Harrison took a look. The large garage door on the other side of the warehouse was rising upward.
He led Kendall around the building, stopping when they reached the garage door opening. Peering inside, he spotted Mixell at the back of the CONEX box. He had opened the doors and was extracting two heavy metal ramps from inside, muscling them into place. He was armed with a pistol in a shoulder harness, but as he set the second ramp in place, he was oblivious to Harrison poking his head around the edge of the garage door opening.
Harrison scanned the rest of the warehouse, spotting a woman’s body sprawled on the floor by the front door, her head twisted into an unnatural position. The realtor must have stopped by and seen too much. Aside from the dead woman and the man in the truck cab, there was only Mixell inside.
Outside the warehouse, Kendall stood beside Harrison, her back pressed against the wall, her pistol held ready. His eyes locked on to hers and she nodded. He held his hand up, all five fingers and thumb extended, retracting one digit into a fist at one-second intervals. When his hand clenched, they surged into the building, leveling their pistols at Mixell, who had his back to them.
Harrison addressed his former best friend. “Put your hands in the air!”
Mixell raised his hands as he slowly turned around. His gaze settled on Harrison, then shifted to Kendall and back.
“My, my,” Mixell said. “What a surprise.” Then he smiled and said, “For you.”
As Harrison tried to decipher his comment, Kendall swung her pistol toward Harrison’s head. “Drop your weapon.”
He turned toward her. “What the hell?”
“You’ve got three seconds to drop your firearm.”
Harrison quickly concluded he had no viable options. Kendall was standing too far away to disarm her. Plus, even if he could, he’d then have to deal with Mixell, who had a pistol in his shoulder holster and would quickly react.
“One,” Kendall announced.
The odds of defeating both of them were slim to none.
“Two.”
Harrison let his pistol fall to the ground.
76
USS NORTH CAROLINA • K-561 KAZAN
Murray Wilson’s options were limited. The incoming Russian torpedo was less than two thousand yards away and closing rapidly on North Carolina. Minutes earlier, he had launched a set of countermeasures, which the Russian torpedo had ignored. Clearly, Kazan was carrying an improved version of Russia’s Type 53 torpedo.
The most promising option was to employ the same tactic the Russian captain had — use the thermocline. Kazan had caught North Carolina by surprise by approaching above the steep thermocline, which created acoustic shadow zones on each side of the layer.
“Pilot, make your depth one-five-zero feet. Use thirty up.”
The Pilot complied and North Carolina tilted to a thirty-degree up angle, shooting toward the surface at ahead flank speed.
Ordering such a shallow depth, combined with a large angle at ahead flank speed, was a recipe for disaster. Only an experienced Diving Officer or Pilot would know when to start reducing the angle and how rapidly, so the submarine didn’t shoot all the way to the surface; Wilson had seen it happen many times aboard submarines with crews preparing for their upcoming deployment.
Wilson had faith in North Carolina’s Pilot, however. Reggie Thurlow was the Chief of the Boat, the senior enlisted man aboard and a master chief. He had never been to sea aboard North Carolina before this week, but he’d been the senior Pilot aboard his previous submarine, also a Virginia class. As the saying went, this wasn’t his first rodeo.
As North Carolina shot upward, Thurlow expertly flooded water in as the submarine approached the thermocline, using the extra weight to more quickly halt the submarine’s upward momentum. After North Carolina passed though the thermocline, Wilson executed his plan.
“Pilot, hard left rudder, steady course two-five-zero!”
The Virginia class submarines were quite nimble, especially compared with Wilson’s Michigan, an Ohio class submarine almost two football fields long. At ahead flank speed and a hard rudder, North Carolina whipped around, sending anything unsecured sliding across consoles and the navigation table.
A significant portion of the submarine’s speed bled off during the turn, and Wilson kept propulsion at ahead flank. They were now accelerating back toward the torpedo, but above the layer while the torpedo remained below.
North Carolina returned to ahead flank speed and seconds later, the torpedo punched through the layer behind North Carolina, still headed on the submarine’s previous course of zero-seven-zero while North Carolina was now traveling in the opposite direction. With North Carolina and the torpedo moving in opposite directions at maximum speed, the torpedo was soon beyond reacquisition range, continuing to open.
After the torpedo faded from Sonar’s sensors, Wilson decided to slow. They needed to find Kazan.
“Pilot, ahead two-thirds.”
Wilson chose to remain above layer and let his towed array droop below, searching above layer with the spherical array and below layer with the towed array. He also needed to reload.
“Weapons, reload tubes Two and Four.”
After Lieutenant Johnston relayed the order to the Torpedo Room, Wilson inquired about the starboard torpedo tubes.
“Any report on the starboard torpedo bank?”
“No, sir,” Johnston reported. “All indications are normal in the Torpedo Room.”
Wilson acknowledged the report. They’d have to troubleshoot later; now wasn’t the time to tear into torpedo and combat control consoles.
A few minutes later, the Torpedo Reload Party completed their task.
Johnston reported, “Tubes Two and Four are reloaded.”
“Very well,” Wilson replied. “Flood down and open outer doors, tubes Two and Four.”
Johnston complied and tubes Two and Four were made ready in all respects.
None too soon, because Sonar picked up a new contact.
“Conn, Sonar. Gained a new contact on the towed array, designated Sierra four-seven, bearing two-seven-seven. Analyzing.”
Not long thereafter, the Sonar Supervisor reported, “Sierra four-seven is classified submerged. Tonals correlate to Sierra four-six.”
Kazan.
Wilson announced, “Designate Sierra four-seven as Master one. Track Master one.”
North Carolina’s Fire Control Tracking Party went to work, determining the contact’s course, speed, and range.
Reassigning Commander Maske as Fire Control Coordinator provided dividends; he instructed the three men determining Kazan’s solution to start with course zero-seven-zero, since Kazan had been following its torpedo toward North Carolina, and to assume a speed of at least ahead full for the Russian submarine, since it had to have been at high speed to keep up with North Carolina. The three operators quickly arrived at a consensus: course zero-seven-four, speed twenty-four knots, range five thousand yards.
“Conn, Sonar. Loss of Master one, all trackers.”
Wilson focused on the unusual report. Contacts typically faded, their tonals or broadband noise growing weaker as range increased. A sudden loss of all frequencies, given the current acoustic environment, could only mean…