First Strike

TEN

As early as the end of the second day, Forsythe could already see the strain starting on the faces of the crew. It wasn’t that they complained — far from it. In fact, since the death of Lieutenant Commander Cowlings, a new, grim determination had seemed to settle over them. A fire for vengeance burned in their eyes, and no one wanted to be the first to admit the strain was getting to him.

Forsythe and the doctor continued to take their meals in the small wardroom, although with only two of them it almost seemed pointless. In fact, the doctor had suggested that they begin messing with the crew, simplifying life for the three mess cooks on board. But Forsythe had decided not to, and not simply because the doctor suggested it — though the fact that that thought had crossed his mind made him somewhat ashamed. Later, he realized his instinct had been correct. He needed a bit of distance from the crew, and while the doctor might not be particularly his favorite company, he would have to do.

“They’re wearing out,” the doctor said, pointing his fork at his interim commanding officer as he spoke. “You can’t keep this up for long.”

“When there are complaints, let me know,” Forsythe said. There was a reason for the rank structure on a submarine, perhaps even more reasons for it than on a larger ship. The chiefs ate in their one small corner of the crew’s mess, behind a divider, and pretended to ignore the rest of the crew. That allowed sailors time to blow off steam. But, had their very junior captain been in the same compartment, they would have been silent.

“I’m already seeing the signs of stress in them.”

“Has someone complained?” Forsythe asked, keeping his eyes down on his plate.

“No. They won’t, you know. But, it’s only a matter of time. You have to listen to me in matters like this, you have to.” The doctor’s voice was smug and demanding.

“Listen to doesn’t mean obey.” Suddenly, Forsythe’s appetite was gone. He shoved the plate back slightly. The one concession to the reduced manpower had been that he and the doctor would obtain their food from the crew’s mess, eat it in the wardroom, then take their own dishes back to the galley. “Until then, keep me posted.”

“The enlisted people aren’t the only people who are my responsibility,” the doctor said softly, his voice carrying a note of menace. “Last night you suggested I read Navy regulations — I suggest you review them yourself. If and when I believe that you are becoming a danger to this crew, I will relieve you. Will relieve you for medical reasons, and order you confined to your stateroom. Between the Chief and the troops, we can get the boat back to the surface and the message out.”

Forsythe turned, icy menace clear on his face. “Then I think we both adequately understand our duties, doctor. And, yes, I am familiar with the passage to which you’re referring.” He could smell the rank stench of fear on the doctor now, and it disgusted him. “That said, I will tolerate no more insubordination from you. Just who do you think the crew will obey? Watch their eyes, doctor. You claim to know the mood of the crew — watch their eyes. Because I can guarantee you, what you’re seeing isn’t stress. It’s pure, one hundred percent pissed off American sailor. Right now, they’d follow me to hell and back if it meant avenging Commander Cowlings. And I suggest you try to stay out of their way.”

“Captain to the Control Room!” The chief’s voice blared out of the speaker on the bulkhead. “Sir, it’s urgent.”

Forsythe picked up his plate and tossed it on top of the doctor’s “Take that to the galley with yours. And, in case it isn’t perfectly clear to you, that’s an order.” He turned and raced out of the compartment.

As he raced down the single central passageway of the submarine, Forsythe’s heart was hammering. For a split second, he wondered if he was experiencing some sort of medical problem like the one that had killed Cowlings. In the next instant, he dismissed the thought. He was perfectly healthy, not carrying a ticking time bomb in his head as Cowlings had been.

“What is it?” he asked as he skidded in to Control.

“The Kilo, sir,” the chief said. He pointed at the sonar display. “She just turned and is heading directly for us.”

Forsythe studied the waterfall display, and at the same time said, “Set quiet ship.” He heard the word being passed softly down the passageways. “And battle stations.” The second word went out as well, but with a touch of electricity in it.

“She must have heard a transient,” the sonarman said, his gaze glued to the screen. “And, if she did, then her hearing’s better than we thought it was.” He shook his head, not denying the fact, but musing over the possibilities. “We need to re-evaluate this whole plan, then, sir.” He looked up at the lieutenant, his face thoughtful. “Our plan is based on certain assumptions. No, not cancel the plan,” he added hastily, seeing the lieutenant start to shake his head. “Just re-evaluate how far we want to stay from her. Out of her weapons’ range, maybe, a little bit farther away. I can still do it,” he concluded.

