"All hands, this is the Captain. We've been playing tag with an Argy sub and he's thrown a torpedo at us. I think we've got it foxed, but we'll know for sure in a minute. Just in case, brace yourselves and stand by."
She surprised herself with the casualness of her own voice. Glancing over at her exec, she noted that Ken had removed his wallet from his pocket and was carefully studying the picture of his family.
This was the difference between a missile and a torpedo engagement. Missiles didn't give you a chance to think, just experience. With torpedoes, though, you had time enough to wonder.
Unbidden, Amanda found her thoughts returning to Vince Arkady. She relived the encounter that had occurred outside of sick bay just a few minutes before: that momentary contact with the warm strength of him, leading to the memory of the gymnasium and the knowing touch of his hands, and on to the texture of that one swift kiss back before it all had counted.
There was a heavy thud, more felt than heard, and looking up, they saw a thick column of water lift out of the sea well behind the ship. Hiro flipped his wallet shut with a decisive snap.
"All hands, this is the Captain again. That was the torpedo, and we're still in business. Now it's our turn to ruin the other guy's day."
They ducked back into the bridge. "Helm, resume heading of two seven zero. Lee helm, bring up your hydrojets again. Resume silent running."
"This brings us right back to where we started," Hiro said, trying to rub the chill out of his arms.
"I'm afraid it does. CIC, this is the bridge. What's happened with the V-ROC?"
"We've just reacquired the passive scan, ma'am," Beltrain replied. "Our fish is still circling around out there, running a search pattern. For a second, just before we lost imaging, I thought that it might have acquired a target. I guess I was mistaken."
"What about the Argy itself?"
"He's gone. Contact broken. But there was something else, ma'am."
"Yes?"
"Back just before our passive arrays dropped out, the Argy momentarily went active with another sonar system. We couldn't get an ID on it, but it wasn't anything standard, maybe a low-powered mine-hunter set. I don't know what this guy is up to, but I think he might be working something on us."
"Speculations?"
"None at this time, ma'am."
"Acknowledged. Keep your ears open."
Amanda leaned against the captain's chair and looked out through the windscreen, acutely aware of the several sets of eyes focused on her back. That storm front was rolling down on them fast. When it hit, they'd have to use their main engines again. This deadlock had to be broken, now, before they were laid open for another attack. Abruptly, she keyed a new address into the interphone.
"Retainer Zero One, this is the bridge."
The Sea Comanche balanced on her landing gear, a dunking sonar pod and a magnetic abnormality detector on the inboard hardpoints of her snub wings, air-droppable torpedoes on the outboard. Her rotors were deployed and turning, and deck hands, cowering against the freezing rotor wash, hunkered near the tie-down points, ready to release on command. A hardline was plugged into a jackpoint beneath the cockpit rim, linking the helo's systems with those of the mother ship and the crew with the phone net.
"Arkady, I need a fast, straight answer on this," Amanda's voice sounded in his earphones. "The weather is bad and it's going to get worse. Can you launch and conduct an effective ASW sweep under the current conditions while maintaining any kind of margin of safety?"
"Hang on a second, bridge."
Arkady toggled over to the aircraft intercom and twisted around to look into the rear cockpit.
"Hey, Gus, the Lady wants to know if we can go find that Argy sub. No shit, man, this one's a volunteer job. What about it?"
"What happens if I say no, sir?"
"Then I go after this guy by myself."
"Begging the Lieutenant's pardon, and with all due respect to his rank, but the Lieutenant couldn't find his own ass with both hands and a flashlight. Tell the Lady we're doing it."
"Okay, Gus, thanks. Bridge, this is Zero One. We can do it. Ready to launch."
"Acknowledged, Zero One." She was using her ultra-professional tone. Total control. "I'm putting the ship across the wind at this time. Launch at your discretion. You are weapons clear and you are authorized to break EMCON to prosecute contacts and for recovery."
The Duke began to turn. Lifting one hand up under the canopy top, Arkady gave the spin-up gesture to the deck chief. The ordnance hand danced back and clear of the helo, holding the orange safety streamers of the torpedo safety pins over her head to prove they had been pulled. The tie-down hands followed, dragging their chocks and belaying the straps with them. The deck chief was the last, pulling the hardline and giving the side of the cockpit a farewell slap.
Keeping the ground brakes locked, Arkady fed power to the turbines and brought up the rotor RPM, all the while gauging the motion of the helipad. At the next lift of the stern, he pulled pitch and let the rise catapult the helo into the air.
The Sea Comanche staggered under the impact of the wind, but Arkady fought her through the transition and got her nose down, gaining speed and altitude. Bucking the weather, he paid off to the north, heading for the datum point on his navigational display that marked the last known position of the enemy.
On the Cunningham's bridge, Amanda heard the droning roar of Retainer Zero One's lift-off and her eyes followed the helo as it pulled away, the cold, moisture-laden air sheathing its rotors in a disk of compression vapor.
Damn you, Vince Arkady….
30
"Damn, Lieutenant. This guy is good."
"Nothing, Gus?"
"Beyond the sound of the shrimp fucking, I'm not picking up a thing."
For a third time, Retainer Zero One held a low hover over the wave crests, the dome of her dunking sonar deployed down 350 feet into the depths at the end of its tether cable.
Arkady scowled as he fought to hold the helo on station with his pitch and collective. "Hell! Even the Swede boats can't be completely silent."
"I know, Lieutenant. If he was maneuvering, I'd at least hear some flow noise around his hull, and if he was station keeping, I'd hear his trim pumps as he maintained depth. Thing is, I'm not hearing anything at all. This guy couldn't have bottomed his boat, could he?"
Arkady considered for a moment and then gave his head a shake. "No way. We're beyond the continental shelf out here with a couple of thousand feet of water under us. All of the Kockums subs are Baltic designs. They don't have enough hull to go that deep."
"I can't figure where else he could have got to, then."
"Could he have found a thermocline down there to sit on?"
"I'll check it out, sir."
Grestovitch called up the sonar-control menu on one of his multimode telepanels and selected the "Extend" command. More dome tether, a light, braided Kevlar cable with an insulated coaxial core, peeled off the reel within the SQR/A1 pod, and the sensor head plunged deeper into the wet dark.
"At full extension… seven hundred feet… bathythermograph does not indicate a thermocline. There's nothing down here for him to hide under or sit on, and I'm still not hearing anything."
"Okay, Gus. Up dome. Let's try it again."
Arkady shifted Zero One a thousand yards west to the next station on the sonar line he was building between the Cunningham and the last known position of the Argentine. As he did so, he found his thoughts projecting past the mechanics of flying the weather-racked helicopter.