Piranha: Firing Point mp-5

by Michael Dimercurio

  “Ship Control Officer, bring us around to the left, left ten effective degrees rudder, course north, speed twenty-two clicks, depth three hundred meters, and keep the angle gentle.”

  “Aye sir, left ten degrees rudder, course zero zero zero, speed increasing to twenty-two clicks, diving to three hundred meters, flat angle.”

  “Very good. Nav, get a Second Captain target solution.”

  Chu was driving off the track of the target, getting a parallax computer solution to the target using only listening sonar, as the Second Captain’s on-line tactical manual recommended.

  “Aye, sir, solution is crude but shows target ST-1 inbound, seventy-seven clicks, distance thirty-five kilometers. Our distance to track is six hundred meters and opening very slowly. He’s going to pass very close, sir.”

  “Very good, Nav. Ship Control, slow to five clicks.”

  “Five clicks, aye. Admiral.”

  “But, sir,” Xhiu said, “he’ll be coming just a few ship lengths from us. We need to open distance.”

  Be cool, Chu thought. “No, ship silence is more important than distance,” he said.

  “Sir, are you still committed to letting the American submarines go? We never thought they’d come this close. This one may detect us. Maybe we should shoot at him now.”

  “No,” Chu said. “We’ll let them both go. Otherwise the torpedo noise and explosions will alert the fleet. Now, listen up in the control room. Target ST-1 is coming at us like a freight train going full out, and he’s making just as much noise. I sincerely doubt he’ll ever look up to take notice of us. Everyone calm the hell down. Be alert for the second 6881. The fleet’s order of battle showed two escort subs. Also, watch the first one for any sign of a counter-detection.” Please let me know, he thought, if the 688 hears me.

  For the next few minutes Chu waited. His lower left panel remained tuned to the face of Lieutenant Commander Xhiu Liu, the sensor-panel operator’s face as much an instrument as any Second Captain display. The excitable navigator’s eyes grew wide, one hand to his headset earphone, alarm growing on his face. Chu waited for what seemed an eternity for the man to speak.

  “Nav, what is it?”

  “Admiral, contact ST-1 signal is suddenly growing dim. He’s slowing down. Coasting down, screw turn count coming way down. Sir, I don’t — I don’t know what he’s doing. He’s—” The navigator had begun to sputter.

  Odd, he had such a cool head when doing commando operations, but put a nuclear submarine under him with orders to fight and he grew as fidgety as a six-year-old.

  Perhaps it was his frustration level — during a commando raid a man had control, but up against an enemy sub, only the captain had control.

  “Just watch him,” Chu said calmly, trying to reassure Xhiu.

  “Yessir, still slowing, still slowing.”

  Seconds clicked by like molasses. Chu watched the raw sonar data appearing on the upper right console.

  The processed data — crowded curves and graphs and broadband waterfalls — were crammed into the center right display. He found the 6881, where a pulsing computer cursor outlined it, the narrowband three-dimensional graphs surrounded by thin lines of boxes as the computer outlined the noise to process, looking outward, seeking transients, nailing down the bearing to the vessel. The central god’s-eye view showed his own ship in the center, a blinking diamond symbol marking the estimated position of the enemy submarine.

  “He’s much slower now, sir. The bearing rate is high left — he’s turning. Another sonar contact coming up also, sir. Contact WT-1, multiple contacts, surface warships, bearing 088, bearings very diffuse, a whole range of bearings to the east. On my mother’s blood, they’re everywhere. I’m tracking, must be, no, sir, over a hundred ships! I can’t—”

  “Congratulations, you found the convoy, but what is ST-1 doing?”

  “Um, he’s slowing and turning, steady on his new course.”

  “Turn-count speed?”

  “Eighteen clicks.”

  He’s looking for us, Chu thought. Maybe he sniffed something at high speed, and he’s slowed down to get a better picture. “Men,” he said, “the 6881’s turn is most probably a routine sonar calibration maneuver. Everyone relax.” He smirked — he never thought he’d say those two words in the heat of this operation.

  More time clicked off.

  “ST-1 is turning again, sir, straight toward us, coming around. Could be moving into attack position. Admiral.”

