Plague Ship (Oregon Files 5)

He was dimly aware of Hali Kasim sending a radio alert to the two ships about the inbound torpedoes, not that there was anything they could do. A ship the size of the Aggie Johnston had a pathetically large turning radius, and needed five miles to stop from her current cruising speed.

“I’m tracking two fast movers off the carrier,” Mark Murphy said from the weapons stations. “I suspect they’re S-3B Vikings, antisubmarine warfare planes armed with either Mark 46 or Mark 50 torpedoes. That Kilo is going to have a real bad day starting in about ten minutes.”

“Which is five minutes too late for us,” Eric said.

“Hali, what’s the range to the fish tracking us?” Cabrillo asked

“Six thousand yards.”

And for the Saga?”

“Thirty-two hundred.”

Cabrillo straightened in his chair, his decision made. It was time to roll the dice and see what happened. “Helm, increase speed to forty knots, put us between the Saga and the torpedo headed for her.”

“Aye.”

“Wepps, open the ports for the forward Gatling and target that fish, slave your computer to the master sonar plot, and you might need the targeting reticle from the crow’s nest camera.”

“Just a second,” Mark said.

“Mr. Murphy.” Juan’s tone was sharp. “We don’t have a second.” Murph wasn’t listening. He was engrossed with something taking place on a laptop computer he had jacked into his system. “Come on, baby, learn it, will you,” he said anxiously.

“What are you doing?” Cabrillo asked, leaning over to compensate for the Oregon’s sharp curve through the water.

“Teaching the Whopper a new trick.”

Whopper was what he and Eric Stone called the Oregon’s supercomputer, having stolen the name from an old Matthew Broderick movie about a young computer hacker who breaks in to SAC/NORAD and almost starts a nuclear war.

“We don’t need new tricks, Wepps. I need that Gatling online and spooled up.”

Murph spun around in his seat to look across the room at Max Hanley, who was engrossed with his own computer. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

“Keep at it, lad,” was all Max said.

“You two mind telling me what’s going on?” Juan asked, looking at each man in turn.

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes,” Mark crowed, jumping up from his chair and pumping his fists over his head. He began typing furiously, not bothering to sit again, his fingers flying over the keyboard, as dexterous as a classical pianist’s. “Logarithm’s lining up, targeting’s coming online. The onboard computer’s in sync with ours. I have full control.”

“Of what?”

Mark glanced at him with a fiendish grin. “We’re about to have ourselves a whale of a time.”

Cabrillo blanched and spun to glance at Max. Hanley looked as inscrutable as a Buddha statue. “You can’t be serious,” Juan said but knew his second-in-command was. “You do know the last time the Russians tried to fire one of those things it blew a hole in the side of the Kursk and killed all one hundred and eighteen aboard? And this one’s an Iranian knockoff, for the love of God.”

“There’s a thousand yards between the Saga and the torp,” Linda Ross said. With communications swirling among the freighters, the American battle group, and the fast-approaching ASW aircraft, she had taken over the sonar station so Hali Kasim could concentrate on the radios.

“Just giving you an option, Chairman,” Max said broadly.

“Don’t ‘Chairman’ me, you crafty old bastard.”

Juan studied the tactical display again, noting the Oregon was about to slip between the incoming torpedo and its intended target. Because of the water density they needed to be directly in front of the torpedo if they were to have any realistic chance of hitting it. By the time they got into position, there would be less than five hundred yards between them and the weapon barreling in just ten feet below the surface.

From the camera on the loading derrick, Cabrillo could see the wake line of the incoming torpedo, a faint disturbance in the otherwise tranquil water. It was approaching at better than forty knots.

“Wepps, we need to take it before it dives for the keel.”

“Tracking,” Murph said.