Phoenix Sub Zero mp-3

by Michael Dimercurio

* * *

  Four P-3 Orion ASW patrol turboprops received the NAVFORCEMED flash transmission. One ignored the order, already departing station, low on fuel and empty of sonobuoys, its replacement enroute from Sigonella. The remaining three throttled up, climbed and headed west, reaching their destinations and cruising back toward the dark water of the strait. The moon had been full but had vanished behind dull unremarkable clouds that seemed to boil up from nowhere and everywhere. The first four-engined plane shut down the two inboard turbines and feathered the props, swooping low over the water sixty nautical miles east of the narrowest point of the strait, turning slowly as it steadied on a southern course, leveling its wings and slowing further until it almost seemed suspended over the water. Silently, at five-second intervals, the cylindrical sonobuoys fell out of the underside of the fuselage, plunking into the water in a neat row, the splashes lost in the powerful thrumming of the props.

  A few moments later, twenty miles west of the first plane, the second P-3 arrived on station, dropped a load of sonobuoys and circled back around. The third took station off Tangier at the opening of the mouth of Gibraltar, laying its sonobuoy field just as the USS Phoenix passed under it. The buoys laid, the P-3s orbited the drop points at sufficient distance that the buoys’ sonars would not be impaired by the noise of the planes’ engines but not so far that radio reception would be impacted. They settled into north-south elongated orbits parallel to the sonobuoy fields, cruising close enough to the surface so that their MAD probes could reach down into the sea in search of anomalies in the earth’s magnetic field, the iron hull of a submerged submarine able to focus magnetic lines of force just as a lens bends light waves. The MAD probes detected nothing, but that wasn’t unusual since the probes were useful only at extremely short range.

  While the P-3s had been turning toward Gibraltar, two pilots and a sonar tech climbed into the Seahawk LAMPS III antisubmarine helicopter on the rolling aft deck of the Burke-class destroyer John Warner and ran through the laminated startup checklist in record time, the twin turbines whining and then howling to idling revs, the clutch catching and spooling up the main rotor. The chopper shook as the rotor passed through several resonance points, then steadied as the blades sped up to idling revolutions. The pilot’s radio headset crackled, a distorted voice from the Wamer’s combat information center, the pilot’s reply competing with the roar of the turbines and the beating of the main rotor as the Seahawk lifted off the deck, the bull’s-eye painted on the dark surface barely visible in the overcast night as the Warner shrank below and astern. Thirty miles south, an identical helicopter turned west and soon joined the first, the two units ready to drop dipping active sonar sets at the first sniff from one of the P3s.

  * * *

  Two hundred feet beneath the surface, between the farthest sonobuoy field to the east and the central field, the Destiny-class submarine Hegira picked up speed, her ship-control console’s display of gyrocompass bearing showing a course of 278, west northwest.

  Commodore Sharef frowned, the unexpected tasting sour in his mouth. The close pass of the antisubmarine warfare turboprop plane to the west ahead of them glowed angrily red on the display screens of the second sensor console, the other screen showing the approach of a helicopter’s rotors.

  The sensors were filling up with the sounds of the aircraft, then with the wailing pings of the sonobuoys. Anger filled him, anger directed at himself. Somehow the American 688 submarine had managed to call in this airborne circus above them. Worse, there had been no explosion from the Nagasaki unit, and time was dragging on. If the torpedo did not explode soon it would run out of fuel. He’d lost the American unit on the sensors, the ship now outside their detection range and quieter than the sea, which was now a damned poor sonar environment with all the aircraft engines. Sharef looked at Tawkidi, who seemed even more upset, since it was the younger man’s recommendation to shoot closer in.

  Sharef decided he had no choice. He could not launch another Nagasaki without knowing the location of the American unit. The Nagasakis had such large fuel tanks that the weapon would wait and circle if it had no target, preventing Sharef himself from getting through Gibraltar since the torpedo would then find the Hegira and sink her. He could not stay here, not with the angry aircraft buzzing above. The longer he stayed, the greater the chances of being detected, and then destroyed. He could not turn back into the Mediterranean. To do that would leave his mission incomplete, nor could he put in a delouse reactor shutdown and wait. Waiting would only give the Coalition naval forces time to reinforce the curtain of ASW planes — and soon, ships — at Gibraltar. He had to bet that the Nagasaki he’d already launched was still in hot pursuit and not waiting for another target; he had to run the gauntlet through the strait, and he had to do it now.

