Piranha: Firing Point mp-5

by Michael Dimercurio

  “I don’t think they’re losing a minute of sleep over it,” Patton said in a ringing voice.

  “Why, John?”

  “Because they put us on the bottom before we even knew we had company. Men, I was going five knots, dead slow, trying damn hard to hear a Rising Sun class that I knew was out there. Next thing I know, I’m on the deck and the ship is on fire, and my coveralls are flaming, and my sonar chief drags me out of the hatch and throws me on a raft and I’m looking at a fucking periscope. Does everyone understand this? These Rising Suns are badasses. They kicked the shit out of us, and they think they can do it again.”

  “Well put, Captain.” Pacino smiled. “We’re not a threat to these guys. The 688s are toys.”

  “What about the Piranha, the Seawolf class?” Chris Porter asked.

  “Good point, Navigator. Any theories? No? Here’s mine. The SSN-23 is in just as much trouble as the 688s, because he’s using the old narrowband-broadband detection methods against a target whose tonals we don’t know. If the Piranha knew what it was looking for, life would be simple. Just set the frequency gate to pick up a 237 hertz tonal and wait for it to fall into your lap. But we don’t know what tonals these guys put out.”

  Pacino took a drink of water, looking into the eyes of the men around him, an old trick to gauge his audience.

  “So my plan is to use acoustic-daylight sonar to the maximum extent we can. At zero hour ten P-5 Pegasus patrol planes will fly out of Kagashima to drop the first load of twenty Yo-Yo remote-sonar sensors. We’ll be hanging out at periscope depth to receive the signals. We’ll spend a lot of our time at PD this run, guys. With the Yo-Yos out there, we’ll use our intelligence of the location of the six Rising Suns to call in torpedo strikes. I’m putting the twelve 688s of the Pacific Fleet here at Point Echo with us. Yes, they’re loud and relatively vulnerable, but I brought them out here for their torpedo rooms. With twelve subs, each carrying 26 Mark 52 torpedoes, I’ve got 312 torpedoes I can vector into the target locations. That will be like a bunch of bees buzzing around them.

  “Now, the Rising Suns have good torpedo countermeasures, according to the tapes we’ve gotten from the Maritime Self-Defense Force. They have four pods that detach from the X-tail aft that sound just like a Rising Sun, just louder. Each pod inflates a foil balloon that acts as a sonar reflector. Guaranteed to confuse a torpedo. But like I said, they have only four apiece, so we run the bastards out of decoys. Then they have a ventriloquist sonar, an active system in the tail that puts out fake sonar returns to the incoming torpedo, throws it off. They can evade one weapon, maybe two at once, but not a dozen.

  “Now, even though I’ll be putting out torpedoes from our vintage 688s, the main weapon will be Piranha’s Vortex Mod Bravo battery, ten weapons, all long-range. If it’s a good day, Bruce Phillips aboard the Piranha fires six Bravos and this war is over. If it’s a bad day, some or all of us take plasma torpedoes on the chin. No guarantees. Next resort after Piranha are the Vortex Mod Charlies we carry, the smaller, shorter-range Vortex, or Vortex-Lite, if you will. We’ve got more of them than the Piranha has Mod Bravos, but with their shorter range, we’ll have to go in deeper in the op area to get them on target.

  “In general, gentlemen, I’m optimistic, but here is my list of worries. One, the Rising Suns have antiair missiles. If they detect the P-5 Pegasus patrol planes, they might shoot them down, and with them, our Yo-Yo remote OTH sensors. If that happens, I’ll blow the wad on the Mark 4 Sharkeyes, but if I only detect some of the Rising Suns, we’ll be in trouble. I’ll have to send in Piranha to shoot what we see, and risk that it may be shot at by the Rising Suns we don’t see.

  “Next worry, that we look out here and don’t find any Rising Suns. If I missed my guess, the boats are dispersed. If that’s the case, we’ll deploy and redeploy Yo-Yos until we see them. At some point we may need to draw their fire. Not a popular option, and the only way to do it is with the Devilfish, because everyone else is blind. If they take us down when we do that, the operation is over and the convoy goes in without us.”

  “What? The convoy goes in anyway?” Porter asked.

