“Sir, maneuvering reports reactor scram with the bulkhead steam valves shut.”
Quickest way to shut down the engineroom, Kane thought. The ship would be whisper-quiet now, only the hissing of air into the depth-control tanks making noise.
“Captain, we’re about out of high-pressure air. I’ll have to hover on the trim pump.”
Kane bit his lip. The massive pump would eat battery power, but after their emergency blows to get off the bottom they had not had a chance to run the air compressors and refill the banks. There was no choice.
“Very well, Chief. Hover on the trim pump. Phone talker, to the engineer, report time on the battery.”
“Conn, sonar, understand we’re hovering to avoid the torpedoes. Request we turn the ship to get the torpedoes out of the baffles.”
“Sonar, Captain, no.”
“Sir, engineer reports a half-hour on the battery, maybe more if we dump forward loads.”
Kane understood. Sonar wanted to start the thruster and burn power to monitor the battle. The engineer wanted to shut down sonar and conserve battery juice.
“Two hundred feet, sir,” the diving officer reported.
“Ease the ascent to one foot per second.”
“One eight zero feet, sir.”
Kane waited, knowing the torpedoes were still screaming in at him. Two minutes later the deck jumped as the sail collided with the bottom of the icepack overhead. They had stopped.
“Give us just enough buoyancy to stay here without listing over.”
“Aye, sir. Trim pump is shut down.”
“What now. Captain?” Mcdonne asked.
“Now we wait,” Kane said. The room was much quieter without the roar of the air handlers. Kane stepped to the door to sonar and looked in on Sanderson. The sonar chief gave him a sour look.
“Can’t hear anything but this ice,” Sanderson said. “The torpedoes are still directly astern in the baffles.”
“Keep listening. If you hear them in front of us, they went by.”
“I’ll be sure to let you know, sir.” Sanderson turned back to his console, ignoring Kane.
Kane stepped back into the room. The faces of the watchstanders, to a man, were hollow, dark circles under their eyes, fatigue and fear sapping their energy. Kane had a feeling the trip was almost over. The only question was how it would end.
“Check fire,” Pacino ordered. “Sonar, Captain, do you have any bearing separation between own-ship units and Target One? And what’s the status of the Phoenix?”
Pacino was greeted by half-startled looks. He recognized that he was interrupting the execution of his own orders: to shoot the weapons in the room until only one was left. But a thought had crept up on him that he was shooting on old data. The torpedoes had been between their sonar ears and the target and the friendly. Anything could be happening out there. Without data, there were no decisions, only ignorance.
“Conn, sonar, no bearing separation. Torpedoes are masking Target One and the Phoenix.”
Pacino stepped toward the chart table on the port side, away from the attack center. The ship was south of a ridge that ran mostly east-west, separating the Labrador Basin from the Davis Strait and the Baffin Bay. The ridge, labeled by the chart as Ungava Ridge, resembled an upside-down smile, concave from Seawolfs perspective. At places the ridge grew shallow, in one point to the west — at Davis Peak — it went all the way up to 100 fathoms. He looked at the chart and bent to examine it more closely. Despite the shallowness of the Ungava Ridge and the proximity of Davis Peak, he decided to drive westward off the line-of-sight to the Destiny. There was still plenty of room, forty miles before the rise of Davis Peak, making the course viable, but even as he ordered the helmsman to put the rudder over and set his course for west-northwest, Pacino realized that this was contrary to his instinct, which, given an arbitrary choice of a course, would be to choose one with more open ocean.
He shrugged it off but it stuck in his mind.
“Sonar, Captain, we’re moving off the track heading west to get some parallax on the target. Report anything you have on Target One if and when it comes out of the way of the torpedoes.”
“Sonar, aye.”
“Helm, all ahead standard.”
Pacino waited, again finding himself impatient. He looked up into the overhead at the repeater display for the spherical array’s broadband, watching the waterfall display cascade down, but other than the blotch to the north from the torpedoes, could distinguish nothing.
“Officer of the Deck, keep an eye on our position. I don’t want to run aground on that ridge.”
“Aye, sir.”
Before his eyes, a twin trace distinguished itself at the center of the short-time display of the waterfall. Something to the north. The Destiny? Why would it be so loud with a twin trace? Pacino had a bad feeling about it and was about to key his mike to call Holt in sonar to see what the strange noises were when Holt’s voice came over his earphones.
“Conn, sonar, two torpedoes in the water, bearing zero zero one and three five eight, pump-jet propulsors at what looks like high speed.”
“All ahead flank,” Pacino ordered, suddenly feeling like he had been there before and made the same order, seen the same double-trace on the waterfall screen. The chart appeared in his mind, the shallows approaching as he continued to drive to the west. Suddenly he knew what he was about to do, and realized that the biggest problem with his plan would be getting the crew to understand and obey it.
Dimly, in the background, he heard Holt declare the incoming torpedoes to be Nagasaki models, as Pacino had known instinctively. He barely paid attention, feeling a sudden nausea.
“Captain,” Vaughn said, “we’re getting too close to the ridge, we need to turn to the south. Those are Nagasakis”
“No, we won’t be turning to the south.” When Pacino looked Vaughn in the eyes, he was startled to see a hardness in his executive officer’s face, as if the XO were examining him to determine if he were fit for command. Pacino chose his next words carefully. “We can’t outrun a Nagasaki torpedo, XO. Much less a pair of them. They go seventy knots. They’ll pursue for an hour, maybe more. Even if they were fired from 50,000 yards, they’d catch us well before the hour expired and I’ve got a feeling these were launched from a lot closer, like 25,000 yards. That would put them thirty minutes away if we ran at flank, fifteen minutes if we continue west. That’s fifteen minutes to get off their track, or ten miles, maybe twelve. We might get out of the search cone completely if they have an enable point like our Mark 50s. It’s worth a shot.”
Vaughn’s expression softened for a moment.
“Okay, you’re the boss.”
“Don’t worry, XO,” Pacino said quietly so that only he could hear. “I have every intention of living through this. Call maneuvering and tell them to load and launch the slot buoy labeled number two.”
Vaughn relayed the order, giving a sidelong glance at Pacino as he did.
Pacino wondered what he’d do with the next order.
“Conn, sonar,” Sanderson said. “I have four torpedo tracks on the spherical array bearing north to north-northeast. At least those four have gone by us.”
“Any change in their speed. Senior Chief?” Kane wondered if the weapons would slow down and circle back if they saw no target.
“No, sir. They’re sill at max speed heading north. I’ve got another one going by, make that two.”
Mcdonne’s big face filled up with a toothy grin. “You did it, sir. Well done.”
“Thank Houser,” Kane said. “I think I will. Thanks, Vie.”
“Conn, sonar, three more past and heading north.”
Kane almost smiled. They’d finally gotten a break. He actually began studying the chart, planning the track back south. To Norfolk. Home.