Chapter Fourteen
Jake descended into the control room. He glanced at Scott McKenzie who was seated at the ship’s control panel with his index fingers holding up silvery knobs.
“How’s our weight?” Jake asked.
“I drained the hovering tanks. I’m using high-pressure air to blow the missile compensation tanks dry now. We might be too light to submerge.”
“That’s okay. Better light than heavy for this dive.”
Jake looked around the control room. Except for Bass and Gant who remained in the engine room, the entire hijack team had assembled in the control room. Six commandos, McKenzie, and the Frenchman faced him.
“Nicely done, Mister Slate,” Renard said. “The ship is yours.”
Jake appreciated the vote of confidence, but he was wary. He didn’t trust the hijackers, and the Colorado was still surfaced and vulnerable.
“Mister Slate,” Kao said while removing his eye from the periscope. “We await your instructions.”
“Start by taking off your masks and sunglasses,” Jake said. “The crew is gone. It’s just us now.”
*
As the tip of the North American Air Defense’s sword, Air Force Major Jeffrey Layne considered himself an elite pilot. Sitting in a cockpit on a runway at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, he prepared for a mission he could not believe real.
As the single Pratt and Whitney F100-PW-229 turbofan engine hummed to speed, Layne double-checked the straps that held him in the reclined pilot seat of his F-16 Fighting Falcon.
Minutes later, his helmet pressed into his headrest as the jet accelerated to Mach 2 over the eastern seaboard. A radio message confirmed that his partner, Air Force Captain Jerry Mansen, had taken position behind him.
Layne tried to imagine an enemy shrewd enough to steal a Trident. He wondered if such an enemy had the foresight to bring shoulder-launched anti-air missiles to turn a turkey-shoot into a battle.
*
Standing by a nautical chart, Jake matched the coordinates calculated by the Colorado’s twin gyroscopic navigators against the visual data Renard had gleaned from landmarks. The coordinates from both sources agreed that charted water depth was fifteen fathoms - ninety feet.
“Mister Slate,” Renard said, “you mentioned that the ship’s height from keel to sail is sixty-eight feet?”
“That gives us twenty-two feet of gravy when we dive.”
“Mon Dieu!” Renard said. “I know you planned for a shallow dive, but I thought that was for an emergency. We’ve escaped without notice. Surely you can wait.”
“We’re hours from the continental shelf,” Jake said. “I don’t want to wait.”
“But even ten more feet could make the difference between grounding or not,” Renard said.
“I don’t like being surfaced, even in the dark. And the sun will rise before we reach the shelf. Scraping bottom is a risk I’m willing to take to get this pig under. I’ve ordered Bass to slow the ship in case we hit.”
“I trust that this ship is strong and that the bottom is soft, mon ami,” the Frenchman said.
“Everyone hold on,” Jake said. “McKenzie, submerge the ship.”
Jake heard clicks as McKenzie flipped six switches upward. The ship’s control panel, a complex array of knobs and switches that manipulated the submarine’s tanks, trim pumps, and ballast, backlit McKenzie with its glowing red indication lights. Pale skinned, McKenzie appeared ghastly as the control panel’s blackness swallowed him.
“Vents are open,” McKenzie said.
Jake glued his eyeball to the periscope lens and watched spray from the forward ballast tank dance in the moonlight as water spurted from the ballast tank vents. He turned and watched the after tanks vent.
The ocean crawled up the back of the ship.
*
Major Jeffrey Layne flew over an estimated position of the Colorado. In the receding morning darkness, he relied upon the Fighting Falcon’s advanced Hughes APG-68 radar to snap up the Colorado’s sail.
On the fourth southward pass, Layne’s heads-up display indicated that the radar had snagged a target. With civilian craft dotting the Jacksonville shipping areas, Layne needed a visual verification before launching weapons. He alerted Mansen, his wingman.
“Jerry, I’ve got something. Bearing one-niner-six.”
“I just got it, too.”
“Let’s check it out.”
As he dived and leveled, Major Layne examined the panorama below his cockpit. He felt so close to the ocean that he could taste salt water.
Aided by night vision, he picked up the tiny rectangular form of the Colorado’s semi-submerged sail and made out the slim appendage of the periscope.
“Jerry! Bearing two-zero-one.”
“I see it. Doesn’t look right, though. Something’s out of whack.”
Layne closed within one mile of the Colorado and examined its silhouette. Everything but the highest piece of the Colorado was hidden below the surface of the Atlantic. He saw only the sail.
“That’s him,” Layne said.
“We can’t hit his rudder or screw. What do we do?”
“Let’s hit the sail. It’s all we’ve got. Follow me in!”
Layne angled his Fighting Falcon and let loose twenty-millimeter rounds.
Bullets cut through the Colorado’s left fairwater plane and riveted a skew line up the sail. Layne flew over the Trident and heard Mansen strafing the Colorado behind him.
“Jerry, open range and come about behind me. We’re going to get some AMRAAMs off and make this count.”
