A half-minute later, the Sonar Supervisor’s voice came over the net.
“USWE — Sonar, Antietam’s weapon has acquired the target. Looks like it’s starting its attack run now.”
Ensign Cooper clapped his hands. “All right!”
Chief McPherson stared at the CDRT without saying anything.
Captain Bowie watched her for a few seconds. “What is it, Chief?”
The chief shook her head. “Something’s not right here, Captain.”
Ensign Cooper looked at her. “What?”
“The sub isn’t doing anything,” Chief McPherson said. “He’s got a torpedo screaming up his ass, and he’s not doing anything about it. No evasion, no flank speed, no nothing …”
“It’s a decoy!” Ensign Cooper shouted. He nearly broke a finger jabbing the button for Navy Red. “SAU Commander— Towers, it’s a decoy! I say again, your target is a mobile decoy! Recommend you take immediate evasive action!”
From across CIC, a Radar Operator yelled, “TAO, I’ve got two, no … make that three missile pop-ups! Bearing two-two-zero!”
The TAO yelled, “Use the goddamned net!” Into his own comm-set mike he half-shouted, “All Stations — TAO, we have in-bound Vipers! I say again, we have missiles in-bound! This is not a drill! Weapons Control, shift to Aegis ready-auto. Set CIWS to auto-engage. Break. EW, I need your best course for minimized radar cross-section, and stand by to launch chaff!”
The Electronics Warfare Technician’s response came a half-second later. “TAO — EW, standing by on chaff. I have active H-band seekers on all three missiles. Looks like Exocet SM-39s, ‘November Variants.’ EW recommends we avoid jamming, sir. I say again, recommend we do not jam. The November birds have home-on-jam capability.”
The captain sprinted for his chair at the center of CIC, between the giant Aegis display screens. Three missile symbols were rapidly closing on the ships. It was still too early to determine which ships had been targeted. He pulled a comm-set over his head and keyed up. “Give me a plot on the pop-up point for those missiles.”
A hostile-submarine symbol appeared on the screen in flashing red.
“What’s the range? Can we hit that bastard with ASROC?”
Ensign Cooper keyed up. “Captain — USWE. Range to missiles’ point of origin is fifty-five thousand yards, sir. No way we can hit it with ASROC.”
“Damn it!” the captain shouted. “TAO, what’s the estimated time-on-top? When are those bastards going to hit us?”
Before the TAO could answer, the captain punched the button to jumper his comm-set into the 1-MC General Announcing Circuit. When he keyed the mike, his voice came out of speakers all over the ship. “This is the Captain speaking. We have three in-bound Vipers off the port bow. All hands rig for impact. This is not a drill.”
The ship heeled over as the bridge began to maneuver to minimize the ship’s radar cross-section.
The TAO said, “Vipers are not targeted for Towers, Captain. All three are locked on Antietam. Estimated time-on-top is ninety seconds.”
As the words left his lips, a second set of hostile-missile symbols popped up on the screen. Three more Exocet missiles — all bound for Antietam.
The captain keyed his comm-set. “Weapons Control, this is the Captain. Can we get some birds up there to help Antietam out?”
The response was a few seconds in coming. “Captain — Weapons Control. Negative, sir. Antietam is fouling our range. As low as those Vipers are to the water, we’d have to shoot through Antietam to get to them.”
The Air Supervisor spoke up. “Antietam is firing, sir. Two salvos of surface-to-air missiles, looks like six and six.”
The captain nodded.
Antietam was following shoot-shoot-look-shoot-shoot doctrine for incoming Vipers: fire two missiles at each Viper, take a peek with radar to see if they’ve been destroyed, and then fire two more missiles at each Viper that survived the initial salvo.
Captain Bowie nodded at the Aegis display screen and said quietly,
“Whiley, you stubborn bastard, still playing it by the book. And look what it’s got you.”
The battle seemed to unfold in slow motion on the big display screens.
Six friendly-missile symbols and three hostile-missile symbols vanished as Antietam’s first salvo took out three of the incoming Vipers. Ten seconds later, the scenario repeated itself as Antietam’s second salvo of six destroyed the remaining three in-bound Vipers.
The Towers CIC team began to cheer.
“I’ll say this for Whiley,” the captain said, “that son of a bitch can shoot!”
The cheers were suddenly chopped off by a voice over the 29-MC speakers. “All Stations — Sonar has multiple hydrophone effects off the port bow! Bearings three-one-five, and three-one-seven. Initial classification: hostile torpedoes!”
“Crack the whip!” Ensign Cooper said into his comm-set. “Bridge — USWE. We have in-bound hostile torpedoes. I say again — crack the whip!”
“Bridge, aye!”
In the background came the muffled wail of the gas turbine engines as they spun up to flank speed.
The Officer of the Deck’s voice broke over the 1-MC. “All hands stand by for heavy rolls while performing high-speed evasive maneuvers.”
The deck began to heel to starboard as the big destroyer whipped into the first in a series of tight, high-speed turns. The crack-the-whip anti-torpedo maneuver would take the ship through a rapid succession of near-hairpin turns, designed to create multiple propeller wakes at very close intervals. A torpedo attempting to follow a ship through the aftermath of a crack-the-whip maneuver would find itself faced with a confusion of wakes to choose from, not to mention a wall of acoustic interference as the millions of bubbles churned up by the ship’s screws collided, collapsed, and popped. Coupled with the towed acoustic decoy system called Nixie, the maneuver was highly effective. Some tactical analysts rated its probability of success at nearly seventy percent. And in the world of torpedoes, it didn’t get any better than that.
Ensign Cooper gripped the edge of the CDRT to maintain his footing as the deck surged first one way, and then the other. The symbols on the screen had devolved into a mad little dance as every ship in the formation executed its own torpedo evasion maneuvers.
“Antietam is outside the screen,” he said quietly. He braced one hip against the side of the CDRT and let go with his right hand so that he could key his mike. “Captain — USWE. Both of the enemy torpedoes are locked on Antietam, and Antietam is outside of our defensive screen.”
He stared at the CDRT’s tactical display, and then looked over his shoulder at the big Aegis display screens. They all told the same story.
From the wild movement of her tactical symbol, it was obvious that Antietam was running her own crack-the-whip maneuver. It was just as obvious that the maneuver was going to fail. The hostile torpedoes had been fired from too short a range. They had far too good a sniff of the cruiser’s real acoustic signature to be distracted by decoys and tricky maneuvers.
Ensign Cooper watched helplessly as the flashing red hostile-torpedo symbols began to merge with the symbol that represented Antietam.
Powered by a four-stage axial-flow turbine and a sophisticated planetary gear drive train, the German torpedo was capable of slightly over fifty knots. And at the moment, it was using every scrap of that power to close the range to its target.