Sea of Death

Twenty-one

Unbeknownst to the crews of the two Romeoclass submarines another submerged warship was present in the open waters due south of Takara Bay. Silently loitering at a depth of seven hundred and fifty feet, she was approximately the same length as the Romeos but with double their displacement and a vastly more modern design.

The Nadashio was the latest Yuushio-class submarine belonging to the Japanese Maritime SelfDefense Force. It sported a sleek, rounded, teardrop-style hull in the manner of the newest US Navy attack boats, on which it was patterned. Unlike its American counterparts, however, the Nadashio was of double-hull construction, its externally framed pressure hull formed from hightensile NS-90 steel. This gave the ships of the Yuushio class an unprecedented diving depth of over 1,000 feet.

Packed within the Nadashio’s inner hull was the very best Japanese technology. The powerful electric motor, designed by Fuji, could produce underwater speeds of up to twenty knots. The ZQQ-4 passive sonar array occupied the entire bow, with three circular transducers stacked one above the other. This served to reduce the vertical beam of the sonar and to drastically reduce the signal-tonoise ratio, allowing for unparalleled detection capabilities.

Directly tied into this array was an advanced weapons-control system designed by Hitachi.

Nowhere was the level of the Nadashio’s hightech design more apparent than in its combined control-and-attack center. Set immediately abaft the six forward torpedo tubes, this allimportant compartment was filled with flashing digital readouts and glowing computer screens. Highly automated, the attack center was manned by only three sailors and a single officer. Two of these highly trained enlisted men now sat before a large attack screen on which was projected a complete readout of the sub’s vital engineering functions, along with a constantly updated, three-dimensional bathymetric chart of the surrounding waters. In place of the standard hydraulically powered control columns, each technician had a heavy plastic joystick mounted into the console before him. As was the case on the latest generation of fly-by-wire jet fighters, the slightest movement of this device controlled the sub’s depth, bearing, and speed, and could launch its weapons.

Seated between these hightech helmsmen, securely harnessed into a high-backed leather command chair of his own, was the Nadashio’s present CO, Captain Osami Nagano. The thirty-seven-year-old Annapolis graduate had his gaze centered on the attack screen, which showed their position and that of their two targets. The Nadashio was repre sented as a flashing blue star, lying motionless in the chart’s southeastern quadrant, while the arrows corresponding to the two Romeos were red, one closely following the other, both headed due south.

“So that appears to bethe extent of the underwater flotilla we’ve been tasked to eliminate,” Nagano observed almost nonchalantly.

“Very well, target them both, and let’s be done with it.”

As the technicians he sat between went to work on their keyboards, Nagano sat back, his eyes still locked on the attack screen. By merely shifting his line of sight to the left-hand portion of the screen, he could read their exact depth, and determine precisely how much charge they had left in the batteries.

This was certainly more convenient than the latest American subs he had sailed on. They still relied on outdated monitoring systems whose level of technology was more suited to the 1970’s.

Nagano often found himself wishing he could show off his current command to his contemporaries in the US Navy. How very proud he was of the advanced hardware that surrounded him! His schoolmates back at Annapolis would be amazed by the Nadashio’s futuristic design; it was years ahead of any comparable American vessel, Though rich in tradition, the US Navy put too much emphasis on wasteful backup systems and old-fashioned, manually powered valves and switches. Not only did their cluttered bureaucracy keep new equipment from being introduced, their leaders lacked the foresight to break from the past and try something radically different.

Yuushio-class warships were designed totally around the computer. Whereas Americans were reluctant to put their complete trust in a machine, the Japanese had long ago learned to rely on and value automation. The Nadashio was living proof of the superiority of the Japanese way of life.

“We have a solution for both targets. Captain,” the senior technician seated to his right reported.

Nagano hastily surveyed the attack screen to recheck the positions of both Romeoclass submarines before delivering his next instructions.

“Prepare to fire torpedoes one and two at the lead boat, then three and four at the one that follows.”

The senior technician efficiently entered this request into his keyboard and responded.

