After the maneuver, Mac determined the Hawaii was running at a depth about two to three hundred feet above SF-1. SF-1 was currently at eight hundred feet, so that put the Hawaii at five to six hundred feet.
“Okay, Mac, I’m descending to nine hundred feet. Give me a mark when we pass under the Hawaii. At that point, we’ll turn to a reciprocal heading of two-one-zero degrees for thirty seconds and then do an Immelman.”
“A what, sir?”
“It’s a maneuver like doing the first half of a loop and then rolling to an upright position at the top of the loop. I’ll go to full power and start raising the nose. We’ll pull about three Gs until we reach the top of the loop in an inverted position. Then we’ll level off and roll upright. We should be about three hundred feet higher than we are now, on a reciprocal heading, somewhere behind the Hawaii. At that point, we’ll give her the first ping. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, Mac. Double-check Master Arm—On.”
“Master Arm—On, XO…Weapons Hot!”
“I’ll slow us down some during the Immelman so we come out of it somewhere around five or ten knots. The Hawaii is basically station-holding now, so she’ll be doing about five knots.”
The maneuver went as planned, and they finished the Immelman on a heading of 030 degrees.
“Nice move, XO. I’ve got her dead ahead. We’re somewhere inside a thousand yards, but I can’t tell you exactly.”
“Ping her.”
Pinnnnnnng.
“She’s six hundred yards ahead, sir.”
“Thanks Mac. Pappy accelerated slightly to close the gap. Give her another ping.”
Pinnnnnnng.
“Two hundred yards, dead ahead, sir,” announced Mac.
“Spotlight—On. We’re moving in. How about one last ping for good measure and to really ring their bell!”
“Aye-aye, sir!”
Pinnnnnnng.
“Position confirmed, sir…one hundred yards and closing. We should pick her up visually any moment.”
Then, out of the gloom, there she was—a monstrous machine lumbering along like the Hindenburg. “I’ve got her, Mac. Slight angle off, she’s started a port turn and that screw is starting to cavitate. Looks like we surprised her and she’s gone to flank speed and is trying to maneuver. I’ll just slide over behind her and line you up for the shot.”
“I’d stay out of that wake if I was you, XO. She’s bound to be creating a lot of turbulence back there. It could probably throw us for quite a loop!”
“Good thinking, Mac. I’ll line you up from just outside the wake.”
With the giant screw directly ahead, MacKenzie fired a bull’s-eye, with the rocket striking one of the seven blades about halfway out from the shaft. The blade shattered, and the entire submarine began to oscillate in the water as the unbalanced screw wreaked havoc on the shaft and its mountings within the hull.
The Hawaii went all stop, and then apparently realizing they had no choice, blew ballast, and floated to the surface, joining the Kilo like a couple of useless fishing bobbers.
USS Texas
Captain Buffalo Sewell again asked his sonar operator what the hell that noise was.
“I don’t know, sir. It came from the direction of the Hawaii. Same thing we heard with the Kilo—a ping, or pings in this case, and then a small explosion.” Concentrating again on the headphones, the sonar operator continued, “Sir, the Hawaii is blowing ballast. They’re surfacing, too—dead in the water!”
“Dang it! It seems like we’re in the middle of a minefield! Where are these things coming from?”
“It can’t be the Louisiana, sir. I’d know an Ohio-class boomer anywhere, and there’s not one out there.”
“Oh, he’s out there all right. I don’t know what George Adams is pulling, but he’s definitely out there. My guess would be he’s gone silent, reduced power, and is lying on the bottom somewhere waiting for us to get spooked by these minisubs and hightail it out of here.”
“He obviously knows we’re here, Captain,” said the Texas XO. “Why don’t we ping him to make sure he’s not sneaking by?”
“No, if he had power to make headway, we would hear him. His coolant pumps would give him away. He can’t go anywhere without power, and there’s no way he would just drift with the current—not here at the Cape. The currents down here would dash him on the rocks in a matter of minutes. So he’s got to be sitting on the bottom, and in that case, a ping would do no good. We wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between him and the bottom. It would only confirm our position. We’ll just wait for him…he’s got to come up eventually. Keep clearing the baffles and listening with everything you’ve got. If there are minisubs out there, they have to make some noise.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.”
Chapter 37
While the Texas waited for the Louisiana at her last suspected position, the Louisiana continued to move away at approximately five knots, powered by the SF-2 sub-fighter. When the internal batteries in SF-2 were exhausted, cables were attached from the Louisiana’s batteries, and the fighter continued to provide silent propulsion.
“Captain, Engineering,” the intercom reported.
“This is the captain.”
“I have a suggestion, sir. Our batteries are being drained more quickly than expected. I suggest turning off the air scrubbers—they draw a lot of power. Since we only have fourteen people on board, instead of the usual hundred and fifty-five, we ought to be able to go for at least eighteen hours without using the scrubbers.”
“Do it, Engineering. And keep thinking about what else we can shut down. Those batteries are going to have to last, even if we have to shut down everything in here and walk around with flashlights.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Six hours, and some thirty nautical miles later, the Louisiana rendezvoused with the XO and MacKenzie in SF-1 at the prearranged location. After mounting the fighter and plugging it into ship’s power, SF-1’s electric drive was started and added to the thrust of SF-2. The Louisiana continued to move away, totally silent, at a comfortable eight knots.
