But a computer command had muted those known and catalogued sounds to a faint and manageable level, leaving Queensly free to probe the depths surrounding the Virginia with a sense far more acute than vision in these circumstances.
His eyes snapped open. He'd heard something, a faint sound that commanded his attention simply because it was different from all of the other background noise. He checked the trace on the waterfall, of course… but he was already reaching for the intercom switch that would put him in touch with Captain Garrett.
"Bridge!" he shouted, startling the sonar techs in the compartment with him. "Sonar! Probable torpedo tube flooding and tube doors opening!"
"Sonar, Bridge," Garrett's voice came back, rough with the blowing wind. "Roger that. Bearing?"
"Bearing approximately zero-nine-zero! Designating contact as Sierra One-seven-two!" He froze, hearing another, more deadly sound. "Torpedo in the water!"
Garrett glanced to starboard, toward the east… but of course saw nothing but night. He hit the 1MC switch by his hand. "Sound general quarters! Torpedo in the water!"
Instantly, the hollow Bong! Bong! Bong! of the sub's emergency warning bell echoed through the hull.
"Sonar, Bridge! How far?"
"Estimate six thousand meters, closing at fifty-five knots. Captain! Two… no, three torpedoes in the water!"
Six thousand meters at fifty-five knots… very roughly a kilometer and a half per minute. Virginia had four minutes before disaster.
Below him, on the forward deck, half a dozen sailors in blue foul-weather gear, bright orange life jackets, and safety harnesses securing them to the deck were hauling at the line fired from the helicopter. The man at the end of that line was lost somewhere in the waves off to port. How far off was he?
Every submariner knew the score. The captain of an American submarine was expected to think first of the mission, then of the safety of the submarine, then the safety of the sub's nuclear power plant, and only after that of the safety of the crew. The mission, the boat, the plant, the crew. That simple, deadly equation was hammered into every sailor during his training at New London and was part of the responsibility borne by every submarine officer. Right now, that "package" out there in the water was completely expendable. To save his command, Garrett was prepared to order the sailors on deck to toss the safety line overboard and immediately get below. Virginia needed to maneuver, and every second of delay brought that hostile torpedo closer, eating away at his tactical options.
"Deck there!" he called over the loudspeaker. "Cast off the line. Clear the deck!"
He could see the stunned consternation of the sailors below in the way they froze in midmovement. Then the chief in charge of the working party barked an order, and they gathered up the line on the deck and hurled it over the side.
"Maneuvering! This is the Captain! Dive the boat!"
He scrambled for the inviting circle of the sail hatch beneath his feet….
Stevens was less than twenty feet from the side of the Virginia when he saw the sailors on board scoop up the free coils of line they'd already gathered in and throw it at him, casting him helplessly adrift.
What the fuck? …
With growing horror, he saw the sailors vanishing down a hatch in the deck, saw the Virginia's sail begin to surge forward… and down.
The submarine was submerging!
He screamed in helpless fury against the storm, against the night, against the nightmare unfairness of being abandoned this way….
"Radio room! Flag Bravo Five-one! Tell them the package is in the water!" Maybe the hovering Sea Hawk would be able to find the CIA officer in the ocean… and maybe not. That was no longer Garrett's problem. The survival of the boat was.
"Come right to course two-seven-zero," Garrett barked. "Ahead flank."
"New course two-seven-zero, aye! Ahead flank, aye!"
"Make depth one hundred feet!"
"Make depth one-zero-zero feet, aye, sir!"
"Weapons status!"
"Tubes one and two warshot loaded," Lieutenant Carpenter replied from the weapons board. "Mark 48 ADCAP."
"Snapshot, two, one!"
"Snapshot two, one, aye aye!"
It would take about forty-five long seconds for the final preparations in the torpedo room, including flooding the tubes and opening the outer doors. In the meantime, though Virginia was swiftly submerging, he could not order a deep dive, not without complicating the flooding and pressurization of the tubes.
He could, however, begin putting some distance between Virginia and the unknown attacker out there. The incoming torpedoes were moving at an estimated fifty-five knots. Virginia could manage thirty-eight… maybe forty over the short haul, which meant that the enemy fish would only creep up on their target at a relative speed of fifteen knots. The course change put the torpedoes behind the sub and racing to catch up.
Meanwhile, Virginia was submerging to take full advantage of her natural element, the sea. The roll and bump to her hull, so pronounced when she'd been on the surface and subject to the battering of the waves, steadied almost at once as her ballast tanks filled and she slipped swiftly into the depths of the night-black abyss.
"Course now two-seven-zero," Chief Bollinger announced from his chair overlooking the steering and dive controls. "Speed coming up to thirty-five knots… thirty-six knots…"
"Sonar, Conn," Garrett called. "What's the status on those fish?"
"Now four, repeat, four torpedoes in the water, Captain. Estimate the closest at 2,500 yards. Sir, they appear to have been fired by a single hostile in a staggered spread."
"Speed now forty knots, Captain," Jorgensen said. "Eng says we can't hold this for long without busting a gut."
"Very well." Twenty-five hundred yards presented a running time of a hair over one minute at fifty-five knots. At a relative speed of fifteen knots, the running time extended to five minutes. He'd bought them that much time, at least, and there was a slender chance they could outrun the things until they ran out of juice.
The control room crew manned their stations, worked their consoles, with a grim and death-silent concentration. They would all know by now that Virginia had abandoned a man to the ocean topside.
Being submariners, they would also know why. With enemy torpedoes bearing in on the Virginia, they would know their survival depended on Garrett's decisions, even when those decisions were tough ones.
The mission first. Then the vessel. And then the men.