Back off from her? I don’t think so. But if her sonar is better than Cowlings thought, we have to take that into account. The unexpected — what you can’t plan for. I can’t be afraid to change our plans. Cowlings wouldn’t have been. For some reason, the thought of what the late operations officer would have done weighed more heavily on him than what he thought his captain would have done.

“She’s not going to leave her box,” Forsythe said, with more certainty that he felt. “But let’s move out to seven thousand yards. Can you still hold contact at that range?”

“Yes, sir.” Pencehaven said, although Forsythe could see doubt on Jacob’s face. “We can always move in closer if we lose her.”

“Right. But—” Forsythe stopped as he watched the display shift ominously. “Down doppler — she’s turned away from us,” he said.

Why is she doing that? She was heading straight for us like she knew where we were. And then she turned away — why?

Seconds before it was confirmed, he knew the answer. The hard squeal of tiny propellers followed by a hard pinging against the hull of the submarine gave him his answer.

“Torpedo in the water!” Jacob said, his voice carrying even though it was at a whisper. “Recommend evasive maneuvers.”

“Down doppler on the torpedo.” Pencehaven corrected, his more sensitive ears telling him what the display had not yet picked up. “Sir, the torpedo’s not heading for us. It’s headed for the bird farm.”

“Evasive maneuvering” Coyote howled, knowing it was useless, but not willing to give up without a fight. The officer of the deck had not waited for his command. Even as he spoke, he felt the ponderous ship start to turn, the deck shifting ever so slightly. The collision alarm beat out its staccato warning over the 1MC overhead, and he heard the pounding of feet as people raced toward their battle stations. Even though general quarters had not been set, everyone knew that it would be, in a few seconds.

The symbol for torpedo popped into being on the tactical screen, small, red, and deadly. It inched toward the aircraft carrier, bearing in unerringly. The speed leader for the Jefferson was already showing her turn, but there was little an aircraft carrier could do to avoid a torpedo. It was like an office building maneuvering to avoid a tornado.

Still, they had to try. They had to.

Captain Coleman stood beside his battle chair, his headphones tethered him to the elevated brown leatherette chair. Theoretically, he should be sitting there, strapped in, but he found it almost impossible to hold still when the ship was in physical danger. It was as though he could control her by pacing the deck, toughen her skin, and keep her sensors turned in the direction of the threat.

“TAO, Sonar! Sir, it should miss us by two thousand yards — it’s headed for the carrier, sir!”

“Time to CPA?” Coleman demanded.

“About ten seconds or a hair less,” the sonarman replied.

Coleman swore quietly. Ten seconds — not enough to get within range and eject noisemakers and decoys, although the carrier would certainly be doing that on her own. Still, it was worth a try. He gave the order, knowing that the entire crew had already anticipated it and was simply waiting for the command.

God, he hated being helpless. To sit here watching as the torpedo arrowed in on the one ship that wasn’t supposed to take a hit, the centerpiece of the battle group. Without the carrier, they had no chance of regaining control of Bermuda.

“Five seconds to CPA, sir,” the sonarman said. Coleman could see the geometries playing out on the screen in front of him, the torpedo squeaking past his ship, the hard turn the carrier was attempting — and the inevitable result.

“ASROC, sir?” the TAO asked. The antisubmarine torpedo could be launched from a vertical launch cell on the ship, and had the range to reach any possible submarine.

“Can’t,” Coleman said shortly. “Our locating data on the Seawolf is twelve hours old — and, at last report, she had been stalking a contact in this very area.” If the ship were to launch a torpedo into the box, there was every chance that it would find the Seawolf instead of the enemy sub. No, this was the Seawolf’s battle — and there was nothing anybody on the surface could do about it.

“Got her solid,” Pencehaven said, his voice as calm as if it were a drill. “Your orders?”

“Are we within weapons range?” Forsythe asked.

“Yes, sir. Two tubes loaded and flooded, waiting for weapons release.”

“Weapons free,” Forsythe said softly. “Two shots — now.”

Even as Forsythe gave the order, Pencehaven mashed down the red button. The submarine shook slightly as compressed air forced a torpedo out of the tube. Its tiny propeller immediately began whipping the water into a froth as it came to life, checked its orders to intercept the target, and pick up speed and headed off on its mission. A second later, another torpedo followed.

