America

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Three hours after the P-3 Orion left th.em, USS La Jolla was still making six knots, still running at eight hundred feet. America was a hundred yards behind her, about one hull length, stepped down slightly to stay out of La Jolla's wash and clear of the towed array cable. An hour ago La Jolla had made a gentle turn of ninety degrees to a course of three four zero. If she stayed on this course for another fifteen minutes, then turned left again, she would be making a perfect square search pattern with the launch site at the approximate center.

Kolnikov had kept the lights on America's sail illuminated. With the aid of the blue-green illuminator and the visible light sensors, he had a relatively clear image on one of the vertical displays. He stood staring at it, mesmerized by the gently turning prop, trying to read the mind of La Jolla's commander. Did he know he was being followed?

Kolnikov was inclined to believe the American didn't know, but how do you explain those two minor course changes in the minutes after America joined behind her? It really looked like he had some noise from the stealth sub on his gear and was checking to ensure it wasn t a false signal. If he knew America was behind him, he was pretending just now. Would he let America fall back and disengage?

Or would he shoot the instant the range opened enough for his torpedoes to arm, which was about one thousand yards?

A hell of a problem.

Turchak was right, of course, Kolnikov mused. And Heydrich, though he hated to admit it, even to himself. He should have fired two torpedoes at the attack boat as soon as she got within the torpedoes' envelope, before the crew even had an inkling that America was near.

Fighter pilots kill fighter pilots, submarine captains are supposed to kill submariners — isn't that the way it goes? Sneak up, launch a torpedo or missile before they see you, shoot 'em in the back. Escape before their friends can take revenge. That is the essence of modern war.

God knows Kolnikov had spent enough years training for it. He knew what it was and how to do it.

But this isn't war, he told himself. We stole a submarine for money. If we had stolen a car no one would have gotten very excited. On the other hand, shooting people while you are stealing things is a bad business. Yeah, we had to shoot some people to get aboard the sub, and we killed that American traitor. Thinking about the dead, he waved irritably, as if he could banish them from his memory.

Too many things on your conscience, Kolnikov. Far too many. A dangerous luxury, a conscience, beyond the pocketbook of a poor man like you.

If La Jolla makes the ninety-degree left turn — in what? ten, no, eleven minutes — Kolnikov mused, then I'll break away, slow to barely maintaining plane effectiveness, let him motor on until he's increased the separation to a mile or so. Then I'll turn ninety degrees to the right and sail away, staying in his stern quarter, where his sonar is the least effective. In the event he does anything aggressive, I'll be in a perfect position to launch from the port tubes.

That decision made, he descended the ladder to the galley and poured himself a cup of coffee. He sipped the hot, black liquid, savored it, stared at his reflection in the plastic that covered the coffeepot operating instructions, which were mounted on the bulkhead. After several sips, he topped off the cup, then climbed back to the control room, where he perched on the captain's stool and lit a cigarette.

On the proper minute, La Jolla began her port turn. Vladimir

Kolnikov sighed with relief. He had Turchak follow her diligently around the turn, then as she steadied on her new course, two five zero degrees, he told Turchak to slow to two knots. "Watch out for that towed array," he warned. "It's right above us."

"I'll avoid it."

Kolnikov nodded. He could rely on Turchak, which was a good feeling.

"Rothberg," he said, glancing around to locate the American. "Check the torpedo control panel. I want to ensure the panel is continuously updating the presets in the torpedoes. I hope to sneak away from her without anyone the wiser, but we must be ready, with our finger on the trigger. I want to let the towed array go by before I turn and point our prop at it. Putting those pulses right into the towed array and expecting them not to hear is asking too much. When we are well aft of it, then we will turn."

He paused, examining their faces, then continued: "If they put fish in the water we must shoot back and get out decoys while we accelerate. Turchak, be ready if I call for power. Alert the engine room. Eck, pay attention to that sonar. Boldt, I want you to continuously monitor the torpedo firing solutions that the torpedo control machine is generating. Sometimes these idiot savants can garble the data coming in and turn out truly amazing, useless solutions. If we must shoot, it will be our asses if we miss. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Rothberg, Eck?"

"Aye, captain," they each said, one after another.