  “Commander Tawkidi, announce full-combat stations. Ship control, ahead thirty clicks, depth 100 meters. Weapons control, open doors seven and eight to sea and warm up the weapons. Sensor control, watch carefully for signs of the American 688 submarine and the previously launched Nagasaki unit — I don’t want to be chased by our own torpedo if it lost the American. Reactor control, be ready to go to emergency ahead if any of the aircraft launch homing torpedoes.”

  Sharef stood at the computerized plotting table to see if he could make it to the Atlantic. He tried to strangle the thought that the mission might soon be over.

  USS PHOENIX

  Lieutenant Victor Houser arrived from maneuvering, his normal battle station duty aft as engineering officer of the watch. Houser was unofficially the leader of the stable of junior officers aboard, the senior lieutenant. As most late first-tour officers were, he was cocky and young and full of himself, tough and aggressive. The boat’s folklore still repeated stories of his pugnaciousness even when he was a nub, a neophyte officer. He was a Southerner hailing from Atlanta or western panhandle Florida depending on the day he was asked, his accent thick, slow, drawling. Crew members and officers in the same compartment with him would unconsciously imitate his speech just as fighter pilots once imitated the slur of test pilot Chuck Yeager’s West Virginia twang. This echoing of Houser’s accent, if in Kane’s earshot, even had Kane speaking in an Atlanta cadence.

  Houser was only slightly shorter than Kane, his height all in his legs. His hair was a light brown or dirty blond, long on top, sticking straight into the overhead, and at his neck stretching almost to the bottom of the collar. He had a double chin, odd since there was not another ounce of fat on the young man. He compensated by being the first man to quit shaving at sea and grow his U-boat beard, sometimes cheating and refusing to shave the two days before the ship would get underway. The beard now was fully grown in, his fleshy chin safely hidden. He was wearing, as usual, his own uniform at sea, eschewing khakis and submarine poopysuits for well-worn jeans, high-top Nikes and one of his dozen Hawaiian shirts, the pattern guaranteed to be the brightest thing in the compartment, and a multicolored belt holding his radiation dosimeter, the gaudy belt looking to Kane like Houser had stolen it from a Barnum and Bailey clown. Kane put up with the unreg outfit out of respect for Houser’s abilities and the sense that Houser, with his perhaps overdose of “personality,” was something of a ship’s mascot, a good luck charm, not to be trifled with.

  Houser worked for Tom Schramford as main propulsion assistant and assistant engineer, the traditional job of the senior lieutenant, responsible for most of the mechanical components of the propulsion plant and thirty-five nuclear enlisted men. In his own way he was one of the most tactically inspired junior officers Kane had ever known. As MPA he was brilliant, thick with the mechanics who worked for him, talking street engines and hot rods when not troubleshooting some problem with Phoenix’s machinery. As one of Kane’s officers of the deck, Houser was good if rough around the edges, driving the ship like a sports car. Kane could always tell when the aggressive Houser was driving— dishes broke from his angles and snap rolls, cooks cursing from spilled soup pots and table settings dashed to the deck
.

  Kane would chew him out for his maneuvers, knowing inside that Houser could fight the ship better than many of the department heads.

  Houser’s relationship with Senior Chief Sanderson was not smooth. Their mutual disrespect was the stuff of shipboard legends, the two men not so much oil and vinegar as dynamite and matches. Houser had been sonar officer when Sanderson had arrived aboard, the sonar chief expecting a red carpet and immediate obedience to his royal proclamations as captain by proxy, including all officers of the deck and his entire chain of command from the sonar officer to the weapons boss to the XO and even the captain. That attitude went nowhere with Houser, the lieutenant quickly in forming the senior chief that in his opinion, according to Navy Regulations, and by God the last time he checked, officers outranked all enlisted men, no matter how many rib bons and hash marks and stars they wore on their service dress sleeves. After a week butting heads Kane had a choice between transferring off the most able, though admittedly prima donna, sonar chief in the known universe or giving Houser, his best junior officer, a new job. On the afternoon of Sanderson’s eighth day aboard Houser took over as main propulsion assistant and the ship had sailed smoothly ever since.

