Terminal Run

“Thanks for all your work, Dr. Wang,” Krivak said as he put the.45 on the deck and pulled off his shirt. The fourth missile launched as he tossed the garment to the deck. “I hope you find your severance package satisfactory.” Krivak dropped his pants and stepped into the wet suit. By the time he had the wet suit on, the fifth and sixth missiles were away.

Krivak opened the lower hatch of the escape trunk and peeked in at the control panel, satisfied that One Oh Seven had shifted control to the local panel. He pulled in his things and unlatched the bottom hatch to shut the escape trunk.

“Goodbye, Wang. Have a good trip.” Krivak slammed the hatch shut and waited for the depth gauge to show the ship coming shallow, listening to the other missile launches.

What a beautiful sound, he thought.

The fourth-launched Mark 98 Tigershark torpedo struggled to an angry consciousness, its sonar receiver fully tuned to the ocean around it. The weapon started its external combustion turbine to begin to search the sea, but there was nothing. The unit was surrounded by open, empty space. It turned a wide circle, five hundred yards in diameter, but heard nothing. It opened the circle and drove around again, but it was still alone. After the fifth, wider circle, it decided to rise up to the layer depth and see if it saw anything there. Slowly the unit drove above the depth where the water temperature suddenly changed from freezing to warm, the higher temperature water keeping the sound waves here above the layer.

As soon as the unit climbed above the layer, it heard something, and it wiggled its fins to see if the sound moved, and it did. The sound was close, inside of a mile. The Tigershark wiggled again to refine the range to the target, and it instructed the engine to shut down. It jettisoned the first stage as the explosive bolts around the unit’s midsection fired, cutting it in half. In the next tenth of a second a high-pressure air bottle in the nose cone behind the sonar sensor lit off, blowing air over the tip of the coasting torpedo, and the solid rocket engine ignited. The bubbles of high-pressure air streamed down the torpedo length to the solid rocket engine nozzle. As the torpedo felt full thrust the bubble of air was replaced, the entire torpedo now encapsulated in a supercavitating bubble of steam. It sped up to 100 knots, its aim at the target unwavering, then 150 knots, finally speeding up to 200 knots, and by then the distance to the target had been eaten completely up.

The torpedo blew into the hull of the target, the kinetic energy of impact shredding the bow, and just as the remains of the torpedo were traveling through the fragments of the target the PlasticPak warhead detonated, and the rest of the target exploded upward into the atmosphere. A red cloud of atomized blood marked the passage of the men named Amorn and Pedro as their motor yacht ceased to exist.

“Captain, we have transients on broadband bearing zero eight eight, sir. It sounds like solid rocket engine ignition.”

“Understand, Sonar.” Pacino said, pursing his lips, “you already reported that — Tigershark engine startups.”

“Conn, Sonar, no. These are missile launches, Captain. Cruise missiles!”

Pacino opened his mouth to give the next order just as XO Vermeers came into the room, a dark scowl on his face as he grabbed a wireless headset. He looked at Pacino and held out his fist with his thumb pointed down. There was no time for anger at Vermeers. Pacino shouted to the diving officer, “Vertical rise to periscope depth, seven five feet, raise the Type 23 and the BRA-44!”

The ship rose sluggishly as the diving officer blew high pressure air into the depth control tanks. “BRA-44 BIGMOUTH coming up, sir!” he called. “Eighty feet, sir!”

“Get us up,” Pacino ordered as he pulled on the Type 23 periscope helmet. “Arm the Mark 80 SLAAM missile battery,” he said, his voice distorted by the helmet. The Submarine-Launched AntiAir Missiles might be able to catch up with a Javelin on solid rocket thrust, as long as he could launch them fast enough. He frantically strapped on the thigh control pad, cursing that he had failed to anticipate that he might need to use the periscope.

“Seven five feet, sir!”

By the time Pacino had turned on the periscope visual, the unit was out of the sky. He trained his view to the sky and immediately saw four arcing smoke trails from the horizon to the cloudy sky.

“SLAAM panel armed, Captain,” Vermeers shouted.