As La Jolla faded from the photonics screen, Kolnikov had Turchak kill the sail lights. He walked aft to the mast control panel. He personally eased the mast down and waited until the green light came on, indicating it was completely stowed. Then he waited until the watertight door closed over the opening, sealing it to prevent flow noises.

The sound from La Jolla's prop still beaconed from the darkness of the sea on the Revelation screen, even though the hull had faded from sight. If she maintained a four-knot speed advantage, Kolnikov calculated, it would take her fifteen minutes to open the distance between them to a nautical mile, a smidgen over six thousand feet. That would be enough. Then he would begin his turn. On the other hand, if this guy was going to punch off a minimum-range shot, he would be far enough away in about seven and a half or eight minutes. Allowing for the fact America was decelerating, call it ten minutes.

Ten minutes .. La Jolla's towed array… When the bitter end of the array went by, the distance would be precisely a half mile. Anytime after that.

"He's definitely slowing, dropping back," Petty Officer Buck Brown said to the control room crew aboard La Jolla.

"Mark the time," Junior Ryder said, and glanced at the clock on the forward bulkhead.

"Don't lose him," the chief of the boat said to Brown.

The XO, Skip Harlow, mopped his forehead again with a sodden handkerchief, even though the room was not overly warm.

The commanding officer, Junior Ryder, glanced at the inertial navigation computer. Six knots. That speed agreed with the dead-reckoning plot. One nautical mile every ten minutes. Say the Russian slowed to two knots… no, make it three. In twenty minutes at three knots the distance between the boats would be one nautical mile, which is two thousand yards. Even if he only slowed to four knots, in twenty minutes the distance would be two-thirds of a mile — call it thirteen hundred yards. That was enough for the torpedoes to arm, but not enough to get the decoys out far enough to be effective in the event Kolnikov instantly returned fire. No, the idea here is to kill the other guy and not get killed yourself. Point-blank torpedo shots were too risky, damn near suicidal, if the other guy was also ready to shoot.

Of course, once America faded from the sonar, the circle of probability where she must be began expanding. The more time that passed, the larger the circle. At some point the circle would be so large that a spread of torpedoes would have to be fired to achieve an acceptable probability of a hit. Eventually the circle would become so large that the probability of a hit would shrink toward zero, even firing a spread. If America were in range.

Junior Ryder considered all these things and made his decision. "Forty minutes, folks. In forty minutes the range will have opened to at least twenty-six hundred yards. We'll give her the gun and put some noise and bubble makers in the water. When the decoys are out, we'll turn. Then we'll shoot two fish."

The crew had trained for years for this moment and everyone knew his job, so there was little to say. People swallowed hard and tried not to look at one another. All highly qualified submariners, they knew that the pirate crew in America would undoubtedly hear the oncoming torpedoes and try to fire torpedoes of their own. Each crew would then try as best they could to evade the torpedoes seeking them. The winner of the battle would be the boat that survived what might be multiple salvos of torpedoes.

If there were a survivor…

"The frequencies on those gurgles are almost too low for the towed array," Buck Brown said. "Not getting much help there. I'm losing him. When he goes aft of the towed array, we'll lose him in seconds."

"Where is he now?"

"Dead aft, Skipper."

Ryder glanced at the clock. "Thirty-seven minutes from now. Remember, this guy may have changed his mind and shoot us as soon as the separation reaches minimum range. Buck, listen up."

Brown concentrated on the computer display before him and pushed his earphones more tightly against his ears.

"Which way will he turn, Skipper?" The OOD asked that question.

"Starboard, I think. Based only on the fact that a port turn would take him right back to the exact position where he launched the Tomahawks. I suspect he will instinctively turn to get away from that location. Of course, he could turn port just because he thinks I think it probable that he'll turn the other way."

"Two torpedoes?"

"That's right. We'll turn ninety degrees starboard and fire both from the starboard tubes. I think he'll probably turn starboard. Fifteen seconds between fish." At these close ranges, the torpedoes would begin an active sonar search for their target immediately after they left the tubes, while accelerating to their attack speed of forty knots. As they ran they would send sonar data back to La Jolla via fiber-optic cables that would reel out behind them. If the fiber-optic wire remained intact, the sonar operator in the firing submarine could help the torpedo differentiate between decoys and its real target during the attack phase and issue steering commands. If the wire broke, the torpedo was on its own, guided by the logic programmed into it.

