He popped a cover off a large electrical breaker and punched the red button marked close, then watched the battery bus voltage meter needle zip up to 250 volts. Up on the main panel he checked the engine speed and diesel voltage.
The engine had held now that it was loaded with the current drain of the dead battery. He stood and walked forward along the panels of the Yokogawa Second Captain supercomputer until he reached the 400-hertz motor generator control cubicle, one of the power generators for the computers.
He shut its breaker and shone his flashlight on its voltage and current meters. The motor generator set came up to speed in the steam module compartment, supplying the computers with their odd 400-cycle AC power. He stepped to the 120-volt 60-cycle panel and performed the same function for the computer’s 60-cycle power generator. When it came up to speed he shut a breaker and reported to the control room that they could restart the Second Captain. He took a walk back to look at the diesel panel, scanning its instruments one last time. Time to get back to the control room and restart the reactor.
He grabbed his battle lantern and started the walk. By the time he reached the stairs, the overhead lights had come back on. He hurried back to the control room’s aft starboard corner, acknowledging Sharef’s smile, then sat in the control seat. The reactor core display took some time coming up on the console, but finally the Second Captain had warmed up and the display showed core status. Quzwini selected the electrical distribution network on an adjacent console and pointed to his subordinate to energize the main ship service AC motor generator set. Lieutenant Kutaiba, the propulsion officer, brought the machine up, energizing the high-voltage AC bus network. Quzwini now had power to his control rod drive motors, and he stabbed the soft response key that was configured to commence reactor startup.
Two modules aft, in the reactor bay, the rod drive motors began pulling control rods out of the uranium core, the power module that had once been eyed by Sihoud as raw material for his desired nuclear weapon, but the fuel would have taken over a year to reprocess with an entire reprocessing plant to isolate the uranium — the reprocessing plant itself would have taken over a year to build, so Sihoud had left the Japanese-constructed core alone and searched for nuclear weapon material elsewhere.
Within three minutes the core was in the power range, the steam headers were warm, and Quzwini had begun spinning up the turbine generators. As soon as he brought the first electrical turbine onto the grid he shot orders at Kutaiba to secure the snorting operation. The diesel engine aft shut down, the absence of its reassuring roar making the ship unnaturally quiet. There was a clunking noise as he lowered the snort mast. Quzwini continued bringing the power module up, finally putting the propulsion turbine generators online.
He turned to Sharef.
“Sir, the plant is back, propulsion AC motor is ready.”
“Dead slow ahead, dive to 500 meters,” Sharef ordered.
He left his spot behind Quzwini and turned to al-Kunis in the sensor area. “Find the submarine as soon as you can. Weapons officer, reapply power to the Nagasaki torpedoes in tubes one through five.”
Hillsworth shook his head as he held his headset’s earphone to his skull.
“Conn, Sonar, Target One has shut down, last bearing one three eight. I still have four units between bearings one three five and one four zero, all four in reattack mode. And sir, I’m getting diesel engine noises from astern, edge of the starboard baffles.”
In the control room Daminski stared at the firing panel.
The weapons that still had their wires connected had acquired on the target, gotten close enough to go to final warhead arming, then lost the target and gone into reattack. Not one detonation. And now sonar reported a loss of the target and a diesel engine noise from astern. From behind them.
Daminski turned to look at Kristman, ideas forming themselves in his mind, all of them colliding and sparking as they swooped through his head.
The torpedoes went into reattack close to the target. Both passive and active homers. Reattack. Couldn’t find the target. Target shuts down. Diesel engine startup from the baffles.
“Cut the wires tubes three and four, shut the outer doors, drain the tubes and reload one through four!” Daminski shouted to Hackle, his voice oddly loud, as if he had become half-deaf. “Helm, right five degrees rudder, all ahead one third!”
“What is it, sir?”
“Fucker fooled us with a god damned decoy, that’s what. That’s why the units kept going into reattack. They can’t get a proximity signal on a decoy. Now that asshole is snorkeling from his launch position — must have shut down his reactor to run silent and something went wrong, tripped a battery breaker. Hackle, get those torpedoes loaded and open the outer doors, tubes one and two. Helm, steady course one four five. Attention in the firecontrol team. The diesel engine is redesignated Target Two. Target One is a decoy and will be dropped from firecontrol. Give me a two-minute leg to Target Two before we maneuver, then we’ll shoot another salvo at him. Carry on.”
“Conn, Sonar,” Hillsworth’s voice shouted, “diesel engine transients designated Target Two have shut down. Loss of Target Two, last bearing, three one five.”
“Status of the tubes. Hackle!”
“Sir, we’ve drained down and are loading a Mark 50 into tube one now, it’ll be another three minutes before we’re connected and spun up.”
“Goddamn it. Get those fish loaded.”
Daminski was furious at himself for leaving the tubes unloaded.
It would take five minutes to warm up the weapon gyros and shoot them, if he had a firecontrol solution, which he didn’t with Target Two shutting down.
“Sonar, Conn, what’s the status of Target Two?”
“Still nothing, sir.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Regained contact on the Coalition sub, Commodore. He’s maneuvering. Towed array range is crude but workable at eight kilometers. We have the target bearing and range set into the torpedoes in one through five.”
“Status of the weapons?” Sharef asked.
“Nagasaki torpedoes warmed up, bow caps open, target solution programmed, sir.”
Sharef nodded. “Shoot tubes one through five.”
“Firing one …”
The deck trembled with the power of the tube launch.
Four more times the deckplates vibrated. Finally, Ahmed thought, Sharef was fighting back.
“Tube launches complete, tubes two through five and seven,” al-Kunis reported. “All weapons running normally.”
“Ship control, turn to three four zero, ahead sixty percent, maintain depth 500 meters.”
“Yes sir, turning to three four zero, sixty percent.”
“Shut the bow caps on one through five, warm up six and seven and flood the tubes.”
Ahmed watched, approving.
The first Nagasaki torpedo left the tube under the pressure of a gas generator at the breech end. Some moments before it had been divorced from the electrical power from the mother ship. The tube had fed in the target’s data as well as the run speed and search pattern to be used on the target. The expanding gases at the base of the tube pushed on the aft end of the weapon, hard, pushing it into the cool curtain of the Mediterranean water. As the elliptical head of the torpedo left the envelope of the submarine’s bow, the water flowed into a duct set low in the weapon’s nose, spinning a small water turbine on jeweled bearings. The turbine generated a minute current in a generator that energized a small electromagnet in a relay; the magnet shut the relay contact in the engine start logic circuit, providing the computer with a signal to start the weapon’s engine.