  “Exactly. The Rising Sun weapon loadout is 48 weapons per sub, total of 288 units. We lost a total of 110 ships. Say that’s about 120 weapons. That means they have about 148 or so torpedoes left. We would draw their fire with a convoy until there are no more torpedoes.”

  “But they have enough to take down the lion’s share of the second convoy,” Porter protested.

  “Look, I didn’t suggest this. It’s just what General Baldini will do. I know that guy. He’s bullheaded, and he’s been known to do frontal attacks on brick walls. Maybe he’ll gamble that the Red force spent more than 120 weapons on 110 kills, and that he can at least get half his men in. Half of a 400,000 man force is better than none, or so Bull Baldini thinks.

  “There is one consolation here,” Pacino continued. “According to the Japanese, the maximum speed of the Mod II Nagasaki torpedo is only 46 knots. A 688 can outrun a torpedo in a tail chase, which I suspect is what happened to the Annapolis. But you can’t run from a torpedo you didn’t detect, so our sonar system is key.

  “And the last worry on the list is that this mission falls on its face if Cyclops fails. We’d better hope the computer works and doesn’t crash on us.”

  “If it works anything as well as Miss. O’Shaughnessy looks, it’ll do great,” a young voice said from the other side of the room.

  “That’s enough,” Pacino said, suddenly furious, biting his lip. “Any questions? Captain, please dismiss your men and come see me in the VIP stateroom.”

  Pacino left the wardroom and crossed the hall to the stateroom, his heart still thumping in anger. No doubt about it, he’d feel better when Colleen was off the ship.

  Chapter 11

  Thursday November 7

  PACIFIC OCEAN

  270 MILES SOUTHEAST OF NAHA, OKINAWA

  USS DEVILFISH, SSNX-1

  “Tanker in sight, bearing mark! Range, mark! Three divisions in low power, angle on the bow starboard five.

  Offsa’deck, take the scope,” Patton called, releasing the grips and turning away. “Where’s O’Shaughnessy?”

  “She’s not at the escape trunk, sir,” the helm officer said, putting down his phone.

  Patton and Pacino exchanged a look. “I’ll go for her,” Pacino said. He walked out of the control room, past the door to sonar, and down the forward centerline passageway all the way to the end at the door to the computer room. He tapped in the combination to the button-type lock, the alphanumerics set to “S-S-N-X,” clicked the latch, and walked in. Colleen O’Shaughnessy sat at her console, typing away, as if there were no personnel transfer waiting for her.

  “You’re late,” Pacino said, trying to keep his voice level. “We need to get you going. Wrap up there and get into the suit and tanks.” He pointed at the wet suit on the deck, the scuba bottle lying next to it.

  She just kept typing, ignoring him.

  “Colleen, let’s go.” He reached for her upper arm, and she shrugged him off, continuing to type.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he cried, his anger rising.

  “I’ll tell you what’s the matter with me,” she said, her voice low, quiet, and furious. “You’re treating me like a child. Now, cut it out and leave me alone. I’ve got two terabytes of code to fix.”

  “Colleen, we’ll manage. Turn it over to Commander Porter. We need to get you off the ship.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your life is in danger.”

  “No, it isn’t, yours is. Especially if you kick me off the ship. Admiral, the code’s corrupt. It has maybe an hour at a time to run before it collapses, and I have to cold-start it.” She kept typing while she spoke.

  “Fine, we’ll cold-start it when it shuts down. Now let’s—”

  “You don’t understand. Each time it shuts down, I have to process and fix the error message. It’s how the debug-system module wor
ks. We might even lose the system fifty times in an hour if there are fifty lines of code incorrect. And your Mr. Porter won’t be able to do that. So it’s not whether my life or your life is in danger, it’s the mission that’s in trouble. This mission goes exactly nowhere without Cyclops. You said it yourself, Admiral, I am the battlecontrol system.” She stopped typing, dropped her hands into her lap, and looked up at him. “I’ll tell you the real reason you want me off the ship. It’s because of your feelings for me.”

  Pacino dropped his jaw, looking down at her. The ponytail was gone. She had combed out her hair, and it looked freshly washed, shining in the light of the overheads.

  Her skin was as healthy as if she’d been outside in the sun, her eyes shining.

  “My feelings for you?”

  “Exactly. And it’s okay, Michael. I have feelings for you too. I have since the first time I saw you 137 days ago at the Dynacorp shipyard meeting.”

