Red Shark

“Very well. Ahead one-third. Come to new course three-three-zero. Rus, let’s see if he sticks with us or what. If he does, we may have no choice but to put one up his nose. We can’t screw around here much longer. If we do, we’ll lose the Red Shark. Every minute we spend playing tag with this Kilo-driver gives the NKs a chance to hightail it into the East China Sea.”

“Aye, sir. Weapons are pre-set.”

The Reno went ahead and swung onto Scott’s ordered heading.

* * *

“Coolant pumps.”

Zemin didn’t have to be told. He saw the line on the monitor and recognized it. Faint, barely there, but definitely a 688I tone line.

Zemin swung into the control room. “Stand by weapons control! Come to course three-three-zero. Motors ahead three-quarters.”

The first officer’s hands flew over the firing consoles, throwing fixed function keys and switches that sent data to the torpedoes waiting in their tubes and armed the torpedo air ram ejection system.

Satisfied with what he saw, Zemin swung back into the sonar room. “Report target’s position.”

“Dead ahead, sir.”

“Good. We’re in his baffles,” Zemin said. He swung back into the control room. “Stand by to fire torpedoes.”

“Captain, I don’t hear him,” said the sonar chief. “Had him when we made that turn onto three-three-zero. I think he may be on our tail.”

Scott didn’t hesitate. “Clear baffles to port! Stand by to take evasive action!”

The Reno heeled left, like a plane banking in flight. If the Kilo was lurking in the dead zone aft of the Reno’s screw, she’d be naked now, exposed to the Reno’s sonar.

The chief almost came up out of his seat. “Goddamn, she’s there all right — two torpedoes in the water!”

“All ahead flank!” Scott bellowed. “Right full rudder.”

The Reno’s coolant pumps accelerated; the boat shook as she leaped ahead and turned away from the incoming torpedoes, Scott and everyone aboard grabbing for handholds.

“Fire decoys port and starboard!” Scott commanded.

The lurch caused by the dual ejection went unnoticed in the turmoil of evasion. Twin Thirty decoys aimed right and left, shot out of the tubes, their noise-making gear a shrill whine over the Reno’s thundering engines.

Scott bellowed a tangle of engine and rudder orders that made the Reno snake dance to evade the Kilo’s incoming torpedoes. No finessing it now, Scott thought. Either outrun the fish or hope to God they kiss the decoys. And no time either for a snap-shot, much less a well-conceived setup and firing solution. All the target data they had was down the drain. The brass-balled Chinaman had managed to get off two shots, and Scott could only scratch his head in wonder.

Two peals of heavy thunder aft from decoyed torpedoes shook the Reno to her keel and made the interior lights blink off and on.

Scott exhaled heavily, as did Kramer and others in the control room. Scott looked around at the sweat-burnished faces, at the slumped shoulders of men who, moments earlier, had thought they might not live another ten minutes. Who among them had dry skivvies, he wondered?

Scott slowed the Reno and spun her onto a heading that would bring her around, close to where the Kilo had been when she’d fired.

“Sonar, Conn. Anything?”

“Blast surge, Captain. Waiting for it to clear. Shallow here, and we’ve got sound pulses running all the way to Okinawa. Probably hear ’em in Pearl, too.”

“Which means he can’t hear us either,” Scott said. “Rig ship for ultra-quiet.”

Zemin held his anger in check. Two shots; two misses. Now the American had disappeared.