“Quzwini, raise the snort mast.”
Quzwini took the cover off a hydraulic control valve, careful to keep any leakage inside the cover from spilling on the deck. He grabbed the knob of the valve lever and pushed it up and to the right, then locked it into position. A hiss and a thunk sounded from the overhead as the high-pressure hydraulic oil forced the snort mast out of the fin and extended it high over the hull.
Ten meters above the command module, the submarine’s fin neared the surface in an attempt to reach the air, to bring it into the ship to feed the hungry diesel. The snort mast, a pipe with a water-sensing valve at the top, pointed to the waves, finally broaching the surface and extending toward the night sky.
“Control, Quzwini, snort mast is up.”
“Depth is two seven meters.”
“Mast is broached. Draining the induction manifold.”
Quzwini manipulated several more hydraulic controllers that operated large shutoff valves in the piping from the snort mast to the diesel engine induction. He was careful, since flooding the diesel with seawater would ruin their chances of restarting his reactor in the next minutes. He lifted a metal cover from a high-pressure air station and operated a valve that would blow out the water from the exhaust piping. Finally the engine was ready. He hit an air valve that rolled the massive engine, ensuring the bearings were lubricated with oil before he started the diesel. He reached below the panel and pulled a plastic cover off an electrical knife switch, the circuit connected to several car batteries housed inside the console, the electricity that would energize the field coils of the generator and allow it to produce power. He rotated the knife switch, flashing the field, then smashed his palm against the start button set in the air-control valve manifold.
Immediately the high-pressure air flowed loudly into the diesel intake manifold and turned the machine, the heavy engine accelerating slowly until it was at speed. Quzwini, going more by feel than any operating procedure, stabbed another air-control valve, commencing diesel engine fuel injection, hoping the engine would continue to roll. Its own compression would have cylinder temperatures high enough for ignition. Reaching again by feel, he cut off the high-pressure starting air just as he heard the engine roar to life, the sound loud even though the beast was three compartments aft. The deck trembled as the machine came up to speed, the sound violent and painful. He watched the output voltage meter, coaxing the machine under his breath, watching the needle rise from the zero peg and climb steadily until it stopped at 250 volts. Quzwini wiped his forehead with his sleeve. The diesel had made it up. Normally he would nurse the engine, giving it twenty minutes to heat up and stabilize the bearing oil temperatures and jacket water outlet, but this was no training exercise.
He popped a cover off a large electrical breaker and punched the red button marked close, then watched the battery bus voltage meter needle zip up to 250 volts. Up on the main panel he checked the engine speed and diesel voltage.
The engine had held now that it was loaded with the current drain of the dead battery. He stood and walked forward along the panels of the Yokogawa Second Captain supercomputer until he reached the 400-hertz motor generator control cubicle, one of the power generators for the computers.
He shut its breaker and shone his flashlight on its voltage and current meters. The motor generator set came up to speed in the steam module compartment, supplying the computers with their odd 400-cycle AC power. He stepped to the 120-volt 60-cycle panel and performed the same function for the computer’s 60-cycle power generator. When it came up to speed he shut a breaker and reported to the control room that they could restart the Second Captain. He took a walk back to look at the diesel panel, scanning its instruments one last time. Time to get back to the control room and restart the reactor.
He grabbed his battle lantern and started the walk. By the time he reached the stairs, the overhead lights had come back on. He hurried back to the control room’s aft starboard corner, acknowledging Sharef’s smile, then sat in the control seat. The reactor core display took some time coming up on the console, but finally the Second Captain had warmed up and the display showed core status. Quzwini selected the electrical distribution network on an adjacent console and pointed to his subordinate to energize the main ship service AC motor generator set. Lieutenant Kutaiba, the propulsion officer, brought the machine up, energizing the high-voltage AC bus network. Quzwini now had power to his control rod drive motors, and he stabbed the soft response key that was configured to commence reactor startup.