“Firing solutions are confirmed, sir. Tubes are flooded, outer doors open.”

“Fire one and two!” ordered Nagano firmly.

In response to this command, the senior technician slid the cover plate off the top of his joystick and depressed the red button that was hidden inside twice.

“Firing one… firing two,” he matter-of-factly said.

The deck below them shuddered twice, as a powerful blast of compressed air sent the torpedoes on their way.

“Fire three and four!” instructed Nagano.

The senior technician once more pressed the red button inside the top of his joystick.

“Firing three… firing four,” he said.

Again the deck trembled, and as Nagano noted the exact time of this launch, he addressed the young technician seated to his left.

“This is an historic moment, Hiroshi. Your first cruise with us is turning out to be an interesting one, isn’t it, lad?”

“That it is, sir,” replied the wide-eyed sailor.

“Well, relax and enjoy the show,” Nagano added ashe pointed toward the four flashing white dots representing the torpedoes, now visible on the screen directly in front of the Nadashio.

“Because as Toshiki here can attest, we don’t see real action like this very often.”

As Jaffers began his welldeserved rest, Seaman Second Class Jed Potters found himself assigned to be his replacement. This was a great responsibility, and Potters somewhat nervously settled himself in behind the relatively unfamiliar console and followed the instructions Jaffers had left with him.

No stranger to the workings of the Hawkbill’s sonar. Potters found the Bokken’s sensor array simply archaic. It fit in perfectly with the rest of the sub’s antique operational systems, though they had proved their ruggedness during the recent depthcharge attack.

The fair-skinned, Floridian tried hard to forget about that terrifying bombardment ashe scanned the waters surrounding them with the boat’s hullmounted hydrophones. Jaffers had emphasized the importance of monitoring the status of the other Romeoclass sub they were following. It was extremely important that they remain silently tucked away in this vessel’s sound-absorbent baffles, and it was up to Potters to inform the OOD the second he sensed a course change.

His headphones presently conveyed a constant, muted throbbing that was emanating from the other Romeo’s batterypowered electric motor. Potters had been instructed to readjust the hydrophones every couple of minutes, to listen for the approach of any other vessels that might be in the area. Yet this sweep was only of secondary importance.

His primary responsibility remained the other Romeo.

Because his knowledge of the Fenik array was extremely limited. Potters didn’t dare attempt to experiment with its various dials and switches. He was content to concentrate his attention solely on the unit’s passive capabilities, which in reality was much like listening to the input from an underwater microphone.

The monotonous throbbing tones of the vessel they followed were enough to put a fellow to sleep, and Potters looked forward to his occasional sweeps of the surrounding seas. It was during one of these impromptu scans that an unusual buzzing sound caught his attention. Barely audible at first, it continually intensified, until it dawned on the startled sonarman that he had heard a similar racket before, while listening to a tape at sonar school.

“Captain …” Potters pressed the right headphone up against his car.

“I believe I’m picking up the sound of high-speed screws. I think it might be coming from a torpedo.”

This tentative warning brought an immediate response from the two senior officers who had been gathered around the nearby chart table. As Chris Slaughter looked up from the bathymetric chart he had been immersed in. Bill Brown rushed over to sonar and put on a set of auxiliary headphones. It took the veteran a couple of seconds to sort out the variety of sounds now streaming into his cars.

And though it had been years since he had last heard the characteristic buzzing whine of an approaching torpedo, this was a sound a submariner never forgot.

“They’re torpedoes, allright!” warned Brown ashe searched the console to determine which portion of the sea this scan was coming from.

“I count two fish, coming in on bearing one-three-zero, maximum range.”

There was atension in Chris Slaughter’s voice ashe loudly cried out.

“Right full rudder! Flank speed!”

A similar scene was taking place aboard the Katana, where Saigo Yoshino coolly monitored the unexpected attack from the boat’s sonar console.

“There are two of them, Captain, on bearing one-three-zero.”

Satsugai Okura stood calmly beside his seated helmsman.

