“I have a surface contact, bearing three-two-zero, relative rough range five thousand eight hundred yards!”
Instantly, Exeter’s attention snapped back to the periscope station. His ensuing orders were delivered crisp and clear for all to hear.
“Down scope! Take us down to two hundred and fifty feet, at one-third speed. Has sonar got anything on this contact?”
The seaman responsible for manning the direct comm line to sonar responded a few seconds later.
“Sonar’s got them on passive, sir. They apologize for not picking it up earlier, but the ship was apparently just lying there, dead in the water. She’s a major combatant, all right. Captain, and she’s coming towards us with a bone in her teeth.”
“Change our course to two-six-zero,” ordered Exeter firmly. He was aware of the sudden tilt of the deck as the Razorback’s sail-mounted planes bit into the Pacific and the 2,800-ton vessel plunged downwards.
The Captain’s eyes were locked on the depth gauge as they dropped beneath the one-hundred fifty-foot level when the comm line from sonar again activated.
“Sir, sonar has another pair of surface contacts, bearings two-eight-five and two-two-zero respectively.
Relative rough range for both contacts is five thousand yards and rapidly closing.”
Genuinely shocked by this revelation, Philip Exeter silently cursed. Here he was less than an hour into the exercise and already they were boxed in and about to be tagged. To escape this rapidly tightening net the Razorback would have to play its alternatives most carefully.
“All stop!” he ordered.
“Level us out at twofive- zero feet.”
While these directives were being relayed, the boat’s senior officers gathered around the navigation table. Fresh from his own recently concluded conversation on the comm line, the XO briefed them of his find.
“Sonar had time to do a preliminary signature ID on those contacts, Captain. The first one that we picked up was a dual-shaft gas turbine. Lefty bets his pension that she’s a Spruance. The other two are single-shaft geared turbines, most probably belonging to a pair of Knox-class frigates.”
“If that’s the case, I’ll bet they’re the Roark and the Joseph L. Hawes,” added the OOD.
“I personally saw those two frigates trying to sneak out of Loma two nights ago. And here they’ve been just waiting for us all this time.”
Aware that the angled tilt of the deck was decreasing, Exeter sighed.
“Whoever they are, you can be certain that all three ships have got choppers and variable depth sonar. That means that we’ve got to make our move quickly or forever hold our peace.”
With his glance locked on the bathymetric charts of the waters they were presently plying beneath, the Captain’s eyes momentarily brightened.
“Lieutenant McClure, do you think you could find us a nice, sandy portion of sea floor nearby for the Razorback to settle into?”
Already taking into account their new course, the sub’s Navigator bent over the chart and responded.
“I believe I can find us a good spot approximately seven nautical miles from our current position, Captain. The only trouble is that we’re going to have to go down to six hundred and twenty-five feet to reach it.”
“We can handle that,” retorted Exeter, who briefly met his XO’s concerned glance.
“Chart us the quickest course and let’s get going. Mr. Willingham, rig us for a deep dive. Then I want the boat to be buttoned up as quiet as a church. Spread the word that a state of ultra-quiet will prevail until further ordered. The only way we’re going to evade these guys is by convincing them that we’re no longer here, so let’s get moving! The U.S.S. Razorback isn’t about to’ get licked so easily.”
One floor beneath the control room, Seaman First Class Todd “Lefty” Jackman sat in the narrow compartment reserved for the sonar monitors. The light here was veiled in red, the atmosphere hushed, as Lefty concentrated on the myriad of sounds being channeled into his headphones. He had been exclusively monitoring the Razorback’s passive-detection system for over two hours. During this time, the noises created by their own vessel had been at a minimum, for they had been lying on the ocean’s bottom, hushed in a state of ultra-quiet. This condition was fine with the senior sonar technician, for it gave his hull-mounted microphones a clearer sweep of the surrounding waters.
The sounds that he had continued to pick up these last one hundred and twenty minutes were far from reassuring. Above them, it was most obvious that the trio of destroyers had yet to be convinced that their target had moved on. He clearly heard the characteristic chugging of their turbines as they circled and probed. Thirty minutes before, the largest of these vessels had even sailed right over them. Lefty had been able to pick out the oscillating hum of its towed VDS unit, being pulled in the destroyer’s wake, seeking any sign of the sub. In this case, fortune had been with the Razorback, for the Spruance-class ship had merely kept moving on. Currently, their pursuers were still in the area, though none were closer than 20,000 yards.
Lefty sat back in his chair and tried to stretch his cramped, muscular limbs. His hands were cold, and his feet practically numb. What he needed was a good thirty-minute workout in the gym. That would get the blood pumping through his body once again. He had heard that the larger subs, such as the 688’s and Tridents, had such facilities right on board. This was not the case with the Razorback. In fact, he was fortunate just to have a bunk of his own. When he had been first assigned to the sub seven months before. Lefty had been forced to hot-bunk with a torpedo man, and he hadn’t had many kind thoughts as to his draw of assignments. It wasn’t until a month before, when he had finally passed his sonar qualification, that the XO had assigned him a space of his own. Though he couldn’t even turn over without getting out of the bunk first, he wasn’t about to complain. The torpedo man had stunk of cordite and machine oil, two scents that Lefty could certainly live without.
The exercise that they had just completed in the North Pacific was his first as a seaman first class.
Comfortable with his specialty. Lefty was beginning to enjoy the Razorback and its crew. Being the last of her kind meant that the boat deserved extra-special attention. He was proud of this fact, and never wanted to be the one who let the tradition down.
Temporarily lifting the headphones from his sore ears, Lefty turned to see what his coworker was up to. Seaman Second Class Seth Burke, who sat to his left, was also taking a breather, and the two conversed in a whisper.
“Well, what do you think. Lefty, will our playin’ possum fool them?”
Lefty shrugged.
“We’d better hope so. Otherwise the Captain is going to have our heads for sure. We should have heard that destroyer long before they saw it on the periscope.”
“It sure is getting nippy down here,” added the seaman second class as he zipped his gray sweatshirt up to his neck.
“What happens if they wait us out and we have to surface to snorkel?”
“Then we lose,” returned Lefty, who was beginning to feel a bit chilly himself.
“It’s times like these that I wish we were in a nuke,” observed Burke.
“Then we could stay down here almost indefinitely.”
“I don’t know about that, Seth. If we had been in a 688, I’ll bet that Spruance would have tagged us for sure when they passed over us. Those nukes can’t shut down like we can. They’ve always got to have some sort of coolant pump going, and that means additional noise. For good-old quiet, I’ll take the Razorback’s battery power any day of the week. Say, have you ever heard the sound of your flashlight going?”