"If the first torpedo finds him," Ryder said, "we can ensure that the second fish turns that way. One of these things should get a hit." He said that for the benefit of the control room crew, trying to radiate confidence. Alas, he was gambling all their lives. Try as he might, he didn't see any other choice. Kolnikov and his men had hijacked America—Ryder and his crew had been sent to find and sink it.

It was as simple as that. Really. Junior Ryder and his men were obeying the orders of their lawful superiors. If they died doing their duty… well, a great many good men wearing American uniforms had gone before them.

Vladimir Kolnikov carefully explained to his control room team what he wanted each man to do and what the execute commands would be. "Don't do anything without orders," he concluded. "Doing the wrong thing is usually worse than doing nothing at all."

He was briefing them just in case, he told himself, hoping against hope that the Americans didn't know that the stealth submarine was anywhere around and that they would disappear into the dark wastes, searching futilely. If the commander knows we are here, he will probably shoot, Kolnikov silently acknowledged.

"The Americans watch too many John Wayne movies," Kolnikov muttered.

"That they do," Heydrich replied, just loud enough for Kolnikov to hear.

He checked the torpedo presets, made sure the computer was properly calculating the angles. It seemed to be. He was studying the horizontal tactical plot when Eck said, "There's another submarine out there. Forty degrees forward of our port beam, I think."

Kolnikov took a deep breath and checked his watch. Seven minutes had passed since La Jolla began pulling away. She was just a fading light on the bulkhead Revelation screen. "What kind?"

"Don't know yet. The computer is trying to match the screw and flow noises."

Eck had already designated a track, but of course, with passive sonar there was no way to quickly determine the depth of the other sub or the range, the distance to it. The control room crew would have to take a series of bearings over time, plot them, then average to eliminate errors, to establish a probable distance, course, and speed on the other sub. Fortunately a torpedo data computer, or TDC, helped with this chore. The same technique could be used for depth, with less accurate results since the angles from the horizontal were so small.

"Another Los Angeles-c\a.ss attack sub," Eck reported.

"I've lost him completely," Buck Brown said to the skipper of USS La Jolla, Junior Ryder. "That gurgle wasn't much, and it's completely gone now, faded into the background noise."

Ryder glanced at the tactical plot, then his watch. Nine and a half minutes. Allowing for the deceleration, the Russian was down to about two knots, slower than he thought. That meant the distance was opening quicker than he'd estimated. He was going to wait until the distance had opened to at least a mile and a half, giving the decoys sufficient time to deploy and the torpedoes more time to acquire their target. Still, it was going to be a minimum range, down-the-throat shot. Another fifteen minutes.

Sweet Jesus, into your hands I commit the lives of these men who sail with me.

"If La Jolla takes a crack at us, this new guy may decide to strap us on too," Turchak said to Kolnikov. Both men knew that decoying and evading torpedoes was a noisy affair, sure to be heard for many, many miles, depending on the location of the temperature and salinity discontinuities. And like blood in the water, attract sharks.

"Port torpedo, from number two tube," Kolnikov said, addressing Rothberg, "target the newcomer. Starboard for La Jolla. Just in case."

"Only one torpedo for each," Turchak whispered hoarsely. "What if one malfunctions?"

"We only have six. We may damn well need the last four."

"I just want you to know that I'd be most unhappy dying with four torpedoes still aboard."

Kolnikov resented Turchak's melodrama. "You're not going to die," he scoffed, "unless food poisoning nails you."

A sweating Rothberg was all thumbs changing the setting for the port torpedo. Kolnikov watched him, made sure he did it right.

Then he waited. Ten minutes came and went. Perhaps La folia's commander was waiting for the range to open.

The unbearable tension seemed to get even tighter.

Rothberg began sobbing.

"Shut up," Heydrich snarled at him.

"They're going to kill all of us," he whispered, barely audible. He glanced fearfully at the bulkheads. The other submarines were out there, listening.

"We must shoot now," Turchak insisted. "Before La Jolla tells this new contact of our presence.

