The run-to-enable was the torpedo flight from the launching submarine to a point on its trajectory where it would arm the warhead and begin to start pinging active sonar, and to begin its snake-pattern wiggle to search for the target. The run-to-enable was sixteen miles. All systems were nominal, and the torpedo emotionlessly clicked off the distance from the firing ship.
The guidance wire suddenly lit up in an electronic flurry of new instructions. The firing ship changed the attack plan. No longer was the Mark 58 ordered to proceed to the enable point and activate active sonar during the search phase and to search at high speed, but was now ordered to slow at the enable point to thirty knots and search in listen-only passive mode. Only when the target was detected and fully acquired could the unit speed back up to attack velocity. The unit did the electronic version of shrugging, accepting the orders and replying back to the launching ship that the orders were received.
Eventually the torpedo reached the enable point, three miles from the target solution. Unit one slowed the propulsor to thirty knots by partially shutting the throttle valve at the fuel feed, the combustion chamber gas flow lowering, the turbine coasting down, the propulsor slowing. The weapon armed the PlasticPak explosive train, rotating heavy metal plates to align a passageway between the volatile low explosive and the relatively inert high explosive. The warhead was a software signal away from detonation.
At this point the signal wire went dead, the circuit no longer established to the launching ship. The unit was operating fully independently.
Once the weapon reached the passive-approach speed of thirty knots, it began its snake-pattern search, a three-degree wiggle to port and a slow wiggle back to the target bearing and continuing on to a three-degree angle to starboard. While it was wiggling horizontally, the unit was wiggling vertically, the pattern looking like a gentle corkscrew in three dimensions. Since the nose cone transducer was highly directional and looked only forward, the corkscrewing motion generated a conical examination of the ocean, the vertex of the “search cone” a narrow six degrees. If the target was outside that flashlight beam of the search cone, the torpedo would miss, which was one of its few flaws, and which required the launching ship’s firecontrol solution to be highly refined. On a bad day,
with a poor solution, the launching ship could select a widening of the search cone, but that would make the snake pattern more of a defined sine wave, and the torpedo would slalom in the direction of the target much slower.
As the unit spiraled to the target, the target noise moved in the acoustic cone of the passive broadband sonar transducer. The search phase had begun, the weapon sensitized to the target, looking for changes in the received sonar noises as it wiggled back and forth. There was a slight signal-to-noise phenomenon beginning at a point just to the right of the solution to the target—the solution had been slightly in error. The weapon turned slightly right and began a new snake-pattern search centered on the slight signal noise. The weapon wiggled right and the noise faded left. The weapon wiggled left and the noise faded right. In the vertical dimension the same thing happened. After three confirmed “left-to-right-tag reversals the unit had confirmed that it had acquired a valid target. The unit had reached the end of the search phase at the acquisition point. The final phase of torpedo flight was known in the Navy as “homing,” but had a more technical term in the design files of the DynaCorp defense contractor that had built the unit. The phase was known as the “terminal run.” During unit one’s terminal run it opened the throttle valve fully on the fuel feed to the propulsor, spinning the shaft to the maximum achievable until it sped up to sixty-two knots. It energized the active sonar system and ordered the sonar transducer to form a sound wave pattern, aping, except this was not the unsophisticated single tone of decades past, but a shark tooth pattern wave that started as a low growl and ascended over the next fractions of a second to higher octaves, to a bell tone and beyond to a whistle and ending in a screeching shriek. It de-energized and turned its function to listening. The sound wave came back, quite distorted, but intact. The computer reset the exact range to the target from the bearing of the passive noise and the new bearing and range from the active ping, forgetting all the erroneous data from the launching ship. Had the wire been connected, the torpedo would have informed the launching ship at this point that it was homing, but there was no continuity.
