However, there was the small matter of enemy torpedoes to deal with first.
"Sonar! Conn! Give me a range countdown on the nearest fish!"
"Conn, Sonar! Range five hundred yards… four-seven-zero… four-five-zero… four-three-zero…"
It felt as though the torpedo were crawling after the Virginia, but it came on, relentless and deadly.
He could hear the pinging now, a faint, high-pitched ringing, growing steadily louder as the torpedo probed the ocean ahead of itself, searching for Virginia's hull. "All hands. Brace for sudden maneuvering!"
"Two-five-zero… two-three-zero…"
"Release countermeasures!" he called.
Lieutenant Carpenter practically pounded on his touchscreen. "Countermeasures released, Captain!"
"Emergency dive!" Garrett said. "Make depth seven hundred feet!"
"Emergency dive, aye. Make depth seven-zero-zero feet, aye aye!"
The deck tilted sharply as Virginia angled sharply down and plunged into the depths.
The countermeasures — a pair of canisters designed to release a cloud of highly reflective bubbles, popped clear of Virginia's hull, drifting along in her wake. Virginia, meanwhile, went nose-down in a steep dive, letting the expanding cloud of bubbles momentarily mask her maneuver.
Coming in two hundred yards astern, the first torpedo, its active sonar pinging, picked up the reflected echoes from the bubbles and kept coming in straight, punching straight through the bubble cloud…… and losing the target echo.
The torpedo's idiot-level brain fell back on its list of programmed directives. Still pinging, it began to circle, searching for a target, any target.
It would continue to do so until its fuel supply ran out.
Virginia, meanwhile, continued its dive, gradually leveling off at seven hundred feet.
Of the remaining torpedoes, the fourth one, at the southernmost extreme of the spread, had traveled far enough off the line-of-sight to the Virginia that it had failed to acquire the target, and continued moving in a straight line off into the empty darkness of the ocean, again until its fuel gave out.
Numbers two and three, however, were close enough that both had already acquired the Virginia when their sonars went active, and far enough back not to be decoyed by the countermeasures. Both detected Virginia's dive, and both angled their propulsors to change their paths into dives that would intercept the fleeing American submarine in another few moments.
Because of the enemy sub's firing spread, the angle between the two incoming torps was almost thirty degrees. Garrett couldn't turn left or right, because to do so would sharply reduce the distance between the sub and one or the other of the torpedoes. All he could do was continue traveling straight, seeking to outrun them both.
Virginia's published dive depth was 800 feet, but in fact she was capable of a bit more… one thousand feet with a 10-percent safety margin. The Seawolf could dive deeper but certain trade-offs had been forced on the new submarine design. Virginia's hull was made of HY-100-grade steel, the same as Sea-wolf, but the pressure hull was thinner to save on weight and on-board space. Her smaller power plant meant she wasn't as fast as Seawolf, even though she was just three-quarters of the Seawolf's weight, and that meant she wasn't as easy to handle at great depth.
"Leveling off at seven-zero-zero feet, Captain," the diving officer announced.
"Very well. Sonar, Conn! Update on the closest fish."
"Torpedo two, Captain. Range now four hundred yards. Closing at a relative speed of fifteen knots. Time to impact… forty seconds."
He waited. The ventilation system was still off, in order to avoid spreading smoke from the torpedo room throughout the boat. That meant it was hot. Sweat was dripping from every face — partly from the lack of air circulation, partly from simple, stark fear. As the seconds passed, as the torpedoes drew closer, the stink of fear grew thicker and thicker.
There was also, Garrett realized, a slight haze of smoke as well. The CAT party would have opened the watertight door to the torpedo room in order to enter it, and some of the smoke would have escaped. Even though all watertight doors on board were sealed now, a little smoke seeped through every time someone went from one compartment to another, and the air was fast becoming pretty foul.
"Incoming torpedo at one-three-zero yards… one hundred yards…"
"Release countermeasures! Full up planes!"
"Countermeasures released, Captain."
"Full up planes, aye aye!" Virginia's deck tilted sharply, bow-up. A calculator slid off a console and clattered aft across the deck, followed by the crash of a carelessly placed coffee mug.
Again, a cloud of bubbles exploded in Virginia's wake. Again, the torpedo — this time coming down at an angle as it continued to pursue the sub on its dive— homed on the bubbles and not the Virginia. Punching through the bubble cloud, it abruptly lost its sonar lock. Still diving, it began to circle, simple-mindedly searching for the suddenly vanished submarine.
There'd been a chance, actually, that the torpedo might plunge beneath its operational depth and implode, but a torpedo was a fairly densely packed mechanism, and could generally operate at greater depths than most subs. After a few moments, the torpedo angled upward, widening its search spiral.
By that time, the third torp was closing on the fast-rising Virginia.
"Torpedo range now four hundred yards! Three-eight-zero. Three-five-zero…"
"What's our depth?"
"Depth five hundred feet, Captain. And rising."
What Garrett was counting on was that a torpedo moving through the water at fifty-five knots could not react immediately to a change in the target's bearing. The tactical trick, here, was to let the hostile torpedo get close enough that, when he pulled a sudden maneuver, it didn't have time to react.
But he couldn't wait too long. At a relative velocity of fifteen knots, that torpedo was closing at a rate of ten yards each second.
"Incoming torpedo at one-two-zero yards…"
"Release countermeasures!"
"Countermea—"
"Full right rudder! Emergency turn, hard right!"
Virginia slewed so sharply that the deck, already canted from her rise up through the depths, now heeled over far to starboard. A sailor standing by the helm station lost his grip, slipped, and hit the deck with a yelp of pain, sliding across the deck to thump against the starboard bulkhead forward.
"Captain! Sonar! Torpedo number two has reacquired!"
Ignore it. Right now, he was dancing with number three….
"Captain! Sonar! Torpedo has not decoyed! Range one-three-zero yards…"
"Blow emergency ballast!"
"Blow emergency ballast, aye aye!"
Virginia's hull shuddered as bottles of compressed air blasted the water from her ballast tanks, and she began rising toward the roof. Three shrill ooo-gah! alarm blasts sounded, as the 1MC blared "Now, surface! Surface! Surface! … "
Her rise was spectacular — better than ten feet per second — as her nose lifted to a forty-five degree angle. Still driving forward at forty knots, she sprinted for the surface.
The third torpedo struck turbulent water and detonated….