Two modules aft, in the reactor bay, the rod drive motors began pulling control rods out of the uranium core, the power module that had once been eyed by Sihoud as raw material for his desired nuclear weapon, but the fuel would have taken over a year to reprocess with an entire reprocessing plant to isolate the uranium — the reprocessing plant itself would have taken over a year to build, so Sihoud had left the Japanese-constructed core alone and searched for nuclear weapon material elsewhere.
Within three minutes the core was in the power range, the steam headers were warm, and Quzwini had begun spinning up the turbine generators. As soon as he brought the first electrical turbine onto the grid he shot orders at Kutaiba to secure the snorting operation. The diesel engine aft shut down, the absence of its reassuring roar making the ship unnaturally quiet. There was a clunking noise as he lowered the snort mast. Quzwini continued bringing the power module up, finally putting the propulsion turbine generators online.
He turned to Sharef.
“Sir, the plant is back, propulsion AC motor is ready.”
“Dead slow ahead, dive to 500 meters,” Sharef ordered.
He left his spot behind Quzwini and turned to al-Kunis in the sensor area. “Find the submarine as soon as you can. Weapons officer, reapply power to the Nagasaki torpedoes in tubes one through five.”
* * *
Hillsworth shook his head as he held his headset’s earphone to his skull.
“Conn, Sonar, Target One has shut down, last bearing one three eight. I still have four units between bearings one three five and one four zero, all four in reattack mode. And sir, I’m getting diesel engine noises from astern, edge of the starboard baffles.”
In the control room Daminski stared at the firing panel.
The weapons that still had their wires connected had acquired on the target, gotten close enough to go to final warhead arming, then lost the target and gone into reattack. Not one detonation. And now sonar reported a loss of the target and a diesel engine noise from astern. From behind them.
Daminski turned to look at Kristman, ideas forming themselves in his mind, all of them colliding and sparking as they swooped through his head.
The torpedoes went into reattack close to the target. Both passive and active homers. Reattack. Couldn’t find the target. Target shuts down. Diesel engine startup from the baffles.
“Cut the wires tubes three and four, shut the outer doors, drain the tubes and reload one through four!” Daminski shouted to Hackle, his voice oddly loud, as if he had become half-deaf. “Helm, right five degrees rudder, all ahead one third!”
“What is it, sir?”
“Fucker fooled us with a god damned decoy, that’s what. That’s why the units kept going into reattack. They can’t get a proximity signal on a decoy. Now that asshole is snorkeling from his launch position — must have shut down his reactor to run silent and something went wrong, tripped a battery breaker. Hackle, get those torpedoes loaded and open the outer doors, tubes one and two. Helm, steady course one four five. Attention in the firecontrol team. The diesel engine is redesignated Target Two. Target One is a decoy and will be dropped from firecontrol. Give me a two-minute leg to Target Two before we maneuver, then we’ll shoot another salvo at him. Carry on.”
“Conn, Sonar,” Hillsworth’s voice shouted, “diesel engine transients designated Target Two have shut down. Loss of Target Two, last bearing, three one five.”
“Status of the tubes. Hackle!”
“Sir, we’ve drained down and are loading a Mark 50 into tube one now, it’ll be another three minutes before we’re connected and spun up.”
“Goddamn it. Get those fish loaded.”
Daminski was furious at himself for leaving the tubes unloaded.
It would take five minutes to warm up the weapon gyros and shoot them, if he had a firecontrol solution, which he didn’t with Target Two shutting down.
“Sonar, Conn, what’s the status of Target Two?”
“Still nothing, sir.”
“Son of a bitch.”
* * *
“Regained contact on the Coalition sub, Commodore. He’s maneuvering. Towed array range is crude but workable at eight kilometers. We have the target bearing and range set into the torpedoes in one through five.”
“Status of the weapons?” Sharef asked.
“Nagasaki torpedoes warmed up, bow caps open, target solution programmed, sir.”
Sharef nodded. “Shoot tubes one through five.”
“Firing one …”
The deck trembled with the power of the tube launch.
