"I heard an Alfa."

"We missed. What did you get?"

"It had twin screws, and it's dead," Simms answered. Their gertrude phones were on a very low power setting.

"Three boats ahead about fourteen miles. One's the Alfa. I don't know about the others." McCafferty outlined his plan quickly. The submarines would proceed north, ten miles apart, and would try to engage the targets from their flanks. Even if they missed, Providence should be able to go straight through when the Russians split to pursue. Simms agreed, and the boats split up yet again.

McCafferty noted that he was still about sixteen hours from the ice. There were probably still Soviet patrol aircraft overhead. He'd wasted a torpedo-no, he told himself, that was a well-planned attack It just hadn't worked, as sometimes happened.

A line of sonobuoys appeared-active ones this time-to his northeast. He wished angrily that the Russians would select one set of tactics and stick to it. Hell, all he wanted to do was leave! Of course he had launched missiles at the Soviet homeland and they were probably still angry about that. Nobody had ever told him whether the mission was successful or not. McCafferty commanded himself to stop this random thinking. He had trouble enough right here.

Chicago moved northwest. As she did so, the bearing to all of her sonar contacts changed to the right. The Alfa was still there, her machinery noise fading in and out. Technically speaking, he could shoot at her, but he'd just seen that her speed and maneuverability were enough to beat a Mark-48 torpedo. He wondered what the Alfa's skipper had done. Surprisingly, he hadn't fired a torpedo of his own down the bearing of the incoming fish. What did that mean? It was an American tactic, and was supposed to be a Soviet tactic also. Was it because he knew that "friendly" boats were in the area? McCafferty filed it away, yet another case where the Russians were not acting the way they were expected to act.

The northwest course closed the distance markedly to one of the contacts. The Alfa and the other unknown maneuvered east themselves, maintaining the ten-plus mile range-unknowingly, the captain thought. He stood over the plot. A fire-control solution was already set on the nearest contact. Range was down to eight miles. McCafferty went to the sonar room again.

"What can you tell me about this one?"

"Starting to look like a Type-2 reactor plant, the new version. He may be a Victor-III. Give me five more minutes and I'll know for sure, sir. The closer we get, the clearer he looks."

"Power output?"

"Pretty low, sir. I thought I might have a blade count a few minutes ago, but it didn't work out. He's probably just making steerage."

McCafferty leaned back against the bulkhead separating the room from the monstrous computer used to process signals. The line on the waterfall display that would show the unique frequency pattern of the machinery on the Victor-III was fuzzy but narrowing. Three minutes later it was a fairly sharp vertical stroke of light.

"Captain, I can now call target Sierra-2 a Victor-III-class Russian sub."

McCafferty went aft to control. "Range to target Sierra-2?"

"Fourteen thousand five hundred yards, sir."

"Solution is set, sir," the weapons officer reported. "Ready for tube one. Tube one is flooded, outer door is closed."

"Right ten degrees rudder," McCafferty said. Chicago turned to unmask her ready torpedo. He checked depth: two hundred feet. On firing, he'd run east rapidly and dive to a thousand feet. The submarine turned slowly at six knots; bearing to the target was three-five-one, and Chicago's midship torpedo tubes were angled slightly outward from her center line. "Solution?"

"Set!"

"Open outer door." The petty officer on the torpedo board pushed the proper button and waited for the status light to change.

"Outer door is open, sir."

"Match bearings and shoot!" The seven thousand tons of USS Chicago shuddered again with the torpedo launch.

"One fired, sir."

McCafferty gave orders to change course and depth, increasing speed to ten knots.

Another exercise in patience. How soon will he hear the fish coming in? This one ran in at shallow depth. McCafferty hoped that its propulsion sounds might be lost in the surface noise. How good is Victor's sonar? he wondered.

"One minute." The weapons officer held a stopwatch. The Mark-48 ran thirteen hundred yards per minute at this speed setting. About ten minutes to go. It was like watching some perverse sports event, McCafferty thought, a two-minute drill in a football game, two minutes of playing time that could stretch to half an hour if the quarterback knew his stuff. Except that they weren't trying to score points. "Three minutes. Seven minutes to go."

Chicago leveled out at one thousand feet and the captain ordered speed cut back to six knots again. Already he had fire-control solutions set on the other two targets. But they'd have to wait.

"Five minutes. Five to go."

"Conn, sonar, target Sierra-2 has just increased power. Cavitation sounds, blade count shows twenty knots and increasing."

"Kick the fish to full speed," McCafferty ordered. The Mark-48 accelerated to a speed of forty-eight knots: sixteen hundred yards per minute.

"Target is turning east, her blade count shows thirty-one knots. Sir, I'm getting a funny signal slightly aft of the target. Target bearing is now three-five-eight. The new signal is three-five-six."

"Noisemaker?"

"Doesn't sound like that. Sounds like something different... not a nixie, but something like that, sir. Target is continuing to turn, sir, bearing now three-five-seven. I believe she may be reversing course."

"Take her up to two hundred feet," the captain said.

"What the hell's he doing?" the exec wondered as the submarine rose again.

"Sir, that new signal has masked the target," sonar announced.

"The fish is now pinging, sir."

"If he has a decoy deployed-he put it between himself and the fish," the captain said quietly. "Fire-control, I want another fish on target Sierra-2, and update the solution for Sierra-l."

Range and bearing figures were re-input into the computer.

"Set for tube three on target Sierra-2 and tube two for target Sierra-I." The submarine passed through three hundred feet.

"Match bearings and shoot." McCafferty gave the order quietly, then took his submarine down again. "That pod on the Victor-III that we thought was a towed-array housing, what if it's a decoy like our nixie?" We don't use them on submarines, McCafferty thought, but Ivan does things his own way.

"The fish might still ignore it."

"He doesn't think so. He thinks it'll work-then he can turn behind the noise of the explosion and get one off at us." McCafferty walked over to the plot. The other new fish was running toward what was probably another Victor-class. The second target was maneuvering east now. The Alfa was also. The obvious tactical move: clear the danger area, turn, and begin your own stalk. While both were turned away, their sonar would be ineffective along the route of the advancing torpedo. Sonar called out.

"Captain, I have an explosion bearing three-five-four. We have lost contact with target Sierra-2. I don't know if the fish hit her or not. The other two fish seem to be running normally."

"Patience," the captain breathed.

"Conn, sonar, we show some sonobuoys dropping aft." The bearings were plotted. They were in a north-south line two miles aft of Chicago.

"One of the other boats got a message out to his friends," the exec suggested.

"Good bet. These cooperative tactics'll be a cast-iron bitch if they ever figure out how to do it right."

"Sierra-2 is back, sir. I have a Type-2 machinery signature at three-four-nine. Some possible hull-popping noises. Sierra-2 is changing depth."