by Tom Clancy
They watched it depart, the stuttering rotor sound diminishing on the breeze.
“What was that all about?” Edwards asked his sergeant.
“Beats the hell out of me, skipper. I think we better boogie on outa here. They were sure as hell looking for something, and I’ll betcha it’s us. Let’s keep to places with some kind of cover.”
“You got it, Jim. Lead off.” Edwards walked back to Vigdis.
“Is safe now?”
“They’ve gone. Why don’t you keep that jacket on. It makes you harder to spot.”
It was two sizes too large for Edwards, and looked like a tent on Vigdis’s diminutive frame. She held her arms out straight in an effort to get her hands out of the sleeves, and for the first time since he met her, Vigdis Agustdottir smiled.
USS PHARRIS
“All ahead one-third,” the executive officer ordered.
“All ahead one-third, aye,” the quartermaster of the watch responded, moving the annunciator handle up from the Ahead Full setting. A moment later the inside pointer changed also. “Engine room answers all ahead one-third.”
“Very well.”
Pharris slowed, coming off a twenty-five-knot sprint to commence another drift maneuver, and allowing her towed-array sonar to listen for hostile submarines. Morris was in his bridge chair, going over messages from shore. He rubbed his eyes and lit up another Pall Mall.
“Bridge,” called the urgent voice of a lookout. “Periscope feather on the port bow! Halfway to the horizon, port bow!” Morris snatched his binoculars from the holder and had them to his eyes in an instant. He didn’t see anything.
“Battle stations!” ordered the XO. The alarm gong went off a second later and weary men ran again to their posts. Morris looped his binoculars around his neck and ran down the ladder to his battle station in CIC.
The sonar loosed a dozen ranging pings to port as Morris took his position in CIC. Nothing. The helo lifted off as the frigate maneuvered north, allowing her towed-array sonar to track on the possible contact.
“Passive sonar contact, evaluate as possible submarine bearing zero-one-three,” announced the towed-array operator. “Steam noises, sounds like a possible nuke.”
“I got nothing there,” said the active-sonar operator.
Morris and his ASW officer examined the water-conditions board. There was a layer at two hundred feet. The passive sonar was below it, and could well be hearing a submarine that the active pings could not reach. The lookout might have seen anything from a spouting whale—this was the mating season for humpbacks—to a streak of foam . . . or the feathery wake left by a periscope. If it was a submarine, he had plenty of time to duck under the layer. The target was too close to be bottom-bounced and too far for the sonar to blast directly through the layer.
“Less than five miles,” ASW said. “More than two. If this is a sub, we’re up against a good one.”
“Great. Get the helo on him right now!” Morris examined the plot. The submarine could have heard his frigate as it sprinted at twenty-five knots. Now, at reduced speed, and with Prairie/Masker operating, Pharris would be very hard to detect . . . so the sub’s fire-control solution had probably just gone out the window. But Morris didn’t have one either, and the submarine was perilously close. An urgent contact report was radioed to the screen commander twenty miles away.
The Sea Sprite dropped a pattern of sonobuoys. Minutes passed.
“I got a weak signal on number six and a medium on number four,” the sonobuoy petty officer said. Morris watched the plot. That made the contact less than three miles off.
“Drop some pingers,” he ordered. Behind him the ship’s weapons officer ordered the arming of the ASROC and torpedo launchers. Three miles off, the helicopter turned and swept across the target area, dropping three CASS buoys this time, which sent out active, nondirectional pings.
“Contact, a strong contact on buoy nine. Classify as possible submarine.”
“I got him, bearing zero-one-five—this one’s a sub, classify as positive submarine contact,” said the towed-array man. “He just increased power. Some cavitation sounds. Single-screw submarine, maybe a Victor-class, bearing changing rapidly left-to-right.”
The active sonar still didn’t have him despite continuous maximum-power pings down the correct line of bearing. The submarine was definitely under the layer.