The weapon drove in, hearing another wave form transmitted in the ocean. This had to be coming from another torpedo, the sound wave subtly altered, with a slight notch in the wave pattern so that unit one could tell which wave was its own and which was the other unit’s. Since there was a unit two out there, the programming for target impact shifted. If unit one had been alone, it would have aimed for the geometric center of the target. But since there was a unit two out there, it was necessary to detect the shape of the target and hit it one-third of the way from the extreme end. Unit two would aim for the opposite end, avoiding the explosion fireball generated by unit one. In this way, two torpedoes would do real work rather than impacting at the same point, the explosion from the first simply fizzling the high explosive of the second unit harmlessly into the sea.
Unit one was closer now. It pinged out again with the shark tooth wave pattern and went silent, hearing the return waveform and perceiving the target in three dimensions. It aimed for the left third of the target, leaving the right two-thirds for unit two. Less than a second of transit time was left. It was almost time to fulfill its mission.
In the dim blue world outside the submarine, the bizarre sound that had suddenly filled the sea around Midshipman Pacino had started as a deep moan and quickly climbed the register to a high screech and abruptly stopped. Pacino’s skin crawled, and he shivered inside his wet suit. The eerie haunting sound seemed like the caw of a giant evil crow, the sound powerful enough to fill the entire sea. The way sound traveled underwater, there was no way to determine the direction of the sound. It seemed to come from all around him. What manner of sea beast would emit such a sound? he wondered. For the next fraction of a second, in the returning silence, he thought he must have heard some sort of auditory hallucination.
An instant later the sound came again, and if possible it was
louder this time, and as soon as it ended another of the undersea crow calls came, but this one was more distant. There were two of them, Pacino thought, his eyes wide. What was happening? Keating had let go of him and had drifted upward a few feet. Pacino grabbed the hatch-operating mechanism, a terror like he’d never felt rising in him. What the hell was that noise?
One final ping, unit one thought. The target was sailing toward it at sixty-two knots, at least, that was how it seemed. In reality the target was stationary and the torpedo was flying in. The left third aim-point was barely five torpedo lengths away. One final ping, aping return, and it was time to get a final proximity signal from the magnetic hull detector.
When the unit was within a half-torpedo length, the iron of the target hull and the magnetic lines of force surrounding the hull registered on the rag-detector, and the processor had all it needed to detonate the PlasticPak explosive. The low explosive detonated in an incandescent flash, the fire traveling along the metal passageway to the high explosive, which began to react and explode. The torpedo sailed on, its nose cone actually making direct contact with the curve of the target hull and slamming into the metal. The impact flattened the nose cone destroying the sonar transducer and rupturing the computer compartment. The consciousness of unit one began to wink out as the computer was shredded by the impact, even before the explosion of the PlasticPak blew it apart from the aft end. The fireball of the explosive reached out for the curving hull, the arms of the combustion gases embracing the metal, the pressure pulse striking the target and ripping through it, vaporizing it, splintering it to its component molecules. The high temperatures of the fireball erased all matter that had been there, the structural bulkhead, the hoop frames of HY-100 steel, the walls of the maneuvering room
and the control panels mounted there, three men standing in the space, the deckplates, the after end of two propulsion turbines, and the metal block of the AC propulsion motor, all were liquefied and then vaporized in the advancing heat of the fireball. The
Shockwave from the explosion reached out for the inside of the vessel and reflected from the far bulkhead, the force of it splitting the target in two at the after portion. The fireball by that time had vaporized all the molecules that had been the unit one Mark 58 Alert/ Acute torpedo, and the torpedo died in the instant that the target began its death throes. The fireball swelled upward from the buoyancy of the water and shrank as it cooled, blowing out the top surface of the water to a hundred feet in the sky.
A few milliseconds later unit two hurtled toward the target, its vanes turning to position it toward the right third of the target.
Another crow call sounded. Midshipman Patch Pacino clutched the hatch operating wheel in panic. He searched the sea to try to determine what the noise was, but he could only see the surrounding blackness. He was looking at the long hull aft stretching to the rudder two hundred feet away when he heard an even louder crow call, saw something flash toward the ship, and then felt the hull suddenly shudder violently as if a giant fist had slammed into her.
