The terse commands continued over the bridge circuit as the officer of the deck ordered decoys and noise makers dumped over the side. The aircraft carrier herself had no torpedoes. United States depended on the other ships and aircraft in the battle group to keep the enemy submarines out of weapon’s release range. The orders from higher authority had sabotaged all that, and allowed the submarine to get within range of the carrier. And there was little that the carrier could do, except use a few tricks of the trade and watch and wait.
Norfolk felt a moment of horror as he saw the torpedo symbol pop up on the monitor screen. It was coming in from the south, heading directly for the United States, and would pass about three thousand yards on the Lake Champlain’s starboard bow. He wished to hell he’d taken it out when he’d had the chance — dammit, it was always easier to ask forgiveness than permission, and he had known this moment was coming from the very second that the admiral had told him not to fire his ASROCs.
And now, it had come to this. Norfolk had known what he should do, had known and not acted. And now men and women would die by the thousands. Not only at sea, but on land, on the day that Taiwan was no longer under the sheltering protection of the U.S. airwing.
“All ahead flank,” the captain ordered, barely even aware of the words as he spoke them. The TAO turn to look at him, his face a mask of doubt.
“Captain, the torpedo?”
“I gave you an order, mister,” Norfolk snapped. He reached out to punch the button that connected the TAO to the bridge. “All ahead flank!”
“All ahead flank, aye-aye, sir,” came the acknowledgement from his XO.
Maybe he doesn’t know. If he’s not watching the screen, if he doesn’t see the geometry, he may not realize that we’re going directly into harm’s way.
Because that is the only way to prevent the greater tragedy — this situation should have never been allowed to develop like this, and I contributed by obeying orders.
And now, even though it required that he risk the ship and his entire crew, he would set it right. Set it right, if it was the last thing on earth that he did.
“What the hell is she doing?” the TAO said, his voice angry. “Dammit, the bitch is…” He fell silent abruptly as it sank in exactly what the Lake Champlain was doing.
“Damn, that man has balls,” Coyote said. Whether or not he made it, he sure as hell was giving it the good old Navy try.
There was no mystery to what the Lake Champlain’s captain was attempting. It was clear that the torpedo would pass in front of the destroyer on its way to seek out its primary target, the aircraft carrier. What the Lake Champlain was trying to do was offer herself up as a sacrificial lamb, to take the shot to prevent it from reaching the carrier.
There were a hell of a lot of reasons that it might not work. First, if the torpedo was equipped with advanced acoustic analysis gear, it would immediately recognize that the destroyer was a smaller ship than the one it intended to hit, and would divert around to avoid the Lake Champlain and continue with its targeted mission. Second, the ranges and distances were such that it was extremely close. Indeed, the Lake Champlain’s captain’s plan depended on the torpedo having acoustic ranging gear onboard, on being in active mode, on detecting a noisy mass of metal nearby and deciding that was a better target. The Lake Champlain would have no chance to decoy the weapon if it was simply a wake-homer, because the destroyer’s wake was well out of the torpedo’s detection range. But acoustically, the bow on aspect of the ship to the receiver was the most preferred target angle for detection.
Coyote picked up the mike. “Lake Champlain, United States. We’re standing by with SAR assets.” He nodded to the TAO, who gave the order to the air boss. More helicopters were moved into immediate launch status.
“Good luck,” Coyote concluded, and replaced the mike, although he was not entirely certain what would constitute good luck for the Lake Champlain—achieving her mission and saving the carrier, or failing and saving her own skin at the expense of the carrier? He wondered which one Lake Champlain thought it was.
“One thousand yards,” the TAO announced. “All stations report zebra set throughout the ship. Evacuated all unnecessary personnel from below the waterline.” The last measure was a last-ditch effort to keep as many people as possible from being trapped below on a flooding ship.
All unnecessary personnel — that didn’t translate into everyone. There would be perhaps fifteen people below the waterline.
Norfolk reached a decision. “All personnel — all of them,” he ordered. “Get everybody out of there, TAO. I want every single body above the waterline.”
Without questioning him, the TAO amended his order, and the captain could hear men and women running throughout the ship.
The hangar deck would be crowded, as would every passageway above the waterline. Few would seek safety on the open weather decks, because a hard explosion would rock the ship so violently that they might be thrown overboard. And even with the carrier’s promise of SAR assistance, the odds of being rescued were not high.
Eight seconds now. Maybe ten. He had always wondered how he would act if he had known he was going to die. Whether he’d be who he wanted to be, the brave naval officer that by his own personal courage somehow made it easier for his men, who kept them so focused on the task and on duty as an overriding imperative that they barely even counted the personal cost? Or would he dissolve into the man his father thought he was, weak and screaming in terror?
He had always thought such a moment would be a watershed for him, and it seemed a profound shame that he would not know the answer until the very end of his life.
How long now, a few seconds? Oddly enough, the moment felt anticlimactic. He had thought that he would be frightened, reacting, but it was as though he had stepped outside himself and watched another man deal with the danger. A calm man, hard in some ways, one who could watch the closure between torpedo and ship impassively, as though it meant nothing to him personally whether the two symbols intersected on the screen or not.
Five seconds now. “Is everyone up from below decks?” he asked the TAO, still surprised to find out how calm and professional the stranger sounded. And why was he asking that, during these final moments? Shouldn’t he be more worried about his own skin instead of the fate of some very junior sailors on the ship?
With an abrupt wrench, the captain felt himself back inside his own skin, and a sense of uncanny peace descended over him.
Because they are my men. I have trained them, I have worked with them, and they have trusted me — the Navy has entrusted me — with their very lives. And in the end, for every one of them that dies, a bit of me dies as well, no matter if I survive.
“Hard right rudder,” he ordered, marveling at what he was about to do. How impossible was this, to try to calculate the exact point on the ship to take the hit?