  Xhiu was losing his cool, Chu thought. He glanced significantly at Lo Sun, as if to say. Get over there and calm him the hell down. Lo walked quietly around the command console to stand behind the sensor console.

  “Steady, Navigator. Weapons Officer, program tubes ten and eleven for target ST-1. Nagasaki II torpedoes, weapon ten programmed for ultraquiet swimout Weapon eleven for high-thrust gas-generator ejection with highspeed ship-to-target transit. Gentlemen, your attention, please. Prepare to attack submerged contact ST-1.”

  USS ANNAPOLIS, SSN-760

  “Sonar, Captain, classify sierra two four mwl”

  There was no arguing with John George Patton when he had his blood up. Contrary to the intent of the U.S. Navy regulations, he maintained an easygoing, almost casual relationship with Demeers. The expert sonarman had been a frequent guest at Patton’s Sandbridge Beach house, where they ate grilled burgers and talked about how the Navy was going to hell, or at least they had until the new admiral had shown up to kick everyone’s ass in gear, as Demeers put it But when there was trouble, Patton’s formerly easy manner vanished with so little a trace that an observer would never have guessed that the two men had put away several dozen cases together.

  At this moment it was strictly military discipline, officer to enlisted, the rank of 0–6 to E8.

  Patton had the words on his lips, prepared to say: “Snapshot tube one.” Within ten seconds that would flood the number one tube, open the outer door, and launch down the bearing line to the intruder submarine.

  Yet he couldn’t open the door until he had a definite hostile target for practical reasons — having an open door caused a now-induced resonance at high speed, like blowing over a bottle mouth. The whistle would scream out into the sea and announce their presence. Patton didn’t intend to open a tube door unless he was ready to shoot to kill, which he was, his knuckles going white on the stainless steel handrail of the conn platform.

  The officer of the deck. Lieutenant Horburg, half stood, half kneeled on the leather seat at the second console of the BSY-4 row of computers, the row called the attack center. Furiously he dialed in a stack of dots, trying to use their two maneuvers to see what distance and speed of the target fit the data. He also needed to gauge where they’d be in the near future, say, five minutes, when a torpedo would be programmed to launch.

  The solution was crude, but was coming in, showing the target 24,000 yards to the northeast, just outside the sector of sonar clutter from the surface task force.

  Patton concentrated on the BSY panel, position two, waiting to see what fell out of Horburg’s computer game.

  So far it looked like the target was zooming up to them at over 35 knots. Patton frowned, knowing that couldn’t be a lurking diesel boat, not with that speed. It had to be nuclear, but if it was hostile, why didn’t it slow down to be quiet and shoot at them when they didn’t suspect?

  Only one reason, Patton thought. It wasn’t an enemy at all. It had to be the Santa Fe, the other escort submarine.

  “Captain, Sonar aye, sierra two four is a submerged contact, distant, low signal-to-noise ratio, making forty knots on one seven-bladed screw, classified 688 class improved.”

  “Captain, aye,” Patton called. “Designate sierra two four the USS Santa Fe:’ “Conn, Sonar, aye.”

  “Supervisor to control.”

  Demeers walked in, his shoulders slumping, a fresh bottle of Coke whooshing open as he unscrewed the cap.

  “Don’t suppose we ought to be shooting Chrissy Carnag
e,” he said. “Bad for the fitness report.”

  “Yeah,” Patton said. “And the Santa Fe wives’ club would tend to frown on that.”

  “Damned shame. It looked like it would be a good watch. Get rid of some of those old torpedoes.”

  “Anything else out there?”

  “Cap’n, the sea is as clean as a hound’s tooth. It’s just us, Chrissy, and about a gross of big, fat surface ships.”

  “Yeah, well, while we sit here and chat, those surface ships are gonna go screaming overhead, and they’ll think we’re the bad guy.”

  “I guess it’s back to fucking flank, then,” Demeers said, his disgust Dot completely feigned. “Hell, it’s like trying to listen to a distant voice with your head in the dryer. While it’s going.”

  “Tell it to Admiral JeanPaul Henri,” Patton said in a mock French accent. He snapped at Horburg, his tone acid, as it always was when he gave his orders. “OOD, let’s kick it Course west at flank.”

