“Your words will be heard and valued, Citizen Visharakoramal.”
Matthews heard the formal introduction and response as he settled down beside his wife. “You spoke very well George.” Rose Matthews whispered the words to her husband quietly, proud of his performance and the approval his words had received. Matthews gently reached out and squeezed her arm. Then they settled back to listen to the rest of the debate.
B-25J “Heavenly Body”, Mediterranean
“P-3Cs out of Aviano.” Perdue explained quickly. The message had come in a few seconds earlier and meant that Heavenly Body was no longer wholly responsible for a task she was desperately ill-equipped to carry out. It was close to being a miracle that they had managed to track the Israeli submarine this long. Then Pursue stopped himself. There are no such things as miracles. We tracked the Israeli submarine because the water is clear and shallow and because Tyson was skilled enough to plot a search pattern that allowed us glimpses of her through the surface of sea. No miracles, or rather we made our own miracle.
“Hey, old-timer. Why not let the new kids on the block have some fun?” The radio message from the lead P-3 betrayed the affection mixed in with the jeers.
“Sure thing kid.” Perdue reflected that calling the aged P-3s ‘kid’ was a semantic strain. But, compared with the ancient B-25, he supposed they were. He was handling cockpit communications so that Tyson could concentrate on flying his aircraft. “What you got?”
“Couple of Harpoons and Mark 54s. Load of sonobuoys. What you got?”
“Machine guns. Lots of machine guns.”
“They’ll come in useful if that damned sub makes it to the surface. Right, old-timer, we’re heading in to lay buoys now.”
The two P-3 Orions swept in, the sea behind them marked with the splashes as the patterns of sonobuoys hit the water. They had laid two long lines, each at 45 degrees to the estimated course of the Tekuma. Together they formed a funnel that converged around the submerged submarine. They also allowed multiple cross references from the noise generated by the submarine’s passage. When fighting a diesel-electric boat, multiple sound contacts were essential. Running on batteries, with a skilled skipper and a cautious crew, a diesel-boat was as near silent as made no difference. And so, it was with some surprise obvious in their voices that the next messages reached Heavenly Body.
“Quebec-seven here. We’re getting strong flow noise off a contact.”
“Quebec-eight. Confirm that. Sending contact data to you now.”
Perdue was almost crying with frustration. If he’d be on the P-3s, the tactical displays would be showing the rows of sonobuoys and the contacts from them, the cross-bearings isolating the position of the submarine below. “Quebec seven and eight. What’s happening?”
“Hold your horses, old timer.” The communications officer on Quebec-seven was getting into the spirit of a 1950s western. “We’re getting multiple flow noise contacts but that doesn’t square with a modern diesel-electric. This one sounds more like a WW2 boat. We’re got some checking to do before we drop.”
“Quebec-seven. We shot the submarine to shit with. 50s while they were on the surface. Chewed up the composite fairings on the sail bad. Bits of GRP went all over. Could that be what you’re hearing?”
There was a long pause and Perdue imagined the crews on the P-3s talking it over. Eventually the radio crackled again. “Yeah, that could be it. Bits of GRP from damaged superstructure panels vibrating in the water flow. You been tracking it visually since you strafed him?”
“We surely have.” Perdue paused and mounted the word “Gas?” at Tyson who gave a thumbs-up. “We got plenty of gas left.”
“Good. Hold one.” There was another long pause. “We’re cleared to shoot.”
“You going to drop a nuke?” Next to Perdue, Tyson had suddenly taken an interest in the conversation. “Because if you are we better get well clear. Heavenly Body is one old lady, she can’t take much of that.”
“Negative on the nuke old-timer. Just plain old Mark 54s. Get ready to strafe it if it gets to the surface.”
Control Room, INS Tekuma, Mediterranean
“We’re picking up propeller beat on the sea surface.” The sonar operator was alarmed; the sound signature was very distinct. The aircraft that had been tracking them had been joined by two more. He’d even picked up the splashes as the sonobuoys had gone into the water. That had meant they weren’t being followed by an antique left-over any more, now they faced modern anti-submarine aircraft flown by crews that had more training in ASW than most of the rest of the world put together. That led to the question that really worried him. Why were they being hunted, they’d killed the Scarlet Beast hadn’t they?
Captain Ben-Shoshan was asking himself the same question and he really didn’t like the answers he was getting. However, he was unable to pursue the matter further because a much more urgent development demanded his attention. His submarine had just been surrounded by a neat diamond of four active sonobuoys. There was no doubt about that, the low-frequency pulses hitting the hull could be heard by everybody in the submarine.
“Give me maximum power right now!” He knew what was going to happen next, above him the anti-submarine aircraft were coming in for the long, low pass that would end with a pair of torpedoes dropped on his position. In this relatively shallow water with no thermocline to hide under, he had very few options left. Under his feet, he felt the humm as the electric motors picked up power and started to spin the prop faster. He guessed that the propeller wouldn’t be cavitating yet, but it was only a question of time. Shallow water meant little pressure on the prop blades so that the bubbles of water vapor would form so much more easily. Every one of them would sound like a tiny hammer hitting the prop blade.
“Torpedoes in the water.” The call from the sonar system operator was desperate. On the command system displays, the symbol representing Tekuma had been joined by two more tracks. Ones that were already moving fast towards her and curving in towards her stern. He could see the two crews above him had done an excellent job of killing him. The torpedoes were perfectly placed, one in each stern quarter. No matter how he turned, he was going to be presenting his stern to one and his beam to the other. That left him with few options.
“Launch decoys.” Outside, from small tubes built into the superstructure, the torpedo decoys popped out. They included noisemakers that would duplicate the sound of his machinery and bubble generators that would give an active sonar something else to ping. There had been a time when decoys had worked but those days were long past. It was the same everywhere, the computer technology that allowed small hand-held telephones to emulate computers allowed an unprecedented level of data processing inside the warhead of a small, expendable weapon. It wasn’t just necessary for a decoy to sound like a submarine, it had to act like a submarine as well. Target Motion Analysis it was called and it had spelt the doom of cheap, expendable decoys. The same technology was now spelling his doom also.
“Do not be concerned, the Lord will protect us.” Yitzchak’s voice was dreamy, distracted. He had been promised protection and salvation, the archangel who had guided him would not let him down. He would not be allowed to fall victim to those who had allied themselves with the Eternal Enemy.
“Bring her around hard, to starboard.” There was a odd quirk with the Dolphin design, she could turn slightly tighter to starboard than to port. It was a tiny fraction but it was the only card Ben-Shoshan had left to play. Then his communications officer’s words struck home. “Yitzchak, what the hell are you talking about? What have you done?”
The Mark 54 had a very specific target. The warhead that could be carried by a lightweight torpedo was inadequate to penetrate the hull of a modern submarine. Probably. So, the Mark 54 had been designed to pick out the submarine’s propeller an home in on that. More importantly, it was designed to blow at least one of the blades off that propeller leaving it completely unbalanced. It was the blast that destroyed his propeller that ensured Ben-Shoshan never got an answer to his questions. Not in this life anyway, things would be different very shortly.