Speed was down to four knots now. Sonar called out a possible contact to the north that immediately faded away. Maybe a Tango, maybe nothing. It was plotted anyway, as the submarine took nearly an hour to reach the second line of pinging buoys.
"Torpedo in the water, port side!" sonar screamed out.
"Right full rudder, all ahead flank!"
Chicago's propeller thrashed at the water, creating a bonanza of noise for the Russian aircraft who'd dropped a fish on a possible contact. They ran for three minutes while waiting for additional data on the torpedo.
"Where's the torpedo?"
"It's pinging sir-but it's pinging the other way, bearing changing south, left to right, and weakening."
"All ahead one-third, rudder amidships," McCafferty ordered.
"Another one-torpedo in the water bearing zero-four-six."
"Right full rudder, all ahead flank," McCafferty ordered yet again. He turned to the exec. "You know what they just did? They dropped a fish to spook us into moving! Damn!" Beautiful tactic, whoever you are. You know we can't afford to ignore a torpedo.
"But how'd they know we were here?"
"Maybe they just guessed well, maybe they got a twitch. Then we gave 'em the contact."
"Torpedo bearing zero-four-one. The torpedo is pinging at us, don't know if it has us, sir. Captain, I got a new contact bearing zero-nine-five. Sounds like machinery noises-possible submarine."
"Now what?" McCafferty whispered. He put the Russian torpedo on his stem and hugged the bottom. Sonar performance dropped to zero as Chicago accelerated past twenty knots. Their instruments could still hear the ultrasonic pings of the torpedo, however, and McCafferty maneuvered to keep the weapon behind him as it dove down after the American sub.
"Bring her up! Make your depth one hundred feet. Shoot off a noisemaker."
"Full rise on the planes!" The diving officer ordered a short blow on the forward trim tanks to effect the maneuver. Along with the noisemaker, it created an enormous disturbance in the water. The torpedo raced in after it, missing below Chicago. A good maneuver, it was also a desperate one. The submarine rose quickly, her elastic hull popping as the pressure on the steel diminished. There was an enemy sub out there, and he now had all sorts of noise from Chicago. All McCafferty could do was run. He was confident that the other sub would chase after him with a homing torpedo circling below, but didn't understand why the other sub was there at all. He slowed Chicago to five knots and turned as the torpedo ran out of fuel below him. Next problem: there was a Soviet submarine close by.
"He's gotta know about where we are, skipper."
"You got that one right, XO. Sonar, Conn, Yankee-search!" Both sides could use unusual tactics. "Fire-control party, stand by, this one's going to be a snapshot."
The powerful but seldom-used active sonar installed in Chicago's bow blasted the water with low-frequency energy.
"Contact, bearing zero-eight-six, range four six hundred!"
"Set it up!"
Chicago's steel hull reverberated three seconds later with Soviet sonar waves.
"Set! Ready for tubes three and two."
"Match bearings and shoot!" The torpedoes were fired within seconds of one another. "Cut the wires. Take her down! Make your depth one thousand feet, all ahead flank, left full rudder, come to new course two-six-five!" The submarine wheeled and sped west as her torpedoes raced toward their target.
"Transients-torpedoes in the water aft, bearing zero-eight-five."
"Patience," McCafferty said. You didn't expect us to do that, did you? "Nice job, fire-control! We got our shots off a minute faster than the other guy. Speed?"
"Twenty-four knots and increasing, sir," the helmsman answered. "Passing four hundred feet, sir."
"Sonar, how many fish we got chasing us?"
"At least three, sir. Sir, our units are pinging. I believe they have the target."
"XO, in a few seconds we're going to turn and change depth. When we do, I want you to fire off four noisemakers at fifteen-second intervals."
"Aye, Cap'n."
McCafferty went over to stand behind the helmsman. He'd just turned twenty the day before. The rudder indicator was amidships, with ten degrees of down angle on the planes, and the submarine was just passing through five hundred feet and hurtling down. The speed log now showed thirty knots. The rate of acceleration slowed as Chicago neared her maximum speed. He patted the boy on the shoulder.
"Now. Ten degrees rise on the planes and come right twenty degrees rudder."
"Yes, sir!"
The hull thundered with the news that their fish had found their target. Everyone jumped or cringed-they had their own problems chasing after them. Chicago's maneuver left a massive knuckle in the water that the executive officer punctuated with four noisemakers. The small gas canisters filled the disturbance with bubbles that made excellent sonar targets while Chicago sped north. She raced right under a sonobuoy, but the Russians could not put another torpedo down for fear of interfering with those already running.
"Bearing is changing on all contacts, sir," sonar reported.
McCafferty started to breathe again. "Ahead one-third."
The helmsman dialed the annunciator handle. The engineers responded at once, and again Chicago slowed.
"We'll try to disappear again. They probably aren't sure yet who killed who. We'll use that time to get back down to the bottom and crawl northeast. Well done, people, that was sorta hairy."
The helmsman looked up. "Skipper, the south side of Chicago ain't the baddest part of town anymore!"
Sure as hell is the tiredest, though, the captain thought. They can't keep coming at us this way. They have to back off and rethink, don't they? He had the chart memorized. Another hundred fifty miles to the icepack.
39 - The Shores of Stykklisholmur
They'd finally defeated the counterattack. No, Alekseyev told himself, we didn't defeat it, we drove it off. The Germans had withdrawn of their own accord after blunting half of the Russian attack. There was more to victory than being in possession of the battlefield.
It only got harder. Beregovoy had been right when he'd said that coordinating a large battle on the move was much harder than doing it from a fixed command post. Just the effort of getting the right map opened inside a cramped command vehicle was a battle against time and space, and eighty kilometers of front made for too many tactical maps. The counterattack had forced the generals to move one of their precious A reserve formations north, just in time to watch the Germans withdraw after savaging the rear areas of three B motor-rifle divisions, and spreading panic throughout the thousands of reservists who were trying to cope with old equipment and barely remembered training.
"Why did they pull back?" Sergetov asked his general.
Alekseyev did not respond. There was a fine question that he had already asked half a dozen times. There were probably two reasons, he told himself. First, they'd lacked the strength to pursue the effort and had had to settle for a spoiling attack to unbalance our operation. Second, the central axis of our attack was on the verge of reaching the Weser, and they might have been called back to deal with this possible crisis. The Army group intelligence officer approached.
"Comrade General, we have a disturbing report from one of our reconnaissance aircraft." The officer related the sketchy radio message from a low-flying recce aircraft. NATO's control of the air had brought particularly grim losses to those all-important units. The pilot of this MiG-21 had seen and reported a massive column of allied armor on the E8 highway south of Osnabruck before disappearing. The General immediately lifted the radiophone to Stendal.