“So, Mikio, this was a clever ambush all along,” observed Okura, who was dressed in a white martial-arts robe.

“I should have expected as much.

Initiate evasive maneuvers! We shall see our way out of this trap, then take the offensive ourselves!”

“Fish continue to close!” informed Bill Brown, who remained at sonar, frantically attempting to make some sort of sense out of the console.

“Though I still can’t give you an exact range.”

The deck was canted over sharply to the right, and Slaughter tightly gripped an overhead support bar ashe answered.

“Hang in there. Bill. At last word, Jaffers is on his way back to spell you.”

“Without a decoy or any noisemakers on board, how are we going to shake those torpedoes. Skipper?”

asked a very concerned Benjamin Kram.

Slaughter looked over at his XO and somberly shook his head.

“I guess all we can do is try to lose them with a knuckle in the water.”

“Mr. Foard!” he added to the helmsman.

“Bring us up crisply to six-five feet. Then take us back down to maximum depth, full power!”

As the helmsman pulled back on his control column, the deck angled sharply upward. An assortment of loose debris went sliding up against the aft bulkhead, where a single black sailor could be seen struggling to make his way through the hatch.

“Jesus!” exclaimed Jaffers, ashe fought the upward slope of the deck, like a mountaineer in the midst of a steep ascent.

“I leave you guys alone for a couple of minutes, and just look at the mess you get us into!”

Meanwhile the Katana washeaded in the opposite direction, while negotiating a series of extreme underwater turns. Okura held onto the back of Chief Mikio’s chair, watching as the muscular helmsman expertly rotated the control column from side to side. This unorthodox tactic left an agitated surge of confusing turbulence in their wake, and it soon proved effective.

“We’ve lost one of the torpedoes, Captain!”

Saigo called out from sonar.

“As we shall lose shortly the other,” replied Okura confidently.

“Mikio, bring us around hard to course one-three-zero.”

“But, Captain, such a bearing will lead us right into the path of our attacker!” countered the confused helmsman.

“Precisely, Chief,” said Okura, whose eyes glistened ashe added.

“Every samurai knows that the only way to successfully ward off an attack is to initiate one. And we shall do just that with a fourshot salvo on my command!”

Aboard the Bokken, all eyes were on the depth gauge that continued to drop until the seventy-foot level was passed. This prompted Chris Slaughter to firmly order.

“That’s enough, Mr. Foard. Now take us down, like a bat out of hell!”

With an intense effort, Foard pushed forward on his control column, and the sub momentarily leveled out before beginning a steeply inclined dive into the depths from which they had just ascended.

A bevy of loose equipment slid across the deck and smashed into the forward bulkhead, and for those not constrained by seatbelts, it was an effort merely to remain standing. These men included Bill Brown, who held onto the side of the sonar console for dear life. Immediately beside him, Jaffers had just secured himself to his chair and already had his headphones on.

“The fish are coming down with us,” he breathlessly observed.

“Range is four thousand yards and closing.”

“How deep are we going. Skipper?” asked Benjamin Kram from his position beside the chart table.

“The chart says we’ve got nine hundred feet before we hit bottom,” replied Slaughter.

“And that’s where I’d like to leave those fish.”

“But can this old lady make it?” added Kram.

Slaughter answered without taking his eyes off the depth gauge.

“I guess we’re all gonna learn the answer to that question soon enough, XO.”

It wasn’t retreat that Satsugai Okura had in mind ashe addressed his sonar operator.

“Recheck that firing solution, Saigo.”

The Katana angled over hard to port, like a jet fighter in a dogfight, and Saigo found himself thrown up against the right portion of his harness.

“Firing solution confirmed. Captain,” he managed, while grasping the canvas belt.

Having only the back of the helmsman’s chair to keep him balanced, Okura ordered.

“Fire one, two, three, and four!”

Inside the hightech environs of the Nadashio’s 331 attack center, the Katana’s torpedoes showed up on the elevated screen as four miniscule white dots in the process of leaving the lead Romeo.

“Four high-speed torpedoes headed our way, Captain!” reported the junior technician unnecessarily.

