Red Shark

Shrill as a bullet whining off steel and a prelude to firing torpedoes.

“Shit, it’s him all right, just like last time,” Scott said, chastened by the Kilo’s skipper and his penchant for using active sonar. He recalled Deacon’s earlier comment about how much brass the Chinaman had in his balls. “A lot,” Scott muttered to himself.

“Conn, Sonar — Master One has opened his outer doors!”

Scott rounded from the watch station to the diving control station. “Right full rudder, all ahead flank; come to course zero-seven-zero; close outer doors,” Scott said calmly, his anxiety bottled up and out of sight. “We may have to kick some sand in his face. Stand by to launch decoys.”

The Reno leaped ahead and heeled into a tight right-hand turn, her screw biting hard, throwing up a knuckle of turbulence between herself and the Kilo.

“Conn, Sonar, torpedo in the water! I say again, torpedo in the water! Test-71 ME!”

“Sonar — torpedo speed?”

“Sir, I…”

Scott saw the shocked looks on men’s faces in the control room and knew that if he didn’t act decisively, some of the younger ones might panic, or worse, freeze at controls vital to the Reno’s survival. There was no time for hesitation, only action that would save them. Instinct propelled him to issue commands in a calm, steady voice.

“Chief, just give me its speed.”

“Thirty-eight knots, sir.”

“Thank you, Chief. Helm, come to course one-seven-zero.” The Reno turned hard right, putting her stern to the Kilo. “Make your depth one hundred eighty feet. Weps, match target bearing on a single Thirty decoy starboard side and shoot.”

Kramer, pale, dry-lipped, gave Scott a repeat-back, then hammered the launch key with a fist. A hiss of compressed air, a slight lurch, and Kramer, his voice surprisingly steady, reported, “Single Thirty away.”

The Reno completed her swing into a high-speed sprint that would hopefully outrun the Kilo’s inbound fish.

There was nothing more Scott could do now but wait with his crew for the decoy to screw up the torpedo’s acoustics and cause it to detonate, or for the Reno to outrun it and in the process make the weapon spend its battery and sink.

Time seemed to have expanded to infinity. A smear of impressions — the crowded control room, its smells, its utter silence — were made altogether surreal by the fearful up-Doppler whine of the racing torpedo’s contra-rotating props.

“Rus,” said Scott, standing in the center of the control room, where the men could see him with his arms folded in a posture of relaxed confidence he hoped would buoy their spirits, “what’s the range on one of those Test-71 MEs?”

“Well, sir, I’m not exactly sure—”

“Twenty klicks,” said OOD Dozier. His khaki shirt was black under both arms. So was everyone else’s. “I just happened to remember it, sir, uh, sorry, Mr. Kramer.”

“Somebody do the math for me,” Scott said. “If we’re running at forty knots, how much distance can we put between us and that fish—”

A shattering explosion caught up to the Reno from astern at the speed of sound underwater. Bolts of pure energy crashed into her hull, shot through her decks and rattled equipment, tossed unstowed gear across compartments, and dumped loose china on the deck in the crews’ mess.

Scott, ears ringing from the heavy blast of the decoyed warhead, waved the cheering men to silence.

“Damage control report, on the double,” Scott commanded as he heaved across the control room. “Helm, left full rudder, let’s see if we can get around behind this guy and shake him off.”

46

The Yellow Sea east of the China coast

Zemin had recovered from the shock of the deafening torpedo explosion, but not from the shock of a Test-71 ME torpedo decoyed to self-destruction by the 688I.

“Captain, the target has turned northeast at high speed,” announced the sonarman.