They had been hastily drilled in the basic operations, but the Stingers were too scarce to be used for practice. Hamish had never actually fired one.
One hundred yards away, the radar dish came to life, rotating back and forth as it searched for its target. From the little he had picked up from listening to the radar technicians, he knew that it was now locked on the other aircraft, working out a targeting solution.
Suddenly it occurred to him that his instructors had been oddly vague on this particular point. The Stinger, he knew, was on its own once it left the launch tube. Nothing he could say or do would influence its track. Even if he were to drop dead the moment after he fired it, it would still continue on.
All this sprang through his mind in a matter of seconds, and it went against every bit of training he’d been given. It should have been so obvious — just as the knowledge of how his sister had died should have been, had he bothered to look at the facts and to ask the right questions.
The battery of missiles beside him erupted into flames and fire, and two missiles shoved themselves out of the launch tubes on a piston of compressed air, their tail ends a mass of smoke and fire. They seemed to hang in the air for a microsecond, and then picked up speed so rapidly they almost vanished before his eyes. He held his fire, waiting — was it possible his Stinger could hit one of their own missiles and undo the very thing they were trying to accomplish? Another question that had not occurred to him before this moment.
Unfortunately, Hamish had no more time to worry about unanswered questions. Perhaps it was a blessing that the radar and the missile launch distracted him from what was about to come, sparing him those moments of certain knowledge that he would die.
When he finally turned back to face the missile, it was to find that it was only a few hundred yards away, a distance it covered in less than a second. Its hungry seeker head slammed into the antenna, detonating with a shock that radiated into the ground. The impact was physical as well as aural, shock waves radiating out from it, smashing into his eardrums with a pressure gradient that popped them like a balloon. The pressure slammed Hamish into the sandbag side of his post with sufficient force to dislodge three rows of sandbags. He lay on his back sprawled across the coarsely woven sandbag fabric, and instinctively tried to pull himself into a sitting position. But just as he did, the wave of the blast reached him, carrying with it shards of metal and cinder block, a deadly hail. The shrapnel drove through the sandbags, knocking off more of them, and sending them tumbling down to the desert below and returning the sand to its natural environment. The shrapnel passed even more easily through Hamish’s body, the first fragment slicing the edge of his neck, the next five penetrating his chest and exiting through the back. Hamish sucked in air, his mind still processing the sight of the missile just a few hundred yards away, still wondering whether or not he would live. The answer was, unfortunately for him, no.
He lay sprawled on the pale sand, the blood from his wounds no longer flowing vigorously since his heart stopped. Although the first piece of shrapnel had not entirely severed his head, his subsequent trip through the air had enlarged the jagged gash, virtually decapitating him. Had Hamish been in a position to observe himself, he would have noticed that he looked peculiarly like his sister the night his father had brought her home for the last time.
TWENTY-FOUR
“Evasive maneuvers! Countermeasures!” Coyote banged on the plotting table with his fist, glaring at Bethlehem. “Damn it, woman, don’t you know what you’re supposed to do?”
A shocked, horrified silence filled the bridge for just a moment, and then the watch team resumed the terse patter that always characterizes dire emergencies. Captain Bethlehem, for her part, stared at Coyote, her face impassive. Time seemed to stop, although in reality it could have been no more than a few seconds. Finally, she spoke. “Officer of the deck — hard right rudder. Starboard engines back, port engines ahead full.”
She listened as the officer of the deck repeated back her orders, her gaze never leaving Coyote’s face. He stared back in stone silence, then howled, “No! You’re taking her right back toward the torpedo!”
“On the bridge wing, Admiral. Now.” Without waiting to see if he followed, Captain Bethlehem stepped away from the table and walked the long distance to the port bridge wing, her footsteps soft but steady on the linoleum. “Officer of the deck — you have your orders.” She swung the catch open and stepped out, finally turning to see if Coyote was following.
Swearing softly, Coyote ran across the bridge and stepped out. “Do you realize what you’re doing? How in God’s name you ever managed to get command of the ship I’ll never know, but you’re the one who’s going to have to live with what you’ve done.”
“I’ll say this once, Admiral. Right now, I don’t have time to pamper your ego.” Bethlehem’s face was molten steel. “This is my ship — it has been since the moment I read my orders to these people. It’s not yours anymore. I will explain myself this once — no questions, no explanations. The turning radius of the ship is such that if I followed your suggestion, the torpedo would hit the ship in the port quarter. It would no doubt do serious damage to engineering. We would lose at least the port shafts, maybe one of the starboard. There is no way — no way — that we would avoid the torpedo. None. And you know it. What I have done is to turn the ship so that the torpedo will hit in the fourth section. If you were paying attention, I ordered that section of the ship evacuated. There may be casualties — yes. But the ship will be able to continue fighting and to launch aircraft. Now, by your leave, I’m a little busy right now.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned abruptly and went back into the ship.
Coyote was enraged. He started after her, intending to throttle her with his bare hands. Then, as he looked at the pale, horrified faces of the men and women on the bridge, he stopped. Captain Bethlehem stood among them, and it was clear from the way they closed ranks around her that they were prepared to protect her. That they were her crew, not his.
“All hands brace for shock,” Bethlehem said, her voice calm and collected. The boatswains echoed her orders over the 1MC.
Coyote grabbed the left side of the plotting table and braced himself against it, leaning toward the port side.
Rabies put the S-3 into a hard dive, then pulled her up abruptly into level flight. “Where is she?”
“Headed for the oil rig,” his TECO said.
“Viking 701, you are weapons-free on hostile submarine contact,” a voice said over tactical.
“Too late,” Rabies shouted, frustrated beyond reason. “Damn it,
“701, be advised that you are weapons-free on this contact regardless of location,” the voice said firmly. “We see where she is — the admiral says go ahead anyway.”
“Our probability of kill isn’t good,” his TECO said.
“It’s zero if we don’t take a shot,” Rabies answered. “If nothing else, maybe that damned oil rig will fall on her and crush her. Fire one.”
There was a click as the torpedo was released from the wing, and a slight jolt as the S-3 was suddenly light on that side. Rabies corrected automatically for the shift in the center of gravity.
“Splash,” his enlisted technician said. “Torpedo is hot and sweet — gaining contact — he has her.” The crew compartment echoed with the sounds of the torpedo seeker head, the sonar pings coming closer together, the torpedo hungry for its contact. “Ten seconds,” his technician said. “Nine, eight, seven…”
“Six, five, four…”
