Straits of Power (27 page)

But Jeffrey couldn’t exactly lock Parker in a stateroom between meals and head visits, and the man had an important role to play soon as Peapod’s handler. Jeffrey felt an obligation to respect him, but he didn’t have to like the guy. He showed Parker where to sit without getting in anyone’s way—at the unused photonics mast-control console, aft of the navigation table.

More crewmen arrived to take the places of those who’d been manning battle stations. Sonar men pulled off their headphones and handed them to fresh people when the new arrivals stated they were ready to relieve them. Lieutenant Milgrom waited until last, as a senior chief stood there to take over from her. She suddenly reacted, as if she’d been hit with a baseball bat.

“Aircraft overflight!” she shouted. “Multiple inbound aircraft! Helos and patrol planes converging from west and north! Sonobuoys! Active sonobuoys at very close range!”

Chapter 30

J
effrey cursed, guessing instantly what had happened: That previous near-miss overflight carried LASH, and saw at least one of the submarines. It radioed in a report, a German commander somewhere made a decision and issued orders, and now armed aircraft were swarming in coordinated, overwhelming force.

“Battle stations,” Jeffrey snapped. “Sonar, suppress the hull echoes.”

“Echoes suppressed! Port wide-aperture array detecting sonobuoy echoes off
Ohio
rudder and screw!”

If Milgrom can hear them, the Germans might too.

There was pandemonium in Jeffrey’s control room, caught transitioning from battle stations to regular watch keeping and suddenly going to battle stations again.
Challenger
crewmen who’d just left ran back. Everyone tried to trade places at once. The compartment became much too crowded. A lieutenant (j.g.) tripped and fell as he passed the helm to Meltzer. Meltzer stepped on the other man’s kneecap to get buckled in at the wheel. Bell dashed from aft and practically tore a junior officer out of the fire-control-coordinator seat.

“More air-dropped active sonobuoys,”
Milgrom called out.

“Rig for deep submergence!” Jeffrey shouted. “Rig for depth charge!” COB acknowledged. “Helm, emergency deep! Down-bubble forty degrees! Increase speed to twenty-six knots.”

Meltzer acknowledged, his Bronx accent thick, always a sign that he felt stressed. He pushed in on his control wheel until it was almost flush with his instrument panel.

Challenger
’s bow nosed steeply down—uncomfortably, desperately so. Jeffery hated doing this, but the ship came first, not the people aboard her. Crewmen still playing musical chairs lost their balance or their grips on fittings. They grabbed for each other, for anything, or slid forward on the treacherous ramp that the flame-proof linoleum deck had become. The unlucky or clumsy ones lay piled in a heap at the front of the space. Two essential fire-control-men stations ended up empty. A stocky chief, dancing to try to stay upright as his shoes couldn’t hold against gravity, crashed into the tactical plot on the bulkhead—now tilted wildly off vertical—next to COB’s position. The display screen went blank. Jeffrey’s seat belt bit into his abdomen, and he was almost folded double while his console top sloped away from him at an outrageous angle.

Challenger
gained speed and kept plunging deeper.

“Fire Control,” Jeffrey shouted, “to
Ohio,
break formation. Commence full evasive measures. Weapons free at your discretion.” Jeffrey had his orders from Hodgkiss; so did Captain Parcelli.

Bell typed madly on his keyboard.
“Ohio
acknowledges! . . . We can’t just abandon them, sir!”

“We need to, we can, and we will.”

“Surface impacts!” Milgrom yelled. “Depth-charge pattern!” The range and bearing she gave were almost identical to
Ohio
’s.

Rumbling detonations sounded at shallower depth.
Challenger
shook but kept diving. She passed through five thousand feet.

“Helm, take her to the bottom, make your course due east!”

“You’re
running
?
”
Gerald Parker yelled as the depth-charge reverb died down. “You can’t just
leave
them there defenseless!”

“They’re not defenseless,” Jeffrey snapped.

“Sir,” Bell said, “we need to
do
something. They have
Ohio
localized! . . . Acoustic link to
Ohio
broken!”

“We’re doing what we’re supposed to do, XO.”

More depth charges went off.
Challenger
’s disarrayed crew was buffeted violently. Men tried to claw their way uphill against the tilt of the deck to reach their stations.

“Torpedoes in the water,”
Milgrom screamed. “Air-dropped, export-model Mark Forty-sixes.” Used by the Germans. “Ranges and bearings indicate the aircraft have
Ohio
surrounded.”