Morris wanted to maneuver but decided against it. A radical turn would cause his towed-array sonar to curve, rendering it useless for several minutes. Then he would have to depend on sonobuoys alone, and Morris trusted his towed sonar more than the buoys.
“Bearing to contact is now zero-one-five and steady . . . noise level is down somewhat.” The operator pointed at his screen. Morris was surprised. The contact bearing had been changing rapidly and was now steadied down?
The helicopter made yet another pass. A new sonobuoy registered the contact, but the MAD gear didn’t confirm the presence of a submarine and the contact was fading. The noise level continued to drop. Morris watched the relative position of the contact pass aft. What the hell was this character doing?
“Periscope, starboard bow!” the talker reported.
“Wrong place, sir . . . unless we’re looking at a noisemaker,” the operator said.
The ASW officer had the active sonar change bearing and the results were immediate.
“Contact bearing three-four-five, range fifteen hundred yards!” A bright pip glowed on the sonar scope.
“All ahead flank!” Morris yelled. Somehow the submarine had evaded the towed sonar, then popped up atop the layer and run up his periscope. That could only mean one thing. “Right full rudder.”
“Hydrophone effects—torpedoes inbound, bearing three-five-one!”
Instantly the weapons officer ordered the launch of an antisubmarine torpedo down the same bearing in the hope that it would disturb the attacking submarine. If the Russian’s torpedoes were wire-guided, he’d have to cut the wires free to maneuver the sub clear of the American return shot.
Morris raced up the ladder to the bridge. Somehow the submarine had broken contact and maneuvered into firing position. The frigate changed course and speed in an attempt to ruin the submarine’s fire-control solution.
“I see one!” the XO said, pointing over the bow. The Soviet torpedo left a visible white trail on the surface. Morris noted it, something he had not expected. The frigate turned rapidly.
“Bridge, I show two torpedoes, bearing constant three-five-zero and decreasing range,” the tactical action officer said rapidly. “Both are pinging at us. The Nixie is operating.”
Morris lifted a phone. “Report the situation to the escort commander.”
“Done, skipper. Two more helos are heading this way.”
Pharris was now doing twenty knots and accelerating, turning her stem to the torpedoes. Her helicopter was now aft of the beam, frantically making runs with its magnetic anomaly detector, trying to locate the Soviet sub.
The torpedo’s wake crossed past the frigate’s bow as Morris’s ship kept her helm over. There was an explosion aft. White water leaped a hundred feet into the air as the first Russian “fish” collided with the nixie torpedo decoy. But they had only one nixie deployed. There was another torpedo out there.
“Left full rudder!” Morris told the quartermaster. “Combat, what about the contact?” The frigate was now doing twenty-five knots.
“Not sure, sir. The sonobuoys have our torp but nothing else.”
“We’re gonna take a hit,” the XO said. He pointed to a white trail on the water, less than two hundred yards away. It must have missed the frigate on its first try, then turned for another. Homing torpedoes kept looking until they ran out of fuel.
There was nothing Morris could do. The torpedo was approaching on his port bow. If he turned right, it would only give the fish a larger target. Below him the ASROC launcher swung left toward the probable location of the submarine, but without an order to fire, all the ope
rator could do was train it out. The white wake kept getting closer. Morris leaned over the rail, staring at it with mute rage as it extended like a finger toward his bow. It couldn’t possibly miss now.
“That’s not real smart, Cap’n.” Bosun Clarke’s hand grabbed Morris’s shoulder and yanked him down to the deck. He was just grabbing for the executive officer when it hit.
The impact lifted Morris a foot off the steel deck. He didn’t hear the explosion, but an instant after he had bounced off the steel a second time, he was deluged with a sheet of white water that washed him against a stanchion. His first thought was that he’d been thrown overboard. He rose to see his executive officer—headless, slumped against the pilothouse door. The bridge wing was torn apart, the stout metal shielding ripped by fragments. The pilothouse windows were gone. What he saw next was worse.
