"Five, four, three, two, one. Fire."
The ship bucked as it spat out a torpedo, and the bow angled up for a moment until the trim computer automatically pumped water forward to compensate for the loss in weight. Sorensen listened to confirm the torpedo was a dummy. The motor never kicked in and it sank into the mud of the gulf.
Hoek was yelling through the intercom, "Sorensen, what's the matter with you? Hit them with the target sonar."
Fogarty stared at his console. The narrow-beam echo ranger was locked onto Mako and tracking her course, but Fogarty, remembering his own recent sonar lashing, couldn't help thinking of the sonar operators whose eardrums were about to take a pounding. Another moment's delay and those same operators would hear the sound of the dummy whooshing out of the tube, and they would return the favor. Reluctantly, he pushed the button on his console.
Glaring at Fogarty, Sorensen said, "The next time you hesitate on a direct order will be your last."
Sound. Fogarty had learned, traveled through warm shallow seawater at 4921.25 feet per second. 12.33 seconds later two men were screaming in Mako's sonar room, and three more in her control room.
On Barracuda there were cheers. Hoek even did a little war dance in his seat.
Mako was now hors de combat, and five of her crew had ringing ears. The umpire aboard Mako immediately noted the "kill," as did Billings, the umpire aboard Barracuda. Both ships sent up radio buoys.
"Well done," said Flowers. "Congratulations."
"Sorry about your men," answered Springfield. "Buy you a drink in Norfolk."
"Sink the Hawk and I'll buy you one."
Springfield retracted his buoy, and Barracuda continued north for three hours on electric power, making sure there was no second picket. Finally the main turbine was cut in.
"All ahead full," ordered Springfield, and Barracuda lunged forward like a dolphin.
8
Six hours after leaving Naples, Barracuda raced through the Tyrrhenian Sea, heading for the Strait of Bonifacio.
"Attention all hands, attention all hands. Secure from general quarters. The movie this morning will be Bonnie and Clyde at zero nine hundred in the mess. That is all."
After eliminating Mako from the wargame, the crew was jubilant. In the galley Stanley was preparing cioppino from fresh fish taken on at Naples.
"What is it?" asked Cakes.
"Shark soup," Stanley replied with a grin.
In the torpedo room Lopez was feeding Zapata and smoking a huge stogie. Aft, even the nucs got cute and painted the profile of a sub on the casing of turbogenerator number one.
Coming off watch, Fogarty went to the movie, and Sorensen went looking for Eddie Luther, the corpsman. With a peek at the watch sheet in the control room he learned that Luther was taking his turn on Sorensen's Beach.
Luther, a dapper little man with a taste for jazz and no scruples whatsoever, sold amphetamines.
No one was on duty in the steering machinery room when Sorensen banged on the door to the Beach. When it opened, Sorensen heard Cal Tjader playing on his machine. Silently, Luther passed Sorensen a packet of ten Dexamyl tablets in exchange for a ten dollar bill, and Sorensen headed for the sonar room to test all the circuits in his console.
Two hours later, on his way to the mess. Sorensen felt the ship reduce speed. As he was munching a hamburger, it came to a complete stop.
"Attention all hands, this is the captain. We have entered French territorial waters approximately thirty miles off the coast of Corsica. We are attempting to contact a French submarine operating in this area. All hands to maneuvering stations. That is all."
Sorensen took up a cup of coffee and walked back to the sonar room.
The Strait of Bonifacio between the islands of Corsica and Sardinia was slightly over six miles wide at its narrowest point. Small islets guarded both sides of the eastern entrance, and dangerously shallow shoals surrounded the western exit into the Mediterranean.
There were three channels deep enough for submerged passage, two on the Italian side and one on the French. Each was a sonar trap. The bottom was seeded with fixed arrays of active and passive sonars impossible to elude. The echo rangers also served as submarine beacons to guide submerged ships through the Strait, which was frequently transited by submarines from all NATO navies, plus the French, but always with prior notice.
The Italians had extremely quiet diesel-electric subs and competent sonar operators. As part of NATO, the Italians would report Barracuda s presence to the fleet, and so the element of surprise would be lost. The French were less predictable, though generally inhospitable toward incursions into their territorial waters.
Springfield decided to gamble on the French. So soon after withdrawing from NATO, the French Navy was not inclined to cooperate with their former allies in small matters. The worst they could do was deny Barracuda passage through the Strait and send her back the way she came.
When it arrived, contact was with Sirène, a diesel-electric of the Daphné class. Davic, on duty in the sonar room, was not surprised to discover the French sub already on an interception course with Barracuda. Springfield ordered all stop, and they waited.
As soon as Sorensen arrived in the sonar room he could see the French sub moving slowly across his screen. The chop of her propellers came through the speakers.
"Get lost, Davic."
"The French are pigs," Davic, the linguist, muttered on his way out. "De Gaulle thinks he's Napoleon."
Fogarty came in and sat down.
"Practice your sonic codes," Sorensen said. "You're going to need them."
Maneuvering in close proximity to another submerged ship was a tricky business. Sorensen never enjoyed it. A collision underwater could rupture the pressure hulls of both ships and send their crews to the bottom.
Three quarters of an hour after the first contact, Sirène came to a full stop five hundred yards away, her echo-ranging sonar pinging every three seconds off Barracuda's hull with monotonous regularity. Sorensen didn't know how adept the French were at identification. They might mistake Barracuda for a Soviet sub, in which case there was no telling what her captain might do. While he was considering this possibility the pings ceased, were replaced by a standard NATO sonic code. The French sonar operator was tapping out an enciphered message in Morse over a gertrude, the underwater telephone. Sorensen transcribed the message onto a notepad, and the captain took it into the locked code room to decode it.
AMERICAN SUBMARINE: YOU ARE IN FRENCH
WATERS. IDENTIFY YOURSELF. SIRENE S 647,
DELONGUE COMMANDING.
Captain Springfield composed his reply as a plea from one submariner to another.
BARRACUDA SSN 593: SIRENE S 647: WARGAME TARGET
KITTYHAWK PLEASE ESCORT THROUGH STRAIT
ON PARALLEL COURSE SPRINGFIELD
COMMANDING.
While the French captain decoded Springfield's message, Sirène did not communicate with the surface. Her captain alone was deciding what to do.
SIRENE S 647: BARRACUDA SSN 593: FOLLOW SUB
BEACON 18 MINUTES N LONG 9 DEGREES 30 MINUTES
W AT 8 KNOTS DEPTH 35 M RUN PARALLEL AT l00
M TO STARBOARD. DITES BON CHANCE A L'AMIRAL