Acts of Vengeance

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX DESTINY

“Range increasing on the primary target, Captain.”

Manilov looked at the technician on the sonar console. “Bearing and distance?”

“Zero-eight-five degrees, 5,200 meters on the primary. The two trailing targets, same bearing, 3,500 meters.”

Manilov acknowledged with a headshake. The battle group was moving away to the east. He had managed to stymie the searchers by concealing the Mourmetz directly beneath the huge mass of the aircraft carrier, then transitioning to a totally silent operating mode. For over six hours they had been concealed here, emitting no signal, registering no audible sound. The boat was only partially stable, and he had been compelled to use his crew for balance, moving them fore and aft, to help maintain the Mourmetz’s attitude.

In every direction he could hear the sub hunters scouring the Gulf of Aden. They had failed to find the Ilia Mourmetz.

Now he could strike again.

Five thousand meters was still a suitable range for the SET-16 torpedo. He would not ascend to periscope depth. From where they were, at a depth of 210 meters, he would fire a salvo of four torpedoes.

Perhaps it would be enough to kill the Reagan. If he was lucky, he would strike a vital organ of the carrier.

“What are your intentions, Captain?”

Manilov glanced up at his executive officer, Dimitri Popov. The young officer had proven himself to be a capable second-in-command. With his cool, unruffled composure during the tense hours of combat, he had earned the respect of the men.

All his crew, even the lowest-ranking enlisted seamen, had discharged their duties honorably. Since they had entered the Gulf of Aden, he himself had acquired a feeling for these men that was very much like familial love. In their crisp, unswerving response to his orders, he knew that they respected him.

Even in his most bizarre fantasies, he could not have imagined a sweeter finish to an otherwise dreary career. The epic adventure they had undertaken was the stuff of Russian fables. He and his gallant young crew had sailed into the teeth of an impossibly powerful foe. They had kept their appointment with destiny.

Popov was waiting for an answer.

“I think we should complete our mission, Mr. Popov.”

The executive officer’s expression didn’t change. “The men will follow your orders, whatever you decide, Captain.”

“And you, Mr. Popov?”

Popov brought his heels together with a click. “I am at your command, sir.”

Manilov nodded, touched by the display of loyalty. He gazed around the control compartment at the tense young faces — Antonin, Popov, Borodin, Keretsky — the eager warrants, the conscripted sailors. Each trusted him with his life. Each had his own soaring hopes, aspirations, dreams of the future. Many had left young wives and infant children back in Mother Russia.

They had a right to live.

For the first time since their voyage began, Manilov’s sense of ultimate destiny was tempered by another emotion. It nibbled at him now, buzzing in his brain like a gnat.

They trust you with their lives.

The men had done everything he had asked of them. More, actually. None had volunteered for a suicide mission. They were mercenaries, not martyrs. They had taken unthinkable risks, completed their assigned mission with skill and daring. It was not their fault the damned obsolete SET- 16 torpedoes had failed to kill the Reagan, not their doing that the hull of the carrier had been constructed to resist conventional warheads.

Ah, if the Mourmetz’s torpedoes had been tipped with nuclear warheads, it would have been a different story. The invincible Reagan would be vaporized in a cloud of steam.

“Fifty-four hundred meters, Captain, range increasing. We still have a valid firing solution.”

Four more torpedoes. He could expect at least two to strike the primary target. And then what? The damned ship still might not sink. The antisubmarine force hovering around the Reagan would pounce like a pack of jackals. The Mourmetz would be doomed.

So be it. It’s your destiny.

Perhaps. But was it theirs? Did he have the right to take them with him into eternity — all in pursuit of some mystical Russian fate?

No.

He barked out the order: “Forward five knots, come starboard to 170 degrees. Maintain 220 meters.”

Every head in the control compartment swung toward him.

“The torpedo tubes are loaded and ready, Captain,” said Popov.

“Seal them. The war is over for us. We’re departing the area.”

A buzz of whispered conversation spread through the control compartment. He could see jubilation on their faces. The war is over for us.

“May I ask where we’re heading, sir?” Popov asked. His eyes were shining.

“Around the horn, down the east coast of Africa. Near Mombasa. That is our best escape route. We’ll pick the exact spot after we’ve established contact ashore.”

Beyond that, he had no idea. They would have to scuttle the Mourmetz, which would be painful for him. They had no choice. The boat was about to become the object of the greatest submarine hunt —

“Aircraft overhead,” called out Borodin from his console. Then, seconds later, “Sonobuoys in the water.”

Silence filled the control compartment. Manilov rushed over to Borodin’s display.

“Contact,” the sonar technician called out. “They’re pinging us!”

