Ian Slater - World in Flames

“There y’are, sir,” said Jones. “Got ‘er all in the tank.”

“Very well. Up hose.”

“Up hose!” mimicked the oiler. “Christ, think he was still captain of a missile frigate or something.”

“Well, once a captain, always a captain, I guess,” said Jones.

“Of this bucket?” sneered the oiler. “Shoot — he might as well’ve stayed home, played in his friggin’ bathtub. He’s not gonna impress anybody down here with all his orders.”

“So why don’t you put in for a transfer?” asked Jones, though knowing that none of them would get it. IX-44E was the bottom of the barrel. To the navy, they were all losers on this barge.

Aboard the Roosevelt, sonar operator, Emerson, didn’t have to tell Zeldman about what he’d seen on the screen, as the listening sonar was on amplification in the control room— everybody hearing the telltale whoosh of a torpedo being fired.

“Incoming!” shouted Emerson. “Submerged hostile, by nature of sound. Bearing zero four seven.”

“Battle stations!” ordered Zeldman, the yellow chime alert already pushed, its soft-toned urgency filling the sub. “Speed?” asked Zeldman, pressing the captain’s cabin call button.

“Forty-five knots,” replied Emerson.

It was almost faster than the Roosevelt could run.

“Hard right rudder to zero three five degrees,” ordered Zeldman.

“Right rudder to zero three five degrees,” came the confirmation, even as the Roosevelt was turning, its rudder control and trim closely watched by the diving officer.

“Bearing. Mark!”

“Zero four seven,” came the response from the fire control party.

“SA tube one, fire MOSS.”

“SA tube, fire MOSS.”

A light tremor passed through the Roosevelt as the mobile submarine simulator shot out from one of the two five-degree-angled starboard abaft tubes situated below and abaft the sail, the simulator traveling at over forty miles per hour on the same course as the attacking torpedo and emitting an identical noise signature to that of Roosevelt.

“Forward tubes one, two, three, four, ready with warheads.” As he spoke, Zeldman could hear the easy, metallic slide and click as the Mark-28 wire-guided radar-homing torpedoes slipped from racks to tubes, the latter’s “lids” closed, the rope-hung “WARNING WARSHOT LOADED” signs now slung from the spin wheel lock on each tube.

“Tubes one, two, three, four loaded, sir.”

“Warheads armed.”

“Warheads armed, sir.”

“Very well. Stand by.”

Three flights down, the torpedo room’s chief petty officer was watching the enlisted men carefully. Since the bigger and much heavier Trident II D-5 ballistic missiles had been put aboard, replacing the Trident I Cs, and upgraded Mark-48-C torpedoes had been introduced to Roosevelt, the firing orders were at times quite different from those of the old Sea Wolf routines, and this was no time for a mistake.

“What’s up, Pete?” It was Robert Brentwood, looking somewhat disheveled, eyes still blinking, adjusting hurriedly to the redded-out control.

“Under attack, sir. Torpedo on zero four seven. Speed fifty-four knots.”

Brentwood looked at the computer for distance and estimated impact time but wanted the sonar team’s independent assessment as well. “TTI, Sonar?”

“Time to impact six minutes, sir.”

“How long’s the MOSS been under way?” asked Brentwood.

“One minute, sir,” answered Zeldman. “Live ones in the tubes in case the MOSS can’t fox ‘em out of it.”

“What’ve we got in forward tubes?”

“Mark-48-Cs, sir. Wire-guided, radar-homing.”

“Very well,” said Brentwood, pulling down the fiexi-cord mike, informing the ship’s company, “This is the captain. I have the con. Commander Zeldman retains the deck.”

Zeldman saw they were at two thousand feet, just above the sub’s “crush depth,” though this was always a “safe-side” depth, a sign to discourage any recklessness or undue risk taking. The Sea Wolf, he knew, could dive deeper, but then the digital readouts would go from green to red as they entered the danger zone.

“We have a new contact,” said Emerson, and Zeldman was immediately by his side.

“Where?”

Emerson pointed to the top of the three sonar screens in series. “First contact, zero speed. New contact bearing zero four two. First contact seems dead in the water.”

“Jesus!” said Zeldman, turning to Brentwood. “Captain. First one must have been a feint — or a dud. Either way, he suckered us.”

Without a word of reproach or the merest suggestion that Zeldman should have waited a bit longer before deciding to release the MOSS, Brentwood turned his attention to the tracking vector to see if the Russian torpedo was changing course, curving away toward the simulator Zeldman had fired. Maybe the Russian fish was a “line-of-sighter,” its computer nose not radar-homing but merely compensatory, set to adjust its heading according to Sea Wolf’s speed and heading but not an electronic lock-on. But then Sonar reported a blip coming through the subsurface shrimp and ice clutter, the blip now being received aboard Roosevelt, the Russian torpedo’s active pulse shooting ahead, the torpedo homing in on the bounce-off from the target.

“TTI?” he asked Sonar again.

“Five minutes, forty seconds, sir.”

“Definitely a homer, then,” said Zeldman. It was his way of suggesting they should fire their warhead torpedoes now.

Brentwood was thinking so fast that a dozen images simultaneously jostled for attention in his brain, the most bothersome that of the Soviet captain firing at such long range. Surely the Russian must know a Sea Wolf would hear his torpedo coming and immediately change course to avoid—

“He mustn’t be homing on our hull,” said Brentwood suddenly. “SOB’s locking onto our prop signature.”

“If he’d been close enough for that, sir,” suggested Zeldman, “we would’ve been hit by now.”

Damn it, Zeldman was right. It had to be hull lock-on, the surface area of the MOSS too small, not giving off the same echo as the Sea Wolf’s larger displacement hull. The only chance was for the Sea Wolf to go to maximum speed, despite the increasing noise her pumps would make, and try to outrun the Russian torpedo. But no sooner had Brentwood given the order for burst speed than Emerson reported two other torpedoes racing for them in “fan” formation, one fired to intercept at a point forward of the Sea Wolf’s present position, the other aft of it.

Brentwood knew he could turn tail and run — and the geometric and trigonometric vectors spewing out of the computer told him that even if the Russian torpedoes were of their fastest class, with a maximum range of thirty-five miles, the Roosevelt might be able to evade the middle of the three torpedoes. At this point he still had a five-mile head start. But it would be, as they’d said at Balaclava, “a close run thing.” It would mean he couldn’t weave but would be committed to a straight-line retreat — not only directly from the approaching middle torpedo but also in front of the Russian sub. And if the Russian was faster than the Sea Wolf — though only the Alfa class was — then the Russian would outrun the Roosevelt. But then, if the Russian was an Alfa and fired another one at closer range, even the Sea Wolf’s burst speed would be unable to evade him.

“TTI five minutes,” reported Emerson.

“All right,” replied Brentwood. “Switch on our active. Let’s try to see what he is. Might as well use it — he knows where we are anyway.”

But even as Emerson pushed the button and heard the distinctive ping of the active pulse passing out from the Roosevelt, he felt guilty, that he was betraying her, so ingrained was the operator’s code of silence. It was as if a priest had been ordered to break a sacred rite, the Sea Wolf’s mission to listen only on passive — not to betray their lethal load by making their own noise. It was a catechism drilled into him from his very first days in Bledsoe Hall in Groton. But if Emerson had doubted the order, Zeldman didn’t. Brentwood’s decision to go active was the right one. With its awesome missile load, the Roosevelt couldn’t preserve America’s nuclear sea-strike capability if it couldn’t survive.