“Pilot, all ahead full, make your depth two hundred feet, steep angle!” Pacino ordered.
“All ahead full, Pilot, aye, make my depth two hundred feet, steep angle, and Maneuvering answers, all ahead full, fifteen-degree down angle on the ship,” Dankleff spat.
In a matter of seconds Dankleff pulled the ship out of the dive. “Two hundred feet, sir!”
“All ahead two thirds,” Pacino said from the navigation console. He had to get them back toward the target submarine. “Right fifteen degrees rudder, steady course three-one-zero. Sonar, mark the bearing to Master Two.”
“Master Two bears one-five-eight.”
“Sonar, how is Master Two’s signal?” Seagraves asked.
“SNR to Master Two is fading but still hold him on broadband on the Q-ten wide aperture bow array and spherical array,” Albanese reported.
“Narrowband?”
Albanese shook his head. “Narrowband’s only showing random noise, Captain.”
“Acoustic daylight?”
“Noise as well, sir.”
High above and behind them, the Kakivak missile’s rocket motor ran out of fuel. Twenty-four explosive bolts fired and detached the booster stage and it tumbled toward the sea. The missile’s jet engine, spooled up by the air ramming into its drop-down intake during the rocket boost phase, lit off, the thrust increasing as the missile arched over and dived toward the sea, now five miles from the target, or thirty seconds at the missile’s just-under-supersonic speed. The missile sailed closer to the hull of the target, the huge ship growing large in the seeker window flashing as the Kakivak executed a pop-up maneuver, its winglets rotating to guide the jet powered weapon skyward again. A hundred yards short of the aim point, directly overhead of the freighter, the missile dived back down and sped downward vertically toward the ship. The fuel valves shut and the engine shut down. Another two dozen explosive bolts fired and ejected the warhead payload. The winglets of the now-empty missile body guided it away from the target and the warhead, and four hundred yards south, a self-destruction charge blew it to fragments that fell to the ocean below.
Aboard the warhead, an explosive charge blew a stabilizing streamer out of the top, followed by a small parachute. At an altitude of four hundred feet, the warhead’s trigger detonated and the NNEMP unit’s high explosive charge flashed into incandescent life, the force of it blowing an iron core through the tunnel of a high voltage electrified armature, the sudden and immediate speed of the core relative to the armature generating an intense and focused electromagnetic pulse traveling at the speed of light. There was little to see or hear but a gray puff of smoke and the thump of the explosion, but the electromagnetic pulse traveled straight down, focused on the target until it fried every electronic circuit aboard the freighter Sargasso Causeway. The force of the trigger charge acted as its own self-destruct mechanism, the remains of the EMP unit littering the sea around the freighter.
The freighter’s navigation lights winked out. She slowed in the water, half a dozen crewmen emerging from her bridge structure to the bridge wing to find out what happened.
“Detonation bearing one-five-one,” Albanese called.
“That would be the EMP,” Romanov commented, seemingly to herself.
“Turn count, Master Two?”
Albanese listened intently, one finger raised in the air, then said, “Target zig, Master Two. Turn count Master Two is decreasing. I no longer hold diesel engines from her bearing on broadband. Master Two is slowing down.”
A quick cheer erupted in the room. Seagraves frowned. “Quiet in control!” he barked.
“We got her, Captain,” Romanov said, smiling that beautiful smile and clapping Pacino on the shoulder. “Thanks to our young non-qual here.”
Seagraves gave Pacino a brief look of approval, just the slightest crinkling of his eyes and a nod. “A somewhat adequate job, Mr. Pacino.” Then, as before, the warning: “Don’t get cocky, though. Now close up on Master One and prepare to commence the operation.”
In the blur of the minutes that followed, Pacino ordered the ship turned to the bearing of the Bigfoot and sped up to twenty knots for the few minutes it would take to close the distance to the target. After the five minutes he’d calculated it would take to get within half a mile of Master One, he ordered Vermont slowed to nine knots and raised both periscopes uncaring of the twin rooster-tail wakes rising from behind their periscopes.
In his periscope view, the snorkel mast and periscope of Master One steadily grew. At Romanov’s direction, he hit the target’s snorkel mast with a laser rangefinder burst and reported the range now closed to five hundred yards. The target hadn’t sped up, gone deep or changed his behavior. They were still undetected.
“Pilot,” Pacino ordered, “Left one degree rudder, rudder amidships, steady as she goes.”
“Steady as she goes, course three-five-eight, sir.”
Pacino watched the periscope display, keeping the unit trained to the scope and snorkel of Master One, the crosshairs of the display showing the bearing changing as Vermont drew up even with the Bigfoot and surged ahead.
“Pilot, steer course north, all stop, mark speed five knots,” Pacino called. Dankleff acknowledged and the ship slowed, now just ahead of and on the port side of the L-class narco-sub.
“Speed five, sir,” Dankleff said. “Steady course north.”
“All ahead one third, turns for five knots,” Pacino ordered, all his concentration focused on the snorkel and scope of the target, now just abreast of Vermont’s propulsor shroud aft.
“It’s time, Patch,” Romanov reminded him. “Let’s go.”
“Captain,” Pacino stood erect as he addressed Commander Seagraves, who stood to the port side of the command console. “Request to open the lockout trunk hatch.”
Seagraves nodded. “Permission granted to open the lockout trunk hatch.”
“Lockout Trunk, Control,” Pacino said, keying his boom microphone into the 7MC ship-control circuit. “Flood the lockout trunk and open the upper hatch.”
The repeat-back rasped over Pacino’s headset, Grip Aquatong making the report. “Flood down the trunk and open the upper hatch, Lockout Trunk, aye.”
“Officer of the Deck,” Dankleff called a moment later, “Lockout trunk upper hatch indicates open.”
“Very well,” Pacino said. “Captain, request to lock out SEALs.”
Seagraves nodded. “Approach Officer, lock out the SEALs.”
“Lockout trunk, Control,” Pacino said over the 7MC. “Lock out and commence the operation.” Fishman in the lockout trunk’s dry station acknowledged.
It was all in the hands of the SEALs now.
10
“Approach Officer, lockout trunk hatch indicates shut,” Dankleff reported from the ship control console.
“Very well, Pilot,” Pacino acknowledged.
“Take us slowly deeper to one hundred feet,” Seagraves ordered. “Underhull maneuver, but maintain station relative to Master One. When you clear seventy feet, raise both scopes.”
“One hundred, scopes at seventy, maintain station, aye, sir,” Pacino said, then barked to Dankleff, “Pilot, make your depth one hundred feet, shallow angle, report depths.”
“One hundred feet, aye, and passing six five feet, down two degree bubble, sir.”
“V’well, Pilot.”
“Seven zero feet, sir.”
“Raising scopes,” Pacino said to Quinnivan. He pulled up both yellow-and-black striped hydraulic control levers for the number one and two periscope. The chart view on his command console blacked out, then displayed the view out the periscope, which was automatically trained toward the bow when he’d retracted it before. He pushed the “train” lever on the periscope controller, a unit that startlingly resembled a computer game console controller, to the right to change the bearing to the target, beside them on the starboard side and slightly behind.