“I’d stay out of that wake if I was you, XO. She’s bound to be creating a lot of turbulence back there. It could probably throw us for quite a loop!”
“Good thinking, Mac. I’ll line you up from just outside the wake.”
With the giant screw directly ahead, MacKenzie fired a bull’s-eye, with the rocket striking one of the seven blades about halfway out from the shaft. The blade shattered, and the entire submarine began to oscillate in the water as the unbalanced screw wreaked havoc on the shaft and its mountings within the hull.
The Hawaii went all stop, and then apparently realizing they had no choice, blew ballast, and floated to the surface, joining the Kilo like a couple of useless fishing bobbers.
Captain Buffalo Sewell again asked his sonar operator what the hell that noise was.
“I don’t know, sir. It came from the direction of the Hawaii. Same thing we heard with the Kilo—a ping, or pings in this case, and then a small explosion.” Concentrating again on the headphones, the sonar operator continued, “Sir, the Hawaii is blowing ballast. They’re surfacing, too — dead in the water!”
“Dang it! It seems like we’re in the middle of a minefield! Where are these things coming from?”
“It can’t be the Louisiana, sir. I’d know an Ohio-class boomer anywhere, and there’s not one out there.”
“Oh, he’s out there all right. I don’t know what George Adams is pulling, but he’s definitely out there. My guess would be he’s gone silent, reduced power, and is lying on the bottom somewhere waiting for us to get spooked by these minisubs and hightail it out of here.”
“He obviously knows we’re here, Captain,” said the Texas XO. “Why don’t we ping him to make sure he’s not sneaking by?”
“No, if he had power to make headway, we would hear him. His coolant pumps would give him away. He can’t go anywhere without power, and there’s no way he would just drift with the current — not here at the Cape. The currents down here would dash him on the rocks in a matter of minutes. So he’s got to be sitting on the bottom, and in that case, a ping would do no good. We wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between him and the bottom. It would only confirm our position. We’ll just wait for him… he’s got to come up eventually. Keep clearing the baffles and listening with everything you’ve got. If there are minisubs out there, they have to make some noise.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.”
Chapter 37
While the Texas waited for the Louisiana at her last suspected position, the Louisiana continued to move away at approximately five knots, powered by the SF-2 sub-fighter. When the internal batteries in SF-2 were exhausted, cables were attached from the Louisiana’s batteries, and the fighter continued to provide silent propulsion.
“Captain, Engineering,” the intercom reported.
“This is the captain.”
“I have a suggestion, sir. Our batteries are being drained more quickly than expected. I suggest turning off the air scrubbers — they draw a lot of power. Since we only have fourteen people on board, instead of the usual hundred and fifty-five, we ought to be able to go for at least eighteen hours without using the scrubbers.”
“Do it, Engineering. And keep thinking about what else we can shut down. Those batteries are going to have to last, even if we have to shut down everything in here and walk around with flashlights.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Six hours, and some thirty nautical miles later, the Louisiana rendezvoused with the XO and MacKenzie in SF-1 at the prearranged location. After mounting the fighter and plugging it into ship’s power, SF-1’s electric drive was started and added to the thrust of SF-2. The Louisiana continued to move away, totally silent, at a comfortable eight knots.
Twelve hours and another one hundred nautical miles later, the crew increased reactor power and brought the Louisiana’s engines back online.
“All ahead, one-third,” ordered Captain Adams. He turned to the XO and with a wink of the eye said, “Ace, you have the conn. In two hours, go to all ahead full.”
The XO chuckled at the fighter pilot nickname. He also recognized it was an extreme compliment from the captain — recognition of the captain’s full confidence in him, and recognition of a truly meaningful accomplishment — a single sub-fighter disabling numerous top-of-the-line fully armed attack boats in live combat. A revolution in submarine warfare!
“All ahead full, sir? That will be a bit noisy…” “I know,” said the captain, “but we have a long way to go, and we need to make up for lost time.”
Back at SUBLANT headquarters in Norfolk, Commander Lannis Wayne noted that the Texas had waited at the last known position of the Louisiana for twenty-four hours. He began to suspect the captain of the Texas had been buffaloed by his old friend, George Adams. Lannis talked to the admiral and suggested that P-3 antisubmarine warfare patrol planes deployed to southern Chile should search an area west of Cape Horn. The admiral agreed, and the P-3s dropped several hundred floating sonobuoys in an arc approximately 150 miles west of the Texas’s current location. The sonobuoys contained passive sonar receivers and radio transmitters for transmitting their readings to the patrolling P-3s. Nothing conclusive was found, although one sonobuoy reported faint intermittent contacts. Lannis ordered further computer analysis of the readings, and the results came back: possible biologics, noise, or possible Ohio-class SSBN.
The admiral ordered the Texas to investigate.
Chapter 38
“All ahead FLANK! Heading two-eight-zero degrees.”
Captain Buffalo Sewell had his orders. He had his navigator plot a track from their position to the position of the sonobuoy that had reported the intermittent contacts. Those contacts, Buffalo now agreed, were not biologics or noise; they were faint echoes of the USS Louisiana.
“I don’t know how he did it, but he got through our defensive line!”
“Why the hurry, Captain?” asked the Texas’s XO. “At this speed we’ll be cavitating like crazy! If the Louisiana is out there, she’ll hear us long before we hear her.”
“I know, but I’m afraid she’s got such a head start, that we’ll need to be at flank for at least a day to have any hope of getting within torpedo range before it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“The Louisiana is obviously headed for the southwestern Pacific. There are two possible reasons. First, George Adams might intend to go island hopping, using the islands as cover to avoid detection, while intending to move on into the Indian Ocean and toward the Middle East. That wouldn’t surprise me. George would surely know the short route from the Atlantic to the Middle East, around Africa, would be heavily guarded. So he’s taking the long way, across the Pacific, to get to the Indian Ocean. From there, with his Trident D-5 missiles, he can reach any Muslim target in the Middle East.”
“That should take a long time. So why flank speed?”
“Well, the second reason he might be headed for the southwestern Pacific, and the biggest concern right now, is that he may be headed toward Southeast Asia. If so, we need to catch up as quickly as possible.”