  “Flank it west, aye, sir,” Horburg said. Stepping up to the conn, he lilted another coiled-cord mike to his mouth, looking like a yuppie trucker with a CB radio.

  “Maneuvering, Conn, shift the reactor to forced circulation.”

  A speaker rasped from the overhead, “Shift the reactor to forced circulation. Conn, maneuvering, aye. Commencing fast insertion.”

  “Sonar, Conn, increasing speed to flank, turning to course west. Helm, right full rudder, all ahead flank, steady course west!” Horburg barked at the helmsman, who turned the control yoke and reached to the panel and rotated a knob, called the engine order telegraph, to flank. A needle on the telegraph panel rotated from the position marked % to flank. On the helm-display animation of the stern of the submarine, the rudder moved to the right to the thirty-degree position.

  “Sir, my rudder’s right full, maneuvering answers all-ahead flank,” the helmsman called.

  Horburg slurred his “Very well. Helm” response, saying! “Vrewun.”

  “Conn, Sonar, aye,” from Demeers on the overhead speaker.

  “Conn, maneuvering,” the speaker blared, “Reactor’s in forced circ, reactor recirc pumps one, two, three, and four running in fast speed, answering all-ahead flank.”

  Horburg hit the mike button, his response slurred to a single word: “Maneuvering, Conn, aye.”

  The deck began to tremble again as the speed-indicator needle climbed from ten knots past fifteen, sailing through the twenties and thirties, slowly approaching forty, finally settling out at forty-one knots.

  “Sir, passing course two six zero to the right, ten degrees from ordered course.”

  “Very well, Helm.”

  “Sir, steady course west!” the helmsman called.

  “Very well. Helm.” Despite his obvious compliance to Patton’s orders, Horburg turned formally to the captain.

  “Captain, ship is at flank speed heading west.”

  “Into the sunset,” Patton said, half to himself. He had one eye on the chart display, the other on the sonar display mounted on the overhead at the attack center.

  Strange, he thought. He’d completed his slow sonar search, yet he didn’t feel any better. When they’d come through the Naze-Yakushima Gap, he’d had the oddest feeling, that there was something out there. But then when he’d slowed down, turned the pumps off, and coasted down to best listening speed, he’d found nothing there. Of course, he only gave it seven minutes and was still going ten knots. Who knows what he would have seen if he’d gone two knots, bare steerageway, and given it a good hour for the narrowband processors to integrate all the major frequency buckets at all points of the compass? Dammit, he almost answered aloud, if he’d done that, the convoy would have overrun him, all their screws cavitating and thrashing the water upstairs into a sonar sound nightmare. No, that was the best he could do, and it had cost him dearly. Counting the coast-down and acceleration time, he’d lost a full eleven minutes at forty-one knots, slipping behind his previous position by 15,000 yards, a full 7.5 nautical miles, so now he was only some three miles ahead of Chris Carnage’s Santa Fe, twenty-three miles west of the convoy instead of his previous thirty. His orders were explicit, to get as far ahead of the convoy as possible. It was just too bad, Patton thought, that to follow the spirit of JeanPaul’s orders he had to violate the letter of them.

  Patton stared at the chart, but his eyes were focused into infinity. It just didn’t seem right. He had that irritating feeling he experienced when he knew he was forgetting something.

  He walked into Demeers’ realm. The blue overhead lights of the sonar room cast a sickening glow over the large consoles of the BSY-4 displays. Two of Demeers’ four console seats were empty. Only Demeers and his operator, a third-class petty officer, had on their headphones.

  The senior chief took one earpiece off, a look of mischief on his face.

  “Something’s not right,” Patton said.

  “True, I haven’t seen a woman in a week,” Demeers said.

  “I’m serious. There’s something out there.”

  Demeers’ face immediately changed to a frowning look of worry. He looked at Patton for a long moment.

  “I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this. Skipper, but you’ve never been wrong when you’ve said that in the past.”

  A shiver crawled up Patton’s spine. This was almost the same eerie conversation they’d had two years ago, a half hour before the Abraham Lincoln took its first torpedo.

