“Sir, I have another decoy deployed on Sierra-2. Sierra-1 has one deployed also. Our fish is pinging on -2. Somebody’s fish is pinging on -1, and one of the Russian fish is pinging at zero-three-five—sir, I have an explosion at bearing three-three-nine.”
Dad wanted me to be an accountant,
McCafferty thought.
Maybe then I could keep all these damned numbers straight.
He walked over to the plot.
The paper plot wasn’t much clearer. The pencil lines that designated sonar contacts and running torpedoes looked like electrical wire dropped at random on the chart.
“Captain, I have very loud machinery noises at bearing three-three-nine. Sounds like something’s broke, sir, lots of metallic noise. Getting some air noise now, he’s blowing tanks. No breakup noises yet.”
“Left full rudder, come to new course zero-one-zero.”
“We didn’t kill the Victor?”
“I’ll settle for a small piece of him, if it sends him home. We’ll score that one as a damage. What’s going on with the other two?”
“The fish after Sierra-1 is pinging, and so’s
Boston’
s—I guess it’s from
Boston.”
The slight abatement of the confusion lasted ten minutes. The second target put her stern on both torpedoes and ran northwest. More sonobuoy lines appeared across
Chicago’s
path. Another air-dropped torpedo was detected to the west, but they didn’t know what it had been dropped on—just that it wasn’t close enough to worry about. The torpedo they’d put in pursuit of the second Victor-class sub was struggling to catch a target running directly away as fast as it could go, and another fish was angling in from the opposite direction. Possibly
Boston
had fired at the Alfa too, but the Alfa was racing away at a speed almost as great as the torpedo’s. McCafferty reestablished sonar contact with
Providence
and continued north. Chaos worked in his favor, and he took maximum advantage of it. He hoped
Boston
could evade the torpedoes that had been launched in her direction, but that was out of his hands.
“Two explosions bearing zero-zero-three, sir.” That was the last bearing to the second Victor, but sonar detected nothing more. Had the fish killed the sub, the decoy, or had they homed in on each other?
Chicago
continued north, increasing speed to ten knots as she zig-zagged through the sonobuoy lines to increase her distance from the injured
Providence.
The attack-center crew was emotionally exhausted, as drained as their captain from the frantic tracking and shooting exercise. The technical aspects of the work had been handled well in pre-war workups, but nothing could simulate the tension of firing live weapons. The captain sent them in pairs to the galley for food and a half-hour’s rest. The cooks brought up a platter of sandwiches for the ones who couldn’t leave. McCafferty sat behind the periscope, eyes closed, head back against something metallic while he munched on a ham sandwich. He remembered seeing the cans loaded aboard. The Navy had gotten a good price earlier in the year on canned Polish hams.
Polish hams,
he thought.
Crazy.
He allowed his crew to go off battle stations an hour later. Half his men were allowed to go off duty. They didn’t head for the galley and a meal. They all preferred sleep. The captain knew that he needed it at least as badly as they.
After we get to the ice,
he promised himself.
I’ll sleep for a month.
They picked up
Boston
on sonar, a ghostly trace on the sonar screens due east of them.
Providence
was still aft, still cruising along at six knots, and still making too much noise from her battered sail. Time passed more rapidly now. The captain remained seated, forgetting his dignity and listening to reports of . . . nothing.
McCafferty’s head came up. He checked his watch and realized he’d been dozing for half an hour. Five more hours to the ice. It came up clearly on sonar now, a low-frequency growl of noise that covered thirty degrees on either side of the bow.
Where did the Alfa go?
McCafferty was in sonar ten seconds after asking himself that question.
“What was your last bearing on the Alfa?”
“Sir, we lost him three hours ago. Last we had him, he was at flank speed on a steady northeasterly bearing. Faded out and he hasn’t come back, sir.”
“What’s the chance he’s hiding in the ice, waiting for us?”
