Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

224 JEFF EDWARDS
USS Towers:
“Holy shit!” the Sonar Supervisor shouted over the net. “They just
blew up the Antietam’s Nixie! The torpedo fell for the decoy! Yeah!
Fuckin’-A!” The sonar team was cheering in the background.
Ensign Cooper jabbed his comm button. “Sonar—USWE. Can it!
Maintain net discipline! This is no time to get excited anyway. There’s
still another torpedo out there, and there’s no way Antietam can get her
backup Nixie fish deployed in time.”
USS Antietam:
About five seconds later, the second of the DMA37 torpedoes proved
Ensign Cooper right. With the other distracting target out of the way, it
dove to an optimum depth of twelve meters, slid neatly under Antietam’s
hull, and detonated.
The explosion flash-vaporized a huge volume of water directly beneath
the cruiser’s keel, simultaneously ripping and burning an enormous hole
through the steel hull plates of the ship’s bottom. The keel, the structural
backbone of the ship, fractured like bone under a sledgehammer. With its
spine shattered and nearly all support snatched out from under its hull by
the still-expanding bubble of vaporized water, the cruiser bent near the
middle, and then broke. The sound was unbelievable, an ear-rending
cacophony of tearing metal and roaring water, punctuated by the screams
of the injured and dying. The overburdened steel hull plates separated
completely, ripping the old ship in half.
The aft section of the ship rolled over on to its starboard side and began
to sink immediately.
The forward half of the ship remained afloat somehow, without power,
as the generators had been destroyed along with the engineering spaces.
Fires raged through the powerless steel hulk that—ten seconds ago—had
been a United States warship.
Samurai Seven-Nine:
“Jesus Christ,” the copilot whispered. “Oh Jesus …”