The Last Paladin: A Novel by Deutermann P. T

Author:Deutermann, P. T. [Deutermann, P. T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller, Historical, Suspense, Adventure, Mystery
ISBN: 9798212301282
Amazon: B0BSKLSZWX
Goodreads: 130270425
Publisher: Tantor and Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2012-05-22T07:00:00+00:00

23

CO

I remained on the bridge after the XO left. We only had a few hours of darkness left, although the picket submarine might risk a daylight surfacing to get that vital warning out on HF radio. Assuming he was somewhere nearby and not fifty miles away. Assuming he’d even heard all those ships. I asked for some coffee while I reviewed my decisions. The ship came right in response to course orders from Combat. Hopefully sonar would recover their passive ears as we moved away from all that badly disturbed water. I summoned the gunnery officer.

“Bat, I want you to brief the torpedo mount crew to be vigilant. If this sub surfaces to get a radio report out, things are gonna move fast. Coordinate with Combat to make sure they give a relative range and bearing to the torpedo control station the moment they get one. There won’t be time to compute a solution—just set depth for ten feet, point and shoot. Hitting something is a long shot; my objective is to spook him into either diving or maneuvering so I can get us close enough to use the three-inch or our standard bag of underwater weapons. Most of all, we need to drive him down before he can get that warning message off, okay?”

“Got it, Captain,” Bat said. “And, for what it’s worth, two fish would be better than one. One on the bearing of the radar contact, the second ten degrees ahead of that if we happen to know which way he’s moving. That way he has to decide which way to turn—hell, we might even hit him.”

“Our surfaced-launched torpedoes are not famous for hitting anything,” I reminded him.

“That was the Mark fourteen, sir; these are the Mark fifteens. We tag him with one of these, all his earthly troubles will be over.”

“Fire two then,” I said. “Keep one in reserve in case we run into a Japanese battleship.”

He grinned and left the bridge.

Then came more waiting. The ship was buttoned up, which meant that belowdecks they were sweltering. Hell, above decks we were sweltering. The ship was moving through the water but not fast enough to raise a cooling breeze. Above the bridge, I could hear a periodic metallic squeak as the radar antenna cranked through its search cycle. Gotta get some grease up there, I thought. I was hungry but knew food wouldn’t be available until GQ was relaxed. If I was hungry, the crew was probably hungrier, but this was no time to get distracted.

More and more I’d begun to appreciate Eeep’s fascination with the passive sonar approach to catching one of these bastards. A destroyer pinging away continuously without knowing if there was even anything out there was mostly creating a beacon for a listening sub who might want to try his luck. The rule of thumb for counter-detection of radar was almost two to one: someone scanning the electronic spectrum could detect a radar transmission farther than the radar could detect the listener. Why? The signal only had to go half as far.

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