The torpedo had struck the frigate just aft of the bow-mounted sonar. Already the bow had collapsed, the keel sundered by the explosion. The foc’s’l was awash, and the horrible groaning of metal told him that the bow was being ripped off his ship. Morris staggered into the bridge and yanked the annunciator handle to All Stop, failing to notice that the engineers had already stopped engines. The ship’s momentum pushed her forward. As Morris watched, the bow twisted to starboard, ten degrees off true, and the forward gunmount became awash, its crew trying to head aft. Below the mount were other men. Morris knew that they were dead, hoped that they had died instantly, and were not drowning, trapped in a sinking steel cage. His men. How many had their battle stations forward of the ASROC launcher?
Then the bow tore away. A hundred feet of the ship left the remainder to the accompaniment of screeching metal. It turned as he watched, colliding with the afterpart of the ship as it rotated in the water like a small berg. There was movement at an exposed watertight door. He saw a man try to get free, and succeed, the figure jumping into the water and swimming away from the wallowing bow.
The bridge crew was alive, all cut by flying glass but at their posts. Chief Clarke took a quick look at the pilothouse, then ran below to assist with damage control. The damage-control parties were already racing forward with fire hoses and welding gear, and at damage-control central the men examined the trouble board to see how severe the flooding was. Morris lifted a sound-powered phone and twisted the dial to this compartment.
“Damage-control report!”
“Flooding aft to frame thirty-six, but I think she’ll float—for a little while anyway. No fires. Waiting for reports now.”
Morris switched settings on the phone. “Combat, radio the screen commander that we’ve taken a hit and need assistance.”
“Done, sir. Gallery’s heading out this way. Looks like the sub got away. They’re still searching for her. We have some shock damage here. All the radars are down. Bow sonar is out. ASROC is out. The tail is still working, though, and the Mark-32 mounts still work. Wait—screen commander’s sending us a tug, sir.”
“Okay, you have the conn. I’m going below to look at the damage.” You have the conn, Morris thought. How do you conn a ship that ain’t moving? A minute later he was at a bulkhead, watching men trying to shore it up with lumber.
“This one’s fairly solid, sir, the next one forward’s leaking like a damn sieve, no way we’ll patch it all. When the bow let go, it must have twisted everything loose.” The officer grabbed a seaman by the shoulder. “Go to the after D/C locker and get more four-by-fours!”
“Will this one hold?”
“I don’t know. Clarke is checking the bottom out now. We’ll have to weld in some patches and stiffeners. Give me about ten minutes and I’ll tell you if she’ll float or not.”
Clarke appeared. He was breathing heavily. “The bulkhead’s sprung at the tank tops, and there’s a small crack, too. Leaking pretty good. The pumps are on, and just about keeping even. I think we can shore it up, but we have to hustle.”
The damage-control officer led the welders below at once. Two men appeared with a portable pump. Morris ordered them below.
“How many men missing?” Morris asked Chief Clarke. He was holding his arm strangely.
“All the guys made it out of the five-inch mount, but I haven’t seen anybody from belowdecks. Shit, I think I broke something myself.” Clarke looked at his right arm and shook his head angrily. “I don’t think many guys made it outa the bow, sir. The watertight doors are twisted some, they gotta be jammed tight.”
“Get that arm looked at,” Morris ordered.
“Oh, fuck the arm, skipper! You need me.” The man was right. Morris went back topside with Clarke behind him.
On reaching the bridge, Morris dialed up engineering. The noise on the phone answered his first question.
The engineer spoke over the hiss of escaping steam. “Shock damage, Captain. We got some ruptured steam pipes on the number one boiler. I think number two will still work, but I’ve popped the safeties on both just in case. The diesel generators are on line. I got some hurt men here. I’m sending them out. I—okay, okay. We just did a check of number two boiler. A few minor leaks, but we can fix ’em quick. Otherwise everything looks pretty tight. I can have it back on line in fifteen minutes.”