Forsythe watched the screen, desperately praying that he had done the right thing. Yes, he could ask the chief if he’d done the right thing — even the doctor, if he had wanted to. But, in the end, it was his decision to make, his responsibility to fight the submarine.

And, until that very second, he had not realized how lonely that could be.

Captain First Rank Sergei Andropov turned on his psychological services officer. “You said they would not fire!”

The man beside him was pale and shaken. He had not understood initially what the hard, buzzing noise was from the speaker, but the crew had quickly filled him in. He would be lucky if he lived long enough for the torpedo to kill him.

“Every projection said that they would not,” he said, aware of how very lame his explanation sounded. “They would not risk it — they are too conscious of their body count, too afraid to take any casualties. They would not—”

“They did!” Andropov grabbed him by shoulders, shook him violently, then transferred his grip to the man’s neck.

“You imbecile, you have killed us!”

The Russians could not presume to know the American mind any more that the Americans could know the Russian psyche. For just one second, he wondered if the Americans had advisers such as this.

Coleman saw the two new bursts of noise on the display, and watched as they resolved into the characteristic shapes of torpedoes. Cold fear clutched at his gut, followed immediately by relief as they turned away from him.

“They’re ours, Captain. Ours!”

Good old Seawolf. She’s pulling us out of this. Now, if I can do so well on the air battle, we may have a chance.

“Two thousand yards, Captain!” Stark terror filled the sonarman’s voice. “Bearing constant, range decreasing. Captain, your orders? Captain?”

“Hard left rudder, flank speed, and…” For just a moment he paused, uncertain of himself for the first time in nearly twenty years. Classic evasion tactics called for him to go deep, forcing the torpedo to follow him down, leaving hard knuckles in the water as he went and ejecting decoys and noisemakers. The theory was that the torpedo could be tricked into attacking one of the phantom targets as the submarine slipped safely below the thermocline.

But the hard, cold knot in his gut told him it wouldn’t work this time. Couldn’t work — no, they had no chance of evading this torpedo using classical tactics. Therefore, his only option was to attempt something radical.

“Surface the ship,” he ordered after what seemed like minutes, but in reality had been a few seconds. “Surface the ship.”

“Captain?”

The Captain reeled around to glare at the conning officer, murder in his eyes. The body of the psychologist stretched out across the deck was ample proof that he was prepared to follow through on his threats. “I said, surface the ship.” He waited.

The junior officer glanced down at the dead psychologist and made his decision. “Surface the ship, aye, sir.”

“One thousand yards — bearing constant, range decreasing.”

I may be too late, he thought, watching the torpedoes move across the time-versus-bearing display. I hesitated — I should not have done that. The other captain — he did not hesitate.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Otter said. The other submarine’s acoustic signature was changing. Otter made a tiny correction with the joystick, turning the wire-guided torpedo. “You’re a bad, bad little bastard, aren’t you?”

“What are you doing?” Forsythe asked. “You’re bringing the torpedo shallow! That sub’s not coming shallow. That would be insanity. She’s got no chance on the surface.”

“She’s got no chance either way, Captain,” the sonarman said quietly. “And she is surfacing — she is.” He pointed at an interference pattern on the screen, tracing out the details as he spoke. “She’s shallow right now, and she’s going to surface. And,” he said with conviction, “she’s going to die.”

She’s going to die. He called me Captain. Again, the full weight of what he’d done bore down on Forsythe.

But when had there been time to do anything differently? There had not been time to surface and ask for instructions, not the way that things had unfolded. There had not been time to make a stealthy approach on the enemy sub and carefully set up a killing shot.

No, this was undersea warfare the way it really was. Not some tidy game of angles and maneuvers in a classroom, the relative positions outlined in different colors of chalk on a two dimensional board. Not a trainer, where you knew that the result would be the instructor calling, “Stop the problem, stop the clock,” followed by a detailed and unforgiving debrief in front of your classmates. How he had dreaded those moments, when his errors would be exposed to everyone else, the teasing that would follow. Not that he had been anymore gentle when it was someone else under the gun, no. That’s not the way it was done.

