“Then if my fate is to die with all of you, I am ready to accept that.”
“Sounds like Eastern fatalism to me.”
“I grew up in Taiwan, remember.” She slipped her yin-and-yang pendant from under a blouse lent to her by the Magic Shop. “I’m a Taoist. It’s not fatalism I believe in, just fate.”
“You’re as stubborn as Max. I can see why he has a thing for you.” Over Juan’s other shoulder, he heard Max Hanley groan aloud and the sound of his palm slapping his forehead. He swiveled to look at his second-in-command. “Sorry, Max, was that a secret?”
Max’s blush started at the base of his throat and didn’t stop until the crown of his head was as red as a cherry. Snickers filled the op center. Juan felt bad for teasing Hanley like this, but he needed something to relieve the tension.
“Mr. Hanley, I had no idea.” Tamara’s smile was genuine. “Come to think of it, my Mississippi cruise was cut short because of you. I think it only fair that, when this is all over with, you find some way to make it up to me.”
Married and divorced three times, Max had always been comfortable around women, especially the ones he found attractive, but for the first time Cabrillo could remember his friend was tongue-tied.
“Helm,” Juan said to get their heads back in the game. “What’s our current speed?”
“Twenty-one knots. That’s the best we can manage in these seas.”
“I’ll get you an extra ration of grog if you can get us a few more knots. Also, alter course to one-zero-five for the next ten minutes, then back to eighty-five. The old zigzag worked for allied convoys, so lets hope it works for us.”
The Oregon’s two torpedo tubes were flooded, though their outer doors were still closed. Linda Ross was covering their sensor suite, and they were doing everything they could to confound the Chinese sub. There was nothing left to do but wait and hope they snuck through.
Juan didn’t know how he did it, but the ship’s phlegmatic chief steward suddenly appeared at his shoulder with a big thermos of coffee and Styrofoam cups with plastic lids.
“What, Maurice, no Royal Doulton?” he teased, knowing he’d never get a rise out of the English septuagenarian.
“Considering the circumstances, I thought a less delicate alternative was more appropriate. If you wish, I can return to the pantry for a proper china service.”
“This is fine. Thank you. I know I could go for a cup.”
Maurice managed to pour cups all around and not get a single drop on his snowy-white apron. And how he maintained traction in spit-polished wingtips was a mystery for another day.
“I gather from your announcement, Captain, that the first watch will be on for the duration?” Maurice had retired from the Royal Navy and wouldn’t abide by calling Cabrillo anything but Captain. He was as much a stakeholder in the Corporation as any of them, but this was a ship, and its commander was called Captain and there would be no argument about it.
“Looks that way.”
“I will make sure to bring you dinner at six. Again, taking the weather into consideration, I think it best I serve something you don’t need utensils to eat. Perhaps burritos?” He said the last word with ill-disguised disgust.
Juan smiled. “Whatever you think is best.”
“Very good, sir.” With that, he slipped away as silently as a cat.
The hours dragged on. There was minimal conversation, just an occasional whispered word, a quick order, and then silence once again. The only real sounds were the swoosh of air through the ventilators and the noises made by the ship and sea as they fought against each other. The hull would creak. Waves would slam. And all the while water sluiced through the ship’s drive tubes under enough force to speed her up to twenty-five knots.
Juan had put off going to the head for as long as he could possibly take it. The nearest facilities were just beyond the op center’s back door, but he didn’t want to leave for even the minute it would take.
He had just unsnapped his shoulder harness and was reaching for his lap belt when Linda cried. “Contact! Sonar. Bearing two seventy-one degrees. Range, five thousand yards.”
Cabrillo could hardly believe she could hear a submarine at that distance in these conditions, but Linda Ross knew her job.
Juan forgot all about his bladder. “Do you have a depth and heading?”
She had one hand pressed to her earphones and the other danced over her keyboard. Above her was the electronic green wash of the waterfall display. “Still working on it, but I definitely have prop noises. Okay. Hold on. Got you. She’s at one hundred and twenty feet. Still bearing two seventy-one.”
