it. What did you do that was so bad in a simulator? Or was this about the grounding? Was the simulator some kind of last chance?”

  “Not quite, Ab. Get this.” And now his voice took on the excitement he felt. “Admiral Pacino took me off the Greeneville so he could assign me to the Piranha, that brand-new Seawolf-class boat coming out of construction in Connecticut, the one we saw in the Sunday paper. She’s mine now! Pacino said I was the one he wanted driving it. He’s taking me out to dinner tonight and flying me to Groton next week for the change of command.”