Plague Ship

course for interception.

“You sure it’ll work?” he asked without looking back.

' ’Course not,” Max told him. “It’s an Iranian copy of an already-flawed Russian weapon. But my crew worked through the night adapting the number one tube so we can fire it, and Murph seems to have the software worked out, so I say go for it. If it works as advertised, it’ll take out the three torpedoes long before they reach their targets.”

'Murph?”

“Whopper has it pegged, Chairman. I can control it as best as it can be controlled, but it’s mostly an aim- and-hope kind of weapon. At two hundred knots, it’s pretty damned hard to steer anything.” Cabrillo would either kiss Max and Murph in a few seconds or curse them in hell. “Helm, turn us bow on to the Kilo. Wepps, open outer door for tube one. Match bearings and shoot.” Foam creamed off the Oregon’s bow as Eric Stone brought the ship around, digging her deep into the waves, to give Murph his shot.

“Stoney, another two points to starboard,” Mark asked, and Eric goosed the thrusters to maneuver the ship so she was pointed directly at where the Kilo had fired the spread of torpedoes. “Linda, she hasn’t moved, right?”

“No. She’s just sitting there paying out wires to guide her school of fish.” Ross replied and took off the passive sonar headphones she’d been wearing.

That was the last piece of information Mark needed. He keyed the launch control. With a blast of compressed air powerful enough to make the freighter shudder, the modified tube shot the rocket torpedo out through the hull door at nearly fifty knots, fast enough for its specially designed nose cone to create a high-pressure bubble of air around the whole weapon. Just as its onboard computer detected the torpedo was slowing, its rocket kicked on with a deafening roar and its stabilizer fins flicked open.

The Hoot, or Whale, rocket torpedo sliced through the ocean in an envelope of supercavitated bubbles that eliminated the deadly drag of having to bull its way through the water. In essence, it was flying, and quickly accelerated to two hundred and thirty knots. Its wake was a boiling cauldron of steam.

The image from the topside camera showed that the sea was being ripped apart by a perfectly straight fault line that began at the Oregon’s bow and grew at four hundred and twenty feet per second.

“Look at that mother go!” someone exclaimed.

“Range to target?” Juan called.

“Three thousand yards,” Linda said. “Make that twenty-six hundred. Twenty-two hundred. Two thousand yards.”

“Mr. Murphy, be ready with the autodestruct,” Juan ordered.

“You don’t want to sink the Kilo?”

“And cause a bigger international incident than we’re already looking at? No, thank you. I just want to ring their bell a little bit and cut the guide wires spooling out of the sub’s bow.”

“How close?”

Juan checked the tactical display, gauging distances between the torpedoes targeting the Aggie Johnston and the Oregon and the ships themselves. The Johnston was less than thirty seconds from having her hull split open by a direct hit. He watched the line of the rocket torpedo cutting across the flat panel, moving so fast that the computer needed to recycle the image every second. He had to make sure to damage the Kilo enough so she couldn’t fire another spread but not to so cripple her that she sank.

“One thousand yards, Chairman,” Linda called out, although Juan could see the numbers on the screen blurring backward for himself.

There was less than two hundred yards now separating the Johnston from the torpedo hunting her. The vectors and speeds involved were complex, but Juan had a handle on it all.

“Wait for it,” he said. If he detonated the rocket too early, there was a chance it wouldn’t cut all the wire.

Too late and the Kilo’s crew of fifty-three were going to die.

“Wait for it,” he repeated, watching the Hoot arrow through the sea and a faint line of disturbed water approaching the supertanker’s exposed flank.

One torpedo was fifty yards from its target, the other, three hundred, but their relative speeds were so vastly different that they would reach their objectives at precisely the same instant.

“Now!”

Mark hit the button that sent an autodestruct signal to the torpedo’s onboard computer. The warhead and remaining solid rocket fuel blew a fraction of a second later, sending an erupting geyser of water into the air and opening a hole in the sea that was fifty feet deep and equally as wide. A stunning concussion wave radiated from explosion. It hit the Oregon bow on, but hammered the side of the Aggie Johnston so that the massive ship heeled slightly to port.

With the explosion’s acoustical onslaught reverberating through the sea, it made passive sonar signals impossible to detect. Cabrillo focused his attention on the topside camera shot of the Petromax supertanker. She rolled ponderously back to an even keel. He continued to watch her for a moment before a smile crossed his lips. There was no explosion from a torpedo slamming into her hull. Max’s plan had worked. The wires coiling out from the Kilo to guide her fish had been cut, and the weapons immediately shut down.

“Linda, tell me the instant you hear anything,” he ordered.

“Computer is compensating now. Give me another few seconds.” Hali turned in his seat. “Chairman, the pilot of one of the S-3B Vikings wants to know what just happened.”

“Stall him,” Juan said, his focus still on Linda, who sat as still as a statue, her right hand clamping the sonar headphones tightly to her head while in front of her tendrils of light floated down the sonar system’s waterfall display.

She finally looked over at him. “No high-speed props sounds, so the three remaining torpedoes are dead and most likely on their way to the bottom. I hear machinery noises from the Kilo and alarms coming from inside the hull. Wait . . . Okay, it’s pumps and . . . they’re blowing ballast.” A bright smile bloomed on her impish face. “We did it! They’re on their way to the surface.” A round of cheers and applause reverberated through the Op Center, and even Max’s bulldog face cracked into a grin.

“Nice job, everybody. Especially you, Mr. Murphy, and you, too, Max. Tell the team who installed the rocket torpedo and modified the tube to expect a little something extra in their next paychecks.” Although each member of the crew shared in the Corporation’s profits on a sliding scale, Cabrillo delighted in handing out bonuses for work above and beyond. It was part of the reason he engendered so much loyalty, though mainly that came because he was the best natural leader any of the people under him had ever worked for.

“Look at that!” Eric Stone gasped.

On the main display, he had shifted the camera view to show the spot of ocean where the Kilo had launched its ambush. The water boiled like a maelstrom, and, in the center of the disturbance, a blunt object rose from the sea. As the bow of the Iranian sub emerged, they could see her hull plates were buckled, as if she had run full speed into a seamount. The normally convex nose was dimpled in the center, the result of the rocket torpedo exploding sixty yards in front of her.

The craft continued to surface, bobbing on waves of her own creation. As it steadied, Stone zoomed the camera in on the damaged hull plates, the Oregon’s computer automatically compensating for the ship’s motion so the image remained rock steady. Air bubbled up from around the torn metal—not much, but enough to indicate the Kilo was taking on water. Hatches on her conning tower and her fore and aft decks were thrown open and a stream of men poured out of the crippled sub.

“You getting anything from them, Hali?” Juan asked.

“General distress calls, sir. Their pumps are barely keeping pace with the flooding. They are requesting assistance from the naval base at Chah Bahar. Her captain hasn’t ordered them to abandon ship, but he wants all unnecessary personnel on deck in case they founder.”

“Are they asking for help from any ships in the area?”

“Negative, and I doubt they will.”

“Agreed. Firing at civilian freighters without warning violates about fifty international treaties.”