“Aye, sir. Weapons are pre-set.”
The Reno went ahead and swung onto Scott’s ordered heading.
“Coolant pumps.”
Zemin didn’t have to be told. He saw the line on the monitor and recognized it. Faint, barely there, but definitely a 688I tone line.
Zemin swung into the control room. “Stand by weapons control! Come to course three-three-zero. Motors ahead three-quarters.”
The first officer’s hands flew over the firing consoles, throwing fixed function keys and switches that sent data to the torpedoes waiting in their tubes and armed the torpedo air ram ejection system.
Satisfied with what he saw, Zemin swung back into the sonar room. “Report target’s position.”
“Dead ahead, sir.”
“Good. We’re in his baffles,” Zemin said. He swung back into the control room. “Stand by to fire torpedoes.”
“Captain, I don’t hear him,” said the sonar chief. “Had him when we made that turn onto three-three-zero. I think he may be on our tail.”
Scott didn’t hesitate. “Clear baffles to port! Stand by to take evasive action!”
The Reno heeled left, like a plane banking in flight. If the Kilo was lurking in the dead zone aft of the Reno’s screw, she’d be naked now, exposed to the Reno’s sonar.
The chief almost came up out of his seat. “Goddamn, she’s there all right — two torpedoes in the water!”
“All ahead flank!” Scott bellowed. “Right full rudder.”
The Reno’s coolant pumps accelerated; the boat shook as she leaped ahead and turned away from the incoming torpedoes, Scott and everyone aboard grabbing for handholds.
“Fire decoys port and starboard!” Scott commanded.
The lurch caused by the dual ejection went unnoticed in the turmoil of evasion. Twin Thirty decoys aimed right and left, shot out of the tubes, their noise-making gear a shrill whine over the Reno’s thundering engines.
Scott bellowed a tangle of engine and rudder orders that made the Reno snake dance to evade the Kilo’s incoming torpedoes. No finessing it now, Scott thought. Either outrun the fish or hope to God they kiss the decoys. And no time either for a snap-shot, much less a well-conceived setup and firing solution. All the target data they had was down the drain. The brass-balled Chinaman had managed to get off two shots, and Scott could only scratch his head in wonder.
Two peals of heavy thunder aft from decoyed torpedoes shook the Reno to her keel and made the interior lights blink off and on.
Scott exhaled heavily, as did Kramer and others in the control room. Scott looked around at the sweat-burnished faces, at the slumped shoulders of men who, moments earlier, had thought they might not live another ten minutes. Who among them had dry skivvies, he wondered?
Scott slowed the Reno and spun her onto a heading that would bring her around, close to where the Kilo had been when she’d fired.
“Sonar, Conn. Anything?”
“Blast surge, Captain. Waiting for it to clear. Shallow here, and we’ve got sound pulses running all the way to Okinawa. Probably hear ’em in Pearl, too.”
“Which means he can’t hear us either,” Scott said. “Rig ship for ultra-quiet.”
Zemin held his anger in check. Two shots; two misses. Now the American had disappeared.
“First Officer, plot back the course the American shaped off his base course. Check the time line and find out when he broke off. Time it out to see how far he could have steamed. He’s not moving at high speed, so he must be within the intercept zone we blocked out on the chart, or at least near it. I want all tubes on ready status.”
“Aye, sir. The reload is complete and Fire-control is set to accept fresh target data.”
“Very well. Now get me that plot-back.”
“Break-up noises?” Park asked.
“None, Comrade Captain.”
“And no torpedoes have been fired for over thirty minutes,” Park offered. “Then they must be hunting for each other.” Park went to the chart table to pinpoint the position of the last set of explosions.
“The attack will draw Chinese naval and air units to the area,” Park said. “If they drop a net over the region, China will be at war with the U.S. and with us, too. Prepare to change course to due south in approximately thirty minutes. From that point on we will hunt for a merchant ship suitable for use as a decoy.”
A light marked Engine Room went on over the ship’s interior communications board. A sailor punched a square button on the board and lifted the phone from its cradle. “Captain, the chief engineer—”
Park didn’t take the call. Instead he sprinted aft to see what had happened.
“Got something here, Captain.”
Scott and the sonar officer peered over the chief’s shoulder. “Merchantman,” Scott said.
“Yes, sir, a big one,” the chief remarked. “Maybe one of those hundred-and-eighty-thousand-dead-
weight-ton cargo ships outa Japan. Probably heard all the noise and detoured to investigate.”
“Great. Next we’ll have the PLAN breathing down our necks.”
“Them too, sir. But see this?” The chief pointed to a thin tonal line working its way down the BSY-2’s waterfall, almost hidden among all the broadband noise.
“Residual from that merchie?”
“Not sure. Sir, could you shift the boat right maybe ten degrees, so I can get a better listen on this?”
Scott gave the order; the Reno turned right until her big bow sonar dome was pointing at the source of the noise.
“Better. Got a tonal. It’s like embedded in the merchie, but I don’t think it is.”
Scott straightened and worked a kink from his back. “Where do you want her, Chief? Another ten degrees right?”
“That might do it, sir.”
Scott made the change and waited patiently for the tonal to strengthen. It didn’t. The merchant vessel, her mammoth diesel pounding relentlessly, drew closer, the passage of her sheer bulk through the water masking all other sounds. Minutes later, the embedded trace vanished.
“Stay with it, Chief,” said Scott. He returned to the control room, feeling shot through with fatigue.
“Captain, let me spell you,” Kramer said.
“Thanks, Rus, I’ll do my part. Everyone else is.”
The atmosphere in the control room and throughout the ship felt tense, strained, the men still at battle stations, the ship rigged for ultra-quiet. To Scott, it felt as if the fabric was about to rip wide open, a sense of urgency straining the seams, a sense of something slipping away, the fact of it a mocking defeat.
Scott’s mind slid back to the hours he’d spent in Tokyo with Tracy. It was always the same: brutal, intense, a gnawing hunger sated, then the downward spiral. Even in Tokyo she’d held him captive. Now, she’d take his failure to call her at the Embassy as a deliberate rejection. He almost laughed out loud. Tracy’s ultimate weapon was jealousy. That and her uncanny ability to make him crave her.
“Conn, Sonar…”
The tonal waterfall had thickened, no longer embedded in the tonals from the merchie.
“Bearing’s steady, sir, and it ain’t the merchie.”
“Master One?”
“I think so.”
“Are we plugged into Fire-control?”
“Yes, sir,” said the sonar officer, who looked as drained as Scott.
“Where’s that merchie?” Scott asked.
“We’re calling him Sierra Three. He’s almost over the detonation site, hasn’t slowed though.”