Finally: “Sonar. Captain, line up the BSY in active mode and report when you’re ready,” he said into his headset microphone.

The Vortex missile blew through the water at terminal velocity, over 300 knots, the waves high above flashing by in a blur. The solid-rocket fuel burned rapidly, the missile getting lighter with each passing second. The unit’s blue laser seeking device scanned the water ahead in a wide cone, the need for last-instant depth and course corrections vital to success.

When the target appeared in the blue light shining through the water, the computer realized the target submarine was far below it, deeper by some three hundred feet. The aft nozzle rotated and sent the missile into a dive as it corrected its course by a few tenths of a degree.

The target size grew from a speck to a huge blur in milliseconds, and the missile’s warhead of seven tons of high molecular density Plasticpac detonated and ignited the sea around it to a temperature approaching the surface of the sun.

Toyoda in the Eternal Spirit was’still in his bunk thinking of Suni when the missile arrived. The hull ripped open, and the Eternal Spirit became a huge teardropshaped mass of vaporized iron and steam rising toward the ocean surface above. The steam formed smaller bubbles, the ocean condensing the steam into smaller bubbles and eventually collapsing them from the pressure and nearfreezing ocean temperatures, the sea boiling with loud noise for the next thirty hours.

“We’re ready to go active. Captain,” Gambini’s voice reported from Piranha’s sonar.

And just then the ship shook to a violent earsplitting explosion as the Vortex missile detonated on target. On the sonar screens, all screens of the broadband system went completely white, the sonar blue-out complete, so much noise in the ocean that there was nothing to hear.

The explosion went on for a long time, roaring and ebbing and roaring again.

“Officer of the Deck,” Phillips said to Court, “secure battlestations. I’ll be in my stateroom.” He clomped out of control and disappeared into the door marked co STATEROOM.

EIGHTY MILES EAST OF HITACHI, JAPAN

USS BARRACUDA

In the sonar room just forward of control. Chief James Omeada sat at his console glaring at the sensors. He checked his watch. In two minutes Lt. Chris Porter would come barging in to ask the usual questions—“Any contacts?” and “You us in’ the right search plan?” and “What’s the status of the BSY?” Omeada and Porter had worked together as sonar chief and sonar officer for almost two years. Secretly Omeada liked and admired Porter, but for reasons long forgotten he was crusty with the young chubby officer, regularly throwing verbal barbs at him, especially in front of the other enlisted men, which most officers would strongly object to. At first Porter had taken the insults, since most of them were based on Omeada’s correct assertion that sonar officers didn’t know squat about the BSY-2 combatcontrol system, the combined firecontrol, sonar suite and navigation computers. Sure, they knew how to play with their little knobs in the control room and stack their little dots, but the real work of nailing down an enemy sub was done in sonar, and Omeada felt Chrissy needed to know that.

However, inadvertently Omeada had created himself a monster. Chris Porter had taken aboard each insult about his dangerous lack of knowledge, withdrawing from sonar to study. The next day he’d be back, exploring the same question he’d asked the day before, but now armed with knowledge and often challenging Omeada’s own knowledge, more than once sending the sonar chief to the tech manual. It was almost spooky how Porter did it — he sure as hell didn’t spend any extra time on the ship. The sonar officer was notorious for leaving the ship at five p.m. every day, no matter the crisis, and at sea, he rarely missed sleep, reliably counted on to be in his rack when he wasn’t standing officer of the deck watch.