So be it. It’s your destiny.
Perhaps. But was it theirs? Did he have the right to take them with him into eternity — all in pursuit of some mystical Russian fate?
No.
He barked out the order: “Forward five knots, come starboard to 170 degrees. Maintain 220 meters.”
Every head in the control compartment swung toward him.
“The torpedo tubes are loaded and ready, Captain,” said Popov.
“Seal them. The war is over for us. We’re departing the area.”
A buzz of whispered conversation spread through the control compartment. He could see jubilation on their faces. The war is over for us.
“May I ask where we’re heading, sir?” Popov asked. His eyes were shining.
“Around the horn, down the east coast of Africa. Near Mombasa. That is our best escape route. We’ll pick the exact spot after we’ve established contact ashore.”
Beyond that, he had no idea. They would have to scuttle the Mourmetz, which would be painful for him. They had no choice. The boat was about to become the object of the greatest submarine hunt —
“Aircraft overhead,” called out Borodin from his console. Then, seconds later, “Sonobuoys in the water.”
Silence filled the control compartment. Manilov rushed over to Borodin’s display.
“Contact,” the sonar technician called out. “They’re pinging us!”
“Depth 250 meters,” Manilov ordered. “Slow to three knots, left 090 degrees.”
“It’s a large aircraft,” Borodin reported. “Four engines, turboprop.”
Manilov frowned. A P-3 Orion. That was troubling. Probably from one of their bases in the Persian Gulf. The P-3 carried a crew of twelve or so, and had the most sophisticated airborne sub-tracking system in the world.
His options were limited. He could stop forward motion and remain motionless here beneath the thermal layer, adrift in the depths like a suspended carcass. Their survival would depend on the sonar-deflecting anechoic tiles on the Mourmetz’s hull. Or he could turn and try to slip out of the search area, returning to the littoral waters off the Yemeni coastline. Or he could run for the rocky shoreline of Socotra, the island twenty miles south in the Arabian Sea.
He didn’t like any of the choices. The P-3 was just the advance scout. Within minutes, the entire antisubmarine force of the Reagan battle group would join the hunt.
The thought struck Manilov that he could still fire his torpedoes. the Reagan was still within range. The source of the torpedoes would be instantly clear. The subhunters would have a positive location on the Mourmetz.
Again he thought of his gallant young crew. No, he decided. They deserved to live.
“MAD, MAD, MAD!” called out the petty officer running the magnetic anomaly-detection gear. He stabbed the position lock key on his panel, fixing the exact location of the contact in the Orion’s inertial guidance navigational computer.
Lt. Chip Weyrhauser, the twenty-eight-year-old P-3 plane commander, felt a surge of excitement. A MAD contact! The long stinger on the tail of the P-3 — the MAD boom — was ancient technology in antisubmarine warfare equipment. Its only usefulness was when you passed directly over the magnetic field of a submerged boat.
As they had just done.
It had to be the Kilo.
He knew that the TACCO — tactical coordination officer — Lt. Jethro Williams, was already on the horn back to the ASW commander aboard USS Arkansas. They were datalinked to the command center, and the commander was seeing everything the TACCO saw.
Weyrhauser couldn’t believe his luck. He had been about to pack it in, declare minimum fuel, and head back to Masirah, their island base off Oman. For six hours they had been sweeping this piece of ocean, coming up with nothing.
Weyrhauser had often regretted choosing patrol planes instead of carrier-based fighters. He thought it would be cushy duty. Patrol plane pilots got to live in neat shore-based quarters — Hawaii or California or Spain — flying big four-engined turboprops, which gave you a good résumé for an airline job. What he hadn’t counted on was the tedium of these god-awful long patrols, the endless search patterns for submarines that, in most cases, got away. Even when you caught them, it was anticlimactic because you never did anything about it. Nobody had sunk an enemy submarine for over half a century.
That’s about to change.
They had the Kilo locked up. Or close, anyway. All they needed was an active lock with the sonobuoys. And clearance to shoot.
The notion made Weyrhauser giddy. This was the renegade sub that had already stuck two fish into the Reagan. The crew who nailed this boat would be the greatest heroes since Dolittle raided Tokyo.
“Steer right, 290 degrees,” called the TACCO.
Weyrhauser complied, bending the P-3 around in a hard right turn back to the northwest. He was flying the patrol plane by hand, not willing to use the autopilot down this low. They were skimming the water at only a hundred feet altitude, going nearly two hundred knots.
They were flying a box pattern, laying a wall of sonobuoys at each side of the box. Sonobuoys were floating sonar signaling devices that transmitted their returns back to the P-3’s mission computer. These were the advanced DIFAR models — directional frequency and ranging — with microphones that could be lowered to listen at preselected depths.
The TACCO selected the array of sonobuoys on his console display, then let the computer automatically eject them from the tubes.
“Contact! Contact!” called out the number two sensor operator.
The TACCO noted the plot, then ordered another right turn. “Roll out 105 degrees. Shit, we’re losing him again!”
It was a bitch trying to pick out the muted hush of a submarine from the gurgling clamor of the ocean. Out here they had not only the sounds of a dozen other ships, but the waves beating the rocks over at Socotra and on the Yemeni coast.
“Getting him again,” said the TACCO. “He’s turning. Come left ten degrees… hold it there.” Then, ten seconds later, “Contact!”
Weyrhauser could feel the charged atmosphere inside the P-3. They were close, very close. He could almost smell the adrenaline in the cabin of the Orion.
“Are we weapons free?” he called to Williams on the intercom.
“Negative,” the TACCO came back. “Weapons locked. We’re waiting for clearance from Popeye.” Popeye was the call sign for the antisubmarine warfare commander, a Navy captain stationed aboard the Aegis cruiser Arkansas.
Weyrhauser chafed at the restriction, even though he knew the reason. There was at least one other submarine in these waters — the Bremerton, the nuclear attack boat that had joined the hunt for the killer sub.
But, goddammit, they were being too cautious. The commander on the Arkansas was seeing the same thing the TACCO saw. No way could this be an American nuke boat. Only one kind of submarine in the world emitted that distinctive seven-bladed screw signature — a Russian Kilo class.
Weyrhauser could barely contain himself. While the brass dithered, this Ivan was getting away.
Eight thousand yards was a good range for the Mark 50 torpedo. The torpedo would make its own passive search for the submarine. When it acquired the target, the seeker would go to active pinging. After that, the submarine was dead meat.
“MAD, MAD!” cried out the operator at his panel.
The sub was directly beneath them.
The TACCO again fixed the position in the navigational computer. “Got him, turning south, heading for Socotra.”