And this was why, he saw, watching as his torpedoes reached the end of their wires and were set free on their own. This is why it was done that way. Because real warfare was nasty, bloody stumbling around the dark, acting and reacting on insufficient information, praying to God that you hadn’t screwed up. Because, if you have, it’s not just worrying about a hard time your roommates are going to give you or the bad marks on a fitrep. It’s knowing that thirty other people will die along with you.

“There they go,” Pencehaven said as the wires snapped. He could no longer control the torpedoes with his joystick. “Damn, they’re just like little bloodhounds — look at them go! You hear that, Captain? You hear that?” The sonarman pointed at the speaker. The series of shimmering pings from the torpedoes’ seeker heads were growing higher pitched, coming faster now. It sounded eager, certain about what it was doing—

Stop it. Don’t anthropomorphize it. It’s a weapon, not a bloodhound.

“Fifteen seconds until contact,” Otter said, his mood more closely matching Forsythe’s own than Pencehaven’s did. The sonarman raised his hands to his earphones, ready to peel them away from his head. He glanced over at his friend and nudged him. “Don’t forget this time. Last time, you couldn’t hear for two days.”

“Yes, yes,” the other said, still smiling broadly.

Hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of sheer terror. But at least for them, not for us.

“Five seconds,” Pencehaven said, pulling his own earphones off. “Stand by for it, folks. It’s going to be a doozy.”

“Passing five hundred feet,” the Russian sonarman said.

Not good enough. We’re not going to make it in time. “Emergency blow,” the Captain ordered, feeling his skin crawl. The sonar pings sounded like ball peen hammers on his hull, an incessant hammering that would drive you insane if you listened to it long enough. But he wouldn’t have to, would he? That was the whole point — he wouldn’t listen to it that long at all.

“Emergency blow, aye,” the officer of the deck said. A loud whooshing filled the submarine and his ears popped, as every bit of available compressed air was dumped into the ballast tanks, forcing out seawater, and jerking the submarine toward the surface. The captain felt heavier as the submarine surged up under him. Then, the submarine tilted hard to the right, and loose gear went flying, cascading down from the elevated front parts of the submarine. It could not fall all the way to the stern, of course. Watertight hatches stopped the debris’s progress, and piled up at the rear of every compartment.

“Five seconds!” someone shouted. There was no need for silence now, no advantage at all. A blind man could follow their progress through the ocean.

“Will you look at that?” Otter said, pointing at the screen. “Man, she’s one noisy bitch on emergency blow, isn’t she?”

“Is that what that is?” Forsythe said, a terrible certainty starting in his heart. “Emergency blow?”

Both sonarman nodded. “No doubt about it, sir. She’s scared and running for daylight.”

“Can she make it to the surface?

Neither sonarman answered.

“One hundred feet,” the Russian sonarman said, the relief plain in his voice. Depth was measured from the keel of the submarine, and if the keel was at one hundred feet, the conning tower was just twenty-five feet below the surface. They were near enough to get out if they had to. If they could.

“Captain, are we going to—?” The officer of the day never had a chance to finish his question.

The torpedo struck the ship in the aft one-third of the hull, about twenty feet forward of the propeller shaft. As its nose dented the steel hull, the force shoved the igniter back into the warhead. The torpedo detonated, instantly vaporizing the seawater around it and producing a massive pressure gradient along the hull of the submarine.

The force of the explosion, coupled by the sudden change in pressure, popped rivets along the junction between two plates. The sea took advantage of the submarine’s weakness immediately, pouring in, as though trying to demonstrate the principle that nature abhors a vacuum.

The sea acted like a giant wedge, forcing the two steel plates farther apart. Incredible forces brought to bear on buckled steel, mangled with nature’s force everything man had so carefully machined.

Inside the submarine, the effect was devastating. The original split in the hull filled the space with water, and the force twisted the inner hull out of shape. Given the submarine’s steep angle of climb, and the forces already in play on her, it didn’t take much to breach her hull completely.

The original leak — if such torrential force can be called by such an innocuous name — was located in a machinery space. The stream of water hit with the force of a fire hose, immediately enlarging the hole. The watertight bulkhead to the passageway held for five seconds, then, under the stress of the hull deformity, the rubber seal pulled away from the coming. Again, the water followed.