“We need it.” Morris hung up.
Pharris lay dead in the water. With the safety valves opened, steam vented onto the massive stack structure, giving off a dreadful rasping sound that seemed like the ship’s own cry of pain. The frigate’s sleek clipper bow had been replaced by a flat face of torn metal and hanging wires. The water around the ship was foul with oil from ruptured fuel tanks. For the first time Morris noticed that the ship was down by the stern; when he stood straight, the ship was misaligned. He knew he had to wait for another damage-control report. As with an accident victim, the prognosis depended on the work of surgeons, and they could not be rushed or disturbed. He lifted the phone to CIC.
“Combat, Bridge. What’s the status of that submarine contact?”
“Gallery’s helo dropped on it, but the torp ran dry without hitting anything. Looks like he ran northeast, but we haven’t had anything for about five minutes. There’s an Orion in the area now.”
“Tell them to check inside of us. This character isn’t going to run away unless he has to. He might be running in, not out. Tell the screen commander.”
“Aye, Cap’n.”
He hadn’t hung the phone up when it buzzed.
“Captain speaking.”
“She’ll float, sir,” the damage-control officer said at once. “We’re patching the bulkhead now. It won’t be tight, but the pumps can handle the leakage. Unless something else goes bad on us, we’ll get her home. They sending the tug out to us?”
“Yes.”
“If we get a tow, sir, it better be sternfirst. I don’t want to think about trying to run this one into a seaway.”
“Right.” Morris looked at Clarke. “Get a gang of men aft. We’ll be taking the tow at the stern, rig it up. Have them launch the whaleboat to look for survivors. I saw at least one man in the water. And get a sling on that arm.”
“You got it, Cap’n.” Clarke moved aft.
Morris went to CIC and found a working radio.
“X-Ray Alfa, this is Pharris,” Morris called to the screen commander.
“State your condition.”
“We took one hit forward, the bow is gone all the way to the ASROC launcher. We cannot maneuver. I can keep her afloat unless we hit some bad weather. Both boilers currently down, but we should have power back in less than ten minutes. We have casualties, but I don’t know how many or how bad yet.
“Commodore, we got hit by a nuke boat, probably a Victor. Unless I miss my guess, he’s headed your way.”
“We lost him, but he was heading out,” the Commodore said.
“Start looking inside, sir,” Morris urged. “This fellow got to knife-fighting range and pulled a beautiful number on us. This one isn’t going to run away for long, he’s too damned good for that.”
The Commodor
e thought that one over briefly. “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind. Gallery’s en route to you. What other assistance do you need?”
“You need Gallery more than we do. Just send us the tug,” Morris answered. He knew that the submarine wouldn’t be coming back to finish the kill. He’d accomplished that part of his mission. Next, he’d try to kill some merchants.
“Roger that. Let me know if you need anything else. Good luck, Ed.”
“Thank you, sir. Out.”
Morris ordered his helo to drop a double ring of sonobuoys around his ship just in case. Then the Sea Sprite found three men in the water, one of them dead. The whaleboat recovered them, allowing the helo to rejoin the convoy. It was assigned to Gallery, which took Pharris’s station as the convoy angled south.
Below, welders worked their gear in waist-deep saltwater as they struggled to seal off the breaks in the frigate’s watertight bulkheads. The task lasted nine hours, then the pumps drained the water from the flooded compartments.
Before they had finished, the fleet tug Papago pulled alongside the frigate’s square stern. Chief Clarke supervised as a stout towing wire was passed across and secured. An hour later, the tug was pulling the frigate on an easterly course at four knots, backwards to protect the damaged bow. Morris ordered his towed-array sonar to be strung over the bow, trailing it out behind to give them some small defense capability. Several extra lookouts were posted to watch for periscopes. It would be a slow, dangerous trip back home.
28
Breakthroughs
STENDAL, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
“Be careful, Pasha.”
