submarine would have an excellent opportunity to make a mad dash to depth, make the ship lose sonar contact, then maneuver back around to take another shot at the ship.
Of course, acoustic blindness worked both ways. If the ship couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see the ship. No matter — if the decoys didn’t work, they’d hear the torpedo itself.
Renny slammed up the toggle that released first one decoy, then another. How many did they have? He was tempted to glance over at the status board, but the chief would have already checked.
The two decoys performed as they were supposed to, frothing up the water and blasting acoustic noise across the entire spectrum. The automatic gain controls kicked in, attenuating the noise in his headset down to a manageable level.
The first torpedo on Renny’s screen veered off to the right, clearly enticed by the attractive noise source saturating the water with acoustic energy. It reached a point that satisfied some primitive firing mechanism in its brain and it detonated.
The second one wasn’t so sure. The detonation of the first torpedo evidently confused it. It wavered along its track for a moment, then started a hard lefthand turn. “Search pattern,” the chief announced. “Conn, Sonar — it’s lost us. For now.”
“Roger,” the skipper answered. “Chief, I’m going to make a run for it back toward the contact. You see any problem with that?”
“Couple of ships between us and Sierra two, Skipper,” the chief answered. “Any word on their status?”
Renny listened to the conversation, his fingers still on the decoy buttons and his eyes glued to his screen. What the chief was asking made perfect sense, if you had to believe that someone just off the coast of Hawaii was shooting torpedoes at them.
“No information, Chief. Until I hear otherwise, every one of them is potentially hostile. Can you rule any of them out — any positive friendlies?”
“Yes, sir. I have
“Under the circumstances, I’m not sure the carrier would appreciate a high-speed run toward her. Give me a course.”
“Two eight zero,” Renny whispered before the chief could ask. “That’s the straightest course that will leave us well clear of
“Two eight zero,” the chief immediately repeated. Renny didn’t know whether the chief was just relying on Renny’s ability or whether he’d done the math himself. Verified it, probably. He’d seen the chief do that sort of instantaneous angles calculation before.
The submarine heeled hard in the opposite direction. She’d backed off on the down bubble and the deck was now almost level.
“Six minutes, captain. Four until we’re inside minimums.”
A kill. The word sent fresh shivers down his spine, and just for a moment — not long at all, but enough to make him waver — Renny paused. The kill — it would be either them or the other boat.
The other, he decided on some level, making a full commitment to those two possible resolutions to their tactical situation. The other — and not us.
“Wait for it, now,” the chief said softly. “We’re safe right now. She’s lost us, she can’t hear us. She’s got to suspect we’re coming for her, but she has no idea where we are. Not yet.”
Renny found the words oddly soothing. He stole a moment to glance over at Otter and was relieved to see the calm, confident expression on the other man’s face. Yes, this was what they’d trained for, this was why they were here. They knew what to do, knew they were good at it. And before the hour was up, someone was going to learn that it was a very, very bad idea to shoot at the USS
“Get them back here,” Batman roared, pounding on the TAO’s back. “Recall all fighters. Can’t you see it? Don’t you know what’s going to happen?” He grabbed the handset without waiting for an answer. “All aircraft, this is the admiral. Starboard marshall —
One by one, the aircraft leads answered up. As they watched, the friendly aircraft symbols that had been boring in on Hawaii stopped, then the pixels pivoted to indicate that the aircraft were headed back to the carrier. Over tactical, it was clear that the operations specialists that normally coordinated the approaches on the carrier were quickly becoming overwhelmed. The airborne E- 2C Hawkeye stepped in, assuming control of the majority of the aircraft and vectoring them around the approach radials to a safe distance south of
Batman stared at the screen, the color drained from his normally ruddy face. “My god, we almost bought it that time.” By now, even the watch officer understood what he meant.
The airspace around Hawaii and the main channel was engorged with a spiderweb of long speed leaders projecting out from missile symbology as the surface ships leaving port opened fire on the hostile aircraft symbols. Had the
Lieutenant Hot Rock had been next in line for the tanker when TFCC and the Hawkeye started shouting orders. After an initial period of confusion, he managed to sort out what happened. It was unbelievable, unthinkable — but there it was. An enemy attack on Pearl Harbor. One part of his mind kept insisting it was simply another part of the battle problem that they’d been working all week.
Hot Rock’s lead, Lieutenant Commander Lobo Hanson, grasped the situation faster than he did. “Come on, Hot Rock. Snap out of it. I don’t have time to baby-sit you. Get your ass up the high position.”
He yanked backed, putting the Tomcat into a sheer, bone-crushing ascent toward high position. The loose deuce fighting formation was the one preferred by most American pilots, and consisted of a team of two aircraft. One took high position, guarding the tail of the forward aircraft and providing additional area coverage because of increased radar range with altitude. The other aircraft took a lower altitude, slightly forward, and was usually the first engage the enemy aircraft.
A couple of cruises ago, high position had been Hot Rock’s favorite. Although he hadn’t been willing to admit to anyone, he had suspected that a deep streak of cowardice ran down his spine. The idea of facing incoming fire, facing it and ignoring it all as he took his own shot, had seemed beyond him. For a while, he managed to slide by on his superb flying skills, but eventually even his backseater reluctantly voiced his opinion.
But finally, when it came right down to it, he found he had what it took. Ever since that cruise, he’d finally felt a part of the fighting squadron.
Not that anyone had let on. Even Commander Magruder, CO of VF 95, hadn’t suspected just how terrified he was in the air. Oh, sure, in aerobatics, formation flying and practice bombing runs — he was above most of them when it came to that sort of stuff.
But when it came down to actually shooting, to facing down an enemy and fighting for your own little square piece of airspace, he backed off. The last time, it had almost gotten Lobo killed.
But that was behind him now. The squadron seemed to be willing to let his past go, and God knows for what reason, Lobo Hanson had decided he was all right. So when she said take high position, his hands and feet moved to obey before he could even get out a question.
But what the carrier was saying was insane, wasn’t it? An attack on Pearl Harbor?
Impossible. Absolutely impossible. As he climbed to altitude, he found himself wondering just how many men had said that before.
“Twenty miles,” his backseater announced. “You got a visual?”
“Yeah, I got it.” The islands of Hawaii stretched out as green and gray lozenges on the horizon. Even from
