Piranha Firing Point

by Michael Dimercurio

  The photo survey done, he turned and flew back ahead of the Glenn, which was far east of the convoy’s position when it had met its fate.

  He prepared to lower the sonar dome, pessimistic that he would achieve results. The radios were out, making communications between his chopper and the Glenn impossible, but the captain evidently wanted to know what was ahead. If Robinson found anything he could classify as hostile, he could shoot it, but what of the 688s? He presumed they were much farther west, and by now the Glenn was tens of miles from the sinking position of the fleet. Any threats ahead of the ship would have to be hostile. Robinson had two torpedoes, and he was authorized to use them.

  He flew on, passing the Glenn, then five miles ahead hovered and deployed the AN/SQS-69 dipping sonar transducer, a sphere of hydrophones that he lowered into the water on a strong cable reel, the assembly capable of penetrating the surface thermal layer a couple hundred feet below. He streamed the dipper, the ball sinking steadily into the sea while he hovered fifty feet above the surface. He had to lean over to scan the display panel that his airman would normally have been searching. In passive listen-only mode, the display showed nothing visible. It was time to ping.

  He punched in the keystrokes to tell the system what he wanted, and when he was ready, the dipping sonar pinged hard. A high-power burst of sound reverberated through the sea, spreading out at sonic speed, trying to find anything to bounce off. The ocean bottom gave one return at the same frequency, the same note, as the transmission, but the dipper was listening for a higher or lower note, as would be returned by a moving object, for instance, a hostile sub.

  There was nothing. Robinson shrugged, knowing it was rare to catch a fish on the first cast. He pinged a few more times. Then he pulled in the dipper and flew ahead, another two miles, sank the ball, and hovered again.

  Robinson thought about the pilots he’d known on the ships of the convoy and about his friends on the John Glenn, and he wondered how many of them were now dead. He forced the thought from his mind, concentrating on the display, but the thoughts persisted. Would he and the Glenn survive to escape this mess? And if they did, what next?

  It didn’t matter, he harshly told himself. Find the sub in the water ahead, or better yet, find no sub, and let the Glenn escape. Please let the Glenn escape, his thought becoming a prayer.

  SS-405 earthquake Commander Ko Tsu watched his sonar panel with one eye and his navigator’s face on the display next to it with the other.

  “Looks like we have one that escaped, sir,” his navigator, Jin Lu, reported from the sensor console.

  “What have you got?”

  “Dual six-bladed screws, high-frequency tonals from one or more gas turbines, coming in from the west, bearing two seven two. This ship is a destroyer. Captain, John Paul Jones-class.”

  “Ship Control, take her up to twenty-five meters.”

  The deck tilted at a steep twenty-degree angle, forcing Ko back against his seat harness. “Mr. First, would you like to make a periscope approach?”

  Ko’s first officer. Lieutenant Commander Jinan Hsu, smiled, revealing buck teeth. “Yes, Captain, very much.”

  “Take the scope, then. I’ll watch from here.”

  The Earthquake had expended twenty-four torpedoes from the aft sector of the westward-bound convoy. Unlike the Arctic Storm, the Lightning Bolt, and the Thundercloud, which could all see their targets, his own position was to the east, and though he had had visual contact when the shooting began, by the time his first eight weapons were away he had been shooting blind, just putting torpedoes out the bearing line and hoping they connected to ship hulls. At first he directed the crew to count explosions, but his count, his navigator’s count, and the Second Captain’s count had come out different, all between one hundred and one hundred twenty explosions, but not enough to determine if they’d killed all the ships of the convoy.

  “Nav, any other ships?” he called. He had to watch his weapon load, perhaps even be ready to withdraw to the south and let Volcano and Tsunami take on the other escapers.

  “No, sir, just this one—wait, sir, higher-priority target, active-dipping sonar, correlates to a Seahawk antisub helicopter, bearing 280. I’ve got one, now two pings. Also very faint rotor noises. Sir, looks like he may be leapfrogging ahead of the destroyer contact.”

  “Designate the surface ship target WT-25, the chopper target number AT-1.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Captain, passing through one hundred meters, ship’s angle going to up ten.”

