Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

254 JEFF EDWARDS
The target had made a violent turn toward the torpedo at the last
second, and the torpedo overshot its mark, rocketing under the hull and
beginning to come out the other side before it could correct its course.
Had the DMA37 been a hair smarter, it might have aborted the arming
sequence and swung back around for another pass at the target—one with
better placement. But the arming conditions had been met, however
briefly, and the computer followed its program. The detonating signal
reached the warhead, and 250 kilograms of high-explosive erupted into an
expanding sphere of fire and death.
USS Towers:
For an instant, the underwater explosion illuminated the darkened
ocean like a flash of lightning. A microsecond later, the shock wave
smashed into the port side of the destroyer, lifting the stern completely out
of the water, and rolling the ship far onto its starboard side.
With a shriek of rending metal, hull plates buckled and collapsed. The
ship’s stern seemed to hang in the air for a second, apparently suspended
on a mushrooming bubble of steam and fire. The keel began to bend.
Then the spell was broken, and the stern crashed back into the waves,
throwing plumes of seawater fifty feet into the air. The whipsaw effect
torqued the keel in the other direction, and the steel backbone of the ship
groaned like a wounded animal, a resonating sound that rose through the
deck plates at an incredible volume. But the keel held.
Towers rolled a little farther onto her starboard side and then
sluggishly, she rolled back to port. She settled onto her wounded side and
began to take on water.
Emergency battle lanterns came on automatically as power failed
through two-thirds of the ship. The lanterns cast circles of light in the
darkened passageways, raising the illumination level from Stygian
blackness to something approaching evening twilight. The engines had
fallen silent, but the semidarkness was far from quiet. The screams of
injured Sailors echoed through the passageways, their cries competing
with the shouts of damage control crews and the torrential rumble of the
rising floodwaters.