Finney ran to the sonar console. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Three torpedoes!” yelled the sonarman. “No, goddammit, we got four now! Four torpedoes in the water, Mr. Finney. Looks like two hundred down, bearing 305, four thousand yards inbound.”
Finney felt the hair stand up on his arms and neck. He knew the information on the sonar screen was being repeated on a similar screen in flag plot in the Reagan.
This is a drill, he thought. It had to be some kind of stupid damned exercise to see if all this gee-whiz shit really worked. No one had fired a real torpedo at an American ship for over fifty years.
“Bearings 300, 290, 280, range three thousand to five thousand yards,” called out the sonarman. “All tracking on Reagan.”
Finney could see it now on the screen. The computer-enhanced display made the sonar returns look like pulsing yellow worms. They were in trail, diverging in about a five-degree spread.
All moving at forty knots toward USS Ronald Reagan.
Finney turned to the tactical display, checking the disposition of the battle group. the Reagan was nestled in the middle of the formation like a mother hen surrounded by her chicks. On her starboard beam were the two screening destroyers, O’Hara and Royal. On the far side, cruising off the carrier’s port beam, was the ammunition ship Baywater. Two miles in trail was Finney’s own ship, the Aegis cruiser Arkansas.
The torpedoes were on a path that would take them between the lead destroyer, USS Royal, and the trailing vessel, USS O’Hara. Every ship in the battle group was maneuvering now, responding to the torpedo alerts.
“The decoys are deploying,” reported the sonar operator. He pressed his finger against the display, leaving an oily print. Finney could see the sonar echoes of the decoys as they spilled into the wake of each warship.
This is no goddamn drill, he thought. With morbid fascination he stared at the pulses on the display. Real ships, real torpedoes. It didn’t make sense. Who the hell would be firing torpedoes?
Reagan was in a hard turn to starboard. Both O’Hara and Royal were making their own tight turns to starboard inside the massive ship’s radius. On the screen the decoys were casting a large acoustic clutter behind each ship.
The torpedoes were ignoring the decoys.
“Two thousand yards and closing,” called out the sonar operator.
Rear Adm. Langhorne Fletcher kept his eyes riveted on Claire. As she told him what she had heard in San‘a, his eyes steadily narrowed. The features of his lean face seemed to harden.
The four of them — Fletcher and Claire, Boyce and Maxwell — sat at the small table in the admiral’s stateroom, directly below the flag bridge.
“Ms. Phillips, you’re quite sure that your contact, Mr.—”
“Maloney.”
“You’re sure he mentioned Mr. Babcock by name?”
“Yes, sir. Several times.”
“And you are certain that he—”
Fletcher stopped. A drink skittered across the glass table. The ship was leaning hard to the port side.
Fletcher’s telephone was ringing. While the others at his table watched, he snatched the phone up, listened for a moment, then said, “I’m on my way.”
Heading for the door, he grabbed his float coat survival vest. “Thank you, Ms. Phillips. Your story has cleared up several issues for me. Now all of you get to your stations. the Reagan is about to go to general quarters.”
He dashed out of the compartment, feet pounding on the steps as he ascended the ladder to the flag bridge.
The voice of the bosun’s mate boomed over the public address system: “General quarters! General quarters! All hands, man your battle stations. This is not a drill.”
As Fletcher stormed into the flag bridge, he saw that everyone in the space — Vitale, Morse, the flag chief yeoman — was staring at the tactical display on the bulkhead.
He looked at the display and said, “Oh, shit.”
The torpedo tracks were pulsing yellow on the screen. They were close, diverging at separate angles toward the Reagan in a fan-shaped pattern. The first two were sliding off behind the carrier’s stern. The second two torpedoes were aimed amidships.
Fletcher realized again that a hundred-thousand-ton aircraft carrier didn’t dodge and weave like a destroyer. Not even a cruiser, which was the largest vessel he had commanded, could elude forty-knot homing torpedoes.
The torpedoes must have been fired at close range. And they weren’t going for the decoys, which meant they were still in an inactive guidance mode.
Not much longer, he knew.
Instinctively he looked out at the whitecapped sea for the distinguishing white wakes. He knew that they didn’t really look like that. These fish were almost surely running deep, invisible from the surface. Not until the last few seconds of their run would they arc upward to explode into the hull of their target.
A blur of impressions sped across Fletcher’s mind. Something had gone horribly wrong, and it was just coming to him what it was. The traditional military chain of command had been severed. Instead of reporting directly to his superiors — Fifth Fleet, CincLant, the Chief of Naval Operations — Fletcher had been receiving orders from a civilian official. Worse, he had not reported the circumstances to the officers above him.
It was a classic mistake — one that had been committed before with tragic consequences.
Torpedoes were homing in on the USS Reagan, and the dismal thought occurred to Fletcher that it was his fault. In his great vanity and hubris, he had taken leave of his judgment. He had allowed his command authority to be suborned by —
The door to the flag bridge burst open. A white-faced Whitney Babcock entered the compartment as the first torpedo struck the Reagan.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE HUNTERS
The dull whump rumbled up from somewhere in the bowels of the ship. Five seconds later, another whump, this one closer, more pronounced. It came from the starboard side, somewhere amidships. the Reagan shuddered from the muffled explosion.
Fletcher gripped the handhold on the bulkhead and stared at the display. “That’s two. Where are—”
“Missed,” said Vitale, pointing at the display. “The last two just missed the rudder.”
Klaxons blared. Over the public address came the bosun’s mate’s voice again: “Torpedo impact, fourth deck aft and amidships! Away all damage control teams. Set condition Zebra.”
Fletcher slid into his tall padded chair and picked up his sound powered telephone. “CIC, flag. Do you have a lock on the sub?”
“Yes, sir,” came the voice of the Combat Information Center duty officer. “O’Hara has a contact and is on the way with Royal backing up. We’re launching Seahawks, and they’re getting a sonobuoy screen down.”
“I want that sonofabitch blown out of the water.”
“We’re doing our best, Admiral.”
Fletcher put down the microphone. He saw Babcock staring at him.
“This is crazy,” said Babcock. “Who… who would torpedo the Reagan?” All trace of color was gone from his face.