Arctic Gambit

19 KNIFE FIGHT

Fighting his rising temper, Jerry almost forgot to tell LT Ford to take over in UCC and maintain contact on the unidentified approaching submarine. The panicky look on all of the operators’ faces helped to remind Jerry that as far as this crew was concerned, he was the next thing to God, and the wraith of a squadron commodore was a terrible thing to behold. As Jerry marched toward the control room, the memories of his own heated debates with his old Squadron 15 commodore, Captain Charles Simonis out in Guam, rushed into his mind. He remembered how he felt when his superior challenged his tactical prowess, and the memory had a calming effect. Jerry decided he wouldn’t relieve Weiss the moment he saw him — he’d at least give the man a chance.

He had no sooner entered the operations compartment, than Jerry saw a lone figure standing in the passageway. It was the executive officer, Joshua Segerson. He looked very unhappy.

“I had a sneaking suspicion I’d run into you, Commander,” Jerry rumbled as he advanced. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, so state your case while we walk.”

Segerson’s surprised expression told Jerry the XO had been expecting a knockdown drag-out fight. Recovering quickly, he said, “Sir, we’re between two hammers and the anvil. If we don’t engage Belgorod first, we’ll be in a three-way cross fire before we can get all our weapons away!”

“Interesting. I don’t see it that way,” Jerry replied sharply. “You and your skipper have a bad case of tactical tunnel vision. You’ve overlooked some clues that should tell you what is actually going on.”

The XO grabbed Jerry’s shoulder, bringing him to a halt. His appearance was a mix of anger and concern. “Commodore! Lou Weiss is a fine submarine officer, and a good captain. He’s proven himself to me, and the crew; I trust his judgment!”

Physically accosting a senior officer like that was unheard of. For a very brief moment, Jerry wanted to slam the man up against the bulkhead, but a fistfight would accomplish nothing. Instead, he took a deep breath, pivoted and faced Segerson. Speaking carefully, he told the XO, “I’m not saying he isn’t a good submariner, or a good captain. What I’m saying is that he’s about to commit a gross tactical error that will adversely affect the ability of this boat to complete its mission.”

Pointing over his right shoulder toward Toledo’s wrecked hull, he exclaimed, “My friend and his crew lie over there, dead, and millions more may join them if we don’t do this right! I’ll give the captain his minute in court, but if I’m not satisfied that he understands what he’s doing wrong, I will relieve him. Do I make myself clear?”

Segerson swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Still apprehensive, but now a little more hopeful, the XO followed Jerry into the control room. As soon as the pair emerged by the plotting tables, Weiss saw them and approached. He had a resigned air about him. “I assume I’m to be relieved, sir,” he said stoically.

Jerry barked, “Enough with the dramatics, Captain! Get your ass over here!” He then turned and took up a spot by the geoplot. Speechless, Weiss stepped down from the periscope stand and stood next to his executive officer. “You, too, COB!” Jerry called over toward the diving officer’s position.

“Yessir!” responded Gibson.

The master chief quickly squeezed by the fire control consoles and positioned himself to Weiss’s right.

“Let me summarize your argument,” Jerry spoke quickly. “If we don’t engage Belgorod first, we may not be able to get all our torpedoes away and escape before being counterattacked by both submarines.”

Weiss nodded. “Yes, sir. If we can get a shot off at Belgorod first, we can at least force her to evade and withdraw. By firing the weapons at slow speed, we’ll be able to delay them from being detected by either Belgorod or the fixed array for a little bit — just long enough for us to get some bearing separation.”

“And where do you plan on placing this attack, since Belgorod is in the towed array’s end-fire beam? We’d have to maneuver at least once to get a reasonable firing solution. That will take time; time we really don’t have with Kazan coming in from the northeast,” countered Jerry.

“It doesn’t have to be a great solution, Commodore, just good enough to make Belgorod run. Her skipper won’t know we don’t have a good solution.”

“But it will still take time, and it all hinges on your assumption that the shot will not be detected quickly. I believe this is an unrealistic assumption, Captain. Either Belgorod, or possibly Kazan, will likely hear the weapon soon after launch. Those boats have the best ASW sensors in the Russian fleet and even a mod seven ADCAP torpedo isn’t that quiet. Either one of the two subs will likely go active and shoot a salvo of weapons down the bearing. Maybe both.

“And once one sub goes active, the other will hear their comrade’s pinging and light off herself, and then we will be caught in a cross fire. This isn’t poker, Lou, it’s chess, and you’re getting pawn hungry. A good submarine commanding officer is aggressive; a great one knows when not to be.”

Weiss’s look was one of discouragement. He’d felt so confident. Jerry smiled faintly; he now had the CO’s attention. “You’ve made two big assumptions here, Lou. First, you assumed that Belgorod would act like any other attack submarine. This is a bad assumption. Belgorod is a Russian navy strategic asset. She and Losharik are your counterparts in the Russian Navy. They’re unique. And don’t forget that Belgorod is also a strategic nuclear asset.

