Читать книгу End Game - Dale Brown - Страница 42

Dog nudged the Megafortress into position to launch the first sonar buoy twenty miles north of the stricken destroyer. The Megafortress would set a large underwater fence around the area, waiting for the sub to make its move.

‘What’s the destroyer’s situation?’ Dog asked Jazz.

‘Nothing new,’ said the copilot. ‘Still fighting the damage. They’ve had a couple of sonar contacts but they seem to have been false alarms.’

As Dog and Jazz launched the buoys, Dish searched for the submarine’s periscope. A half hour later they had covered every inch of the target area without finding anything.

‘Best bet, he’s sitting down about three hundred meters, just about as low as he can go, holding his breath and waiting for the destroyer to limp away,’ said Jazz.

‘He’ll be waiting a long time.’

‘He won’t get by the buoys without us knowing.’

Dog wasn’t so sure about that. In theory, the hunters had all the advantages – the buoys could find anything in the water down to about 550 meters or so, and an extended periscope or snorkel could be easily detected at this range.

But the reality of warfare was never quite as simple as the theory, especially when it involved a submarine. Dog had worked with the Navy on sub hunts before, and they were always complicated and tricky affairs. In NATO exercises, submarines routinely outfoxed their hunters.

‘Just a waiting game now, Colonel,’ said the copilot. ‘We’ll get him eventually. We just have to be patient.’

‘For some reason, Jazz, being patient has always seemed the hardest thing to do,’ Dog said.