  Except when Houser was officer of the deck, as he was now. Another reason he was aft as engineering officer of the watch during battle stations and Schramford, the engineer, who normally should have been the EOOW, was instead officer of the deck. Now with Schramford aft cranking up the reactor, Houser mounted the conn and looked down at the displays and the status board and the plots, pulling on a headset as he did.

  “Sonar, Conn,” Houser’s acerbic voice rang on the communication circuit, “what’s the status of the incoming torpedo?”

  Sanderson’s reply was equally caustic.

  “Still incoming.”

  “Any idea of range? Or speed?”

  “Conn, Sonar, no.”

  Schramford’s voice came on the circuit next. “Conn, maneuvering, we’re overpowering the reactor now, limited by main engine bearing temperatures, reactor power steady at one three eight percent.”

  “We’re getting …” Kane craned his neck and peered at the speed indicator, noticing the deck’s vibration seemed about the same … “forty-two knots. Is that all she has, Eng?”

  “Sir, any more and we’ll melt the mains or grind up the reduction gear. As is we’ll sustain some core damage and higher radiation levels.”

  “Eng, you get me away from this torpedo and I’ll buy you a brand-new plant,” Kane said.

  “Captain, presets loaded and confirmed,” Follicus broke in.

  “Very well, Weps,” Kane replied. “As soon as we’re done shooting, get the crew working the reload.”

  “I’ve already told them, sir.”

  Kane stepped back from the attack center to the periscope stand, where he could see the entire crew in the stuffy room.

  “Firing point procedures, tubes one and two.”

  “Ship ready,” Houser drawled.

  “Weapons ready,” Follicus said.

  “Solution input,” Mcdonne said, obviously unhappy at shooting a torpedo without contact on the Destiny, the artificial range and orbit point a gamble.

  “Tube one, shoot on programmed bearing,” Kane said.

  “Set,” from the attack-center Pos Two console’s Rodney Olson as he locked in the orbit point for the torpedo in the computer, sending it to the torpedo in the tube in the lower level deck.

  “Stand by,” Follicus said, taking the firing trigger on the firing panel to the nine o’clock position, completing the launching circuit in the computer.

  Two decks below a small solenoid valve opened in an ultrahigh-pressure air line leading to the firing ram, a large piston with the high-pressure air on one side and water on the other. The air side of the ram became loaded with the air at over 3,000 pounds per square inch, the surface area of the piston translating the pressure to a force of 200 pounds per square inch as it pushed against the water on the other side of the ram. The water side realized the same pressure spike, the pressure in the torpedo tanks soaring, the water spilling into vents in the aft end of the tube, rocketed the torpedo from the tube. In little more than a second two tons of Mark 50 torpedo had been accelerated to three g’s and cleared the tube. The ejector ram, now at its end position, came to rest, the air side venting inboard in a tremendous crash, pressurizing the entire ship and temporarily deafening the torpedo-room crew in spite of their Mickey Mouse ear protectors.

  In the control room David Kane’s eardrums slammed from the pressure of the torpedo launch. Before his hearing returned to normal he barked the next order:

  “Tube two, shoot on programmed bearing.”

  Seconds later the second torpedo left its tube and turned back around to the east on a medium-speed run to enable.

  For the next fifteen minutes, the Nagasaki torpedo gaining steadily on it, the Phoenix launched torpedoes every forty-five seconds, the weapons leaving the ship and turning back around to head east.

  After twenty-three torpedoes had been launched, Follicus turned around to face Kane and Mcdonne.

  “Sir, the last torpedo is loaded in tube four. Should we shoot or save it?”

  Mcdonne spoke up, knowing Kane would want a recommendation.

  “I say save it. Captain. Never know when we’ll need an insurance policy.”

  Kane decided he’d be damned if they found a spare torpedo in his hull’s wreckage … if it came to that.

