They'd made it, and without being detected. The sonar crew had been following Lieutenant Hawking's escapades off to the southwest, where, to judge from the volume of active pinging, the whole damned Iranian navy was chasing him like hounds after a fox, leading them farther south into the Gulf shipping channels.
They were still moving slowly forward, at about three knots.
"Two fathoms beneath the bow," the diving officer announced. "One fathom beneath the bow… "
The bottom was coming up fast. "Maneuvering! All stop!"
"All stop, aye."
But eighteen-thousand-tons-plus did not stop on the proverbial dime. Stewart felt a gentle, grating shudder through the deck, heard the scrape of mud beneath the bow.
"Maneuvering! Back slow!"
"Maneuvering, back slow, aye aye!"
Ohio's screw reversed. Every man in the control room was death-silent, listening, straining to hear, to feel, if Ohio was going to go aground. There was another slight scraping sound, and then an empty silence, a feeling of drifting free.
"All stop."
"All stop, aye aye, sir."
"Nicely done, Skipper," Shea said.
"Bullshit. I kissed the beach."
"Kissing the beach and making a lifetime commitment to the beach are two different things, Captain. With these damned tides, it's a wonder we can get in this close."
True enough. The tidal picture inside the Persian
Gulf was enormously complex, so much so that extensive computer modeling was used to make tide predictions here for naval operations, and even those weren't always of much use, but sheer guesswork rather than hard information. Each of Ohio's incursions close to shore had been planned to take place during high-tide periods, to give the submarine some extra maneuvering room. In water this shallow, even a few feet could make a difference. Some parts of the Gulf coastline saw no more than a couple of feet difference between high and low tide… but the spring tides near Bushahir could reach eight to ten feet. In general, narrow passages like the Straits of Hormuz tended to amplify rising tides, and the difference between high and low water could be enormous, unpredictable, and, therefore, dangerous.
Tidal currents could be complex, too, especially inshore, and strong enough to sweep even a vessel as large as the Ohio into shoal waters or the side of one of these damned little islands scattered along this part of the coast as thickly as mines in a minefield.
"Okay, maneuvering, I want back dead slow. Very, very gently now."
"Maneuvering back slow, aye."
"Helm, come hard right. We're going to parallel-park this beast."
With the helm right and the screw reversed, Ohio began slowly turning to the left, her bow swinging away from the dangerously shoal water ahead. He wanted to be pointed south, ready to cut and run the moment May-hew and his people were back on board.
Damn these shallow waters. And damn armchair admirals who would send 140 men into waters too shallow to provide decent cover. It was still dark on the roof, but should rapidly be growing light. When the sun came up, Ohio would be starkly visible from the air, even fully submerged.
Stewart checked the bulkhead clock—0448 hours.
"Our retrieval window for the ASDS is set from 0500 through 0600," he said. "High tide is at 0510 hours this morning; sunrise at 0507. If our SEAL friends are late, we're going to be facing ebb tide and full daylight in water that's already shallower than in my bathtub at home." He raised his hand and rubbed his eyes.
"Skipper?" Shea asked. "How long has it been since you had any rack time?"
"Damfino. Eighteen hours?"
"I don't think so, sir."
"Thirty-six, then. Don't remind me."
"You need rest, sir. We made it to Waypoint Bravo. It'll be another hour before the SEALs are here, at least. You could catch that much sleep."
"Negative, Mr. Shea." He nodded at the overhead, indicating the search under way in the distance. "Not with all that going on. With luck, we'll get the SEALs on board, slip back out to the channel, retrieve Mr. Hawking and his infernal machine, and then get the hell out of Dodge. Two more hours. Max."
"Yes, sir." Shea didn't sound convinced.
Stewart grinned. "Don't worry. I've only run us aground once this morning. And I don't intend to do that again."
"I wasn't worried about that, sir. But you're dead on your feet."
"Better than dead in my—"
"Control Room, Sonar!"
"Control Room. Go ahead."
"Sir! We have a new contact! Sierra Three-three-nine, bearing one-one-five… and, sir! She's close!"
"What is she, Chief?" He recognized Chief Sommersby's voice.
"Submarine, Captain. We're getting tonals off her even without the towed array. Sounds like it might be our friend from the Gulf of Oman."
"Has she spotted us?"
"Don't know, sir. I'd have to guess yes, though. There's a lot of backscatter in the water."
All of the active pinging in the distance was sending sonar pulses throughout this part of the Gulf. Like stray light illuminating a visual target, scattered sound waves reflecting off surface and bottom could "illuminate" a submarine target, make her visible to the passive sonar of another boat.
All question, however, vanished as a sharp, ringing ping sounded through the Ohio. The Iranian sub had just gone active with his sonar.
"Captain!" Sommersby shouted over the intercom. "He's opening his outer doors!"
"Maneuvering!" Stewart called. "Ahead two-thirds!" He looked at Shea. "Hang on, Wayne. This is going to get rough!"
21
"Range to target… sixteen hundred meters!" the weapons officer shouted. "Outer torpedo tube doors open!"
"Fire torpedo one!" Captain Damavandi ordered.
A sharp hiss, and a lurch, as the torpedo erupted from Ghadir's bow.
"Tube one fired electrically!"
"Fire two!"
"Tube two fired electrically."
Damavandi turned to Tavakkoli, his exec. "We have him."
"Thanks be to Allah!"
Damavandi glanced at Khodaei, who was standing nearby. "Yes."
"Torpedo one has acquired the target, Captain," the weapons officer announced. A moment later, "Torpedo two has also acquired!"
"Cut the wires," Damavandi ordered. "Helm! Bring us left to course one-eight-five. Maneuvering, ahead full!"
By using every stealthy trick he'd learned from his Russian teachers, by virture of the Ghadir's superb battery-driven silence — and, yes, by the grace of Allah the Mighty in Battle — they'd been able to sneak up on the American giant. The moment they'd sent out that ranging ping, however, the enemy captain had heard them and become aware of his danger. If he had a torpedo ready and loaded, he might execute what the Americans called a snapshot, in an effort to kill the Ghadir. By turning south and accelerating to full speed, Damavandi hoped to preserve Ghadir's tactical freedom, giving the Iranian sub space and depth within which to maneuver.
The American didn't have that freedom. He was close up against shallow water — Lieutenant Shirazi had reported sounds of the enemy vessel scraping bottom moments ago — and he was at a dead stop. If he bolted, if he ran for open water, he risked running solidly aground, and then the Iranian navy would have the ultimate prize, an American nuclear submarine as hostage, as bargaining chip, as propaganda victory… even as a source for a working nuclear reactor. Iranian nuclear research would be bootstrapped forward by years.