No change in her bearing meant they were heading straight for the Oregon.
“Helm, full emergency stop, then turn us with the thrusters until we’re at ninety-one degrees,” Cabrillo ordered. That would take them directly away from the sub and minimize the time her flank was exposed. The Chinese wouldn’t know what to make of a contact that could pull off such a maneuver. He wondered if the Argentine aircraft had gotten a good enough look at them to know their target was a merchantman and not a naval vessel.
The magnetohydrodynamics wailed as Stone brought up full power and reversed the variable-pitch impellers in the drive tubes. As the speed bled off, the ocean swells attacked the Oregon as if angered that their power was being challenged. The ship heeled over nearly forty degrees when they were broadside to the waves, and water swept her decks from stem to stern.
Using the bow and stern thrusters, they turned as tightly as a bottle cap, and as soon as they were on the correct heading, Eric changed the impellers again and kept the engines firewalled.
“Range?” Cabrillo called out.
“Four thousand yards.”
The sub had gained almost a mile on them as they were turning. Juan did a quick calculation, and said, “Mr. Stone, just so you’re aware, the Kilo’s coming at us at twenty-three knots.”
In response, Eric dialed in emergency power.
The ride was brutal, like being on a bucking bronco. The ship shuddered so badly that Juan feared his fillings would loosen, while each climb up a wave was a vertiginous journey surpassed only by the gut-wrenching descent. Cabrillo had never called on his ship to give him more.
“Range?”
“Four thousand one hundred.”
A cheer went up. Despite it all, they were pulling away from the submarine. Juan patted his armrest affectionately.
“Contact,” Linda cried. “Sonar. New transient in the water. Speed is seventy knots. They’ve fired! Contact. Sonar. Second torpedo in the water.”
“Let go countermeasures,” Cabrillo ordered.
Mark Murphy worked his magic on the keyboard, and a noise generator was released from a pod under the keel, though it remained attached to the ship on a lengthening cable. The device emitted sounds like those the Oregon was making and was designed to lure the torpedo away from the ship.
“The first torpedo’s coming strong. The second has slowed. It’s going into stand-by.” The Chinese captain was keeping one of his fish in reserve in case the first missed. It was good naval practice. “Range is two thousand yards.”
In combat, time has an elasticity that defies physics. Minutes and seconds seem interchangeable. The tiniest increments can go on forever while the longest duration is gone in an instant. It took the torpedo a little over two minutes to halve the distance, but for the men and women in the op center it seemed hours had elapsed.
“If they go for the decoy, it should happen in about sixty seconds,” Linda announced.
Juan caught himself clenching his muscles and forcibly willed his body to relax. “Okay, Mr. Stone, cut power and go quiet.”
The engines spooled down evenly, and the ship began to slow. It would take at least a mile to come to a stop, but that wasn’t the goal. They wanted the torpedo to concentrate solely on the decoy they were towing.
“Thirty seconds.”
“Take the bait, baby, take the bait,” Mur
ph urged.
Juan leaned forward. On the big monitor, the sea behind the Oregon looked as dark and ominous as ever. And then a geyser, a towering column of water, erupted from the surface and rose nearly fifty feet, before gravity overcame the effects of the explosion and the geyser began collapsing back in on itself.
“Scratch one decoy,” Mark crowed.
“Eric,” Juan said calmly, “turn us about with ten percent power on the thrusters. The acoustics are going to be scrambled for a while, but keep it quiet. Wepps, open the outer doors.”
Mark Murphy opened the ship’s two torpedo doors, as they came about and pointed their bow at the approaching submarine.
“Linda, what’s he doing?”
“He’s slowed down so they can listen, but he’s maintaining his depth. And that second torpedo’s still out there someplace.”
“He’ll want to hear us sinking,” Juan said, “rather than surfacing. Mark, oblige him.”
“Roger that.” He typed in commands on his computer, and an electronic track began to play. The speakers were attached to the hull and they pumped out the sounds of a ship in its death throes.
