Piranha: Firing Point

The master chief’s answer was as professional as Phillips’ was casual: “Captain, Sonar, aye. Do you intend to clear baffles?”

“Sonar, Captain, no. Offsa’deck, upstairs now!”

“Aye, sir,” the officer of the deck snapped back, a twenty-eight-year-old lieutenant named Gustavson.

“Dive, make your depth six six feet, steep angle. Helm, ahead full!”

“Sixty-six feet, aye, twenty-degree up bubble.”

“Ahead full. Helm, aye. Maneuvering answers, all ahead full.”

The deck inclined upward, and the crew grabbed for handholds. Their bodies strained against seat belts as the deck became a staircase-steep ramp.

“Eight hundred feet, sir.” “Very good,” Gustavson said.

“Six hundred feet, sir.”

“Sonar, Conn, coming to PD, no baffle clear,” the OOD said to his boom mike. He was standing behind the number two periscope, which was still stowed in its well because the ship’s speed was too high to raise it.

“Conn, Sonar, aye.”

“Four hundred feet, sir.”

“Helm, all back one-third. Dive, flatten the angle to up ten.”

The deck trembled as the backing bell was answered.

Phillips had to slow the ship before it emerged above the thermal layer, where a dangerously close surface contact could be lurking.

“Two hundred feet, sir!”

“Helm, all stop, mark speed seven knots.”

“Helm, aye, maneuvering answers all stop. Speed ten knots.”

“One five zero feet, sir,” the diving officer barked.

“Mark speed seven knots, sir,” the helmsman called.

“Lookaround number two scope,” the OOD called, an order that required the diving officer and helm to report the ship’s depth and speed to avoid shearing off a periscope and opening a huge hole in the hull.

“Depth, one one zero feet, sir.”

“Speed, six knots, sir.”

“Up scope!” Gustavson rotated the hydraulic control ring in the overhead, and the stainless steel pole lifted out of the well. He bent over to catch the optic module as it came out of the well, snapping down the grips as the module appeared.

“Dark, dark, dark,” Gustavson said, training the periscope view upward to see the underside of any hulls that might be close enough to collide with. He rotated himself around in frantically fast circles. “No shapes, no shadows,” he called.

“Eight zero feet, sir.” “Scope’s breaking,” Gustavson said as the periscope became awash in the phosphorescent foam of the sea at night. He continued driving the pole around in rapid circles, one per second. “Scope’s breaking…”

Seven five feet.” ‘Scope’s breaking—” ‘Seven zero feet!” ‘Scope’s clear, low-power surface search,” Gustavson said, puffing from the exertion of spinning around the periscope.

The control room was silent, waiting for Gustavson to cry either “Emergency deep” or its functional equivalent! “Oh, shit!” which would be greeted with the same emergency actions to get the ship down fast, but finally Gustavson announced, “No close contacts.”

Bruce Phillips reached for the red radio handset, the UHF satellite secure-voice tactical frequency named Nestor for some forgotten reason. He glanced at the call sign sheet, raising his eyebrows at his call sign and the Devilfish’s.

“Ricky, this is Lucy,” he said into the red handset.

“Ricky, this is Lucy, over.”

The burst of blooping static immediately followed.

“Lucy, this is Ricky, flash message to follow from Fred. Message reads, coordinate readout, alpha at zero golf, bravo at eight hotel, charlie at two foxtrot, delta at nine mike, echo at six tango, foxtrot at five sierra.” The Royal Navy executive officer, Roger Whatney, hurriedly scribbled the coordinates to the six Rising Sun submarines as fast as they were read off, then typed furiously, entering the data into the BSY-4 fire-control system.

“Immediate release of all packages, break, break, acknowledge, over.”

Phillips snapped his fingers at Whatney to get the data into the plot, and leaned over position two of the fire-control system. Three of the Rising Sun vessels were inside the range circle of the Vortex missiles. The ship was carrying them on the outside of the hull like a bandolier, since they were much too big to carry inside the ship. Plus, the launching mechanism for the old Mod Bravos was an external tube because the older missile could not be launched from a torpedo tube without rupturing the hull.

“Ricky, this is Lucy, tell Fred we are mailing packages.

Lucy out.” “Sir,” Roger Whatney said, “targets one, two, and four are in range.”

Phillips had kept Vortex missile power applied ever since they’d entered the operation area. He’d risked the gyros overheating, but now he was glad he had, because now there would be no waiting.

“Weps, detach muzzle caps tubes ten, one, and nine.

Lock in solutions as follows, target one to tube one, target two to tube ten, target four to tube nine.”

“Locked in. Captain.”

“Very well. Firing point procedures, tube one, target one.”

“Ship ready,” Gustavson called.

“Solution ready,” Whatney said.

“Weapon ready, tube one, target one,” the weapons officer said. “Launch auto-sequence start on tube one, target one. Computer has the countdown—”