It took considerable self-control for Garrett not to feed the helm instructions. He needed to show the crew his trust in their abilities.
At the same time, it wouldn't do at all for Virginia to take out that dock just off the port bow.
In silence he watched his command sidle up to the dock, watched the line handlers toss their lines across to sailors waiting ashore, and wondered if he would ever get used to this new kind of war.
Captain ul Haq dropped the arms of the periscope and leaned into them, walking the scope in approved fashion through three complete circles as Shuhadaa approached periscope depth. He could see the water growing light, then becoming a froth of white spray. As the periscope cleared the surface, he continued walking the scope, checking the entire horizon. Submarines had been lost when they surfaced inadvertently directly beneath — or in the path of — an oncoming surface ship.
There was only a single ship visible, and she was at least three miles off. "Allah be praised," he said with soft but heartfelt sincerity.
"What is it?" Noor Khalili asked.
"Our prey."
Four times in the past five days, Shuhadaa had stalked a target, and four times the target had eluded them. The last time, two days ago, they'd picked up a very large surface contact — almost certainly a super-tanker — but the vessel had proven to be too far away to make visual contact. Evidently, sound waves played interesting tricks on the sub's sonar displays in these shallow waters. Convergence zones could make a target seem to be thirty kilometers away, when in fact it was hundreds.
A Kilo-class boat could only manage about twenty knots, running all-out on the surface using her diesels, which was dangerously noisy. Creeping along submerged on batteries alone, she could only manage twelve knots. Almost anything could outrun that. As with predators in the wild, the submarine needed to exercise supreme patience… and to expect that too often chance would favor the prey.
Now, though, ul Haq watched the target moving slowly along the horizon, an almost perfect setup.
The vessel's lines were unmistakable, impossibly high and sharply square, with a very low, two-story bridge structure forward, a single stack aft. As if to confirm the initial identification, the name NISSAN was spelled out in titanic characters along the vessel's side.
According to intelligence reports passed on from Zaki, she was the Innoshima Maru, a bulk car carrier sailing under Panamanian registry — gross weight of 51,858 tons, deadweight tonnage of 28,070 tons, length overall 185 meters, draught 11.7 meters. Her Hitachi/BMW single-shaft diesel propelled her at a steady 19.5 knots. On board, loaded onto fourteen full cargo decks from keel to main deck, were 3,100 automobiles and 500 trucks, en route from Yokohama to Europoort/Rotterdam.
She was, in fact, a submariner's dream target.
She was also a prime terrorist's target — epitome of Western capitalist consumerism. Ul Haq's orders from Maktum in fact were to give special attention to hunting and killing such highly visible symbols of the West — cargo carriers piled high with consumer goods, cruise ships loaded with wealthy tourists… and the oil tankers that represented the lifeblood of America, Europe, and the West.
"Target bearing… mark!" he snapped.
"Target bearing two-five-seven," Lieutenant Mahmud Jamal replied, reading the figure off the circle marker on the opposite side of the periscope casing.
"Range, 5,500 meters. Sonar, designate contact as Target One-five. Fire control, ready tubes two and three and prepare to fire."
"Captain, tubes two and three are loaded and ready to fire."
"Set running depth at fifteen meters." That was deep, but the Russian-built torpedoes were designed to explode beneath the target ship's keel, breaking her back. And, according to the warbook, that car carrier had a draught of almost twelve meters.
"Running depth set to fifteen meters, Captain!"
"Open outer doors."
"Outer doors open."
"Match sonar bearing on tube two and… shoot!"
A loud hiss sounded through the submarine, accompanied by a shudder in the deck. "Tube two fired electrically!"
"Match sonar bearing on tube three and… shoot!"
A second hiss. "Tube three fired electrically. Both torpedoes running straight and normal, Allah be praised!"
Ul Haq suppressed a wry grin at that last. As a ship captain, he frowned on invoking Allah aloud during ship operations, especially during combat. It could get in the way of orders and understanding. And that fervent Allah-be-praised carried just the faintest hint of surprise… as though Lieutenant Jamal hadn't expected the torpedoes to work at all. That could be bad for discipline.
But Jamal's excitement, with the excitement of the moment, was contagious. After five days of stalking, the tiger was pouncing at last!
"Down scope!" He slapped the periscope handles up and stepped back as the gleaming cylinder slid down into its well in the deck at his feet. The ocean had appeared clear and there was no reason for that carrier to be escorted, but a submariner did not casually ignore his training. "Running time to target?"
"Three minutes, forty seconds, Captain." Ul Haq checked the clock on the bulkhead, noting the position of the sweep second hand, and began counting off to himself.
A minute passed… then another… and another. The tension in the control room grew, a palpable presence as crushing as the weight of the ocean outside. Those torpedoes were acoustically homing, with sound receivers that picked up the target's propeller noise and steered them in unerringly. But even the best technology was known to fail.
And then, transmitted through the water, came the far-off thud of an explosion.
The men in the control room erupted into cheers and shrill-chorused cries of "Allah akbar!"
"Silence!" Ul Haq shouted, and the tumult quieted. Martyrs and angels! He'd missed hearing a second explosion, if there'd been one. "Sonar, conn! What do you hear?"
"Conn, sonar! Two definite underwater explosions. And… and breaking noises! We got her, Captain!"
And now it was time for ul Haq to mutter a quietly voiced Allah be praised….
"Up periscope!" he ordered, stepping up to the scope mount once more. Snapping down the handles, he leaned against the eyepiece, walking the periscope back onto the heading of the target.
Pandemonium….
The Innoshima Maru, despite her deep draught, towered high out of the water and, with a full cargo, tended to be uncomfortably top-heavy. One of the torpedoes appeared to have detonated directly beneath her stern-quarter roll-on/roll-off door, crumpling the vessel's stern; the other must have exploded almost directly beneath her center keel, for the carrier had buckled partly amidships, as though punched from below by a titanic, upthrust fist. She was far down by the stern already as the hungry sea poured in through a gaping hole torn across her transom. Those car carriers, ul Haq knew, did not have transverse watertight bulkheads — an omission designed to save weight and to provide more maneuvering room when loading the cargo onto fourteen separate decks. The water pouring in astern and amidships would rapidly flood all the way forward. Already, the Innoshima Maru was taking on a pronounced list to port, its upper deck angling toward the distant submarine.
He thought he could make out members of the carrier's crew, tiny black specks moving along the deck. They would be terrified, he knew, struggling to lower boats, or else giving in to panic and flinging themselves into the sea. There would be no escape, though. The car carrier possessed a huge volume, and the water flooding those compartments and deck spaces would suck down everything in and on the water for hundreds of meters around.