“The pilot, I gather, is one of the best, Admiral. We were lucky there.”
“I dunno.” Vaughn looked away. “That kid is Admiral Magruder’s nephew.
You know that?”
“No, sir! I thought the names were a coincidence!”
“Well, he is. Maybe he owes his billet as much to politics as to skill, hey?”
“It’s possible, sir.”
“Damned straight it’s possible. I don’t like brown-nosing. A man should get where he is on his own steam, right? Not by politics!”
Vaughn caught himself. He’d been about to launch into a diatribe against Navy career politics. It was a sore point with him. Once a man made commander in this man’s navy it was all politics, with careers made or broken by who you knew.
He’d almost been broken, once, but goddamn he’d had the last laugh!
Here he was in command of a carrier battle group again after twelve bitter years.
The one thing that could screw things up for him was failure. Vaughn had a thorough fear of failure, and it seemed to him that whatever gods of the sea had granted him his wish of another CBG command were being capricious with him. Why did the new command have to be Jefferson, at the end of her deployment, her crew so worn down that disaster was an hour-to-hour possibility? It wasn’t fair.
“I’m going to want to tighten up the group, Captain,” he said, still studying the chart. “Bring those guys in closer. Hell, no one’s going to nuke us, for God’s sake. And the individual ships are goddamned sitting ducks scattered all over the ocean like that. Write up the orders. When we hit Turban Station tomorrow, we’ll tighten up.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Next. We’d better start holding exercises. Sharpen up the men. I don’t like being this close to a shooting war with men who could fall asleep at their stations, hey?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And signal Biddle. I want that goddamned Foxtrot found, and fast. No excuses!”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“An aggressive posture, that’s the ticket, hey?” He studied the mark that showed Biddle’s last position. Where the hell was the Foxtrot now?
“There has been nothing for almost two hours, Captain.”
“It’s possible they’ve left us.” Captain Raju Khandelwal braced himself with one hand against an overhead conduit. “Blow forward ballast.”
“Blow forward ballast, aye.” There was a rumble, and the thin shriek of compressed air forcing water from the submarine’s tanks. The deck shifted beneath Khandelwal’s feet.
“Take us up, Shri Ramesh. Level at twenty meters.”
“Twenty meters, yes, sir.” His Exec took his place behind the planesmen, reading the depth gauge over their heads. An ominous creak sounded through the boat as hull metal flexed. The Kalvari was not the most modern of submarines, nor the most silent. As she stirred and lifted from the bottom and her hull took up the full strain of the vessel once more, her framework creaked protest.
The sounds seemed especially loud. Kalvari had been resting on the bottom for almost five hours, ever since the sharp sonar pinging had warned them that a ship was searching these shallow waters for them.
Now, though, the waters around the Indian sub were silent, had been silent for a long time. The intruder, whatever it was, had no doubt decided to move on. If it had not, then it was certain to hear the submarine’s underwater groanings, but that could not be helped.
Khandelwal’s orders had been to leave Bombay Harbor submerged and to avoid detection by other vessels until he reached his station fifty miles off the Pakistani port of Karachi. He was operating under a tight deadline and had to be in his assigned patrol area no later than noon tomorrow.
Kalvari’s mission was to interdict Pakistani shipping, including that of Pakistan’s allies. That was why secrecy was so important. India’s Moslem neighbor could not survive for long without help from the outside, but New Delhi feared that world opinion would shift toward Pakistan once it was known that international shipping had been targeted by Indian submarines.
Who had the intruder been? Soviet, possibly … though an American task force was approaching the area. It was unlikely to have been Pakistani, not this far from Pakistan’s waters … but his orders had been explicit.
In any case, the exercise had been good for the men. He had a good crew, but none of them had combat experience. A taste of what awaited them under relatively safe conditions would help get them into the spirit of the patrol.
The deck, slanting somewhat as the sub rose, began to level off. He would take the sub up to periscope depth for a quick look around, to make sure they were really alone, and then proceed with the mission.
The hull creaked once again.
“Bridge,” Mason’s voice yelled. “CIC! We got the bastard!”
Captain Farrel picked up the handset. “Where? Whatcha got?”
“Solid passive contact, heading zero-one-five. Hull noises … and Chase says he just blew ballast. He’s close!”
“Go active.” He turned to the helmsman. “Zero-one-five, son. Ahead two thirds.”
“Zero-one-five, ahead two thirds, aye, sir.” Biddle heeled sharply to port as she went into a hard turn.
“Contact!” the sonar operator called. “Single screw to port! It sounds … it sounds like a Perry, sir!”
A Perry-class frigate. That could mean American, or … “Go active! Range!” Khandelwal clung to the brass grip on the periscope well, his eyes on the depth gauge. Ninety meters. Too deep yet to see what was going on.
He heard the chirp as the sub’s sonar operator began probing the water around them with sound. The ping of the echo followed close behind.
“Contact! Bearing one-nine-five, range two thousand meters! Closing at two-five knots!”
His boat’s survival would be determined by the decisions he made within the next minute, Khandelwal knew. He picked up an intercom mike and held it to his mouth. “Torpedo room! Stand by!”
“Torpedoes standing by, sir. Tubes one and two loaded, wire-guided.”
The Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate was an American design, but in this modern age of arms sales and weapons package diplomacy, that meant nothing. Only the year before, two had been purchased by Pakistan.
He listened to the chirp of sonar, his experienced ear noting the decreasing intervals between ping and echo. If this was one of the Pakistani frigates, as its aggressive pursuit suggested … “Captain, sonar! Splashes to port, close!”
Splashes! Depth charges or ASW torpedoes! He clicked the switch on the intercom mike. “Torpedo room! Fire one! Helm, evasive!”
“Bridge! Sonar! Torpedo launch at zero-one-five, range one-eight hundred!”
Farrel’s fist came down on the console. “Left full rudder! Ahead flank!”
The guided-missile frigate leaped across the water, sea spray lashing across the bridge windscreen. It was possible to outrun a torpedo, but the range was damned tight for a stunt like that. Biddle could make thirty knots. A torpedo might do forty or more, depending on the type.
“Bridge, sonar. Torpedo is maneuvering. Looks like it might be wire-guided, sir.”
That might be a break. “Where’s our LAMPS, Bill?” he asked his Exec.
“Sonobuoy run. He’s right over the bastard!”