McCafferty stood at the periscope pedestal, watching his men at work as they entered data into the fire-control computers, backed up by other men with paper plots and hand-held calculators. The weapons-control panel was lit up by indicators showing ready. The submarine was at battle stations.
"Take her up to two hundred feet, we'll listen above the layer for a few minutes." The maneuver paid off at once.
"I got direct-path to the targets," the sonar chief announced. They could now detect and track sound energy radiating directly from the Soviet ships, without depending on the on-again, off-again convergence zones.
McCafferty commanded himself to relax. He'd soon have work enough.
"Captain, we're about due for another sonobuoy drop. They've been averaging about every fifteen minutes, and this one might be close."
"Getting that Horse-Jaw sonar again, sir," sonar warned. "Bearing three-two-zero at this time. Signal weak. Classify this contact as the cruiser Kirov. Stand by-another one. We have a medium frequency active sonar bearing three-three-one, maneuvering left-to-right. We classify this contact as a Kresta-II ASW cruiser."
"I think he's right," the plotting officer said. "Bearing three-two-zero is close to our bearings for a pair of screen ships, but far enough off that it's probably a different contact. Three-three-one is consistent with the center screen ship. It figures. The Kresta will be the screen commander, with the flagship a ways behind him. Need some time to work out the ranges, though."
The captain ordered his submarine to stay above the layer, able to duck beneath it in seconds. The tactical display was evolving now. He had a workable bearing on Kirov. Almost good enough to shoot on, though he still needed range data. There seemed to be a pair of escorts between him and the cruiser, and unless he had a proper range estimate, any missile he launched at the Soviet flagship might attack a destroyer or frigate by mistake. In the interim, the solution on the attack director set the Harpoons to fly straight for what he believed to be the battle cruiser Kirov.
Chicago began to zigzag left and right of her course track. As the submarine changed her position, the bearing to her sonar contacts changed also. The tracking party could use the submarine's own course deviation as a baseline to compute ranges to the various contacts. A straightforward process-essentially an exercise in high-school trigonometry-it nevertheless took time because they had to estimate the speed and course of the moving targets. Even computer support couldn't make the process go much faster, and one of his quartermasters took great pride in his ability to use a circular slide rule and race the computer to a hard solution.
The tension seemed to grow by degrees, then it plateaued. The years of training were paying off. Data was handled, plotted, and acted upon in seconds. The crew suddenly seemed a physical part of the gear they were operating, their feelings shut off, their emotions submerged, only the sweat on their foreheads betraying that they were men after all, and not machines. They depended absolutely on their sonar operators. Sound energy was their only indication of what was happening, and each new bearing report triggered furious activity. It was clear that their targets were zigzagging, which made the range computations even more difficult.
"Conn, sonar! Active sonobuoy close aboard to port! Below the layer, I think."
"Right full rudder, all ahead two-thirds," the executive officer ordered instantly.
McCafferty went to sonar and plugged in a set of headphones. The pings were loud but... distorted, he thought. If the buoy was below the temperature gradient, the signals radiating upward would be unable to detect his submarine-probably. "Signal strength?" he asked.
"Strong," the chief replied. "Even money they might have picked us up. Five hundred yards farther out and they lose us for sure."
"Okay, they can't monitor them all at once."
The XO moved Chicago a thousand yards before returning to base course. Overhead, they knew, was a Bear-F ASW aircraft armed with homing torpedoes and a crew whose job it was to listen to the sonobuoy signals. How good were the buoys and the men? That was one thing that they didn't know. Three tense minutes passed and nothing happened.
"All ahead one-third, come left to three-two-one," the executive officer ordered. They were now through the line of buoys. Three more such lines were between them and their target. They'd nearly determined range for three of the escorts, but not to the Kirov yet.
"Okay, people, the Bears are behind us. That's one less thing to worry about. Range to the nearest ship?" he asked the approach officer.