“Depth 250 meters,” Manilov ordered. “Slow to three knots, left 090 degrees.”

“It’s a large aircraft,” Borodin reported. “Four engines, turboprop.”

Manilov frowned. A P-3 Orion. That was troubling. Probably from one of their bases in the Persian Gulf. The P-3 carried a crew of twelve or so, and had the most sophisticated airborne sub-tracking system in the world.

His options were limited. He could stop forward motion and remain motionless here beneath the thermal layer, adrift in the depths like a suspended carcass. Their survival would depend on the sonar-deflecting anechoic tiles on the Mourmetz’s hull. Or he could turn and try to slip out of the search area, returning to the littoral waters off the Yemeni coastline. Or he could run for the rocky shoreline of Socotra, the island twenty miles south in the Arabian Sea.

He didn’t like any of the choices. The P-3 was just the advance scout. Within minutes, the entire antisubmarine force of the Reagan battle group would join the hunt.

The thought struck Manilov that he could still fire his torpedoes. the Reagan was still within range. The source of the torpedoes would be instantly clear. The subhunters would have a positive location on the Mourmetz.

Again he thought of his gallant young crew. No, he decided. They deserved to live.

“MAD, MAD, MAD!” called out the petty officer running the magnetic anomaly-detection gear. He stabbed the position lock key on his panel, fixing the exact location of the contact in the Orion’s inertial guidance navigational computer.

Lt. Chip Weyrhauser, the twenty-eight-year-old P-3 plane commander, felt a surge of excitement. A MAD contact! The long stinger on the tail of the P-3 — the MAD boom — was ancient technology in antisubmarine warfare equipment. Its only usefulness was when you passed directly over the magnetic field of a submerged boat.

As they had just done.

It had to be the Kilo.

He knew that the TACCO — tactical coordination officer — Lt. Jethro Williams, was already on the horn back to the ASW commander aboard USS Arkansas. They were datalinked to the command center, and the commander was seeing everything the TACCO saw.

Weyrhauser couldn’t believe his luck. He had been about to pack it in, declare minimum fuel, and head back to Masirah, their island base off Oman. For six hours they had been sweeping this piece of ocean, coming up with nothing.

Weyrhauser had often regretted choosing patrol planes instead of carrier-based fighters. He thought it would be cushy duty. Patrol plane pilots got to live in neat shore-based quarters — Hawaii or California or Spain — flying big four-engined turboprops, which gave you a good résumé for an airline job. What he hadn’t counted on was the tedium of these god-awful long patrols, the endless search patterns for submarines that, in most cases, got away. Even when you caught them, it was anticlimactic because you never did anything about it. Nobody had sunk an enemy submarine for over half a century.

That’s about to change.

They had the Kilo locked up. Or close, anyway. All they needed was an active lock with the sonobuoys. And clearance to shoot.

The notion made Weyrhauser giddy. This was the renegade sub that had already stuck two fish into the Reagan. The crew who nailed this boat would be the greatest heroes since Dolittle raided Tokyo.

“Steer right, 290 degrees,” called the TACCO.

Weyrhauser complied, bending the P-3 around in a hard right turn back to the northwest. He was flying the patrol plane by hand, not willing to use the autopilot down this low. They were skimming the water at only a hundred feet altitude, going nearly two hundred knots.

They were flying a box pattern, laying a wall of sonobuoys at each side of the box. Sonobuoys were floating sonar signaling devices that transmitted their returns back to the P-3’s mission computer. These were the advanced DIFAR models — directional frequency and ranging — with microphones that could be lowered to listen at preselected depths.

The TACCO selected the array of sonobuoys on his console display, then let the computer automatically eject them from the tubes.

“Contact! Contact!” called out the number two sensor operator.

The TACCO noted the plot, then ordered another right turn. “Roll out 105 degrees. Shit, we’re losing him again!”

It was a bitch trying to pick out the muted hush of a submarine from the gurgling clamor of the ocean. Out here they had not only the sounds of a dozen other ships, but the waves beating the rocks over at Socotra and on the Yemeni coast.

“Getting him again,” said the TACCO. “He’s turning. Come left ten degrees… hold it there.” Then, ten seconds later, “Contact!”

Weyrhauser could feel the charged atmosphere inside the P-3. They were close, very close. He could almost smell the adrenaline in the cabin of the Orion.

“Are we weapons free?” he called to Williams on the intercom.

“Negative,” the TACCO came back. “Weapons locked. We’re waiting for clearance from Popeye.” Popeye was the call sign for the antisubmarine warfare commander, a Navy captain stationed aboard the Aegis cruiser Arkansas.

