Hunter Killer

probably do the trick,” he added jauntily. “Antisubmarine specialists, of course.”

The President did not know any better than St. Martin that the French Navy owned only two of the Tourvilles, and the other one was on sea trials in the north Atlantic. Instead he trusted the word of his Foreign Minister, which would not do him much good. Meanwhile, St. Martin continued his rock-steady progress toward the gallows.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 1430 (LOCAL)

STRAIT OF HORMUZ

Capt. Bat Stimpson had the North Carolina in the identical position he occupied on Sunday morning just before he sank the Voltaire. The Virginia-class hunter-killer was steaming slowly up the Strait of Hormuz, two hundred feet below the surface, awaiting the arrival of another tanker, chartered by TRANSEURO, this time a ULCC, the 400,000-ton Victor Hugo, fully laden with Abu Dhabi sweet crude bound for Cherbourg.

The coded signal from SUBLANT had been retrieved from the satellite in the small hours of that Wednesday morning. It read: 140400APR10. ULCC Victor Hugo heading east along Trucia coast from Abu Dhabi loading platforms. Escorted by French ASW DDG De Grasse. ETA your datum Strait of Hormuz 1600. Eliminate them both.

Bat Stimpson did not bother to gulp this time. The orders were succinct and perfectly straightforward. The Victor Hugo was already around the Musandam Peninsula and past Oman’s rocky headland of Ra’s Qabr al Hindi.

The North Carolina ops room knew it was their approaching target because the sonar room had picked up the sonar transmissions of the De Grasse, unmistakable on D- Band, Thompson Sintra DUBV 23. French warship.

At 1510, the operators picked up the De Grasse’s military air/surface search radar transmissions, right at the end of its sixteen-mile range. Again unmistakable, beaming out from the top of the destroyer’s mast, Thompson-CSF DRBV 51B on G-Band.

The Torpedo Director deep below the ops room in North Carolina was already making his final checks. He had prepared two weapons in case there was a malfunction. But Captain Stimpson was confident they could sink the destroyer with just one wire-guided Gould Mark 48 ADCAP fired from seven thousand yards. They would take the destroyer before they hit the tanker because, again, they would use submerge-launch Harpoons against the ULCC, in order to burn the colossal amount of crude oil.

Right now the ops room had the Victor Hugo and the De Grasse steaming on a south-southeast course, at seventeen knots, 200 yards apart, the destroyer positioned off the tanker’s portside bow.

And on they came, hard on their course, headed for the mouth of hell.

Ready number one and number two tubes, 48 ADCAP.

Aye, sir.

Fifteen minutes passed, and the sonar room called, “Track 34…bearing one-seven-zero…Range six miles.”

And now the guidance officer was murmuring into his microphone constantly. The North Carolina seemed to hold her breath as the sonar team checked the approach of the French destroyer, calling out the details in that hyper-tense calm that grips a submarine in the moments before an attack.

The XO had the ship, and Bat Stimpson stared at the screen. Then he called, STAND BY ONE! Prepare to fire by sonar.

Bearing one-two-zero…range 7,000 yards…computer set.

FIRE! snapped the CO. And everyone felt the faintest shudder as the big ADCAP thundered out in the ocean, instantly making forty-five knots through the water, straight toward the projected line of approach of the De Grasse.

Weapon under guidance, sir.

Bat Stimpson ordered the torpedo armed, and 5,000 yards away, still running fast through the water, it began to search passively for the warm hull of the destroyer.

Three minutes after firing, the Mark 48 switched to active homing sonar, pinging its way toward the destroyer. Now it could not miss, and it locked onto its target.

It was just 300 yards from the warship, when the French sonar room, taken by surprise, caught the torpedo flashing in toward the stern, where the four huge turbines drove the twin shafts.

TORPEDO!..TORPEDO!..TORPEDO!..RED ONE SEVEN FIVE…ACTIVE TRANSMISSION…RANGE THREE HUNDRED YARDS.

Too late. Too close. The Mark 48 slammed into the stern of the De Grasse, detonated with barbaric force, blew the stern clean off the ship, split the shafts asunder, and blasted the engine room to rubble.

Eight men died instantly, and within moments the ship began to sink, stern first, as water cascaded through the open aft end of the warship. No one had been expecting anything like this, and there were several bulkhead doors and hatches left open.

This might have been construed as shortsighted, since the destroyer’s entire raison d’etre was to protect, and perhaps fight, as she moved through a possible war zone.

However, 200 yards away, onboard the tanker, men stood at the rails on the high bridge and gazed in astonishment at their mighty escort, which had not only blown up but also appeared to be on fire at the aft end, and sinking as well.

And as they watched, incredulously, several of them saw the unthinkable, as two sub-Harpoon missiles came scything through the crystal-clear skies and smashed straight into the hull of the Victor Hugo. They blew most of the 1,000-yard-long deck 100 feet into the air, straight out over the starboard rails like a can of sardines, opening sideways.

Again, the crew was largely saved by the great distance between the upperworks and the long front end of the ship, which housed the oil. Four men, who were working for’ard, were of course killed instantly, and the ensuing fires were unimaginable. From the bridge, it looked like a lake of pure flame roaring up into the stratosphere. Crude oil is hard to ignite, but when it does it’s extremely difficult to extinguish.

As with the Voltaire, the Master of the Victor Hugo had no option but to abandon her. There were two gigantic, thirty-foot-long jagged holes in the tanker’s port side, close to the waterline, and there was oil leaking out into the ocean but burning fiercely.

The fire was growing hotter by the second. If the Captain and his crew did not get off this massive ship in the next ten minutes, they would surely fry.

At that point, with the lives of everyone onboard the two ships hanging in the balance, Captain Stimpson elected to leave the area. He made one final visual observation of the havoc he had wrought, and then ordered the North Carolina deep again, instructing the helmsman to turn away, south.

“Bow down ten…depth two hundred…make your speed twenty…course one-three- five…

In his seaman’s heart, he hoped that rescue would be prompt and thorough, using every possible ship and helicopter the Omani Navy possessed. For the catastrophe was closest to their shores. But he could not afford to dwell on the unfairness of the sailors’ fate. France had transgressed the natural laws of survival on the planet earth. And she deserved every last bit of vengeance the U.S.A. chose to inflict upon her.

The warship, and the men who sailed it, was the responsibility of the French Navy and the politicians in Paris. Captain Stimpson believed the survivors should be well compensated. Like him, they were only carrying out their orders.

SAME DAY, 1600 (LOCAL)

ELYSEE PALACE

PARIS

The President of France had been this angry before, but not in living memory. He twice banged his fist down upon his Napoleonic sideboard, which made the Louis XVI Sevres porcelain cups dance up and down on their saucers and the silver Napoleonic coffee pot bounce on the polished inlaid surface of the sideboard.

Another couple of whacks like that and the burly little former communist mayor could have done about a million dollars’ worth of damage.