Damage Control Read Free Page A

in back trying to run us out of fuel?”
    “That’s where the ASW module told us to go, skipper,” Goldy said.
    “Yeah, yeah. I came out this way to keep that big island between us and their radar.” Stevens was holding the plane about ninety feet off the waves beneath them, flying with one hand and turning his head to Goldy when he talked. One bad twitch and they’d have a wing in the water, but Stevens always flew this way and his crews got used to it. And they
had
to be under the opposing force’s radar horizon, because they were cheating—flying to a target before startex.
    Stevens pushed the throttle forward and banked to the left, heading for the entry point to the pattern the SENSO had marked twenty nautical miles to the west.
    “I have an ESM cut just beyond the island. Russian airsweep radar, second generation.” Collins sounded less nervous. He was better with the radar detection than with the sonar. “I’m putting it on screen. Second cut. Got a triangulation. See it, skipper?”
    Stevens flicked his eyes from his instrument scan to the little screen on his console and winced. The Indians had at least a radar picket, maybe more,
much
closer to him than he had expected. This is where he and Rafe and the crotchety bastards in the anti-submarine warfare module had guessed they’d find the Indian sub early in the exercise. Rafe wanted it found and tagged from the get-go. And here the Indianswere, with a radar picket right at the edge of the start area, looking out for someone like—
    “Looks like we’re all cheating together,” Goldy said.
    “Jeez, Craik might have warned us the Indians were this far south.”
    Out of the corner of his eye, Stevens saw the flash off her visor as Goldy turned her head and looked at him. Clearly she didn’t agree with his views on cheating, either.
    “Got another cut, skipper. Another air-search radar.”
    “They shouldn’t be seeing us yet,” Stevens said, banking sharply to keep the bulk of the forty-mile-long island between his plane and the radar pickets on the other coast.
    “Startex in one minute,” Goldy said. “I think we may be the first casualties in this thing.”
    “Not if I can help it. Whitehorse, put a long pattern down here.”
    Collins cut in. “We’re still seven miles from the drop—”
    “Let’s put the first line in here and we’ll sneak up the coast low, drop a few more, and see what we get.”
    Collins mumbled something about how far the Indian sub would have to be from her start position to be caught this far west.
    “You got something to say, Mister Collins?”
    “No, sir.”
    Clunk.
Each sonobuoy had the passive systems to listen for an enemy sub within a thousand yards or so, and a tiny radio transceiver to broadcast the digital data back to the plane. When the sonobuoy survived the drop to the water and the transceivers worked, it was a great system.
    “Number one in the water and I have a signal.” Whitehorse had a flat, nasal voice.
    Stevens thought it might have been the longest sentence he’d heard out of the boy.
    Clunk.
    “Number two in the water and—live. She’s good.”
    Collins came in again. “Look at the salinity, Whitehorse. Where’s the layer?”
    Stevens cut the nerd babble from the rear seats. He didn’t expect they’d find the sub, but it was an exercise and he didn’t want to be remembered as the first casualty.
    Clunk.
    “Startex,” Goldy said. The game was live; if anyone had seen them, they’d be called with an imaginary missile shot over the radio. Stevens looked at the digital readout on the encrypted comms without thinking, fearing the worst. Nothing came, and he smiled. He looked down where the live buoys from Whitehorse’s drops were matched up with the projected pattern and prepared to turn west toward the island after the next drop. At this altitude, even at low speed, every turn was exciting.
    Clunk.
    “I—uh, skipper? We—shit, there it is again. Maybe a sub?” Collins, from the