The Hunt for Red October - Tom Clancy [212]
"And the other American?"
"A few kilometers seaward, drifting slowly, like us. I do not have an exact range. I could raise him on active sonar, but that—"
"I am aware of the consequences," Tupolev snapped. He went back to the control room.
"Tell the engineers to be ready to answer bells. All men at battle stations?"
"Yes, Comrade Captain," the starpom replied. "We have an excellent firing solution on the American hunter sub—the one moving, that is. The way he runs at full speed makes it easy for us. The other we can localize in seconds."
"Good, for a change," Tupolev smiled. "You see what we can do when circumstances favor us?"
"And what shall we do?"
"When the big one passes us, we will close and ream his asshole. They have played their games. Now we shall play ours. Have the engineers increase power. We will need full power shortly."
"It will make noise, Comrade," the starpom cautioned.
"True, but we have no choice. Ten percent power. The Ohio cannot possibly hear that, and perhaps the near hunter sub won't either."
The Pogy
"Where did that come from?" The sonar chief made some adjustments on his board. " Conn, sonar, I got a contact, bearing two-three-zero."
"Conn, aye," Commander Wood answered at once. "Can you classify?"
"No, sir. It just came up. Reactor plant and steam noises, real faint, sir. I can't quite read the plant signature . . ." He flipped the gain controls to maximum. "Not one of ours. Skipper, I think maybe we got us an Alfa here."
"Oh, great! Signal Dallas right now!"
The chief tried, but the Dallas, running at thirty-two knots, missed the five rapid pings. The Red October was now eight miles away.
The Red October
Jones' eyes suddenly screwed shut. "Mr. Bugayev, tell the skipper I just heard a couple of pings."
"Couple?"
"More 'n one, but I didn't get a count."
The Pogy
Commander Wood made his decision. The idea had been to send the sonar signals on a highly directional, low-power basis so as to minimize the chance of revealing his own position. But the Dallas hadn't picked that up.
"Max power, Chief. Hit Dallas with everything."
"Aye aye." The chief flipped his power controls to full. It took several seconds until the system was ready to send a hundred-kilowatt blast of energy.
Ping ping ping ping ping!
The Dallas
"Wow!" Chief Laval exclaimed. " Conn, sonar, danger signal from Pogy!"
"All stop!" Chambers ordered. "Quiet ship."
"All stop." Lieutenant Goodman relayed the orders a second later. Aft, the reactor watch reduced steam demand, increasing the temperature in the reactor. This allowed neutrons to escape out of the pile, rapidly slowing the fission reaction.
"When speed gets to four knots, go to one-third speed," Chambers told the officer of the deck as he went aft to the sonar room. "Frenchie, I need data in a hurry."
"Still going too fast, sir," Laval said.
The Red October
"Captain Ramius, I think we should slow down," Mancuso said judiciously.
"The signal was not repeated," Ramius disagreed. The second directional signal had missed them, and the Dallas had not relayed the danger signal yet because she was still traveling too fast to locate the October and pass it along.
The Pogy
"Okay, sir, Dallas has killed power."
Wood chewed on his lower lip. "All right, let's find the bastard. Yankee search, Chief, max power." He went back to control. "Man battle stations." An alarm went off two seconds later. The Pogy had already been at increased readiness, and within forty seconds all stations were manned, with the executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Tom Reynolds, as fire control coordinator. His team of officers and technicians were waiting for data to feed into the Mark 117 fire control computer.
The sonar dome in the Pogy's bow was blasting sound energy into the water. Fifteen seconds after it started the first return signal appeared on Chief Palmer's screen.
" Conn, sonar, we have a positive contact, bearing two-three-four, range six thousand