Osami Nagano watched as this tightly grouped salvo turned to the southeast and calmly replied.

“So I see, Hiroshi. Prepare to launch mobile submarine simulator and initiate quick-stop procedure.”

With alightning-quick flurry, the young sailor addressed his keyboard, and seconds later he responded.

“Decoy ready to launch, sir.”

“Launch decoy!” ordered Nagano.

It was the senior technician who depressed the red button recessed into the top of his joystick, and the entire deck shuddered. On the attack screen, a white dot appeared beside the blue star, representing the Nadashio. As the dot began flashing and headed to the northeast, the junior technician spoke out clearly.

“Captain, the decoy is emitting.”

“All stop!” instructed Nagano.

“Sound a condition of ultra quiet throughout the ship. For all effective purposes, the Nadashio will now become invisible.”

With no hightech attack screen to show them their position in the undersea battlefield, the crew of the Bokken depended upon constant updates from their senior sonarman.

“Torpedo range is now down to two-thousand yards,” said Jaffers, whose strong voice did not waver.

Chris Slaughter listened to this report, while fighting back the forward slope of the deck from his position behind the helm. The depth gauge had just passed the six-hundred-and-fifty-foot mark, and as they continued their descent, the hull welds began to creak.

“I don’t know what’s going to get to us first, sir,” remarked the tense helmsman ashe continued to push down on his control column, “this depth or those torpedoes.”

Slaughter’s reply was curt and to the point.

“I’d much rather die trying, Mr. Foard. After all, that’s what life is all about.”

In the Bokken’s forward torpedo room, the loudly creaking hull ominously moaned, and those in the compartment now had something besides the torpedoes to be concerned about. Tightly holding onto the torpedo pallet to keep from tumbling forward were Pete Frystak, Adie Avila, Miriam Kromer, and the SEALs. Not having the benefit of Jaffer’s constant updates, they could only visualize the worst, and of those present. Old Dog appeared closest to losing it.

“This rust bucket’s gonna split wide open!” observed the frightened commando, as the deck violently shook beneath them.

“Easy son,” advised Pete Frystak.

“These boats are built incredibly strong. She’ll make it, sure enough.”

A small trickle of water began streaming from the edge of the brass cap of the number two torpedo tube. Adie Avila was the first to notice it.

“Pete,” he said as calmly as possible, “I think we could have a problem with—” His words were cut short by aloud bang, as the cap sprung open and a torrent of seawater gushed in.

“We’ve got to cap her or we’re goners!” exclaimed Pete Frystak.

This was all the SEALs had to hear to charge into action. Cajun was the first to let loose of the pallet and attempt to reach the ruptured cap. The slippery deck caused him to lose his footing, and he sprawled on his backside. Yet because of the steep angle caused by the sub’s descent, he slid forward to the very point he’d been trying to reach.

Both Warlock and Traveler made the best of his example; they merely sat down on the wet deck and allowed gravity to pull them forward.

This put the three soaked SEALs immediately beside the open cap. Seawater was pouring in as if from a high-pressure fire hose, and it was apparent that it would take a combined effort to stem the flow.

“Damn it, Old Dog!” cried Warlock.

“Are you just going to stand there?”

The tall Texan’s grasp had frozen on the iron rim of the torpedo pallet ashe’d watched his teammates vainly attempt to push the cap closed. The onrushing seawater poured inside with a deafening roar, and Old Dog seriously doubted they had any hope of surviving.

“Come on, Adie!” said Pete Frystak.

“They’re going to need all the muscle they can get.”

Old Dog watched as the veteran pulled a two foot-long iron crowbar from the pallet’s tool locker. Frystak then sat down on the deck and allowed the slope to pull him to the bulkhead. His lanky assistant followed, and Old Dog briefly looked over at Miriam Kromer, who tightly gripped the pallet beside him.

“Can I help?” asked the concerned toxicologist.

There could be no hiding the fear in her eyes, and Old Dog suddenly felt ashamed of himself.