Twelve hours and another one hundred nautical miles later, the crew increased reactor power and brought the Louisiana’s engines back online.
“All ahead, one-third,” ordered Captain Adams. He turned to the XO and with a wink of the eye said, “Ace, you have the conn. In two hours, go to all ahead full.”
The XO chuckled at the fighter pilot nickname. He also recognized it was an extreme compliment from the captain—recognition of the captain’s full confidence in him, and recognition of a truly meaningful accomplishment—a single sub-fighter disabling numerous top-of-the-line fully armed attack boats in live combat. A revolution in submarine warfare!
“All ahead full, sir? That will be a bit noisy…” “I know,” said the captain, “but we have a long way to go, and we need to make up for lost time.”
Back at SUBLANT headquarters in Norfolk, Commander Lannis Wayne noted that the Texas had waited at the last known position of the Louisiana for twenty-four hours. He began to suspect the captain of the Texas had been buffaloed by his old friend, George Adams. Lannis talked to the admiral and suggested that P-3 antisubmarine warfare patrol planes deployed to southern Chile should search an area west of Cape Horn. The admiral agreed, and the P-3s dropped several hundred floating sonobuoys in an arc approximately 150 miles west of the Texas’s current location. The sonobuoys contained passive sonar receivers and radio transmitters for transmitting their readings to the patrolling P-3s. Nothing conclusive was found, although one sonobuoy reported faint intermittent contacts. Lannis ordered further computer analysis of the readings, and the results came back: possible biologics, noise, or possible Ohio-class SSBN.
The admiral ordered the Texas to investigate.
Chapter 38
“All ahead FLANK! Heading two-eight-zero degrees.”
Captain Buffalo Sewell had his orders. He had his navigator plot a
track from their position to the position of the sonobuoy that had reported the intermittent contacts. Those contacts, Buffalo now agreed, were not biologics or noise; they were faint echoes of the USS Louisiana.
“I don’t know how he did it, but he got through our defensive line!”
“Why the hurry, Captain?” asked the Texas’s XO. “At this speed we’ll be cavitating like crazy! If the Louisiana is out there, she’ll hear us long before we hear her.”
“I know, but I’m afraid she’s got such a head start, that we’ll need to be at flank for at least a day to have any hope of getting within torpedo range before it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“The Louisiana is obviously headed for the southwestern Pacific. There are two possible reasons. First, George Adams might intend to go island hopping, using the islands as cover to avoid detection, while intending to move on into the Indian Ocean and toward the Middle East. That wouldn’t surprise me. George would surely know the short route from the Atlantic to the Middle East, around Africa, would be heavily guarded. So he’s taking the long way, across the Pacific, to get to the Indian Ocean. From there, with his Trident D-5 missiles, he can reach any Muslim target in the Middle East.”
“That should take a long time. So why flank speed?”
“Well, the second reason he might be headed for the southwestern Pacific, and the biggest concern right now, is that he may be headed toward Southeast Asia. If so, we need to catch up as quickly as possible.”
“And what’s the concern there, Captain?”
“Indonesia—by population, the largest Muslim country in the world. That may be his first target. If so, we’ve got to stop him before he gets within four thousand miles—the range of his D-5 missiles. That doesn’t leave us much time.”
The Texas’s navigator was carefully studying an undersea chart of the Pacific Ocean. “Captain, a four-thousand mile arc from Indonesia would put them right along a line running north-northeast from New Zealand to American Samoa. That’s pretty much directly along the Tonga and Kermandec Trenches.”
“Very well,” replied Captain Sewell. “That’s our line in the sand. If the Louisiana crosses that line or makes any strange moves in that area, we’re putting her down.”
Chapter 39
USS Louisiana
“So we’re slightly behind schedule. Shall I order the helm to increase speed?” asked Pappy.
“No need,” George responded. “By my calculations, we’ll make up the deficit within a day at our current speed.”
The Louisiana had run for a day and a half in the Pacific, and the captain and XO had just finished a review of their current state. Leona was carefully taking notes of the conversation for the ship’s log. In the more relaxed and casual atmosphere of the captain’s cabin, Pappy ventured, “You know, it’s a real shame world affairs have led to this.”
“Would you like me to leave now, Captain?” asked Leona.
“No, no. Stick around for a few minutes.” Then, addressing Pappy, George continued, “It certainly is. It’s the old ‘man’s inhumanity to man.’ You would think that as the stakes got higher, we would have learned we had to change our ways.”
“I guess it isn’t going to happen—not voluntarily at any rate.”
“Well hopefully,” said the captain, “we’ll provide the incentive people need.”
“I hope you’re right, because if you’re not, mankind is going to be starting all over again.”
“Have either of you ever seen pictures of the Earth taken from deep space?” asked the captain.
“Of course.”
