“She had on the headset when the explosion hit,” Albanese said. “It broke the headset and I imagine she’ll be functionally deaf for a day or two. Assuming the best.”
Pacino motioned in Chief Goreliki to take care of Kim, who stood her up to take her to her bunk.
“What do you think, Chief?” Pacino asked Albanese.
“I think somebody dropped a nuke. We should put in a couple of legs to get the range. If it’s distant, it was friendly fire from Vermont. If it’s close, probably one of the bad guys.”
“You can’t do TMA on a blue-out,” Pacino said. Doing target-motion-analysis on a cloud of bubbles that took up a quarter of the azimuth was a waste of time. “What do you think about hitting it with an active sonar ping?” Pacino asked.
“That pretty much goes against everything we’ve been doing on this mission. You know, stealth and all,” Dankleff said, frowning. “And going against every order we have on this mission.”
“True. But if this is the result of Vermont firing a nuke, we’ll get an immediate range on the detonation radius, and maybe a surviving Russian submarine, assuming Whale here can interpret the return ping—”
“I can interpret it,” Albanese said, matter-of-factly.
“You sure?”
“No. I was trying to give myself confidence. And change my universe’s reality.”
“You’ve been talking to Fishman again, right?” Pacino continued. “If there were submarines that survived the blast, we need to know where they are.”
“Say there are?” Dankleff asked. “What’s our next move?”
“Obvious,” Pacino said. “We drive out that way and sink them.”
“Dammit, Patch, that’s not our directive!” Dankleff’s face had turned red as he shouted. “We’re supposed to hide and sneak out of the Arabian Sea, not turn our guns on some opposing force, spoiling for a fight. Is this your version of, ‘the best defense is a good offense,’ for fuck’s sake?”
“I wish I’d thought of that to say, actually, U-Boat,” Pacino said. “Look at it this way. Any submerged contact out that way has a room full of torpedoes. If he’s damaged and recovers, those torpedoes will be in the mail to our position. And to Vermont’s position. How big is your catcher’s mitt, U-Boat? Big enough to catch an inbound Futlyar torpedo? Or a baker’s dozen of them?”
Dankleff sighed, rubbing his eyes. “Why, oh why, didn’t I select Lobabes for AOIC?”
Pacino clapped Dankleff on the shoulder. “Good man. So, Chief Albanese, you ready to line up and try this?”
“Let’s turn to face the bearing to the detonation, zero-four-five, and hover. That’ll remove any own-ship noise from the sonar equation.”
Pacino stepped back to the command post. “Grip, left twenty degrees rudder, steady zero-four-five.”
“Northeast? Are you high?”
“Just do it, ya damned non-qual SEAL.”
“Fine, my rudder is left twenty, coming around to course zero-four-five.”
Pacino reached for a phone and called the wardroom. “Get Captain Ahmadi up to central command,” he said to Fishman. While he waited, he watched the dinner-plate sized compass spin slowly in the center of Aquatong’s console. Finally he steadied up on course 045.
“Grip, all stop. I’ll set up to hover.”
Ahmadi showed up, Fishman behind him. “Yes, Mr. Patch. Can I help?”
“Help me hover the boat,” Pacino said. Ahmadi took the position two console seat and stared at the displays, then pumped water from aft to forward and from the depth control tank to sea, waiting to see how the boat responded, then flooding depth control slightly. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he concentrated. After several minutes of operating the trim system, Ahmadi looked up at Pacino. “We’re hovering at one hundred meters, Mr. Patch.”
“Keep watching it, Captain,” Pacino said. He hurried back to sonar.
“We’re steady on zero-four-five and hovering. You ready?”
“Yes, sir,” Albanese said. “The MGK-400 is lined up.” He looked up at Dankleff. “OIC, permission to ping active?”
Pacino looked at Dankleff, who bit his lip, then said, “I’m gonna regret this, but, Chief, ping active.”
The loud active sonar ping could be heard with the naked ear in the hull of Vermont, the sound loud and long. It seemed to be coming from the south. And it seemed close.
Captain Seagraves looked at Officer of the Deck Romanov, his face startled. “What the hell is going on?”
“That was from Panther,” Petty Officer Mercer said from the Q-10 stack seat. “Bearing one-seven-eight.”
“Can you tell if there’s a return ping?” Romanov asked.
“We’re not set up for that,” Mercer said. “We’d have to ping out with the Q-10 ourselves to interpret actual distance to the blueout and see if there are any surviving submerged contacts.”
Seagraves, Romanov and Quinnivan gathered at the command console. “What the hell are they doing?” Seagraves said, his frown deepening.
“Approach Officer, we have a zig on the Panther,” Mercer announced. “Aspect change. He’s turning to his left. Northwest.”
“Goddammit,” Seagraves cursed. “Dankleff is supposed to get Panther out of here, no matter what happens.”
“Transients from Panther,” Mercer said. “Sounds are consistent with him starting up his fast reactor.”
“I’m going to kill those guys,” Seagraves muttered to himself.
“Panther is speeding up, sir. Sounds like he’s putting on maximum turns.”
“He’s heading toward the blueout, Captain,” Romanov said, flipping the command console to the chart. She’d drawn blood red circles around the impact points of the SubRocs. The bearing to the point in between the circles was 049. Before Panther started acting up, they’d done three legs of target motion analysis, TMA, to determine the range to the blueout, and it was sloppy, but generally correlated with the range they’d set into the SubRocs, 180 and 190 miles from the Vermont. “I think. Let’s get some TMA done on Panther to get his solution. Maybe he detected something.”
“We don’t have time for that, Nav,” Quinnivan said, cupping his hand over his boom microphone, giving an illusion of the three of them having privacy in the crowded battlestations-manned control room. “Panther pinged active, so if there is someone out there, now they know we’re here, and they know Panther didn’t steal herself. Our presence as an escort sub has to have been guessed by an opposition force. And all I can say is, ‘duh.’ It’s fookin’ obvious. So let’s see what Panther detected. We need to line up active sonar and ping the hell out of that blueout. See what Panther’s got her nose into.”
“XO makes a good point, Captain,” Romanov said, as if she sensed Seagraves’ doubts.
Seagraves looked at Quinnivan, then Romanov. “Any downside to going active?”
Quinnivan made a sour face. “Sure, Skipper. Whoever’s out there would have our exact bearing. If he’s good, he could do a couple passive TMA legs on us and nail down our exact solution.”
“But he can’t put a warhead on us,” Romanov said, “we’re way outside torpedo range, if a contact is near the blueout.”
“Pilot,” Seagraves ordered, “left twenty degrees rudder, steady zero-four-nine. All ahead flank.” He looked at Romanov. “We should at least get going in that direction.”