“And if he counterfires?”
“After the launch we’ll drive off the track by five kilometers, then delouse. Once we’re shut down, an incoming torpedo will not detect us.”
“A delouse without a Dash Five? I don’t think those tactics will”
“At this long range it will do. And if it does not we will have time to restart.”
Tawkidi scribbled on the pad. “Sir, torpedo-run time to the target is about an hour and twenty minutes. We can’t stay shut down that long. We only had forty minutes last time.”
“The battery did not have a full charge. It will last longer, perhaps an hour, now that it has had a deep discharge and the full-current recharge. We’ll wait twenty-five minutes prior to the delouse and restart before we fully drain. Is that satisfactory?”
“Aye, sir. We’re ready to shoot.” Tawkidi knew when to say yes.
Sharef’s voice grew loud in the tight room. “All watchstanders, a moment please. We have classified the submerged contact as another 688-class American. To avoid an attack I intend to fire a single weapon now at long range, move off the track, and shut down propulsion with a delouse maneuver. When the 688 is on the bottom we will proceed into the Atlantic. We will warm up a second weapon and keep it standing by in case. Questions? Very well. Weapons officer, open tubes nine and eight to sea and warm up the weapons, report when ready to fire. Deck officer, maneuver the ship to the south. I don’t want to approach the target any closer than we are now.”
“Aye, Captain. Ship control, one degree right rudder, steer course south.”
For what seemed a long time to Ahmed nothing happened but the flashing of displays on the weapon-control screens.
The room’s only noise was the humming of the computers and the low growl of the air handlers. After several minutes the torpedoes were warm.
“Range to the target?” Sharef requested.
“Ninety-one kilometers,” Lieutenant Commander Mamun, the weapons officer, reported from the weapons panel.
“Shoot tube nine.”
The deck shook as the heavy Nagasaki torpedo left the ship for its distant target.
“Ship control, right five degrees rudder, steer course north. Reactor control, prepare to insert a delouse.”
Sharef walked to the sensor-console area and looked at the two banks of console displays devoted to the target submarine.
Nothing had changed — they apparently had not heard the launch. The next two displays on the neighboring console were monitoring the torpedo on its slow-speed approach to the submarine far over the horizon. Now there was nothing to do but wait the forty-five minutes or hour until the two machines detected each other. One would run, the other speed up and chase. When the hunter had killed the prey, the passage to the Atlantic would be wide open and then it would be time to think about how they would assemble the Scorpion warheads in the Hiroshima missiles. And once that problem was solved, all that remained was to get within range of Washington and fire the missiles. Sharef briefly wondered whether he would ever get Hegira back to base after the missiles had done their job. Better not to think of that, he told himself.
Meanwhile, ten kilometers to the west, the Nagasaki torpedo drove on toward its target.
Edwin Sanderson was a big man, frequently asked how he stood being confined in a submarine. He wasn’t exactly flabby but was well on his way to developing a gut, standard issue for chiefs in the submarine force. Too many second helpings of bacon and eggs, too few exercise sessions in the torpedo room. His hair was now more gray than black. His gray penetrating eyes tended to show red after hours of staring at the sonar consoles. When he was angry many a senior officer had backed down to him. When off-duty or drunk or amused he could crack a grin that made the face radiate goodwill around him. His wife joked that it was his infectious smile that had charmed her into his orbit, but that if she had seen his anger when they were courting she would never have married him.
As for whether he felt confined in the sub, in truth he was more at home at sea — his routine restricted to the sonar display room, the sonar equipment space, the chief’s quarters and the crew’s mess — than at his Ghent home. His home life was enjoyable, he had a pretty wife, now showing some weight on her previously thin frame, two sons, one in high school, the star center on the basketball team, the other in junior high who hadn’t quite found himself. It wasn’t that Sanderson didn’t enjoy being in port, it was just that his wife and sons seemed to own the house, and he was a frequent visitor. Home was a busy port, he was a cargo ship that pulled in from time to time. The family welcomed him when he’d return from a run at sea, but after two days he felt like he was underfoot. Life had led him to the sea and made him a chief then, and he loved it.
At sea the actions of the men around him seemed centered on him. The ship to him was a giant mobile ear, built so that sonarmen could listen to and interpret the sounds of the sea, most of them random, others manmade and sinister. The rest of the vessel, her reactor and steam plant, her control room, her weapons, even her crew were all subordinate to the task of listening to the sea. This submarine, built for a dozen select sonarmen, was more his, he felt, than the captain’s.
After all, he was the chief sonarman, the one man declared by the Navy to be the best aboard at listening to that symphony of sound in the sea, best at leading the men who would listen under his instruction, best at attending to and fixing the monstrous ear and the surrounding equipment, best at directing the young officers who drove the ship in a way that would make his equipment listen optimally.
His title said it best — Senior Chief Sonarman Sanderson.
He sat now at the aft display console of the BQQ-5D sonar set, the seat just forward of the sliding curtain to the control room, where he could see the other consoles and talk to the officer of the deck in control without using the speaker system or the cumbersome boom microphone. As usual, he was dressed as if they had just pulled into the Norfolk carrier piers: starched khakis, his submarine dolphins gleaming above two rows of ribbons and his boomer pin, his nametag shining over his right pocket, his chief’s emblems new, his shoes shining. He always dressed this way at sea, never opting for the relaxed coveralls and sneakers of shipmates.
Some said it was because in his khakis he retained his authority, his formality, while in a poopysuit he would become just another crewman. The closest to a friend Sanderson had, a first-class petty officer named Smoot, insisted that the khakis were more comfortable to the chief, but Sanderson himself knew the first reason came the closest. In his more mellow moments he realized he had a streak of arrogance about him, but he maintained even to himself that it was a selfless arrogance born out of service to his countryafter twenty-six years in the Navy he was the best sonarman on the god damned east coast. If he had limits they were only that he had to use the aging BQQ-5D sonar suite instead of the advanced BSY-1 of the Improved-688 boats, and that he was sailing aboard an older 688 submarine instead of a much quieter 688-1 class. But even so, he would pit his ship and his sonar against any in the fleet ― if exercises meant anything he and the Phoenix were a match for any warship afloat or submerged.