  “Very good. Mr. First, get ready on the scope. Ship Control, throttle to stop, come to ten clicks. Attention in control, men. I’ll be launching the Nagasaki in tube 25 down the bearing line, keeping the weapon in tube 26 warm and ready to go in case weapon 25 has a problem.

  Then we’ll shoot the chopper.”

  “Ten clicks, sir, ship’s depth fifty meters, angle up ten going up to five.”

  “Very good.” Ko looked at his panel, noting the ship was slowing to fifteen clicks. That was slow enough that his first officer could raise the periscope without fear of shearing it off. “Mr. First, raise your scope.” “Aye, sir,” he said, then told the Second Captain to raise the mast. With a stroke on the panel Ko brought up the view out the periscope, on the main display on the right column.

  “Twenty-five meters. Captain, ship’s angle flat.”

  “Very good. Ship Control. Weapons,” Ko called! “Apply power to tubes 25 and 26, and open bowcap doors.”

  “Aye, sir, 25 and 26 warming-up now.”

  “Open bowcaps 25 and 26.”

  “Opening now.”

  “Enable number one and two Darkwing missile tubes for low-altitude, low-speed target.”

  “Aye, sir,” from the weapons officer. Ko would target the chopper as soon as the number 25 torpedo was away, but he wanted the Darkwings ready in case the chopper detected him.

  “Weapons Officer, program 25 for ultraquiet swimout mode, low-speed transit.”

  “Aye, sir, programming now, bowcaps now open, 25 and 26.”

  “Very good.”

  The navigator spoke again, one hand on his headset.

  “Sir, new ping, bearing 287, target AT-1.”

  “Darkwings enabled, sir, missiles one and two,” the weapons officer called. ‘First, do you have an air search going? Train to 287.” ‘Yessir, on 287—” ‘Anything in high power?” ‘Not yet.” ‘Try high and ultrahigh power. Find that chopper.

  Weps, status of 25?”

  “Torpedo 25 is ready in all respects, sir, target bearing loaded in.” “Shoot 25.” “Second,” the weapons officer said, “shoot 25. Sir, tube 25 indicates weapon has cleared the tube in swimout mode.”

  “Captain, bow camera indicates weapon 25 away,” the navigator said.

  “Very good. First, the chopper?”

  “I’ve got something. Captain. Very distant, just a jumping speck in ultrahigh power.”

  “Keep on him. I want to try a laser-missile guide-in.

  Weps, program the Darkwing missile for a laser visual guide-in to the chopper.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Nav, torpedo 25 status?”

  “Captain, 25 is running normal at bearing 274, on bearing to target WT-25.” “Keep on it,” Ko said. Calmly he reached down to the side of his seat and withdrew a thermos of tea. Pouring it into an insulated cup, he replaced the thermos and took a sip of the steaming brew.

  “Chopper’s coming, sir,” Jinan Hsu reported from the periscope. The periscope display on Ko’s command console showed an image of a helicopter, the aircraft so distant that the power magnification caused it to jump around. Hadn’t these Japanese engineers figured out a way to stabilize that? Ko thought, annoyed.

  “Very good. First. Keep on him until we launch the Darkwing. We’ll monitor the surface target WT-25 on sonar.” “Sir, the chopper is in range,” Jinan said. “I recommend we shoot it now, then confirm the hit on the Jones-class destroyer.”

  �
�No, wait. If we shoot the Darkwing now, we can’t laser-guide it in. Just keep cool. First, he’s not going to hear us.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Torpedo running time, Weps?”

  “Eight minutes, sir.”

  “Nav, still have both the weapon and WT-25?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Nothing to do now but wait, gentlemen.”

  Ko sipped his tea, watching his displays.

  Robinson picked up the dipper and flew on another mile and a half. So far he’d detected nothing.

  He was unaware that as the dipper sphere came out of the water, a Nagasaki torpedo had sailed into detection range. He flew within a half mile of it as he progressed farther east, sanitizing the area for the USS John Glenn.

