“Fish closing, dipping, dipping. Turning upwards, fish pinging. Cutting wire. Terminal approach, closing, closing.”
Benson stood and punched the air. “Hot Datum, Tango three. Yes, eat that.” The control room cheered.
“Are you going to take out the cargo ships too, Sir,” asked Nikki.
“No Lieutenant. We’ll need the Pentagon to give us the green light for that. Planesman, right rudder, come to north northwest, sixteen knots.”
“North Northwest at sixteen, Aye Sir.” USS Stonewall Jackson sailed into the enemies’ lair. After ten minutes he knew they must be close.
“Kaminski, position?”
“We’re off the north Oman peninsular, entering the Strait of Hormuz now, Sir.”
The sonar operator looked up to Nathan. “Contact, contact Sir,” said Benson, “two subsurface contacts. Left contact is definitely Ghadir class, right is suspected Kilo. Northwest, range eight miles.”
“Weaps what’s our Pointer deployment?”
“Scooby is in tube five Sir.”
“What’s our tube status?”
“Sir, tube one being reloaded with Mk 48. Tubes two to four and tube six Mk 48. Three VPM tubes with twenty-one Tomahawk, three are factor 100 warheads.”
“Flood tube five, open door, stand by, speed eight knots” The Captain was slowing to reduce the sound they gave off.
It took a minute. “Sir tube five ready in all respects, Scooby booted and ready.”
“Launch on tube five.” The Pointer was punched out of the tube.
“Scooby launched and running, Sir”
“Position Scooby two miles to the left of the Gahdir. Designate Gahdir and Kilo as Tango’s four and five. Compute firing solutions. Reload tube five with Harpoon.” All tubes would be Mk 48 apart from tube five loaded with Harpoon, the sea skimming anti-ship missile. Nathan had to admit he was greedy, he’d like more tubes for Pointers. VPN couldn’t deploy Pointers, but Nathan swore he’d be banging on the CNO’s door to get them modified. Several minutes later they were ready.
“Scooby is in position Sir. Our range to Tangos is four miles.”
“Ready tubes four and six, Mk 48, flood tubes, open doors.”
“Weaps, send an active ping from Scooby on the tangos’. Let’s get em wishing they could wash their underwear.”
“Sir, the Ghadar is coming to the west, he’s going for Scooby.”
“Put Scooby into a spiral dive, level him out at nine hundred feet.” Weaps looked at Nathan.
What the hell was he up to?
Benson listened to the deep. He could hear it talking to him, whispering its dark sweet nothings. He could sense the creatures, both near and far. The temperature too. Sounds carried differently through cold and warmer waters. The beating was soft, a slightly rounded frequency indicating warmer waters. He felt the sound subtlety change in pitch, he knew that could be the start of an aspect change. The start of the boat turning, there it was again, it became more pronounced.
“The Kilo is keeping station, he’s turning slightly to our starboard. He’s heading towards us.”
Nathan knew the Kilo either sensed them or it was wary of a trick. The Captain of the Kilo knew Scooby could be a gift or a trap. The Black hole was playing safe. Her commander must be one of their best, he’d been given the command of one of their best boats. The Kilo slowly came south, Nathan waited his chance.
“Sir, the Kilo’s diving, his revs are up. Down at four hundred feet now. I think he’s layering Sir. There’s a cold layer.” The deep sea is divided into a warmer surface layer and a cold deeper layer. They’re separated by a thermocline, an abrupt change in temperature that acts as a barrier to sound propagation. Get below the thermocline and you’re greatly obscured from a sonar above the layer.
“Emergency dive, emergency dive. Get below the sucker.” A Soryu class boat that USS Stonewall Jackson is based on, has a maximum working depth of two thousand nine hundred feet. The Kilo class at just nine hundred feet maximum working depth is optimised for anti-shipping warfare. It’s also quite capable against SSBN’s who tend to operate around a max depth of one thousand feet.
“Our depth is six hundred feet, eight hundred, one thousand, one thousand two hundred,” the Planesman called out. It was a race to depth and USS Stonewall Jackson had won, it hadn’t finished yet. Nathan grinned at the XO. “They build a strong hull in Kobe, Japan.”
Nathan turned to his sonar wizard. “What’s he up to?”
“Lucy tells me that he’s bottomed out at eight hundred feet, Sir. It’s hard to know if he sees us or not.”
“Weaps, weapon status?”
“We have a Mk 48 in tube four with his name on it, firing solution loaded and updated, tube ready in all respects Sir.”
“Planesman, forward one third.”
“One third Aye Sir.”
“XO,” said Nathan walking towards the Conn, “I think we’ll go under him and get out of his sonar lobes. The MGK-400E has reduced sensitivity from above and below.”
“Sir, a word of caution,” said Kaminski.
“Go on.”
“Those studies were done with Indian boats and a Polish boat. The sonar was improved since then.”
“Ok,” said Nathan, “but do the Iranian’s have that improvement?”
“I don’t know Sir.” Nathan knew you couldn’t know everything.
“We’ll have to take our chances.” The boat edged its way towards a position four hundred feet below the Kilo. Nathan worried about his depth, should he have gone deeper? He’d another one thousand five hundred feet still to go.
“Trim for descent, let’s get more headroom above us.” The boat sank further into the depths.
“Our depth is one thousand seven hundred feet Sir.” He’d leave it a little longer until levelling out.
“Flash, flash,” called out Benson his voice rang out with alarm.
“Type 53 fish launched, it’s heading down Sir.” Damn, Nathan knew that it was Ostekhbureau’s finest. Capable of fifty miles per hour and carrying a quarter ton of TNT; it was coming for them. Desperate times, desperate measures.
“Blow forward, max revs.”
“Emergency ascent Sir.”
Nikki frowned, what?
“One thousand five hundred feet, three hundred feet. Max revs.” USS Stonewall Jackson climbed up from the depths. He calculated the time elapsed.
“Weaps, launch tube four.”
“Aye Sir. Fish launched and running. Good launch, fish is hungry Sir.”
“Type 53 range three hundred feet, closing, closing. Range two hundred feet Sir.”
“Hard right rudder. Eject countermeasures to our left.”
“Range one hundred feet Sir. Fifty feet Sir.”
“Sir. Fish has passed us by. Sir, it’s… wait one. It’s turning, it’s looking for us.” Benson laughed. “It’s spiralling down, searching below us. The bastard missed, and it thinks we’re deep.”
“Mk 48 running in on Tango five,” said Weaps, “pinging, pinging. Cutting wire.”
A thudding boom sounded from outside the hull.
“Fish missed Sir, it blew short of Tango five,” said Benson.
“Recompute firing solution on tube six, mark Tango five.”
“Solution laid in. Tube is ready in all respects.”
“Sir,” said Benson, “Tango five is remaining hull upward her prop isn’t turning. She’s falling Sir. The kilo’s falling down, ass first, she must be leaking bad. She’s blown ballast, still falling.”
“Put the feed on the boat’s intercom.”
“Aye Sir.” The sound of rushing, a creak and then another. The death sounds of a groaning hull, creaking wailing steel. The groaning became constant. The crew looked at each other. Throughout the boat, men and women, led in bunks, put down books, took off headphones. In the galley they looked at the table. cups of coffee sat there. It seemed a sacrilege to do anything other than listen. They listened to the awful sounds of the crushing end. It could be us. They knew that Mothers, Fathers, Sisters and Brothers lost what they loved that day. There was no satisfaction, they witnessed their fellow submariner’s agony. The groaning of the hull became a soft sudden tearing sound. The hull implosion. Tango five was off down to the vast graveyard that was the seabed.