“It just occurred to me,” Cabrillo said. “We should have the speakers on a wire we can lower from the hull. It’d be more realistic.” He looked over at Hanley. “Max, you should have thought of that.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I just did.”
“A little late to help us now.”
“You know what they say—”
“Better late than never.”
“No. They say, Wepps, fire both tubes.”
Mark hadn’t been fooled by the repartee, and he launched the torpedoes the instant the order came.
Jets of compressed air blew the two-ton weapons from the tubes as their electric motors came online. In just a few seconds, they were homing in on their target at sixty-plus knots. Cabrillo used the keypad on his chair to switch the view screen to the forward camera. The torpedoes left twin wakes of white bubbling water that streaked away from the ship.
“That second fish will be after us in about three seconds,” he said. “Open the forward redoubt for the Gatling gun, and crank it up.”
A cleverly hidden door at the bow crashed open, and the multi-barrel snout of the Gatling emerged. The cluster of barrels was spun up until they were just a blur. Capable of firing four thousand 20mm tungsten rounds a minute, the weapon had the capability of tearing through enough water to reach the torpedo as it homed in on the ship. They had stopped a similar attack in the Persian Gulf when an Iranian submarine had taken a shot at them.
“Contact. Sonar. Their fish has gone active. Oh, no!”
“What?”
“She’s at three hundred feet.”
Juan understood the implications immediately. Unlike their last fight with a Kilo-class, where the water had been shallow, here the Chinese captain had the sea room to order his torpedo deep and come up on them where a ship is most vulnerable—along the keel. A modern vessel can survive a massive explosion along her flank—witness the USS Cole—but a blast under the hull will snap its spine and usually result in it breaking into two pieces and sinking within minutes.
“Who’s going to win the race?” Cabrillo asked.
“Their fish is inside ours by a hundred and fifty yards and coming at us four knots faster. It’ll hit us a full minute before ours hits him.”
Juan considered and rejected option after option. There simply wasn’t enough time to maneuver away, and the seas were too rough for the Oregon’s unparalleled speed to be a factor.
“Wepps, sound the collision alarm. Eric, I’m transferring helm to my station.”
Over the electronic warble of the alarm came another mechanical sound.
Max, who knew the ship better than anyone, was the first to realize that Juan had opened the big moon-pool doors. He quickly grasped what the Chairman intended. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Got a better idea? So long as that torpedo uses a contact fuse rather than a proximity signal, there’s a chance we can pull it off.”
“And if he does detonate just under the keel?”
“Having the doors open or closed won’t change a thing.” Cabrillo turned to Linda. “You’re my eyes. Guide me into position.”
“What do you want me to do?” She still didn’t understand.
“Thread the needle with that torpedo. I want it to come up directly below the moon pool. With a little, no, with a lot of luck, that thing will fly clear when it broaches. That should snap its guy wires. After that, it’s nothing but a big paperweight.”
“You are nuts,” she said, and looked at Max. “He is.”
“Yes, but it actually might work.”
She returned to her display. “Depth is still three hundred. Range, one thousand yards.”
The torpedo maintained its track, staying deep as it raced for the Oregon. Because of the guy wires running back to their sub, the Chinese couldn’t take evasive maneuvers against the two torpedoes tracking them. Juan had to hand it to the Chinese captain. If the roles were reversed, he would have gotten out of there as soon as he heard he was under attack.
“Range, four hundred yards. Depth, unchanged. Time to impact, about forty seconds.”
The Chinese commander wouldn’t alter the torpedo’s depth until it was directly under the ship, and then he would send it straight up on its killing charge.
“Range, one hundred yards. Depth, unchanged. Juan, it’s about twenty feet to starboard of our center line.”
Cabrillo kicked on the thrusters to push the Oregon laterally through the water. With the sea heaving so much, it was going to take more than the lot of luck he’d mentioned. It was like threading a needle, only the hand holding the needle was wracked with tremors.
“That’s good. Okay, she’s coming up. Depth, two-fifty. Range, twenty yards.”