Jeffrey heard the torpedo engines scream. Then he heard gurgling, bubbling sounds.
Parcelli launched noisemakers.

Above the other racket he heard dull
boom
s.

“Reactor check valves,” Milgrom stated.

“Ohio
’s going to flank speed,” Bell said, in disbelief that this whole thing was happening.

“Negative!” Milgrom said. “More check valves, different bearing!” Jeffrey couldn’t hear them this time. He still had a tactical plot on his console but the data was unreliable.

Where the hell is Lieutenant Torelli? I need his first-squad tracking team.
Two fire-control men who should have been to Jeffrey’s right at battle stations instead lay badly hurt down by the forward bulkhead. Jeffrey saw the jagged white bones of compound fractures to arms and legs. He saw the bright red blood as shipmates tried to use tourniquets on the wounded.

“Decoys,” Bell said. “I think they’re both decoys.
Ohio
’s trying to throw the Germans off.”

Jeffrey nodded. “He’s probably gone as deep as he can and stopped to drift so he can play possum.”

The control-room deck began to warp from the outside pressure as
Challenger
dove deeper and deeper at her top quiet speed. Near nine thousand feet, Milgrom called out, “Hull popping.”
Challenger
’s ceramic-composite hull was protesting the punishment. There was no way to avoid this. Jeffrey worried that the crunching sounds would give his ship away—he hoped they’d be drowned out by the wild action raging almost two miles above. He feared a sudden cannonlike influx of the sea. This was the deepest
Challenger
had gone since departing Norfolk; a flaw undiscovered till now in the latest repairs would have horrible consequences. Unforgiving blasts shattered the ocean again.

“Torpedoes have detonated,”
Milgrom yelled, projecting her voice above the ever-rising noise.

Jeffrey waited to hear the thing he dreaded most aside from a flooding alarm—the sounds of a sinking submarine.

“Assess both decoys destroyed!” Bell called out.

Ohio
had only two decoys. The Germans would know they hadn’t hit her yet—decoys gave off no floating wreckage, no bodies, no telltale oil slick. Because she’d been quiet, she couldn’t have moved fast, couldn’t have gotten far. More sonobuoys pinged high above.
Challenger
kept racing east. The melee behind them was at such shallower depth that the angles involved let the wide-aperture arrays pick up what was happening.

Sonobuoys continued pinging. Jeffrey eyed the gravimeter. He was heading into the Ionian Basin, south of Italy and Greece.
Ohio
was cornered against the steep rise leading up to the Malta Channel. Parcelli had contingency orders from Jeffrey that if the two ships needed to separate under attack,
Challenger
would head east and
Ohio
should avoid heading east. If Parcelli went west, back toward Malta, he was dead. His choices were to stay still or make a move either north or south. Jeffrey thought that south would be better: The water was much more open there.

Parker slammed hard against the back of Jeffrey’s seat, then leaned on it for support.

Jeffrey was livid. “Get back to your position.”

“I need to know what’s happening.”

“The task group is coming unglued, is what’s happening.”

Meltzer pulled back on his wheel.
Challenger
began to level off at almost twelve thousand feet.

More depth charges detonated. Milgrom reported more torpedo-engine sounds. Then she reported more pings, coming from the type of sonar on ASDS minisubs.
Ohio
had released them, so they could lure the inbound torpedoes away from their parent. Parcelli was using his minisubs as last-ditch improvised decoys; Jeffrey pitied the crewmen aboard them. But jettisoning the minis let
Ohio
go faster—less flow resistance and noise.

“You can’t just leave two hundred people to die,” Parker yelled in Jeffrey’s ear.

“My orders are explicit! If detected and attacked in the Med,
Ohio
is expendable and
Challenger
must get away.”

“You can’t play God like this! We still need all those SEALs and probes and weapons on
Ohio.”

“For now they’re on their own. We need
Challenger
in one piece so we have the German mini with the range to get Peapod.”

“You’d sacrifice
Ohio
for a
minisub
?
”

“You’re out of line, Mr. Parker! Get back to your post!” Jeffrey pointed at the photonics-mast console. The constant pings and blast reverb and screaming of torpedo engines made their conversation surreal.

“You’re the famous Captain Jeffrey Fuller! You’re supposed to be the man who never gives up, who does the impossible! Pull another trick out of your ass before it’s too late!”

“Get back to your post.”
Jeffrey resisted shoving Parker.

The ocean was rent by a giant thunderclap, then another.

“Assess both ASDSs destroyed,” Bell shouted, horrified.

