The Silent Service: Virginia Class by H. Jay Riker

Author:H. Jay Riker [Riker, H. Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: aVe4EvA
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Published: 2011-06-20T16:07:10+00:00

Tuesday, 6 June 2006

Control Room, USS Virginia South of Oluanpi Taiwan 0858 hours, Zulu −9

“Think they’re here yet?” Jorgensen asked.

“They’re SEALs,” Garrett replied. “They’re here. The problem is finding them in an invisible needle in a very large haystack.”

Virginia had made good time coming south from her too-brief stopover in Japan. After taking on board additional supplies—including fresh fruit and vegetables for the galley and more frozen food to replace that lost when the freezer had gone tits-up—they’d continued south, rounding the southern tip of Taiwan to reach the spot specified in their orders. They were cruising slowly now at one hundred feet, waiting to make contact with the SEAL element designated Trident.

213

“So . . . what do we do? Hang out a ‘welcome’ sign?”

“Much as I hate to say it, we wait another minute...and then we go active.”

Jorgensen made a face, and Garrett could sympathize. Submariners employed two distinct forms of sonar, their principal means of sensing what was in the ocean around them. Passive sonar was the act of listening. Most things moving around in the ocean were noisy, to one degree or another, and Virginia’s sensitive electronic ears could pick up a tremendous amount of information just by paying attention.

Active sonar meant sending out a loud, sonic chirp— the sound equivalent of radar—and collecting the reflected sound waves when they bounced back from a target. Active sonar was far more informative than pas-sive—especially when your target was another submarine designed to be as stealthily quiet as possible.

But going active also meant broadcasting your existence and your exact position to every passive listener in the area, and that was something that submariners tended to regard as a decidedly unnatural act—kind of like a burglar shouting “Anybody home?” as he crawled in through the window.

Garrett was all too aware that this region south of Taiwan had recently been a combat zone. Three years ago, he’d brought the Seawolf into these waters, and taken on a small fleet of hostile attack subs, courtesy of the People’s Republic of China. The PRC’s new and growing fleet of attack submarines had been crippled in that exchange, but there was every reason to believe they were in the process of making a comeback.

Might there be PLAN boats lurking out there, listening for an American sub to go active? It was a distinct and uncomfortable possibility.

“Sonar, Conn.”

“Go ahead, Conn. Sonar.”

“Heads up back there, and ears on. We’re going to go active in a second, and I want to know if you get so much as a twitching octopus as a response.”

“Aye aye, sir!”

He checked the control room clock, which was still set to local time. Oh-nine hundred hours. . . .

“Sonar, Conn. Give me a ping. We’re looking for an ASDS in this immediate vicinity.”

“Conn, Sonar. One ping, aye. . . .”

ASDS-2 South of Oluanpi Taiwan 0900 hours, Zulu −9

The sonar pulse struck the ASDS hull like a hammer blow, loud enough to leave ears ringing. Lieutenant Mark Halstead looked up and said quietly, “Right.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.