Mirage

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The alarm’s wail was followed up with red flashing strobes as the Oregon’s automated systems went into combat mode. A sultry female voice came over the intercom. “All crew to battle stations. All crew to battle stations.”

“Report,” Hanley barked from the command chair.

Mark Murphy was seated at his normal position toward the front of the room, where his primary job was to monitor the ship’s vast array of weaponry. He was there this morning to watch the dive.

“Second.” He typed furiously, his skinny fingers moving with the virtuosity of a concert pianist. “Oh damn.”

“What is it?”

“Passive sonar detected the sound of a submarine opening two of its outer hull doors.”

“Distance and bearing?”

“Eight thousand yards off our starboard side.”

“Whose is it?”

“Coming up now.” The United States Navy kept a database of identifiable noises made by nearly every submarine in the world so that individual boats could be identified during combat situations. Mark had happened to work with one of the data specialists who updated the lists and who had lousy computer-security skills. “It’s a Russian Akula-class. Hull number one five-four. She must be just creeping along, because there are no machinery or screw noises.”

Max glanced over at the radar plot. There were no ships within twenty miles of the Oregon. That meant there were no other targets if the submarine’s intentions were hostile. The fine hairs on the back of his neck began to prickle.

“Chairman, we’ve got a Russian sub parked about four and a half miles off our starboard beam. She just opened two torpedo tubes.”

“Get out of there,” Juan ordered.

“Shot fired!” Mark yelled. “Torpedo in the water.”

It would take a few seconds to accurately calculate the torpedo’s course, but all the men listening knew instinctively that the torpedo was on a course toward the Oregon. The only real question was whether she was the target or they were gunning for the derelict ship she was hovering over.

Max wasn’t the strategist Juan was. He was a nuts-and-bolts kind of guy who left planning to others, so he took his cue off Cabrillo’s last order. “Helm, flank speed.”

The inertia of eighteen thousand tons of steel idling on the ocean’s surface was a massive force unto itself, but it was no match for the magnetohydrodynamic engines. The cryopumps spun up and went infrasonic as they pumped liquid nitrogen around the magnets that stripped free electrons from the water forced through the drive tubes. A creaming explosion of froth erupted at the Oregon’s fantail, and within ten seconds of Max’s command the big former freighter was moving.

That they were under way also meant that within seconds they would be beyond their radio’s limited range to communicate with the divers or Eddie in the submersible.

“Max, just before you gave the order I heard a second torpedo launch,” Mark told him. With the ship under way, the passive sensors were deaf to everything except the noises the Oregon herself produced, the shriek of her engines and the building hiss of water against her hull.

“Juan, did you catch that?”

“A second torpedo.” Cabrillo didn’t hesitate before issuing his orders. The underwater radios weren’t encrypted, so the Russian captain knew there were people on the wreck. What he’d done was cold premeditated murder. “Sink ’em.”

There were only about seven minutes until impact. The Oregon would be safely outside the torpedoes’ sonar range, but the wreck was a sitting duck.

“You got it. Mark, let’s tell this guy he picked the wrong dance partner. Hit him with the active sonar, maximum gain, and keep hitting him until I tell you to stop.”

Murph gave a wicked grin and fired off sonar pings. The returns showed the Akula hadn’t yet started to make her escape.

“She’s still sitting there, and her torpedoes are staying deep.”

“Waiting around to see her fish hit the wreck. Bad mistake, my friend,” Max said. “You should have hightailed it the moment you fired. ’Course, you couldn’t know that we were listening or know that we can track you.”

Eric Stone rushed into the op center and took the helm seat next to Murph. With the exception of the Chairman himself, young Mr. Stone was the best helmsman aboard and could thread the Oregon through the eye of a needle if necessary.

“Eric, bring us about and let’s get him within range of our torpedoes.” The Akula could take such a relatively long shot because she was firing at a stationary target, but to hit a moving opponent required a shortening of the distance. “Wepps, get our own fish readied.”

“Roger that. Looks like the sonar woke ’em up. The Akula’s starting to move. The continental shelf drops away about twenty miles from here, and once she goes over, she’ll dive like a stone and we’ll lose her for sure.”

The Oregon began cutting a long arc through the sea as she chased the fleeing Russian sub, and with her vastly superior speed, there was little chance the sub would get away.

