Piranha: Firing Point

He prepared to lower the sonar dome, pessimistic that he would achieve results. The radios were out, making communications between his chopper and the Glenn impossible, but the captain evidently wanted to know what was ahead. If Robinson found anything he could classify as hostile, he could shoot it, but what of the 688s? He presumed they were much farther west, and by now the Glenn was tens of miles from the sinking position of the fleet. Any threats ahead of the ship would have to be hostile. Robinson had two torpedoes, and he was authorized to use them.

He flew on, passing the Glenn, then five miles ahead hovered and deployed the AN/SQS-69 dipping sonar transducer, a sphere of hydrophones that he lowered into the water on a strong cable reel, the assembly capable of penetrating the surface thermal layer a couple hundred feet below. He streamed the dipper, the ball sinking steadily into the sea while he hovered fifty feet above the surface. He had to lean over to scan the display panel that his airman would normally have been searching. In passive listen-only mode, the display showed nothing visible. It was time to ping.

He punched in the keystrokes to tell the system what he wanted, and when he was ready, the dipping sonar pinged hard. A high-power burst of sound reverberated through the sea, spreading out at sonic speed, trying to find anything to bounce off. The ocean bottom gave one return at the same frequency, the same note, as the transmission, but the dipper was listening for a higher or lower note, as would be returned by a moving object, for instance, a hostile sub.

There was nothing. Robinson shrugged, knowing it was rare to catch a fish on the first cast. He pinged a few more times. Then he pulled in the dipper and flew ahead, another two miles, sank the ball, and hovered again.

Robinson thought about the pilots he’d known on the ships of the convoy and about his friends on the John Glenn, and he wondered how many of them were now dead. He forced the thought from his mind, concentrating on the display, but the thoughts persisted. Would he and the Glenn survive to escape this mess? And if they did, what next?

It didn’t matter, he harshly told himself. Find the sub in the water ahead, or better yet, find no sub, and let the Glenn escape. Please let the Glenn escape, his thought becoming a prayer.

SS-405 EARTHQUAKE

Commander Ko Tsu watched his sonar panel with one eye and his navigator’s face on the display next to it with the other.

“Looks like we have one that escaped, sir,” his navigator, Jin Lu, reported from the sensor console.

“What have you got?”

“Dual six-bladed screws, high-frequency tonals from one or more gas turbines, coming in from the west, bearing two seven two. This ship is a destroyer. Captain, John Paul Jones-class.”

“Ship Control, take her up to twenty-five meters.”

The deck tilted at a steep twenty-degree angle, forcing Ko back against his seat harness. “Mr. First, would you like to make a periscope approach?”

Ko’s first officer. Lieutenant Commander Jinan Hsu, smiled, revealing buck teeth. “Yes, Captain, very much.”

“Take the scope, then. I’ll watch from here.”

The Earthquake had expended twenty-four torpedoes from the aft sector of the westward-bound convoy. Unlike the Arctic Storm, the Lightning Bolt, and the Thundercloud, which could all see their targets, his own position was to the east, and though he had had visual contact when the shooting began, by the time his first eight weapons were away he had been shooting blind, just putting torpedoes out the bearing line and hoping they connected to ship hulls. At first he directed the crew to count explosions, but his count, his navigator’s count, and the Second Captain’s count had come out different, all between one hundred and one hundred twenty explosions, but not enough to determine if they’d killed all the ships of the convoy.

“Nav, any other ships?” he called. He had to watch his weapon load, perhaps even be ready to withdraw to the south and let Volcano and Tsunami take on the other escapers.

“No, sir, just this one — wait, sir, higher-priority target, active-dipping sonar, correlates to a Seahawk antisub helicopter, bearing 280. I’ve got one, now two pings. Also very faint rotor noises. Sir, looks like he may be leapfrogging ahead of the destroyer contact.”

“Designate the surface ship target WT-25, the chopper target number AT-1.”

“Yessir.”

“Captain, passing through one hundred meters, ship’s angle going to up ten.”

“Very good. Mr. First, get ready on the scope. Ship Control, throttle to stop, come to ten clicks. Attention in control, men. I’ll be launching the Nagasaki in tube 25 down the bearing line, keeping the weapon in tube 26 warm and ready to go in case weapon 25 has a problem.

Then we’ll shoot the chopper.”

“Ten clicks, sir, ship’s depth fifty meters, angle up ten going up to five.”