Barracuda: Final Bearing mp-4

by Michael Dimercurio

  Pastor shook his head and brought himself back to the supervision of the ship’s rig for ultraquiet. As he walked the ship he switched lights in the spaces from bright white to red — the red lights kept awareness for the rig foremost in the crew’s minds. In the goat locker, the chief’s quarters, he found a grizzled, veteran chief taking a shower. He felt like killing the man. The rig specifically prohibited showers, laundry and cooking, all of which made unnecessary noise. It didn’t matter how hot and sweaty the men got, the rig was the rig. Pastor chewed the chief out as quietly as he could, then continued on his rounds. He returned to the control room.

  “Weapon status,” Pastor asked the young officer of the deck, an academy grad named Mark Strait, who was the sonar officer.

  “Sir, we’ve got all four tubes loaded. One and two are flooded with outer doors opened, torpedo power applied and units warmed. Units in three and four have been powered down from before. We’ll shift in another hour.”

  The maximum readiness rig specified open tubes, weapons powered up with their gyros spinning, ready to fire at any time. That way if Pastor found a target they could program the torpedo in seconds and launch. The only trouble was that the torpedoes could not remain powered up for more than an hour at a time or the gyros would overheat, and sometimes in the middle of tracking a target the outer doors would have to be shut, the weapons powered down, the alternate tubes opened to sea and their torpedoes spun up. The operation could take ten or fifteen minutes, which meant that long without the ability to shoot at the target.

  Pastor leaned over the central firecontrol display, the one known as position two, selecting it to line-of-sight mode. The way he figured it, he would have all of one minute to identify the target, put its bearing into firecontrol, set the bearing and assumed range into the torpedo, and fire before the target knew he was there. Maybe less.

  Birmingham was not a new boat, and the newer Improved 688 class ships were much quieter, but then if Pastor felt his ship shouldn’t be here in the Oparea, ready for combat, he wouldn’t be in command of her. Admiral Pacino would replace him with someone willing to take the risk and fight.

  Pastor looked over at pos one, the console furthest forward, selected it to geographic plot mode, a God’s-eye view of the sea, showing the coastline of Japan, their wolfpack partner ahead and to the east, the USS Jacksonville, the two submarines steaming on a parallel course up the coastline searching for Destiny submarines. The Jacksonville was the same vintage as the Birmingham, both at the tail end of their service lives. Pastor stepped to pos three, the third console aft, and selected it to line-of-sight mode with the target selected as the Jacksonville, just so that he could see where not to put a torpedo in case things got confused. That done, the firecontrol system was as good as it was going to get with no hostile contacts. Satisfied with the status of the control room.

  Pastor moved on into the sonar room through the forward starboard door of control. Sonar was lit with blue fluorescents, its screens multicolored displays, the room’s light ghostly after the red of the control room. In charge of sonar was Petty Officer Hazelton, a skinny curly-haired farm boy from Iowa who loved to torture city kids with stories of butchering pigs at pig roasts, his stories of behind-the-barn sexual encounters equally lurid. In spite of his youth and odd interests, Hazelton knew the sonar suite. And Pastor, a sub captain who believed that sonar was the center of the submerged universe, knew more sonar acoustic physics and equipment knobology than many chiefs.

  “Permission to take a console,” Pastor asked Hazelton, the formality in reference to the fact that Hazelton was in charge in sonar, and even the ship’s commanding officer needed to ensure that taking a console would not interfere with the sonar search. Hazelton replied in the affirmative, handing Pastor a headset. Pastor strapped it on, adjusted the microphone and looked down on his dual-screen console display. The upper screen was selected to the waterfall display of short-and medium-time broadband noise. It was a way of “seeing” what the ship’s spherical array heard, but with this display the user could listen to all directions at once and look back in time to compare this second’s noise with last second’s, this minute’s noises with the minute before.

