“You tell me.”
“What do you mean?”
“While you were playing geopolitics with a terrorist, he was setting us up for a torpedo shot. It was a sucker play, Mr. Babcock.” Fletcher spat the words out.
“That’s absurd.”
“Is it? Why else has he been yanking us around, holding off an air strike to rescue our marines?”
“Watch your tongue, Admiral. I’m the one who put you in this job and I’ll—”
He stopped when he saw the look on Fletcher’s face. Fletcher was staring at something over his shoulder, out the port side of the flag bridge.
An orange fireball was mushrooming skyward. Above the fireball rose an oily dark cloud. Flaming debris spurted like roman candles from the inferno.
It took six seconds for the concussion to reach the Reagan.
The blast hammered the stormproof windows of the flag bridge. Down below, men and equipment were swept across the open flight deck, tumbling over the fantail, into the catwalks, over the side. Masts ripped from their moorings on the island, crashing down to the deck below. A Seahawk helicopter, just lifting from the fantail, flipped into a vertical bank and plummeted into the water.
“Jesus,” said Guido Vitale, looking up in shock. “What the hell was that?”
“The Baywater,” said Fletcher. “The ammunition ship. It took one of the torpedoes that was meant for us.”
Horrified, Fletcher stared at the carnage one and a half miles off the Reagan’s aft port quarter. The stricken ship was blown in half. The severed stern of the Baywater was already sliding into the sea, flames leaping from the shattered structure. The forward half was low in the water, burning fiercely. As Fletcher watched, an explosion boiled up from the hull. Another black mushroom belched into the sky.
Guido Vitale made a sign of the cross. “God help them.”
Fletcher stared at Babcock. “God help us all.”
“Fast contact, Captain. A hundred and fifty degrees, three thousand meters. A destroyer, by the screw noise.”
“Course and speed?”
“Twenty knots, accelerating, turning to an intercept bearing.”
One of the escort destroyers, thought Manilov. No surprise. After a possible periscope echo, then a salvo of torpedoes, they were coming with all their knives drawn. They would never stop hunting the submarine that torpedoed their battle group.
“Forward five knots, descend to eighty meters.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Manilov had always wondered how it would feel at this moment. Never in his years of naval service had he actually fired a shot in anger. Now, not one but four shots. Three had found targets.
It was as sweet as he could have hoped.
At least two torpedoes had impacted the Reagan. No secondary explosions, which was unfortunate. He could only hope now that the two-hundred-kilogram warheads had sufficiently ruptured the carrier’s hull, destroying its watertight integrity. Even sweeter would be an explosion in one of the ship’s reactor spaces, setting off a nuclear calamity that would force them to scuttle the ship.
But the sweetest moment — the kind that submarine skippers enjoyed in their wildest fantasies — was the explosion of the escort vessel. The magnitude of the blast was enough to nearly rupture the ears of the sonar operator. The hull of the Mourmetz had trembled from the blast, causing the crew in the control room to break their silence and cheer at the top of their lungs.
“More screw noise, Captain. Another destroyer. And something else… I think an aircraft. A helicopter… yes, definitely a helicopter.”
Manilov made a quick calculation. With the destroyer’s fast closing speed, they would merge in four minutes, presuming the destroyer had a reasonable fix on the submarine’s last position. The helo would be overhead at approximately the same time. Each, he knew, carried Mark 46 or Mark 50 antisubmarine torpedoes.
The Mourmetz had only minutes left to live.
“Ready tubes five and six. Reload the first four.”
He saw Popov and Borodin look at each other and nod. Good, thought Manilov. Let them know how Russian submariners fight.
“Tubes five and six ready, Captain.”
“Stand by.” He leaned over the combat computer operator’s console. “Do we have a firing solution on the destroyer?”
“Almost. It will be difficult with the target head-on.”
“Compute a solution for the trailing destroyer. We’ll put one up both their snouts.”
“Aye, Captain. It is not precise, just the passive return.”
“I understand. It’s our only option.”
Manilov studied the display for another ten seconds, choosing his moment. “Fire five.”
“Fire five,” Popov responded.
The Mourmetz shuddered as the 2,220-kilogram weapon burst from the number five tube.
Manilov did another quick check of the display. “Fire six.”
“Aye, fire six.”
Another shudder. The sound of the exiting torpedo filled the interior of the Mourmetz.
“The aircraft, Captain. Coming closer. It will fly directly over us.”
“How many?”
“Just one is all I am detecting.”
“Ready the missile battery.”
“Ready with Igla one, sir.”
Manilov had no idea whether the Igla missiles even worked. The SAM battery had been a retrofit on the Kilo-class submarines and was never tested before the Mourmetz was sold to the Iranians. No matter. If fate allowed the missiles to function today, then they would.
He waited until he was sure the helicopter was within the killing envelope of the short-range Igla. The trick was not to wait too long. The helicopter would launch its torpedo.
“Stand by… Fire!”
He heard a rumbling noise, the sound of the compressed air blowing the weapon free of its battery in the sail. Then the gurgling sound of the missile ascending to the surface.
“Ahead five knots, course a hundred and sixty-five degrees, maintain eighty meters.”
The warrant officer looked up at him. “Captain, that course will take us directly beneath the enemy aircraft carrier.”
“Precisely.”
The first SH-60B Seahawk — call sign Blister Eleven — was on a mission of vengeance. The pilot and his crew had barely escaped the blast from the exploding Baywater. His squadron mates in Blister Ten — the second SH-60B that launched ten seconds behind them — had been smashed like a cheap toy into the sea behind the Reagan.
The ATO — the airborne tactical officer in the helicopter — had already loaded the fix from the disappeared periscope sighting into his mission computer, then correlated the information with the recorded tracks of the four torpedoes, datalinked from the Arkansas.
While the helicopter accelerated low over the water, he saw it — Yes! — the sub-tracking solution on his situational display. He knew where the sonofabitch was. Computers were really pretty cool gadgets.
For the pilot of the Seahawk, it was coming down to a race between him and the destroyer. He could seeO’Hara leaving a wake like a speedboat as it sliced through the water. Somebody was going to kill the submarine and he was damned well going to make sure it was Blister Eleven.
Making a good 120 knots, the helicopter skimmed over the top of the O’Hara on the same course — 330 degrees — headed for the sub’s position. According to the ATO’s inertial navigation computer, the sub was exactly one mile straight ahead.