His radar did discern aircraft of the incoming strike force. As he tried to count the swarm, he saw one icon disappear.
“We hit a Fencer,” Walker said. “But there’s too many of them. Most of them will get through.”
“Forget the Fencers,” Cahill said. “They’re showing that they’re not turning back no matter how much we shoot. Turn both cannons to the helicopter.”
“I’m aiming both cannons at the helicopter.”
The icons of the strike force seemed unstoppable.
“The Fencers are surely coming with anti-submarine weapons,” Cahill said. “We need to submerge soon so they don’t know where to drop them.”
“Let me guide a few rounds into the helicopter for Jake.”
“You have twenty seconds. Then we’ll need to start defending ourselves below the waves.”
The icon of a railgun round intersected with that of the helicopter, and the aircraft fell from radar.
“It’s a hit!” Walker said.
“Secure the gas turbines, shift propulsion to the MESMA systems, and prepare to submerge.”
The high-frequency whir ebbed.
“The ship is ready to submerge,” Walker said.
Cahill offered a parting look to his boss.
“Got to go, Pierre.”
“Good luck, my friend.”
The Frenchman’s face froze as the communications link attempted to frequency-hop around the Russian jamming.
“Submerge the ship,” Cahill said. “Make your depth fifty meters. Make turns for fifteen knots.”
He grabbed a console for balance during the down angle.
“How’s fifteen knots possible submerged?” Walker asked.
“Strain the battery for the extra knot. Every second counts.”
“Got it.”
“Start listening for torpedoes and for the Kilo,” Cahill said.
“No sign of torpedoes,” the sonar supervisor said. “We’re listening for the Kilo.”
“Flooding? Damage control efforts? Pumps?”
“We’ll hear it, Terry. Give us a few moments.”
Unable to find patience, he snapped an order.
“Liam, energize the side-scan sonar, full power,” he said. “Sweep it in all directions.”
“Energizing the side-scan sonar.”
“We’ve got the Kilo,” the sonar supervisor said. “We hear its outboard motor and we’re pinpointing its other sounds. Bearing is three-three-eight.”
“Liam, come left to course three-three-eight. Focus the side-scan sonar dead ahead.”
Cahill glared at the screen showing the three-dimensional sonic image of the water. His eyes burned.
“Nothing,” he said. “We must still be over half a mile away.”
“Maybe not,” the sonar supervisor said. “We’re getting a return from the side-scan sonar.”
“Range?” Cahill asked.
“One thousand yards.”
“That’s our Kilo. We’re close, but we’re still in danger.”
He counted seconds as the Goliath neared its victim, and the multiple cuts of sonic return created an oblong shape on his display.
“There it is,” he said. “I would say the aspect is narrow, except that it’s blurry.”
“The sounds from the Kilo are shifting, too,” the sonar operator said. “One second the pumps are loudest. Then the outboard. Then the broadband flooding noise.”
Cahill surmised the nature of the oddities.
“I think that mongrel’s figured us out.”
“You mean that we’re coming to grab him?” Walker asked.
“That captain has balls and brains. He’s spinning himself in a circle to make it difficult for us.”
“Our outboards can manage it though.”
“Manually, yes,” Cahill said. “But there’s nothing automated in our system I know of to deal with this. Damn that bloody bastard. He’s going to make us work for it.”
“This means we can’t take our usual lateral approach, either. We’ll need to stop underneath and handle the orientation with the outboards exclusively.”
Cahill brooded over the Russian’s surprising twist.
“He’s doubled the complexity,” he said. “We need to get this right in six axes — three-dimensional positioning and three-dimensional rotation. This complicates matters.”
“At least he won’t kill us,” Walker said. “We just crossed within five hundred yards. Torpedoes are no longer a threat.”
“Right. Let the crew know where it is and have them prepare for loading operations. This may take some tricky manual work with the presses and multiple eyeballs on cameras.”
After Walker spread the word through the primary loudspeaker, Cahill ordered him to slow the Goliath to a drift. The forward-scanning sonar placed the Kilo one hundred yards away.
“Deploy the outboards,” he said. “Energize external lights.”
The exterior lights turned the blackness in his unused monitors into ugly pale grays.
“Secure the side-scan sonar,” he said. “Energize the upward-scanning sonar.”
He was exhilarated when the tactical system’s integration algorithms transformed the acoustic return from his scanning sonar into the form of the Kilo’s stern.
“I’ll take manual control from here,” he said. “I’m stopping us right underneath that mongrel.”
The upward-scanning sonar showed the blurred view of the submarine. Spinning above the Goliath, the Kilo appeared to leave a sonic trail like a comet. Cahill’s quick glances at camera views showed the Russian ship sliding in and out of lights bathing the water above the cargo bed.
“Look at those holes,” he said. “Jake’s torpedo pounded a dozen wounds straight in, but that thing would still be fighting and running if we didn’t hit it, too.”
“Jake sure gave it a beating, but it kept fighting,” Walker said.
Cahill looked down and tapped an icon.
“I’m shifting us towards the Kilo’s center of mass.”
The focal point of the submarine’s rotation appeared to glide over the center of the Goliath’s cargo bed. He tapped keys that commanded the outboards to flip direction in unison and bring the mighty ship to motionlessness.
“Good job,” Walker said. “Not to be downer because I know you just made it look easy, but the hard part comes next.”
“It’s all a matter of perspective. Coming to forty meters.”
“Terry, wait! You forgot to set us into a matching spin!”
“Oh, did I?”
“What are you doing?”
“Just wait.”
Cahill watched the Kilo’s outboard, extending two meters below its engine room, swing towards his rising ship. From the corner of his eye, he saw Walker blush.
“Okay, I understand now.”
“And here it comes.”
The Kilo spun atop the Goliath without incident.
“Damn,” Cahill said. “Missed it. Coming to thirty-nine meters.”
In a monitor, he saw the outboard clear the Goliath’s port engine room by less than a foot.
“We’ll get it on its next half rotation over the port bow. Coming to thirty-eight meters.”
“Why doesn’t he just surface?” Walker asked.
“The sea state is calm enough that it doesn’t buy him anything, and he may be afraid of friendly fire.”
“Here it comes,” Walker said. “Turn up the sonar volume.”
The distant crunching of metal against metal rang through the sonar loudspeaker as the outboard banged against the Goliath. What little remained of the small motor after its first impact snapped when it collided with the starboard bow.