‘Can you clarify?’ the observer cut in.
‘Yes — it’s a Charlie.’
Things began moving fast. Dunker passed his data to the other helicopters, while Hob engaged down. The aircraft lunged forwards and began losing height as it swooped automatically to the dip position. Hob told Grog to monitor the height and the PCS authority, while he himself checked the altitude, air speed and the rate of descent.
Hob felt curiously remote as for the hundredth time he allowed the computers to take over. He deliberately released several of the systems in order to speed up the operation, taking over the cab manually for positioning and by allowing the PCS to find the hover height of forty feet. Then he would let the system catch up again and take over both height and aspect.
‘Christ!’ Grog rapped suddenly, peering through his port windows.
Hob caught sight of the faint torpedo tracks below them, two fingers streaking through the sombre waters. The leading fish was curving on its course, as it followed then closed in on Oileus’ wake.
‘Look, Hob — it’s going for the foxer.’
They both saw the explosion, a huge circular, milky hump on the surface when the sea erupted. A vast column of black and brown foam leaped hundreds of feet into the air. Hob could see Oileus sheering away to starboard, her captain obviously aware that the tracks had approached from the port quarter. No doubt her hooter was blowing, and she would be wasting no time in streaming her spare foxer.
‘Brazen’s arrived just in time,’ Hob said as, lightly monitoring the controls, he waited impatiently for the cab to lose height. ‘Spot her foxer, Grog?’
‘Yep — a long way astern.’
‘Okay in the back?’ Hob asked. ‘There’s a sub. there for sure … Try to get through to Brazen, Dunker, and tell him to watch out. The sub’s fired only two fish.’ Hob could see the frigate, an impressive sight as she heeled to her emergency turn to port.
‘Roger,’ Dunker said. ‘Get down in the dip soon, for God’s sake, Hob.’
It seemed an eternity before the machine got them from ninety knots at two hundred feet to zero speed at forty feet. But then they were down, in the hover, the grey sea splashing white with the occasional, lazy wave. Hob and Grog checked that the cab was directly into the wind, as the doppler indicated by its crossed hairs.
‘Heading two-six-oh,’ Grog reported. ‘I’ve got five knots on my ASI.’
‘Five knots on ASI,’ Hob said. He slid open his window for a final check. It was difficult now that the wind had died — he was having to use hundred per cent torque because they were fully loaded. ‘If anything happens, we’ll go in,’ Hob said. ‘No question about it: we’re too heavy.’
‘Right,’ Grog said. The others in the back had also understood the message.
‘Roger,’ Dunker said. ‘Okay for Wally, too.’
‘Ts and Ps are all good,’ Hob said, continuing the drill.
‘Attitude?’ Grog asked.
‘Attitude — one degree nose up. Two degrees, left wing low.’
They checked the doppler and trimming, and the system took over…
‘First dip checks complete,’ Hob reported. ‘Lower the body.’
Bunker came in: ‘Roger-lower the body. All round sweep, axis 270. High frequency scale eight.’
Then Wally reported: ‘Fifty feet.’
Hob breathed a sigh of relief-the ball was well below the surface now and switched to ‘cable hover’, the device which took all the sting out of keeping the aircraft vertically over the ball. Once the computer sensed the slant on the cable it would manoeuvre the helicopter so that it was always vertical. If the cable began to drag, the sonar body would be tilted ‘beyond limits and would no longer transmit.
The observer had taken a bathy reading. After all the recent weather there was little ‘layer’ trouble, the eternal problem caused by different temperature gradients. The ball could go down as deep as they wanted …
‘One hundred feet,’ Wally reported. ‘We’re sticking at that.’
Wally was now immediately alongside the observer’s position. He was already pinging, starting at north and was sweeping round to west. He had transmitted three pings when Hob was nearly deafened inside his bone dome.
‘Whoops!’ Dunker yelled, unable to contain himself. ‘Sonar contact, 290°- tracking, zero-four-zero.’
‘Gripes! That was quick. Are you sure?’ Hob queried.
Dunker: ‘Okay. We’ll have a look at it.’
‘Buck up — not much time,’ Hob said. ‘What sort of confidence is it?’
‘Definitely a sub. It’s got two knots, opening doppler. Just losing it, Hob — fading. Transponder to code retain switch,’ and Dunker was on the air telling the others that he was ‘hot’.
‘Flash…flask…flash. This is 827. Sonar contact 290° — range two zero, contact fading. 827 — out.’
The observer needed a couple of minutes of firm contact to achieve a plot — but he knew now that 819, 849 and 850 would be lifting their bodies and were preparing to join 827 … He was on to them again: ‘827 — sonar contact: 295°; range one-five; tracking zero-four-five; speed six.
819, 849,850 join me. Execute Plan Corral. Over.’ ‘Come on,’ Hob snapped. ‘Let’s get the bastard before he fires the rest of his salvo.’ Dunker was muttering from the back:
‘Bloody hell,’ he cried, ‘the contact’s fading. Prepare to jump.’
‘Raise the body,’ Hob snapped. ‘Quick.’ ‘Raising the body,’ Wally replied.
‘Seventy … fifty feet.’
Grog switched over. ‘Doppler,’ he announced.
‘Jump — 300°,’ Dunker ordered. Hob was squinting over his shoulder at the aircrewman who was wrestling with the winch and body.
‘Get that body in. Get it in.’ Then he heard Wally shouting from aft: ‘Body housed and latched.’
‘Ready at the back,’ Dunker snapped. ‘Jump! Modified PCS, heading 300°.’
‘Engage up,’ Hob ordered.
‘Engaged,’ from Grog.
Again that interminable wait for the seventy-eight seconds while the PCS climbed them out of the hover to the exit speed at two hundred feet — but at sixty knots and at hundred feet Hob released the cyclic to give him pilot control. He turned her sharply right.
‘Steady 300°. Transit checks, please.’
‘Fuel Ts and Ps are all right,’ Grog called. ‘Oil temperature seems to have gone up a bit. I’ll keep an eye on it.’
‘Right: mark it.’ Grog marked it with the chinagraph while he continued his monitoring: ‘Rest of the Ts and Ps are good. Authority is good.’
Hob’s nagging concern over the engine temperature was interrupted by Dunker at the back:
‘Okay. Ready up front to go in?’
Hob said: ‘Let’s have a modified.’ He could save a lot of time that way.
‘Roger,’ Dunker agreed. ‘Standby to mark dip Right, modified, decelerate.’
Hob flared the cab back to sixty knots. As she dropped, he watched Brazen swinging in towards Oileus’ wake, a superb sight, but she was getting in the way. As the cab pulled back, he, put her into twenty degrees of bank and went straight into the hover.
‘Transition,’ the observer called.
‘Engage down.’
They went through the drill again until Hob got them down to forty feet. He could see the sea, blue-grey now, churning in the whirls from the down-draught of the rotors.
‘Authority’s good,’ Grog monitored. ‘You’re four up; you’re three left; Ts and Ps are good.’
The body was already on its way down and Dunker was itching for Wally’s first transmission. The ping whanged home.
‘819, execute radar vectac.’ Dunker, his voice tense, was vectoring the other Furious helicopter over the sub contact.
‘Standby to drop serpent…’ From the corner of his eye, Hob glimpsed Brazen in the middle of her emergency turn to starboard. She was heeling to her beam-ends while astern of her a huge wave humped in the frothing confusion of her wake.