The submarine was divided, like a surface ship would be, into a series of watertight compartments designed to withstand considerable pressure. But every engineering design works on the assumption that the hull would remain intact.

The passageway running the length of the sub was empty. The submariners were in watertight compartments on either side, at the battle stations, torn between the duty and the compulsion to race forward or aft to one of the escape hatches. Everyone knew what the steep angle on the deck meant — they were surfacing, surfacing hard, and there was only one reason to do that with a torpedo in pursuit. Each one vowed silently that when he heard the submarine break the surface he would abandon his post and head to the escape hatch, protocol and duty be damned.

The ocean, however, had other plans.

The next to the last segment of the passageway flooded first and the watertight hatches on either side of it collapsed almost immediately. As the ancillary equipment room filled with water, it became heavier, deepening the submarine’s already steep angle of ascent, and severely slowing her forward progress. The submarine had enough inertia built up, however, that even the fatal breech of the hull could not stop her from reaching the surface. Still, she broke the surface at a sharper angle than her designers ever intended.

As she breached the surface of the ocean, the sea broke through the aft watertight door. Now, with the full force of the sea behind it, it smashed into engineering, cold seawater surging over the hot main propulsion engines. The engines flashed the first cascade of water into steam, then shattered, metal torn apart by the sudden change in temperature as more water followed.

There were three sailors in that compartment, each with his own general quarters station. The first was assigned to monitor the oil pressure and temperature over the main engines. The second was the damage control petty officer, standing by to coordinate any repairs or actions in an emergency. The third was a very junior member of the crew, whose only job in life was to watch the bilges and make sure that the seepage never rose above two inches.

They had approximately four seconds warning before the ship began to break apart, long enough for a prayer or a curse, depending on each one’s temperament. Long enough for the senior rating to scrabble up the ladder to the escape hatch and begin desperately twisting the heavy wheel, hoping against hope that he could somehow manage to get it opened, get inside, and get out before he was trapped. The other tried to follow what he was doing, but got in the way. While the senior rating might have had time to get the inner hatch open, it was almost certain he would not have had time to climb inside the escape chamber, shut the hatch behind him, and reseal it. Even if he had time, the pressure and forces acting on the hull would probably have warped the chamber itself, either preventing the hatch from securing or keeping the outer hatch from opening.

In any event, the others had forgotten to grab emergency egress breathing devices and would have drowned as the chamber filled.

As it was, the sea broke through suddenly, slamming into the compartment and flooding it instantly. The youngest seaman was slammed into a bulkhead and his neck snapped. He had a few seconds of fading consciousness, but not enough time to feel the cold, clear panic and fear flooding the other two.

The senior petty officer, the one who had climbed the ladder, was knocked off his perch. He took a deep breath, held it, and moved through the compartment, hoping to find an air bubble trapped there. The man in the middle panicked. He became completely disoriented. In trying to emulate the other in the complete pitch darkness and cold water, he swam for the stern of the ship. By the time oxygen starvation forced his mouth open in an instinctive insistence that he could indeed breathe seawater if he just tried hard enough, he had realized his mistake.

The third man lived — at least for a few more minutes. He had time to realize what was happening, to watch the water rising around him, to hear the sudden crack as the hull gave way. He was completely conscious as the water quickly rose, the cold leeching the heat almost immediately, the water filled with oily debris. He could not see the water rise, but followed its progress as it crept up his body, the heavy pressure on his chest, the icy oil against his skin, seeping into his tightly closed mouth and invading his nostrils.

He knew the submarine better than his own house and he tried to make his way forward. He pounded against the first door he encountered, but the man on the other side rightfully refused to doom the rest of the ship by opening the hatch. Finally, as he verged on unconsciousness from oxygen starvation, his mouth opened and he breathed in seawater.

Those in the forward compartments who were strong and acted quickly survived. As they heard the torpedo hit, they ignored their standing orders, opened their hatches and streamed forward. They secured the hatches behind them as the went, moving forward against the flood, struggling against the ever deepening inclination on the deck. Eventually, they reached the control room.

Inside the control room, utter chaos prevailed. The captain had roared out a hasty abandon-ship order that was not necessary. Every one of them instinctively knew that to stay in the submarine would be to die. No damage control effort could begin to staunch the flood.

