“Thirty to go until it’s exhausted, then.”
“We’ve got three-hundred and sixty rounds left in the starboard cannon, and seventy-nine in the port cannon. Including the one on the Nanuchka, that leaves us enough ammunition to bleed nine Vympels dry.”
“That Slava cruiser has six,” Walker said. “Then four more with the Buyan missile boats. Then another six when you add the rest of the ships. They can defend themselves with just half their arsenal.”
“Half is all they’d get while they’re running north. They’d only be able to bring half the Vympels to bear. But I see your point, especially since we need to keep rounds in reserve to avoid becoming fodder to aircraft.”
“We’ve got the five hundred rounds of reloads in each engine room. We could replenish the starboard cannon as fast as we bleed it. The port cannon can be reloaded, too, with a larger work team and some athleticism, but it would be trickier and slower.”
The math and the assumptions behind the possible scenarios danced in Cahill’s head as Walker continued his assessment.
“But they can reload, too. If we give them breathing room, they’ll reload their expended Vympels to keep pace, and I imagine that with all their ships, we’d run out before they would. Our long-range weapon advantage is questionable at best from here on out.”
A new idea took root in Cahill’s mind.
“Let’s add a wrinkle,” he said. “Let’s test the Vympel against two simultaneous targets. Target the Nanuchka with ten splintering rounds from each cannon, synchronize fire manually.”
Walker appeared to suppress a smile as he tapped his screen.
“That’s what I was just thinking. Both cannons are ready with ten splintering rounds each. The gunners are on the phone with each other and will manually synchronize firing. Our rate of fire will be slowed in half with the manual count.”
“Very well. I’m okay with that. From each cannon, fire ten synchronized splintering rounds.”
The railguns sounded within milliseconds of each other, and they continued firing every ten seconds until the room fell silent during the rounds’ ballistic flights.
“Here it comes,” Walker said.
Ripping bursts of azure intersected with the twin traces of incoming streaks.
“The Vympel took down the first pair,” Walker said. “It apparently can shift its arc of fire to the second round in time.”
“Let’s see if our luck improves,” Cahill said.
The missile boat knocked down the second pair, but the third duet of projectiles drew a different outcome.
Cahill gasped as he watched bullets shatter one railgun round, but then the point-defense system erupted with insanity, sending a full one-second stream into the sky, followed by another long burst, and yet another.
“It didn’t reach the second round before it splintered!” he said. “It attacked the buckshot. Perfect!”
“It’s a hit!” Walker said.
“Another misfire like that from the Vympel, and that ship will be helpless. How’d our round do?”
“No effect on propulsion. Still thirty-three knots.”
Cahill watched the Vympel take down two more pairs before the sixth and seventh duets confounded its guidance system, bled it dry of bullets, and landed half their ordnance. Then the eighth through tenth pairs punctured steel.
“There we go,” Walker said. “We’ve hit the propulsion train. I see heat in reduction gears and at least one diesel spinning down.”
“Make that two. The middle diesel appears to be cooling.”
Cahill glared at the satellite infrared, hoping to see the third and final engine go dark. But it stayed bright, pushing the ship forward at fifteen knots.
“Prepare five more splintering rounds from the starboard cannon for that last diesel.”
Two minutes and five rounds later, Cahill stranded the Nanuchka dead in the water. He turned his attention to the ships that protected each other east of Jake’s rhomboid boundary. The icons merged and then yielded to hollow outlines.
“Chaff,” Walker said. “They must have placed a ship upwind of the formation and are covering the entire group with chaff.”
“We observed the Chinese doing that in the Spratlys.”
“The Russians didn’t need long to figure it out.”
“They probably have enough chaff to hide from radar until they drive out of our weapons range.”
“That’s what they appear to be doing. They’re heading north to skirt the edge of Jake’s minefield.”
“Check out the infrared satellite coverage.”
“Shit, Terry. It’s a cloud.”
Cahill saw that the Russian fleet’s heat signatures of white-hot propulsion equipment had transformed into a murky azure fog.
“How’d they accomplish that? A smoke screen?”
“It’s got to be,” Walker said. “The same ship that’s shooting chaff is probably burning oil. The Russians know how to create smoke to hide.”
Cahill felt his situational superiority over the Russian fleet waning. He had surprised them and forced them into reactionary action. But he knew they were smart and cool under pressure, and if he gave them enough time, he expected them to craft a deadly counterstrike.
And with the Bosporus mined shut, trapping him in the Black Sea, they had enough time.
“If they escape, they’ll be back with a vengeance,” he said.
“Do you want to try an earlier splintering time? We could expand our circle of buckshot and rain down hell over them, and there would be nothing the Vympels could do about it.”
“We’d just be shooting tiny bullets blindly at big ships. I’d consider it a waste of ammo. If I’m going to shoot them, I’m going to need to paint them with our own phased array. We’ll need to get within twenty miles to power through their chaff and jamming.”
“That Slava-class cruiser has cannons that can reach forty nautical miles. And it’s built to trade punches with ships bigger than us. Then you have to consider that we’d be well within range of every anti-ship missile they have. We need to strike from a distance, or we don’t strike at all.”
Cahill grasped for a solution, but it eluded him.
“Then there’s nothing more we can do to them from here. They’ve found the right defensive tactics.”
“They’ll run out of chaff before they run out of smoke.”
“Right,” Cahill said. “We could shadow them at the same course and speed until that happens and then take our chances against their jamming. But to do that, we’d have to trace our steps back towards the Kilo that shot at us.”
“Then we’d be inviting a torpedo.”
“I know.”
“So what’s our next move, Terry?”
“Let’s play a little defense now. We’ll slow down, deploy our towed array sonar, and search for that Kilo.”
Cahill ordered the railguns stowed as he slowed the Goliath and shifted the burden of his ship’s electric propulsion motors to the six MESMA systems. He then ordered the ship to dive.
After escaping the rocking waves and slipping into the gentle bosom of the undersea world, he leaned toward his sonar supervisor’s ear.
“Remember that you have a lot of unusual things to listen for. The diesels need to be running for that Kilo to be moving faster than a crawl. Listen for flow noise, too, since Jake’s slow-kill weapon put at least a dozen holes in it.”
“I already briefed the team on it.”
Cahill looked at the tops of heads seated at the consoles of the Subtics tactical system. He recognized them as competent sonar technicians recruited from the Australian Navy, but he found himself wishing for an elite guru like Remy.