“If he does, we’ll pick him up before he picks us up, sir. If he’s moving, his engine plant turns out a lot of medium- and high-frequency noise,” the sonar chief explained. McCafferty knew all that, but wanted to hear it again anyway. “All the low-frequency ice noise’ll ruin his chance to detect us at long range, but we should be able to hear him a good ways off if he’s moving.” The captain nodded and went aft.
“XO, if you were driving that Alfa, where would you be?”
“Home!” The exec smiled. “He has to know there are at least two boats out here. Those are awful short odds. We crippled that one Victor, and
Boston
probably killed the other one. What’s he going to think? Ivan’s brave, but he’s not crazy. If he has any sense at all, he’ll report a lost contact and leave it at that.”
“I don’t buy it. He beat our fish, and he probably beat one from
Boston,”
the captain said quietly.
“You could be right, skipper, but he ain’t on sonar.”
McCafferty had to concede that point. “We’ll be very careful approaching the ice.”
“Agreed, sir. We’re being paranoid enough.”
McCafferty didn’t think so, but he didn’t know why.
What am I missing?
Their fix on the edge of the icepack was old. Currents and wind would have moved the ice a few miles south as increasing summer temperatures weakened the thick white roof on the ocean.
Maybe an hour’s worth?
the captain wondered hopefully.
The plot showed Boston fifteen miles to the east, and Providence eight miles southeast. Three more hours to the ice. Eighteen nautical miles, maybe less, and they’d be safe.
Why should there be anything else out here? They can’t send their whole fleet after us. They have plenty of other problems to worry about.
McCafferty dozed off again.
“Conn, sonar!” McCafferty’s head came up.
“Conn, aye,” the exec answered.
“Providence
has speeded up somewhat, sir. Estimate she’s doing ten knots.”
“Very well.”
“How long was I out?” the captain asked.
“About an hour and a half. You’ve been awake quite a while, sir, and you weren’t snoring loud enough to bother anybody. Sonar is still blank except for our friends.”
McCafferty got up and stretched.
That wasn’t enough. It’s catching up with me. Much more of this and I’m more dangerous to my own crew than I am to the Russians.
“Distance to the ice?”
“About twelve thousand yards, near as we can make out.”
McCafferty went to look at the chart.
Providence
had caught up and was even with him now. He didn’t like that.
“Go to twelve knots and come right to zero-four-five. He’s getting too eager.”
“You’re right,” the exec said after giving the proper orders, “but who can blame him?”
“I can. What the hell does another few minutes matter after all the time it’s taken to get this far?”
“Conn, sonar, we have a possible contact bearing zero-six-three. Sounds like machinery noise, very faint. Fading out now. We’re getting flow noise that’s blanking it out.”
“Slow down?” the executive officer asked. The captain shook his head.
“All ahead two-thirds.”
Chicago
accelerated to eighteen knots. McCafferty stared down at the chart. There was something important here that he wasn’t seeing. The submarine was still deep, at one thousand feet.
Providence
still had her tail working, but she was running close to the surface, and that made trouble for her sonar performance. Was
Boston
running shallow, too? The quartermasters on the fire-control tracking party kept advancing the positions of the two American subs in keeping with the known course and speed of each.
Chicago
rapidly closed the distance. After half an hour she was broad on
Providence’s
port bow, and McCafferty ordered speed reduced to six knots again. As the submarine slowed, the exterior flow noise abated and her sonars returned to full performance.
“Sonar contact bearing zero-nine-five!”
The plotting team ran a line across the chart. It intersected the previous bearing line . . . almost exactly between
Boston
and
Providence!
McCafferty bent down to check the depth there—nineteen hundred feet. Deeper than a 688-class sub could dive . . .
. . . but not too deep for an Alfa . . .
“Holy shit!”
He couldn’t fire at the contact. The bearing to the target was too close to
Providence.
If the control wires broke, the fish would go into automatic mode and not care a whit that
Providence
was a friendly.
“Sonar, go active, Yankee-search on bearing zero-nine-five!”
It took a moment to power-up the system. Then the deep
ba-wah
sound shook the ocean. McCafferty had meant to alert his comrades. He’d also alerted the Alfa.
“Conn, sonar, I have hull-popping noises and increased machinery noise at bearing zero-nine-five. No target on the scope yet.”
