thought, like real combat, even. Was the new Japanese torpedo really that
good, had it really just ignored the decoy and the knuckle? “We recording
all this?”
“You bet, sir,” Sonarman i/c Laval said, reaching up to tap the tape ma-
chine. A new cassette was taking all this in, and another video system was
recording the display on the waterfall screens. “There go the motors, just
increased speed. Aspect change … it’s got us, zero aspect on the fish, screw
noises just faded.” Meaning that the engine noise of the torpedo was now
somewhat blocked by the body of the weapon. It was headed straight in.
Kennedy turned his head to the tracking party. “Range to fish?”
“Under two thousand, sir, closing fast now, estimate torpedo speed sixty
knots.”
“Two minutes to overtake at this speed.”
‘ ‘Look at this, sir.” Laval tapped the waterfall display. It showed the track
of the torpedo, and also showed the lingering noise of the decoy, still gener-
ating bubbles. The Type 89 had drilled right through the center of it.
“What was that?” Laval asked the screen. A large low-frequency noise
had just registered on the screen, bearing three-zero-five. “Sounded like an
explosion, way off, that was a CZ signal, not direct path.” A convergence-
zone signal meant that it was a long way away, more than thirty miles.
Kennedy’s blood turned a little cold at that piece of news. He stuck his
head back into the attack center. “Where are Charlotte and the other Japa-
nese sub?”
“Northwest, sir, sixty or seventy miles.”
“All ahead flank!” That order just happened automatically. Not even
Kennedy knew why he’d given it.
“All ahead flank, aye,” the helmsman acknowledged, turning tin- cmmd
ator dial. These exercises sure were exciting stuff. Before tin- engine order
was acknowledged, the skipper was on his command phone again:
“Five-inch room, launch two, now-now-now!”
The ultrasonic targeting sonar on a homing torpedo is too high in fre-
quency to be heard by the human ear. Kennedy knew that the energy was
hitting his submarine, reflecting off the emptiness within, because the sonar
waves stopped at the steel-air boundary, bouncing backward to the emitter
that generated them.
It couldn’t be happening. If it were, others would have noted it, wouldn’t
they? He looked around. The crew was at battle stations. All watertight
doors were closed and dogged down as they would be in combat. Kurmhio
had launched an exercise torpedo, identical to a warshot in everything but
the warhead, for which an instrument package was substituted. They were
also designed not to hit their targets, but to turn away from them, because a
metal-to-metal strike could break things, and fixing those things could be
expensive.
“It’s still got us, sir.”
But the fish had run straight through the knuckle . . .
‘ ‘Take her down fast!” Kennedy ordered, knowing it was too late for that.
USS Asheville dropped her nose, taking a twenty-degree down-angle,
back over thirty knots with the renewed acceleration. The decoy room
launched yet another bubble canister. The increased speed degraded sonar
performance, but it was clear from the display that the Type 89 had again run
straight through the false image of a target and just kept coming.
“Range under five hundred,” the tracking part said. One of its members
noticed that the Captain was pale and wondered why. Well, nobody likes
losing, even in an exercise.
Kennedy thought about maneuvering more as Asheville ducked under the
layer yet again. It was too close to outrun. It could outturn him, and every
attempt to confuse it had failed. He was just out of ideas. He’d had no time to
think it all through.
‘ ‘Jesus!” Laval took his headphones off. The Type 89 was now alongside
the submarine’s towed-array sonar, and the noise was well off the scale.
“Should turn away any second now …”
The Captain just stood there, looking around. Was he crazy? Was he the
only one who thought-
At the last second, Sonarman i/c Laval looked aft to his commanding of-
ficer. ‘ ‘Sir, it didn’t turn!”