Vladimir Kolnikov lit a cigarette and smoked it in silence.

The minutes ticked away in dead silence in La Jolla's control room. Everyone perspiring, everyone watching this and that, no one saying a word. Ten minutes since America passed the end of the towed array… eleven..

On the fourteenth minute, Buck Brown broke the silence. "Contact! I have a subsurface contact. About fifteen degrees forward of our port beam."

Junior began doing mental arithmetic. The range between La Jolla and America had opened to almost a mile and a half, which the torpedoes would traverse in about two minutes after they had made the turn.

"Los Angeles—class," Brown said.

Shit! With her Revelation sonar, America must have heard the other boat. And there was no way in the world that boat would hear America. For whatever reason, that sub had just sailed unsuspectingly into the middle of a shootout.

Should he wait?

If he contacted the other boat on the acoustic circuit, Kolnikov might shoot at both boats. The American could fire back, down the bearing line of the incoming torpedo, but at short range would he have enough time to get his decoys out, accelerate, and evade? While

Junior weighed the problem, the oncoming victim was steadily closing the range.

"Okay," he said, making up his mind. "Let's do it. Right full rudder. Flood tubes one and two."

"Kolnikov, La Jolla's making a funny noise." Eck pressed his headphones tightly against his ears and watched the presentation on his scope. It took him all of five seconds. "He's flooding tubes."

Kolnikov's face was a mask. He took two steps to the torpedo control console, checked the presets going to each weapon one more time. Without knowing the range to the second sub, he was going to have to merely shoot down the bearing line and hope for the best. Not knowing how far the torpedo had to travel made that an iffy proposition. And with a limited number of torpedoes, he couldn't afford to miss.

"Target turning starboard," Eck reported.

"Go active," Kolnikov snapped at Eck. "Give me exact range and bearing to La Jolla, then to the port-side submarine."

Eck turned a knob on his console, selected a narrow beam width.

Ping! The needle jumped when the pulse went out.

Buck Brown heard the ping from America just after the first Mk-48 pump-jet torpedo swam from its tube and raced away, turning toward La Jolla's beam, in the direction that America had to be. As he sang out the news, he checked the PPI readout on the scope of the neighboring console, looking for the bearing. "Starboard beam, Captain," he roared.

"Fire two," Junior Ryder ordered, although only seven seconds had passed since the first fish was launched. He couldn't afford to wait. He was counting on the second torpedo guiding automatically, because the fiber-optic wire would undoubtedly break as he accelerated.

"All ahead flank, launch the decoys."

Four decoys were ejected from the housings in the sub's tail planes, two noisemakers and two bubble generators. Bubbles reflect sound, so they acted like chaff clouds that reflect radar energy. The noisemakers and generators would create an acoustic wall, Ryder hoped, which would defeat the active sonar in the nose of the torpedoes he knew Kolnikov would inevitably launch.

Eck sang out the range and bearings to the two submarines as they came up on his display, but the process now was strictly automatic. La Jolla was only twenty-four hundred yards away, a little over a mile, while the Johnny-come-lately was at twenty-six thousand yards, about thirteen miles. The information about each contact went to the torpedo data computer, which computed the proper course to those locations and the necessary firing angles, the presets, which were electrically sent to the torpedoes in the tubes. Then they were launched and Turchak slammed the power lever to flank speed ahead. They could feel the acceleration as the turbines accelerated and the prop pushed violently on the seawater. "Watch the temperatures," Turchak admonished the engine room crew.

Each succeeding sweep of the active sonar beam allowed the computer to determine a slightly different range and bearing to the targets. Subtracting the apparent movement of America, the computer then calculated the course and speed of both targets. The torpedo data computer updated the intercept bearings and fed that information to the appropriate torpedo via the fiber-optic wires. Meanwhile, the active seekers in the torpedoes were searching for their targets.

"Should I launch the decoys?" Boldt asked. Rothberg was curled in a chair, useless, staring at the Revelation panels. Heydrich was leaning against the aft bulkhead, a cup of coffee in his hand, discreetly bracing himself against the acceleration and any maneuvers Kolnikov ordered.

