The V-ROC round had impacted some distance from the Man’s position, giving the attack boat a chance to work up to a fleeing speed. Radical turns to port and starboard followed, creating diversionary knuckles in the submarine’s wake. Steep dives to hunt sound masking thermoclines. High angle powered ascents to climb out of the seeking weapon’s cone of acquisition The full spectrum of escape and evasion maneuvers available in the subwar lexicon. The Barracuda had a counter for each move. The Han had neither the sophistication necessary to fox the incoming Mark 50 nor the performance required to open the range and evade. The Red crew gradually became aware of an intermittent outside irritation — piercing almost superaudial, and growing in strength. Ultrasonic sound waves were striking the Han’s hull, the sonar impulses being produced by the seeker head of the converging torpedo. A hypertech Deathwatch beetle in the submarine’s bulkheads ticked off the last minutes. The spacing between the impulses shortened and they heard a new sound the hot hiss of a torpedo propulsor. Somewhere within the Han’s internal darkness, someone whispered his peace to a God his society forbade him to acknowledge.
The hissing grew in intensity, softly overwhelming, until suddenly it ended in a resounding slam.
But there was no shattering concussion. No rending of metal. No explosive inrush of water. Just the trailing rattle of the dud torpedo frame rolling away along the hull. The crew of the Han exchanged glances and began to wonder if they might yet survive.
“That unarmed fish flushed him out, ma’am,” Beltrain reported “I’ve gotta read this guy Monsarrat’s book.”
“Come by my cabin sometime and I’ll loan it to you, Dix. What’s his position?”
“Bearing three four oh relative off the bow. Range is twelve miles. Heading three hundred and fifty degrees true. Depth three five oh Speed twenty six knots.”
“Distance from the life raft group?”
“About six miles to the north of them, ma’am. We have a safety margin.”
“Very good.” Amanda keyed in to the surface-to-air circuit. “Gray Lady to Retainers. Kill him.”
“Okay, Gus, you heard the Lady. Spin ‘up. We’re rolling in.”
“Aye, aye, Lieutenant. We’ve got good links and locks. Positioning and drop points coming up on the HUD.”
They were over clean water again, well clear of the oil slick. As the Sea Comanche’s nose came around to the north, luminescent grid patterns and targeting reticles seemed to materialize inside the tinted windscreen, the targeting path that would guide them in to the drop point. In the distance, the repetitive flash of Retainer Zero Two’s navigational beacon could also be seen.
“Zero Two, this is Zero One. I’ve got you to the south. Let’s set up a convergence here and whipsaw this son of a bitch between us.”
“Roger, Zero One. Coming in.”
“Set for snake-acquisition pattern. Set depth for two five oh. Drop at two miles.”
“Roger, Zero One.”
“I’ve only got one unit on board, Nance, so you’ll have the follow-through. I will disengage to the east. You will overfly to the north and reverse back into the contact to reengage.”
“Will comply.”
“You got all that, Gus?” Arkady called back into the rear cockpit.
“Got it, sir. The fish is hot. Verifying that warhead and drop safeties are off.”
The waves shimmered fifty feet beneath the helo’s belly.
On the Heads-Up Display the drop hack crawled in under Zero One’s nose as she bore down on her release point. Over the radio band Nancy Delany called out her run. Her voice was tightly controlled. Arkady knew that this would be the first time she had ever delivered live ordnance on a living target.
“Coming in on drop point. Three, two, one … drop!”
Its weapon released, Zero Two flared upward and climbed.
“Zero Two is out. Zero One is in. Three, two, and one. Torpedo away.”
Streaming its drogue chute, Arkady’s Mark 50 hit the water in a clean dive, vanishing beneath the surface with a metallic flash.
“Both units running hot, straight, and normal,” Grestovitch reported laconically as Zero One turned away.
There was nothing else to be said. The Han was trapped between two converging torpedoes. No matter which way the sub turned, she would be turning into her own death, leaving her absolutely no place to go.
The systems operator pulled the gain bar of the sonar audio output all the way down and waited.
A patch of ocean suddenly went a hazy gray as a million water droplets were shock-bounced off the surface. An instant later, a towering geyser of white foam lifted into the sky.
“Yeah, babe!” Grestovitch heard his pilot exclaim with a quietly fierce satisfaction. “We nailed that sucker!”
Just to make sure, Gus kicked the audio back up.
The reverberation of the blast rang through the local sea environment, but the sonobuoys had already acquired a massive transitory. The unmistakable shriek of high-pressure air boiling into ballast tanks. The death scream of a mortally wounded submarine.
“Confirm that, Lieutenant. Detecting emergency blow. He’s coming up!”
“All right.” Arkady lifted his hands off the controller grips for a second, clinching his fists at shoulder height in a brief gesture of victory. “Gray Lady! There she blows! She’s surfacing!”
“Acknowledged, Zero One.” He could hear cheering in the background beyond Amanda’s voice. “Keep him covered and keep us advised. We are moving in to pick up the frigate’s crew now. Very well done, Retainers!”
Arkady grinned. The queen had bestowed the touch of her hand.
A widening circle of foam formed on the ocean’s surface.
A wedge of turbulence appeared within it, and a great black ax blade suddenly cut the waves.
“She’s on the surface now,” Arkady narrated over the open mike, bringing Zero One into a hover just off site.
“Looks like damage to the forward hull. Sail damage. One of the clearwater planes is gone … Decks awash now. She doesn’t look very stable. They’d better get the crew off that thing fast … She’s settling by the bow! She’s going down! Oh, Jeez! Gus, get the camera on this!”
The inward rush of water through the torpedo gash was winning out over the outward flow from the ballast tanks. The growing weight was radically shifting the Man’s center of balance forward, pushing it back into a dive angle, pushing it beyond a dive angle.
The submarine’s hull began to pitch into the vertical, the bow and sail sinking while the stern rose. The cruciform tail fins broke water and lifted almost majestically into the sky, the great bronze scimitar blades of the propeller still revolving slowly.
It was both mesmerizing and appalling. Arkady found himself sidling the helo in closer, warily circling the wavering column of steel. As he came around to what had been the deck side of the hull, he noticed movement and a thin trickle of steam.
Just above the waterline, a hatch had swung open. At its mouth, a figure in a mustard-yellow life jacket struggled like a half-crushed insect, billows of white vapor swirling out past him. With a final convulsive lunge, the figure rolled out into the sea. Feebly, he began to swim away from the doomed ship.
There was more movement within the hatchway. Another man was trying to fight his way clear. “Come on,” Arkady found himself murmuring. “Come on. Come on!”
This one didn’t make it. The hatch rim dipped beneath the surface. Arkady jerked his eyes away, trying to cut off the image of what must be happening in the gut of that hatchway: the choking inrush of the sea, the merciless pressure that pushed away from the light and into the final darkness.