Barracuda: Final Bearing

He thought about his newborn son Kosaku waiting for him at home. He had never spent much time thinking about his MSDF duty, but now that Kosaku was here he found himself jealous of every moment away from him. He was thinking that MSDF duty was no longer for him; the other men seemed somehow different from who he was, they no longer had much in common.

Kami stared now at the sonar data screens, the data filtered by the computer, and seeing nothing, sat down in the deep cushioning of the control seat to continue to watch and to wait.

USS BARRACUDA

Lieutenant Porter stood on the conn and snapped his fingers at the chief of the watch, calling for coffee. The sonar display was selected to the thin wire narrowband towed array sonar, the beam looking forward as the ship continued to sail northeast. The sonar repeater was selected to the time-integration feature of the narrowband sonar, the graph of 152 to 155 Hertz in screen center.

Chief Omeada had just zeroed the frequency bucket, wiping out all previous data. Now the computer was going to wait and collect sound in that specific tonal range, display noise that it received at a higher level vertically. The graph was almost like the bottom of an hourglass, the sand representing each piece of sound at a particular frequency. If the graph line rose horizontally with time, the line flat, then there was no one out there.

If the graph line became a spike with a narrow peak at a particular frequency, there was a pure tone out in the sea constant with time. And the sea did not generate pure bell tones that lingered as time passed. Only machines did.

Porter received his coffee and slurped it, the tingle running through him as he stared at the sonar screens.

If only he could detect the Destiny and beat out Omeada he would never let the chief forget it.

He flipped through the sonar displays, but seemed to feel a resonance of the tingle at the time-frequency display.

He watched the six frequency buckets on the screen, barely blinking, until his scalding hot coffee was gone and the frequency at 154 cycles per second had spiked into a narrow finger of sound.

The Destiny was out there and by God he had found it. He put down the coffee mug and ran toward the door to sonar, colliding with Omeada, who was running out of sonar into control.

“We’ve got him,” they said at once, rubbing their foreheads from the collision.

USS BARRACUDA

Admiral Pacino woke up from a sound sleep at the prodding of Paully White.

“Sir, it’s two a.m. Kane’s manning battlestations.

We’ve got a Destiny.”

“About time,” Pacino muttered, slipping into coveralls and leather deck shoes. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, feeling the gauze of his injured eye, wondering when if ever the eye would heal. He pulled on the eyepatch as he left the stateroom, careful to avoid the rushing watchstanders.

The large control room was packed. Kane stood on the conn with his officer of the deck, Scott Court. XO Roger Whatney stood below between the conn platform and the attack center. The consoles of the attack center were filled with officers, adjusting their solutions, trying to find one that fit the data to the Destiny.

Kane nodded curtly at Pacino and Paully, then addressed the watchsection. Pacino strapped on a battle headset so he could listen to the conversations in the room.

Again he felt he was watching from the sidelines, and with it the thought that this action should be his. He shook his head to concentrate on the battle in front of him.

“Attention in the firecontrol team,” Kane announced from the conn. “We have designated the sonar contact as Target One, Destiny-class submerged submarine. We now hold Target One weakly on the thin wire towed array forward-looking beam, his 154 Hertz tonal coming in clearly. We hold him at bearing west, approximately two six five. There’s no broadband from this bearing.

This isn’t much to go on but we will be putting out multiple salvos of Mark 50 torpedoes on the bearing to the target. That’s all, carry on.”

SS-810 WINGED SERPENT

Tanaka looked at his watch. It was after two in the morning and he had been staring at the Second Captain screen for what seemed forever. He was tired and frustrated.

He told himself he would watch the screen for one more hour, then go to bed in spite of the Americans out there, the pounding of his heart from the uppers, the shaking of his hands, and the acid in his stomach.

The mission had gone on too long. The Americans and their waiting game had finally gained them an advantage.

He swept the heavy green-shaded lamp to the deck, brought his hands to his face, his hands shaking.

He desperately needed sleep but there was too much of the amphetamines in his system. He was feeling closed in by the ship, by the mission, by the lack of contact with an enemy.

When would it end? And how?

USS BARRACUDA