*
Chainsaw gunfire hammered through the control room.
“What the fuck was that?” McKenzie asked.
Jake recognized the high-speed repetition of bullets ricocheting through the Colorado’s sail as jet engines roared overhead.
“We’re under attack by aircraft! Flood hovering tanks completely, flood fifty grand into both missile compensation tanks. Flood the centerline tank. Get this pig under!”
“I don’t have enough hands,” McKenzie said.
“I’ll help,” Jake said. “Mister Renard, finish lowering the scope. Everyone else hold on!”
Jake joined McKenzie at the ship’s control panel.
“Ten degrees down on the stern planes,” Jake said.
Tiger pushed his yoke toward the ground, activating an electro-hydraulic signal to the stern plane’s hydraulic ram. At the Colorado’s tail, the stern planes tilted up ten degrees to drive the nose down.
Jake heard Kao call off numbers from the depth gauge.
“Eighty feet, eighty-five, ninety-”
A scraping noise filled the room as the bow hit the ocean floor.
Jake’s stomach sank as the Colorado rebounded to the surface.
Major Layne focused on the GEC Avionics hologram Heads-Up Display that cut the darkness outside his F-16. The HUD told him that the Fighting Falcon’s radar had shifted from search to fire control mode. He held missile lock on the sail and flipped a plastic guard from his trigger.
Layne’s lungs froze as the Advanced Medium Range Anti-Air Missile detached from under his left wing. White flame sliced the dawn. Accelerating to Mach 4, the missile raced through half of its four-mile journey in less than three seconds.
The F-16’s radar beacon shut off as the weapon’s seeker awoke. The AIM-120 AMRAAM missile’s radar illuminated the Colorado’s sail. During the end of its flight, the AMRAAM computed the millisecond at which to detonate.
A wall of compressed air from the forty-eight-pound warhead smacked the vertical sail and dented it inward. A ring of slicing metal traced a cone through the Colorado’s right fairwater plane.
As waterlogged heaviness reclaimed the Colorado, Layne watched it submerge with the outer third of its sheared right fairwater plane tumbling along the hull. He cursed as his second AMRAAM overshot the sinking target and splashed into the water.
Jake bent backwards over the ship’s control panel. The AMRAAM explosion rang in his head, and his back felt bruised. He pushed himself upright and listened for jet engines but heard no trace of aircraft overhead.
He forced a yawn to pop his ears and discerned a rumbling noise. The Colorado tilled the sea with its bow and ground to a stop.
“We’re on the bottom,” Jake said. “We’re safe for the moment, but we’ve got to get out of here.”
He looked to Tiger, who offered an unreadable grin. Jake found the husky man’s apparent lack of fear disturbing, especially when he himself was terrified.
“We’re rising!” McKenzie said.
Jake felt the Colorado settle at a two-degree down angle.
“We’re light aft,” he said. “Pump from forward to after trim tanks. I don’t want our rudder exposed.”
McKenzie flipped switches that directed water between internal tanks. The downward angle leveled at minus half a degree.
“You have depth control?” Jake asked.
“I think so,” McKenzie said.
“Make your depth eighty-two feet,” Jake said.
“We’re dropping, but not too bad. I think I can level us off,” McKenzie said.
“Nice job,” Jake said. “I’m speeding us up to get out of here. We’ll make fifteen knots until we get ten feet of water under us, then we’ll punch it into high gear.”
Jake walked behind the periscopes and sank into a Naugahyde captain’s chair. Renard approached him.
“I know you’re tired,” Renard said, “but we should examine the speed to noise tradeoff.”
“Do I need to remind you about geometry?” Jake asked. “Every knot of speed increases the area of uncertainty geometrically for whoever’s looking for us. We need speed.”
“You know this ship well, but I would be wary of the flow noise at fifteen knots given the damage to our sail. We do not know how bad the damage is or how it will affect our flow noise.”
“Fifteen knots is optimal,” Jake said.
“How so?”
“With the damage to the sail, I’m making a judgment call. You have a better idea?”
“No, I do not, but I need a cigarette. Do you have my Marlboros?”
Jake laughed.
“Yeah, I’ll get them. And as long as I’m up, I’ll fire up sonar to see who’s in this ocean with us.”
*
As Major Layne flew back to Tyndall, a P-3 Orion, a high endurance aircraft, dropped its first sonobuoy three miles behind the Colorado.
The P-3 had been rushed into the sky from Naval Air Station Jacksonville. Double checks were skipped, and the aircraft was loaded with a quarter of its nominal sonobuoy and fuel load. The haste proved wise as the P-3 reached the Colorado just after it submerged.
Below the Orion, a cylinder cut through the waves and bobbed back to the surface. A radio antenna sent a signal to the Orion telling its crew that the sonobuoy had awoken.
The tethered hydrophone absorbed sound. It heard the crackle of a shrimp bed, the drone of the Orion’s propeller blades, and the ninety-five-point-three-hertz frequency tonal of the Colorado’s reactor coolant pumps.