  A noise was shown with a spot of light, the brightness in proportion to the strength of the sound. As time went on, the noise heard at that instant moved down the screen to be replaced by new display traces, the noises falling down, a noise of a ship drawing a vertical line down the waterfall of the random-noise display. The lower screen was a number of graphs, the vertical axis of each graph sound intensity, the horizontal axis the frequency. The ship was searching for specific tones put out by the Destiny II-class, the intelligence tipping them off to search for a signature around 150 hertz, most probably generated by the ship’s turbine generators. Pastor slouched deep into the leather of the seat and listened to the various traces down the display, investigating each one for a man-made sound, selecting a narrowband processor on the traces he couldn’t confirm as biologies, as fish. He trained the cursor to the bearing of the Jacksonville, the trace very slight on the waterfall display. He could just make out her screw turning if he concentrated on it. The Jacksonville would be more detectable on narrowband, but as long as he knew she was there, there was no sense wasting narrowband processing time on the friendly sub.

  Whenever Pastor operated a sonar console he thought about his family. He wasn’t quite sure why, except that perhaps it was that the sounds of the ocean sounded like his wife’s stomach when she was pregnant, the lazy Friday nights spent with him lying with his head in her full lap, her perfume caressing him, the sounds of her abdomen soothing him, the occasional kick of the baby pressing against his ear. The first child had almost killed Carol, the emergency C-section taking place at the last minute, the surgeon losing Carol’s heartbeat, spending endless minutes trying to revive her. Pastor had stood in the operating room, wearing his scrubs, openmouthed behind the surgical mask as they carted away his newborn baby daughter from the room, the baby’s mother clinically dead. Over and over they tried to start her heart but all they could see was the flat line of the heart monitor. Pastor, trained to handle pressure, had not been up to seeing his wife lying there dead, her abdomen cut open. Finally a nurse realized he wasn’t part of the team and had ushered him out of the room, and it was like he had been drinking all night — his memory trace just stopped. He never lost consciousness but it was almost as if the mental pain had been too much for him.

  He came to an hour later in a waiting room outside intensive care. He stood, as if lost, and asked about his wife. At first the nurse looked at him blankly, then waved him to a room. Carol’s face was as hollow-eyed as a corpse, her skin as white, her hair wild, but when she opened her eyes and looked at him she had never seemed more beautiful to him. He had hugged her as hard as he felt she could handle, tears of relief coming from his eyes, shaking as he felt her hand patting his back. She had said only two words — “the baby?” — and Pastor had stood upright, at a loss. He had never asked about the child, and had kissed Carol’s cheek and said the baby was fine. He practically ran from the room to see the child, a normal and healthy seven-pound girl, short brown hair curled around her sleepy eyes. The baby accounted for, Pastor hurried back to Carol, but she was out cold and would not wake up for a day and a half, and when she did she remembered nothing, not even asking him about the child.

  After that episode with tiny Adrianne, Pastor was unwilling to try again, but she had insisted, and two years later he had sweated out another pregnancy with Carol, this time twins. But that pregnancy had gone sour, too, one of the twins dying in utero, requiring them to induce labor, endangering the life of the healthy fetus. The living newborn was ten weeks premature, tiny, struggling for life. Carol had trouble coping, the dead twin constantly on her mind. As Darlene grew up, her name given her before birth, Carol insisted she saw an apparition of the dead twin Danielle. It had been a tough year, the first after Darlene was born, but that was five years
ago, and it had been over a year since Carol had seen the apparition of Danielle playing with her living twin. Pastor had wanted Carol to get psychiatric help but she wouldn’t hear of it. At least things were calming now, Pastor thought.

  He moved the sonar electronic cursor over to a new trace and listened hard. The groan of a whale could be heard in the distance, the sound eerie, surreal, echoing through the depths of the sea. Pastor continued his search, wondering if they would ever detect anything in the Oparea. The size of this chunk of ocean was huge in square miles, an area the size of California and Nevada combined, and so far there had been exactly nothing.

  The officer of the deck in the control room turned the ship in a baffle-clearing maneuver to train the spherical array on the ocean that had been astern of them, in the blind spot behind the screw, although Pastor had ordered them to “drag the onion,” deploy the teardrop-shaped AN/T-47 caboose array that was designed to look aft, but he agreed with the O.O.D’s decision since the caboose was crude and small, only a supplement to occasionally turning the ship to see behind them. But for ten minutes after the turn there was still nothing. The O.O.D returned to base course and followed the coastline to the northeast. The sea was absolutely empty. Aside from the Jacksonville, there was no one there.