Weyrhauser chafed at the restriction, even though he knew the reason. There was at least one other submarine in these waters — the Bremerton, the nuclear attack boat that had joined the hunt for the killer sub.

But, goddammit, they were being too cautious. The commander on the Arkansas was seeing the same thing the TACCO saw. No way could this be an American nuke boat. Only one kind of submarine in the world emitted that distinctive seven-bladed screw signature — a Russian Kilo class.

Weyrhauser could barely contain himself. While the brass dithered, this Ivan was getting away.

Eight thousand yards was a good range for the Mark 50 torpedo. The torpedo would make its own passive search for the submarine. When it acquired the target, the seeker would go to active pinging. After that, the submarine was dead meat.

“MAD, MAD!” cried out the operator at his panel.

The sub was directly beneath them.

The TACCO again fixed the position in the navigational computer. “Got him, turning south, heading for Socotra.”

“Check our weapons status again,” Weyrhauser ordered.

A quarter minute passed. “Got it!” Jethro Williams said over the intercom. “Weapons free.”

Weyrhauser felt a shiver of excitement run through him. They were about to make history.

He received another heading change from Williams. This time they would fly a mile-long, wings-level pass directly along the axis of the submarine’s last two plotted positions.

“Bomb bay doors open,” Weyrhauser ordered.

It was a calculated gamble, turning south and running for it. Manilov knew he was risking everything on the chance that the P-3 would lose its lock on the Mourmetz before the other aircraft and ships showed up. He would be outside the net of sonobuoys before they could reestablish the contact.

Only twenty miles. If he reached Socotra, they might escape. In the undersea wilderness off the island’s shore, sonar echoes were strewn like chaff in the wind. The submarine would be undetectable.

Did he make the right decision?

Strange, he thought. Never before had he questioned his own judgment. His objective had always been clear: Kill the enemy. To that end, every decision he made, each order he gave, was like the subliminal moves of a fencer. Thrust and parry. Act and react. Yevgeny Manilov possessed an unwavering confidence in his ability.

But something had changed. His single-minded obsession with sinking the Reagan was replaced by a different imperative: He wanted to live. More than that, he wanted his crew to live.

A rivulet of perspiration found its way past his brow, dripping off his nose and splashing onto the chart before him. His palms were damp. He felt a dryness in his throat.

Should he have remained in place? In deep water, beneath the thermal layer, the Mourmetz might have stayed undetected by the sub-hunting patrol plane.

Perhaps. It was a decision he couldn’t undo. Now they would live or die with it.

The earlier jubilation in the control compartment was gone. The crew wore expressions of grim determination. Borodin stared at the console of the MGK-400EM digital sonar. Popov busied himself scribbling on a notepad, ignoring the chirping pings of the sonobuoys.

Then another sound. A deeper, more sinister noise.

“Torpedo in the water!” shouted Borodin.

Each head in the control compartment swung to the sonar operator. “Bearing 025, seven thousand meters,” the sonar operator announced. “Forty knots, passive searching.”

Manilov’s thoughts raced ahead. It had to be a Mark 46 or a Mark 50. In either case, the torpedo would conduct its own private little search until it located a target within its programmed radius. Then it went into active sonar tracking and homed in like a killer angel.

He thought about firing another Igla, taking out the patrol plane. It was too late. Firing the missile would only betray their exact position.

“Ascend to fifty meters, steer 205 degrees. Ahead full.”

He saw Popov looking at him questioningly. “We’re putting our stern to the torpedo?”

“We’re buying time,” said Manilov. “We’ll run until he goes active. Then we make noise near the surface, turn and try to decoy it.”

Popov was still staring at him. It was contrary to the textbook Russian Navy tactic, which favored turning toward an incoming torpedo, making it overshoot. Manilov had never believed in the tactic.

Did he make the right decision?

There it was again. The doubt.

“Decoys, Captain?”

Manilov shook his head. “Not yet. Not until he goes active.”

The submarine tilted upward, ascending rapidly. Through the hull they could hear the sound of the torpedo’s high-speed screw.

“Three thousand meters,” Borodin called.

Then a new sound: rapid, relentless, high-frequency pinging. It sounded like the chirping of a maniacal insect.

“Active sonar!” Borodin yelled. “We’re targeted.”

In the mission computer display he saw the digital symbol of the torpedo with a flashing circle around it. He was right. It was a Mark 50.

“Hard left, full rudder, 020 degrees.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Decoys now.”

Popov punched the switch for the decoy dispenser, spewing a trail of sonar-attracting decoys in the wake of the submarine.

At a speed of fifteen knots and accelerating, the Mourmetz sliced into the hard left turn. Manilov was gambling that the torpedo would sense the false mass of the decoys and continue straight for them.

