Silent Waters

Chapter 47

The battery charge was getting very low because of the life support systems and the sonar. Sonar by itself was a power hog. McCann had to keep it operating at full capacity, and the system’s seawater pumps, required to cool its computers, were an awful power drain.

He looked at the display that showed the power on the grid from the ship’s turbine generators.

“Come on, Amy. Fire that baby up.”

Another few minutes and they’d be dead in the water.

“Come on…”

The display started to come alive.

“You’re doing it, Amy,” he said into the mouthpiece.

She had the auxiliary engine running. McCann watched the battery charge gauge jump.

“Yeah, baby,” Brody shouted. “She’s real good, sir. We’ve got to get us one like her on board for the next patrol.”

“Where are you, Amy? Get up here,” McCann said into the mike.

“I’m coming. I’m coming,” she shot back. “Will you please stop being so bossy?”

“Conn? Sonar,” Brody shouted. “Multiple torpedoes in the water. Bearing on us. I read four fish, Skipper.”

“What’s the range gate?”

“Prolonged pinging, sir. Lead torpedo is maybe six thousand yards.”

He’d known it was just a matter of time. They hadn’t gotten their message off soon enough. McCann left the conn and ducked into Sonar, looking briefly over Brody’s shoulder and checking the speed and coordinates.

They had only minutes.

Amy burst into the control room as McCann stepped back onto the conn. She was greasy and dirty and had blood stains on her clothing, and McCann thought he’d never seen a more beautiful woman. He watched her come to a halt and stare at the bodies of Cav and Dunbar, lying by the navigation panels where he’d dragged them.

Considering what was going on right now, McCann shouldn’t have felt so defensive. But he felt the urgent need to explain everything to her. An urge brought on by the stark uncertainty of whether or not they’d get out of here alive.

He went to her. “Here’s the ‘cleanup’ you heard about. They were dead when I got up here.”

Amy looked away, obviously accepting his words. “I’m reporting for duty, Skipper. What else do you want me to do?”

He smiled. “I’m going to put you at the helm.”

“Driving the sub?” she asked, her eyes rounding. “I can’t do that.”

“It’s not much different than driving a car. I’ll show you.” He took her by the arm and seated her, starting to show her some of the controls.

“Conn? Sonar. Range gate dropping,” Brody told him.

McCann knew he had no ability to fire off counter measures that would draw the fire of the torpedoes. There was no running away from these fish, either, not with the reactor shut down.

“How far do you figure, Brody?” The sonar man could judge the distance of the torpedo by the time between active sonar pings. The shorter the intervals between pings, the closer the torpedo.

“Range is about three thousand yards,” Brody responded.

They were a sitting duck, fat and passive while a death blow drew nearer.

“No,” McCann muttered. “There is one thing we can do.”

He leaned over Amy.

“Heads up, Brody,” he shouted. “You too, Amy. Emergency blow, fore and aft. We’re taking her up. Amy, pull back on the yoke and try to keep it at a twenty-degree up bubble.”

Amy looked over her shoulder at him, nervously. He gave her a reassuring nod. If this worked, he might get up above the ceiling setting of the weapons… if they had them programmed for it. And even if they were hit, if they could make it to the surface, McCann thought he could somehow save Amy’s and Brody’s lives. A very big somehow.

McCann slammed two steel levers into their cradles above his head, and the sound of high pressure air displacing the water in the ballast tanks blasted in their ears. As the water was forced out of the tanks, the submarine immediately became lighter and began to rise with rapidly increasing speed. As the deck tilted upward, McCann put his hand over Amy’s and helped her keep the ship’s ascent at twenty degrees.

The numbers on the depth indicator flickered as the ship shot up from the depths. The speed indicator read fifteen knots. Eighteen knots. Twenty-one knots.

Over the roar of the emergency blow, McCann could hear Brody calling out the distance of the lead torpedo on their tail. The depth indicator showed three hundred feet to the surface. Two-fifty. Two hundred. He hoped there were no surface vessels above. There were going to burst up through the surface like a rocket.

“Continuous ramp wave on the lead fish.”

The torpedo now had a precise fix on the sub’s location. McCann glanced once more at the depth indicator. One hundred feet.

They weren’t going to make it, he thought, and then three successive explosions rocked Hartford.