Four more times the deckplates vibrated. Finally, Ahmed thought, Sharef was fighting back.
“Tube launches complete, tubes two through five and seven,” al-Kunis reported. “All weapons running normally.”
“Ship control, turn to three four zero, ahead sixty percent, maintain depth 500 meters.”
“Yes sir, turning to three four zero, sixty percent.”
“Shut the bow caps on one through five, warm up six and seven and flood the tubes.”
Ahmed watched, approving.
* * *
The first Nagasaki torpedo left the tube under the pressure of a gas generator at the breech end. Some moments before it had been divorced from the electrical power from the mother ship. The tube had fed in the target’s data as well as the run speed and search pattern to be used on the target. The expanding gases at the base of the tube pushed on the aft end of the weapon, hard, pushing it into the cool curtain of the Mediterranean water. As the elliptical head of the torpedo left the envelope of the submarine’s bow, the water flowed into a duct set low in the weapon’s nose, spinning a small water turbine on jeweled bearings. The turbine generated a minute current in a generator that energized a small electromagnet in a relay; the magnet shut the relay contact in the engine start logic circuit, providing the computer with a signal to start the weapon’s engine.
The pressurized peroxide fuel flowed out of the opened fuel solenoid valve into the combustion chamber, expanding into vapors as it entered the annular-shaped chamber with the ring of spark plugs. The plugs arced from the high-voltage current of the onboard battery, igniting the peroxide vapors, which soared in temperature at the inlet vanes of the axial turbine in the aft end of the torpedo. The gases spun the turbine and passed out the flapper exhaust valve into the surrounding sea. The spinning turbine turned a shaft connected to a ducted water jet propulsor, similar to the larger unit of the Hegira. The torpedo accelerated to its shallow depth cruising speed on the intercept course to the target, its sonar ears listening hard for the sounds of a gear-driven screw.
* * *
“Conn, Sonar! Torpedo in the water, bearing three one nine! Second launch, two torpedoes — no three — Conn, Sonar, we have multiple torpedoes in the water, all screws cavitating!”
“Helm, all ahead flank! Maneuvering cavitate!” Daminski shouted. “Dive, make your depth one three hundred feet. Off’sa’deck, load Mark 21 evasion devices in fore and aft signal ejectors. Helm, right half degree rudder, steady course one three zero.”
Daminski watched the control room crew follow his orders until the ship was on course, running from the incoming torpedoes. This was a moment he had dreaded — at the business end of an enemy torpedo with nothing to do but run and hope they ran out of fuel. His stomach filled with acid.
“Conn, Sonar, how many torpedoes?”
“Sir, five torpedoes. Bearing rate zero. They’re getting louder. Captain.”
Daminski, in spite of trying to keep his mind from the memory, had been in this position before, but always in the attack simulators in Norfolk and Groton, rooms set up to look exactly like 688-class control rooms, with the same attack-center consoles and plots, a room adjacent to the simulator the sonar display room. If the overhead lights were blacked out, a crew could almost believe they were in an actual control room fighting the targets that appeared as diamond symbols on the firecontrol consoles. In the simulators, the computer “target” frequently fired torpedoes at the at tacking submarine, turning hunter into prey, testing the approach officer’s wits to see how well he could evade the torpedoput the incoming weapon in the baffles due astern, or on the baffle edge if he wanted to be fancy and track it on broadband sonar and run at flank speed.
The reason Daminski hoped to forget was compelling. He had been shot at by the computer over twenty times in the last five years. In those twenty times, his ship had never survived. The computer’s torpedoes always killed him. In the postattack mop-ups he had always wanted to know why the counterattacks were so lethal … “Maybe you’re getting too close to the guy. Commander,” a firecontrol chief had told him. “Shoot him from a longer range and if he shoots back the torpedoes might run out of fuel.”
“Yeah, and he’ll hear mine and evade. I don’t think so.”
“Suit yourself, sir.”
“Does anyone else survive being shot at? Any of these other 688-jockeys on the Norfolk piers? Guys who shoot further out?”