By the time the submarine was halfway through the turn, Manilov knew it wasn’t working.

The torpedo wasn’t fooled.

The pinging reached a fanatical pitch. Manilov saw the flashing symbol on the display moving leftward, intercepting the submarine’s new course.

“A thousand meters, closing,” Borodin said. His voice was flat, without emotion.

Manilov nodded. He felt the eyes of his young crew watching him. Popov’s lips were moving in a silent supplication. Borodin’s face was solemn, resigned.

Manilov looked from one to the other, returning each man’s questioning gaze. They trusted you. They’ve placed their lives in your hands.

He knew what he had to do. Rising from his console, he picked up his Russian Navy officer’s cap and placed it on his head.

He turned to Popov. “Bow planes full up,” he ordered. “Flank speed, emergency ascent.”

Popov’s mouth dropped open. “Ascent? Captain, the torpedo… it will—”

“I gave you an order, Mr. Popov. Emergency ascent!”

Popov nodded and turned to his console.

Manilov gripped the brass handhold at his station as the hull of the Mourmetz tilted upward. He heard the nearly silent hum of the propulsion system deepen to a noisy throb. So much for stealthy running, he thought. The Mourmetz had no more need for stealth.

“Thirty meters, ascending,” called out Antonin in an unnaturally high voice. Manilov saw the digital depth gage unwinding in a blur.

In a forty-five degree ascent, the submarine was racing for the open sky.

“Twenty meters.”

Most emergency ascents, in Manilov’s experience, were showboat maneuvers. They were performed to impress bureaucrats and high-ranking officers and the media. In reality, bursting through the surface at such a speed and angle was guaranteed to inflict damage on antennae and planes and exterior running gear.

None of that mattered now.

Clinging to the brass handhold, Manilov kept his eye on the sonar display. The symbol of the incoming torpedo was blinking on the screen like a firefly. With each blink, it appeared closer to the symbol of the Mourmetz. The symbols were nearly merged.

Borodin saw it too. He glanced up at Manilov. Manilov just nodded.

In the next instant, he felt the bow of the Ilia Mourmetz shoot through the surface like an erupting geyser. He braced himself as the bow plunged back downward. He snatched the microphone from his console.

“Attention all hands, this is the captain. Stand by for torpedo damage. Prepare to—”

The torpedo smashed into the Mourmetz’s port side, just forward of the bow plane. The explosion ripped through the pressure hull, opening the submarine to a flood of seawater.

The control cabin went black. Manilov was flung against the bulkhead, smashing his head into a switch panel. He dropped to the deck, knocked senseless.

He was dimly aware of water sloshing over him. He saw the dim yellow emergency lights flicker, then come on.

Dazed, he struggled to his knees and looked around the compartment. In the flickering light, it looked like a scene from hell. The decks were awash. Torrents of seawater poured in through a ruptured bulkhead.

Antonin lay hunched over his panel. Blood gushed from a deep wound in his temple. Borodin was sprawled face-down on the flooded deck, looking lifeless. Keretzky was nowhere in sight.

Someone — he guessed that it was Popov — was standing on the ladder to the sail bridge. He was struggling to open the hatch.

Manilov staggered over to where Borodin lay. He pulled the young man upright, then dragged him toward the ladder.

Popov had the hatch open. A fresh torrent of seawater sloshed in on them.

Manilov shoved Borodin up to Popov. “Take him.” His voice sounded tinny and distant. The explosion had rendered him nearly deaf.

He returned to the control compartment. Antonin was on his feet, bleeding profusely and looking confused. Manilov steered him to the ladder, then shoved him toward the hatch where Popov had stationed himself.

“They’re getting out,” Popov yelled down. “I can see the others escaping from the aft hatch.”

Manilov nodded. At least half his crew, those in the aft compartments, would live. So would those in the forward section who survived the torpedo blast. He had made the right decision.

Twice more he returned, dragging Keretzky and then Chenin, one of the young enlisted men, to the hatch.

He made one more pass, looking for survivors. The compartment was waist deep in seawater. The hull was listing to port, the bow tilting downward. Manilov heard a long, creaking metallic noise, which he knew was a bulkhead giving way.

The Ilia Mourmetz was dying.

In the yellow light, he saw something, a dark round object, floating past him. It was his Russian Navy officer’s cap. Manilov retrieved the cap, gave it a shake, then placed it squarely on his head.

In a thousand dreams, he had lived this moment. He stood as tall as he could in the shifting compartment. He was a Russian naval officer. This was his destiny.

The lights flickered again, then went out, pitching the compartment into blackness. With a final shudder, the Ilia Mourmetz rolled over and began its long descent to the bottom of the sea.