Roth slipped his hands from his pockets and grasped the polished rail that encircled the La Jolla’s elevated conning area.
“Now listen up, guys,” he said. “Our rules of engagement state that we prosecute any submerged contact within fifteen miles of the convoy. We don’t have to wait until a weapon is fired to attack. We fire first. I know this ship is old, but you’re all capable of fighting her to her best.”
“Damned right, sir!” a balding senior chief petty officer said.
Sailors echoed the balding man’s sentiments, and a chorus of bravado and high fives broke out.
“I appreciate the confidence,” Roth said. “But keep your heads in the game. Man battle stations.”
Commander Roth watched a lanky lieutenant commander slide a sound-powered headset earpiece behind his jaw.
“The last station just reported in, sir,” the executive officer said. “We’re rigged for ultra-quiet.”
“What’s the assessment of Romeo One?” Roth asked.
“We picked up Romeo-one’s hull-popping transients,” the executive officer said. “We heard his hull expand and compress as he was changing depth.”
“He went to periscope depth?” Roth asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“He might have just downloaded orders to attack our convoy. You got a range?”
The executive officer tapped a man in a La Jolla ball cap on the shoulder, whispered, and pointed at a stack of dots. The man twisted dials, and the dock stack tightened.
“Best guess is twenty miles, sir. He’s got a long way to go to attack our convoy.”
“Was he snorkeling?”
“Didn’t hear any diesels. He might be too paranoid to risk the noise.”
“Agreed,” Roth said. “But if he didn’t snorkel, let’s assume his battery is depleted to seventy-five percent and that he wants to keep forty percent for his post-attack evasion. How fast can he go?”
The executive officer nodded at a sailor who handed him a laminated placard that correlated Romeo class submarine battery burn rates to speeds.
“He has to cover fifteen miles,” the executive officer said. “Burning thirty-five percent of his battery, he can sustain ten knots.”
“Enter ten knots for Romeo One into the fire control system. Plot a course and speed to intercept him six miles from the convoy’s track, fifteen minutes ahead of him.”
“What about the other Romeos we’ve been tracking?”
“We’ll deal with them as opportunity permits,” Roth said. “Let’s stop one bad guy at a time.”
Roth had repositioned the La Jolla in front of the inbound Japanese convoy.
“How’s it tracking, executive officer?” he asked.
“Romeo One’s been heading for the convoy since he came down from periscope depth, sir. The solution’s tracking as you assumed, only two knots slower.”
“He had less juice in his battery than we estimated.”
The executive officer grabbed the laminated graph.
“Probably sixty-percent charge when he received orders to attack the convoy.”
“That bothers me,” Roth said.
“Why, sir? We’ve got him nailed. I recommend that we take him out with one torpedo just inside fifteen miles—”
“But if he’s willing to attack the convoy with almost no juice to spare for an evasion, I question if he’s alone. He didn’t have to hurry. He could have waited and intercepted the convoy farther along its track.”
Two sailors in blue cotton jump suits stepped aside as Roth and the executive officer stooped over a trace-paper geographic plot of the ocean. Roth pointed.
“Romeo One is here,” he said. “Romeo Two is here, closer to the minefield.”
“You think they’re waiting along the convoy’s track to take turns… whittle it down ship by ship?”
“Let’s look at Romeos Three and Four,” he said.
“We haven’t heard them for a while, sir. They could have received orders hours ago — long before we heard Romeo One reach periscope depth to receive orders.”
“Give them ten hours of transit at twelve knots… one hundred twenty miles.”
Roth opened a pair of dividers to one hundred twenty nautical miles and walked it over the chart.
“Romeo Four’s out of range to attack the convoy, but look,” he said.
“I’ve got you, sir. Romeo Three can reach them just before the Taiwanese anti-submarine minefield.”
“So Romeo One attacks, the convoy hits evasive maneuvers, and tankers fall from the convoy. What’s left of the convoy keeps coming, and it happens again and again until there’s little to no convoy left.”
“Why not just gang up in a wolf pack?”
“You know what it’s like tracking ten surface targets, each doing submarine evasion zigzag legs, don’t you?”
“Pandemonium. You can’t tell one target from another, and with the zig legs, a torpedo aimed at one ship often intercepts another. Plus, once the first ship is hit, the rest evade on diverging courses.”
“Also,” Roth said, “if shots interfere, torpedoes could be wasted on the same target, or worse, shock waves from one torpedo could destroy another.”
“You think they’re spread out along the convoy’s track, sir? One Romeo inflicts its damage, surgically, and by the time the next Romeo attacks, the remaining convoy has regrouped into a tight circle of targets?”
“Exactly,” Roth said. “And we’ll have to take them out one by one, repositioning with each attack. No room for slop. No time for battle damage assessment. We shoot, cut the guidance wire, hope we aimed well, and move on.”
The executive officer craned his neck and glanced at the screen that displayed torpedo settings.
“We can shoot at Romeo One now, sir,” he said.
Roth reviewed the details and agreed. He stepped up to the conning platform and announced his orders.
“Firing point procedures, Romeo One,” he said. “Tube one will be the firing tube. Tube two will be the backup. I will engage with a single torpedo.”
“Plot ready, solution ready, weapon ready,” the executive officer said. “The ship is ready.”
“Shoot on generated bearing,” Roth said.
He reached for his cross.
Commander Hamid Hayat sipped tea as he stood. Knowing the slightest flinch would instill panic among the crew of the Hamza, a Pakistani Agosta class submarine, he tolerated no displays of fear from his men or himself.
“Torpedo alarm,” he said in English with an Urdu accent.
“I’ve got it, sir,” his executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Faisel Raja, said.
Hayat wiped his sleeve across his beard and lowered the teacup to a console.
“Read it. Silence it,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Coming at us?” Hayat asked.
“No, sir. Signal strength is too weak. It’s to our starboard and drawing right. No danger to our ship.”
“Raja,” Hayat said. “Torpedo seekers can adapt their signal strengths for a given sound environment, and signal strength can be irrelevant. But bearings drawing to the right cannot be faked. The torpedo is no danger to our ship. The torpedo is targeting Sun’s ship, not ours.”
“It is drawing in Sun’s general direction,” Raja said.
“It’s not just drawing in his direction; it’s heading for him. It’s an American torpedo, and it won’t miss.”
Raja look flustered. He tripped over a sailor’s foot while returning to the torpedo alarm.