  “No, XO. Firing point procedures, tube four.”

  When the last weapon had left the ship, leaving the torpedo room empty, the torpedoes enroute to or already at their preprogrammed hold points waiting for the emergence of the Destiny, sonar chief Edwin Sanderson clapped his hands against his headset, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head.

  “Conn, Sonar,” he called, his iron control lost for a moment as he spit out the words — “Nagasaki torpedo is going active. Range gate shows it’s within 2,000 yards.”

  Chapter 17

  Sunday, 29 December

  WESTERN MOUTH, STRAIT OF GIBRALTAR

  The guidance-and-attack computer of the Nagasaki torpedo had half the power of an American-made Cray supercomputer but also took up only a cubic meter of space aboard the thirteen-ton torpedo. The sonar system of the weapon was sophisticated and sensitive, able to hear a surface warship fifty miles away, a submarine thirty to forty in ideal sound conditions with a target radiating a typical amount of noise. The power of the computer was used mostly in sifting the several hundred thousand gigabytes of sound data it picked up from the sea, including tonal frequencies in a narrowband processor, all the analysis done in real time, just as Hegira’s Second Captain system did, except that instead of displaying the data, the torpedo’s computer relayed the analysis to the target-interception subroutines. The interceptor programs calculated the swiftest interception course and speed to the target — the torpedo attempted to avoid unproductive tail chases, instead aiming itself toward a point in the ocean where the target would be in the future, a sort of smart football aiming not for the wide receiver but where he would be at the exact time of reaching the field. In this case the target parameter calculation was predictable since the target submarine had put the torpedo due astern. The Nagasaki could only aim for the target and order the propulsor to spin at maximum speed, giving it 128 clicks of forward velocity to the target’s mere seventy-seven.

  The speed advantage had the torpedo steadily closing the distance to the target, gobbling up the sea between hunter and prey. The weapon had, in effect, been patient, content to drive in at maximum thrust and click off the minutes, waiting as the target grew nearer and nearer. Still, it was not easy being patient with the knowledge that the target was just ahead; had the unit been a cheetah pursuing a gazelle, its mouth would have been watering furiously at this point.

  Soon the target was within two kilometers, the range determined by driving a slight wiggling course to see how the bearing to the target r
eacted. The short range caused the targeting functions to activate the unit’s sonar set — —passive listen-only sonar was fine for pursuit of a loud contact but not good enough for the exact placement and detonation of the six metric tons of shaped-charge plastic explosive in the warhead. If the torpedo attempted to hit the target with passive search sonar, with this high closing speed, it could experience a bearing error that would cause the unit to go sailing past the target and have to turn around and continue the chase. The active echo-ranging came on, illuminating the sea around it with a powerful medium-pitched sonar pulse, transmitting the pulse at power high enough to generate steam vapor bubbles at the nose cone. After the pulse the torpedo went silent and listened for the return, which came back a fraction of a second later, the sound distorted by the target submarine’s rotating screw, the frequency downshifted to a deeper pitch by the target’s motion away from the sonar pulse. The target position in the computer’s mind needed to be adjusted slightly, the range a bit farther than the torpedo had originally thought.

  The target position established, the torpedo began its final arming actions, preparing the high explosive’s fuse for detonation. The targeting program called for another data point, the sonar transmitter complying with another loud ping. The target was now at one point five kilometers. A software interlock closed a contact in a relay of the fuse’s arming circuit, preparing the system to detonate with the last signal in the circuit: the proximity magnetic sensor. The target’s wake from its large-diameter propeller began to buffet the torpedo, its signal to dive to a slightly deeper depth to avoid the screw vortex and get under the target’s hull amidships. The roar of the screw ahead and the turbulence of it became more violent. Another ping, another range. Less than a kilometer now.

  The target was too close to ping a pulse and get a meaningful return. The sonar switched to a ramp transmission, a police-siren sound going slowly from a deep pitch to a high-pitched wail, then dropping down to the low pitch. The receiver was able to get the return from the target at the same time the transmitter put out the signal. The range closed to 400 meters, shrank rapidly to two shiplengths, the target screw vortex pounding the Nagasaki with turbulence.