Piranha: Firing Point

Patton had stood on the conn, the elevated periscope stand, of the control room mockup — so realistic in looks, feel, and even smell that Patton could easily imagine he was at sea. He looked down on the crowd, trying his best to look like he was cool, when in fact he was scared to death. Flunking this scenario would mean cashing in his eighteen-year submarine career, going to Marey and telling her that he had failed, that their way of life was over. The sonar chief called from the sonar space forward: “Conn, Sonar, new sonar contact, designate sierra one, bearing one eight zero. Contact is putting out a medium signal-to-noise ratio on a single pump-jet propulsor.

Contact is classified as submerged warship, classification Russian Severodvinsk-class fast-attack submarine. Conn, Sonar, second new sonar contact, designate sierra two, bearing two six five. Contact putting out a strong signal-to-noise ratio on two four-bladed screws. Contact is classified surface warship, classification Russian Kirov. Conn, Sonar, third new sonar contact—”

By the end the chief reported twenty contacts, ships on every point of the compass, each of them ships from the Russian order of battle, each of them bristling with antisubmarine weapons, each of them lethal. Lesser men would have panicked. Patton, knowing he.was doomed, leaned over the railing of the conn and said sardonically! “Well, men, looks like we’ve got them surrounded.”

He prioritized the sonar contacts by their threat level, their distance to him, the submarines first. Within five minutes he pumped out four torpedoes at the submerged contacts, drove away from his launch position, and set up on the surface contacts. Taking a wild forty-degree up-angle trip to periscope depth, he confirmed the range to the Kirov class. The ship was a veritable nuclear battleship, armed to the teeth with torpedoes and antisubmarine rockets. Within the second ten minutes of the scenario, he unloaded two loads of tube banks at the surface ships, sending three to the Kirov, two to a Slava cruiser, two to a Moskva class, one to a Kara cruiser, one to a Kresta II, firing methodically at Udaloy II destroyers, pumping torpedoes out at Sovremenny destroyers, until his torpedo room was out of weapons. Then, with half a fleet of enraged surviving Russians, he turned tail and dived deep, running as fast as he could, zigging occasionally. He found a shallow bank, the depth conveniently below a thermal layer — making him invisible to hunters from the surface. He bottomed the submarine, shut down the reactor and everything that made the slightest noise, and the Russian flotilla sailed overhead, none the wiser. In total, he took down sixteen capital ships and damaged several others. Even better, none of the ships overhead, their active sonars pinging angrily, were able to find him.

Admiral Pacino came into the room laughing, his teeth white in the dim backwash of light from the battlecontrol-system consoles. He walked up to Patton and extended his hand in a high-five. Patton slapped it and smiled back.

“Excellent job, John,” Pacino said. “You have as much aggressiveness as your namesake, maybe more.”

Patton smirked in dismissal, knowing the truth, that his heart had been pounding with the fear of failure, and that he’d never thought it would go this well.

“Just one thing. Captain Patton,” Pacino said, throwing his arm around the younger captain. “We weren’t at war with Russia. The scenario was to find a Destiny II Japanese sub amongst all the clutter of a Russian fleet.”

He shook his head, still laughing. “But what the hell, that attack was one for the books. I’ll be playing the tape of your battle as required viewing for all prospective commanding officers, and that Destiny II stuff, that’ll be our little secret. Just remind me, John, never to give you war-shot torpedoes until I tell you who the enemy is.”

Patton blushed, but smiled in pleasure. Pacino took him to dinner, and amazingly enough turned out to be a regular guy. Patton was up half the night telling Marcy about the trip to Norfolk, and how he soon would be named to command a 6881-class submarine. Orders came in to take over the USS Tucson. He was tasked as an escort submarine for the carrier battle group out of Pearl Harbor when the Japanese blockade occurred. He went to sea on a moment’s notice, screening the carrier Abraham Lincoln as the convoy plowed its way northwest to Japan. The Japanese submarines attacked when Lincoln was barely an hour out of port. Patton and Tucson had just heard a bare sniff of the first Destiny attacker when the Nagasaki torpedoes were launched. Patton drove at flank toward the firing submarine, unloading a tube bank into it. It sank without ever knowing Patton was there.