"No," said Kolnikov. "We'll use the antitorpedo weapons." These were small defensive torpedoes that homed in on the sonars of the incoming ship killers, riding the beam to them and exploding them prematurely. The latest thing in submarine defense, they were going to sea for the first time on America, which was the only boat that had them. "Enable two," Kolnikov added, "and I pray to heaven they work."

Four of these missiles were mounted in the sail. When enabled, they would automatically fire in sequence when they received a sonar signal on the proper frequency.

"And the jammer," he added, pointing at Eck, who nodded vigorously.

"Make notes," Kolnikov said to Turchak, who was monitoring the boat's increasing speed and waiting for the order for the violent turn that he knew was coming. "Anything doesn't work, we'll write a hot letter to Electric Boat."

The Los Angeles-c\ass attack submarine that had sailed into the midst of the torpedo duel at twenty knots was USS Colorado Springs. Her sonar operators heard the thrashing of La Jolla's prop, then the echo-ranging ping of America's sonar. No neophyte, the captain knew precisely what he was hearing — torpedoes had been fired. The sonar quickly provided bearings to the active sonar and the accelerating sub. The problem, of course, was determining which sub contained the pirates and which one held good guys.

Within seconds his leading sonarman confirmed his first deduction. Mk-48s were indeed in the water, several of them. The distinctive sound of the swash-plate piston engine — which burned Otto-fuel, nitrogen ester with an oxidant — driving the pump-jet propulsion system was one he had heard many times before on exercises.

Seconds later the sonarman told the captain that at least one of the torpedoes was closing on Colorado Springs.

At least now, the captain reflected, he knew which sub was which.

"Fire two fish on the bearing of the incoming. Quickly now, let's do it, people." Fortunately the integrated sonar/combat control suite performed automatically. As the sonar derived a bearing, that data was fed into the system, which calculated the presets and electrically set the selected torpedoes while the tubes were being flooded.

When the outer doors were opened, the two torpedoes were ejected from their tubes by compressed air, their engines started, and they raced away, accelerating swiftly. The crew of the Springs did not elect to let the fiber-optic wires reel out behind them, however. Already the boat was accelerating. The captain intended to maneuver as violently as he could to cause the incoming fish to miss; fiber-optic wires would probably be broken, and they probably weren't long enough anyway.

With both torpedoes gone, Colorado Springs laid over in a hard turn designed to put the incoming torpedo forward of the beam, forcing it into a maximum rate turn, which might make it miss. And she launched a half dozen decoys.

Ruben Garcia's screaming voice in his earphones startled P-3 pilot Duke Dolan. "Torpedoes in the water, noisemakers. They're shooting at each other."

The P-3 Orion was orbiting at 25,000 feet, fifty miles from the center of the sonobuoy set. Gauzy cirrus aloft softened the afternoon sunlight, diffused it. Four miles below, the surface of the sea appeared a deep blue. The haze and the sea merged twelve or fifteen miles away, so there was no horizon. The surface of the placid ocean was flawless, unbroken by a single ship or wake. And yet, it wasn't empty.

"Tell SUBLANT," Duke told the TACCO. "Get permission for us to go back in. There may be survivors or something."

"Roger."

"Tell me if you hear any explosions."

"Got it," Garcia snapped and flipped switches so he could talk to SUBLANT on the radio.

Aboard America, Eck and Kolnikov heard the high-pitched pinging of the incoming torpedoes as they locked onto their target. La Jolla's decoys were pouring noise into the water, but Eck's sonar was so advanced that the decoy noise was easy to filter out. The Mk-48 Kolnikov had fired, however, lacked Revelation's sophistication.

Although he had ordered America to increase her speed drastically, Kolnikov had not ordered a turn for fear of breaking the fiber-optic wire unreeling behind the war shot aimed at La Jolla.

Eck studied the torpedo sonar data displayed on a separate screen.

He had too many targets. He couldn't tell which was the real one, so he made the assumption that all the targets were false and the submarine was behind them. Eck turned the torpedo to go around the targets he could see and come in behind, where he hoped the forty-knot fish would find La Jolla. He was so intent on his task that he didn't hear the antitorpedo weapons being fired from the sail and accelerating away, though the sonar faithfully captured the event.

