Edwards wiped his brow. The Mendar s keel hung down some twelve to fifteen feet. If Providence hadn’t pulled out in time, her sail would’ve plowed into the fisherman’s keel right about now. Even at this depth, the two were separated by only five or six feet of water, too close for comfort, but necessary to adequately fool the pursuing torpedo.
Edwards glanced at the WLR-9 active intercept display. Now only a couple hundred yards astern, the incoming torpedo still transmitted the terminal homing frequency. But now its transducer would be aimed up at the surface as it followed Providence to her new shallower depth. It would be painting both hulls with acoustic energy, receiving active returns from both the Providence and the Mendar. It would now have to choose between the two targets. One might expect the choice to be obvious, that a three-hundred-sixty foot submarine would present a much larger return than a fishing boat one tenth its size. One would be right too, if it weren’t for the thin rubbery layer of anechoic foam covering Providence’s hull from stem to stern. Many of Providence’s own sailors probably thought the spongy substance was there to provide them better traction on deck, but in fact its only purpose was to absorb acoustic energy, and Edwards was counting on it to come through for them now. He was counting on the torpedo to shift its focus to the Mendar s larger acoustic echo.
“Our stern’s past the Mendar, Captain,” Fremont reported, hovering over the tactical display.
“Dive, make your depth five hundred feet! Fast!” Edwards ordered.
He had to open the distance now and get some depth separation from the Mendar. And as Providence tilted to head back into the deep, it became a simple waiting game. With the Hatta’s torpedo traveling at thirty-six knots, he would not have to wait for very long. He squeezed the railing, praying that he had managed to trick the pursuing weapon.
Moments later, he had his answer. A loud whack! followed by a booming explosion shook the hull and seemed to thrust the deck forward several feet. Providence creaked and moaned as the shockwave rippled along her length from her spinning screw all the way up to her bulbous bow. Several men fell to the deck, but this time Edwards held on firmly to the railing. He knew the answer before sonar reported it.
“Conn, Sonar,” the sonar chief’s voice reported with audible relief. “Torpedo has detonated well astern!”
A cheer sounded throughout the room as every sailor at every station seemed to realize in unison that the ruse had worked. The torpedo had blown the abandoned Mendar to bits. But Edwards’ face quickly suppressed any jubilation as he motioned for the men to attend to their stations. They were not in the clear yet. The Hatta was still out there.
The waterfall display in the overhead now showed a swath of bright green covering every point on the azimuth. The ship’s hydrophone sensors were momentarily useless, saturated from the multiple pressure waves generated by the exploding torpedo. But all passive sonar systems used the same sound-pressure-level measurement as the means to detect contacts, including the Hatta’s. All were susceptible to this downside of the technology, and at this moment, Edwards was counting on it. If the Hatta were anywhere nearby, her sonar sensors would be experiencing the same exact anomaly. The sensors would take about a minute to recover, like a brief time-out for both teams, but Edwards intended to use it to Providence’s advantage.
“Helm, all stop. Dive, continue to five hundred feet,” he said as he moved over to the weapons consoles to stand beside Miller. “Firing point procedures, Weps, on tubes two and three. We’ll wait a few more seconds before firing. I want some of this speed off her to make sure we don’t lose the guiding wires.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Miller acknowledged, then added quizzically, “Where shall we shoot them, sir? We’ve got no solution on the Hatta. Shit, we haven’t even detected her yet.”
“Don’t worry about that. Just select a zero degree gyro angle and make sure you don’t lose the wires.”
As the puzzled Miller scrambled down the line of consoles to make sure all were ready, Edwards checked the speed log. Providence had slowed to less than ten knots. Any flow noise the Hatta could use to track her would be gone. The suspicious tonal that had pinpointed Providence like a beacon for the past week had disappeared in the last twenty-four hours, the offending equipment probably dislodged by the close torpedo explosion the night before, and at this moment Edwards was thankful for it. Now Providence could transform herself into a silent void in the ocean.
“Chief of the Watch,” he called across the room, “Pass the word to all stations to rig the ship for ultra quiet. No repairs are authorized without my specific permission!”
Stopping all repairs would ensure no butterfingered sailor dropped a piece of equipment on the metal deck, or slammed a panel shut, or created some other transient that would give away their position. From this point on, silence took precedence over anything else.
“We’re ready, Captain,” Miller said, after his men finished entering the torpedoes’ settings.
Edwards checked his watch and looked at the waterfall display, still saturated from the explosion. He hoped Peto’s display on the Hatta was taking just as long to recover.
“Fire two!” Edwards said, and waited for the loud whack! The deck vibrated as the water ram launched the weapon from its tube three decks below, followed shortly thereafter by the customary pressure change throughout the ship. The torpedo was away.
“Fire three!”
The same sequence followed and Edwards immediately glanced up at the sonar display to make sure both torpedoes had launched while the system remained saturated. It was only another half minute later that the passive sonar system recovered and the bright green saturation disappeared. With her weapons now away, Providence would sit quiet and wait.
As a captain, Edwards always tried to place himself in his opponent’s shoes. With any luck, Peto’s display would have taken just as long to clear, perhaps longer, and Edwards began to wonder how Peto would react when the Hatta’s sonar display suddenly revealed two Mark 48 ADCAP torpedoes on the hunt and no trace of the Providence.
The torpedo detonation had rocked the ship along its length, every compartment feeling the forceful jolt and shaking violently. The middle level officers’ quarters was no exception. At the moment the torpedo detonated, Van Peenan had been resting his aching head on his pillow. The next moment, his rack spit him out like a piece of stale chewing gum, sending him careening across the room to impact with the wash closet on the opposite wall.
“Son of a bitch!” he cursed, as he rubbed the fresh bump on his head. “What the hell was that?”
It took Van Peenan only a few moments to realize Providence had just been rocked by a torpedo explosion, though this one seemed much farther away than the one that shook him out of his rack the night before. This one sounded farther astern.
What the hell is going on? he wondered. The ship must be under attack again. The speed was falling off. Shit, she must be damaged! Damn that asshole, Coleman! He couldn’t run an engine room to save his fucking life! Captain Christopher will have his ass for that!