roughly one-three-zero.”
“Maybe he can hear us,” Ricks growled. “I'm taking us up through the layer. Make your depth one hundred feet.”
“One hundred feet, aye,” the diving officer responded immediately. “Helm, five degrees up on the fairwater planes.”
“Five degrees up on the fairwater planes, aye. Sir, the fairwater planes are up five degrees, coming to one hundred feet.”
“ Conn, maneuvering, the rattle has stopped. It stopped when we took the slight up-angle.”
The XO grunted next to the captain. “What the hell does that mean…?”
“It probably means that some dumbass dockyard worker left his toolbox in the ballast tank. That happened to a friend of mine once.” Ricks was truly angry now, but if you had to have such incidents, here was the place for them. “When we get above the layer, I want to go north and clear datum.”
“Sir, I'd wait. We know where the CZ is. Let him slide out of it, then we can maneuver clear while he can't hear us. Let him think he's got us scoped before we start playing tricks. He probably thinks we don't have him. By maneuvering radically, we're tipping our hand.”
Ricks considered that. “No, we've cancelled the noise aft, we've probably dropped off his scopes already, and when we get above the layer, we can get lost in the surface noise and maneuver clear. His sonar isn't all that good. He doesn't even know what we are yet. He's just sniffing for something. This way we can put more distance between us.”
“Aye aye,” the XO responded neutrally.
Maine leveled off at one hundred feet, well above the thermocline layer, the boundary between relatively warm surface water and the cold deep water. It changed acoustical conditions drastically and, Ricks judged, should eliminate any chance that the Akula had him.
“ Conn, sonar, contact lost in Sierra-5.”
“Very well. I have the conn,” Ricks announced.
“Captain has the conn,” the officer of the deck acknowledged.
“Left ten degrees rudder, come to new course three-five-zero.”
“Left ten degrees rudder, aye, coming to new course three-five-zero. Sir, my rudder is left ten degrees.”
“Very well. Engine room, conn, make turns for ten knots.”
“Engine room, aye, turns for ten knots. Building up slowly.”
Maine steadied up on a northerly course and increased speed. It took several minutes for her towed-array sonar to straighten out and be useful again. During this time, the American submarine was somewhat blinded.
“ Conn, maneuvering, we got that noise again!” the speaker announced.
“Slow to five — all ahead one-third!”
“All ahead one-third, aye. Sir, engine room answers all ahead one-third.”
“Very well. Maneuvering, conn, what about that noise?”
“Still there, sir.”
“We'll give it a minute,” Ricks judged. “Sonar, conn, got anything on Sierra-5?”
“Negative, sir, holding no contacts at this time.”
Ricks sipped at his coffee and watched the clock on the bulkhead for three minutes. “Maneuvering, conn, what about the noise?”
“Has not changed, sir. It's still there.”
“Damn! X, bring her down a knot.” Claggett did as he was told. The skipper was losing it, he realized. Not good. Another ten minutes passed. The worrisome noise aft attenuated, but did not go away.
“ Conn, sonar! Contact bearing zero-one-five, just appeared real sudden, like, it's Sierra-5, sir. Definite Akula-class, Admiral Lunin. Evaluate as direct-path contact, bow-on aspect. Probably just came up through the layer, sir.”
“Does he have us?” Ricks asked.
“Probably yes, sir,” the sonarman reported.
“Stop!” another voice announced. Commodore Mancuso walked into the room. “Okay, we conclude the exercise at this point. Will the officers please come with me?”
Everyone let out a collective breath as the lights went up. The room was set in a large square building shaped not at all like a submarine, though its various other rooms duplicated most of the important parts of an Ohio-class boomer. Mancuso led the attack-center crew into a conference room and closed the door.
“Bad tactical move, Captain.” Bart Mancuso was not known for his diplomacy. “XO, what advice was that you gave to your skipper?” Claggett recited it word for word. “Captain, why did you reject that advice?”
“Sir, I estimated that our acoustical advantage was sufficient to allow me to do that in such a way as to maximize separation from the target.”
“Wally?” Mancuso turned to the skipper of the Red Team, Commander Wally Chambers, about to become the CO of USS Key West. Chambers had worked for Mancuso on Dallas, and had the makings of one hell of a fast-attack skipper. He had just proven that, in fact.
“It was too predictable, Captain. Moreover, by continuing course and changing depth course you presented the noise source to my towed array, and also gave me a hull-popping transient that ID'd you as a definite submarine contact. You would have been better off to turn bow-on, maintain depth, and slow down. All I had was a vague indication. If you'd slowed down, I would never have ID'd you. Since you didn't, I noted your hop on top the layer and sprinted in fast underneath as soon as I cleared the CZ. Captain, I didn't know I had you until you let me know, but you let me know, and you did let me get close. I floated my tail over the layer while I stayed right underneath it. There was a fairly good surface duct, and I had you at two-nine thousand yards. I could hear you, but you couldn't hear me. Then it was just a matter of continuing my sprint until I was close enough for a high- probability solution. I had you cold.”
The point of the exercise was to show you what happened when you lost your acoustical advantage.“ Mancuso let that sink in before going on. ”Okay, so it wasn't fair, was it? Who ever said life was fair?'
“Akula's a good boat, but how good is its sonar?”
“We assume it's as good as a second-flight 688.”
No way, Ricks thought to himself. “What other surprises can I expect?”
“Good question. The answer is that we don't know. And if you don't know, you assume they're as good as you are.”
No way, Ricks told himself.
Maybe even better, Mancuso didn't add.
“Okay,” the Commodore told the assembled attack-center crew. “Go over your own data and we do the wash-up in thirty minutes.”
Ricks watched Captain Mancuso exit the room sharing a chuckle with Chambers. Mancuso was a smart, effective sub-driver, but he was still a damned fast-attack jockey who didn't belong in command of a boomer squadron, because he simply didn't think the right way. Calling in his former shipmate from Atlantic Fleet, another fast-attack jockey — well, yeah, that's how it was done, but damn it! Ricks was sure he'd done the right thing.
It had been an unrealistic test. Ricks was sure of that. Hadn't Rosselli told the both of them that Maine was quiet as a black hole? Damn. This was his first chance to show the commodore what he could do, and he'd been faked out of making a favorable impression by an artificial and unfair test, and some goofs from his people — the ones Rosselli had been so damned proud of.
“Mr. Shaw, let's see your TMA records.”
“Here, sir.” Ensign Shaw, who'd graduated sub school at Groton less than two months before, was standing in the corner, the chart and his notes grasped tightly in his tense hands. Ricks snatched them away and spread them on a work table. The Captain's eyes scanned the pages.
“Sloppy. You could have done this at least a minute faster.”
“Yes, sir,” Shaw replied. He didn't know how he might have gone faster, but the Captain said so, and the Captain was always right.
“That could have made the difference,” Ricks told him, a muted but still nasty edge on his voice.
“Sorry, sir.” That was Ensign Shaw's first real mistake. Ricks straightened, but still had to look up to meet Shaw's eyes. That didn't help his disposition either.