Kolnikov glanced up at the bulkhead-mounted sonar panels and stood frozen, mesmerized. He could see the decoys, like newborn stars, and the river of disturbed water that was La Jolla's wake, which appeared as a luminescent flow of gases in a darker universe. The sight that captured his attention, though, was the streaks left by the wakes of the speeding torpedoes — both his going away and La Jolla's incoming.

He couldn't take his eyes off the two incoming fish, racing toward him like tracer bullets.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught the streaks that were the antitorpedo weapons. The one on the right went straight as a flashlight beam for the incoming warhead — and hit it. The detonation of shaped charge rocked the submarine slightly and appeared on the screen as a brilliant flash of white light.

The second antitorpedo weapon missed.

Involuntarily he grabbed for the table, braced himself, unable to tear his eyes from the screen.

Now a series of strobing lights flashed across the screen as more than 150 transducers buried in America's anechoic skin began emitting sound in a pattern that was designed to confuse the acoustic receivers in the nose of the torpedo and cause it to turn.

Racing in at forty knots, the incoming death ray seemed to turn away from the center of the screen at the very last second and disappear out the side.

The torpedo had missed!

Vladimir Kolnikov exhaled convulsively.

Over the noise of the incoming torpedo, Buck Brown heard the explosion caused by the premature detonation of La Jolla's first torpedo and assumed it had struck America. He also heard the active sonar countermeasures of America, but the reality of what he was hearing didn't register. He was too busy tracking the incoming torpedo and ensuring that the tactical plot was correct.

Junior Ryder also heard the first explosion and thought for a fleeting instant that he had torpedoed America. That thought died when he heard the active countermeasures. Although he had never heard it before, he had been briefed about it and recognized the sound for what it was. Still, these thoughts occupied only a corner of his consciousness — his attention was devoted to the tactical plot, a two-dimensional computer presentation of the tactical situation. His submarine was in the center of the plot. America and the Springs were depicted in their relative positions… as was the track of the incoming torpedo.

He could see that the torpedo was being steered around the acoustic decoy cloud. He ordered more decoys deployed and called for a hard turn into the oncoming torpedo to try and force an overshoot.

If his boat had been going faster, the maneuver would have worked.

Ryder's eyes widened and he involuntarily grabbed the table as the torpedo track merged with the center of the plot.

The explosion rocked the boat.

Aft! It hit aft!

Then the lights went out and the computer screens went blank.

The explosion of the shaped charge in the warhead of the Mk-48 ruptured the hull of USS La Jolla. The enormous pressure of the ocean did the rest. The engineering spaces were crushed. The watertight hatch leading forward held for a long moment… as the steel carcass that had been a sub settled deeper into the sea. Down she went, slowly, the pressure building inexorably.

"Emergency surface. Blow the tanks!"

Junior Ryder shouted the order over the groans of steel being twisted and deformed under the enormous pressure. They heard the compressed air being released, heard the rumbling of water being forced from the ballast tanks.

The generators had failed. In the glow of the battery-operated emergency lantern, Junior watched the depth gauge. If he could get the sub to the surface he could save some of his men — the ones still alive. If not…

Behind him the talkers on the sound-powered circuit were trying to raise the men in the engineering spaces. One of them was sobbing.

The needle on the depth gauge quivered as the boat tilted, the aft end sinking and the bow rising. There was too much water aft.

"Shit!" shouted the chief of the boat over the voices and the noise of tortured steel. "It ain't gonna work."

He was right. The needle on the depth gauge began moving clockwise. The boat was going deeper.

"Oh, Jesus," someone exclaimed. Then the sea crushed the bulkheads aft and the air pressure increased astronomically, rupturing every eardrum, collapsing lungs and eyeballs in the microsecond before the wall of water hit them like a flying anvil.

And then they were dead.

Kolnikov recognized the ripping, tearing, crushing noise after the torpedo detonation for what it was. He immediately turned his attention to the Springs. He had one torpedo on the way, which the attack sub might well avoid.

He checked the combat computer to ensure that the remaining torpedoes in the tubes were getting presets. One was receiving range and bearings to Colorado Springs, the other to what was now the wreck of La Jolla. He flooded the tube, opened the outer door, and launched the torpedo that was tracking the Springs. Then he set up the remaining fish to track her too.

