Debt of Honor

'Mr. Shaw, let's go to battle stations torpedo. Firing-point procedures.'

The Tomcats went off first, one every thirty seconds or so until a full squadron of twelve was aloft. Next went four EA-6B jammers, led by Commander Roberta Peach. Her flight of four broke up into elements of two, one to accompany each of the two probing Tomcat squadrons.

Captain Bud Sanchez had the lead division of tour, unwilling to entrust the attack of his air group to anyone else. They were five hundred miles out, heading southwest. In many ways the attack was a repeat of another action in the early days of 1991, but with a few nasty additions occasioned by the few airfields available to the enemy and weeks of careful analysis of operational patterns. The Japanese were very regular in their patrols. It was a natural consequence of the orderliness of military life and for that reason a dangerous trap to fall into. He gave one look back at the formation's sparkling wakes and then focused his mind on the mission.

'Set on one and three.'

'Match generated bearings and shoot,' Claggett said calmly.

The weapons technician turned his handle all to the left, then back to the right, repeating the exercise for the second tube.

'One and three away, sir.'

'One and three running normal,' sonar reported an instant later.

'Very well,' Claggett acknowledged. He had been aboard a submarine and heard those words before, and that shot had missed, to which fact he owed his life. This was tougher. They didn't have as good a feel for the location of the destroyer as they would have liked, but neither did he have much choice in the matter. The two ADCAPs would run slow under the layer for the first six miles before shifting to their highest speed setting, which was seventy-one knots. With luck the target wouldn't have much chance to figure where the fish had come from. 'Reload one and three with ADCAPs.'

Timing, as always, was crucial. Jackson left the flag bridge after the fighters got off, and headed below to the combat information center, the better to coordinate an operation already figured out down to the minute. The next part was for his two Spruance destroyers, now thirty miles south of the carrier group. That made him nervous. The Spruances were his best ASW ships, and though SubPac reported that the enemy sub screen was withdrawing west, hopefully into a trap, he worried about the one SSK that might be left behind to cripple Pacific Heel's last carrier deck. So many things to worry about, he thought, looking at the sweep hand on the bulkhead-mounted clock.

Precisely at 11:45:00 local time, destroyers Gushing and Ingersoll turned broadside to the wind and began launching their Tomahawk missiles, signaling this fact by a five-element satellite transmission. A total of forty cruise missiles angled up into the sky, shed their solid-fuel boosters, then angled down for the surface. After the six-minute launch exercise, the destroyers increased speed to rejoin the battle group, wondering what their Tomahawks would accomplish.

'I wonder which one it is?' Sato murmured. They'd passed two already, the Aegis destroyers visible only from their wakes now, the barely visible arrowhead at the front of the spreading V of white foam.

'Call them up again?'

'It will anger my brother, but it must be lonely down there.' Again Sato switched his radio setting, then depressed the switch on the wheel. 'JAL 747 Flight calling Mutsu.'

Admiral Sato wanted to grumble, but it was a friendly voice. He took the headset from the junior communications officer and closed his thumb on the switch. 'Torajiro, if you were an enemy I would have you now.'

He checked the radar display-only commercial targets were on the two-meter-square tactical-display screen. The SPY-1D radar showed everything within a hundred-plus miles, and most things out to nearly three hundred. The ship's SH-60J helicopter had just refueled for another antisub sweep, and though he was still at sea in time of war, he could allow himself a joke with his brother, flying up there in the big aluminum tub, doubtless filled with his countrymen.

'Time, sir,' Shaw said, checking his electronic stopwatch. Commander Claggett nodded.

'Weps, bring them up and go active.'

The proper command went to the torpedoes, now nearly two miles apart on either side of the target. The ADCAP-'additional capability'-version of the Mark 48 had a huge solid-state sonar system built into its twenty-one- inch nose. The unit launched from tube one was slightly closer, and its advanced imaging system acquired the destroyer's hull on the second sweep. Immediately, the torpedo turned right to home in, relaying its display to the launch point as it did so.

'Hydrophone effects, bearing two-three-zero! Enemy torpedo hearing three-zero!' a sonar officer shouted. 'Its seeker is active!'

Sato's head turned sharply toward the sonar room, and instantly a new item appeared on the tactical display. Damn, he thought, and Kurushio said the area was safe. The SSK was only a few miles oil.

'Countermeasures!' Mutsu's captain ordered at OIKC. In seconds the destroyer streamed an American-designed Nixie decoy off her fantail.

'Launch the helicopter at once!'

'Brother, I am somewhat busy now. Have a good flight. Good-bye for now.' The radio circuit went dead.

Captain Sato first wrote off the end of the conversation to the fact that his brother did have duties to perform, then before his eyes he saw the destroyer five miles below him turn sharply to the left, with more boiling foam at her stern to indicate a sudden increase in speed.

'Something's wrong here,' he breathed over the intercom.

'We got him, sir. One or both,' the fire-controlman announced.

'Target is increasing speed and turning to starboard,' sonar reported.

'Both units are in acquisition and closing. Target isn't pinging anything yet.'

'Unit one range to target is now two thousand yards. Unit three is twenty-two hundred out. Both units are tracking nicely, sir.' The petty officer's eyes were locked on the weapons display, ready to override a possible mistake made by the automated homing systems. The ADCAP was at this point not unlike a miniature submarine with its own very precise sonar picture, enabling the weapons tech to play vicarious kamikaze, in this case two at once, a skill that nicely complemented his skill on the boat's Nintendo system. The really good news for Claggett was that he wasn't trying a counter-detection, but rather trying to save his ship first. Well, that was a judgment call, wasn't it?

'There's another one forward of us, bearing one-four-zero!'

'They have us,' the Captain said, looking at the display and thinking that probably two submarines had shot at him. Still, he had to try, and ordered a crash turn to port. Top-heavy like her American Aegis cousins, Mutsu heeled violently to the right. As soon as the turn was made, the CO ordered full astern, hoping that the torpedo might miss forward.

It couldn't be anything else. Sato was losing sight of the battle, and overrode the autopilot, turning his aircraft into a tight left bank, leaving it to his right-seater to hit the seat belt signs for the passengers. He could see it all in the clear light of a quarter moon. Mutsu had executed one radical turn and then twisted into another. There were flashing lights on her stern as the ship's antisub helicopter started turning its rotor, struggling to get off and hunt whatever—yes, it had to be a submarine, Captain Sato thought, a sneaking, cowardly submarine attacking his brother's proud and beautiful destroyer. He was surprised to see the ship slow—to stop almost dead with the astern thrust of her reversible propeller—and wondered why that maneuver had been attempted. Wasn't it the same as for aircraft, whose rule was the simple axiom: Speed Is Life…

'Major cavitation sounds, maybe a crash-stop, sir,' the sonar chief said.

The weapons tech didn't give Claggett a chance to react.

'Don't matter. I have him cold on both, sir. Setting three for contact explosion, getting some magnetic interference from—they must use our Nixie, eh?'

'Correct, sailor.'

'Well, we know how that puppy works. Unit one is five hundred out, closing fast.' The technician cut one of the wires, letting unit one go on its own now, rising to thirty feet and fully autonomous, activating its onboard magnetic field and seeking the metal signature of the target, then finding it, letting it grow and grow…