  “I never knew,” Pacino sputtered, his chest so tight he could barely speak. “Why didn’t you say something, or do something? Something to tell me?”

  “You weren’t ready. You’re still not. Besides, I did do something. I’m here, aren’t I?”

  Pacino struggled to think. “But, Colleen, your life is in danger. We’re headed for a combat zone. You can’t be here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Navy regulations, for one thing—”

  “Screw them. Next?”

  “Okay, your father.”

  “If I were a guy, that wouldn’t matter, would it?”

  Pacino pushed against his mental haze. “You’re right. Maybe it wouldn’t. But you’re still leaving. I’m not putting you at risk any more than I already have. It was wrong to bring you here.”

  “Look at it this way. Admiral. If this were 1912 and I were on the Titanic, would you evacuate me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, if I were on the Titanic because I alone had the information to prevent it from hitting that iceberg, and that were my purpose, then would you evacuate me?”

  “Dammit, yes.”

  “And have a thousand deaths on your conscience? I doubt it. You’d let me stay to try to save the ship. Because, Admiral, without me this ship is the Titanic.”

  Pacino looked her in the eye for a long moment.

  “You’re right, I do have feelings for you,” he admitted waiting for the pang of guilt to set in, but it was late.

  Colleen smiled. “I want three kids.”

  Pacino laughed, his mouth open to reply, when the door lock clicked, then the latch, and the door opened against the jamb. It was Patton, one eyebrow raised.

  “Loss of battle control!” a speaker in the overhead boomed.

  “Back to work,” O’Shaughnessy sighed, turning back to her panel. Pacino waved at her and left the room, pulling Patton after him.

  “Shove off the personnel-transfer tanker,” Pacino said. “She’s staying with us.”

  “Is she nuts? We’re going to be—”

  “We’re going to be without a battlecontrol system unless she’s onboard to fix it.”

  Patton sighed, walking back to control. When Pacino arrived there, Patton had already ordered the ship to return deep at emergency flank. He looked at Pacino strangely.

  “You got a second. Admiral?”

  Patton waved him into his captain’s cabin. On the table was a package wrapped in brown paper, with an envelope taped to it. The envelope said, PERSONAL FOR COMMANDING OFFICER.

  “I’ve already read the note,” Patton said. “It said to give the package to you when we were close to the operation area.” He looked at Pacino, curious.

  Pacino opened the package. The brown paper was wrapped around a folded black cloth, the material coarse and heavy. As he unfolded it all the way, Patton whistled.

  It was a Jolly Roger pirate flag, the skull and crossbones white on the black field. The flag was large, the size of a bedsheet. Above the grinning skull was the legend in uneven white letters, USS DEVILFISH, and below the crossbones the legend read, you ain’t cheatin, you ain’t tryin. Pacino looked at it, startled.

  The flag had flown on the bridge of the first Devilfish, and it was one of two things Pacino had pulled out of the captain’s stateroom before he had abandoned ship.

  The second had been a photograph of his father standing in front of his submarine, the doomed Stingray. Back in Norfolk, Pacino had taken the flag and the photo to the Stingray monument, a black marble obelisk dedicated to the men who had died in the sinking of the submarine, Pacino’s father’s name engraved first on the list. Reverently Pacino had bent to leave the flag and photograph, and had limped on his crutches away, never expecting to see the flag again.

  He had heard reports about it, though. Someone reported that on a visit to see Admiral Donchez at his Commander Submarines Atlantic Headquarters, the Jolly Roger flew over the building next to the American flag. Pacino had shrugged it off as a false rumor. But here the flag was, yet another reminder of Donchez.

  “Let me see the note,” Pacino said. The note simply said: Give this to Admiral Pacino when the ship is close to the operation area. It was in Dick Donchez’s handwriting.

  Pacino swallowed hard.

  “Hang it in the control room,” he said to Patton.

  POINT ECHO HOLD POSITION 40 MILES EAST OF THE NAZE-YAKUSHIMA GAP

  USS DEVILFISH, SSNX-1

  Pacino checked his Rolex. Thirty minutes to zero hour.

  He had been pacing the ship for the last few hours, circling between the computer room, control, sonar, and Patton’s stateroom.