He turned away from the combat computer and stood in the center of the room looking at the Revelation panels. Noises were still coming from La Jolla as metal tore and she was crushed, compartment by compartment. Revelation displayed her agony as random flashes and smears of light that were brighter than the general glow of the acoustic decoy area, which was beginning to cool off.

The torpedoes fired at the Springs were two streaks that led away into the darkness.

Twenty-six thousand yards, about thirteen miles, the torpedoes would need a little over nineteen minutes to traverse that distance. And no doubt that sub had fired torpedoes in this direction that would require about the same amount of time to arrive.

America was still accelerating. Kolnikov directed Turchak to turn to ninety degrees off the bearing to the Springs. With a lot of luck he might run out of the detection cone of the incoming torpedoes, for undoubtedly there was more than one. He didn't expect to succeed in this maneuver, but he thought it worth a try. In any event, he would have the torpedoes in his stern quarter. When they were close enough, he would begin turning into therrt, tighter and tighter, trying to bring them forward of the beam and force an overshoot.

At the same time, he would trigger the active acoustic defense. He had only two more antitorpedo weapons, and he didn't want to use them here unless forced into it. On the other hand, as Turchak pointed out, it is silly to die holding a loaded gun you refused to shoot.

"Let's pray there are no more than two torpedoes inbound," he said aloud.

"I didn't know you prayed," Turchak muttered, and wiped his hands on his trousers.

"SUBLANT says to go in," the TACCO told Duke Dolan. "And we have explosions. Breakup noises."

Duke Dolan turned his attention to the autopilot. He studied it carefully, gingerly turned the heading control to bring the big plane out of its turn and steady on the proper heading. Then he retarded the throttles and lowered the nose several degrees.

He did everything slowly, trying to concentrate, trying to block out the thought of dying men.

To die on such a day.

God forgive us.

"I can hear torpedoes running," Eck said as he worked feverishly to get accurate bearings. Kolnikov could hear them too through the sonar headset he was wearing, but mainly he was listening to the sounds of La Jolla being crushed. The noises had about stopped. There was nothing left to crush as the wreckage sank slowly toward the ocean's floor, here about sixteen thousand feet below the surface.

More torpedoes were running. Life or death?

The deciding factor, Kolnikov hoped, would be the antitorpedo countermeasures. Americas were two technological generations beyond the countermeasures in the Los Angeles—class boats. Seawolf was the generation between them. If he encountered Seawolf he would shoot fast and first.

Perhaps he should not have fired at the Springs. The other boat might have been unable to resolve a firing solution.

Well, it was done. Perhaps the Springs would successfully evade and he could slip away.

Or perhaps he and Turchak and Eck and all the others would die right here in just a few minutes when the torpedoes arrived.

Kolnikov didn't really believe in God, not as He was depicted by organized religions. He believed that there was something bigger than man, bigger than life, but he didn't know what. He hadn't thought about it much, either. He would learn all the answers soon enough.

He could hear the incoming torpedoes now, pick them out of the background noise… part of which was the Springs's noisemakers and bubble generators. The devil of it was that he couldn't tell how far away they were. He glanced at the clock.

Eleven minutes had passed. Running time should be a bit over nineteen if the Springs had fired at a target with a known range. Probably she hadn't. The Mk-48 torpedo was probably cruising at forty knots, searching as it came. That would make the running time. . what? He tried to do the mental arithmetic and couldn't. He did it on a piece of paper lying nearby.

Nineteen minutes, forty seconds.

Twelve minutes gone. .

Heydrich was sitting negligently in one of the chairs at an unused sonar console. He was watching Eck, the Revelation displays, Boldt, and Kolnikov. Just taking it all in, like a man whiling away the remainder of a lunch hour.

Kolnikov felt a rush of anger. He turned his back on Heydrich so he wouldn't have to look at him.

Thirteen minutes…

Boldt was chewing his fingernails, tearing at them. Sweat ran in rivulets down the cheeks of Georgi Turchak; the few remaining strands of hair on top of his head were sodden. He had the boat under perfect control, right at twenty knots, which was about as fast as the boat would go and still remain reasonably quiet. Eck was working like a madman at the sonar control panel, resolving the bearing, tweaking it, ensuring that the information was being fed to the computer-driven tactical plot. And Leon Rothberg, the American? He was staring listlessly at the bulkhead, his eyes apparently unfocused. Perhaps he was the only sane one among them.