At the bottom of every watertight hatch is a port, known as the telltale. Because there are no windows between the watertight compartments, the telltale provides a way of determining whether the other side is flooded or not.

The control room crew heard the frantic pounding of the others on the hatch, and, in an act of superhuman courage, one of them stayed behind and popped open the telltale. When he saw no water, he opened the hatch and helped drag the rest of the crew through it. After the last one was in, as he saw water seeping into the compartment they’d just vacated, he slammed the hatch shut and twisted the wheel. Except for the captain, he was the last man to leave the dying submarine.

“Come on, Jeff,” Coyote said softly. He wasn’t sure if it was an order or a prayer.

Beneath his feet, the deck was now tilted as hard over as he’d ever felt it. He had to give her credit, the old girl was strong, but she just couldn’t maneuver like the smaller boys could.

On the screen in front of him, the torpedo symbols inched closer and closer, their positions reported by the Lake Champlain from the cruiser’s sonar detections.

No time, no time. We’re not even all buttoned up — if it hits directly under the keel, we’re in serious trouble.

Outside the compartment, Coyote could hear feet pounding down passageways as sailors scrambled for their general quarter stations. The damage control crews were the most critical part of the entire evolution, since they would be the ones who determined whether or not Jeff stayed afloat.

If it hits. Just turning now — we may be able to confuse it.

Evasive maneuvers worked — at least in theory. How well depended on what type of torpedoes had been fired. The acoustic homers would have no difficulty tracking her, although a straight wake homer might be confused by a sudden change of course.

Suddenly, Lake Champlain skipper’s voice came over the circuit, ferocious joy in his voice. “Jeff, Champlain—they’re gone! My sonarmen said they simply slowed down then stopped. Massive explosions under the water, too, sir, immediately before. They were probably still on wire guidance, the Seawolf took out the submarine, and the torpedoes went stupid.”

Cheers broke out in TFCC, and Coyote drew in a deep, shuddering breath. So, the Seawolf was on the job — and just how had she accomplished this? Everything Coyote had read said that the Seawolf was tasked only as an intelligent asset pending relief on station.

The details spelled out in the P4 had been far more alarming. Coyote had whistled softly as he read it, unable to believe that the submarine’s watch section had gotten her underway without the captain or the XO on board. In fact, the senior line officer present on board was a lieutenant commander.

Coyote folded up the message and tucked it into his shirt pocket. “Good on you, Seawolf,” he said. He shuddered at the thought of being shorthanded so far below the surface of the ocean, while marveling at the man who had managed to pull it off. No, they weren’t aviators — but, for the first time in his career, he was awed by someone whose max speed was just over thirty knots.

Forsythe stood stunned, watching the silent death unfold on the sonar screen in front of him. All around him, the sonarman and the sailors mouthed quiet cheers, arms pumping vigorously in the air, pounding each other lightly on the back. Even in the midst of their exhilaration over a successful war shot, they remembered the first rule of life below the surface: Silence is safety.

The sonar chief jabbed Forsythe in the ribs. “Get with it, sir.” The chief stared at him with a silent intensity, as though willing Forsythe to read his mind. He let Forsythe see him glance around room, taking in the sailors and their silent celebrations, and then returned his gaze to Forsythe’s face, eyes narrowed, shoulders back.

Suddenly, Forsythe understood. The chief was doing the job that all chief petty officers do in the Navy, although under somewhat different circumstances. He was training a junior officer — the officer commanding the Seawolf, true, though only by a quirk fate, but a junior officer nonetheless.

The crew needed him, Forsythe realized. He had to show he approved of what they’d done to make the killing of the other submarine something that they could live with. Because, at some level, each of them knew what happened was not just pixels on a sonar screen. It was the death of the ship and her men, men very much like themselves. Russian, yes. Diesel-propelled instead of nuclear. But within the double-hull construction there were men with families who would miss them, sons and husbands who would never go home. And that, Forsythe realized, his own men must not be allowed to think about. Not now. Not yet.

Maybe someday, when they left the depths and were back on the surface, when they could look at what happened again in the sunlight, consider it without thinking immediately that it could have been them.

But, how to do that? Forsythe’s mind raced furiously, and he saw the chief’s face relaxed as he realized he’d made his point. How would Lieutenant Commander Cowlings have handled it?

