Piranha Firing Point by Michael Dimercurio

Author:Michael Dimercurio
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780340674710
Publisher: Onyx
Published: 1999-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

I can’t search for all of them at once, it would take a week! So if we go in, we go in half deaf.” O’Connor pointed at Demeers.

Patton looked at the senior chief, making his next question loud and lip-readable, “You agree. Senior?”

“Yessir.” Demeers’ voice was still distorted, a deaf man. “We’re putting our head into a lion’s mouth.”

Patton glared at them, feeling bile flood his stomach.

He jammed his hands in his pockets—after all, he hardly needed the crew to think he was frightened, although he certainly was, O’Connor was dead right.

Heading into an op area with no confirmed search plan was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack.

What frequency tonal? How loud? Did low frequencies show up first? Where should the processors be set? Wide bands or narrow? The sonarmen knew they were putting their necks on a chopping block and so did Patton, but he had to show them confidence, because that was all they had at this point—just the captain’s instincts and his guts.

“Listen, goddammit,” Patton finally said, his nostrils flared, his black eyes flashing. “I’m going in and I’m going in shooting. You guys find me a fucking target, I don’t care how hard it is. You got that?”

O’Conner nodded, looking as if he’d just been asked to drive a car at one hundred mph at midnight with no headlights.

As Patton returned to the control room he wondered how he was going to explain all this to fleet command.

He’d missed the intruder submarines, he wouldn’t hear them when he returned to attack them, and his sonarmen wanted to just go home. When this mission was over, he would probably lose his ship, his command pin, his shoulder boards, and probably his dolphins, because losing a convoy he was charged with protecting was not the way to promotion. Of course, that assumed he walked away from this operation instead of becoming fish food at the bottom of the East China Sea.

Vale was staring at him. “What?” Patton said, irritated.

“What’s going on. Captain?” “I’ll tell the men,” Patton said. “Attention in the fire-control team.” A dozen whispered conversations—all of them business—halted. “Starting a few minutes ago, we heard multiple explosions from the bearings of the convoy. We’ve turned around and are heading back to the convoy’s position at flank speed. Meanwhile sonar reports a blueout across all eastern bearings, with explosions continuing. The convoy is probably under attack.

What we don’t know is whether the attack is coming from an intruder submarine or submarines or whether it was an air attack. My intention is to make maximum speed toward the convoy, and when we’re closer, slow down, rig for ultraquiet, and commence a slow-speed sonar search for any possible submarines.

Carry on.”

“Conn, Sonar, aye,” came through Patton’s headset.

So now, here I am, Patton thought, flanking it into a war zone like a fool, with no idea who the enemy is or what he sounds like. I might as well just wear a sign that says, “Shoot me.”

pacific ocean

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