“I’m convinced that Belgorod’s standing orders are to avoid a fight at all costs. She will run as far and as fast as possible from us.

Segerson was shaking his head, trying to follow all of his commodore’s finer points, but one thing just kept bothering him. “I don’t get it, sir, if you believe any torpedo we launch will be detected quickly, then how does attacking the facility first change anything?”

“Ah, very good, XO,” commended Jerry. “That deals with the second assumption, but I doubt you’d realize that you were making one. You were all being good little submariners trying to figure out how you could stay undetected, covert, during the attack. Well, we can’t. So we need to be as frickin’ loud as we possibly can!”

If human brains had circuit breakers, three of them would have popped then and there.

“What!?” blurted all three men in concert.

“I’m… I’m sorry, Commodore, but I don’t understand,” stammered Weiss.

“All right, then, here’s the new plan.” Jerry motioned for them to close ranks and look at the geoplot. “Walter is almost past the minefield, here, on our right, José is on the other flank about here, and we are in the middle. Once José clears the minefield we have both UUVs come up, say two hundred feet off the bottom, drop their NAEs and run like hell, away from the gap. Yes, that means we’re sacrificing them; fortunes of war.

“At the same time, Carter will also deploy countermeasures, as well as some mobile decoys. This will cause the majority, if not all of the Sever modules to alarm. But because there will be multiple, very loud, noise sources evenly dispersed along the line, it’ll mess with the system’s ability to provide good bearings. Even if they do manage to get a glimpse, there will be at least five possible moving targets for them to contend with, the Russians won’t know where to send their ASW assets. In the meantime, while they’re still crapping their pants, we’ll fire four weapons. The first two go out at twenty-eight knots, the second set at forty knots. When the second pair catches up to the first, we put the pedal to the metal on all four torpedoes, cut the wires, close the outer doors and run through the gap.

“By the time Belgorod can distinguish the torpedoes through the jamming, we won’t be anywhere near that bearing. Her captain will naturally think he’s the target of the salvo. He’ll probably counter fire and then run to the south as fast as his boat’s overweight butt can go.”

“What about Kazan?” Segerson asked.

Jerry grinned. “That’s why I’m having the UUVs dump the NAEs to the north of the minefield. All that noise should trigger the mines’ passive sensors and many of them will go active looking for a target to lock on to. I don’t think Kazan’s captain will want to be anywhere near a pack of activated mines looking for something to kill. He’ll evade to the north, just to make sure he’s out of range of the mine’s torpedo payload.”

“And if he goes active first?” pressed Weiss.

“Then he’ll see a lot of junk on his screen from all the noise, but even if his sonar system can cut through it, there will be multiple moving targets. He’ll have to figure out real fast what’s valid and what isn’t — if we’re lucky, he may even think there are several submarines attacking simultaneously. Regardless, he’ll be distracted and that gives us the advantage. Once we get in front of the countermeasures, we’ll have a clear line of bearing to Kazan. We generate a quick fire control solution, and if necessary, throw a couple of Mark 48s her way while we head north to the pack ice. Any questions?”

Weiss, Segerson, and Gibson initially kept staring at the geoplot, then looked up at each other, and then finally at Jerry. “Um, no, sir,” said Weiss.

“Okay, then. We need to do this expeditiously; we’ll only have about ten minutes after the first countermeasure is launched. We need to have the torpedoes on the way, and us out of the way before that time is up,” Jerry summarized. Then pointing at Segerson, added, “The XO and I will set up the torpedo spread, and you, Captain…”

“Yes, sir?”

“Fight your ship.”

The enthusiasm in control started ramping up the moment Jerry had given Weiss his instructions. LT Ford, in charge in UCC, successfully navigated José across the fixed acoustic arrays and had just detected one of the PMK-2 mine anchors. Jerry glanced at the navigation plot and saw that Carter was only a few hundred yards from the lead-lined passage they’d created. Life was about to get very exciting… for the Russians.

“Weps, make tubes one through four ready in all respects,” Weiss ordered calmly.

“Make tubes one through four ready in all respects, aye, sir,” repeated Owens. Jerry peeked at the torpedo tube status display and confirmed they were being flooded down; they’d be ready to shoot soon. Stepping back from the fire control consoles, Jerry turned and caught Weiss looking his way; his expression was still an odd mixture of relief and bewilderment.

Smiling, Jerry passed by the periscope stand and without looking up remarked, “When this all over, Captain, remind me to tell you a little sea story about a very close friend of mine.”

Startled by the unexpected statement, Weiss hesitated momentarily, recovered, and replied, “Yes, sir.”

“Captain, we’re passing over the acoustic arrays now,” reported Malkoff.

“Time to begin the festivities,” Jerry muttered under his breath, reaching for the intercom mike. “UCC, Conn. Accelerate UUVs to maximum speed and bring them to a depth of four hundred feet.”

As Ford acknowledged the command, Weiss leaned toward the fire control consoles and shouted, “Countermeasures, stand by!”

