Red storm rising - By Tom Clancy Page 0,104

fifteen degrees rudder." McCafferty was calmer now. He'd played this game before. "Come to new course one-one-zero. Sonar, I want true bearings on that torpedo."

"Aye. Torpedo bearing two-zero-six, coming port-to-starboard."

Chicago passed through two hundred feet. The boat had a twenty-degree down angle. The planesmen and most of the technicians had seatbelts to hold them in place. The officers and a few others who had to circulate around grasped at rails and stanchions to keep from falling.

"Conn, sonar. The torpedo seems to be following a circular path. Now traveling starboard-to-port, bearing one-seven-five. Still pinging, but I don't think it has us."

"Very well. Keep those reports coming." McCafferty climbed aft to the plot. "Looks like he made a bad drop."

"Could be," the navigator agreed. "But how in hell--"

"Had to be a MAD pass. The magnetic anomaly detector. Was the tape running? I didn't have him long enough for an ID." He checked the plot. They were now a mile and a half from where they'd been when the torpedo was dropped. "Sonar, tell me about the fish."

"Bearing one-nine-zero, dead aft. Still circling, seems to be going down a little. I think maybe the noisemaker drew him in and he's trying to hit it."

"All ahead two-thirds." Time to slow down, McCafferty thought. They'd cleared the initial datum point, and the aircraft's crew would need a few minutes to evaluate their attack before beginning a new search. In that time they'd be two or three miles away, below the layer, and making little noise.

"All ahead two-thirds, aye. Leveling off at eight hundred feet."

"We can start breathing again, people," McCafferty said. His own voice was not as even as he would have preferred. For the first time, he noted a few shaky hands. Just like a car wreck, he thought. You only shake after you're safe. "Left fifteen degrees rudder. Come left to two-eight-zero." If the aircraft dropped again, no sense in traveling in a straight path. But they should be fairly safe now. The whole episode, he noted, had lasted less than ten minutes.

The captain walked to the forward bulkhead and rewound the videotape, then set it up to run. It showed the periscope breaking the surface, the first quick search ... then the smoke marker. Next came the aircraft. McCafferty froze the frame.

The plane looked like a Lockheed P-3 Orion.

"That's one of ours!" the duty electrician noted. The captain stepped forward into sonar.

"The fish is fading aft, Cap'n. Probably still trying to kill the noisemaker. I think when it hit the water it circled in the wrong direction, away from us, I mean."

"What's it sound like?"

"A lot like one of our Mark-46s"--the leading sonarman shuddered--"it really did sound like a forty-six!" He rewound his own tape and set it on speaker. The screeeing sound of the twin-screw fish was enough to raise the hairs on your neck. McCafferty nodded and went back aft.

"Okay, that might have been a Norwegian P-3. Then again it might have been a Russian May. They look pretty much alike, and they have exactly the same job. Well done, people. We're going to clear the area." The captain congratulated himself on his performance. He'd just evaded his first war shot--dropped by a friendly aircraft! But he had evaded it. Not all the luck was with the other side. Or was it?

USS PHARRIS

Morris was catnapping in his bridge chair, wondering what was missing from his life. It took a few seconds to realize that he wasn't doing any paperwork, his normal afternoon pastime. He had to transmit position reports every four hours, contact reports when he had any--he hadn't yet--but the routine paper-shuffling that ate up so much of his time was a thing of the past. A pity, he thought, that it took a war to relieve one of that! He could almost imagine himself starting to enjoy it.

The convoy was still twenty miles to his southeast. Pharris was the outlying sonar picket. Her mission was to detect, localize, and engage any submarine trying to close the convoy. To do that, the frigate was alternately dashing--"sprinting"--forward at maximum speed, then drifting briefly at slower speed to allow her sonar to work with maximum efficiency. Had the convoy proceeded at twenty knots on a straight course, it would have been nearly impossible. The three columns of merchantmen were zigzagging, however, making life a little easier on all concerned. Except on the merchant sailors, for whom stationkeeping was as foreign as marching.

Morris sipped at a Coke. It was a warm afternoon