Khandelwal’s orders had been to leave Bombay Harbor submerged and to avoid detection by other vessels until he reached his station fifty miles off the Pakistani port of Karachi. He was operating under a tight deadline and had to be in his assigned patrol area no later than noon tomorrow.
Kalvari’s mission was to interdict Pakistani shipping, including that of Pakistan’s allies. That was why secrecy was so important. India’s Moslem neighbor could not survive for long without help from the outside, but New Delhi feared that world opinion would shift toward Pakistan once it was known that international shipping had been targeted by Indian submarines.
Who had the intruder been? Soviet, possibly … though an American task force was approaching the area. It was unlikely to have been Pakistani, not this far from Pakistan’s waters … but his orders had been explicit.
In any case, the exercise had been good for the men. He had a good crew, but none of them had combat experience. A taste of what awaited them under relatively safe conditions would help get them into the spirit of the patrol.
The deck, slanting somewhat as the sub rose, began to level off. He would take the sub up to periscope depth for a quick look around, to make sure they were really alone, and then proceed with the mission.
The hull creaked once again.
“Bridge,” Mason’s voice yelled. “CIC! We got the bastard!”
Captain Farrel picked up the handset. “Where? Whatcha got?”
“Solid passive contact, heading zero-one-five. Hull noises … and Chase says he just blew ballast. He’s close!”
“Go active.” He turned to the helmsman. “Zero-one-five, son. Ahead two thirds.”
“Zero-one-five, ahead two thirds, aye, sir.” Biddle heeled sharply to port as she went into a hard turn.
“Contact!” the sonar operator called. “Single screw to port! It sounds … it sounds like a Perry, sir!”
A Perry-class frigate. That could mean American, or … “Go active! Range!” Khandelwal clung to the brass grip on the periscope well, his eyes on the depth gauge. Ninety meters. Too deep yet to see what was going on.
He heard the chirp as the sub’s sonar operator began probing the water around them with sound. The ping of the echo followed close behind.
“Contact! Bearing one-nine-five, range two thousand meters! Closing at two-five knots!”
His boat’s survival would be determined by the decisions he made within the next minute, Khandelwal knew. He picked up an intercom mike and held it to his mouth. “Torpedo room! Stand by!”
“Torpedoes standing by, sir. Tubes one and two loaded, wire-guided.”
The Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate was an American design, but in this modern age of arms sales and weapons package diplomacy, that meant nothing. Only the year before, two had been purchased by Pakistan.
He listened to the chirp of sonar, his experienced ear noting the decreasing intervals between ping and echo. If this was one of the Pakistani frigates, as its aggressive pursuit suggested … “Captain, sonar! Splashes to port, close!”
Splashes! Depth charges or ASW torpedoes! He clicked the switch on the intercom mike. “Torpedo room! Fire one! Helm, evasive!”
“Bridge! Sonar! Torpedo launch at zero-one-five, range one-eight hundred!”
Farrel’s fist came down on the console. “Left full rudder! Ahead flank!”
The guided-missile frigate leaped across the water, sea spray lashing across the bridge windscreen. It was possible to outrun a torpedo, but the range was damned tight for a stunt like that. Biddle could make thirty knots. A torpedo might do forty or more, depending on the type.
“Bridge, sonar. Torpedo is maneuvering. Looks like it might be wire-guided, sir.”
That might be a break. “Where’s our LAMPS, Bill?” he asked his Exec.
“Sonobuoy run. He’s right over the bastard!”
Farrel faced a terrible choice: try to outrun that incoming torpedo — probably impossible when it was less than a mile away — or try to break the concentration of the men directing it. Wire-guided torps were homed on their targets by commands sent down a thin wire unreeling behind the weapon. Once the torpedo acquired its own sonar lock the wire was cast off … or the sub could steer the thing all the way to the target.
If he could force the sub to turn away he might break the wire, but he had only seconds before the torpedo locked on by itself.
“Pass the word to the LAMPS,” Farrel said. “Fire on the target.”
He’d taken the step, and it was a terrible one. But by loosing the torpedo, that sub skipper had just forced Captain Farrel to choose between his ship and the submarine.
The location of Biddle’s sonar target had already been relayed to the circling Seahawk, which was further pinpointing the contact by dropping a chain of sonobuoys around the sub’s suspected position. Target data was fed into the two Mark 46 ASW torpedoes slung from the Seahawk’s hull.
At the command to fire, one of the torpedoes dropped away, a drogue chute opening at its tail to position it at the correct angle for entering the water. Arming when it hit the surface, it picked up the submerged Foxtrot almost immediately, circled onto a new heading, and dove.
“High speed propeller to port!” The hydrophone operator’s voice was sharp with fear. “Very close!”
“Hard to port!” Khandelwal’s knuckles whitened on the periscope railing. The maneuver might make them lose their own torpedo, but perhaps the launch alone might make Kalvari’s attackers back off. If they could just elude this new threat … At forty-five knots, the lightweight Mark 46 torpedo slammed into Kalvari’s hull just forward of her conning tower. The detonation of ninety-five pounds of Torpex ripped a gaping hole through both the inner and outer hulls.
Captain Khandelwal was hurled across the control room as an avalanche of water exploded through the port bulkhead. His exec, Lieutenant Joshi Ramesh, was smashed against the conning tower ladder by the waterfall.
In seconds, watertight doors imperfectly seated in concussion-warped frames gave way, and the Indian submarine began its final dive into darkness.
White water fountained high into the sky a mile off Biddle’s starboard side, accompanied by a bass earthquake rumble felt through the ship’s hull and decks.
“Bridge, sonar! Torpedo has gone ballistic. Passing two hundred yards astern.”
Farrel’s eyes stayed riveted to the plume of seawater, now cascading back across a troubled sea. “Make to the LAMPS helo,” he said. “Lay more buoys and listen for the sub. Stand by to recover survivors.”
But he already knew there would be no survivors. He’d saved the Biddle … but sent a submarine and seventy-eight men to their deaths.
The political repercussions would be spreading out already … and far more quickly than the base surge from the underwater explosion now rocking the Biddle.
The Indian rear admiral studied the teletype message in his hand and felt tears of loss and anger burn his eyes. There was precious little information there, but the statement needed no elaboration.
INSS KALVARI SUNK BY U.S. FFG, PERRY CLASS. NO SURVIVORS.
The message, transmitted from an IAF Mig-25 reconnaissance aircraft overlying the area, included coordinates positioning the loss one hundred miles west of Bombay, in international waters but well within the
