"Clear, Admiral!"
"Good. Make it clear to our people in the operational area as well."
"Yes, sir. At once."
Baba-Janzadeh turned his attention back to the chart, where an aide was marking the position of the sighting, and drawing a straight line toward the northwest, indicating its last known heading.
The fact that the enemy vessel was there, almost fifty miles from the mainland and over seventy from the sensitive area near Bandar-e Charak… what did it mean? That the Americans had not been able to get close enough to send in their commandos? Or that they had already done so? Abu Musa was a good point from which an American submarine could conduct electronic surveillance of the air, sea, and land Omani operations. But had they put their special operations commandos ashore? If they had, were the commandos still in Iran, or had they been retrieved already?
And… if the Americans knew the key details about the secret beneath Kuh-e Gab, what were they prepared to do about it?
A very great deal was riding on the answers to those questions.
Caswell was pretty well fried. Emotional stress had taken its toll, and, in some ways, his talk with the COB had made things worse. He was no longer actively contemplating suicide, but with that option slammed shut, he felt more trapped than before. It was as though there was literally no place to go, nothing to do, to escape the intolerable pain.
Ohio's duty schedule was adding to the stress. Six hours on, twelve off… except that he'd been standing extra shifts when the boat was under high alert. Then rules said he was supposed to get eight hours sleep, but for days now sleep had been impossible. Doc Kettering had offered him something to help him sleep, but he had refused. He needed a clear head.
Which, of course, he didn't have to begin with. Dobbs had picked up the sound of that approaching aircraft.
Caswell knew he'd screwed up again, and it could have been a bad one.
Damn but the hash was loud outside! He could hear an almost constant barrage of chirps and cheeps, echoing and reechoing across the shallow waters of the Gulf. How the hell was he supposed to hear—
Ping!
The sonar pulse was loud, loud and close, coming literally out of nowhere. "Control Room, Sonar!" he yelled, mashing down the intercom switch. "Active sonar transmission, bearing zero-five-five, range… range less than two thousand yards!"
"Acknowledged."
Ping! Ping!
The barrage of sound was so loud now you didn't need earphones to hear it ringing against the hull. "Control Room… he's locked on to us!"
And, despite the noise, Caswell heard what was just possibly the most ominous sound a submariner could hear and recognize.
It was the grating broadband squeak of the outer doors to the torpedo tubes on another submarine as they slid open.
19
Captain Mehdi Jalali brought his fist down hard on the plot table. "Fire torpedo number one!"
A sharp hiss… and the deck lurched as the torpedo was ejected from Tareq's forward tubes by a blast of compressed air, momentarily interfering with the vessel's trim.
"Torpedo one fired electrically, sir!"
"Fire number two!"
"Torpedo two fired electrically, sir!"
"Fire number three!"
"Torpedo three fired electrically, sir!"
Jalali looked at the clock on the bulkhead, noting the position of the sweep second hand. Range to target was 1,800 meters… one and a half minutes, close enough.
He would have liked to have gotten in closer before firing, but his first active sonar pulse had returned a target — good, strong, and close. He hadn't expected to find himself with the enemy already squarely in his sights, Allah be praised. He would have been foolish to wait, hoping for a better solution, especially when the American now knew Tareq was here, and exactly where she was.
Three torpedoes to sink one submarine was probably excessive, Jalali thought… but then, this was an exceptional target. Ohio-class subs were big, and one 533mm torpedo might not be enough.
And he was well aware that he might not get a second chance.
"All torpedoes running normally," the weapons officer announced. "Allah be praised!"
Allah be praised indeed… when the warheads found their mark.
"Torpedoes in the water, Captain!" came the urgent call from Sonar. "Two… no, now three torpedoes! Range eighteen hundred yards!"
"Snapshot!" Stewart yelled. "Sierra Three-one-one!"
Ohio never went on patrol with fewer than two of her four tubes loaded and ready to fire at all times, and since entering the Gulf, Stewart had ordered four war-shots loaded. Boomers weren't expected to use their torpedoes; their weapons were twenty-four MIRVed Trident ICBMs, and if the boat had to fire a torpedo, it was because an enemy hunter-killer sub had found them, and because their mission — to remain undetected and serve as a deterrent — had failed. In her new role as an SSGN, the Ohio's operational envelope left a lot more leeway. She was still expected to remain undetected, especially when carrying out a clandestine insertion op along an enemy coast. However, the very fact that she did have to approach that coast meant she was a lot more vulnerable. Firing in self-defense was a lot more likely now.
A "snapshot" was just that, a quick, return shot fired without aiming. The idea was to loose one of the ready torpedoes as quickly as the tube could be flooded and the outer door opened, getting it off and running. If the incoming enemy torpedoes destroyed the Ohio, at least there was a chance that the American submarine would take her killer down with her.
"Torpedo tube three fired, Captain," the weapons officer announced. "Running hot, straight, and normal." A pause. "Torpedo three has acquired the target, Captain."
"Cut the wire, Lieutenant. Helm! Hard left rudder! Maneuvering, ahead full!"
"Torpedo three is running free, sir."
"Helm, hard left rudder, aye aye!"
"Control Room, Maneuvering. Ahead full, aye!"
Stewart felt the building power trembling through the deck as Ohio accelerated into a turn. He grabbed hold of the edge of the plot table to stay upright. The deck was canting beneath his feet.
This was why the helmsman and planesman stations actually had seat belts, though they usually weren't needed on boomers. Normally, submarine maneuvers were gentle enough, but high-speed combat maneuvers were something else entirely. Stewart heard a loud crash from somewhere forward as some piece of unsecured gear flew loose and struck the deck.
The hell of it was that the water here was just too shallow to allow any real maneuvering. With so little third dimension to work with, the Ohio might as well have been a skimmer, stuck on the roof. Her single available weapon now was speed, to literally outrun the oncoming torpedoes. Soviet-made 533mm torpedoes could travel at 35 knots, while the Ohio could manage 25 or a bit more. That meant that the torpedoes, now 1,500 yards astern, were closing with a relative velocity of ten knots.
Ohio had just extended her remaining time to four and a half minutes.