makes. Renny came bolt upright in his chair. “Sonobuoys, I think,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Whatever it is, they’re tossing something in — ” A massive explosion rocked the water around the ship. Renny screamed, ripped the headphones off and bent over, moaning. The automatic gain control had managed to block out most of the noise, but still enough acoustic energy had made it into the headsets to feel like an arrow lancing straight through his skull.
The ship rolled hard to port and then back to starboard as the OOD fought to stabilize her. A down angle on the deck developed almost immediately. Renny felt the nauseating motion of the ship going into a hard lefthand turn while still unstable from the explosion, and diving at the same time.
“Depth charges,” he said, barely able to hear his own voice. Behind him, his chief tapped him on the shoulder and nudged him out of the chair. Renny’s earphones were already on the chief petty officer’s head. “Depth charges, goddammit, who the hell uses depth charges anymore?”
A second explosion answered that question quite handily.
The ship dove more rapidly now, but it was controlled movement from the ship seeking out a deeper layer of water rather than a submarine damaged by the blast. The further down they got, the further away from the helicopter overhead they’d be. Still, submerging held its own dangers. As the pressures increased, so did the potential consequences of even a small pinhole leak in any gear. Outside the submarine, the water pressure was increasing rapidly, bearing down on every square inch of the hull. Since water was thicker under pressure, it also served as a better medium for conducting acoustic energy. A blast at this depth would be amplified, not only in the amount of energy that hit the submarine but in the damage that any breach in hull integrity would pose.
“How the hell did they find us?” Otter demanded. His hands were dancing over the passive acoustic display, checking out different frequencies, searching frantically for any hint of a threat around them. They both knew the answer to his question.
“Nobody was active, and there were no sonobuoys in the water,” Renny said. “It was the other submarine — he must have heard us on his passive gear, then surfaced to radio in a position report.”
“But when? When!” Otter demanded. He scrolled back to the time on the display. “When was it that you heard something?”
Renny leaned over and pointed to a spot on the graph. “There. Right about then.”
“That was almost thirty minutes ago,” Otter said. “You certain about that?”
Renny shook his head. “Not entirely, but the time fits. He would have had to be fairly close to us to have heard anything at all, and you know he wouldn’t want to be anywhere around if they were going to drop depth charges. So he crept up, took a listen, then sneaked back out of area before he came shallow and radioed in a position report… By now he’s at least ten miles away, maybe more.”
“All hands, this is the captain,” Tran’s voice said over the loudspeaker. Every section of the submarine had been turned down to minimum volume, but the boat was so quiet that his voice was easily distinguishable. “It appears we have evaded the helicopter, and I’m going to be bringing the ship back to a shallower depth. Maintain silence about the decks, even after I secure you from general quarters. It looks like we had the bad luck to be directly under that helicopter while he was dumping garbage or something.”
Renny grinned, admiring Tran’s ability to stay so calm during a crisis. It had been exactly the right thing to say to the ship and crew.
“And I figure we got us a little score to settle with the submarine we left alive back behind us,” Tran’s voice continued, the slightest hint of a Southern drawl in it now. “So suck it up, stay quiet, and I promise you — we’ll get that bastard snitch before he pulls back into port again.”
There were no cheers, no applause, but everyone in the submarine could feel the invisible surge of enthusiasm that rallied through the crew. “We’ll move back into position on the Chinese aircraft carrier.”
As the ship maneuvered, a loud, clanging noise reverberated throughout the entire hull. It seemed to saw at Renny’s bones, sink through his flesh, and then fade away into nothingness. Without having to ask, he knew what it was. The ELF antenna wire that they had been trailing had been severed. Their submerged communications with the outside world had been cut off. Sure, they could still come to communications depth and receive and transmit messages, but that would mean giving up the cloak of invisibility that was the submarine’s primary defensive weapon.
The call came from the SEAL team just as Batman was mobilizing his forces to deal with the troop carriers headed for shore. Tombstone’s pickup team jumped as the speaker crackled to life.
“Bad news, sir,” the remarkably clear voice of the SEAL team leader said. “We found the weapon — but it’s inaccessible. The Chinese dumped it in the shallow water. I’ve got some plans for getting to it and disarming it, but it’s going to take a little while to set up. In the meanwhile, if your sub could keep the area clear around it, it might lessen the chances of detonation. Over.”
“Roger, copy all. We’ll do what we can, Murdoch.” Batman’s voice was grim. He turned to Bam-Bam. “Get off a message to
Captain Tran fought his impulse to pace, schooling himself to stillness that rigged for silent running required. He would not allow himself the luxury of expending some energy through pacing the small compartment. Not only would it not have achieved anything, but it would set a bad example for the rest of the crew. Silent ship meant just that — no unnecessary movement, no talking, and above all, no pacing the deck.
This was the hardest part of submarine warfare, probably the reason that the men who served on these ships bore the name “silent service.” It was a game of cat and mouse, of waiting, of staying submerged and hidden while you waited for the other fellow to make a mistake. Captain Tran held this as an article of faith, that there was no crew as superbly trained as the one on board an American fast attack submarine. Granted, the equipment gave them every edge as well, but it was the crew rather than the steel that encased them that he placed his trust in.
A movement aft caught his eye, and he turned to see the sonar chief holding one finger up in the air. Slightly ashamed at the relief he felt to be moving, Tran padded silently over to the console. He studied data displayed there before asking in a whisper, “Is that her?”
Jacobs nodded. “Bilge pumps, I think,” he said. “It’s faint, and intermittent.”
Tran reached for a spare set of headphones jacked into the input line and slipped them over his ears. He was always surprised at how much more quiet it was with the headphones on, even on a submarine at quiet ship. He could hear his own heartbeat, hear the steady rhythm of his own breathing as blood coursed through his veins. And, just at the edge of perception, he heard the sound that had alerted his sonar team. There it was again — a faint
“Not as watertight as we are, perhaps,” he said, making an old joke. Bilge pumps weren’t normally run for leaks inside a submarine — any leak would be almost instantly fatal, as high pressure water rocketing into a hull would probably precipitate cascading casualties faster than any crew could keep track of them. No, bilge pumps were used to pump over the small discharges that steam, an occasional leaky pump, and just sheer spillage accumulated in the lower parts of the ship. Still, his joke was met with a slight smile from the crew.
“Targeting solution?” the sonar chief asked.
Tran nodded. “Completely passive. No one is supposed to know we’re here until the carrier is ready to move.” He could see by the expression on the chief’s face that this didn’t sit well. They had contact, albeit a tenuous one. They would have a firing solution within seconds. Every second that they let pass with this submarine still alive in their home waters ate at them. He now regretted the one ranging ping that he’d ordered earlier. That extra bit of uncertainty might have now worked in his favor.
“We can’t do anything right now with the situation as it is on the land,” he said, and briefly debated with himself just how much to explain to the crew. He knew about the nuclear weapon located on the island, but was it necessarily something he needed to tell the rest of the crew? Most of them had families, girlfriends, even parents on the island. Would the additional worry about the families distract them from the job at hand? And more importantly, would knowing that their friends and loved ones were in such mortal danger improve their performance
