So Osgood stood in the corner, impatient at the delay in finishing his maintenance. The clock above the plot was showing 1241 and he was already late for dinner. The ops room was dimly lit, to allow for easy interpretation of the displays. There was an unusual hum and he sensed the tension as the captain snapped his orders. The drill was smooth but whatever was going on had certainly caught the team's concentration: men crouched across the PPIS, chinagraph pencils scrawled, operators muttered into their microphones. Suddenly, loud and clear through the loudspeaker bawled Lieutenant Gamble's voice.
'Riser!.. Riser! One thousand, five…'
The tension became electric. The HCO from his display on the right was trying to vector the Lynx back on to the line. The captain glanced up at Lieutenant-Commander Farge.
'Go active,' he snapped. 'Investigate contact zero-one-eight. Stream the Foxer.'
Then the measured pings began echoing throughout the ops room against the distant sound of the doppler effect. The familiar noise enveloped the room, as Osgood glanced again at the clock:
1243
'Contact!' The leading sonar operator, who was standing behind the two operators he was directing, stood motionless, watching the PPIS.
'Go up in scale,' the chief muttered from the underwater display.
As Osgood watched, the operators stiffened where they crouched over their displays: he distinctly heard it, the firm sub. contact.
Things were happening fast. It was hard to follow all the nattering, but he was startled by the yell from the bridge (sounded like Lieutenant Neame):
'Sir! Perdix is ditching. She's a mass of flame… oh, my Christ..' ' We're being fired on!' Oz heard the pilot's cry and then the loudspeaker went dead.
'Perdix echo faded, sir,' the HCO reported from his display.
'Roger,' the captain said calmly. ' Mark her datum and tune 1246. Bridge, hard right, steer 355°. Lifeboat's crew man the boat.'
The sonar director was calling out:
'Sub. contact classified nuke, sir.'
'Pass my intentions to the Commodore,' Captain Trevellion rapped. ' I shall hold on to this contact, then recover the helicopter's crew. Ask him to send over Jesse, if he can spare her.'
Farge peered at his display, then began speaking to COM STANAVFORLANT:
'This is Hotel Uniform. Hot… datum established four-two, nine six. Bearing zero-one-eight, range five-thousand, two. Datum error two miles: datum time 1246 — 1246.'
'Coming aft to three-four-zero,' the buffer said, adjusting the knob on his display. His operators were busy at their displays, peering, listening, jotting down the bearings across the faces of their PPIS.
'I've got it,' the operator nodded at his director. ' Cut… three-four-eight. Two thousand, two…' The tracking was systematic, remorseless. The enemy was bloody close now.
'Good cut. Three-four-zero, two thousand, one.'
'We're hot,' Trevellion rapped. Farge was adjusting his control to line up his plot with the echo.
'Steady on two thousand, one, sir,' the buffer called.
The operator continued his pinging, never taking his eyes from his screens:
'Cut — three-three-seven… visual only. Second, no cut; no paint, PPI…' The man's back stiffened. His amazed face turned, all colour drained:
'HE sir. Classified torpedoes… torpedoes running, confirmed, sir.'
Osgood stood transfixed. Everyone in the ops room had frozen for an instant, incapable of accepting that the impossible was happening. The captain glanced at his PWO, then crouched over his command display:
'Put a fish in the water,' he commanded. He raised his voice, calling to the bridge: ' Stream the Foxer, full ahead together! Come hard left!' Osgood was fascinated by the scene. Here they were, a bunch of men who had been training together for months to be ready for this moment. At this second, the two adversaries were trying to blast each other to extinction. This was a private war fought to the death, out here, alone in these wastes, a sort of overture to the main concert: and neither opponent was able to halt the appalling, inevitable consequences.
'No change from sonar,' the sonar operator called. ' All round HE.'
'STWS ready, sir,' from the Chief.' Cruising fire.'
'Fire!' the captain ordered tensely.
'STWS fired, sir. Range, one-nine,' the buffer sang out, as cool as if this was a NATO exercise. Then he was reporting through to COMSTANAVFORLANT:
'This is Hotel Uniform. Fish loose, bearing three-three-six, range one-seven. Time 1248.'
'We're on top of him, sir.' Farge was talking into the intercom. ' Losing him…'
'Steady on one-nine-oh,' the captain was ordering the bridge. The edge of the training indicator cabinet was boring into Osgood's back as Icarus heeled to the turn.
Farge was talking again into his mike, his speech slow, deliberate:
'This is Hotel Uniform. Grapeshot… Grapeshot… Grape-shot… bearing three-three-two. Time 1249. Out.'
'Any signs of Perdix?' the captain called to the officer of the watch.
'Yes, sir, flashing light in the water… right astern, sir. Just visible.'
'Take her bearing.' The captain swung round to his PWO: ' Are we hot?' he asked. ' Still hot, sir,' Farge said.
Captain Trevellion nodded. ' Well done,' he said quietly. ' All of you.'
26
Surgeon Lieutenant Joe Hennessey, USN, medical officer of the frigate, Jesse L. Brown, could do no more for the survivors. He had remained on the upper deck, the cold eating through him, while divers plunged into the arctic sea to fish out the poor fellows from their rafts.
He had never seen a ship sink. The sight had proved as terrible as he had imagined: the broken back, the awful silence as the stricken ship hesitated, poised for those terrible seconds before plunging to her watery tomb. The most shattering moment of all was the realization that suddenly nothing remained — nothing save the pathetic flotsam, some of it human, bobbing on the boiling surface.
Just bits… human scraps from which hardened men turned their eyes. The luckiest of the frigate's crew were those who had been killed outright by the torpedo explosions, a truth which applied also to the Soviet submariners. There was little evidence left of the Soviet nuke; so far only a leather cushion, a splintered wooden bench and Russian guts.
There was hope for only eight of the eleven survivors whom Jesse had picked up. Miraculously, the pilot of the helicopter, though still unconscious, would be all right; but the observer, who had dragged him from the sinking cab into the self-inflating life-raft, was dead from exposure. Another officer, a Lieutenant-Commander by his shoulder badges, might pull through, but survival would be touch and go unless they could transfer him to Glorious. Four other Britishers were still unconscious, all exposure cases. The survival of this enlisted man (his ident. tally recorded the name of Osgood, Thomas) was miraculous. This sailor had remained conscious throughout, though they had to prise his arms from the inert body he was still trying to warm. This patient was suffering from acute exposure: he was the skipper of Icarus, who was new to the ship, apparently.
The dead were laid out abaft the after screen, a sad duty to deal with later. The doctor leaned over the enlisted man who was sitting up now, sipping the coffee they held for him.
'Okay?' Joe Hennessey asked. 'Welcome aboard Jesse L. Brown. You're alive and well, Osgood.' The man was registering, so the doctor persevered: ' Can you tell me what happened? Yes, you're okay. We're on our way back to join the Force.'