“Tubes one and two are flooded,” Mark announced moments later. “Outer doors are still closed. And, just to remind you, we need to slow to twenty knots for them to open. Otherwise, we can damage the torpedoes.”

“Noted,” Max replied.

They’d cut the range down to six thousand yards, and Hanley kept at them. Five minutes had elapsed since the first shots were fired. The torps would hit the wreck in about two more. Max needed to end this quickly if he was to get back on-station and coordinate any necessary rescue operation.

“Contact!” Mark shouted. “He’s fired on us! Torpedo coming straight in.”

“Helm, full reverse. Slow us to twenty knots. Wepps, open those doors as soon as you can and fire. Eric, once the torpedo’s away, take us back up to thirty knots.”

At that speed, they wouldn’t be traveling much slower than their own weapon. The two men didn’t understand Max’s strategy but carried out his orders nevertheless.

The ship physically shuttered as the impellers went into reverse, glasses rattled on tables, and crewmen were forced to brace themselves against anything solid due to the massive deceleration.

“Twenty knots,” Eric called out.

“Firing.” Mark pressed the key to fire their own torpedo and flipped the toggle to close the doors.

Eric Stone had watched him and reversed the engines once again. Again, the ship gave a mighty shiver as if all that power was trying to tear her apart.

“Sorry, old girl,” Hanley said under his breath and patted his seat’s armrest. He then spoke aloud. “Prepare autodestruct of our torpedo as soon as it’s abreast of the incoming Russian fish.”

“Ah,” Mark said with understanding.

Because they were still blasting the sea with active sonar pulses, they could track the two torpedoes in real time, unlike the Russian, who wasn’t pinging but relied on passive listening to find its prey.

In one corner of the main view screen, Hanley brought up a computer-enhanced sonar “picture” of the seas ahead of them. Between them and the Akula, the two torpedoes were hurtling toward each other at a combined speed nearing ninety knots.

“Helm, be prepared to slow again for another shot. The explosion’s going to ruin his ability to listen to us. When they blow, come right five points, so if he pops off a blind shot, he won’t get lucky.”

The two torpedoes raced at each other with mindless abandon and would meet less than a half mile off the Oregon’s bows. Just a few seconds more. Murph’s hand hovered over the autodestruct button, his eyes unblinkingly on the screen. If this didn’t work, they would have little time for evasive maneuvers.

The Akula’s captain never would have suspected his quarry would dare to keep charging at them. But there was a truism he obviously wasn’t aware of: Never play a game of chicken with a man you don’t know.

“Now!” Max, Eric, and Mark shouted at the same time.

Stone set about changing their course while ahead of the ship, a mushrooming ball of water was thrown twenty feet into the air.

Both torpedo icons disappeared from the screen, replaced by a hazy cloud of distorted acoustical returns.

“Okay, Helm, slow us down to twenty. Wepps, fire at will.”

Moments later, the Oregon unleashed her second torpedo, and the range was so close that the Akula didn’t have a chance. She was racing along the bottom, eking everything she could out of her machinery in hopes of reaching the edge of the continental shelf. The cacophony of sonar pings the Oregon was throwing into the sea would overwhelm the Akula’s displays should she try to go active herself.

They all saw it simultaneously. On the sonar screen they could see their torpedo racing in the Akula’s wake when the sub came to a stop in a little less than half her length.

Hanley reacted fastest of any of them. “Wepps, autodestruct now!”

Mark peeled his gaze from the monitor and typed in the appropriate command. The torpedo was so deep that there wasn’t even a ripple on the surface when it exploded less than five hundred yards from its target.

“What happened?” Eric asked.

“She hit something, a seamount of some kind, a boulder. Something,” Max posited. “Back off the engines so we can listen on passive.”

“Why’d you blow our torpedo?”

“Because when and if that sub is ever found, the investigators will conclude, rightly, that this was an accident. No need to advertise that they were being chased when they did a nosedive into the seafloor.”

By the time the ship slowed enough for the sensitive microphones to be deployed, the Akula was as silent as the grave.

Max roused himself. “Helm, get us back to the wreck ASAP.” He shot a glance at the battered Timex on his wrist. “Their torps would have hit eight minutes ago. The Chairman and the others are on borrowed time.”

He wouldn’t let himself think about the more likely scenario that they were all dead.