  Now Paully White, Patton, and Pacino were sitting at Patton’s conference table, looking at the chart display of the East China Sea. Pacino felt his stomach tense, his pulse racing, the pre-game jitters thrumming through him. He struggled to find something useful he could do.

  He had already brought the Piranha up to periscope depth and briefed Bruce Phillips on the final details of the war plan. There was nothing to do now but wait.

  What if he was wrong? he thought. What if the subs were hundreds of miles south, or dispersed throughout the sea? What would he do then? He could do nothing until the aircraft dropped their Yo-Yo remote sensors into the Naze-Yakushima Gap, and then the battle would begin or he would be forced to switch to Plan B. For a moment he thought about Colleen, but that was like poking his hand into a hornet’s nest, feelings overwhelmingly strong on the other side of that mental wall.

  All he would allow himself to feel was concern for Colleen and hope that nothing happened to her. Or him, he thought.

  When the clock reached 2255 local time, Pacino stood.

  “Let’s man up,” he said, walking forward into the control room. He ducked out through the forward door to the passageway to its end and into the computer room.

  “Man… battle stations!” the overhead speaker boomed, repeating the message.

  “Well, this is it,” he said.

  As Colleen looked up at him, her face was a mask of worry. Her eyes rotated between him and her computer screen. “Good luck, Michael,” she said, and Pacino thought it sounded so strange to hear that from her lips, yet so good.

  “You too, honey,” he said, hating himself for the weird way it sounded and made him feel.

  Her face relaxed for just a second, a serenity coming over her, and then the curtain fell, the frown returning, her fingers typing on the keyboard, a curse under her breath at the computer. He stepped to the door and looked back at her, wanting to remember her like this.

  Chapter 12

  Thursday November 7

  KAGOSHIMA NAVAL AIR STATION

  KAGOSHIMA, JAPAN

  The P-5 Pegasus Antisubmarine-warfare patrol plane idled at the end of runway one eight. The strip pointed due south toward the dark water of the East China Sea.

  The only light in the cockpit came from the backwash of the instrument panel and the lights of the runway.

  The flashing numerals of the digital chronometer, sy
nchronized with the overhead satellite atomic clock, flashed 53 … 54 … 55 …

  Commander David Toscano’s Nomex-gloved hand was already poised on the throttles to the four fanjet transit engines mounted in pairs on the high wings of the ungainly aircraft, and when the numerals 55 flashed, he moved the levers forward to the detents at the instrument panel. The jets howled far behind him, making the plane shake with the power. Toscano’s feet remained planted on the toe brakes, watching as the needles climbed on the electronic analog-mimic instruments — oil pressure, fuel flow rate, revolutions per minute. The jets were coming up normally to full thrust. The heavy bird would need every ounce of power the Dynacorp engines could deliver because the day’s load was heavy, featuring fat war-shot Mark 79 torpedoes, each weighing twenty tons, plus two Yo-Yo Mark 12 over-the-horizon remote-sonar-sensor pods, a massive two tons each.

  Toscano looked over at his copilot, who nodded behind his visor. The clock ticked, 58 … 59 … 00. At zero zero exactly Toscano released the toe brakes. For the first second the P-5, shuddering under several dozens of tons of thrust, did exactly nothing, sitting immobile on the runway. Toscano’s fingers tensed on the control yoke, toes poised on the rudder pedals. The P-5 finally budged, accelerating in the first few seconds to a walking speed, even as the jets aft screeched at full power. Toscano shot a look at the panel — all nominal — then back at the runway. At fifteen seconds they were at a jogging speed. Another five seconds clicked off, and the airspeed needle showed them at twenty knots, only about fifty feet of runway behind them, almost two miles of concrete ahead.

  The big bird slowly gained speed until the ground was rushing by beneath them, highway speed, the aircraft bouncing slightly. To a hundred knots the airspeed climbed, then 120,140, half the runway gone, the plane shaking insistently. At the three-quarter point the jet had made it to safe takeoff velocity, 175 knots, but Toscano held it down, the wings bouncing behind them. To 180, 190, 200 knots — the concrete’s end could be seen ahead. Toscano gently pulled back on the control yoke and the nose came up, only darkness in the windows ahead, the shaking airframe instantly canning, the P-5 airborne over the water of the East China Sea. The needle of the radar altimeter climbed as the jet fought for altitude. As they passed through a thousand feet, Toscano throttled back and put the yoke forward.