  NORTHWEST PACIFIC

  EIGHTY KILOMETERS SOUTHEAST OF POINT MUROTO-ZAKI, SHIKOKU ISLAND

  SS-810 WINGED SERPENT

  Tanaka joined the watchstanders in the control room after viewing the scenario develop on the Second Captain, the sounds of the two American submarines on the sonar sets for the last twenty minutes. Hiro Mazdai had been frantic, asking Tanaka to call battlestations immediately and fire four Nagasaki torpedoes at the contacts.

  Tanaka looked at him, knowing the Americans were nearly blind. He had insisted to the officers that they treat the Americans with caution, and caution might seem to dictate that the enemy submarines be fired at immediately upon detection ten kilometers before. But to Tanaka the height of fear was not equivalent to caution.

  Firing Nagasakis blindly was foolish and had no meaning. He wanted to sneak up on the Americans, determine their range, speed and course precisely, then put the four Nagasakis out, two per submarine, when he knew exactly where in the ocean the enemy subs were. That was caution.

  He also refused to man battlestations. That just made noise and put the crew in a trigger-happy mood. They needed to be able to fight a prolonged war from their normal steaming watch sections, he insisted. They were panicky now with the first American in their sights, but there would be more, many more, perhaps another dozen or two dozen, and Tanaka would train the officers to consider this almost routine. Precise, controlled, cautious, planned, and routine. This was a time for the mind, not the stomach, he told Mazdai.

  The conning officer. Lieutenant Commander Kami, had driven the ship slowly closer, keeping his eye open for a maneuver by the Americans. Not that he was concerned if the American submarines fired at him. Their torpedoes were of little consequence. The Destiny II class had a computer-controlled SCM sonar system in the bow and the stern. The SCM, sonar countermeasures, was an electronic ventriloquist that could confuse any American torpedo. When the torpedo pinged a sonar pulse at them the SCM ventriloquist sonar would hear it, electronically modify it and send out a return pulse precisely shifted in frequency, distorted and sent early, all arranged to arrive so as to confuse the pinging sonar system. Any incoming torpedo that encountered their SCM system would turn in circles, as confused as a blind sheepdog, or blow up in the middle of the sea.

  And even if one of their inferior torpedoes did close range in spite of the SCM system, the Two class could take a hit of that size and not sink. It would take several direct hits to put a Two class, with its double hull, down for good. A single direct hit would be an inconvenience, perhaps even shut down the Second Captain for a few scary moments, but beyond that there was little to fear from the Americans.

  Finally it was time to attack. The ship was in position, the targets’ locations and speeds and courses absolutely known to the Second Captain, the Nagasaki torpedoes warm and ready to fire. Tanaka considered giving the order to fire from his stateroom but rejected the idea.

  He put on his uniform tunic, buttoned the high collar, straightened his hair and proceeded to the control room.

  The eyes of the men met his, and to his disgust they all showed fear. Even Mazdai seemed nervous.

  “Mr. First,” Tanaka said, “launch Nagasaki torpedoes one and two at the southwestern American, torpedoes three and four at the American bearing west, presets as indicated in the Second Captain.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Mazdai said, looking grateful to finally be doing something.

  The torpedoes were away.

  Tanaka did not stay to monitor their progress. He walked back along the central passageway to his stateroom and sat down at the Second Captain console to watch the torpedoes as they sped to the targets. He selected the upper display to the sonar-detection system, already forgetting about these first two Americans, concentrating instead on finding the next American boats.

  USS BIRMINGHAM

  Pastor was still on the sonar console when the trace showed up on the screen. He placed the electronic cursor on it and listened. It was definitely man-made, a tremendous whooshing noise.

  “We’ve got something here,” he told Hazelton. The sonar tech put his cursor on it.

  Pastor noted that the trace diverged into two, then three, finally four. Two of the traces moved across the screen as they were going quickly across Birmingham’s bow. The other remained at a constant bearing. Hazelton clicked his boom microphone to the control speaker circuit.

