Piranha: Firing Point

Aft of the periscope stand were two navigation-plotting tables, one devoted to the navigation electronic chart, the second to tracking the main enemy contact.

The entire room would easily fit into most family rooms with room to spare. Not one cubic centimeter of volume was unused, every reachable space from the deck to the overhead packed with equipment, panels, consoles, displays, intercoms, phones, cables, valves, piping, alarm boxes, seats, or plotting tables. At battle stations, when twenty men would stand watch in the room, the chief of the watch was required to quadruple the air conditioning to the space, not so much for the people as the electronic equipment.

Lieutenant Horburg was relieved at the conn by the battle-stations OOD, a slightly older lieutenant named Dietz. Pattern’s executive officer arrived as well, his face marked by the lines of his bedspread. Commander Henry Vale was taller than Pattern, with light skin and dark eyes and hair, his body slight, wearing wire-rimmed glasses that gave him an academic’s look.

Patton pulled on his headset. Horburg took his battle station at the second battlecontrol console of the BSY4, position two, the master target-solving station. Four other officers manned positions one, three, and four, the weapons officer taking a station at the aft panel, the weapons console. The navigator manned the aft plot table with a ring of men around him, plotting the manual solution to the master target. Meanwhile the ship-control team was replaced by the battle-stations crew, and several phonetalkers stationed themselves around key watchstanders.

Patton blew into his boom mike, testing it, then called to Vale, who at battle stations would be the fire-control coordinator, in charge of the men finding the solution to the master target.

“Coordinator, Captain, test”

“Cap’n, Coordinator, aye,” Vale replied.

“Sonar, Captain, test.”

“Conn, Sonar, aye,” came the reply. It wasn’t De-Meers but his first-class petty officer, O’Connor. Patton raised a finger to Vale, telling him to hold down the fort.

Patton left the room through the forward starboard door leading to sonar.

“How’s the hearing?” Patton asked Demeers, who had been joined by four sonarmen sitting in the consoles.

The senior chief was standing behind them, looking over their shoulders.

Demeers shook his head, pointing at his ears.

“Dammit,” Patton said. “O’Connor, you got the bubble?” “Yessir,” the sonarman said. “Senior’s backing me up, Cap’n.”

“What’s going on out there?”

“Blueout across the eastern bearings. One loud explosion after another. The convoy is taking hits, sir. And I’m worried.” O’Connor turned to look up at Patton.

“I’m not sure we’ll hear the bad guy. Or bad guys. This is damned loud. Captain. It’s deafened the senior chief, and we’re getting up to 140 decibels from out here, peak, from detonations, and we’re over twenty miles away.

God knows how loud it’ll be when we get in close. Plus, I don’t know what I’m looking for. The search plan has us all over the frequency map.” “What are you saying, O’Connor?” Patton asked harshly.

“I’m saying I’m not sure I can hear an attacking submarine over all this, and even if the sea was quiet, I might not see him first I need to know what I’m up against — diesel boat. Destiny II, Rising Sun, older 688.

I can’t search for all of them at once, it would take a week! So if we go in, we go in half deaf.” O’Connor pointed at Demeers.

Patton looked at the senior chief, making his next question loud and lip-readable, “You agree. Senior?”

“Yessir.” Demeers’ voice was still distorted, a deaf man. “We’re putting our head into a lion’s mouth.”

Patton glared at them, feeling bile flood his stomach.

He jammed his hands in his pockets — after all, he hardly needed the crew to think he was frightened, although he certainly was, O’Connor was dead right.

Heading into an op area with no confirmed search plan was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack.

What frequency tonal? How loud? Did low frequencies show up first? Where should the processors be set? Wide bands or narrow? The sonarmen knew they were putting their necks on a chopping block and so did Patton, but he had to show them confidence, because that was all they had at this point — just the captain’s instincts and his guts.

“Listen, goddammit,” Patton finally said, his nostrils flared, his black eyes flashing. “I’m going in and I’m going in shooting. You guys find me a fucking target, I don’t care how hard it is. You got that?”

O’Conner nodded, looking as if he’d just been asked to drive a car at one hundred mph at midnight with no headlights.

As Patton returned to the control room he wondered how he was going to explain all this to fleet command.