“Alright,” said the captain. “Let’s stay here for now.”
Five more minutes went by without a word in the control room.
In sonar, they all stared at their consoles, focused on the noise coming in their headsets. It was a whirring they were all familiar with, the sound of an empty ocean, a rushing noise like wind. They’d been trained to pick noises out of that sonic haystack, and they were all good at it: that’s why they were the battle stations team. While their brains were focused on their ears, their eyes were focused on their consoles, which had a digital clock in the lower corner: 0610, and the minutes continued to tick by.
Then, from the cold, unknowing noise of the ocean in front of them came a high, watery ping, each pulse lasting one second with a second between. It faded, then disappeared for a beat, but then it was back, as distinct and regular as a metronome.
Jabo heard the sonar supervisor key his microphone before he said a word.
“Sonar conn, we have an active submerged contact at three-four-zero relative, designate Sierra One.”
Thank God, Jabo said to himself. He looked at his watch: 0615. They had fifteen minutes to prosecute the target.
The supervisor was in control. “It’s faint!” he said. “May not be due to range, may be due to our depth. But we’ve got her. Recommend we come shallow.”
“No time,” said Jabo. “I’m going to do one TMA maneuver. That’s all we’ll get. I want to confirm range, then we’re doing the procedure.”
“Aye, aye sir,” said the supervisor, trotting back to sonar.
“Do it,” said Jabo to V-12. “Like we discussed.”
“Left ten degrees rudder!” said V-12. “Steady on course two-four-zero.”
The helm acknowledged the order and the ship swung left. On the console in front of them, bearings were starting to stack up, each ping from the Boise, one green dot for every ping that sonar heard. The fire control operator adjusted the solution he had in the system to keep the dots in a straight line. The straighter the line, especially after the maneuver tested their solution, the more accurate their estimate of the Boise’s course, speed, and range.
“What have you got?”
“Looks like she is on two-five-zero, five knots, about a thousand yards in front of us,” he said.
Jabo looked at his watch, they had ten minutes left. He waited one full minute, to verify that their solution still stacked up.
“Captain, we’ve got her. Inside a thousand yards. Recommend the special procedure.”
“Concur,” said the captain.
Jabo picked up the 27MC microphone, a link to sonar and the torpedo room. “Fire water slug from tube one!” he said.
Instantly, he felt the whoosh beneath his feet and his ears popped as the torpedomen ejected a tube full of water toward Boise. Had there been a torpedo in that tube, instead of just water, it would have sped toward the target on an intercept course determined by fire control.
“Ten seconds!” said the XO, stopwatch in hand.
“Fire water slug from tube two!”
Again, he felt the rumble in his feet and felt the pressure change in his ears. He’d been on the receiving end of these, in previous exercises, and he knew how loud the sound would be to the Boise, less than a half mile away.
“Ten seconds,” said the XO.
Jabo picked up the microphone for the UT, or underwater telephone, a transponder that broadcast voice directly into the water.
“Boise, this is Louisville, do you read? Boise, this is Louisville, do you read?”
They waited, but there was no response. Jabo’s heart was pounding, he felt excitement that they’d located their target, but was deeply certain that her lack of response was bad news. He looked down at the captain who was continuing to watch her dots stack up in a straight line.
“Sir? The special procedure is complete.”
The captain continued staring at the dots. “No reaction at all,” he said with a sigh. “Stay on course until it stops.”
They stayed behind her for another ten minutes until the pinging stopped, at precisely 0630, and the reliable, straight stack of green dots abruptly stopped growing.
“Ok,” said the captain. “Let’s go active. One ping.”
It was an option Danny hadn’t had on the Alabama, where their active sonar had been crude and almost useless. The BQQ-5 sonar on the Louisville, designed to use against a very quiet foe, was both sophisticated and powerful.
On the captain’s order, the same sphere they used for listening emitted a burst of sound so powerful that it actually boiled some of the seawater in contact with it. The sound travelled to the Boise, bounced against its hull, and returned to them.
“Conn, sonar, Sierra One detected on active.”
Danny and the captain huddled around the CODC screen to see the display. The signal was a smear that vaguely correlated with the solution they’d been building.
“Again,” said the captain. Sonar complied, sending out another active pulse. Again, the return stacked up, but the precision was bad, not nearly as solid as the sound the Boise had emitted on her own.
“It’s fuzzy,” said Danny.
“The tiles,” said the captain. “I’ve operated against a coated boat before, and it looked just like this.” The captain was referring to the anechoic tiles that covered the Boise. (The Louisville, not an “improved” 688, was not covered by the tiles.) The soft, rubbery surface was specifically designed to absorb and degrade an active sonar signal.
“Again?” asked Danny.
“No,” said the captain. “That’s enough. It won’t get any better. Break contact. Let’s go to periscope depth and tell them we’ve found her.”
“Do it,” said Jabo, turning to V-12.
“Dive make your depth one-five-zero feet.”
“Make my depth one-five-zero, aye sir.”
At the shallow depth they cleared baffles, turning to starboard to make sure no one was behind them, in their acoustic blind spot. With that accomplished, they were ready to go all the way up.
V-12 puts his hands on the ring for the number two periscope, and turned it. The cylinder smoothly rose until he could flip down the handles and put his eye to the eyepiece. He turned around completely once before giving the order.
“Dive, make your depth seven-five feet.”
“Make my depth seven-five feet, aye sir.” The control room went silent as the ship started coming shallow. V-12 slowly spun with the scope, ensuring their path to the surface was clear with his own eyes.
“Scope is breaking….scope is clear,” he said, continuing to spin around deliberately, searching the seas.
“No close contacts,” he said. The control room began talking again, giving orders, receiving reports. V-12 kept his eye on the scope. Jabo leaned over to him and whispered in his ear as he spun.
“So you didn’t see her on the way up?”
“No,” V-12 whispered back. “And I was looking.”
“Raise the mast,” said the captain.
The Chief of the Watch flipped a toggle switch that raised one of their multi-function antennas. They started receiving traffic immediately, routine messages that had been waiting for them.
“Are we ready with our outgoing message?” asked the captain.
“We’ve got the draft prepared,” said V-12, his eye still on the scope. “Just need to fill in our course and speed for the Boise, her exact position, and her response to the special procedure.”