He heard footfalls in the passageway outside his stateroom and saw shadows intermittently blocking the small sliver of light at the foot of the door. Men ran to and fro, probably damage-control teams on their way to fight fires or make repairs. The mirrored wash closet cabinet above his head had popped open from the impact, and he picked himself up off the deck to close it. He flicked the light switch on the bulkhead and a single fluorescent bulb over the sink sputtered to life. In the dim lighting he could see the cuts and bruises on his face, the sunburned skin now peeling from his brow, the disheveled sun-bleached red hair.
He looked like shit, like some pathetic loser. Somewhere back in the engine room right now Dean was probably laughing his ass off at the thought.
Just then, the deck trembled beneath his feet. A loud whack! came from the torpedo room one deck below, soon followed by another. Providence was firing torpedoes. The battle must not be over yet.
As Van Peenan splashed his blistered face with cool water, an evil thought suddenly entered his aching head. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before and could kick himself for keeping to his rack for so long when such a golden opportunity awaited. The thought revived him, and he suddenly felt a burst of adrenaline as he wiped his face with the towel. As the towel came down and he stared at his face in the mirror, he could not hold back the sinister grin rapidly forming there. Moments later he was pulling on his blue uniform jumpsuit, hardly able to keep from salivating at his perfect luck.
The battle was not over yet, and sometimes men die in battle.
“All stations report rigged for ultra quiet, Captain,” the chief of the watch reported.
“Very well,” Edwards responded over his shoulder before returning his attention to the weapon consoles. Providence was now invisible to any hydrophone more than two miles from the ship, and even inside that range a sonar operator would have to be pretty keen to detect the spinning pumps in the engine room, presently the only source of noise. This gave him a little peace of mind as he and Miller leaned over the operators’ shoulders to see the telemetry data coming back from Providence’s two torpedoes. Both units were running normally with their guiding wires still intact.
“You ever heard of UUVs, Weps?” he asked.
“Unmanned Underwater Vehicles?” Miller replied. “Sure, Captain. UUVs for littoral ops. I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never seen one. Apparently the things are loaded with a ton of hydrophones and transducers with a thirty-mile spool of cable to stay in touch with the mother ship. You can launch ’em from miles away and let the UUV’s robot brain go sniff out the bad guy. Then it transmits the data back to you via the cable. But what does that have to do with—”
“Think of it this way, Weps,” Edwards interrupted him. “Our torpedoes are UUVs right now. They may be crude substitutes, but they’ve got transducers and we can steer them. That’s all we need. I want you to send both weapons on a snake pattern search covering the southwestern quadrant.”
“But, sir, the Hatta could be anywhere …”
“She’s in the southwestern quadrant, Weps! I’m sure of it. Bunda is far to the southwest of us. If the Hatta spent all afternoon following us, she would have had to come from that quadrant. And if we damaged her propulsion system last night, as I suspect we did, she wouldn’t have wasted the time to get around us before firing. I’m sure she fired the moment we came in range. Think about it. If you were her captain and you had just caught us on the surface, wouldn’t you go ahead and shoot while you had the shot?”
Miller nodded. “I see your point, sir.”
“And I’m sure she’s no more than five thousand yards from us right now. She probably fired somewhere in the vicinity of the Mendar, so we must have closed the distance to her with our evasion maneuver.”
As the console operators, each controlling one torpedo, pulled up the tactical map view on their displays, Edwards and Miller watched intently. The maps were centered on the Providence’s position and had two green symbols, each representing one of Providence’s torpedoes, both now a few hundred yards away from the ship. As the operators typed in commands, the two torpedoes changed course toward the area southwest of the ship.
“Commence active search,” Miller ordered.
The two operators responded and the dots on both weapons began tracking off in snaking arcs that wound far to the right and then returned far to the left, sweeping out every portion of the southwest quadrant. A rotating “V” shape, with its apex affixed to each symbol, swept from side to side across the torpedoes’ bows, representing the aimed direction of the built-in sonar transducers.
Edwards could only imagine the horror Peto and his crew must be feeling at the moment to see two shipkillers searching for them at forty-five knots with active transducers pinging away. Despite his brief friendship with the rebel captain, their submarines were on different teams now, and only one could sail away from this contest. For the first time, he had the upper hand on Peto, and he could not let personal emotion keep him from exploiting it. The life of every man on the Providence depended on it.
Within moments, the operator in front of Miller reported, “Number two torpedo has acquired the target!”
Edwards was not surprised, and he felt almost guilty for his own mounting excitement when he saw a bright green “V” with a dot in the middle of it appear on the display ahead of Providence’s number two torpedo. It represented the Hatta’s position, a mere four thousand yards to the south-southwest. His deduction had proved to be correct.
“Conn, Sonar. Torpedo in the water!”
“Sonar, Conn, aye. Keep an eye on it,” Edwards said calmly, knowing full well that Peto had fired the torpedo blindly, a last ditch effort, hoping Providence would take evasive action and reveal her position. Edwards knew Peto was grasping at straws, and he would not take the bait. The rebel captain had to know that his ship was doomed. With Providence’s number two torpedo now bathing his hull in acoustic energy and accelerating to sixty-five knots, Peto had few options left. The Hatta could not escape unless the Providence did something foolish and noisy, like running from an ill-aimed torpedo.
“Conn, Sonar, torpedo is tracking off to the east. It does not appear to be a threat.”
Edwards smiled, a little relieved, but not surprised. Peto was indeed shooting in the blind, and had not detected Providence’s position.
“Target is picking up speed now, Captain,” the console operator reported, as he read the data coming back from Providence’s torpedo. “Target is now heading two two zero, range five thousand yards, speed twelve knots. Torpedo number two has shifted to terminal homing!”
Edwards could picture the screaming twenty-one foot killer driving straight for the Hatta’s spinning screw. With a damaged propulsion train, Peto had to be pushing his battery to the limit to get the twelve knots out of his sub, but he had no hope of outrunning a Mark 48 ADCAP.
“Conn, Sonar. Picking up a countermeasures launch to the southwest.”
The Hatta’s last chance, Edwards thought, but it was far too late to save her now.
“Warhead armed!” the operator for number two torpedo reported. “Torpedo detonation!”