O'Malley laughed. "If I say no, will it matter?"
"I think we should remain close together," Perrin said. "Five miles' separation at most. The real trick will be timing our sprints. The convoy wants to make as straight a run as possible, right?"
"Yeah." Morris nodded. "Hard to blame the Commodore for that. Zigzagging all those ships could create almost as much confusion as a real attack."
"Hey, the good news is no more Backfires for a while," O'Malley pointed out. "We're back to a one-dimension threat."
The ship's motion changed as power was reduced. The frigate was ending a twenty-eight-knot sprint and would now drift for several minutes at five knots to allow her passive sonar to function.
USS CHICAGO
"Sonar contact, bearing three-four-six."
Seven hundred miles to the icepack, McCafferty thought as he went forward. At five knots.
They were in deep water. It was a gamble, but a good one, to run away from the coast at fifteen knots despite the noise Providence made. It had taken four hours to reach the hundred-fathom curve, a period of constant tension as he had worried about the Russian reaction to their missile attack. The Russians had sent antisubmarine patrol aircraft first of all, the ubiquitous Bears dropping sonobuoys, but they'd been able to avoid them. Providence still had most of her sonar systems in operation, and though she could not defend herself, she could at least hear the danger coming.
Throughout the four-hour run the wounded submarine had sounded like a wagonload of pipes, and McCafferty didn't want to think about how she had handled, with her fairwater planes hanging like laundry in a breeze. But that was behind them. Now they were in seven hundred feet of water. With their towed-array sonars deployed, they'd have an extra measure of warning for approaching danger. Boston and USS Chicago cruised three miles on either side of their wounded sister. Seven hundred miles at five knots, McCafferty thought. Almost six days...
"Okay, what do we have here, Chief?"
"Came in slowly, sir, so it's probably direct path. We have a slow bearing change rate. My first guess would be a diesel boat on batteries, and close." The sonar chief showed no emotion.
The captain leaned back into the attack center. "Come right to zero-two-five."
The helmsman applied five degrees of right rudder, gently bringing the submarine to a northeasterly course. At five knots USS Chicago was "a hole in the ocean" that made almost no noise at all, but her contact was almost as quiet. McCafferty watched the line on the screen change shape ever so slightly over a period of several minutes.
"Okay, we have a bearing change to the contact. Bearing is now three-four-one."
"Joe?" McCafferty asked his executive officer.
"I make the range eight thousand yards, plus or minus. He's on a reciprocal heading, speed about four knots."
Too close, the captain thought. He probably doesn't hear us yet, though.
"Let's get him."
The Mark-48 torpedo fired at its slowest speed setting, turned forty degrees to the left on leaving the tube, then settled down to head for the contact, its guidance wires trailing back to the submarine. The sonarmen directed the fish toward its target while USS Chicago moved slowly away from the launch point. Suddenly the sonar chief's head jerked up.
"He's heard it! He just kicked his engines. I got a blade count-it's a Foxtrot-class, doing turns for fifteen. Transient, transient, he just flooded tubes."
The torpedo accelerated and switched on its homing sonar. The Foxtrot knew it had been found, and her captain reacted automatically, increasing speed and ordering a radical turn to starboard, then firing a homing torpedo back down the line of bearing at its attacker. Finally he dove deep, hoping to shake off the closing fish.
The hard turn left a knuckle in the water, an area of turbulence which confused the Mark-48 briefly, but then the torpedo charged right through it, and on coming back to undisturbed water, found its target again. The green-painted weapon dove after the Foxtrot and caught it at a depth of four hundred feet.
"Bearing is changing rapidly on the inbound," the sonar chief said. "It's going to pass well aft of us--hit, we got a hit on the target." The sound echoed through the steel hull like distant thunder. McCafferty plugged in a set of phones in time to hear the Foxtrot's frantic attempt to blow to the surface, and the screech of metal as the internal bulkheads gave way. He did not hear the captain's last act. It was to deploy the rescue buoy located on the aft comer of the sail. The buoy floated to the surface and began transmitting a continuous message. All the men aboard the Foxtrot were already dead, but the rescue buoy told their fleet headquarters where they had died-and several submarines and surface ships immediately set off to that point.
USS REUBEN JAMES
O'Malley pulled up on the collective control and climbed to five hundred feet. From this height he could see the northern edge of the convoy off to the southwest. Several helicopters were in the air-a good idea of someone's. Many of the merchant ships were carrying Army helicopters as deck cargo, and most of them were flyable. Their crews were taking them up to patrol the convoy perimeter, looking for periscopes. The one thing any submariner would admit to being afraid of was a helicopter. This procedure was called "black-sky" ASW. Throughout the convoy, soldiers were being told to watch the ocean and report anything they saw, which made for many false sighting reports, but it gave the men something to do, and sooner or later they might just spot a real periscope. The Seahawk moved twenty miles east before circling. They were looking for a possible submarine detected on the frigate's passive sonar array during the last drift.
"Okay, Willy, drop a LOFAR-now-now-now!"
The petty officer punched a button to eject a sonobuoy out the side panel. The helicopter continued forward, dropping four additional buoys at intervals of two miles to create a ten-mile barrier, then O'Malley held his aircraft in a wide circle, watching the sea himself as the petty officer examined the sonar display on his screen.
"Commander, what's this I hear about the skipper? You know, the night before we sailed."
"I felt like getting drunk, and he was kind enough not to make me drink alone. Didn't you ever get drunk before?"
"No, sir. I don't drink."
"What's this Navy coming to! You take her for a minute." O'Malley took his hand off the stick and adjusted his helmet. It was a new one and he hadn't quite gotten used to it yet. "You got anything, Willy?"
"Not sure yet, sir. Give me another minute or two."
"Fair enough." The pilot contemplated his instruments briefly, then resumed his outside scanning. "I ever tell you about this thirty-five-footer in the Bermuda-to-Newport race? Storm beat hell out of it. Anyway, it had an all-girl crew and when the boat swamped they lost all their-"
"Skipper, I got a weak signal on number four."
"Grateful as hell for being rescued, too." O'Malley took the stick and brought the helicopter around to the northwest. "You don't do any of that either, Mr. Ralston?"
"Strong drink giveth the desire, sir, but taketh away the ability," the copilot said. "Two more miles, sir."
"He even knows Shakespeare. There may be hope for you yet. Talk to me, Willy."
"Still a 'weak' on number four. Nothing else."
"One mile," Ralston said, watching the tactical display.