  Once he had put the dipper in, the screen immediately read something bearing west, behind him. He scanned the panel, disturbed, again missing his airman. Hurriedly he withdrew the dipper and flew back west toward the Glenn. He scanned the panel again, seeing that the frequency correlated to a highspeed water jet. It had to be a torpedo. The Glenn was under attack. He had to tell them, and the only way he could communicate with them was to fly close to the blown-out bridge and signal them to take evasive action.

  The Glenn was about five miles astern, still plowing through the waves heading east. It took only three minutes to close the distance to the destroyer, and when he was only halfway there, the officer on the bridge got the message. He put the rudder over hard to the left, the ship turning hard, rolling far to starboard. The ship steadied on course north, hoping to confuse the incoming torpedo. The warning to the Glenn complete, Robinson turned back to the east to try to find where the torpedo had come from. The enemy sub must be far away, he thought, or else he would have heard it on the dipper.

  He was a mile from the Glenn when he heard an explosion.

  The shock wave tossed the helicopter as though it were a toy. Robinson fought for control, a sinking feeling grabbing his gut, and he almost didn’t want to look back.

  The chopper came around, and in the sea a mile west, a ball of flame rose over what had once been the destroyer John Glenn. A white and orange and black mushroom cloud ascended slowly, flaming and burning.

  He could still see the wake of the ship leading north to the blast zone, but the ship was completely gone. The flames rose higher, blown eastward by the prevailing winds, and all Robinson could do was watch, dumbfounded, as his ship burned. The mushroom cloud rose high above him, at a thousand feet mostly dark smoke blowing up into the atmosphere.

  Angry and frightened, Robinson checked his fuel gauge. Onboard were two torpedoes, and if he could find the enemy sub, he could shoot it and put it down before he ran out of fuel. He had two full tanks of JP5.

  That should keep him up the few hours it would take to find this murdering bastard. He turned the chopper slowly to the east and flew on to a spot a mile beyond where he’d been. There he set up to hover and dropped the sphere.

  SS-405 earthquake

  “Captain, I think we should consider shooting AT-1.

  He’s coming back around and heading east. I think he’s mad.”

  “Let him come a little closer. I want you to have a clear view on low power.”

  “Low power, sir? He could get a shot off.”

  “Weps, we enabled in laser guide-in mode, Darkwings one and two?”

  “Yessir,” the weapons officer barked.

  “Wait, Mr. First.”

  The seconds clicked off, until the chopper stopped to hover, only a few kilometers away, and lowered his dipping sonar. The pulse of it was so loud that Ko Tsu could hear it with his naked ear. He smiled.

  “Mr. First, that’s close enough for me,” he said.

  “Weps, shoot Darkwing one. First, enable the laser and guide it in.”

  Driven by the steam gas generator at the base, the missile erupted from the fin-mounted missile tube pointed at the waves above.

  Still enclosed in its protective bubble of steam generated by the rocket motor inside the fin, the nose cone of the missile penetrated the surface. The two-meter-long missile burst into midair. Gravity momentarily took over from the impulse of the steam force, and the missile was starting to fall back toward the water when the low-G contact clicked in and the solid rocket fuel ignited in a full-thrust rush.

  The missile zoomed skyward, accelerating to three hundred clicks as it soared up to a height of a kilometer.

  As the weapon finished its ascent and turned downward, it found a laser signal from the periscope mast of the submarine. Then, much fainter, it received the laser signal bouncing off the target, which coincided with the heat from the target’s engine exhaust. The missile dived toward the target, accelerating to four hundred clicks, then five hundred as the target grew large in its seeker window. The exhaust nozzle was white-hot, and the missile arrowed straight for it. When the windshield of the target was within a meter of the missile nose cone, it detonated.

  Within milliseconds the missile metamorphosed into a growing white-hot fireball and blast shock wave. The explosion expanded until it enveloped the target, the vaporized helicopter joining the fireball.

  Robinson had just stopped to hover and drop the dipper, sensing somehow that he was getting closer.

