The pressurized peroxide fuel flowed out of the opened fuel solenoid valve into the combustion chamber, expanding into vapors as it entered the annular-shaped chamber with the ring of spark plugs. The plugs arced from the high-voltage current of the onboard battery, igniting the peroxide vapors, which soared in temperature at the inlet vanes of the axial turbine in the aft end of the torpedo. The gases spun the turbine and passed out the flapper exhaust valve into the surrounding sea. The spinning turbine turned a shaft connected to a ducted water jet propulsor, similar to the larger unit of the Hegira. The torpedo accelerated to its shallow depth cruising speed on the intercept course to the target, its sonar ears listening hard for the sounds of a gear-driven screw.
“Conn, Sonar! Torpedo in the water, bearing three one nine! Second launch, two torpedoes — no three — Conn, Sonar, we have multiple torpedoes in the water, all screws cavitating!”
“Helm, all ahead flank! Maneuvering cavitate!” Daminski shouted. “Dive, make your depth one three hundred feet. Off’sa’deck, load Mark 21 evasion devices in fore and aft signal ejectors. Helm, right half degree rudder, steady course one three zero.”
Daminski watched the control room crew follow his orders until the ship was on course, running from the incoming torpedoes. This was a moment he had dreaded — at the business end of an enemy torpedo with nothing to do but run and hope they ran out of fuel. His stomach filled with acid.
“Conn, Sonar, how many torpedoes?”
“Sir, five torpedoes. Bearing rate zero. They’re getting louder. Captain.”
Daminski, in spite of trying to keep his mind from the memory, had been in this position before, but always in the attack simulators in Norfolk and Groton, rooms set up to look exactly like 688-class control rooms, with the same attack-center consoles and plots, a room adjacent to the simulator the sonar display room. If the overhead lights were blacked out, a crew could almost believe they were in an actual control room fighting the targets that appeared as diamond symbols on the firecontrol consoles. In the simulators, the computer “target” frequently fired torpedoes at the at tacking submarine, turning hunter into prey, testing the approach officer’s wits to see how well he could evade the torpedoput the incoming weapon in the baffles due astern, or on the baffle edge if he wanted to be fancy and track it on broadband sonar and run at flank speed.
The reason Daminski hoped to forget was compelling. He had been shot at by the computer over twenty times in the last five years. In those twenty times, his ship had never survived. The computer’s torpedoes always killed him. In the postattack mop-ups he had always wanted to know why the counterattacks were so lethal … “Maybe you’re getting too close to the guy. Commander,” a firecontrol chief had told him. “Shoot him from a longer range and if he shoots back the torpedoes might run out of fuel.”
“Yeah, and he’ll hear mine and evade. I don’t think so.”
“Suit yourself, sir.”
“Does anyone else survive being shot at? Any of these other 688-jockeys on the Norfolk piers? Guys who shoot further out?”
“You want to know the truth, sir?”
“Give it to me straight. Chief,” Daminski had asked, wondering if his own tactics were truly flawed. “Commander, nobody survives. Unless the torpedo coming at you is so far off your bearing that it goes the wrong way, or so grossly flawed that it won’t detonate, or a long way away when you first hear it, that’s it. A sixty-knot long-range torpedo coming down your bearing line will almost always nab a forty-knot submarine. Of course, you might be up against a slower running torpedo. But I doubt it.”
“Thanks a load. Chief,” Daminski had said.
Nobody survives.
Screw him, Daminski thought. When Augusta pulled back into Norfolk he’d look that chief up and demand a beer. Several beers. And an apology.
Chapter 12
Friday, 27 December
“Torpedoes are closing, all five in the baffles.”
The deck shook as Augusta ran from the weapons.
Daminski looked at the speed indicator, wondering how he could go faster.
“Off’sa’deck, status of the signal ejectors?”
“Mark 21s loaded, ejectors ready.”
“Launch fore and aft.”
“Aye, sir.”
The two signal ejectors pushed out baseball-bat-sized noisemakers, one of them set to blow a large cloud of bubbles to confuse active sonar, the second programmed to make loud broadband noise, much like that made by the ship’s screw as she plowed through the water at maximum speed.
“Get me the engineering officer of the watch on the JA,” he said to Kristman. Kristman grabbed a phone handset and barked into it, then held it to Daminski. “EOOW, unload the turbine generators and pick up the loads from the battery. Take the mode selector to battleshort, then open the throttles to 150 percent power, you hear me? And take T-ave to five twenty, that’s right. Repeat that back … and listen, be damned sure you don’t lose an AC bus — the last thing I need is to lose a main coolant pump. Do it.”
He handed the phone back to Kristman, who nodded approvingly.
Daminski glared at the speed indicator, which slowly climbed from thirty-eight knots to forty-two. Daminski had given orders that might breach the fuel elements and melt the core, and all he had gotten from it was four lousy knots.
Parasitic drag, he thought abstractly. Daminski climbed the periscope platform and grabbed a sheet of paper from the navigator’s pad, scribbling on it for a few seconds, then pausing. For a few moments he put his hand into his coverall suit and fingered the letter from Myra, then shook his head and finished writing. He looked for Kristman and called the executive officer to the conn periscope platform, away from the men at the attack-center consoles. He pulled the XO close.
“Danny, send for a radioman with a slot buoy. Have him code this in quickly. Load it forward.” Kristman reached for a phone, intercepted the radioman entering control and gave him the paper without reading it. The young radioman left in a hurry.
The next item on his mind was the tubes. He still might be able to get off a counterfire, even without a solution on the target.
“Weps, what’s the status?”
“Sir,” Hackle’s voice seemed higher than usual, with just a suggestion of a tremble. “One and two are dryloaded. Mark 50 power is on, self-checks still in progress. Recommend flooding tubes and opening outer doors.”
“Flood one and two and open the outer doors.” “Sir,” Kristman said, touching Daminski on his shoulder, “we’ll have to slow to shoot the units. Twenty knots, maybe twenty-five.”
“Do you really think they’ll have a problem?” Augusta’s tubes were located far aft of the bow and were canted outward ten degrees, making the torpedoes leave the ship at an angle. At forty-two knots of forward velocity the weapons would get so much side force from the slipstream that they might bend or break. The standard operating procedure declared nonemergency launches be made under twenty knots — like a warshot torpedo launch was ever routine … “You heard about the flank-bell launch from Trepang, didn’t you? One torpedo broke in half. The second one did fine. But those were exercise shots without warheads. You bust a warshot in half, it’ll blow the compartment wide open.”
“Our Arab friends might already have taken care of that. I’m more worried about the health of the torpedoes. A broken Mark 50 won’t kill a target very well.” Daminski faced the attack center. “Weps, what’s the god damned status?”
“Outer doors open one and two, self-checks complete, ready to fire. Except for the solution, sir.”