Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

SEA OF SHADOWS 141
down an aircraft—therefore no submarine ever would shoot down an
aircraft. Everyone knew that sub-SAMs were only a rumor: a spook story
with which to tease helicopter pilots. No one had ever seen one—
therefore they must not exist.
But the Americans had just learned the hard way that sub-SAMs were
not the stuff of rumor. Like the dagger they were named for, the Dolch
missiles had cut the American defenses to the bone.
With two quick squeezes of his thumb on the firing button, young
Hostettler had changed the face of naval warfare. He had also, perhaps,
branded himself a war criminal. Only time and the judgment of history
could tell.
Gröeler forced his attention back to the sonar display. The hole in the
American’s defense perimeter was massive, a veritable autobahn into the
heart of their carrier strike group.
He stepped through the door of the Sonar Room into the submarine’s
Control Room. “Take us below the sonic layer and then increase speed to
all-ahead full. If we are to penetrate the formation, we must be in exactly
the right position when their defenses begin to come apart.”
USS Kitty Hawk:
The deck tilted to the left as the huge ship heeled into a tight starboard
turn. To an untrained observer, it might have seemed incredible that
82,000 tons of steel could move so quickly. In fact, the carrier was by far
the fastest ship in the strike group, with a top speed of over forty knots.
Kitty Hawk was making use of that speed now, building momentum
rapidly as she turned to leave her slower escorts behind. That too might
have surprised an observer, but strategically the carrier was far more
valuable than all of her escort ships combined. And right now, Kitty Hawk
was running for her life.
The watertight door at the rear of Flag Plot slammed open, and Admiral
Joiner made his way across the slanting deck to his chair. “Ernie, what the
hell is going on? Why are we turning?”
Commander Ortiz looked up from the tactical display. “The formation
has been penetrated, Admiral. We’ve got two helos down and a hole in
our defensive screen the size of Texas.”
The admiral scowled. “How did we lose two helos?”
“Looks like sub-launched surface-to-air missiles, sir.”
“Sub-SAMs? Jesus Christ, I thought those rumors were bullshit.”