“Come on, Todd!” the captain urged.
“Transients, transients!
Boston
just increased power, sir—there goes
Providence.
Torpedoes in the water, bearing zero-nine-five ! Multiple torpedoes in the water at zero-nine-five!”
“All ahead full!” McCafferty looked at the plot. The Alfa was perilously close to both subs, behind both, and
Providence
couldn’t run, couldn’t dive, couldn’t do a Goddamned thing! He could only watch as his fire-control team readied two torpedoes. The Alfa had fired four fish, two at each American boat.
Boston
changed course west, as did
Providence.
McCafferty and the exec went to the sonar room.
He watched the contact lines swing left and right across the screen. The thick ones denoted the submarines; the thinner, brighter lines each of the four torpedoes. The two aimed at
Providence
closed rapidly. The wounded sub was up to twenty knots, and made noise like a gravel truck trying to run. It was clear that she’d never make it. Three noisemakers appeared on the screen, but the torpedoes ignored them. The lines converged to a single point that blossomed bright on the screen.
“They got her, sir,” the chief said quietly.
Boston
had a better chance. Simms was at full speed now, with the torpedoes less than a thousand yards behind. He, too, deployed noisemakers and made radical changes in course and depth. One torpedo went wild, diving after a decoy and exploding on the bottom. The other locked on
Boston
and slowly ate up the distance. Another bright dot appeared, and that was that.
“Yankee-search the Alfa,” McCafferty said, his voice low with rage. The submarine vibrated with the powerful sonar pulses.
“Bearing one-zero-nine, range thirteen thousand.”
“Set!”
“Match and
shoot!”
The Alfa didn’t wait to hear the incoming torpedoes. Her skipper knew that there was a third sub out there, knew that he’d been pinged. The Soviet sub went to maximum speed and turned cast. Chicago’s weapons officer tried to move the torpedoes on a closing course, but they had a scant five-knot advantage on the Alfa, and the math was clear: they’d come up two thousand yards short at the end of their fuel. McCafferty was past caring. He too went to flank speed and chased after her for half an hour, coming down to five knots three minutes before the torpedoes ran out of fuel. The flow noise cleared off his sonars just in time to hear the Alfa decelerate safely.
“Okay, now we’ll try again.” They were three miles from the ice now, and
Chicago
was quiet. The Alfa turned west, and McCafferty’s tracking party gathered data to compute her range. The turn west was a mistake. He evidently expected
Chicago
to run for the pack and safety.
“Conn, sonar. New contact, bearing zero-zero-three.”
Now what? Another Russian trap?
“I need information!”
“Very faint, but I got a bearing change, just moved to zero-zero-four.”
A quartermaster looked up from his slide rule. “Range has to be under ten thousand yards, sir!”
“Transients, transients!
—torpedo in the water bearing zero-zero-five!”
“Left full rudder, all ahead flank!”
“Bearing change! Torpedo bearing now zero-zero-eight!”
“Belay that order!” McCafferty shouted. The new contact was shooting at the Alfa.
“Jesus, what is this thing?” the sonar chief asked.
The Alfa heard the new fish and reversed course. Again they heard and saw the thunder of the Alfa’s engines . . . but the torpedo closed the distance rapidly.
“It’s a Brit. That’s one of their new Spearfish. I didn’t know they had any in the fleet yet.”
“How fast?” the sonar chief asked.
“Sixty or seventy knots.”
“Gawd! Let’s buy some.”
The Alfa ran straight for three miles, then turned north to head for the ice. She didn’t make it. The Spearfish cut the corner. The lines on the display merged again, and a final bright dot appeared.
“Bring her around north,” McCafferty told the exec. “Go to eighteen knots. I want to be sure he knows who we are.”
“We are HMS
Torbay.
Who are you?”
“Chicago.
”
“We heard the commotion earlier. Are you alone?” Captain James Little asked.
“Yes. The Alfa ambushed us—we’re alone.”
“We will escort you.”
“Understood. Do you know if the mission was successful?”