NETTS GOOD HUNTING. DELONGUE.
"Well I'll be goddamned," said Pisaro. "Looks like Netts had it rigged all the time."
Springfield said nothing, studied a chart. Two nerve-racking hours were required to align both subs astride the beacon. Barracuda, on the right, was longer and broader of beam than Sirène, and the Italian operators of the fixed arrays would surely notice something peculiar about the passage. In order to resolve the anomaly they would go through channels, would inform their superiors, who would then query the French commander on Corsica. The French also would have both subs on their screens and yet be unsure of what was happening. By the time it was sorted out. Barracuda should be clear of the Strait, Captain Delongue would have explained the situation to his superiors and would receive either a pat on the back or a court-martial. The latter was a real possibility, and Springfield felt a certain distaste about requesting Delongue, a man he did not know, to take that risk.
Slowly the two subs moved into the Strait. The course marked by the beacons included three turns, the last of which curved around dangerous shoals off the Iles Lavezzi, a cluster of islets a mile off the tip of Corsica. Sorensen locked his side-to-side sweeping array to the left in order to report instantly any maneuvering by Sirène, and fed the data to the navigator in the control room. Fogarty monitored the bottom scanner to make sure the depth under the keel corresponded with the chart. The captain stood at the sonar repeater in the control room and kept his eyes on both screens while giving orders to the helm.
The first turn headed the ship on a southwesterly course that paralleled the Italian passage through the Strait. In the belly of the ship the inertial navigation gyros spun on their axes, sending the digital readouts of longitude and latitude on the navigator's console spinning dizzily until the turn ended.
They were at periscope depth, but no periscope from Barracuda broke the surface. Springfield navigated on gyros and sonar alone.
Sirène also ran without benefit of periscope, radar or communication gear. In his log Delongue cited sea conditions and the presence of merchant ships in the Strait. No submarine captain would ever risk damage to his precious surface gear, but Delongue's real reason was that he didn't want to answer any questions until he cleared the Strait.
The second turn, to the right, brought them within half a mile of the main Italian fixed-arrays. Pings echoed back and forth between the two subs, and off the bottom and the surface, sending a weird and confusing signal back to the Italian operators on Sardinia. Sorensen imagined them listening to this strange mix, scratching themselves and trying to puzzle it out. He was sure they could hear coolant pumps and they probably were asking themselves if the French had secretly developed a nuclear attack submarine.
As the ships eased into the final turn, the depth gauge on Fogarty's bottom scanner suddenly began to rise.
"Sorensen, look at this…?"
Sorensen twisted around to look at Fogarty's screen and recognized the rising pattern of bottom sand. He immediately unlocked the side-to-side sweepers from the French sub and started looking for obstructions. If there was anything big resting on the bottom, they were going to hit it, but the screen showed nothing but the rising shoal a half mile away.
Sorensen spoke into the intercom. "Sonar to control. Shoals bearing two nine seven, depth one two zero feet and rising. One one five feet."
"Control to sonar," said the captain, "we have it on the screen. Mr. Pisaro, take her up to sixty-five feet."
"Depth sixty-five feet, aye. Rig for steep angles."
The command rippled throughout the ship. Sailors in every compartment grabbed whatever was close and held on.
"Stern planes up twenty degrees."
"Up twenty degrees, aye."
"Pump forward trim tank number one to aft trim tank number two."
The bow rose sharply and the prop drove the sleek hydrodynamic hull toward the surface. Sirène began to rise alongside, but not nearly so quickly. The diesel-electric sub did not have the power to drive herself rapidly up or down in a state of neutral buoyancy.
The shoals continued to rise. Springfield realized he would have to surface or reduce speed, steer to the left and fall in behind the French sub in order to avoid grounding on the shoals.
"All stop," he said. "I'll be damned if I'm going to surface in the Strait."
From his diving console Pisaro said, "That French captain is covering his ass, protecting himself from a court-martial sure as hell."
"Sonar to control. Sirène is moving deeper into the channel. Range one one zero yards, one two zero yards, one three zero yards."
"He's giving us room to maneuver," said the XO. "He can tell them he tried to make us surface and then that he had to move to avoid a collision."
"All right," said the captain. "By now, the Italians know something funny is going on, but they'll want to talk to the French before they do anything else. Let's just get the hell out of here. All ahead slow. Left full rudder."
"All ahead slow, aye."
"Left full rudder, aye."
The ship banked left and quickly corrected her trim. Fogarty watched the fathometer as the shoals fell behind. Barracuda moved out of the Strait and into the open sea.
Sorensen spoke into his intercom. "Sonar to control. Receiving message from Sirène." He scribbled on his notepad and handed the message to the captain as he came through the door.
Five minutes later Springfield had the position and order of battle for the fleet.
9
For three days and nights Admiral Horning, commodore of the carrier group, had directed the search for the elusive Barracuda. Mako had vanished, obviously "sunk." From the operations center on Kitty Hawk Horning had plumbed the depths with sonars and magnometers, crossed and crisscrossed the surface with frigates and destroyers, and sortied into the air hundreds of times with helicopters and antisubmarine airplanes. Five of his own submarines prowled under and around his armada, hydrophones open to every gurgle, yet Barracuda remained underwater and undetected.
Springfield had eluded the trap set by Mako and had disappeared. Admiral Horning's remaining submarines were having trouble operating in close proximity to one another, and his aircraft kept finding them instead of Barracuda. Alarms would scream, sonar officers would shout, "Contact! Contact!" All for nothing.
And if that weren't enough. Horning had Netts gloating in the wardroom.
On the morning of the fourth day, after a sleepless night during which he had demanded a report every fifteen minutes from the operations center, Horning shaved, showered and dressed in fresh tans.
It had been twenty-five years since he had felt so rotten. During World War Two, as commander of a destroyer, he had escorted convoys of merchant ships across the North Atlantic through deadly wolfpacks of German U-boats. In that war an enemy submarine presented a terrible menace, but one he could deal with. Diesel-electric subs spent most of their time on the surface, wallowing in heavy seas, full of seasick sailors, submerging only to hide, attack or escape intolerable weather. Underwater, they were slow and at the mercy of short supplies of air, water and battery power.
A nuclear-propelled attack submarine was another matter entirely. A true submarine ship, rather than a submersible boat, a nuke remained underwater virtually all the time, sending a periscope above the surface only to communicate or to take a satellite fix for navigation. It made fresh water by desalinating seawater, and oxygen by electrolysis of the fresh water. As for power, sheer power, it was incomparable. The reactor core in Barracuda was good for one hundred thousand miles, and she could outrun any ship in the fleet.