He told himself he would watch the screen for one more hour, then go to bed in spite of the Americans out there, the pounding of his heart from the uppers, the shaking of his hands, and the acid in his stomach.
The mission had gone on too long. The Americans and their waiting game had finally gained them an advantage.
He swept the heavy green-shaded lamp to the deck, brought his hands to his face, his hands shaking.
He desperately needed sleep but there was too much of the amphetamines in his system. He was feeling closed in by the ship, by the mission, by the lack of contact with an enemy.
When would it end? And how?
“Firing point procedures. Target One, horizontal salvo, tubes one through six, one quarter degree offset, twenty-second firing interval,” Kane announced to the control room. There was no sound in the room except the whining of the gyro and the low rush of air from the air handlers.
“Ship ready,” Jeff Joseph, the battlestations officer of the deck, reported.
“Weapons ready,” from the weapons officer.
“Solution ready,” the XO finished.
“Tube one, shoot on generated bearing,” Kane commanded.
“Set,” pos-two operator Lieutenant Porter said.
“Standby,” the weapons officer called and rotated the stainless steel trigger to nine o’clock.
“Shoot,” Kane said.
“Fire!” weapons said, pulling the trigger to the right.
The launch sound blasted into the control room, highpressure air venting from the downstream side of the ram that pressurized the torpedo tanks. Pacino felt his hearing was half gone.
“Tube one fired electrically, sir,” the weapons officer called.
“Conn, sonar,” Chief Omeada said. “First fired unit, normal launch.”
The second torpedo was fired, the control-room crew reading from the same script, then again for unit three, until six torpedoes were fired. Kane powered up the weapons in tubes seven and eight and opened their outer doors while having the torpedo-room crew reload one through six. It took a few minutes, but seven and eight came up to speed and were ready to fire.
Kane shot them, a total of eight torpedoes traveling through the sea, intent on hitting the Destiny that he had estimated to be twenty nautical miles away. Impact would be at a point somewhat closer than the Destiny was now, since he was getting closer with time. The impact point was about seventeen miles to the west, with calculated time for the torpedoes to reach impact point eighteen minutes from now. If they had fired a Vortex missile, Pacino thought, impact time would be more likely only four minutes. Anything could happen in eighteen minutes.
“Attention in the firecontrol team,” Kane said. “With eight fish on the way, we wait to see what Target One is going to do. He may counterfire, and if he does I intend to cut the wires in all tubes and run east. Otherwise, we’ll sit and listen.”
Tanaka craved sleep but he knew if he went to bed all he’d do would be to listen to the complaints of his body.
He grabbed the water carafe and drank out of it, the water running over his chin — and when he put it down he saw that the Second Captain display was full of broadband noise, pulsing broadband noise.
He sat back down and scanned through the screens, his jaw falling open as he realized what was happening.
A half-dozen American torpedoes were screaming in toward them. How long had they been in the water?
Why hadn’t anyone detected the American who fired them? What happened to his officers in the control room?
And how the hell did six — no, seven — no, now it was eight! — torpedoes get launched at them?
He grabbed his uniform tunic and ran out of the room to control and found his first officer Hiro Mazdai crouched over the Second Captain display being run by the mechanical officer, Lieutenant Commander Kami.
“What’s going on? What are you doing? Man full battlestations and get the weapons in tubes eleven and twelve warmed up. Open the outer doors! Why didn’t you detect the Americans?”
Tanaka came up closer to first officer Mazdai, who had stood at attention. Tanaka slapped him hard; a red welt appeared on his cheek.
“You have brought dishonor on my ship, Mr. First. One more mistake and I will relieve you. Permanently. Is that clear?”
“Very clear. Captain.”
“Now get those tubes ready to fire!”
“Yes sir.”
“Any activity from the target yet?” Kane asked Omeada in sonar.
“Nothing yet. Captain. I don’t think he can hear us yet.”
“He sure as hell should hear our torpedoes—”
A low rumble could be heard through the hull, just barely audible. Kane looked up at the sonar screen, which had been selected to the broadband waterfall display ever since battlestations were manned. A large white patch appeared at bearing north, the sound intense from its reading on the screen, the white patch of sound spread out over ten degrees of azimuth.
“What the hell was that. Chief?”
“Something blew up from the north. Skipper. Could be a nuclear blast from what I can see.”
“Good God,” Kane said to Pacino. “You don’t think they have nuclear torpedoes, do you?”
“No. They don’t need to. The Nagasaki is the most destructive torpedo in the world right now. If our Mark 50s could do what it does, we’d have no problems.”
“So what was that noise?”
“That, Captain Kane, was one of ours.”
“But we don’t—”
“Just fight the ship against the threat at hand.”
Kane didn’t need to worry about the explosion from the north. It was Bruce Phillips shooting a Vortex missile, putting down another Destiny II.
Paully White looked up at Pacino from the control room deck and mouthed the word, “Brucey.” Pacino just nodded.
“What was that?” Tanaka yelled at Mazdai. “What was that sound? What does the Second Captain show?”
He received no answers from the man or the machine. Perhaps it had been the detonation of a Nagasaki torpedo against a distant American, perhaps one of the northern deployed units.
“Status of the tubes?”
“Weapons are warm. We still have no sonar data on the launching ship.”
“You still have no contact?”
“Nothing, sir. The sea is empty. Look for yourself.”
“The sea is not empty, Mr. First. We are looking for the wrong thing. The computer is filtering out the noise we seek.”
“No, sir, it is correct. The American Los Angeles-class ships—”
“This is obviously not an LA-class vessel. It is something else, British or French.”
“No, the computer was looking for them also.”
“Then maybe the American Seawolf class. We’re not filtering for that.” Tanaka knew time was ticking but he had to solve this problem and solve it now.
“Seawolf class had three ships. One sank from a flooding or torpedo accident. The other is on the US east coast being built. The third was in Hawaii but it never got underway. The Galaxy satellite photos showed it pulled into a maintenance barn. It never emerged.”
“It might have sneaked out during a storm or with a cold reactor submerged or any of a hundred ways a sub can be sneaked to sea.”
“We would have known—”
“Obviously, First, we didn’t know! Now reset the filters for the Seawolf class and find this submarine. I want torpedoes in the water in two minutes.”
Bruce Phillips stood on the conn and heard Gambini’s voice calling in something from sonar.