“Sir, the screw appears to be a turbine-type screw, ducted propulsor. Contact is tentatively classified as a warship, submarine type. Destiny class, running on the surface. Conn, Sonar, we now have an increase in signal.
Contact is putting out transients.”
“Is it possible he’s submerging?”
“Captain, Sonar, yes.”
“Let’s designate contact Sierra One as Target One, Destiny Il-class attack submarine.”
Phillips barked orders to the firecontrol team— weapon presets for the torpedoes in tubes one and two, speed changes, depth changes, calling for the bearing rate to the target. The ship settled down to a momentary quiet as the sonar and computer gathered data on the outbound Japanese submarine.
Pacino glanced quickly at the chronometer display above the firecontrol consoles, his experience telling him to turn now to get the second leg on the target, to zig zag the opposite direction and see how the direction to the contact, his bearing, changed. Pacino ached to give the order himself, when finally Phillips called out! “Helm, right fifteen degrees rudder, steady course east.
Sonar, turning to the north.”
“Helm, aye, my rudder’s right fifteen, passing two eight zero.”
“Conn, Sonar, aye,” the sonar supervisor’s anxious voice crackled in Pacino’s headphones. “Captain, you’re pointing the target, sir.”
“I know fix that, god damnit,” Phillips said.
Pacino made a mental note to talk to Phillips about two things — that pointing the ship toward the contact when the range was unknown could cause a collision, and was a violation of fleet regulations, and second, that he’d better get his crew used to violating fleet regs, because in wartime the only rules were the ones the captain made up along the way. Obviously the sonar chief hadn’t figured that out, but it was Phillips’s job to prepare him. But then, how would he himself as a submarine skipper, the way he was six years ago, perform under the harsh light of an admiral’s eye? Perhaps the same as Phillips, perhaps worse.
“Conn, Sonar, loss of contact! Target One has shut down, last bearing zero one eight.”
“Dammit,” Phillips mumbled. “What the hell happened?”
Phillips’s executive officer hurried into the room. Lt.
Comdr. Roger Whatney, Royal Navy, was on exchange while an American was second-in-command of a Trafalgarclass sub, all part of a pilot program to bring the two English-speaking nuclear submarine navies into a closer cultural alignment, one of Pacino’s innovations since taking over the reorganized fleet. Whatney was short and slight enough to make Phillips look a giant. He was quick to smile, easy going, his enthusiasm a trademark.
Today, however, he looked deflated, haggard. He stood next to Phillips.
“Where the hell did he go. Coordinator?” During battlestations Whatney would become the firecontrol coordinator, responsible to Phillips for the target’s firecontrol solution. For the duration of the battle Whatney would cease to be called “XO”—shorthand for executive officer and would be simply “Coordinator.”
“We lost the target, sir? Looks like he pulled the plug and went silent.”
“Here’s your headset. You look like crap.”
“Thanks, Captain. A close encounter with pneumonia.”
Phillips bent over the officer at the firecontrol console and spun the knobs set into the horizontal skirt of the panel. The lines on the display rotated and wiggled. “Coordinator, I’m thinking of putting a torpedo down the bearing line to his old position.”
“Sir, loss of contact was two minutes ago. At his range, he could drive off-track before the torpedo got there even if he didn’t hear it. And if he did, we’re done for.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Sonar, any detect?”
“Captain, Sonar, no.”
The room waited for the outbound Japanese sub to come closer, for him to get louder. Pacino watched the chronometer, thinking that he was probably going thirty-five knots at a range of sixty miles, with a detection range to the Destiny pessimistically at five miles, meaning it could be well over an hour before he got this far out. What would he do if he were in command. Drive in closer, he thought.
“Helm, left ten degrees rudder, steady course zero one eight, all ahead standard. Attention in the firecontrol team. We’ve lost Target One when he submerged. Present intentions are to get closer to him, get a quick detect, then drive off the bearing line to get a one-minute range, then fire a Mark 50 selected to immediate enable. After weapon launch we will clear datum to the south at flank and monitor the situation on the caboose array and the towed array endbeam. Carry on.”
Gutsy, Pacino thought. This would be interesting. The time on the chronometer unwound for ten minutes until sonar called on the headsets.
“Conn, Sonar, reacquisition Target One, bearing zero one one.”
“Helm, left three degrees rudder, steady course three zero zero. Commencing leg one when steady. Coordinator.
You’ve got thirty seconds.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Sir, steady course three zero zero,” the helmsman called from the ship-control panel.