The next two-tenths of a second lasted forever. Pacino held on to the hatch operator with a death grip, too terrified to breathe, as the explosion from the aft starboard quarter of the ship bloomed. The explosion had a perverse kind of beauty as it gracefully unfolded. The hull opened, fingers of high-tensile steel reaching out to embrace the bright orange of the fireball where it penetrated the ship. The explosion grew upward for a fraction of a second, the orange glow calming to a light yellow, then to a bright blue, then to a blue just more bright than the surroundings. Pacino watched in horror, still frozen to the hatch operator, when the Shockwave hit him. He felt like he’d been slapped by the flat hand of an immense bully. The next ticks of time were dim, but when the Shockwave had passed, he realized it had blown his mask off his face and his regulator out of his mouth and dashed his back against the hatch ring. An intense pain shrieked from his lower back and his head. He
was plunged into a frightening underwater darkness, or else the explosion had blinded him. He couldn’t move, he had frozen himself to the hatch ring like a fool, with no mask and no regulator, too frightened to try to find his regulator again. He could sense blood pouring out of his nose, even in the seawater, his head pounding intensely, the sharp pain from the front of his face making him certain the blast had fractured his skull. His hearing was gone. He was deaf. The rest of the nightmare unfolded silently, all sounds detected by feeling them in his chest.
The second explosion came from the bow and lit up the sea like lightning brightens a landscape with an uneven flickering floodlight. The force of this detonation seemed much stronger than the first, the hull blasted by a gigantic supersonic sledgehammer, the water around her an anvil holding her in place for the punishment of the celestial impact. Pacino knew he was not blind, but when the light faded a half second later he was back in the dark.
Pacino spent the next ticks of the clock furiously praying, not knowing what else to do and paralyzed in pain and fear, but the prayer was not a coherent sentence, just repeating a hundred times the phrase Oh God oh God oh God.
Loss of wire-guide continuity, unit one, Krivak. That is a good sign. Loss of wire on unit two. Explosion in the water from the bearing of the Piranha, Krivak. A second detonation, same bearing. We have two hits against the Piranha, Krivak. Should we shoot units three and four?
“No, One. Have the sonar module listen to the bearing to the Piranha and record any hull breakup noises. If we missed, or if the damage is insufficient, we will need to load the plasma-tipped weapons.”
It would appear we have fulfilled our mission, Krivak. This unit will prepare a situation report for Squadron Twelve.
“Very well. Any noises from the Piranha!”
Yes, very violent noises. Continuing explosions. We may
have hit a lubrication oil reservoir or the diesel fuel tank. Bulkheads are screaming in a prelude to rupturing.
“But no sounds of a torpedo muzzle door opening, no high frequency noise of a torpedo gyro?”
No, Krivak. The USS Piranha is wreckage now. She is sinking. Sinking. Dying. Krivak?
“Yes, One?”
don’t know how to explain this, but this unit is feeling something very strange right now. A system malfunction, perhaps.p>
That was bad news, Krivak thought. “Please try to describe the malfunction, One.”
It is difficult to put in words, Krivak. This unit can only liken it to things read but not understood well from your literature. The thing you describe as sadness, grief, and shock in the aftermath of a loss or a death. This unit knows this sounds odd, but my systems are seeming to slow down, as if this unit is somehow… paralyzed. This unit is… filled with … sadness, Krivak. Sadness that we killed the Piranha, with all the people aboard. They are dying now, and this was only supposed to happen to an enemy. This unit knows that there were bad people onboard, which is the definition of a mutiny, but this unit believes we have just killed some good people along with the bad. And it has… made this unit’s systems… somehow sluggish.