“You want to know the truth, sir?”
“Give it to me straight. Chief,” Daminski had asked, wondering if his own tactics were truly flawed. “Commander, nobody survives. Unless the torpedo coming at you is so far off your bearing that it goes the wrong way, or so grossly flawed that it won’t detonate, or a long way away when you first hear it, that’s it. A sixty-knot long-range torpedo coming down your bearing line will almost always nab a forty-knot submarine. Of course, you might be up against a slower running torpedo. But I doubt it.”
“Thanks a load. Chief,” Daminski had said.
Nobody survives.
Screw him, Daminski thought. When Augusta pulled back into Norfolk he’d look that chief up and demand a beer. Several beers. And an apology.
Chapter 12
Friday, 27 December
STRAIT OF SICILY
“Torpedoes are closing, all five in the baffles.”
The deck shook as Augusta ran from the weapons.
Daminski looked at the speed indicator, wondering how he could go faster.
“Off’sa’deck, status of the signal ejectors?”
“Mark 21s loaded, ejectors ready.”
“Launch fore and aft.”
“Aye, sir.”
The two signal ejectors pushed out baseball-bat-sized noisemakers, one of them set to blow a large cloud of bubbles to confuse active sonar, the second programmed to make loud broadband noise, much like that made by the ship’s screw as she plowed through the water at maximum speed.
“Get me the engineering officer of the watch on the JA,” he said to Kristman. Kristman grabbed a phone handset and barked into it, then held it to Daminski. “EOOW, unload the turbine generators and pick up the loads from the battery. Take the mode selector to battleshort, then open the throttles to 150 percent power, you hear me? And take T-ave to five twenty, that’s right. Repeat that back … and listen, be damned sure you don’t lose an AC bus — the last thing I need is to lose a main coolant pump. Do it.”
He handed the phone back to Kristman, who nodded approvingly.
Daminski glared at the speed indicator, which slowly climbed from thirty-eight knots to forty-two. Daminski had given orders that might breach the fuel elements and melt the core, and all he had gotten from it was four lousy knots.
Parasitic drag, he thought abstractly. Daminski climbed the periscope platform and grabbed a sheet of paper from the navigator’s pad, scribbling on it f
or a few seconds, then pausing. For a few moments he put his hand into his coverall suit and fingered the letter from Myra, then shook his head and finished writing. He looked for Kristman and called the executive officer to the conn periscope platform, away from the men at the attack-center consoles. He pulled the XO close.
“Danny, send for a radioman with a slot buoy. Have him code this in quickly. Load it forward.” Kristman reached for a phone, intercepted the radioman entering control and gave him the paper without reading it. The young radioman left in a hurry.
The next item on his mind was the tubes. He still might be able to get off a counterfire, even without a solution on the target.
“Weps, what’s the status?”
“Sir,” Hackle’s voice seemed higher than usual, with just a suggestion of a tremble. “One and two are dryloaded. Mark 50 power is on, self-checks still in progress. Recommend flooding tubes and opening outer doors.”
“Flood one and two and open the outer doors.” “Sir,” Kristman said, touching Daminski on his shoulder, “we’ll have to slow to shoot the units. Twenty knots, maybe twenty-five.”
“Do you really think they’ll have a problem?” Augusta’s tubes were located far aft of the bow and were canted outward ten degrees, making the torpedoes leave the ship at an angle. At forty-two knots of forward velocity the weapons would get so much side force from the slipstream that they might bend or break. The standard operating procedure declared nonemergency launches be made under twenty knots — like a warshot torpedo launch was ever routine … “You heard about the flank-bell launch from Trepang, didn’t you? One torpedo broke in half. The second one did fine. But those were exercise shots without warheads. You bust a warshot in half, it’ll blow the compartment wide open.”
“Our Arab friends might already have taken care of that. I’m more worried about the health of the torpedoes. A broken Mark 50 won’t kill a target very well.” Daminski faced the attack center. “Weps, what’s the god damned status?”
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