“More torpedoes in the water,” Milgrom said. “Mark Forty-sixes.”

“Sir,” Bell pleaded, “we all have friends on that ship. You can’t just let them die. You saved
Ohio
twice before, near Norfolk and then with a
Dreadnought
decoy.”

“I have my orders,” Jeffrey said coldly, torn up inside.

“I’ve seen you disobey orders, Captain.” Tears were coming to Bell’s eyes.
“Please.”

There was a new screeching roar on the sonar speakers. It was overlaid by other, similar ones. They would stop, and then more would occur, repeatedly.

“Ohio
is launching Polyphems,” Milgrom said.

Many crewmen turned to Jeffrey, their faces asking him to achieve a miracle. They knew those Polyphems would point right back at
Ohio.
The German aircraft that weren’t shot down would known exactly where to aim. Parcelli was making his last stand.

Deeper, ripping roars drowned out the higher-pitched screeching ones.

“Tomahawk launches, Captain,” Bell whispered, all choked up.

“Loud surface impacts,” Milgrom reported. “Chaotic flow noise, increasing in depth. Assess as aircraft shot down.”

There were more blasts from depth charges. Noisemakers gurgled in vast profusion, some old and some fresh, trying to confuse torpedoes. More Polyphems screeched, more Tomahawks roared. Parcelli might still fight his way out to safety.

“New surface contact! Brandenburg tonals identified!” A frigate had joined the battle. Much louder pings sounded now above everything else. “Brandenburg has gone active!” The frigate had a sonar mounted under her bow. It was much more capable than any battery-operated sonobuoys. “More torpedoes in the water! ADCAP Mark Forty-eights!”
Ohio
was engaging the Brandenburg.

“More
torpedoes in the water! Mark Forty-sixes!” The Brandenburg was shooting back. Both vessels had four torpedo tubes.
Ohio
’s weapons were faster and smarter.

There were different roars that ended in sharp detonations—
Ohio
’s antitorpedo rockets.

Parcelli still has a chance.

Jeffrey heard an extremely powerful ping, on the opposite side of
Ohio
from the Brandenburg frigate’s bearing.

“New
surface contact! Contact is ex-Italian
de la Penne
–class destroyer!” Taken over by the Imperial German Navy.

“Six tubes on a de la Penne, Captain,” Bell said flatly.

“Help them!” Parker shouted from the rear of the control room. “For the love of heaven, use your Mark Eighty-eights!”

“They’d be a dead giveaway, you fool!” Jeffrey looked at the best-guess plot. The frigate and destroyer had
Ohio
in a pincers, one from the north and one from the south, each making over thirty knots. Parcelli was badly outgunned, ten tubes to four, and must be running out of ADCAPs. If he went west to shallow water now, he was surely doomed. His only escape was east.

Jeffrey had ordered him not to flee east. Would Parcelli obey, to protect
Challenger
from detection and possible crippling or destruction? Would Parcelli and his crew maintain their discipline to the last, and knowingly sacrifice themselves? Or, caught in a squeeze, fighting for life, with layer after layer of defenses peeled away and every tactic failing, would Parcelli come toward Jeffrey and bring enemy fire down on
Challenger
?

Roar after roar meant more Tomahawk launches. These were probably programmed in antiship mode. They moved ten times as fast through the air as a torpedo moved through the water.

Heavy concussions pounded
Challenger
and echoed off the side of the towering escarpment between her and the Malta Channel.

“Loud explosions! Cannot identify!”

The acoustic madhouse made it impossible to follow the battle via hydrophones. The tactical plot was useless without updated data from sonar. All Jeffrey could do was wait.

Eerie moans, and
crack
s, and sounds like breaking glass came over the speakers, garbled by dull thuds and sharper eruptions.

“Assess destroyer and frigate sinking!” Bell said with renewed hope. “Assess explosions were Tomahawk hits!” The breaking-glass noise came when the red-hot piping of gas-turbine engines and diesels was hit by cold seawater; the moans and cracks were tormented steel bending and fracturing as the enemy warships broke apart on the outside and from within; the thuds and eruptions were ready-use ammo and entire magazines blowing up.

Torpedo engines continued to scream. Jeffrey heard another
boom-boom-boom,
then a rising whine as
Ohio
herself tried flank speed. He listened to another long series of antitorpedo rocket engines light off.
I think Parcelli just fired the last of his rockets.
There were sounds like shotgun blasts, and these began to mingle with torpedo warheads exploding singly or in groups. Echoes and reverb were more intense than ever.