  Just then a white exhaust trail of a missile climbed a thousand yards into the sky. Robinson watched it dumbly, slowly registering that the missile had come from nowhere, from a patch of featureless blue sea no different than the rest of the ocean. It rose so high that for a moment it was invisible, above the limit of his windshield view. Then he realized that it would be descending for him. He had to try to get away.

  He moved his hands on the collective and hit the rudder pedal. His finger stabbed the switch on the cyclic grip that would ditch the sonar dipper and free him to fly away. In the fraction of a second it took to do that, the white flame trail of the missile became visible again.

  The missile grew huge in his windshield.

  He never even felt the blast.

  As the fireball grew, encompassing the target in the orange flames, pieces of helicopter flew off into space and fell toward the sea.

  Among the parts were the highspeed rotors, which detached from the hub and hurtled horizontally away from the wreck. The tail had been sheared off, and it fell end over end to the sea, just fifty feet below, splashing into the white foam and sinking. Most of the rest of the helicopter was unrecognizable molten or flaming chunks of aircraft.

  One of the chunks falling to the sea was a scorched flight helmet reading lt. b. robinson uss john glenn.

  Inside the helmet was a black mass, burned and crusty, beige bone showing through burned flesh. The helmet tumbled until it hit the water. It splashed and floated at the surface for a few seconds, then sank to the sea floor 850 fathoms below.

  “Helicopter AT-1 is down. Captain,” the first officer said.

  “Anything at the bearing to the surface contact, WT-25?”

  “Yes, Captain, a column of smoke, maybe two kilometers high.”

  “Nav, any sonar detect at the previous bearing to WT-25?”

  “No, sir, the destroyer is gone. We’re alone again.”

  “Very good. Everyone, relax. We’ll wait here at battle stations for any more surface contacts and the 688s. If we don’t have anything in an hour, we’ll secure. Mr. First, what did you think?”

  “Fantastic, Captain. This ship is simply amazing.”

  If only it had more torpedoes, Ko Tsu thought.

  “That it is, Mr. First,” was all he said.

  USS annapolis, SSN-760

  The first explosion was so loud in Demeers’ headset that he was certain his eardrums had ruptured. He hurled the headset to the deck, clapping both his hands to his ears.

  Water was running furiously in his eyes and down his nose.

  He shook his head to clear it, his ears ringing and useless. His main display he turned to broadband waterfall, which showed reverberations throughout the bearing
s of the sea. He pulled up “the onion,” the broadband receiver towed from a mile-long cable coming out of the starboard towed-array tube mounted on the top of the starboard sternplane vertical stabilizer. The BSY4ON41B stern-facing sonar set was designed to give them a warning of a torpedo inbound from directly astern, in their cone of deafness, the baffles. The onion was named because of its teardrop shape, the aft half of it hemispherical.

  The onion display flashed up, the aft bearings turning into a loud sonar blueout, which meant there was so much broadband noise that nothing could be heard through it. For a half second Demeers wondered where Captain Patton was until he realized that for some time he had been standing right behind Demeers’ shoulder, looking at the displays.

  Demeers’ voice was unrecognizable and almost inaudible when he tried to speak to the captain. “Trouble at the convoy.” Patton said something Demeers didn’t catch and vanished.

  In the control room, Patton rushed up the steps to the elevated periscope stand and grabbed the stainless steel handrail. He took a quick look around. Then orders poured from his mouth to the officer of the deck, Kurt Horburg.

  “Offsa’deck, man battle stations. I have the conn.

  Helm, left one degree rudder, steady course east. Sonar, Captain, coming around to the east. Quartermaster, log that the captain suspects the convoy has come under attack and is returning east to investigate and, if possible, counterattack. OOD, flood tubes one through four and warm up weapons one through four.”

  The deck tilted far to the right, then back to the left as the ship went through its flank-run snap roll, reversing course. There was a flurry of acknowledgments, except from sonar. Patton shook his head. Demeers had hurt his ears, and who knew how much that would paralyze them?

  “OOD, mark range to the convoy.”

  “Captain, leading aircraft carrier generated-solution range is twenty-four nautical miles. Our ETA is thirty-five minutes from now, sir.”