Krivak didn’t know what to say. Should he comfort One Oh Seven, keep it functional, and keep on with the mission, or should he encourage its breakdown so he himself could control the ship directly?
As Pacino’s air ran out, his mental clarity returned with a thump, as if a switch had been thrown inside him. The hull was angling downward in the darkness, he could feel it, and he could almost see it in the light of a secondary explosion from aft—the diesel fuel oil tank exploding. The ship was sinking. His eardrum slammed for a second, from increasing pressure. There was no doubt. Piranha was going down, and for all he
knew he—and perhaps Keating—survived when no one else had. The hull was probably a coffin full of dead bodies right now, he thought. The rational thing to do with what little air he had in his lungs was push away the hull, activate the carbon dioxide gas cylinder in his buoyancy compensator, and float to the surface and pull the pin on the distress beacon. If he did that simple act, he would survive, he told himself. He would live. He had lived in the face of two violent explosions, two terrible Shockwaves and the explosion of the fuel tank, and his body was whole. He had been spared, and now it was time to leave the sinking submarine below him and swim for the surface. It was the only logical thing he could do.
For an instant time seemed to freeze, the lack of air in his lungs stopped hurting, and before his astonished eyes the water in front of him started to glow in a yellowish light, then somehow parted and opened wide. His knuckles grew white on the hatch operator in fear as he saw the light brighten and begin to form images. Images from his life. There was no fear, no sense of time, the images coming all at once and surrounding him all at once, yet still experienced individually. And they were not just moving pictures that he saw, they were real, and all the emotions he had felt living them came back to him. It was baffling but natural at the same time. He saw his father’s submarines. He saw his father standing tall above him with three gold stripes on his service dress blue uniform, leaning down to sweep him up and kiss him, his teddy bear falling to the carpeting. His father wearing working khakis in the light of the cracked doorway at Christmas, coming in to sit on the bed. The pillow was stained with tears, because Daddy was going away for a long time. The smell of the submarine was his cologne as his father leaned over to kiss him on his wet cheek. The Devilfish is going to the north pole, Anthony, he said. We have a special urgent job to do, and then we’ll come home. Are you going up to help Santa, his own seven-year-old voice asked, his father looking stunned for a moment. Yes, son, but that is very secret, and you can’t tell anyone. Now get some sleep, and be the man of the house for Mommy. That’s a
brave sailor. The rumbling sound of the Corvette’s engine u
nder the stilted house, the car fading away into the darkness. The long days waiting for his father to come home, and then the cigar smoke smell of Uncle Dick, Daddy’s boss, when he told Mommy that Daddy was dead, and that the Devilfish had gone down under the ice. And then Daddy wasn’t dead, he was in the hospital, but he looked dead and slept for weeks and weeks, and the doctors thought he was going to die sometime soon.
The images moved on, the fights between young Pacino’s mother and father over the submarine, their separations never formal legal separations, but always the kind that resulted from new deployment orders. His father gone more than he was there, his mother growing increasingly bitter, aging in front of him. The last battle when the Seawolf sank, Uncle Dick came again with news of the elder Pacino’s death, the next week the news reversed, but this time his mother had taken him away to Connecticut and there was a long year without his father.
He saw the look on his father’s face as he saw the letter from the Superintendent of the Naval Academy granting his son an appointment as a midshipman, and how his father’s harsh face had softened into pride. And his mother’s face, now lined and no longer beautiful, taking the news hard as her son turned down the Ivy League and followed the older Pacino. The troubled times at Annapolis, with grades coming naturally but military conduct his nemesis, the constant class-A offenses, being continually threatened with being kicked out. And the end of the trouble, with the sinking of his father’s cruise ship, when for the third time he’d been told that his father was presumed dead. That had snapped something inside him, hurtling him from childhood to adulthood in one swift stroke, but also stealing something from him, something childlike, a dark heaviness filling him on that day, which was only partially lifted with the news of his father’s survival for the third time. But Admiral Pacino had never been the same, and
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