As they watched, bright noise splattered across the screen, overlapping clusters and blobs of brilliant noise. The contact faded out, its acoustic return blanked out by the noise.
“Sir, we need that active,” Pencehaven said urgently.
“I hear, I hear — go active,” the captain said.
The submarine had evidently detected the torpedo — and who could not, as much noise as she put in the water — and ejected a series of noisemakers. They spun frantically through the water, churning up massive flumes of air bubbles, probably with acoustic generators inside them as well. The entire passive spectrum was clotted with new frequencies, lines that wavered crazily in and out of contact, completely obscuring the other submarine.
They could see that the torpedo was distracted by a noisemaker off to its right. It fell away from its original course, and started to make an approach on the noisemaker. Jacobs made the correction automatically, steering it away from there and back onto its original course.
“How much longer?” Pencehaven asked.
“Another five hundred yards,” Jacobs said. Another five hundred yards, and the wire umbilical that still connected the torpedo to the submarine would snap, terminating the submarine’s guidance capabilities.
“Man, look at her go. What’s she doing, forty knots?”
“Has to be,” Jacobs agreed. “Her propulsion has to be — ”
“Let’s get another shot off, boys,” the captain’s voice ordered. “No sense in taking any chances.”
“Second shot, aye, sir,” Pencehaven said promptly. Without even looking, he could tell that Jacobs was readying the second shot now. This one would be his, all his. He waited until Jacobs nodded, then depressed the fire button. Another low rumble swept through the submarine along with the whish of compressed air exploding outward from the tube.
“Shit!” Jacobs and Pencehaven exclaimed simultaneously.
“Inbound, inbound!” Pencehaven shouted. “Torpedo, torpedo in the water, bearing zero-zero-zero relative. Range, ten thousand yards. Snapshot procedures.” He had Jacobs toggle off another torpedo immediately down the line of bearing, then held tight to the arms of his chair as the submarine broke into a hard turn to the right. “Noisemakers, decoys,” he ordered.
Suddenly, the water around them was as alive with sound as it had been around the enemy contact. The submarine had managed to snap off a torpedo at them, and while the American submarine had sent one immediately down the same line of bearing, their main problem right now was not to guide their torpedo onto the target, but to avoid being a target themselves. Jacob snapped the wire guidance and said a silent prayer that the torpedo would find its mark.
The submarine was now traveling at one hundred and eighty degrees off its base course, establishing a line of bearing. It then cut hard to the right again, then to port, crossing its own wake several times. Finally, the depth tilted down at a steep angle. Pencehaven watched the depth indicator, and noted that they were moving below the thermocline, entering a region of the ocean where sound waves would be bent downward rather than upward. The change in depth across the gradient was intended to obscure the noise of the American submarine from the other torpedo.
“Can’t be much of a torpedo,” Pencehaven whispered, his voice barely audible. “Look, it’s buying the first noisemaker.” And indeed, the screen bore out his observations, as Jacobs watched the loud, slow torpedo fired by the minisub take dead aim on the first noisemaker they’d ejected. Thirty seconds later, they both pulled their headsets off long enough to avoid being bombarded by the noise of the explosion. “Wonder how many she carries,” Pencehaven said, his voice slightly louder.
“Can’t be more than one or two,” Jacobs observed. “Not as small as she is.”
“Back to the hunt, boys,” the captain’s voice said over the circuit. “I’m coming shallow — I want two more torpedoes up that bastard’s ass.”
The thermocline was a tricky bitch, one that worked both for you and against you, Pencehaven reflected. Sure, it obscured your own noise from an enemy submarine, but it also blocked the return of your own active sonar transmissions, although of course they’d gone silent during evasive maneuvers. The best hunting is done when both the submarine and the target are in the same acoustic layer.
As they came shallower, the enemy contact reappeared on their screens. “Got a targeting solution,” Jacobs announced.
“Hold fire, hold fire!” the captain shouted. “We’re too close to the carrier.”
Pencehaven swore silently. The carrier was showing up as a large, green lozenge on his screen, her acoustic signature unmistakable on both the waterfall display and in his earphones. Nothing but a carrier had that peculiar chug, chug, the rhythmic thumps that accompanied flight deck operations, the peculiar hiss and whine of reactor coolant pumps. “No way we can take the shot,” he observed.
“The best thing the carrier could do is get out of the way,” Jacobs said. He shook his head in frustration. “We’ve still got two torpedoes in the water, though. Maybe one of them — ” As he watched, the submarine contact disappeared from their screen.
Rabies let out a howl of glee. “Okay, boys and girls, time to earn our pay. It’s all ours.” The
“Who goes first, the helo or us?” the TACCO asked.
“Helo’s closer in — not within minimums, though,” the copilot pointed out. “I’d say the helo.”
Sure enough, moments later, the
The TACCO let out a groan of frustration. “It was mine, all mine,” he said brokenly. “If only — ”
Rabies put the S-3 into a tight turn, putting them nose on to the attacking helo. They watched the torpedo fall off of her hard point, splash noisily into the water, then dive. In the crystal clear waters, they could follow the course of the torpedo down to a considerable depth. Rabies fancied he could even see the outline of the minisub, a darker blotch against the white sand seabed and coral.
But wait, was that…
“Homeplate, you’ve got an inbound torpedo,” he said, his voice calm despite the tension twisting his gut into a knot. “Repeat, torpedo inbound!”
“We’ve got it, Hunter,” the TAO snapped.
As he watched, Rabies saw the
“With a target that big, she can’t miss,” Pencehaven said. He stared at the geometry of the attack, sick dread filling his heart. Sure, it wasn’t his boat that was going to get nailed, and he was glad about that. But what about the six thousand plus men and women on board that aircraft carrier? And wasn’t that the heart of the entire battle plan, having the air power to establish air superiority for the troops who would follow? An idea flickered through his brain, and without thinking, he toggled the communications switch. “Captain, recommend course two-four-zero, speed flank plus,” he said firmly. “Sir, if we can get close enough in, we can eject our noisemakers into the path. We’ve already seen that it’s a stupid torpedo — it’ll go for it, sir. I’m sure of it.”
“The carrier’s got her own noisemakers,” the captain said.
Pencehaven shook his head. “It’ll be too close, sir. Even if they destroy the torpedo, it looks like it’s going to be astern of her. The overpressure wave and the explosion itself may damage the carrier’s propellers. I know she’s got four of them, but if she loses maneuverability…” Pencehaven didn’t need to finish the sentence. Everybody on board the submarine knew what it would mean to lose a propeller — a dramatic decrease in maneuverability. And if the aircraft carrier couldn’t maneuver, she couldn’t turn into the wind to launch and recover aircraft. “Recommend we deploy noisemakers for the carrier’s protection, sir,” Pencehaven concluded.
