Farrel faced a terrible choice: try to outrun that incoming torpedo — probably impossible when it was less than a mile away — or try to break the concentration of the men directing it. Wire-guided torps were homed on their targets by commands sent down a thin wire unreeling behind the weapon. Once the torpedo acquired its own sonar lock the wire was cast off … or the sub could steer the thing all the way to the target.
If he could force the sub to turn away he might break the wire, but he had only seconds before the torpedo locked on by itself.
“Pass the word to the LAMPS,” Farrel said. “Fire on the target.”
He’d taken the step, and it was a terrible one. But by loosing the torpedo, that sub skipper had just forced Captain Farrel to choose between his ship and the submarine.
The location of Biddle’s sonar target had already been relayed to the circling Seahawk, which was further pinpointing the contact by dropping a chain of sonobuoys around the sub’s suspected position. Target data was fed into the two Mark 46 ASW torpedoes slung from the Seahawk’s hull.
At the command to fire, one of the torpedoes dropped away, a drogue chute opening at its tail to position it at the correct angle for entering the water. Arming when it hit the surface, it picked up the submerged Foxtrot almost immediately, circled onto a new heading, and dove.
“High speed propeller to port!” The hydrophone operator’s voice was sharp with fear. “Very close!”
“Hard to port!” Khandelwal’s knuckles whitened on the periscope railing. The maneuver might make them lose their own torpedo, but perhaps the launch alone might make Kalvari’s attackers back off. If they could just elude this new threat … At forty-five knots, the lightweight Mark 46 torpedo slammed into Kalvari’s hull just forward of her conning tower. The detonation of ninety-five pounds of Torpex ripped a gaping hole through both the inner and outer hulls.
Captain Khandelwal was hurled across the control room as an avalanche of water exploded through the port bulkhead. His exec, Lieutenant Joshi Ramesh, was smashed against the conning tower ladder by the waterfall.
In seconds, watertight doors imperfectly seated in concussion-warped frames gave way, and the Indian submarine began its final dive into darkness.
White water fountained high into the sky a mile off Biddle’s starboard side, accompanied by a bass earthquake rumble felt through the ship’s hull and decks.
“Bridge, sonar! Torpedo has gone ballistic. Passing two hundred yards astern.”
Farrel’s eyes stayed riveted to the plume of seawater, now cascading back across a troubled sea. “Make to the LAMPS helo,” he said. “Lay more buoys and listen for the sub. Stand by to recover survivors.”
But he already knew there would be no survivors. He’d saved the Biddle … but sent a submarine and seventy-eight men to their deaths.
The political repercussions would be spreading out already … and far more quickly than the base surge from the underwater explosion now rocking the Biddle.
The Indian rear admiral studied the teletype message in his hand and felt tears of loss and anger burn his eyes. There was precious little information there, but the statement needed no elaboration.
INSS KALVARI SUNK BY U.S. FFG, PERRY CLASS. NO SURVIVORS.
The message, transmitted from an IAF Mig-25 reconnaissance aircraft overlying the area, included coordinates positioning the loss one hundred miles west of Bombay, in international waters but well within the usual Indian patrol zones.
Kalvari sunk by a U.S. frigate! Why had the American opened fire? Why?
The admiral crumpled the message in his fist, then stood at his desk. It seemed plain enough. The Americans were coming to the aid of their Moslem ally after all. The Indian Parliament might have something to say about that. The war fever gripping the entire nation was like nothing he had ever seen before.
And Rear Admiral Ajay Ramesh would win his vengeance for the death of Joshi, his son.
CHAPTER 4
The sun had set moments before, leaving the sky a glory of yellow, pink, and blue. General Abdul Ali Hakim was less interested in the sky than in a spindly tower silhouetted against the sunset some twenty kilometers west of the bunker.
The Great Thar Desert stretched from the swamps of the Rann of Kutch in the south clear to Haryana State and the Punjab, straddling more than eight hundred kilometers of Indian-Pakistani border. Until this day it had been a barren waste of sand and gravel with but one significance to Pakistani military strategy: more than once the Thar had proved to be a superb barrier against the Indian army. Now it was going to have a second significance, one arguably far more vital than the first.
“One minute, General,” an aide said at his side.
Hakim grunted in reply. His mind was on the border, some fifty kilometers further to the southeast. A hostile border, now that the Indians had finally stopped rattling their sabers and actually drawn them.
Not that the New Delhi regime’s army was anywhere that close. As always, the Tharparkar, as Hakim thought of it, was a natural barrier more formidable than endless fortifications, mine-fields, and interlocking fields of fire. While there were rumors of enemy armor massing near the Jodhpur-Hyderabad Road far to the south, the nearest Indian troops were probably at the Rajasthan Canal, fully a hundred kilometers from this lonely outpost on Pakistan’s frontier.
It was a pity, Hakim thought with a rare flash of humor, that the pigs weren’t closer. Much closer.
“It’s been a long road, Abdul.”
Hakim turned to face the speaker. General Mushahid ul Shapur was a powerful man, a member of Pakistan’s ruling military clique and Hakim’s own patron at Islamabad.
“It has indeed, sir.”
“But a worthwhile one. Today, the nations of Islam take their rightful place with the superpowers of this world. No longer will the kafir of India seek to dominate us by force of arms!”
“Inshallah,” Hakim said softly. “As God wills.”
Shapur looked at him with hawk’s eyes, then turned back to the viewing slit in the bunker wall without another word. Hakim himself was surprised at his response to the general’s observation. Moslem by birth and upbringing, he nonetheless had always resisted the insidious Islamic lure of allowing Allah to take the blame for everything, good or ill.
Surely, a man bore some responsibility for the deeds of his own hands.
“Twenty seconds,” a technician behind him in the bunker said.
“Sir,” the aide said. “Your goggles.”
“Of course.” He lowered the binoculars, then slid the dark-lensed goggles he wore under his high-peaked army cap down over his eyes.
Around him in the bunker, aides, officers, and politicians likewise settled their goggles into place, shielding their eyes.
“Five,” a young Pakistani technician intoned from his console farther back in the bunker. “Four … three … two … one … detonate!”
Daylight returned to the empty desert, first as a pinprick of unutterably brilliant blue-white radiance, then as an expanding ring of white flame burning through the protective layers of the goggles. The desert lit up with stroboscopic clarity, with each pebble, each chunk of gravel and depression in the lifeless ground throwing ink-black shadows across the sand.