In AMR #3, the burning bearing seized up, grinding the spinning propeller shaft to an abrupt halt.
In the Main Engine Room, Ingraham’s gas turbine engines continued to crank forty-one thousand horsepower of torque into the input shaft of the main reduction gears. But the reduction gears couldn’t turn, because the output shaft was locked in place. The transverse frames that supported the reduction gear housing began to buckle under the strain, as the howling turbines attempted to turn the entire main reduction gear, housing and all.
The monstrous stress ripped open welds between plates of the ship’s hull, and the sea came flooding in. The MRG housing cracked, spraying lubricating oil all over the engine room, and throwing off hot steel shrapnel like a bomb.
A fist-sized chunk of broken gear caught the Upper-Level Watch in the left cheek. Moving at the speed of a meteor, it tore the side of his head off without even slowing down. His limp body fell off the catwalk and into the rapidly flooding bilge.
Ingraham drifted to a stop and wallowed at the mercy of the waves.
The chase was over. The submarine was gone.
CHAPTER 40
“Just a second, Bob,” President Chandler said. “Let me go secure.” He inserted the magnetically coded encryption key into the slot on his STU-6 secure telephone unit and gave it a half-turn clockwise. The key clicked as it locked into place, and a brief series of warbling tones came out of the earpiece while the phone synced up with the encryption algorithm in a twin phone on the desk of the Chief of Naval Operations. The red “clear” lamp went out, and the green “secure” lamp came on.
“Okay, Bob,” the president said. “We’re in the green. I assume you’re calling to give me an update on the sub hunt. How are we looking?”
“It’s the old joke, Mr. President,” Admiral Casey said. “Good news and bad news.”
“What’s the good news?”
“We have clear battle damage assessment. Towers took out one of the submarines. Her helicopter took out another one.”
“So there’s only one hostile sub left?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent,” the president said. “What’s the bad news?”
“Towers and Benfold are both shot up pretty badly, and Ingraham is totally out of the picture. Somebody is going to have to write a bunch of those ‘The U.S. Navy regrets’ telegrams, sir. Quite a few of our young men and women out there are coming home in body bags.”
“We’re paying a hell of a price,” the president said. “But we can still win this thing, can’t we?”
The CNO sighed. “I don’t know, sir. Towers has already restored her electrical power, and Benfold should be back under way within an hour or so. How much speed they can make still remains to be seen. Maybe they can catch that sub. Then again, maybe not.”
“If they catch it, can they kill it?”
“I think so, Mr. President. I damned sure hope so.”
“You aren’t exactly filling me with confidence here, Bob.”
“With all due respect, sir, if you want more confidence you’ve got to give me more assets. It’s not too late to get a couple of P-3s out there. Then I could pretty much guarantee you a kill.”
“I can’t do that, Bob,” the president said. “We’ve got to show that we can go toe-to-toe with the best the Germans can offer up and still come out on top.”
“I understand that, sir. But what if that sub gets by us? Why risk losing when there’s still a chance to guarantee a win?”
“Goddamn it, Bob! Can’t you see what this is about? In the minds of the people, perception is reality. Shoernberg is making a power play here, and he’s only thrown a few cards on the table to do it. If we have to call up the militia, the Boy Scouts, and the Air National Guard to catch one lousy German submarine, he wins. Shoernberg will have successfully demonstrated that the United States cannot win in a fair fight against German military hardware and tactics. He’ll come out of this flexing his muscles, and we’ll end up looking weak. And about twenty minutes after the dust settles, every pocket Napoleon in the developing world is going to start wondering if the U.S. is really so tough after all.
“We’ve only got one choice here, Bob. We’ve got to take Friedrik Shoernberg’s little power play and shove it so far up his ass that he can’t remember what he had for breakfast. He sends out four submarines; none of them get through. Not one of them! Then he only has two choices: escalate the conflict or back down. And I don’t think he’s stupid enough to escalate.”
“Mr. President, if what you say is true, then we need to guarantee a kill on that last submarine,” the CNO said. “And, if you need a guaranteed kill, you’ve got to let me throw some more assets into the hunt.”
“No, Bob. How we kill that submarine is every bit as important as whether or not we kill it at all.”
“That’s what you keep telling me, sir,” the CNO said. “But I’ve got two ships out there that have already had the shit shot out of them, and I’m asking them to take on a killer submarine without backup.”
The president sighed. “Okay, Bob. Let’s try it this way … In a one-on-one fight between a surface combatant and a submarine, who wins?”
“Whoever shoots first, sir.”
“Exactly. And who shoots first?”
“Whoever gets contact first.”
The president chuckled. “You’re going to make me drag this out of you, aren’t you? All right, you stubborn bastard, who gets contact first?”
“Three times out of five, it’s going to be the submarine, sir.”
“So, if a surface ship mixes it up with a submarine, three times out of five, the ship gets its doors blown off. Would that be a safe assumption?”
“Pretty much, sir.”
“And anybody who has a clue about Undersea Warfare knows this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, how many of our ships have the Germans sunk so far?”
“One, sir, if you count the Antietam.”
“I do not count the Antietam,” the president said. “She isn’t sunk, and she isn’t going to be. In fact, we’re going to repair her and keep her in service.”
“With all due respect, sir, that doesn’t make any sense. We can build a Flight-Three Arleigh Burke with every bit as much firepower and a thirty-year service life for what it would cost to put Antietam back together. Why waste that kind of money on a cruiser that’s over twenty years old?”
“Perception,” the president said. “Perception. The political value will be tremendous. Think about how it will look to the man on the street …
Submarines kill surface combatants three times out of five, but not when they take on the United States. We go one-on-one, ship-to-sub, and we kill everything. The Germans lose every single unit they send out, but all of our ships make it home. Every single one of them lives to fight another day. In a fight where the Germans have the inherent advantage, Shoernberg loses it all. He comes away with no military victory, no propaganda coup, no bragging rights. Nothing.”
“And you think he’ll tuck tail and go home?”
“If he does, maybe we can stitch NATO back together for a few years,” the president said.