The sonar dome on the underside of the hull was thirty feet back from the bow. Cabrillo had to keep that in mind. The torpedo was twenty yards from the sonar but ten from his ship. The moon pool was directly amidships of the five-hundred-and-sixty-foot freighter.
“Depth, one-eighty feet. Horizontal range from the bow is five yards.” A second later, she amended, and said, “Depth, one-fifty. Range, three yards.”
Juan ran the vectors in his head, calculating the torpedo’s glide slope as it arrowed in on them, his ship’s speed and position, and how the waves were affecting her. He had one shot or they were all going to die. There was no margin for error. And there was no hesitation. He slammed on full power for less than two seconds and then threw the impellers into reverse. The ship lurched forward, shouldered aside a big breaking wave, and slowed once again.
“Depth, fifty feet. Range is zero.”
Eric keyed on a fish-eye camera attached high up on a bulkhead, overlooking the moon pool. Water surged from the hole in the ship in black glossy mounds that spilled over onto the grated floor and sank to the bilge.
“Depth zero,” Linda said in an emotionless monotone.
Like Leviathan rising from the deep, the bulbous nose of the Chinese torpedo exploded out of the moon pool. Meeting no resistance, its motor thrust the weapon fully out of the water. Its quick last-second acceleration was enough to snap the two guy wires trailing miles back to the sub. It crashed back into the water, ringing like a bell when it hit the edge of the pool. And then it sank from sight. With no control inputs coming from the mother ship, the onboard computer shut the weapon down.
A victorious roar filled the op center and echoed throughout the ship, where other crew members had been watching video monitors. Max slapped Cabrillo on the back hard enough to leave a red handprint. Tamara hugged Juan briefly, and then Max much longer.
Cabrillo made to leave the room. “Chairman,” Linda called to stop him. “What about the sub? Our torpedoes hit in forty-five seconds.”
“I’ll be in the head if they need me.”
He was in the restroom, sighing contente
dly, when another cheer went up. The fish had done their job, and the route to Antarctica, and the end of this affair, was open.
TWENTY-FOUR
A LIGHT TOUCH ON THE SHOULDER WOKE JORGE ESPINOZA. Like any good soldier, he was awake instantly. His aide, Corporal deRosas, stood over him, holding a mug of what he hoped was coffee.
“Sorry to wake you, sir, but a large ship has appeared at the mouth of the bay.”
“A warship?”
“No, sir, a freighter. It’s beached.”
Espinoza threw off the thick sheaf of blankets and regretted it immediately. Though the overseer, Luis Laretta, had boasted that fuel wasn’t a problem for the facility, the air in the building they used as a billet had a perpetual chill that seeped into everything. Espinoza pulled on two pairs of long johns before donning fatigue pants. On his feet went three pairs of socks.
“Has anyone aboard tried to make contact?”
The aide opened the metal blinds to let in what passed for sunlight in this godforsaken deep freeze. The room was barely big enough for the bed and a dresser. Its walls were painted plywood. The single window overlooked the back of another building just three feet away. “No, sir. The ship appears abandoned. One of its life rafts is missing from the davits, and, judging by how beat-up it is, it looks like it was deserted some time ago. Sergeant Lugones scoped it with a thermal sight. Nothing. The ship’s stone-cold.”
Espinoza took a swig of the strong coffee. It didn’t go well with the film in his mouth, and he made a face. “What time is it?”
“Nine A.M.”
Three hours of sleep. He’d survived on less. He and Jimenez and a couple of Sergeants had been out most of the night, scouting the hills behind the base for ambush sites. The fractured terrain was a natural fortification, with hundreds of places to position fire teams. The only problem was keeping them warm. Today was going to be dedicated to seeing how long the men could stay in position and still maintain combat efficiencies. The Sergeants guessed four hours. His estimation was closer to three.
He finished dressing and downed the rest of the coffee. His stomach rumbled, but he decided to investigate the mystery ship before breakfast. “Wake Lieutenant Jimenez.”