Barracuda: Final Bearing

“What was that?” Tanaka yelled at Mazdai. “What was that sound? What does the Second Captain show?”

He received no answers from the man or the machine.

Perhaps it had been the detonation of a Nagasaki torpedo against a distant American, perhaps one of the northern deployed units.

“Status of the tubes?”

“Weapons are warm. We still have no sonar data on the launching ship.”

“You still have no contact?”

“Nothing, sir. The sea is empty. Look for yourself.”

“The sea is not empty, Mr. First. We are looking for the wrong thing. The computer is filtering out the noise we seek.”

“No, sir, it is correct. The American Los Angeles-class ships—”

“This is obviously not an LA-class vessel. It is something else, British or French.”

“No, the computer was looking for them also.”

“Then maybe the American Seawolf class. We’re not filtering for that.” Tanaka knew time was ticking but he had to solve this problem and solve it now.

“Seawolf class had three ships. One sank from a flooding or torpedo accident. The other is on the US east coast being built. The third was in Hawaii but it never got underway. The Galaxy satellite photos showed it pulled into a maintenance barn. It never emerged.”

“It might have sneaked out during a storm or with a cold reactor submerged or any of a hundred ways a sub can be sneaked to sea.”

“We would have known—”

“Obviously, First, we didn’t know! Now reset the filters for the Seawolf class and find this submarine. I want torpedoes in the water in two minutes.”

USS PIRANHA

Bruce Phillips stood on the conn and heard Gambini’s voice calling in something from sonar.

“Say again. Master Chief?” Phillips said.

“We’ve got distant noises that I’m classifying as torpedoes, all concentrated on a bearing set to the south. I am not, repeat, not, calling torpedo in the water.”

“I’m confused. What’s the deal?”

“Sir, the torpedoes appear to be… Mark 50s. This may be a battle with another US unit and the Japanese.

All I can detect are the torpedoes, they’re the loudest, but there must be something going on to the south.”

“Attention in the firecontrol team. After we launch this Vortex at Target Five we’ll clear datum to the south at emergency flank. There may be someone down there who needs our help. Firing point procedures. Target Five, Vortex tube six.”

The launching litany continued for the sixth time since the first Destiny was shot. With the missile that Phillips had launched at the arctic ice ridge, after this one was gone, he was six missiles down, four to go. The launch sequence went as the previous five had, ending in a deafening roar of the Vortex rocket motor ignition, the noise easing as the missile flew underwater downrange, then the second deafening transient as the missile hit the fifth Destiny and exploded.

“Helm, left five degrees rudder, steady course south, all ahead emergency flank,” Phillips ordered.

Piranha came up to emergency flank turns, almost sixty-one knots, her deck shaking hard as the main engines shrieked aft, the steam flow-rate twice the maximum allowable.

SS-810 WINGED SERPENT

“Sir, may I remind you that we still have eight incoming torpedoes and we have not evaded them? Shouldn’t we turn the ship and run?”

Tanaka glared at Mazdai. “Don’t ever again advocate turning and running from the enemy. I’ll kill you.” He bent back down over the console and bit his lip, the filters for the Seawolf class now entered into the Second Captain’s processors. All there was to do was wait to collect the data. The American was out there and he was dangerous. He had the acoustic advantage, he hadn’t shown up on the Second Captain system with the Los Angeles-class filters set up, so he had to be a Seawolf.

Yet how did he get by the Galaxy satellites? It didn’t make sense but the proof was in front of them, the Second Captain beginning to show data coming through the filters. The screen annunciator went off, confirming the sounds of the Seawolfclass submarine. Perhaps they didn’t have the acoustic advantage after all, Tanaka thought, perhaps it was just that the Second Captain was looking for the wrong sounds.

This battle might yet be turned around.

“Sir, what are you going to do about the eight torpedoes?”

“I’m going to let the Second Captain take care of it as soon as the two Nagasakis are away. Now let’s maneuver the ship to get a range on the Seawolf out there.

And then we can launch.”

USS BARRACUDA

“Still nothing from the target, Captain,” Omeada’s voice said in Kane’s headset. The Destiny hadn’t counterfired, hadn’t maneuvered, just kept going as if he didn’t care that he’d been shot at, or didn’t know. But it was one thing not to hear the Barracuda. It was another not to hear eight loud Mark 50s.

“That’s a fact. Captain,” executive officer Leo Dobrowski reported from the attack center. “Contact has maintained course and speed. He doesn’t know we’re here, or our torpedoes.”

“Very well, then, we’ll keep waiting.”

Pacino glanced at Paully White, an uneasiness filling him.

USS PIRANHA