Scorpion in the Sea

SEVENTY

The Captain sipped his tea, not tasting it, hardly feeling it in his mouth. His eyes were intent on the depth gauge. He held his face immobile, while trying to still the seething tension in his stomach. He watched the depth gauge as the Musaid directed the planesmen into a smooth level transition at 125 meters. The pinging sound from above was grating on everybody’s nerves, the incessant pinging physical evidence of their enemy’s acoustic energy field advancing through the black depths, probing for them, reaching out to touch just once the steel hull of the submarine that was now slipping south a bare fifty feet off the ocean floor. The depth was not extreme, but neither was it comforting. The old hull made occasional soft popping sounds, and the compression mist was beginning to form around the overhead of the control compartment.

“Sir,” announced the sonarman from his console. “Coral Sea’s doppler has changed.”

“What?! Are you certain?”

The Captain threw the mug of tea into the trash can as he moved quickly to the sonar console.

“Sir. Yes. It is certain. The propulsion noises are about the same, perhaps louder. Screwbeats are up, too. But the doppler line has changed. He is moving away from us. It is certain.”

The Captain’s face tightened. The mission was dissolving in his face. He had one option left.

“Attack director, set tubes three, four, five, and six to slow speed, long range. Prepare to fire on bearing only. We will make a pursuit shot.”

The weapons officer hastily entered the settings. The “slow” speed for the big, Russian torpedoes was thirty five knots, but the twenty knot speed differential allowed them to run for almost twenty miles. They still had no accurate range information on the carrier, but they had a chance of a hit if they fired now and let the big fish rush down the bearing as the carrier hauled away to the east, transmitting a clear beacon of sound back to the submarine’s sonar and the torpedoes’ own guidance systems.

“Torpedoes are set; tubes are ready, Sir!”

“Very we—”

The Captain’s order was interrupted by the sudden rattling, buzzing noise of the destroyer’s torpedo decoy noisemakers. It was a sound none of them had ever heard, including the Captain. The Deputy panicked.

“Torpedo!” he yelled. “They have fired a torpedo at us!”

“Silence, you fool,” yelled the Captain, whirling on him. “That’s not a torpedo! Sonar, quickly, what is the bearing?”

“Sir,” shouted the sonarman. “The bearing is coincident with the destroyer.”

“Steady bearing!” croaked the Deputy, his fingers in his mouth. “It comes straight for us!”

The Deputy was clearly unnerved, and the Captain could see that the Control room crew’s composure was shaken by the loud buzzing noise erupting over the speaker. The speaker! He reached up and turned it off. The buzzing noise stopped, and he leaned down again to look at the trace on the sonar. It was broadband noise, loud, deliberate. But definitely not a torpedo. He had heard the sound of American destroyers’ electric torpedoes at the Soviet ASW school. They sounded like an electric drill, but nothing like this. He put his hand on the sonarman’s shoulder to steady him, and was about to order the release of the pursuit torpedoes when the depth charge went off.

The underwater blast was huge, hammering the submarine violently, knocking all the lights out for an instant as switches were dislodged, and producing a cloud of dust and small debris in the control room. Several men screamed in panic when it hit, only to look around sheepishly once it was over. The only real casualty was the sonarman, who was disabled, his ears ruined by the huge audio overload, his face in tears from the pain. The chief sonarman pulled him off the console at once and took the phones himself. At the diving planes, the Musaid held onto the shoulders of both planesmen, urgently coaching them to hold the depth level.

The sonar showed a massive blur of amber light to the east of them as the depth charge plume broke the surface and generated yet more noise into the water. The Deputy was yelling again.

“It was a torpedo! It was a torpedo! It hit the bottom instead. We are—”

He was silenced by a wicked, backhanded slap to the face from the Captain, the force of which sent the Deputy off his chair and sprawling onto the deckplates. The Captain towered over him amidst the confusion in the control room.

“Control yourself, or I will put you in a tube and fire you into the sea! That was a depth charge, you idiot. The old destroyer carries depth charges. Her torpedoes cannot work in shallow water.”

He straightened up, his face dark with rage.

“But mine can. Attack director, verify the settings on the pursuit torpedoes. Musaid, get damage reports from engineering!”

“Settings verified. The system is in order!” yelled the weapons officer.

“Fire tubes three, four, five and six in pursuit mode, on channel one fire control data. Prepare to fire tubes one and two on wire guidance. This destroyer needs to die!”

The submarine jolted once, twice, and twice more as the fish were fired by water impulse into the sea. The Captain reached up and turned the sonar audio speaker back on. Above the buzzing decoy noise everyone in the control room immediately heard the harmonic whine of steam turbines spinning up as the torpedoes came alive instantly, surging forward and up towards the surface as the guidance systems took control, turning left in great arcs to the bearing of the target, the carrier to the east.

The giant steam fish were not stealth devices, which was why submariners called them screamers. Once fired, they broadcast approaching death in a howling whine to anything listening in their path. Four thousand pounds going at nearly forty miles per hour, they were capable of smashing a ship even without their one ton warheads.

“Bearing to the carrier!” barked the Captain, crouching over at the sonar console. The plot was forgotten now.

“Sir. Bearing is 095. Fish appear to be in pursuit; no circle runners,” reported the chief.

The young sonarman with the best ears, what had been the best ears, huddled next to the console, rocking back and forth on his haunches. A medic had been summoned to give him demerol against the pain shrieking in his head.

“Bearing to the destroyer. Quickly!”

“Sir, the bearing is 080, but changing.”

“Keep that bearing data on channel two. Attack director, prepare to fire tubes one and two on wire guidance, data on channel two! We will wait until he steadies.”