Kolnikov studied the tactical plot. The torpedoes were curving in behind in a tail chase, one trailing the other. Alas, he had not managed to get outside their acquisition zone.

"Ten degrees left rudder, Turchak… Little more rudder… A little nose down, a few more turns. . Boldt, fire off the hull transducers, let's see if we can make the torpedoes pass behind."

He looked up from the tactical plot to the Revelation screen on the port side. There was the first torpedo, a luminous streak curving in, growing larger, closing.. And the second, well behind, following the first. The distinctive high-pitched noise of their seekers squealed in his earphones; on the Revelation screen it looked as if the incoming torpedoes were sporting a single headlight each.

Should he launch an antitorpedo torpedo? Both of them?

"Full left rudder, Turchak. Wrap it up tight."

At these grazing angles, the hull-mounted active acoustic coun-termeasure should be effective — the antitorpedo weapon probably would be the best choice for a torpedo coming in on the beam. Might get one of those tomorrow, he thought. Or in an hour.

Closer and closer came the rushing torpedo… and at the last instant turned to go behind the ship. He turned and saw it going away on the after starboard screen.

Back to port. One to go.

Racing in, tighter than the last one.

"Give me all the turn that's in her," he roared at Turchak, who tilted the boat with the planes. Kolnikov had to grab something to keep from sliding on the deck.

As the second torpedo streaked past, he heard Rothberg sobbing again.

"Right full rudder," Kolnikov commanded. "Take her down to sixteen hundred feet, put the Springs dead astern, and run like hell."

After the boat rolled out of the turn with her bow down, Heydrich rose from his chair and stretched. "That was certainly an education. You are very good at this, Kolnikov. Very good." Then he walked out of the compartment and went down the ladder to the galley.

Aboard Colorado Springs, the crew deployed decoys to build an acoustic wall between the incoming torpedo and the sub. Without a human brain to help it find a way through or around the decoy, the first torpedo picked out the strongest signal and went for it. Unfortunately that signal was well above and left of the submarine, and once it had missed, the torpedo ran on, vainly searching for a target.

It was only when the noise from the decoys began subsiding that the crew heard the second incoming torpedo, which had been fired several minutes after the first.

They put noisemakers in the water, but a bit too late. The torpedo struck the upper starboard tail plane a glancing blow and detonated. The force of the blast did not hole the pressure hull, but it blew the seals in the main propeller shaft and actually bent one of the blades. It also made a mess of the upper starboard tail plane.

When it became obvious that there were no more torpedoes inbound, the leaking, vibrating shaft convinced the captain the time had come to get to the surface. As quickly as he could. He gave the order to blow the tanks, emergency surface, and the submarine began to rise from the depths. Under control, still intact, but in no shape to hunt further for a stolen America.

SUBLANT called Vice-Admiral Navarre in the Pentagon war room. He was standing there with the CNO, Stuffy Stalnaker, going over the tactical situation, figuring out what ships were where, what could be done with them.

"Torpedoes were fired, at least four. One submarine was hit and sunk. Another was hit and damaged and began an emergency surface maneuver. That is the evaluation of the P-3 TACCO from the sounds on his sonobuoy. We don't know which subs were hit."

"Can SOSUS confirm?"

"We are working on that now, sir. I'll have more in a few minutes."

"Keep us advised," Navarre said and hung up the phone. He turned away from the CNO for a moment to try to get his face under control, then faced the man and relayed the news.

"I hope to Christ one of those torpedoes hit America," Stalnaker said hopefully. From the look on Navarre's face, he could see the submariner didn't think that likely.

A half hour later they heard that Duke Dolan's P-3 was overhead the sub that managed to surface. Dolan said she was a Los Angeles— class boat. The sub was wallowing on the surface, down at the stern, unable to make way.

Two minutes later the admirals in the Pentagon learned that she was Colorado Springs. She was soon on the air, radioing a report of the action.

As the messages came in, it became obvious that the boat that had gone down was La Jolla. America had escaped.