To Kill the Potemkin by Mark Joseph

Naples
breakwater.
The sailors on the tanker's bridge scarcely glanced at the revolving
light
buoy, and no one noticed a much smaller float that had attached itself
magnetically to the buoy. Eight inches in diameter, the float had a
two-foot-long antenna extending into the air and a thin wire descending
into
the depths. At the far end of the wire, 150 feet down, USS Mako hovered
in ambush.
    She
had been on-station for six hours,
waiting for the message from the Sixth Fleet shore command that would
announce Barracuda 's departure.
Having spent a dozen patrols lying off Soviet ports waiting for Russian
submarines to exit, the crew was accustomed to picket duty.
    The
tide had turned and Barrcuda was
about to exit the bay under the tanker's sound screen. Captain Flowers
joked
that Netts himself was on the tanker, intentionally fouling the water
with
noise pollution. Like everyone else on Mako , Flowers
wished for Barracuda' s,ultimate
success, but regretted that if it came it
would be at his expense. His orders were to stop Barracuda the
moment
she emerged from the channel and put a quick end to "Netts's Folly."
    "Radio
to control. Target under
way."
    Flowers
wasted no time. "Cut loose that
buoy," he ordered. "Control to weapons, he's moving. Load dummies in
tubes one and two."
    The
weapons officer, Lt. North, stared at the
blip on his screen that was Barracuda, just as he
had stared a month
before at the blip that was Leninsky Komsomol when
she sailed from
Leningrad into the Gulf of Finland. Should Barracuda elude the picket
and reach blue water, she could outrun Mako and
reach the fleet in
thirty hours.
    The
rules of the war game established a
combat-free zone within a radius of ten miles around Naples. Outside
the
ten-mile limit, a submarine "kill" would be registered by the firing
of a dummy torpedo and a sonar blast, to be judged as a hit or a miss
by
umpires aboard each ship. Torpedoes fired at other submarines would
contain no
propellant. Immediately after being ejected from the tubes, they would
sink.
Only the torpedoes Barracuda fired at Kitty
Hawk would make a run
to the target. With no warhead the fish would bounce off the huge hull
of the
carrier, causing no significant damage.
    "Control
to sonar, listen up. He's
moving."
    Mako 's
sonar room was larger, quieter and more
comfortable than the cramped sonar room on Barracuda. With her more
sophisticated sonars, computers and fire control systems, plus the
element of
surprise, Mako seemed to have every advantage. The
sonarmen expected Barracuda to proceed seven or eight miles into the bay and
submerge under
their noses.
    "Sonar
to control. We have her, bearing
three four six. Course one two three. Speed four knots. Range nineteen
thousand
yards. She's turning. Bearing three four seven, three four eight, three
four
nine. Captain"—the operator's voice suddenly rose with
astonishment—"she's submerging ."
    The
sonar operators listened to Barracuda 's machinery as
she submerged, prop
cavitating noisily in the shallow water of the bay. The sounds were
muddled by
the tanker that was now between the two subs.
    Suddenly
the machinery noises stopped. They
heard the tanker, the ping of the fixed beacon that guided ships in and
out of
the harbor, but no submarine.
    "Sonar
to control. We lost her on the
passive array. She disappeared."
    "Springfield's
guessed that we're
here," said the XO, Commander Poland.
    "Control
to sonar. Echo-range,"
ordered Flowers. "Find her."
    "Sonar
to control. Echo-ranging."
    The
bottom of the bay was studded with rocks,
sunken ships, mounds of garbage and waste from the deeply dredged
channels, all
of which deflected and distorted the sonar pulses from Mako 's
echo rangers, transforming her
sonar screen into an undecipherable maze.
    In
the control room Flowers scratched his
jaw, took off his headset and rubbed his ears.
    Poland
said, "She's gone turbo-electric.
She's trying to sneak out on the quiet."
    The
captain nodded, knowing that ballistic
missile