World in Flames

brief, pitying glance in Brentwood’s direction before disappearing from view.

The IX-44E started to buck in a chop coming in from the direction of Point Loma, a chop that would not even be discernible to the dozens of warships and the carrier high above, flying the pennants of battle honors won.

While the warships’ crews were readying again for war, Ray Brentwood had the decidedly dull and uninspiring task of plowing up the coast fifteen miles off the beach, where a hysterical member of the La Jolla chapter of “Environmental Watch” had reported another “massive” oil spill.

When they got there, Seaman Jones estimated it was an “iddy biddy” spill of no more than a hundred gallons, probably burped out by one of the warships or one of the coast-plying cargo vessels. The barge nudged about in the increasing swell, its very motion seeming to Brentwood as resentful as the harsh coughing of its engine, while the flexible polyethylene hose that served as a boom trailed off the stern with all the enthusiasm of a sullen snake, flopping into the water to contain the rainbow-streaked chocolate-mousse oil that stained the cobalt blue of the sea.

“Down with the hose!” ordered Brentwood, then seconds later, “Suck ‘er up!”

“Oh, sweetheart,” murmured one of the crew.

“What was that, sailor?” snapped Brentwood.

“Nothing, sir.”

“Then get to it. I want all of it.”

“Oooohli—” groaned an oiler. “He wants all of it.”

“C’mon,” said Jones. “Poor bastard’s already had the shit kicked out of him.”

“Yeah — well, Jonesy, he’s still alive,” said the oiler.

“Not sure I’d wanna be,” said the winch operator. “With that kisser.”

“Yeah, he’s still kicking, ain’t he?” added the oiler. “Hell of a lot of guys from the Blaine were deep-sixed. He got off.”

“Shut up,” said Jones. “He’ll hear you.”

“So what!”

“Come on!” called out Brentwood from the wheelhouse. “I want it up before it goes to a tar ball.” If the oil did coagulate and sink, it would be pushed up later on the beach by the tide, and over the next few days he’d have every retiree in La Jolla going into cardiac arrest and calling their congressman, never mind the poor bastards on the west coast of southern Alaska and British Columbia, where one of the Russian subs had sunk both a huge freshwater carrier and oil supertanker, spilling millions of gallons. They’d be cleaning that up for years.

It was this thought that started Ray Brentwood wondering, as he knew they had been in Ottawa and Washington, how the hell the Russian subs had gotten in so close to the coast without detection. Sure, there had been a lot of surface interference, gale conditions, but still, the SOSUS hydrophone arrays on the sea bottom, monitored by the Canadian navy out of Esquimau on Vancouver Island, should have picked up a sine wave or two of the sub’s cooling pumps. Of course, once they’d sunk the tankers, the subs had had no trouble getting out under the cacophony of torpedoes exploding and ships going down, such noise completely overwhelming the SOSUS network, providing cover for the Russian subs to hightail it out of the area at maximum speed, the noise of their cooling pumps, racing flat out, lost in the death throes noise of the dying tankers.

“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