Master Chief Tommy Zillich sat leaning against the bulkhead in the back of the sonar shack. His tailbone was sore from hours of sitting. A tension headache was tightening its pincers on a spot just above the bridge of his nose. Pressing a set of earphones to his head, he tried to concentrate harder, to sort out the babble of noise he was listening to outside Toledo’s hard shell. His “boys” could play with all their high-tech computer gear as much as they liked. He would use the best tools a good sonar man possessed: his ears and a lot of years of experience.

The rest of his boys were following the antics of the two Russian Grishas. There was not much challenge keeping tabs on those skimmers. They were racing around as if they wanted to be heard and tracked. One would sprint ahead while the other one pinged away with his Foal Tail dipping sonar. Then they would switch places. His concern was what ordnance those guys might launch, or the Udaloy destroyer when it realized it had sunk a dummy.

Zillich glanced up at the threat intercept receiver. The LED showed the signal strength of the Russians’ sonar was now up to fifty-six.

Zillich knew that Toledo’s thick anechoic rubber coating was a definite advantage when dealing with active sonar. It was designed to absorb the transmitted energy and lower the big sub’s sonar cross-section. Still, the coating wasn’t perfect. It didn’t cause them to disappear like a Romulan cloaking device.

When the signal strength got high enough, Toledo could still be detected. It was getting high now. The Grishas should be getting enough of a return to see their shape even if their sonar men were asleep.

Just then, Tommy Zillich heard a sound that made his blood run cold. Multiple splashes, directly overhead.

He grabbed the 21MC microphone and yelled a warning. “RBU-6000 splashes! Close overhead!”

One of the Grishas had shot its rocket-powered depth charges. The hundred-and-twenty-five-kilogram antisubmarine mortars, normally fired in salvos of twelve, would sink until they hit something, or until their timers went off. The twenty-five kilograms of high explosive would detonate with an awesome force. One mortar hitting Toledo could damage her severely. A whole salvo detonating around her would be fatal.

“All ahead flank!” Glass shouted without hesitation. Toledo jumped ahead as the throttle man whipped open the throttles, pouring steam into the propulsion turbines. Joe Glass was already doing the math in his head. The bombs sank at a rate of twenty feet per second. They had less than a minute to get clear. The deadly race was on.

“Skipper,” Brian Edwards yelled. “We can’t go above twenty-five knots with the ASDV strapped on! We might rip the latch away!”

“I know. Get the people out of there, quick! We may have to jettison the thing if we can’t get away fast enough.”