Barracuda: Final Bearing

Bruce Phillips stood over the chart, his pointer shaking over its surface with the vibrations of the deck. The speed indicator showed a velocity of sixty-two knots now, since all but four of the Vortex tubes were gone.

At this rate, assuming the noises they had heard were at the limits of sonar detection, fifty miles, the ship would be in the vicinity of the battle in another forty-five minutes.

Phillips looked up at the overhead, wondering if that would be enough.

SS-810 WINGED SERPENT

“Finally,” Tanaka said as the first leg of data was in on the American Seawolf. Now he could turn the ship to get a parallax range. “Left minimum rudder, ship-control officer, come to course north.”

Tanaka watched the data fall into the Second Captain, waiting tensely, biding his time. All the while the incoming eight American torpedoes were soaring in at them, arrival time could be as soon as five minutes. The thought occurred to him then that the SCM, the sonar countermeasures feature of the Second Captain, might malfunction and he would have to eat his words about being able to take torpedo hits and survive. Of course, if that should happen, he would not long be embarrassed.

He would be on the sea floor, dead.

“Tube status?”

“Ready to open the outer doors. Tubes eleven and twelve are flooded, weapons warm. The enemy location and velocity are locked in, gas generators ready to arm an outer-door opening.”

“Good, open the outer doors.”

USS BARRACUDA

“He’s maneuvering,” Kane said quietly to Pacino, his hand covering his boom microphone. “He knows we’re here.”

“Getting a range on you,” Pacino said. “He’ll be opening his outer doors soon and then we’ll have company, Nagasaki torpedoes. Have you got the ship positioned so we can hear the target without our torpedoes masking him?”

“We’re going north at full speed. I don’t dare flank it or our noise signature will double.”

“Just keep your bearing separation in mind—”

“Conn, Sonar,” Omeada’s voice called on the battle circuit, “we have transients coming from Target One.

I’m calling torpedo tube doors coming open.”

“Very well, Sonar,” Kane replied into his headset, looking at Pacino. “Helm, all ahead flank.”

“Ahead flank, aye, sir, maneuvering answers, all ahead flank.”

“Helm, right one degree rudder, steady course zero two zero.”

“Rudder right one degree, sir, passing zero one zero to the right, ten degrees from ordered course… steady course zero two zero.”

The deck trembled slightly as the ship accelerated, the reactor circulation pumps aft — huge pumps, each the size of a compact car — started up, their 1500 horsepower motors spinning the rotors, pumping the coolant water through the core so the reactor power could double from 50 to 100 percent.

“Any minute now, sir,” Paully said to Pacino.

SS-810 WINGED SERPENT

“Shoot,” Tanaka commanded. The torpedo in tube eleven left the ship under the force of the gas generator’s steam pressure, the torpedo’s engine starting and spinning the pumpjet propulsor of the Nagasaki torpedo to full revolutions. The Nagasaki dived to 400 meters and sailed on toward the target.

Tanaka remembered what he had been thinking about using only one torpedo per American submarine, but this was a special circumstance. The Seawolfclass ship would be a threat on an even playing field with the Destiny II class, and a single Nagasaki could not be completely trusted to tear it apart. A second torpedo launch was the safe thing to do.

“Tube twelve,” Tanaka said. “Shoot!”

The twelfth Nagasaki launched by the Winged Serpent departed the bow of the ship, starting its engine and accelerating toward the target. “That should take care of the Seawolf,” Tanaka said, his mood improving. “Now for the incoming eight American torpedoes.” He concentrated on the Second Captain console, switching it to the ship-control and weaponevasion screens. He found what he was looking for, the function that would turn control of the vessel over to the Second Captain and allow it to use the massive computing power to ping out with the ventriloquist SCM sonar system.

Soon the Seawolfclass ship would be on the bottom, the Winged Serpent able to continue in its search of the offshore waters for any remaining Americans. When the American sank he would go to bed confident that the worst threat in the Pacific had been neutralized.

There was even more good news here, he realized.

With the most formidable ship in the American submarine force on the bottom, how willing would the Americans be to send in an inferior Los Angeles-class ship? So this was it, the concluding battle of the American blockade.

The Second Captain took command of the submarine then, distracting Tanaka from his thought as the ship went into a violent maximum-rudder/maximum-speed maneuver to try to get the range of the incoming torpedoes.