"And the stabilizers?" Morris asked.
"They work just fine, skipper."
"What about the ASW troops?"
"Let's meet 'em."
Morris followed his XO into the superstructure. They proceeded forward between the two helicopter hangars, then to the left past officers country and up a ladder. The Combat Information Center was located one level below and just aft of the bridge, adjoining the commanding officer's stateroom. Dark as a cave, it was newer than Pharris's and larger, but no less crammed. Twenty or more people were at work running a simulation.
"No, Goddammit!, howled a loud voice. "You have to react faster. This here's a Victor, and he ain't gonna wait for you to make up your damn mind!"
"Attention on deck! Captain in Combat," called Ernst.
"As you were," called Morris. "Who's that loud sunuvabitch?"
A barrel-chested man emerged from the shadows. His eyes were surrounded by crinkles from looking into too many low suns. So this was Jerry the Hammer O'Malley. He knew him only by a crackling voice on a UHF radio, and by his reputation as a sub-hunter who cared more for his trade than promotion boards.
"I guess you mean me, Captain. O'Malley. I'm supposed to drive your Seahawk-Foxtrot."
"You're right about the Victor. One of those bastards blew my first ship near in half."
"Sorry to hear that, but you oughta know that Ivan's putting his best skippers in the Victors. She handles better than anything else they got, and that rewards a smart driver. So you were up against the varsity. Did you have him outside?"
Morris shook his head. "We were late picking him up, just coming off a sprint, and acoustical conditions weren't all that great, but we detected him, he couldn't have been more than five miles out. We had the helo after him, just about had him localized, then he broke contact neat as you please and got inside on us."
"Yeah, the Victor's good at that. Pump-fake, I call it. He starts going one way, then turns hard the other, leaves a knuckle in the water, and probably a noisemaker, too, right in the middle of it. Then he dives down under the layer and makes a quick sprint in. They've been refining that tactic for the past few years, and we've had trouble programming a reliable counter for it. You need a sharp crew in the helo, and you need good teamwork with these guys here."
"Unless you read my report, my friend, you must be a mind reader."
"Right, Captain. But all the minds I read think in Russian. The pump-fake's what the Victor is best at, and you have to pay attention, what with his ability to accelerate and turn so quick. What I've been trying to teach people is when he shows turn to port, you start thinkin' he's really going to starboard, and you slide over maybe two thousand yards and wait a minute or two, then you hammer the bastard hard and pickle off the fish before he can react."
"And if you're wrong?"
"Then you're wrong, skipper. Mostly, though, Ivan's predictable-if you think like a submariner and you look at his tactical situation instead of your own. You can't keep him from running away, but his mission is to close on the target, and you can make life real hard for him if he does."
Morris looked O'Malley hard in the eyes. He didn't like having the loss of his first command analyzed so glibly. But there was no time for these thoughts. O'Malley was a pro, and if there was a man to handle another Victor, this might be the one. "You all ready?"
"The bird is at the air station. We'll join up after you clear the capes. I wanted to talk things over with the ASW team while we had the time. We're gonna play outside ASW picket?"
"Probably. With a towed-array, it doesn't figure that we're going to be in close. And we might be teamed with a Brit for the convoy mission."
"Fair enough. If you want my opinion, we have a pretty solid ASW team here. We might just give the bad guys a hard time. Weren't you on Rodgers a few years back?"
"When you were working with the Moose We worked together twice, but never met. I was 'X-Ray Mike' when we exercised against Skate"
"I thought I remembered you." O'Malley came closer and dropped his voice. "How bad is it out there?"
"Bad enough. We lost the G-I-UK line. We're getting some pretty good SURTASS info, but you can bet Ivan's going to be gunning for those tuna boats pretty soon. Between the air threat and the sub threat-I don't know." His face showed more than his voice did. Close friends dead or missing. His own first command blown in half. Morris was tired in a way that sleep alone would not cure.
O'Malley nodded. "Skipper, we got us a shiny new frigate, a great new helo, and a tail. We can hold our end up."
"Well, we'll have a shot soon enough. We sail for New York in two hours and take a convoy out on Wednesday."
"Alone?" O'Malley asked.
"No, we'll have Brit company for the New York run, HMS Battleaxe. The orders haven't been confirmed yet, but it looks like we'll be working together all the way across."
"That'll be useful," Ernst agreed. "Come on aft, skipper, I'll show you what we're up to." The sonar room was aft of CIC, closed off by a curtain. Here real lighting was on, as opposed to the darkened, red-light world of Combat.
"Jeez, nobody ever tells me anything!" growled a young lieutenant commander. "Good morning, Captain. I'm Lenner, combat systems officer."
"How come you're not at your scope?"
"We froze the game, skipper, and I wanted to check out the display on playback."
"I brought the game tape myself," O'Malley explained. "This is the track of a Victor-III that faked out one of our carriers in the eastern Med last year. See here? That's the pump-fake. You'll notice that the contact fades out, then brightens up. That's the noisemaker inside the knuckle. At this point he ducked under the layer and sprinted inside the screen. Would've hit the carrier, too, because they didn't get him for another ten minutes. That"-he jammed his finger at the display-"is what you look for. This tells you you're up against a driver who knows his stuff, and he's out for your ass." Morris examined the screen closely enough to recognize the pattern. He'd seen it once before.
"What if they use the maneuver to break clear?" Lenner asked.
"Because if they can break contact, why not break contact towards the target?" Morris asked quietly, noting that he had a very young combat systems officer.
"That's right, skipper." O'Malley nodded ruefully. "Like I said, this is a standard tactic for them, and it rewards a sharp driver. The aggressive ones will always bore in. The ones who break off-that's effectively a kill. We have to reacquire, but so do they. With a twenty-knot speed of advance, once we get past them, they have to play catch-up. That means making noise. The guy who runs away probably won't run the risk, or if he does, he'll do it badly and we'll get him. No, this tactic is for the guy who really wants to get in close. Question is, how many of their skippers are that aggressive?"
"Enough." Morris looked away for a moment. "How's the helicopter complement?"
"Only one flight crew for the bird. My copilot's pretty green, but our onboard systems operator's a first-class petty officer who's been around the block a few times. The maintenance guys are a pickup bunch, mostly from the readiness group at Jax. I've talked to them, they should do just fine."
"We got berths for them all?" Morris asked.
Ernst shook his head. "Not hardly. We're packed pretty tight."