Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

216 JEFF EDWARDS
changes in Doppler as the submarine moved through the water. Without
frequency information, they were restricted to Target Motion Analysis.
While it would eventually give them the information they needed, TMA
could take twenty minutes or more and would require them to turn at least
once (and maybe twice) to feed the computer enough changes in bearing
rate to do its magic. But turning wasn’t an option right now. He couldn’t
afford to open up a hole in the formation. If he did, the submarine could
slip through it and get inside the screen’s defenses—which was exactly
what had happened to Kitty Hawk.
The ensign stared at the colored symbols on the CDRT. Every thirty
seconds, another red line appeared, each one tagged by a tiny set of digits
that represented the Zulu time of that particular bearing update. The red
lines accumulated slowly. Using only bearings, this was going to take a
long time. Too long.
He exhaled fiercely. “Shit.” He keyed his mike. “Sonar—USWE,
have you got any kind of narrowband on this contact at all?”
“No discrete tonals, sir. The target is showing a tightly packed cluster
of frequencies up around 550 hertz, but it’s so garbled I can’t do anything
with it. Everything else I’ve got is too broad and diffused to track or
classify. We are definitely not getting anything we can use for Doppler.
Request permission to go active, sir.”
Cooper’s answer was immediate. “Negative, Sonar. Remain passive.
If we spook this guy, he’ll pop off a shot at us and run like hell.”
Chief McPherson nodded. “Good call, sir. No sense in tipping our
hand this early in the fight.”
Cooper tapped his fingers on the face of the CDRT. “Thanks, Chief.
What do you think about having Sonar adjust the depth of the towed array,
to see if we can get some useful narrowband?”
Chief McPherson shook her head. “Never violate the second rule of
USW, sir: ‘If you’ve got contact, don’t screw with anything.’”
“We’re running out of time, Chief. Antietam’s helo is going to be
airborne in …” he checked his watch—“about two minutes.”
“It’s your call, sir,” the chief said. “Until we finish our watch turnover,
you’re still the USWE. But if it were me, I’d say screw the helo. That’s a
LAMPS III bird, strictly re-detect and attack. They’re not set up for
search. They’ve got no business launching until we have the contact
localized.”
A hand squeezed Ensign Cooper’s shoulder. He looked around to find
the captain standing behind him. “Listen to your chief, Pat. I can’t count
the number of times I’ve seen somebody lose contact because they were
futzing with equipment line-up, trying to get a better picture.”