“There’s one picture taken from so far away that the Earth just looks like a little dot in the midst of all the vast blackness of space. A tiny little jewel of life in an ocean of nothingness. When you look at that little speck of dust, it’s even harder to believe we have killed and maimed and tortured each other for thousands of years—probably hundreds of thousands of years—so that we could control some little part of that speck for a few fleeting moments.”
“It’s pretty ridiculous, isn’t it?” responded Pappy.
“I’ll say,” said Leona.
Pappy paused for a few moments and then ventured, “You would think we could stop that if the goal was just to control a fraction of the speck. But how do you stop it when you have fanatical Muslims who believe they should conquer the world in the name of Allah? In their minds they’re not doing it for themselves, they’re doing it for Allah.”
George sat back down and took a deep breath. “That’s an excellent question, Pappy. I’ve thought a lot about myself, because it’s kind of the essence of the problem we have to overcome—if mankind is ever going to break out of this routine of killing each other in the name of religion.”
“So have you come up with anything?” asked Leona.
“Well, I think I’ve come up with a better explanation of the problem.”
“At least that’s a start, Captain,” said Pappy. “We have to understand the problem before we can find a solution.”
“That’s true,” said George, “and to get at the root of the problem, you have to understand what motivates the other side. We may have different value systems, but we’re all human, and we have the same basic fears.”
“Fears?” asked Pappy.
“Yes, fears, because every negative emotion we experience is actually based on fear. In every example of emotions like hatred, greed, and envy, the real basis of those emotions is fear. Look at your typical radical Islamic terrorist for example. Why do you suppose he hates the West so much?”
“I don’t know…because we hinder the spread of Islam, or because modern communications have brought the influence of the West into Islamic countries? Or maybe because we seem to be there just for their oil?”
“It could be any of those, and the basis for the hatred would still be fear. Deep down, the terrorist fears change. He fears Western influence will change his way of life. It’s exactly the same kind of fear that drives the West to resist him. The West fears being overtaken by Islam. It’s a never-ending cycle, and it’s one we are always caught up in.”
Pappy and Leona both nodded.
“Just look in the newspaper any given day and you can see it over and over. When Muslims are demonstrating in the streets, for example, and calling for attacks on European countries because someone published a cartoon in a newspaper depicting Mohammed, you know these people have been totally overcome by the realm of fear.”
“So going back to my original question, how does this relate to radical Muslims believing they should take over the world in the name of Allah?” asked Pappy.
“Well first of all, I don’t think God has instructed anyone to conquer the world. All of those beliefs reflect man’s attempt to create God in man’s image, not the other way around. Radical Muslims—and let me emphasize I’m talking about radical Muslims, not your ordinary everyday Muslims—is that they have taken all of the wrong verses of the Qur’an and made them central to their religion. They have accepted all of the verses of the Qur’an that relate to fear—in other words, the verses that were corrupted by Mohammed’s worldly interpretations—and have rejected God’s verses—the verses relating to love and compassion.”
“So why do so many people follow these militant radical leaders?” asked Pappy.
“Because it’s easy,” responded George. “What the radical leaders are preaching makes sense to their followers in the context of the lives they’re living. It’s easy for people to believe in a God who is just like us—one with the same sense of justice. One who rewards the ‘righteous’ and punishes the ‘bad.’ But what these people ignore is that by accepting a God who is just like us, you have to accept a God who is flawed. One who is judgmental, quick to anger, vengeful, and full of hatred of anyone who is not just like him.”
“Not the kind of God I want to believe in,” said Leona.
“Me neither,” said George. “But because these radicals beli
eve that God has laid down these laws and instructions, and because they believe in a judgmental and vengeful God, they live in fear that God will punish them if they fail to carry out his instructions.”
“So they have a fear-based religion instead of a love-based religion, is that it?” asked Pappy.
“Yes. If you remember, the Qur’an was written during a thirty-year war against an alliance of Arab tribes, so it’s full of stories designed to encourage the people to fight. The basic message is, ‘Do it my way or you will go to hell.’”
“You know, George, I think you’re right in your conclusion that the key to stopping radical Islam is to get the rest of the world’s Muslims involved in stopping them,” said Pappy. “But it just doesn’t seem to be happening. Look at Palestine. For years, Hamas sponsored the bombings of Jewish buses, restaurants, and nightclubs because of their fanatical belief that Israel must be destroyed. In response, the Jews counterattacked and imposed stricter and stricter limitations on the Palestinians. It was clear to any objective viewer that Hamas was driving the Palestinian people into total ruin. So what happened? Hamas won the elections in Palestine and became the majority party!”
“That’s true, Pappy. It’s a sad day when people let hate overcome love of their fellow man. Like Sagan said, we’re all on this little insignificant speck of dust together, and all we can think about is killing each other.”
“Anyway, after the Palestinian elections, Hamas leaders made a tour of Muslim countries, and they were welcomed everywhere as if they were respectable national leaders. All I could think was that if the leaders of any of those Muslim countries had had any guts at all, they would have arrested them on the spot as terrorists and made a statement to the world that radical Islam must stop.”
“Without some prodding, though, that isn’t likely to happen,” said George. “That’s why we’re establishing a deterrent to future terrorism that also provides a real incentive for mainstream Muslims to get involved.”
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