Tom Clancy - Debt of Honor

"Be nice to get back to Fort Stewart, sir," First Sergeant Vega observed.

"Spread on that sunblock and catch some rays on the beach."

"And miss all this beautiful snow and sleet, Oso?" At least the sky was clear now.

"Roge-o, Captain. But I got my fill o' this shit when I was a kid in Chicago." He paused, looking and listening around again. The noise-discipline of the other Rangers was excellent, and you had to look very closely indeed to see where the lookouts were standing.

"Ready for the walk out tonight?"

"Just so's our friend is waiting on the far side of that hill."

"I'm sure he will he," Checa lied.

"Yes, sir. I am, too." If one could do it, why not two? Vega thought. "Did all this stuff work?"

The killers in their midst were sleeping in their bags, in holes lined with pine branches and covered with more branches for additional warmth. In addition to guarding the pilots, the Rangers had to keep them healthy, like watching over infants, an odd mission for elite troops, but troops of that sort generally drew the oddest.

"So they say." Checa looked at his watch. "We shake them loose in another two hours."

Vega nodded, hoping that his legs weren't too stiff for the trek south.

The patrol pattern had been set in the mission briefing. The four boomers had thirty-mile sectors, and each sector was divided into three ten-mile segments. Each boat could patrol in the center slot, leaving the north and south slots empty for everything but weapons. The patrol patterns were left to the judgment of individual skippers, but they worked out the same way. Pennsylvania was on a northerly course, trolling along at a mere five knots, just as she'd done for her now-ended deterrence patrols carrying Trident missiles.

She was making so little noise that a whale might have come close to a collision, if it were the right time for whales in this part of the Pacific, which it wasn't. Behind her, at the end of a lengthy cable, was her towed-array sonar, and the two-hour north-south cycle allowed it to trail straight out in a line, with about ten minutes or so required for the turns at the end of the cycles to get it straight again for maximum performance.

Pennsylvania was at six hundred feet, the ideal sonar depth given today's water conditions. It was just sunset up on the roof when the first trace appeared on her sonar screens. It started as a series of dots, yellow on the video screen, trickling down slowly with time, and shifting a little to the south in bearing, but not much. Probably, the lead sonarman thought, the target had been running on battery for the past few hours, else he would have caught the louder signals of the diesels used to charge them, but there the contact was, on the expected 60Hz line. He reported the contact data to the fire-control tracking party.

Wasn't this something , the sonarman thought. He'd spent his entire career in missile boats, so often tracking contacts which his submarine would maneuver to avoid, even though the boomer fleet prided itself on having the best torpedomen in the fleet. Pennsylvania carried only fifteen weapons aboard—there was a shortage of the newest version of the ADCAP torpedo, and it had been decided not to bother carrying anything less capable under the circumstances. It also had three other torpedolike units, called LEMOSSs, for Long-Endurance Mobile Submarine Simulator. The skipper, another lifelong boomer sailor, had briefed the crew on his intended method of attack, and everyone aboard approved. The mission, in fact, was just about ideal. The Japanese had to move through their line. Then operational pattern was such that for them to pass undetected through the line of battle, as the skipper had taken to calling it, was most unlikely.

"Now hear this," the Captain said over the 1-MC announcing system. Every speaker had been turned down, so that the announcement came as a whisper that the men strained to hear. "We have a probable submerged contact in our kill zone. I am going to conduct the attack just as we briefed it. Battle stations," he concluded in the voice of a man ordering breakfast at HoJo's.

There came sounds so faint that only one experienced sonarman could hear them, and that mostly because he was just forward of the attack center. The watch had changed there so that only the most experienced men—and one woman, now—would occupy the weapons consoles. Those people too junior for a place on the sub's varsity assembled throughout the boat in damage-control parties. Voices announced to the attack-center talker that each space was fully manned and ready, and then the ship grew as silent as a graveyard on Halloween.

"Contact is firming up nicely," the sonarman said over his phones.

"Bearing is changing westerly, bearing to target now zero-seven-five. Getting a faint blade-rate on the contact, estimate contact speed is ten knots."

That made it a definite submarine, not that there was much doubt. The diesel sub had her own towed-array sonar and was doing a sprint-and-drift of her own, alternately going at her top speed, then slowing to detect anything that she might miss with the increased flow noise.

"Tubes one, three, and four are ADCAPs," a weapons technician announced. "Tube two is a LEMOSS."

"Spin 'em all up," the Captain said. Most COs liked to say warm 'em up, but otherwise this one was by-the-book.

"Current range estimate is twenty-two thousand yards," the tracking party chief announced.

The sonarman saw something new on his screen, then adjusted his head-phones.

"Transient, transient, sounds like hull-popping on Sierra-Ten. Contact is changing depth."

"Going up, I bet," the Captain said a few feet away. That's about right, the sonarman thought with a nod of his own. "Let's get the MOSS in the water. Set its course at zero-zero-zero. Keep it quiet for the first ten thousand yards, then up to normal radiating levels."

"Aye, sir." The tech dialed in the proper settings on her programming board, and then the weapons officer checked the instructions and pronounced them correct.

"Ready on two."

"Contact Sierra-Ten is now somewhat, sir. Probably above the layer now."

"Definite direct-path to Sierra-Ten," the ray-path technician said next.

"Definitely not a CZ contact, sir."

"Ready on tube two," the weapons tech reported again.

"Fire two." the CO ordered at once. "Reload another MOSS," he said next.

Pennsylvania shuddered ever so slightly as the LEMOSS was ejected into the sea. The sonar picked it up at once as it angled left, then reversed course, heading north at a mere ten knots. Based on an old Mark 48 torpedo body, the LEMOSS was essentially a huge tank of the OTTO fuel American "fish" used, plus a small propulsion system and a large sound-transducer that gave out the noise of an engine plant. The noise was the same frequencies as those of a nuclear power plant, but quite a bit louder than those on an Ohio-class. It never seemed to matter to people that the thing was too loud. Attack submarines almost always went for it, even American ones who should have known better. The new model with the new name could move along for over fifteen hours, and it was a shame it had been developed only a few months before the boomers had been fully and finally disarmed.

Now came the time for patience. The Japanese submarine actually slowed a little more, doubtless doing its own final sonar sweep before they lit off the diesels for their speedy passage west. The sonarman tracked the LEMOSS north. The signal was just about to fade out completely before the sound systems turned on, five miles away. Two miles after that, it jumped over the thermocline layer of cold and warm water and the game began in earnest.

"Conn, Sonar, Sierra Ten just changed speed, change in the blade-rate, slowing down, sir."