“Don’t worry, Doc,” he said with gathering confidence.

“You just hold tight, and we’ll get this whole thing over with real quick.”

He loosened his grasp, and the pull of gravity caused him to fall hard on his right side. His big body rapidly gained momentum as it hit the cold, wet deck and tumbled straight toward the bulkhead.

It proved to be Traveler who alertly intercepted him before he crashed into the steel partition headfirst.

“What kept ya’, big guy?” Traveler quizzed ashe helped Old Dog stand.

Old Dog was in no mood to answer this question.

Instead he joined the individuals gathered about the sprung cap. They had already managed to position the crowbar behind the cap’s brass head, and without waiting for an invitation. Old Dog grabbed the tool’s topmost portion. Pete Frystak also gripped it, along with Cajun.

“We’ll give it a try on the count of three,” ordered the veteran.

“Adie, you and Traveler stand by to tighten it down the second we get it closed.”

Miriam Kromer could just hear these instructions from her position beside the pallet. The water continued relentlessly pouring in, and was well over afoot deep in the compartment’s forwardmost portion. Amazed by how quickly it seemed to be accumulating, she realized that it wouldn’t belong before the whole torpedo room was completely flooded.

Her panic intensified as claustrophobia possessed her. The walls suddenly seemed to be closing in, and it was an effort merely to breathe. Once more she was carried back to her childhood, to that traumatic afternoon when she’d almost smothered beneath her collapsed bed. Yet it was the powerful voice of Pete Frystak that snapped her back to reality.

“One… two… three!”

Asher gaze focused on the men assembled around the open torpedo tube, she found herself desperately projecting her will in an effort to help them in this life-and-death struggle with the onrushing sea. The stiff crowbar they held seemed to flex under the strain of their combined pressure, and in response, the cap bit into the torrent of gushing water. Like a solid wall, the flood resisted their efforts, and a momentary stand-off ensued.

Not to be denied. Old Dog let loose a powerful war cry inspired in equal parts by fear, frustration, and willpower. An almost superhuman effort followed, the big Texan almost single-handedly utilizing the crowbar to nudge the cap forward until the now disrupted flow began wildly spraying in all directions.

Both Traveler and Adie Avila rushed in at this point to push forward on the cap, and as they redogged the tube’s fittings, the raging torrent became but a mere trickle, this opening to the sea successfully resealed.

In the Bokken’s control room, the worried crewmembers were preoccupied by a drama of a different sort.

“Torpedo range is down to nine hundred yards and closing,” said Jaffers.

The tense voice of the helmsman followed.

“Captain, we’re coming up on eight hundred feet.

Should I pull her out?”

Chris Slaughter looked at the depth gauge and icily replied.

“Hold it just a little longer, Mr. Foard.”

“Torpedo has capture!” exclaimed Jaffers.

This was all Slaughter had to hear to change his mind.

“Pull us up, Mr. Foard. Emergency ascent!”

Foard yanked back on the control column, and as the vessel’s hydroplanes bit into the surrounding water, the Bokken leveled out and began gliding upward like a lumbering jumbo jet at takeoff. It took almost a full minute for Jaffers to sort out the cacophonous mixture of sounds in their wake.

But ashe did so, he was quick to report.

“Both torpedoes just went active again. If we only had some way to further mask our signature, I think we could beat them.”

This innocent remark suddenly struck the white haired man who stood beside him.

“The bubbler!” exclaimed Bill Brown.

“We almost forgot about the masking device we’re outfitted with!”

Stanley Roth was at the alternator, doing his best to squeeze as much battery power as possible from their already vastly depleted store, when the call arrived from the control room, ordering him to engage the bubbler mechanism. He wasted no time in implementing this request.

“Hey, Orlovick!” he shouted.

“Start up that bubbler on the double. And pray it works, son, because we’ve still got two fish on our tail that don’t know the word quit.”

From his vantage point on the catwalk, Roth could see the young reactor specialist acknowledge this order with a wave and rush over to the bubbler’s compressor. This was the heart of the device, where the millions of sizzling bubbles would be created and then projected out into the surrounding waters, from the thousands of pin prick-sized holes that completely encircled the vessel’s pressure hull.

