SSN - Tom Clancy [113]
But Mack didn't want it to come to that. The Typhoon's death had been bad enough. Submariners, even the enemy, deserved to die with their ship rather than at the hands of the creatures of the sea.
Once battle stations were manned, Captain Mackey passed the order for the torpedo room to "make tubes one and two ready in all respects, including opening the outer doors." In addition to making Cheyenne's tubes ready as early as possible, he intended to launch two Mk 48s in the quiet "swim-out" mode as he had done with the off-board sensor, but this lime they would be armed as weapons.
The remaining Akula, with its own towed array, had shown that he could be a quiet adversary. Naval intelligence still had not learned much about that sensor capability, so Mack decided to play it safe. He elected to follow the same plan he had used successfully earlier, steering the torpedoes off target so they would be attacking from bearings other than Cheyenne's location.
"Make tubes one and two ready in all respects, including opening the outer doors, fire-control, torpedo room, aye."
After the torpedo room reported completing the ordered evolution with the torpedo tubes, the executive officer informed Mack, "Captain, tubes one and two are ready in all respects. Both outer doors are open."
"Very well, fire control," answered the captain.
The Akula was tracking to the southwest. Cheyenne was closing the range, intending to intercept with a fire-control solution before the Akula could reach detection range on Cheyenne.
The Akula continued drawing left as Cheyenne closed. It, too, was otherwise quiet, with no contact on the spherical or conformal arrays. Because of this, the BSY-1 operators had to rely on the readings from the TB-23, assisted by Mack's course changes, to make the solution possible for the fire-control party. When both they and the fire-control coordinator were satisfied with the TMA (target motion analysis) solution on Master 127, the Russian Akula II SSN, the captain ordered, "Firing point procedures, Master 127."
The combat systems officer at the weapons control console reported the target course as 200, speed four, and range 27,250 yards.
"Sonar, conn, stand by." "Conn, sonar, standing by."
"Match sonar bearings and shoot, tubes one and two." "Match sonar bearings and shoot, tubes one and two, aye."
"Tubes one and two fired electrically," reported the combat systems officer.
"Conn, sonar, units from tubes one and two running hot, straight, and normal," came the report from the sonar supervisor as the two torpedoes executed their wire clearance maneuvers and accelerated to slow speed for the long inbound run.
"Very well, sonar," responded the captain. "Take charge and steer the weapons. Unit one off course ten degrees to the right and unit two off course forty-five degrees to the left." When the torpedoes were close enough for passive acquisition, they would be steered back in the opposite direction.
"Time to turn the units?" asked the captain. 'Twenty minutes for unit one, captain," answered (he combat systems officer. "Seventeen minutes for unit two."
The torpedoes were turned on cue. One was leading the target while the other was slightly lagging. 'Time to acquisition?" Mack asked. 'Ten minutes for unit two, Captain," the combat systems officer replied. "Twelve minutes for unit one."
Exactly on schedule, the combat systems officer reported, "Unit two has acquired." Two minutes later he added, "Unit one has acquired." This time both torpedoes had acquired their original target. There were no more Russian submarines left out there.
"Cut the wires, shut the outer doors, and reload tubes one and two," ordered