“Very well, XO,” Pacino said, taking it in while climbing the conn platform and putting on his headset. “XO, call up Hobart aft and tell him to load the slot buoy number one into the aft signal ejector. Weps, status of the tubes?”
“Port bank tubes dryloaded with Mark 50s,” Scott Court reported from the far aft console, the weapons-control panel.
“Spin up two, four, six, and eight, flood and open outer doors. Set submerged target presets, high-to-medium passive snake pattern.”
“Aye, sir. Torpedo power coming on, one through four.”
“Attention in the firecontrol team,” Pacino said to the room. The quiet conversations stopped. Those watchstanders who weren’t at visual displays turned to look at Pacino. “As soon as the torpedoes warm up we will be launching a horizontal salvo at Target One. We’ll reload immediately and fire off another salvo. We’ll continue until Target One is on the bottom or counterfires. In the event of a counterfire I will run but I’ll keep shooting. Carry on.”
In the sonar room Jesse Holt frowned at the narrowband frequency buckets and keyed his mike. “Conn, sonar, new contact, partially masked by Target One, bears 354, range distant. Contact is a submerged warships, possible American 688 class.”
Confusion clouded Jeff Joseph’s face as he acknowledged into his boom microphone, “Conn, aye.”
“A 688 class at the same bearing as the Destiny,” Vaughn said in frustration. “The Phoenix, the ship who trailed the Destiny all the way here.”
“We’re early,” Pacino said, angry at the interruption to the firing-routine. “Phoenix was supposed to be out of the area when we got here, but we’re an hour early.”
Pacino looked at the navigation chart. The strait was a narrow corridor of seaway going north and south. At the south, Seawolfs position was marked as a black dot. Farther north, an orange mark denoted the Destiny, the target. Somewhere north of the Destiny, the Phoenix sailed, unaware that they were in the line of fire. If Pacino went ahead with the torpedo shot, he risked hitting the friendly, the Phoenix. If he waited, the Destiny might launch the adhesive plutonium bomb at D.C. He felt like a policeman ready to shoot at a bad guy, suddenly finding out the villain had a hostage.
“We could hold our fire and wait for her to get out of the way.”
“No,” Pacino said. “We’re going ahead with the attack. If Phoenix’s sonar is good enough to hear the Destiny, then it’ll be good enough to hear the incoming Mark 50 torpedoes. And when she realizes Mark 50s are coming in, she’ll get off the track or hover so the Doppler filter won’t see her. It’s worth the risk …”
It sounded like a rationalization, and from the looks on the faces of Vaughn and Joseph, it must have sounded that way to them too.
“Torpedoes in tubes two, four, six and eight are warm, self-checks complete, all tubes flooded, two and four outer doors open.”
Court spun his chair to look at Pacino. “We’re ready to fire. Captain.”
Pacino, on the conn, felt the weight of command on his shoulders, a three-ton barbell. Here, in front of his crew, he was about to endanger — or worse — another U.S. submarine.
But to fail to launch the torpedoes would allow the Destiny to launch its doomsday weapon. If he had told Donchez to order Phoenix out of the way an hour earlier … His face denying his feelings, Pacino ordered: “Tube two. shoot on generated bearing.”
“Set.” Vaughn said.
“Standby.” Court said, pulling the long firing trigger to the three o’clock position.
“Shoot!” Pacino commanded.
“Fire!” Court pulled the firing trigger to the fire position.
A short hiss sounded before a violent boom roared through the ship. Pacino’s eardrums slammed from the pressure pulse as the firing ram one level below vented to the ship.
The first torpedo had already left the tube, the submarine fading far behind as its engine started and the propulsor began spinning. Fifteen seconds later the second torpedo was fired from the ship, then a third and a fourth. All four weapons hurled through the near-freezing ocean northward toward the target, all in high-speed transit waiting for the signal from their internal computers to slow down and begin listening for the sound signature of the target.
In the control room Pacino waited while the torpedo-room crew reloaded the tubes. It would take some five minutes before the hydraulic rams had positioned the last torpedo and the gyros were powered up. During the wait, he looked at the sonar waterfall-display monitor, watching the dim traces of the torpedoes as their bearings merged with the bearing to the target.
And to the bearing of the Phoenix …
The headache was much worse. Commodore Sharef was beginning to think it was psychosomatic, the result of his conflicting feelings about the missile-launch. Whatever the cause, he had never felt pain this severe, the sharp screaming behind his eyes enough to prevent concentration on anything but the pain. But he had to rise above it …
Tawkidi lowered the periscope. “Open water overhead, Commodore. We’ll have a clean shot here if we hurry.”
“Status of tube one?” he asked Tawkidi.
“Flooded, bow cap open. Missile power is on and read back of target parameters and route milestones complete. The missile is ready for a programmed one-minute countdown but we need to slow down to bare steerage way.”
“Ship control, dead slow ahead, four clicks.”
“Four clicks, sir.”
“General Sihoud, are you ready for us to begin the one-minute countdown?”
“Start the countdown,” Sihoud said. “It is time for us to deliver our revenge.”
Sharef tried not to make a face.
“Commander, commence one-minute countdown,” Sharef ordered, feeling the onset of dizziness in addition to the headache.
“Countdown commencing, sir, at launch minus sixty seconds, in automatic. Ship’s speed meets launching parameters. Now at launch minus fifty seconds and the missile is satisfactory.”
Another minute, Sharef thought, and it was over … then withdraw to the north, take the ship under the permanent ice pack, sail up around the northern tip of Greenland and back to the North Atlantic to the Med. And from there, home.
The traces forming on the sensor-control consoles heralded the incoming American torpedoes. The Second Captain system monitoring the sensor inputs began to understand the meaning of the sounds and became alarmed. The buzzing of the annunciator on the panel broke the silence in the room. Tawkidi saw the alarm first and turned to Sharef, who had joined him at the panel.
“Incoming torpedoes, sir. At least four of them. We don’t see the launching platform—”
“General Sihoud,” Sharef said urgently, “we must break off the countdown and evade—”
“We, Commodore, we must complete the launch, then evade these weapons …”
“Conn, sonar, we have reacquisition. Target one, bearing one seven four. Contact has slowed, his signature is much quieter now.”
“Conn, aye,” Kane said, peering over the pos-one console.
Kane glanced up at the chronometer. The digital numerals read out 0814 zulu time, which would be 0414 local time. In another half-hour Kane would clear datum to the north.
Whoever Steinman and Donchez had sent would be coming from the south to attack the Destiny. It was just as well, he thought. His crew was bone tired — the ones still alive. The crew and ship were ready to go home. The boat would need about a year in the dry dock, maybe two if the shipyard moved up their next scheduled overhaul. Which meant that this would be his last trip with Phoenix. He had a year before being slated for relief, something that had seemed sufficiently distant that he had not given it much thought, but now it was becoming obvious that he was approaching one of the crossroads in his career. He had to decide what his future plans were. Should he remain in the Navy or leave for civilian life? With no more sea duty the equation came down to which desk job. He still felt he was too young to say goodbye to the sea, but—