combat action without any hope of support. Or something like that. Checa
faced the problem common to officers: subject to the same discomfort and
misery as his men, he was not allowed to bitch. There was no other officer to
bitch to in any case, and to do so in front of the men was bad for morale, even
though the men probably would have understood.
“Be nice to get back to Fort Stewart, sir,” First Sergeant Vega observed.
“Spread on that sunblock and catch some rays on the beach.”
“And miss all this beautiful snow and sleet, Oso?” At least the sky was
clear now.
“Roge-o, Captain. But I got my fill o’ this shit when I was a kid in Chi-
cago.” He paused, looking and listening around again. The noise-discipline
of the other Rangers was excellent, and you had to look very closely indeed
to see where the lookouts were standing.
“Ready for the walk out tonight?”
“Just NO’S our friend is wailing on the far side of that hill.”
“I’m sure he will he,” Checa lied.
“Yes, sir. 1 am, too.” If one could do it, why not two? Vega thought. “Did
all this stuff work?”
The killers in their midst were sleeping in their bags, in holes lined with
pine branches and covered with more branches for additional warmth. In
addition to guarding the pilots, the Rangers had to keep them healthy, like
watching over infants, an odd mission for elite troops, but troops of that sort
generally drew the oddest.
“So they say.” Checa looked at his watch. “We shake them loose in an-
other two hours.”
Vega nodded, hoping that his legs weren’t too stiff for the trek south.
The patrol pattern had been set in the mission briefing. The four boomers
had thirty-mile sectors, and each sector was divided into three ten-mile seg-
ments. Each boat could patrol in the center slot, leaving the north and south
slots empty for everything but weapons. The patrol patterns were left to the
judgment of individual skippers, but they worked out the same way. Penn-
sylvania was on a northerly course, trolling along at a mere five knots, just as
she’d done for her now-ended deterrence patrols carrying Trident missiles.
She was making so little noise that a whale might have come close to a colli-
sion, if it were the right time for whales in this part of the Pacific, which it
wasn’t. Behind her, at the end of a lengthy cable, was her towed-array sonar,
and the two-hour north-south cycle allowed it to trail straight out in a line,
with about ten minutes or so required for the turns at the end of the cycles to
get it straight again for maximum performance.
Pennsylvania was at six hundred feet, the ideal sonar depth given today’s
water conditions. It was just sunset up on the roof when the first trace ap-
peared on her sonar screens. It started as a series of dots, yellow on the video
screen, trickling down slowly with time, and shifting a little to the south in
bearing, but not much. Probably, the lead sonarman thought, the target had
been running on battery for the past few hours, else he would have caught
the louder signals of the diesels used to charge them, but there the contact
was, on the expected 6oh/. line. I le reported the contact data to the fire-con-
trol tracking party.
Wasn’t this something, the sonarman thought. He’d spent his entire career
in missile boats, so often tracking contacts which his submarine would ma-
neuver to avoid, even though the boomer fleet prided itself on having the
best torpedomen in the fleet. Pennsylvania carried only fifteen weapons
aboard-there was a shortage of the newest version of the ADCAP torpedo,
and it had been decided not to bother carrying anything less capable under
the circumstances. It also had three other torpedolike units, called
LEMOSSs, for Long-Endurance Mobile Submarine Simulator. The skipper,
another lifelong boomer sailor, had briefed the crc* <»n his intended methodof attack, and everyone aboard approved. 'Ilic ininiion. in tact, was justabout ideal. The Japanese had to move through Ihfir lino Then o|H-rationalpattern was such that for them to pass undetected through the I .me of Haltle,as the skipper had taken to calling it, was most unlikely."Now hear this," the Captain said over the i-MC announcing systemevery speaker had been turned down, so that the announcement came as awhisper that the men strained to hear. ' 'We have a probable submerged con-tact in our kill zone. I am going to conduct the attack just as we briefed it.Battle stations," he concluded in the voice of a man ordering breakfast atHoJo's.There came sounds so faint that only one experienced sonarman couldhear them, and that mostly because he was just forward of the attack center.The watch had changed there so that only the most experienced men-andone woman, now-would occupy the weapons consoles. Those people toojunior for a place on the sub's varsity assembled throughout the boat in dam-age-control parties. Voices announced to the attack-center talker that eachspace was fully manned and ready, and then the ship grew as silent as agraveyard on Hallo ween."Contact is firming up nicely," the sonarman said over his phones."Bearing is changing westerly, bearing to target now zero-seven-five. Get-ting a faint blade-rate on the contact, estimate contact speed is ten knots."That made it a definite submarine, not that there was much doubt. Thediesel sub had her own towed-array sonar and was doing a sprint-and-drift ofher own, alternately going at her top speed, then slowing to detect anythingthat she might miss with the increased flow noise."Tubes one, three, and four are ADCAPs," a weapons technician an-nounced. "Tube two is a 1.1-MOSS.""Spin 'em all up," the Captain said. Most COs liked to say warm 'em up,but otherwise this one was by-the-book."Current range estimate is twenty-two thousand yards," the trackingparty chief announced.The sonarman saw something new on his screen, then adjusted his head-phones."Transient, transient, sounds like hull-popping on Sierra-Ten. Contact ischanging depth.""Going up, I bet," the Captain said a few feet away. That's about right,the sonarman thought with a nod of his own. "Let's get the MOSS in thewater. Set its course at /.ero-zero-zero. Keep it quiet for the first ten thousandyards, then up to normal radiating levels.""Aye, sir." The lech dialed in the proper settings on her programmingboard, and then the weapons officer checked the instructions and pro-nounced them correct."Ready on two."' Conimt Sierra-Ten isnowsomewhat, sir. Probably above the layer"Dchnile direct-path lo Sierra-Ten," the ray-path technician said next."Definitely not a ('/. contact, sir.""Ready on tube two," the weapons tech reported again."l;ire two." the C'O ordered at once. "Reload another MOSS," he saidnext.Pennsylvania shuddered ever so slightly as the LEMOSS was ejected intothe sea. The sonar picked it up at once as it angled left, then reversed course,heading north at a mere ten knots. Based on an old Mark 48 torpedo body,the LEMOSS was essentially a huge tank of the OTTO fuel American"fish" used, plus a small propulsion system and a large sound-transducerthat gave out the noise of an engine plant. The noise was the same frequen-cies as those of a nuclear power plant, but quite a bit louder than those on anOhio-class. It never seemed to matter to people that the thing was too loud.Attack submarines almost always went for it, even American ones whoshould have known better. The new model with the new name could movealong for over fifteen hours, and it was a shame it had been developed only afew months before the boomers had been fully and finally disarmed.Now came the time for patience. The Japanese submarine actually sloweda little more, doubtless doing its own final sonar sweep before they lit off thediesels for their speedy passage west. The sonarman tracked the LEMOSSnorth. The signal was just about to fade out completely before the soundsystems turned on, five miles away. Two miles after that, it jumped over thethermocline layer of cold and warm water and the game began in earnest."Conn, Sonar, Sierra Ten just changed speed, change in the blade-rate,slowing down, sir.''"He has good sonar," the Captain said, just behind the sonarman. Penn-sylvania had risen somewhat, floating her sonar tail over the layer for a bet-ter look at the contact while the body of the submarine stayed below. Heturned and spoke more loudly. "Weapons?""One, three, and four are ready for launch, solutions on all of them.""Set four for a stalking profile, initial course zero-two-zero.""Done. Set as ordered, sir. Tube four ready in all respects.""Match bearings and shoot," the Captain ordered from the door of the