  “Conn, Sonar, torpedo in the water, bearing zero seven zero! I say again, torpedo in the water—”

  Pastor threw his headset down and ran through the door to control, where he found the officer of the deck standing on the conn with his hand in his pocket and his mouth open, paralyzed by what the instructors at Prospective Commanding Officer school referred to as the “aw shit factor.” It wasn’t that Strait was panicking, his mind was simply overwhelmed, overloaded with data. He had to take in the notion of the incoming torpedo before he could react to it, and this was so far outside his experience level that it could take up to three seconds for him to process the information.

  Pastor had no such time lag. He was full of adrenaline as he went to the conn.

  “All ahead flank! Maneuvering cavitate! Right fifteen degrees rudder, steady course two five zero! Dive, make your depth one thousand feet! Ready the Mark 21 countermeasure in the aft signal ejector! Load the forward signal ejector with SLOT buoy marked’code 3.”

  For the next thirty seconds Pastor kicked his crew, getting them over the shock, getting them moving. Thirty seconds after that there was no more to do. He had bumped reactor power to 100 percent at flank speed, he had dived deeper to 1000 feet to keep the screw from boiling up sheets of bubbles that would add to their noise signature, he had launched a countermeasure that simulated the sounds of the ship and he had turned and run from the torpedo. All that was left was to launch the signal ejector’s radio buoy that would notify Admiral Pacino they were under attack. He hesitated, knowing that to launch the radio buoy was an admission of defeat, that that could be the last thing anyone would ever hear from the USS Birmingham.

  “Launch the SLOT buoy in the forward signal ejector.”

  “Launch forward signal ejector, aye, sir,” Strait said, punching the red mushroom button, the radio buoy now away.

  Pastor leaned over the pos-two display; the junior officer of the deck was trying to rig a solution to the firing submarine, assuming it had fired from the bearing that the torpedo was first detected. But when that assumed solution was compared to the bearing to the Jacksonville set up on pos three, any torpedo Birmingham fired at the enemy would pass right by Jacksonville first.

  Pastor was not about to give up trying. Just because the firing Destiny submarine was on the other side of Jac
ksonville did not mean that he couldn’t fire. It just meant that the torpedo would need to remain in transit mode until it was on the other side of the friendly submarine.

  There was a problem — his knowledge of the position of the Jacksonville was based on her preattack position. Just as he had maneuvered Birmingham in response to the torpedo, he knew Jack Stolz would be maneuvering Jacksonville to get away from the torpedoes launched at her from the Destiny. That was what those other two contacts had been.

  Still, he might be able to get a solution on the Jacksonville and avoid putting a torpedo in her. He set up pos three in dot-stacked mode, all the while dimly aware of his crew filing into the room for battlestations, the immediate action they took when a torpedo in the water was called. Someone handed Pastor a headset. He put it on, still adjusting the knobs on pos three, anchoring Jacksonville’s position at the time it zigged, maneuvered away from the torpedo. There was a minute or two of data that was garbage since that was during the time that Birmingham was also maneuvering. Sweat poured off Pastor’s face and dripped onto the console. He wiped it away, concentrating as hard as he ever had in his life on the firecontrol display in front of him, trying to visualize the sea above, the location of the hostile sub, its position relative to the Jacksonville, where Jacksonville would turn after the torpedo was fired at her. The tactical problem was turning into a nightmare, and suddenly it began to matter less when the sounds of the torpedo sonar pulse cut into the control room, the sonar noise as loud as a referee’s whistle blown a foot from his ear, the sound piercing and painful. It kept up, a short blast every fifteen seconds, each one closer. Pastor sweated over the solution to the Jacksonville, finally felt comfortable with it. He glanced down at the pos two screen, the assumed solution to the firing ship based on the bearing to the incoming torpedo, then compared that with the solution to the Jacksonville.

  “Snapshot tube one,” Pastor called. “Alter presets to set in a ten-thousand-yard run to avoid homing on the Jacksonville.” Pastor waited. At least he was going to get a shot off at this bastard. The pinging of the torpedo blasted into the room, getting closer with each ping, until he could hear the screw noise of the incoming torpedo.