Counter Poised (29 page)

“Aye-aye, sir. Master Arm—On.”

The Chinese
Kilo

Panic!
No submarine pinged another except to refine their ranging information for a
final
fire-control solution. So a torpedo launch was
imminent
! The ping had come from their starboard beam. “Right full rudder! All ahead FLANK!” ordered the Chinese captain. The
Kilo
accelerated and turned toward the origin of the ping to reduce her cross section and bring her own torpedo tubes to bear on the enemy. By rapidly closing the range to the enemy, the
Kilo
could also possibly avoid destruction by reducing the range to less than the minimum arming distance of the American Mark 48 torpedo, the suspected weapon they were facing. In such a case, the torpedo would not arm until it was past the
Kilo
.

SF-1

“Mac, what have you got now?”

“Sir, the
Kilo
is cavitating, but there’s not much change of bearing. The screw noise seems a bit muffled now. If I had to guess, I’d say she might have turned into us.”

“If you’re right, we need to move out of her path. We have the advantage in maneuverability—let’s use it. Turn on the spotlight—they can’t see us anyway.”

MacKenzie reached forward to the control panel, flipped on the switch for the spotlight, and flooded the area in front of SF-1 with bright light.

Directly in front of SF-1, not more than one hundred feet away and perhaps five feet below them at the most, was the massive bow of the Chinese
Kilo
—on course for a head-on collision! Both men automatically drew back in their seats trying to avoid the massive nose of the submarine.

“Shit!!!” shouted Pappy and Mac in unison as Pappy rolled left so that their right wing just missed the conning tower of the
Kilo
as it sped under them. Pappy leveled the wings as they passed the conning tower, and SF-1 skimmed along the top surface of the
Kilo
toward the stern, with barely two to three feet of clearance. Then, directly ahead was the gigantic seven-bladed screw, with its huge blades chopping furiously through the water, creating a torrent of cavitation bubbles.

“Shit!!!” Pappy and Mac again shouted in unison. Pappy yanked back on the stick, and as he did so, the inertial G-force caused MacKenzie’s thumb to push the “pickle” button on the top of his weapons control stick. SF-1 fired a single rocket, which struck the front of the massive screw at almost point-blank range. Instinctively, Pappy hit the SQID drive and rapidly accelerated away from the
Kilo
.

Although SF-1 was extremely close to the blast, she was aft of the screw by the time the shock wave was generated, and the screw itself shielded them from the blast. The screw did not fare so well. The rocket impacted near the center of the screw, where it mounted to the
Kilo’s
engine shaft. The momentum of the rocket, combined with the rearward force of the blast, blew the screw completely off the shaft. The angular momentum of the screw kept it turning, and the screw flew
forward
, careening up the deck of the
Kilo
and crashing into the conning tower before falling into the depths of the sea.

The Chinese
Kilo

The Chinese captain was completely bewildered. Strange whooshing sounds reported by sonar, an explosion, and tremendous crashing noises down the length of the deck, but no hull damage. No station reported any flooding. Meanwhile, their speed dropped even though the shaft accelerated wildly and they still had full engine power! Finally, although there was no internal damage, they were dead in the water. The captain did the only thing he could do and blew ballast tanks. The Chinese
Kilo
bobbed to the surface like a fishing cork—out of action.

USS
Texas

Captain Buffalo Sewell called to his sonar operator, “Sonar, conn. What’s going on out there?”

“I don’t know, sir. There was a sonar ping in the direction of the Chinese
Kilo
, and the
Kilo
started cavitating heavily. Then there was an explosion, but it wasn’t near big enough to be a Mark 48 or any other known torpedo. I don’t know what it was…”

“Who…”

The sonar operator held up a finger as he listened intently to his headphones. “Sir, the
Kilo
is blowing ballast. They’re surfacing—dead in the water!”

“Any sign of the
Louisiana
?”

“No sir. Nothing resembling an
Ohio
-class boomer.”

“Maybe it was a minisub or someone else working with the
Louisiana
,” said Buffalo. “After working with George Adams for three years on the SUBLANT staff, I wouldn’t put it past him to have recruited other help with this little venture of his.”

“The Russian
Alpha
is moving away, sir. Apparently too much action for her.”

“Where’s the
Hawaii
?”

“She seems to be moving in to fill the gap, but still some sixty thousand yards out of position.”

“Good. At least somebody’s got some balls around here.”

Pinnnnnnng.

“Where did that come from?” Buffalo asked incredulously.

“Near the
Hawaii
, sir.”

“Well that can’t be any kind of minisub! There’s no way any known minisub could travel that far in such a short period of time. Or maybe there’s more than one…”

Pinnnnnnng.

“
Again
?!?”

Pinnnnnnng.

“What the hell? This is ridiculous!” said Buffalo. “I haven’t heard this many active pings in my
entire career
! Now I’ve heard four in less than half an hour—three within a minute!”
Blam!
“What the hell was
that
?” demanded Buffalo.

SF-1

After their near-miss with the Chinese
Kilo
, Pappy and Mac laid off a ways, let their hearts stop pounding in their ears, and had a talk about their tactics.

“We have a steep learning curve here, Mac. We learned our lesson on that one not to rely on passive ranging, especially at close quarters. It’s hard to overcome ten years worth of training that taught us to never use active sonar unless absolutely necessary to stay alive. But in this sub-fighter, all the old rules are out the window. Since no one can defend against us anyway, let’s ping the hell out them!”

“I imagine they’re all going crazy trying to figure out who we are, what we are, how we’re doing this, and what we’re going to do next!” said MacKenzie, reveling in the moment.

