Nearby Andros Island was worthless as a resort because, except for Andros Town, it was a rock resembling the surface of the moon, if the moon had scrubby undergrowth. On the shore facing east toward Tongue of the Ocean, Dynacorp’s Sound Surveillance Systems subsidiary had set up a compound, a small town housing the technicians, naval officers, engineers, scientists, and salvage divers needed to run the test facility. Other than a weekly plane from Palm Beach, the island was isolated from the world, which the Navy saw as another benefit. Pacino had spent two nights on the Dynacorp compound with nothing to do but drink in the prefab building used as an officers’ club. He was glad to see the test finally get underway; it was time to get back to the Seawolf. There was much to do and little time to do it, including getting the ship out of the drydock and ready for the first manned live firing of the Vortex missiles.
And to turn over command of the ship to her next captain, he reminded himself, a thought he did not want to face. Giving up Seawolf would feel like giving up his son …
“Captain Pacino,” Dr. Rebman’s voice called, “you might want to see this from inside.”
In a covered deck space behind the pilothouse a command center had been rigged in what had been the crew’s mess. Behind Pacino, through several large windows installed in the bulkhead, a dozen men could be seen peering into eight oversized video monitors. Pacino walked into the space, almost immediately breaking into a sweat, the air conditioning inadequate to keep up with the men and the video screens and the heat of the Caribbean sun. On the forward bulkhead, four of the monitors showed the interior of the gutted target submarine Bonefish, one camera in the rear of the boat pointing forward, another forward pointing aft, one showing the topside deck looking aft toward the conning tower, one below the deck level; the only thing discernible inside the empty boat were the strings of temporary lights and the pallet of batteries that powered them. Every bulkhead, console, valve, pipe, and cable had been removed from the old boat so that the hull could be seen. Bonefish had no engines but did have a rudimentary depth-control system. Her forward motion would be controlled by a tug with a cable to Bonefish’s bow, the tugboat expendable and under command from the Diamond. The video signals from the cameras were obtained remotely in the Diamond’s control space using telemetry.
The camera’s video data was transmitted along fiber-optic lines to a telemetry module inside the remote-controlled tugboat. The cameras would roll aboard the Bonefish even after missile detonation and the sub was on her way to the bottom.
The scientists intended to study how the ship sank, what the hole looked like, how the ship died when the Vortex hit it, all in an attempt to judge the effectiveness of the warhead.
The remains of the hull would be salvaged and evaluated by materials experts. The 3D sonar data would be evaluated and presented, showing the path of the weapon, whether the unit had been stable after launch, whether its trajectory to the target had been straight and controlled or serpentine and reckless.
Not all the data was coming from the target. The firing ship was also under the eyeballs of the Dynacorp technicians.
Two of the screens showed flickering images of the interior of the Piranha, viewing the fat and long steel Vortex launching cylinder from several angles. The tube was covered with strain gauges and what looked like miles of wires, trying to find out how the tube behaved under the stress of the missile launch. The visual and electronic data would be conveyed to the outside world by means of cables leaving the submarine at the aft end of her sail to a data buoy floating on the surface, which would transmit the images and tube-strain information to the Diamond via data link. The buoy had a long reel of cable with a tension spring, so that no matter where in the bathtub the transmitting sub went, the Diamond would continue to receive data. The data buoy also received control signals to the Piranha’s maneuvering system from the Diamond’s control space; at the aft end of the hot room a control console had been placed with room for two technicians. These men drove the Piranha, changing her speed, depth, and course from the wraparound console.
In the past, data would have been collected from the weapon as well, the warhead replaced with a data recorder, a black box, that would tell the researchers what the torpedo had seen at each second of its trip to the target and the ensuing pursuit and “explosion,” the final detonation replaced with a tumaway maneuver. But in this test, the missile’s tremendous kinetic energy at 300 knots was so extreme that after it passed the target, it would continue on — there was no way to shut down a solid-fueled rocket — and in continuing it would smash into the far sheer wall of the bathtub, taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars of sonar sensors. The weapon-test scientists had elected to allow the Vortex to detonate its warhead to study the effects on the target, but also to act as a missile self-destruct system to preserve the bath tub’s sonar array.
Pacino watched as the control crew orchestrated the test, the snatches of conversation blending into each other, rising into a slow crescendo as the launch time approached. Over the next hour the Bonefish left the surface, sinking into the clear Tongue water under the control of the towing control tugboat. At the command of the technicians at the Piranha control console, the firing ship submerged and slowly cruised toward the launch point. The morning test preparations continued until the sun was high in the cloud-streaked sky. At last the missile firing was on its final countdown.
Pacino, his summer-weight khaki shirt now soaked with sweat, took a position at the oversized windows facing the Tongue and waited. Dr. Rebman joined him, the suit coat now replaced with a starched white lab coat. The countdown was initiated, and as it reached zero Pacino watched the sea where the tugboat towed the target. At the count of zero, launch point, the room grew silent, all eyes but Pacino’s watching the video monitors.
He saw a slight rush of foam at the distant point where he had imagined the firing ship to be, then moments later the sea at the target bearing erupted in a column of water that blasted upward in an odd spherical shape, barbs of spray coming out of the curving dome of the explosion. The water continued to rise, forming a mushroom cloud that dwarfed the Diamond, the cloud spreading and rising into the air, then raining down on the sea below. Then the sound came from the distant explosion, the roaring power of it rattling the glass of the windows, slamming Pacino’s eardrums, the full bass of the detonation pounding him. Pacino smiled, unable to contain the exhilaration of it, already bringing his hands up to clap, and turned to the men in the room, expecting the crew to be as exuberant at the success of the test.
Instead he saw long, incredulous faces staring at two video monitors as a tape player replayed the scene. Rebman was bent over a control console, shouting into a headset. The video scene rolled, the Vortex tube of the Piranha in the center of the picture, until Pacino could see the tube burst open in slow motion, then the explosion as the missile’s flaming exhaust filled the torpedo room. The camera apparently died at that point, the picture turning to snow. On the screens on the right videos played in a closed loop as the target ship’s cameras recorded the death of the ship— apparently the missile had sunk the Bonefish. But it had also put the Piranha on the bottom. Another tube rupture.