Forsythe stood a little straighter, feeling the weight of command on his shoulders. He lifted his chin, braced slightly, and said, “Good job. Now let’s nail those other bastards.”

Otter and Pencehaven nodded in unison. “We’ll get them, sir,” Otter promised. “We’ll get them or I’ll volunteer to hot rack with him the rest of the cruise.”

Laughter broke out among the crew, although quiet, still so quiet. There would be no hot racking on this mission, Forsythe realized. That there would be little rack time at all didn’t seem to occur to them.

“All right — let’s make it three for three, shall we?” Forsythe asked. He turned to the sonar chief. “Chief, I need a recommended course and depth to intercept the next contact.”

“Due north, Captain,” the chief said, nodding in approval. “I recommend we make our approach below the layer — that seems to be working for us pretty well, I’d say.”

“Very well. Make it so.” What else? What am I forgetting? An after-action report, certainly, but there wasn’t time to stop and transmit it just yet. Maybe on ELF — were there appropriate codes for it?

A sudden, gut-wrenching thought occurred to him. He drew the chief off slightly to the side, and said, “Good job. You know what I mean.” The chief nodded. “But there’s something else. There could have been survivors, Chief.” He held up one hand to forestall comment. “I know, I’m not about to surface and take a look for them. But we need to alert somebody, just in case…” He couldn’t finish to sentence.

“They were shallow when it hit, Captain,” the chief said, emphasizing the last word ever so slightly as if to remind Forsythe who he was right now. “Real shallow. Plenty of time for most of them to make it out.” The chief considered the matter for moment, and said, “A message buoy, delayed transmission. I’ll set it for six hours. That will give us time to clear the area before it starts transmitting.” He shot a glance at his very junior captain. “I’m assuming you don’t want it screaming bloody murder directly overhead.”

“To whom?” Forsythe asked.

“Second Fleet. They’ll get the message to the appropriate civilian and military vessels in the area. I’m not sure whether Bermuda’s Coast Guard is going to be in any shape to respond, but there’s plenty of surface traffic in the area. And the water’s warm — they can wait it out if they’re smart.”

No hypothermia — just sharks. Forsythe remembered the briefings on the waters around Bermuda. The profusion of fishing and passenger vessels resulted in lots of garbage, which attracted sharks. That, and the warm-water fishing.

“Good thinking. Now, let’s go after that other one.” Forsythe turned and started to walk back into the control room. The chief cleared his throat. Forsythe turned. “Something else?”

“Yes, sir.” The chief came closer. “It’s about the crew, sir. They’re flying high now, and they will for a while. But, sooner or later, they’re going to start wearing out.” The chief passed him a piece of paper. On it were listed the most critical watch stations on the ship, with two names next each position. “Some of them are completely qualified, at least on paper. But, under the circumstances, everybody’s capable of handling most everything on each watch station. I recommend you give them about forty-five minutes, then stand half of them down for rack time. We’ll be transiting for awhile to get to the next operating area, and if there’s ever a chance to go skimpy on the watch, it would be now. Give the first group three hours off, then put the second crew down for three hours. Then restart the regular watches. We can keep that up a lot longer than if we keep everybody awake at once.”

“I’m not on here,” Forsythe said, as he scanned the list. That earned him a small wintry smile from the chief.

“No, sir. You’re not. The captain never is.

As Forsythe watched, acoustic signatures of the enemy torpedoes wavered across the screen. They moved from the right to the left, indicating that they were slowing down. Finally, they trailed off the left edge of the screen and disappeared.

“Dead in the water,” Pencehaven said softly. “We snapped the wire before they could acquire the targets on their own.”

The chief grinned and slapped him on the back. “Unbroken record, right?”

Pencehaven nodded and tried not to look too pleased with himself.

“Record of what?” Forsythe asked.

“Of not buying drinks. After every deployment, every man and woman on the carrier wants to buy him a beer. I doubt he’s spent a penny on booze or food in the last two years. Right, Pencehaven?”

“I bought my mother dinner once.”

“Yeah. But then that frigate guy came up and bought you both a drink, didn’t he?” the other sonarman chimed in. “Besides, doesn’t count when it’s your mother.”

Forsythe put his hand on Pencehaven’s shoulder. “We get home, I’m buying you one myself. Hell, I’ll buy you an entire bar!”