As the engineer glanced back at the status board, he had a sense of being overwhelmed. The ship was so badly damaged — for a moment the details threatened to overwhelm them. How could one group possibly catch up with it all?
Then the hard-learned lessons came flooding back. One thing at a time — prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. No, you can’t do everything at once. Keep her afloat for now, and the rest of it can be sorted out later.
“It’s bad, Admiral. But it could be worse.” Norfolk’s voice was tight and controlled. “We’re still working to control the flooding. No fire, yet. One shaft very questionable, the propeller probably okay. No personnel killed, although we have a couple of injuries, broken bones, that sort of thing. One concussion, the corpsman thinks.”
“What do you need from us?” the admiral asked.
“Medical evacuation, as soon as I can set flight quarters. We’ll have to use the stretcher — I’ve got about ten degrees list on the deck.”
Ten degrees — it didn’t sound like much, but Coyote knew it was a hell of a lot of list. Ten degrees would make everything uphill, would knock all loose gear around in a compartment. That more than anything else Lake Champlain’s captain said told Coyote just how badly the destroyer was damaged.
“Combat systems?” Coyote asked.
“All operational,” the captain said. “I’m not sure we can deploy the towed array, but sonar and all radars are on. As are our missiles and fire control.”
Coyote paused for a moment, and said, “I know what you did, Captain. That last maneuver — I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such an outstanding if damned dangerous shiphandling maneuver. It looks like it worked, though.”
“That it did, Admiral.”
“Did you know it would?”
There was a long silence online, and for a moment Coyote thought they had lost communications. But then the captain spoke, his voice for the first time showing some of his pain. “No, Admiral, I didn’t. But I had to try it — I pulled everyone up above the waterline before I did.”
“Everyone?” Coyote was astounded.
“Everyone. My call, sir.”
“Your call indeed, Captain,” Coyote said promptly. He would not criticize, ever, a man who’d shown such courage. “Take care of your ship, captain — and your people. And tell me when you’re ready to receive my helo. We’ll use the frame and get them off immediately. When we can… it’s going to get a little busy here in about five minutes.”
“Roger that, Admiral. I’m watching inbound right now.” The captain’s voice was grim. “We’re online, sir, and ready to fight.”
“Oh, man,” Jacobs said softly as he pulled his earphones away from his head. “Sounded like a direct hit, Captain,” he finished. He glanced up at his skipper.
“God help them,” the captain said. And although they had faced the same danger themselves not moments before, with far less possibility that they could recover from a hit, the captain felt a moment of profound sorrow for the surface ship. A direct hit, even for a ship as well-built as the Lake Champlain had to be dangerous.
“Thirteen hundred feet,” the officer of the deck announced. “Continuing to descend to eighteen hundred.”
The torpedoes were still clearly audible over the speaker, although the tone had a faintly fuzzy edge to it as the sound wound its way through the different layers of the ocean to reach them.
“Any problems?” the captain asked.
“None, sir.”
“There won’t be,” Pencehaven said suddenly. It was the first time he had spoken in perhaps an hour, and his voice startled them both.
“You’re awful certain, Otter,” the captain said.
Pencehaven nodded. “Yes, Captain. I am. These stupid torpedoes are going to go for the noise makers — I guarantee it.”
“Fourteen hundred feet.”
“I have an idea, Captain,” Pencehaven said. He held up a CD. “There’s one way to make certain they think they’ve destroyed us.”
“Absent actually taking a hit, I hope.”
Pencehaven nodded. “Say we continue on down — two thousand feet isn’t too much, Captain. They’ll start to lose us at that depth and they may not be absolutely certain how deep we are and what kind of range they have on their torpedoes. So they’re going to be listening very carefully. When the last torpedo goes for the decoy, we make them think it’s us.”
“With the recording?” the captain asked.
Pencehaven nodded. “I can ground out to the hull, Captain. The world’s greatest speaker. Odds are that it’ll sound exactly like we… like we… well, you know. At least I think it will.”
The captain regarded him for a moment. There was no telling just how savvy the Chinese sonar operators were, not after what they’d seen. Still, this certainly wouldn’t be anything they’d be expecting — hell, nobody but Otter would have thought of it to start with.
The captain nodded. “Get it ready. But we have to wait for exactly the right time.”
“Sixteen hundred feet,” the officer of the deck announced.
Otter slid the CD into the player and wound his patch cords and speaker outputs over to rest on metal brackets that were connected to the hull of the submarine. “I need the engineers to generate some sound shorts right here, sir. Or somewhere that I can reach with my speakers.”
The captain made the arrangements, and Pencehaven had obviously talked this over with the engineer beforehand, because the arrangements went smoothly.
“Eighteen hundred feet.” The noise of the two torpedoes had grown fuzzy, as the submarine passed through a shallow acoustic layer. But now it picked up again, as though they had finally located their quarry. Everyone in the submarine heard the seekerhead shift to a higher, more rapid ping as the torpedoes began to home in on them.
“Hear that?” Pencehaven asked. “Get ready, sir.”
At first, the captain could hear nothing different coming over the speaker. But then he heard it — or thought he heard it — just at the edges of his perception. Then he knew he heard it — the faint growl of the torpedo’s propeller.
“Any second, now, Captain,” Pencehaven said.
It just might work… it’s worth trying at least. At least I know that we can stay safely below their kill depth. But if they think they got us — well, the odds shift immeasurably in our favor.
Suddenly the regular motor noise exploded followed by another explosion.
“Now!” Pencehaven pushed the play button.
The volume was cranked up to full, and sound filled the submarine. It was eerie, an odd sound, of continuous explosions. The noise crescendoed until the individual components were no longer distinguishable from the general cacophony. It continued on for what seemed like hours, days, months, and each person in the control room felt cold sweep through him. The sounds translated too easily, too immediately, into what they, too, would experience if the torpedo found its mark. Finally, when each one thought that the noise would drive him mad, it started to decrease. The intermittent explosions and groans, continued for some time, growing fainter and finally dying away completely.
The control room was utterly silent afterwards, as though the crew were at a memorial service. They had just listened to the death of a submarine and it was only sheer luck and God’s grace that it hadn’t been them. But the death of the other submarine, the recording they’d just played, would serve a purpose — keeping the shipmates they’d never known safe.