Piranha: Firing Point

“Don’t suppose we ought to be shooting Chrissy Carnage,” he said. “Bad for the fitness report.” “Yeah,” Patton said. “And the Santa Fe wives’ club would tend to frown on that.”

“Damned shame. It looked like it would be a good watch. Get rid of some of those old torpedoes.”

“Anything else out there?”

“Cap’n, the sea is as clean as a hound’s tooth. It’s just us, Chrissy, and about a gross of big, fat surface ships.”

“Yeah, well, while we sit here and chat, those surface ships are gonna go screaming overhead, and they’ll think we’re the bad guy.”

“I guess it’s back to fucking flank, then,” Demeers said, his disgust Dot completely feigned. “Hell, it’s like trying to listen to a distant voice with your head in the dryer. While it’s going.” “Tell it to Admiral JeanPaul Henri,” Patton said in a mock French accent. He snapped at Horburg, his tone acid, as it always was when he gave his orders. “OOD, let’s kick it Course west at flank.” “Flank it west, aye, sir,” Horburg said. Stepping up to the conn, he lilted another coiled-cord mike to his mouth, looking like a yuppie trucker with a CB radio.

“Maneuvering, Conn, shift the reactor to forced circulation.”

A speaker rasped from the overhead, “Shift the reactor to forced circulation. Conn, maneuvering, aye. Commencing fast insertion.”

“Sonar, Conn, increasing speed to flank, turning to course west. Helm, right full rudder, all ahead flank, steady course west!” Horburg barked at the helmsman, who turned the control yoke and reached to the panel and rotated a knob, called the engine order telegraph, to flank. A needle on the telegraph panel rotated from the position marked % to flank. On the helm-display animation of the stern of the submarine, the rudder moved to the right to the thirty-degree position.

“Sir, my rudder’s right full, maneuvering answers all-ahead flank,” the helmsman called.

Horburg slurred his “Very well. Helm” response, saying! “Vrewun.”

“Conn, Sonar, aye,” from Demeers on the overhead speaker.

“Conn, maneuvering,” the speaker blared, “Reactor’s in forced circ, reactor recirc pumps one, two, three, and four running in fast speed, answering all-ahead flank.”

Horburg hit the mike button, his response slurred to a single word: “Maneuvering, Conn, aye.”

The deck began to tremble again as the speed-indicator needle climbed from ten knots past fifteen, sailing through the twenties and thirties, slowly approaching forty, finally settling out at forty-one knots.

“Sir, passing course two six zero to the right, ten degrees from ordered course.”

“Very well, Helm.”

“Sir, steady course west!” the helmsman called.

“Very well. Helm.” Despite his obvious compliance to Patton’s orders, Horburg turned formally to the captain.

“Captain, ship is at flank speed heading west.”

“Into the sunset,” Patton said, half to himself. He had one eye on the chart display, the other on the sonar display mounted on the overhead at the attack center.

Strange, he thought. He’d completed his slow sonar search, yet he didn’t feel any better. When they’d come through the Naze-Yakushima Gap, he’d had the oddest feeling, that there was something out there. But then when he’d slowed down, turned the pumps off, and coasted down to best listening speed, he’d found nothing there. Of course, he only gave it seven minutes and was still going ten knots. Who knows what he would have seen if he’d gone two knots, bare steerageway, and given it a good hour for the narrowband processors to integrate all the major frequency buckets at all points of the compass? Dammit, he almost answered aloud, if he’d done that, the convoy would have overrun him, all their screws cavitating and thrashing the water upstairs into a sonar sound nightmare. No, that was the best he could do, and it had cost him dearly. Counting the coast-down and acceleration time, he’d lost a full eleven minutes at forty-one knots, slipping behind his previous position by 15,000 yards, a full 7.5 nautical miles, so now he was only some three miles ahead of Chris Carnage’s Santa Fe, twenty-three miles west of the convoy instead of his previous thirty. His orders were explicit, to get as far ahead of the convoy as possible. It was just too bad, Patton thought, that to follow the spirit of Jeanpaul’s orders he had to violate the letter of them.

Patton stared at the chart, but his eyes were focused into infinity. It just didn’t seem right. He had that irritating feeling he experienced when he knew he was forgetting something.

He walked into Demeers’ realm. The blue overhead lights of the sonar room cast a sickening glow over the large consoles of the BSY-4 displays. Two of Demeers’ four console seats were empty. Only Demeers and his operator, a third-class petty officer, had on their headphones.

The senior chief took one earpiece off, a look of mischief on his face.

“Something’s not right,” Patton said.

“True, I haven’t seen a woman in a week,” Demeers said.

“I’m serious. There’s something out there.”