sinking, and O'Malley could pick out the two other helicopters working this contact from their flying lights. They dropped two lines of passive sonobuoys, each eight miles long, at right angles to each other.
'The picket lines are in place, Hammer,' Captain Perrin called. 'Begin.'
'Willy: hammer!' Six hundred feet below the helicopter, the sonar transducer pounded the water with high- frequency sonar pulses. He did this for one minute, then reeled in and flew southeast. The process lasted half an hour. By this time his legs were knotting up, making his control movements awkward.
'Take over for a few minutes.' O'Malley took his feet off the pedals and worked his legs around to restore circulation.
'Hammer, Bravo, we have a contact. Buoy six, line Echo.' This was the east-west line. Buoy number six was third from the west end, where the north-south 'November' line began. 'Weak signal at this time.'
O'Malley took the controls back and headed west while the other two helicopters circled behind their respective lines.
'Gently, gently,' he murmured over the intercom. 'Let's not spook him too much.' He picked his course carefully, never heading directly for the contact, never heading far away from it. Another half hour passed, one miserable second at a time. Finally they had the contact running east at about ten knots, far below the layer.
'We now have him on three buoys,' Perrin reported. 'Hatchet is moving into position.'
O'Malley watched the blinking red lights about three miles away. Hatchet dropped a pair of directional DIFAR buoys and waited. The display came up on O'Malley's scope. The contact passed right between the DIFARS.
'Torpedo away!' Hatchet called. The black-painted Stingray dropped invisibly into the water, half a mile in front of the oncoming submarine. O'Malley closed and dropped his own buoy to listen as he brought the Seahawk into hover.
Like, the American Mark-48 torpedo, the Stingray didn't use conventional propellers, which made it hard to locate on sonar both for O'Malley and the submarine. Suddenly they heard the sound of propeller cavitation as the submarine went to full power and turned. Then came hullpopping noises as she changed depth abruptly to throw the fish off. It didn't work. Next came the metallic crash of the exploding warhead.
'Hit!' Hatchet called.
'Down dome!'
Willy lowered the sonar transducer one last time. The submarine was coming up.
'Again!' Ralston wondered. 'That's two in a row.'
'Set it up! Willy, hammer him.'
'Range four hundred, bearing one-six-three, I have an up-doppler.'
'Circular search, initial search depth one hundred.'
'Set,' Ralston replied.
O'Malley dropped his torpedo at once. 'Up dome! Bravo, the hit did not kill the target, we just dropped another one on him.'
'He might be trying to surface to get his crew off,' Ralston said.
'He might want to fire his missiles, too. He should have run when he had the chance. I would have.'
The second hit finished the submarine. O'Malley flew straight back to Reuben James. He let Ralston land the Seahawk. As soon as its wheels were chocked and chained down, he got out and walked forward. Morris met him in the passageway between the helo hangars.
'Great job, Jerry.'
'Thanks, skipper.' O'Malley had left his helmet in the aircraft. His hair was matted to his head with perspiration and his eyes stung from hours of it.
'I want to talk over a few things.'
'Can we do it while I shower and change, Cap'n?' O'Malley went through the wardroom and into his stateroom. He stripped out of his clothing in under a minute and headed for the officers' shower.
'How many pounds you sweat off on a day like this?' Morris said.
'A lot.' The pilot pushed the shower button, closing his eyes as the cold water sprayed over him. 'You know, I've been saying for ten years that the -46 needed a bigger warhead. I hope to hell those bastards in ordnance will listen to me now!'
'The second one. What was it?'
'If I had to bet, I'd say it was Papa. Great job from the sonar guys. Those steers you gave us were beautiful.' He pushed the button again for more cold water. O'Malley emerged a minute later, looking and feeling human again.
'The Commodore is writing you up for something. Your third DFC, I guess.'
O'Malley thought about that briefly. His first two were for rescues, not for killing other men.
'How soon will you be ready to go up again?'
'How does next week grab you?'
'Get dressed. We'll talk in the wardroom.'
The pilot raked his hair into place and changed into fresh clothing. He remembered the last time his wife had told him to use baby powder to protect his skin from the abuse of sweaty, tight clothes, and how stupid he'd been to reject the suggestion as not in keeping with aviator machismo. Despite the shower, there were a few patches of skin that would continue to itch and chafe. When he went to the wardroom, he found Morris waiting for him with a pitcher of iced bug juice.
'You got a diesel boat and two missile boats. How were they operating? Anything unusual?'
'Awfully aggressive. That Papa should have backed off. The Charlie took a smart route, but he was boring in pretty hard, too.' O'Malley thought it over as he drained his first glass. 'You're right. They are pushing awful hard.'
'Harder than I expected. They're taking chances they ordinarily wouldn't take. What's that tell us?'
'It tells us we got two more busy days ahead, I guess. Sorry, Captain, I'm a little too wasted for deep thinking at the moment.'
'Get some rest.'
37. The Race of the Cripples
Two o'clock in the morning. The attack would begin in four hours despite all his efforts to change it. Alekseyev stared at the map with its symbols of friendly units and intelligence estimates of enemies.
'Cheer up, Pasha!' Commander-in-Chief West said. 'I know that you think we use up too much fuel. It will also destroy their remaining stocks of war supplies.'
'They can resupply, too.'
'Nonsense. Their convoys have suffered heavily, as our own intelligence reports have told us. They are sending one massive shipment across now, but the Navy tells me they are sending everything they have against it. And in any case it will arrive too late.'
Alekseyev told himself that his boss was probably right. After all, he had made his rank on the basis of a distinguished career. But still…
'Where do you want me?'
'With the OMG command post. No closer to the front than that.'
The OMG command post, Pavel thought ironically. First 20th Guards Tank Division was supposed to be the operational-maneuver group, then a two-division formation, then three divisions. Every time the breakthrough maneuver had been frustrated, until the very term 'operational-maneuver group' sounded like some kind of absurd joke. His pessimism returned. The reserve formations held for exploitation of the attack were far behind the front, so as to be able to move to wherever the best penetration of NATO lines happened. It might take hours for them to reach the proper point. NATO had demonstrated a remarkable ability to compensate for sudden breakthroughs, he reminded himself. Alekseyev set this thought aside as he had with so many others and left the command center, collected Sergetov, and once again found a helicopter to take him on the trip west. His aircraft waited on the ground for its usual fighter escort.