21
Navy Blue
Air Force One lifted off a few minutes sooner than expected, speeded on her
way by the early hour. Reporters were already up and moving before the
VC-25B reached her cruising altitude, coming forward to ask the President
for a statement explaining the premature departure. Cutting short a state trip
was something of a panic reaction, wasn’t it? Tish Brown handled the jour-
nalists, explaining that the unfortunate developments on Wall Street com-
manded a quick return so that the President could reassure the American
people … and so forth. For the moment, she went on, it might be a good idea
for everyone to catch up on sleep. It was, after all, a fourteen-hour flight
back to Washington, with the headwinds that blew across the Atlantic at this
time of year, and Roger Durling needed his sleep, too. The ploy worked for
several reasons, not the least of which was that the reporters were suffering
from too much alcohol and not enough sleep, like everyone else aboard-
except the flight crew, all hoped. Besides, there were Secret Service agents
and armed Air Force personnel between them and the President’s accommo-
dations. Common sense broke out, and everyone returned back to the seating
area. Soon things were quieted down, and nearly every passenger aboard
was either asleep or feigning it. Those who weren’t asleep wished they were.
Johnnie Reb’s commanding officer was, by federal law, an aviator. The stat-
ute went back to the 19308, and had been drafted to prevent battleship sailors
from taking over the new and bumptious branch of the Old Navy. As such,
he had more experience flying airplanes than in driving ships, and since he’d
never had a command afloat, his knowledge of shipboard systems consisted
mainly of things he’d picked up along the way rather than Iroin a mutter of
systematic study and experience. Fortunately, his chid engineer was a
black-shoe destroyer sailor with a command under his bell. The skipper did
know, however, that water was supposed to be outside the hull, tioi inside.
“How bad, ChEng?”
“Bad, sir.” The Commander gestured to the deck plates, still covered
with an inch of water that the pumps was gradually sending over the side. At
least the holes were sealed now. That had taken three hours. “Shafts two and
three are well and truly trashed. Bearings shot, tail shafts twisted and split,
reduction gears ground up to junk-no way anybody can fix them. The tur-
bines are okay. The reduction gears took all the shock. Number One shaft’s
okay. Some shock damage to the aft bearings. That I can fix myself. Number
four screw is damaged, not sure how bad, but we can’t turn it without risking
the shaft bearings. Starboard rudder is jammed over, but I can deal with that,
another hour, maybe, and it’ll be ‘midships. May have to replace it, depend-
ing on how bad it looks. We’re down to one shaft. We can make ten, eleven
knots, and we can steer, badly.”
“Time to fix?”
“Months-four or five is my best guess right now, sir.” All of which, the
Commander knew, would require him to be here, overseeing the yard crews,
essentially rebuilding half the ship’s power plant-maybe three quarters. He
hadn’t fully evaluated the damage to Number Four yet. That was when the
Captain really lost his temper. It was about time, the ChEng thought.
“If I could launch an air strike, I’d sink those sunzabitches!” But launch-
ing anything on the speed generated by a single shaft was an iffy proposi-
tion. Besides, it had been an accident, and the skipper really didn’t mean it.
“You have my vote on that one, sir,” ChEng assured him, not really
meaning it either, because he added: “Maybe they’ll be nice enough to pay
for the repairs.” His reward was a nod.
“We can start moving again?”
‘ ‘Number One shaft is a little out from shock damage, but I can live with
it, yes, sir.”
“Okay, get ready to answer bells. I’m taking this overpriced barge back to
Pearl.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Admiral Mancuso was back in his office, reviewing preliminary data on the
exercise when his yeoman came in with a signal sheet.
“Sir, looks like two carriers are in trouble.”
“What did they do, collide?” Jones asked, sitting in the corner and re-
viewing other data.
“Worse,” the yeoman told the civilian.
ComSubPac read the dispatch. “Oh, that’s just great.” Then his phone
rang; it was the secure line that came directly from PacFltOps. “This is Ad-
miral Mancuso.”
“Sir, this is Lieutenant Copps at Fleet Communications. I have a sub-
marine emergency beacon, located approximately 31-North, 175-East.
We’re refining that position now. Code number is for Asheville, sir. There is
no voice transmission, just the beacon. I am initiating a SuBMiss/SusSuNK.
The nearest naval aircraft are on the two carriers-”