“Yeah, well they can fret and think all they want, but the truth is, even if they knew exactly who, what, and how we’re doing what we’re doing, and even if they knew exactly what we intend to do next, they are powerless to stop us. So let’s make this gap a little wider—we want the
Louisiana
to have plenty of room to slip through. Who’s the next one down the line?”

“There’s a pretty good gap, XO, but it sounds like the
Hawaii
may be moving into it from the south.”

“All right! A worthy adversary! Top of the line U.S. attack boat…think we can, uh, render her ineffective?”

“Absolutely, sir!”

“So do I. I’m accelerating to fifty knots…let’s close this gap in a hurry. We’ll slow down when we get closer, but I want to move right in on her—inside minimum torpedo range—before we go active. It shouldn’t be a problem. We could fly circles, or even loops, around her completely undetected.”

After ten minutes on a course toward the
Hawaii
, the XO slowed to twenty-five knots and began a series of sweeping S-turns to generate changing bearing angles to the contact so MacKenzie could get a passive ranging solution.

“XO, aren’t you concerned about a repeat of our
Kilo
near-miss?” asked Mac nervously.

Pappy felt his heart race and noticed the palms of his hands were wet. However, he needed to keep an air of calm for the sake of the mission. “No. The reason we closed that gap quicker than expected was because the
Kilo
panicked after we pinged her and turned into us at flank speed. We’re not going to make that mistake this time. We’ll ping the
Hawaii
all right, but not until we’re practically in firing position. I just need to get a final ranging to know when we might be in visual range with the spotlight.”

“Okay, XO. I’m showing the
Hawaii
at about ten thousand yards on a heading of approximately zero-three-zero degrees.”

“All right, we’re headed west, directly for her. We’ll swing around to the south and circle in behind her…no wait…I think I have a better idea. What’s her depth, Mac?”

“I can’t really tell, sir. We have a single, horizontal row of sonar transducers mounted around the bow. So we can get pretty good azimuth information, but I can’t really tell whether they’re above or below us.”

Pappy appeared lost in thought for several seconds and then it was like a light bulb came on. “By Jove, I’ve got it!” he exclaimed.

“Sir?”

“Tighten your harness, Mac. I’m going to roll this baby into a ninety-degree angle-of-bank to the left. With a little top rudder and forward stick, I can hold the nose level and keep us pointed at the
Hawaii
. You get an angle-off reading on that sonar, and because we’re banked at ninety degrees, it will convert into a “depth-off” angle. By that, I mean it will indicate how much the
Hawaii
is above us or below us or whether she’s level with us. Since we know the range—probably about eight thousand yards by now—with a little quick trigonometry, we can calculate the difference in depth.”

After the maneuver, Mac determined the
Hawaii
was running at a depth about two to three hundred feet above SF-1. SF-1 was currently at eight hundred feet, so that put the
Hawaii
at five to six hundred feet.

“Okay, Mac, I’m descending to nine hundred feet. Give me a mark when we pass under the
Hawaii
. At that point, we’ll turn to a reciprocal heading of two-one-zero degrees for thirty seconds and then do an Immelman.”

“A
what
, sir?”

“It’s a maneuver like doing the first half of a loop and then rolling to an upright position at the top of the loop. I’ll go to full power and start raising the nose. We’ll pull about three Gs until we reach the top of the loop in an inverted position. Then we’ll level off and roll upright. We should be about three hundred feet higher than we are now, on a reciprocal heading, somewhere behind the
Hawaii
. At that point, we’ll give her the first ping. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, Mac. Double-check Master Arm—On.”

“Master Arm—On, XO…Weapons Hot!”

“I’ll slow us down some during the Immelman so we come out of it somewhere around five or ten knots. The
Hawaii
is basically station-holding now, so she’ll be doing about five knots.”

The maneuver went as planned, and they finished the Immelman on a heading of 030 degrees.

“Nice move, XO. I’ve got her dead ahead. We’re somewhere inside a thousand yards, but I can’t tell you exactly.”

“Ping her.”

Pinnnnnnng.

“She’s six hundred yards ahead, sir.”

“Thanks Mac. Pappy accelerated slightly to close the gap. Give her another ping.”

Pinnnnnnng.

“Two hundred yards, dead ahead, sir,” announced Mac.

“Spotlight—On. We’re moving in. How about one last ping for good measure and to really ring their bell!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

Pinnnnnnng.

“Position confirmed, sir…one hundred yards and closing. We should pick her up visually any moment.”

Then, out of the gloom, there she was—a monstrous machine lumbering along like the Hindenburg. “I’ve got her, Mac. Slight angle off, she’s started a port turn and that screw is starting to cavitate. Looks like we surprised her and she’s gone to flank speed and is trying to maneuver. I’ll just slide over behind her and line you up for the shot.”

“I’d stay out of that wake if I was you, XO. She’s bound to be creating a lot of turbulence back there. It could probably throw us for quite a loop!”

“Good thinking, Mac. I’ll line you up from just outside the wake.”

With the giant screw directly ahead, MacKenzie fired a bull’s-eye, with the rocket striking one of the seven blades about halfway out from the shaft. The blade shattered, and the entire submarine began to oscillate in the water as the unbalanced screw wreaked havoc on the shaft and its mountings within the hull.

The
Hawaii
went all stop, and then apparently realizing they had no choice, blew ballast, and floated to the surface, joining the
Kilo
like a couple of useless fishing bobbers.

USS
Texas

Captain Buffalo Sewell again asked his sonar operator what the hell that noise was.