  “Senior, I’d give anything to be wrong right now.”

  “Want to take a console?” Demeers asked, holding up a headset.

  “Nah. I’ll go back to control. Just keep a weather eye out.”

  “Yessir.”

  Patton absentmindedly wandered out of sonar, finding himself back at the chart table without remembering going into the control room. There was no shaking the feeling. There was something out there.

  * * *

  Xhiu’s question hung in the air. Chu ignored it for a second to scan his console displays.

  “No,” he finally said, “I’m not going to shoot him.”

  “But, Admiral, he’s gone right past us and sped back up. He didn’t hear us.”

  “Exactly, Nav. He’s not a threat. Not right now. And shooting him will just put a big ball of noise in the ocean, and the surface force will hear it, even over the noise of their own screws.”

  “But the second submarine is nearing closest point of approach. What about him?”

  Chu smiled at his console, knowing his face was being displayed at the sensor-control console where Xhiu Liu was strapped in. “You know what I’m going to say to that, don’t you, Nav?” Xhiu cracked his first smile of the watch. “Let him go.”

  “Aye, Admiral”

  “Now, are we set up on the convoy?”

  “They’re coming in at sixty-five clicks, distance thirty-five kilometers.”

  “It’s time to come up to mast-broach depth. Target ST-2, the second submarine. Is he opening distance now?”

  “Past closest point of approach and opening,” Xhiu said.

  “Very good. Ship Control Officer, slow to fifteen clicks, mast-broach depth, twenty-two meters, up-angle thirty degrees. Mr. First, take the command console.”

  As the deck tilted upward, Chu’s seat leaned down toward his aft-feeing console. With some difficulty he unbuckled his harness. Pulling himself up with handholds placed at the top and sides of the console, he stood on a deck that was slanted at a thirty-degree angle. Lo Sun squeezed into the narrow gap between the cocoon-like console and the reclining seat, strapping himself into the harness. In the meantime Chu pulled himself to the circular platform of the periscope stand in the corner.

  He hit a mushroom button, and the periscope seat unfolded and lowered, the arrangement a sort of motorcycle without wheels. Chu straddled the seat, his hands on the scope grips, his eyes to the binocular eyepieces. Because the periscope mast was retracted, the display in the binoculars was dark and dead. Chu trained the seat until it
was pointing exactly forward, the way he liked to start a periscope search.

  “Second Captain, control room lights on dim,” he said to his boom microphone. The room lights dimmed till he was in twilight, to eliminate glare from the room interfering with his view out the instrument

  “Nav, range to the convoy?”

  “Sir, twenty-four kilometers.”

  “Admiral, ship’s depth is passing through one hundred meters,” Yong Wong reported from the ship control console.

  “Bring her up,” Chu ordered. “Second Captain, raise the periscope mast.”

  He returned to the periscope, and as it rose from its haven in the fin, the darkness in Chu’s eyepieces lightened just a bit. He rotated his left grip down, training the view to angle toward the surface high above. With his right index finger he pulled a trigger on the right grip, and the motorcycle seat slowly rotated clockwise, as did Chu’s view out the rotating periscope mast. He could see sunbeams streaming downward from a lighter portion of the sea directly above, but otherwise it was a blur. Chu kept rotating the instrument slowly, his view trained upward.

  “Thirty meters, sir. Taking ship’s angle flat.”

  “Very good.”

  As the deck angle began to become level, Chu was able to sense the deck rocking almost imperceptibly, rolling to starboard just a little, then back to port. The waves overhead came into focus, their underside an odd silvery color. The sea was not as calm as he’d expected, but with small waves. Now that he could see the surface, he sped up the platform rotational speed.

  “No hulls, nothing close,” he said into his boom mike.

  Finally the lens of the fiberoptic transmitter mast, the periscope, broke the surface. Water blurred the lens for a moment as Chu rotated the platform, still looking for ships passing too close to their position. Nothing was visible as the film of water cleared from the lens. The horizon came sharply into view, the world above composed of only two elements — white overcast sky and dark blue water — and the line of the horizon was ruler sharp. Chu slowed his rotational speed, searching in low power for surface ships.