Goliath Read Online Free Page A

sixty-nine-hundred-ton, nuclear-powered attack sub. Schultz wipes the sweat from his palms, then pushes down on the steering wheel before him, maneuvering the Jacksonville’s fairwater planes, which protrude like small wings from the submarine’s sail.
    “Launch countermeasures, both launchers.”
    The chief repeats the captain’s orders.
    “Conn, sonar, one of the torpedoes fell for the countermeasures, the other two fish have acquired and are homing. Bearing two-one-zero, best range twelve hundred yards—”
    “Launch the NAE. Reload both launchers with ADC’s. Helm, right full rudder—”
    “Conn—sonar, torpedoes still with us … six hundred yards … impact in sixty seconds.”
    The perceived temperature within the suddenly claustrophobic steel chamber is rising.
    Petty Officer Third Class Leonard Cope stares at his console, fighting to breathe, sweat dripping on his monitor. “Conn, sonar, torpedo impact in thirty seconds—”
    “Rig ship for impact—”
    “Conn, sonar, I’ve got a bearing, very faint—”
    “Identify—”
    “No known registry on the computer database, but goddamn this thing’s big.”
    “Firing point procedures—Sierra-1, ADCAP torpedo. Make tubes one and two ready in all respects.”
    “Aye, sir. Tubes one and two ready in all respects.”
    “Solution ready,” the XO reports.
    “Weapons ready. Thirty-five percent fuel remaining, run-to-enable two-five-hundred yards.”
    “Ready—shoot!”
    Two Mk-48 Advanced Capability wire-guided torpedoes spit out from the Jacksonville’s bow, homing in on the unknown aggressor.
    “WEPS, release countermeasures, come to course three-one-zero—”

    Petty Officer Cope grabs his headphones as an explosion tears at his eardrums. Then he hears something he has never heard before—the frightening crunch of an imploding steel hull.
    A heavy pulse of structural vibrations shudders the Jacksonville. Power flickers off. Emergency lights illuminate the frightened faces of the junior members of the crew, hyperventilating at their stations.
    “Conn, sonar, sir, that explosion … it was the Hampton .”
    “Skipper, contact has launched two more torpedoes, both active—”
     
    Two hundred and fifty yards to the west, the Jacksonville’s two Mk-48 ADCAP torpedoes have slowed to forty knots. Onboard sonars ping, searching the sea for the enemy contact, the weapon’s real-time computers sending highly processed data back to the sub via a trailing fiber-optic wire.
    Two consecutive returns. The torpedoes accelerate, pinging faster—
    —before slamming nose first into two antitorpedo torpedoes.
    The concussion wave from the double detonations sends reverberations through the Jacksonville’s interior hull, as it rolls the submarine hard to port.
    “Conn, ship’s own were struck by antitorpedo torpedoes! Both ADCAPS destroyed—”
    Captain O’Rourke stares at his XO, a cold chill running down his spine. His sub, one of the finest in the world, has been outgunned and outmaneuvered.
    “Skipper, incoming torpedo! Impact in ten seconds—”
    “Brace for impact!”
    A resounding double explosion from beneath the hull cracks open the Jacksonville’s keel. A massive jolt—the sub suddenly blanketed in suffocating darkness. Shouts, screams, and yells rise above an insane chaos of shearing metal and ripping bulkheads. Steam bursts from unseen pipes. A shower of sparks illuminates a gallery of ghostly faces—petrined, confused, their shattered minds screaming in the terror of one final, unified thought— I’m going to die —as Death reaches for them.
    It breaks through the hull with sonic speed, crushing its victims with an icy embrace.
    Aboard the USS Ronald Reagan
    Captain Hatcher rushes into the Command Information Center, grabbing hold of a console as his ship lurches beneath him. “Report!”
    Rocky Jackson stands. “It was a series of underwater munitions, four in all, very powerful. Totally blew out three of the four props and