“Yes, shoot faster.” The scenario played out again. Again the US sub shot the black torpedo, the Japanese evaded and counterfired. The US sub sank. “This time increase the Mark 50 search speed to high,” Pacino ordered, thinking the torpedo was too slow. The simulation ended the same way. The American sub sank. “Dammit.
Chief, you got the ability to program in a Vortex missile as own ship’s unit?” The Vortex missile was an experimental hybrid combination of torpedo and missile, ran underwater on solid rocket fuel and traveled at 300 knots to the target. It was the fastest underwater device ever invented, guided by a blue laser and packing several tons of Plasticpac ultradense molecular explosive. It was accurate, fast and lethal. The weapon would have been used fleet-wide if not for two problems: one, the unit was huge and would not fit into an Improved 688class submarine torpedo room; two, the missile had to be “hot launched” to be stable, meaning it ignited its solid rocket fuel inside the torpedo tube, and so far in every test it had blown up its own launching tube. In its last test in the Bahamas test range the unit had killed the target drone submarine and the launching drone submarine. The missile program, not surprisingly, had been abandoned. “Admiral, we have an old program I wrote for the Vortex, but, sir, that thing’s a suicide weapon. It always blows up the tube.”
“I know, I know, but configure it and let me try it.”
“Aye, sir. It’ll take a few minutes.” Pacino waited, thinking about Phillips and the expression on his face when Pacino had relieved him. “I’m ready. Admiral.”
“This scenario assumes a Seawolf class firing when Phillips got the solution, this time using a Vortex missile.”
Pacino watched the screen, saw that the Destiny was detected at 14,000 yards, seven miles out, and that a minute and seventeen seconds later the Vortex missile was ejected from the tube. The result was dramatic.
The firing dot, the US submarine, vanished as soon as the missile was launched, the chiefs black humor sneaking into the simulation. The missile track covered the ground to the Destiny in mere seconds. The missile hit the orange dot before it had time to fire back. The orange dot, the Destiny II class Japanese attack submarine pulsed, flashed and vanished. Pacino stared at the screen, wondering how he could get the Vortex to keep from blowing up the firing ship. IF Bruce Phillips walked slowly in the rain to the old turn-of-the-century Corvette, the blue convertible clean but ready for the used-car lot. He climbed in, wiped the rain from his face, cranked the motor to get the heater going and reached for the phone to call Abby while still in the parking lot of the USUBCOM Training Center. He had known Abby O’Neal for almost two years, having met her at an international conference on maritime law he had been assigned to in a northern Virginia resort. Abby was a successful maritime law attorney. Phillips had approached her at a reception after her presentation. Her hair was long, sleek and midnight black with a sheen to it. Her looks were black Irish, her features soft, her eyes large and brown. But taking in his crewcut and rhino build, she obviously was thinking him a muscle head who knew nothing of the sea, his ill-fitting civilian suit giving away little about his career. The next day he had given his presentation on the effect of submarine warships on maritime law, and when he had finished she had come up to him and spent the next five minutes apologizing for the day before. Phillips had asked her out and they had been inseparable ever since.
Her secretary answered now.
“Braddock, Samuels & O’Neal, Ms. O’Neal’s office.”
“Hi, Sarah, is Abby in?”
“Hi, Skipper, she’s just coming out of a meeting— here she is.”
“Bruce, hi. How’d it go?”
“I lost my ship today.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, honey, but you said those simulators are hell.”
“No, I wasn’t talking about the simulation. I got sunk in that too, but the admiral—”
“That guy you were telling me about, the maniac?”
“That’s the one. He relieved me of command. I’m no longer in command of the Greeneville.” His voice was a monotone, as Pacino’s had been earlier.
“Bruce, I can’t believe it. What did you do that was so bad in a simulator? Or was this about the grounding?
Was the simulator some kind of last chance?”
“Not quite, Ab. Get this.” And now his voice took on the excitement he felt. “Admiral Pacino took me off the Greeneville so he could assign me to the Piranha, that brand-new Seawolfclass boat coming out of construction in Connecticut, the one we saw in the Sunday paper. She’s mine now! Pacino said I was the one he wanted driving it.
He’s taking me out to dinner tonight and flying me to Groton next week for the change of command.” Phillips waited for her to react. “My God.
That guy Pacino must love you.”
“He just recognizes tactical brilliance when he sees it.”
“Right,” she said, laughing, “as long as there are no sandbars in sight.”