Orlovick had to get on the tip of his toes to reach the metal box in which the power switch was located. Yet when he did so, he couldn’t seem to get it started. He jiggled the switch up and down for several frustrating seconds before taking a step back and smacking the side of the switch box with the open palm of his hand. Instantly, the compressor coughed to life, and Stanley Roth smiled.

“That’s my boy,” he said to himself with a satisfied sigh ashe turned back to the alternator, to get on with the task of pulling the very last bit of power out of their badly depleted batteries.

The sounds made by the bubbler device caught Jaffers by surprise. Hissing, sizzling bubbles filled his headphones with an alien commotion that all but overshadowed any other audible signatures. For a moment, he completely forgot about the torpedoes he had been closely monitoring, and then he realized that their nerve-racking race with death was finally over.

“They’re gone!” he joyously observed.

“We lost the damn torpedoes!”

Inside the Nadashio, a celebration of a much more low-key nature was taking place. Osami Nagano appeared smugly confident ashe peered up at the elevated display screen and watched the four torpedoes the lead Romeo had shot at them head to the northeast, hot on the trail of the flashing decoy.

“If we can penetrate a US Navy carrier task force and outrun one of its Sturgeon-class subs, escaping this feeble attack is nothing for the Nadashio,” he bragged.

“Yet now we must turn our attention back to our prey. What is the exact progress of our attack?”

There was a momentary pause as the technicians addressed their keyboards. Nagano impatiently looked to his right.

“Well, Toshiki, how soon until our torpedoes hit?”

The senior technician scanned the data visible on the screen and hesitantly replied.

“I don’t understand it, Captain. Both Romeos seem to have disappeared.”

“But that’s impossible!” exclaimed Osami Nagano.

He looked at the screen to confirm this report.

The red arrows corresponding to the two Romeos were nowhere to be seen, and for the first time Nagano’s expression displayed a hint of uncertainty.

“Could our torpedoes have hit their targets?” he offered.

“Unless there’s been a major malfunction in the firecontrol feedback loop, that’s highly unlikely, sir,” answered the senior technician.

“Because I still show no indication that any of the warheads have yet detonated.”

“Then where are the two Romeos?” asked the Nadashio’s captain.

His senior technician’s only response to this was a confused shake of the head ashe furiously queried the sub’s computer in an attempt to find an answer to this perplexing situation.

A solemn, funereal atmosphere prevailed inside the Katana’s control room, where Satsugai Okura stood behind the sonar console, looking grim and dispirited.

“The torpedo continues to close, Captain,” reported Saigo heavily.

“We just can’t seem to shake it.”

“And the vessel that launched it?” quizzed Okura.

The sonarman checked his display before answering.

“It remains directly above us, sir, on the other side of the thermocline.”

Okura thoughtfully looked up to the pipe-lined ceiling and softly whispered, “If in his mind the warrior doesn’t forget one thing, that being death, he’ll never find himself caught short.”

“Excuse me, sir?” said the sonarman, who thought these barely audible remarks were meant for him.

“It was nothing that concerns you, Saigo,” responded Okura, directing his attention to the sonar console.

“How much longer until impact?”

“Two minutes at the most. Captain,” answered Saigo.

Okura squared his shoulders and inhaled deeply before speaking out loudly for all to hear.

“If it is indeed our time, we shall go as true samurai warriors.

Take us straight up, Chief Mikio! For the glory of the Emperor!”

Spiraling out of the black depths, the persistent torpedo close behind, the Katana shot upward, its V-shaped bow headed straight for the rounded underbelly of the unsuspecting Nadashio. As the Romeoclass vessel penetrated the thick layer of coldwater that had masked it from its attacker’s sensors, the torpedo attained capture. And at the exact moment its contact warhead detonated, the Katana sliced into the Nadashio’s reinforced hull, causing both vessels to instantly implode in a white-hot mass of swirling seawater.