Debt of Honor

There came sounds so faint that only one experienced sonarman could hear them, and that mostly because he was just forward of the attack center. The watch had changed there so that only the most experienced men— and one woman, now—would occupy the weapons consoles. Those people too junior for a place on the sub's varsity assembled throughout the boat in damage-control parties. Voices announced to the attack-center talker that each space was fully manned and ready, and then the ship grew as silent as a graveyard on Halloween.

'Contact is firming up nicely,' the sonarman said over his phones.

'Bearing is changing westerly, bearing to target now zero-seven-five. Getting a faint blade-rate on the contact, estimate contact speed is ten knots.'

That made it a definite submarine, not that there was much doubt. The diesel sub had her own towed-array sonar and was doing a sprint-and-drift of her own, alternately going at her top speed, then slowing to detect anything that she might miss with the increased flow noise.

'Tubes one, three, and four are ADCAPs,' a weapons technician announced. 'Tube two is a LEMOSS.'

'Spin 'em all up,' the Captain said. Most COs liked to say warm 'em up, but otherwise this one was by-the- book.

'Current range estimate is twenty-two thousand yards,' the tracking party chief announced.

The sonarman saw something new on his screen, then adjusted his head-phones.

'Transient, transient, sounds like hull-popping on Sierra-Ten. Contact is changing depth.'

'Going up, I bet,' the Captain said a few feet away. That's about right, the sonarman thought with a nod of his own. 'Let's get the MOSS in the water. Set its course at zero-zero-zero. Keep it quiet for the first ten thousand yards, then up to normal radiating levels.'

'Aye, sir.' The tech dialed in the proper settings on her programming board, and then the weapons officer checked the instructions and pronounced them correct.

'Ready on two.'

'Contact Sierra-Ten is now somewhat, sir. Probably above the layer now.'

'Definite direct-path to Sierra-Ten,' the ray-path technician said next.

'Definitely not a CZ contact, sir.'

'Ready on tube two,' the weapons tech reported again.

'Fire two.' the CO ordered at once. 'Reload another MOSS,' he said next.

Pennsylvania shuddered ever so slightly as the LEMOSS was ejected into the sea. The sonar picked it up at once as it angled left, then reversed course, heading north at a mere ten knots. Based on an old Mark 48 torpedo body, the LEMOSS was essentially a huge tank of the OTTO fuel American 'fish' used, plus a small propulsion system and a large sound-transducer that gave out the noise of an engine plant. The noise was the same frequencies as those of a nuclear power plant, but quite a bit louder than those on an Ohio-class. It never seemed to matter to people that the thing was too loud. Attack submarines almost always went for it, even American ones who should have known better. The new model with the new name could move along for over fifteen hours, and it was a shame it had been developed only a few months before the boomers had been fully and finally disarmed.

Now came the time for patience. The Japanese submarine actually slowed a little more, doubtless doing its own final sonar sweep before they lit off the diesels for their speedy passage west. The sonarman tracked the LEMOSS north. The signal was just about to fade out completely before the sound systems turned on, five miles away. Two miles after that, it jumped over the thermocline layer of cold and warm water and the game began in earnest.

'Conn, Sonar, Sierra Ten just changed speed, change in the blade-rate, slowing down, sir.'

'He has good sonar,' the Captain said, just behind the sonarman. Pennsylvania had risen somewhat, floating her sonar tail over the layer for a better look at the contact while the body of the submarine stayed below. He turned and spoke more loudly. 'Weapons?'

'One, three, and four are ready for launch, solutions on all of them.'

'Set four for a stalking profile, initial course zero-two-zero.'

'Done. Set as ordered, sir. Tube four ready in all respects.'

'Match bearings and shoot,' the Captain ordered from the door of the sonar room, adding, 'Reload another ADCAP.'

Pennsylvania shuddered again as the newest version of the venerable Mark 48 torpedo entered the sea, turning northeast and controlled by an insulated wire that streamed out from its tailfin.

This was like an exercise, the sonarman thought, but easier.

'Additional contacts?' the skipper asked, behind him again.

'Not a thing, sir.' The enlisted man waved at his scopes. Only random noise showed, and an additional scope was running diagnostic checks every ten minutes to show that the systems were all functioning properly. It was quite a payoff: after nearly forty years of missile-boat operations, and close to fifty of nuclear-sub ops, the first American sub kill since World War II would come from a boomer supposedly on her way to the scrapyard.

Traveling far more rapidly, the ADCAP torpedo popped over the layer somewhat aft of the contact. It immediately started radiating from its own ultrasonic sonar and fed the picture back along the wire to Pennsylvania.

'Hard contact, range three thousand and close to the surface. Lookin' good,' sonar said. The same diagnosis came from the weapons petty officer with her identical readout.

'Eat shit and die,' the male member of the team whispered, watching the two contact lines close on the display. Sierra Ten went instantly to full speed, diving at first below the layer, but his batteries were probably a little low, and he didn't make more than fifteen knots, while the ADCAP was doing over sixty. The one-sided chase lasted a total of three and a half minutes and ended with a bright splotch on the screen and a noise in the headphones that stung his ears. The rest was epilogue, concluding with a ripping screech of steel being crushed by water pressure.

'That's a kill, sir. I copy a definite kill.' Two minutes later, a distant low-frequency to the north suggested that West Virginia had achieved the same goal.

'Christopher Cook?' Murray asked.

'That's right.'

It was a very nice house, the Deputy Assistant Director thought as he pulled out his identification folder. 'FBI. We'd like to talk to you about your conversations with Seiji Nagumo. Could you get a coat?'

The sun had a few more hours to go when the Lancers taxied out. Angered by the loss of one of their number not so long before, the crews deemed themselves to be in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, but nobody had troubled himself to ask their opinion, and their job was written down. Their bomb bays taken up with fuel tanks, one by one the bombers raced down the runway and lifted off, turning and climbing to their assembly altitude of twenty thousand feet for the cruise northeast.

It was another goddamned demonstration, Dubro thought, and he wondered how the hell somebody like Robby Jackson could have thought it up, but he, too, had orders, and each of his carriers turned into the wind, fifty miles apart to launch forty aircraft each, and though these were all armed, they were not to take action unless provoked.

46—Detachment

'We're almost empty,' the copilot said in a neutral voice, checking the manifest as part of the preflight ritual.

'What is the matter with these people?' Captain Sato growled, looking over the flight plan and checking the weather. That was a short task. It would be cool and clear all the way down, with a huge high-pressure area taking charge of the Western Pacific. Except for some high winds in the vicinity of the Home Islands, it would make for a glassy-smooth ride all the way to Saipan, for the thirty-four passengers on the flight. Thirty-four! he raged. In an aircraft built for over three hundred!