"Captain, we have a firing solution."
"Very well." Massoud Dadashi considered the tactical situation for a moment. Damavandi, his old friend, had suggested he drive the American submarine north of Forur Island and into Damavandi's trap… but that didn't preclude the possibility of taking a shot himself if the situation warranted it. Yunes' active sonar showed the enemy to be within twelve kilometers' range — a long-range shot, but possible. With the American's speed, he was pulling away from the Yunes, which was already moving at seventeen knots, her best speed.
If Dadashi fired now, he would urge the American to keep moving forward. North it was too shallow, and the south was blocked by Forur Island. A torpedo would encourage the American captain to keep to his current course.
And… anything was possible. Even such a long-range shot as this might hit the enemy vessel.
And Dadashi found that he wanted that kill.
He would take the chance. "Ready torpedo tube one!"
"Sir! Tube one is loaded and ready to fire!"
"Fire one!"
The other submarine, Hawking had decided, was Iranian. As he closed the range, his on-board computer, processing the sounds coming from the other vessel, had identified the active sonar as a low-frequency MGK-400 Rubikon, a Russian export design designated as "Shark Teeth" by the West.
He was tracking one of the Iranian Kilos.
His engine warning light was flashing again, and he cut back slightly on the speed. The enemy vessel was less than a mile ahead now. He ought to be able to see it soon.
In his ears he heard only the rush of water outside and the pulsing throb of the Manta's engine. It was a tradeoff. If he used the Manta's single serious tactical advantage — its speed — he lost the ability to hear the enemy.
Above the water, the sun had been up for a good hour now, and the water was fast growing light. Visibility was hampered somewhat by particles of debris suspended in the water, but Hawking found he had fairly good visibility out to about eighty feet. That wasn't the same as being able to hear the enemy eight or ten miles away, but it was something. It made things less claustrophobic… and more like sitting in the cockpit of a fighter plane at twelve thousand feet.
Ping!
The Kilo up ahead was still pinging away, and that provided Hawking with a perfect homing beacon. He wondered if the guy was tracking the Ohio or just randomly probing the depths ahead.
He leaned forward, trying to see through the murk. There was something…. Yes! The Kilo emerged out of the gloom, a huge, elongated shadow, still almost invisible in the murk, but he could make out the T-shaped control surfaces on the tail and the outsized sail amidships. He switched on the Manta's external lights, the better to see.
At sixty knots he streaked down the Kilo's starboard side.
"Torpedo one fired electrically!"
Yunes lurched and rolled slightly with the launch. But there was something else, too… a shrill fluttering sound that appeared to be coming from aft, but that was moving rapidly along the submarine's right side, from back to front. For a moment Dadashi thought something had gone awry with the torpedo launch, but he could not imagine what might have happened. Had something torn loose on Yunes' hull?
"Captain! Sonar! Unidentified contact close aboard to starboard!"
"Sonar, this is the captain. What is the contact?"
There was a hesitation on the part of the sonar officer, and Dadashi shoved aside a flash of irritation with himself. If the man knew what it was, he wouldn't have called it "unidentified."
"Sir, I don't know. But it's fast! Sixty knots! It's cutting across our bow!"
Dadashi felt a surge through the deck beneath his feet. The object, whatever it was, must be throwing out a tremendous wake.
"It must be the American drone," he said. "Track it!"
He wondered how he could kill an enemy vessel that was capable of traveling at sixty knots, with a torpedo that, at best, could manage forty.
Hawking saw the torpedo leave the Kilo, sliding out of an open door on the port side just abaft the huge, rounded nose in a sudden cloud of bubbles. He was already past the Kilo and banking left to come back around, but he could see the long, pencil-slender black shape of the torpedo vanishing into darkness.
He wasn't entirely sure whether the Kilo was shooting at him or at the Ohio somewhere up ahead. Either way, however, his own orders were clear. The bad guys had just taken a shot at the good guys… and now the good guys could shoot back.
Circling around to the rear of the Kilo, he brought the Manta into line with its tail, about two hundred feet astern and a bit high, looking down on her after-deck. He touched three spots on his touch screen, arming one of the fighter sub's torpedoes.
On the joystick, his thumb came down on the firing trigger.
"Fire one!"
It seemed appropriate.
23
Just as revolutionary new technologies had opened a whole new world for submarines in high-speed heavier-than-water "flying" craft like the Manta, they had opened a new world in underwater weaponry as well. The perfect example was the rocket torpedo.
A Russian invention named "Shkval," for "squall," the rocket torpedo had a range of 7,500 yards and could travel at an unheard-of 200 knots — about 230 miles per hour. Western intelligence had been following the Russian development program for a long time. In 1998, China had purchased forty of the weapons, and there were reports that a Chinese naval officer had been aboard the ill-fated Kursk to observe Shkval test firings.
The western press first learned of the device in April 2000, when an American businessman named Edward Pope was arrested by the Russian FSB and charged with espionage. Pope, it seemed, had acquired detailed plans for a revolutionary, high-speed rocket torpedo.
The weapon, in both its original Russian version and, now, in the American copy, was a solid-fuel rocket that lubricated its passage through the water by releasing a high-pressure stream of bubbles from its nose, coating its entire body in a thin layer of gas. The process, called "supercavitation," essentially allowed the torpedo to travel at high speed inside an envelope of gas, which tremendously reduced drag from the surrounding water.
The original Shkval had been a three-ton monster designed to carry a tactical nuclear warhead fired by a simple timer, and was intended to take out U.S. aircraft carriers or other big-ticket items. Later versions had carried conventional warheads, and one application had been to use the high-speed capability to quickly put a warhead in the general area of an enemy ship, then slow to conventional speeds in order to conduct a search and home on the target.
The new American Stormwind Supercavitating Torpedo (Rocket), or STR, was considerably smaller, and had been designed with the Manta and various drone weapons platforms in mind. It carried only a small H.E. warhead — euphemistically referred to as a "lethality enhancer" — relying for most of its punch on mass and speed to achieve a kinetic kill. When a half ton of rocket hit the hull of a submarine at 230 miles per hour, it didn't need much in the way of high explosives to finish the job.