An intense silence descended on the control room as everyone sat anxiously at the edge of their seat. All eyes were on Jerry, waiting for him to give the order when all hell would break loose. After an insufferable pause, the intercom speaker squawked to life. “Conn, UCC, both UUVs are at eight knots, accelerating to ten. Depth is four hundred fifty feet, coming to four hundred feet.”

With an expression of utter resolve, Jerry clicked the mike. “UCC, Conn, deploy countermeasures… NOW!”

Petty Officer Yolkov yawned and rubbed his eyes. The Sever monitoring station personnel had been at full combat alert for the last twenty-four hours, and everyone was starting to get a bit worn. Glancing at his watch, he was disheartened to see that his shift was only half over. Sighing quietly, the young rating picked up his mug with hot tea. He had to stay awake for another two hours. Yolkov raised the mug, but it never reached his lips. Suddenly, his eyes went wide with disbelief as his display console erupted with alarms.

“Lieutenant!.. LIEUTENANT!” he screeched.

“What is your problem, Petty Officer Yolkov?” shouted an angry Zhabin. The lieutenant looked up and saw both operators were white as ghosts; Yolkov was trembling, pointing nervously at his screen.

Irritated, Zhabin strutted toward the pair, yelling, “I said, what is the problem, Petty Officer—” He stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he looked over the operator’s shoulder and saw the display.

“Mother of God!” he exclaimed. The entire northern line of Sever modules was alerting. The track log kept jumping between three and five possible targets. But there was no track data, and the bearings were all over the place. Stumbling backward, Zhabin almost fell over a chair at a nearby desk. Scrambling to maintain his balance, he grabbed the nearest phone… but whom should he call? The helicopter detachment commander? No! He had to alert the entire base. With quivering fingers he punched in the chief of staff’s number.

Boris Kalinin had learned to appreciate the early hours of each morning. It was the only time he could rely on to be free of interruptions, allowing him to attack the massive assemblage of paperwork the base generated. Thus, when the phone rang, it was with frustration that he reached for the handset.

“Chief of Sta—” he started to say, but was cut off by an excited, loud, and incoherent voice, shouting something about multiple contacts. Kalinin recognized the voice as the officer in charge of the Sever monitoring detachment. Irritated by the unintelligible report, the captain bellowed, “Lieutenant Zhabin! Get a hold of yourself! Calm down, you imbecile! That’s better. Now report properly, Lieutenant.”

Zhabin paused and began again. His voice was still very agitated, but he was at least understandable. Kalinin listened, impatient, then with alarm. Jumping to his feet, he exclaimed, “Five submarine contacts!? The entire northern array line is being jammed!? Call the flight line immediately! I want helicopters airborne, right now!”

He slammed the handset down back into the base while shouting for his aide, “Pyotr! Sound a base-wide alert! We’re under attack!”

“Firing point procedures, Dragon torpedo complex, Mark 48 ADCAP, tubes one through four,” snapped Weiss.

“Solution ready,” called Segerson.

“Weapons ready,” Owens followed instantly.

“Ship ready,” announced Malkoff.

“Shoot on generated bearing!” Weiss roared.

“Set… standby… shoot!” reported the fire control technician.

Down in Carter’s torpedo room, the firing valves on the port and starboard tube nests popped open, releasing high-pressure air to the tube’s air turbine pumps. The spinning turbine blades drove an impeller that gulped hundreds of gallons of seawater and thrust it forcefully into the tube. The massive pulse of seawater boosted the two-ton torpedoes into the ocean at nearly thirty knots. Seconds later, the four torpedoes’ own engines came to life and the torpedoes accelerated smoothly and quietly.

“Normal launch!” shouted the fire control tech. “Torpedoes are on course one eight three, first set at two eight knots, the second at four zero knots, run-to-enable seven five double oh yards!”

LT Owens then did a quick double take; she didn’t like what she saw. “Captain! Loss of wire continuity on weapon number four!”

“Understood,” replied Weiss calmly, he wasn’t surprised. Statistically, it was a long shot to retain all four wires. Turning to Jerry, he asked, “Do we still accelerate the three torpedoes to sixty-five knots?”

Mitchell paused while he did the mental math. At forty knots, the torpedoes would need an additional two minutes or so to reach the enable point, where the seekers would start pinging. He shook his head; the Russians wouldn’t be able to react quickly enough. He decided he’d rather keep all four weapons. “Negative, Captain. Bring all weapons to forty knots.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Weiss said then, looking at his stopwatch, counted down the time until his next order. “Weps, accelerate units one and two to forty knots, cut the wires, and shut the outer doors.” Weiss gestured for Segerson to follow up on the torpedoes’ status. Pivoting, the captain ordered, “Helm, all ahead standard. Dive, keep us close to the bottom!”

Captain-Lieutenant Mirsky didn’t even bother taxiing to the runway. He frantically waved the ground crew away, turned the aircraft to face the wind, and then gunned his machine. The Ka-27M helicopter leapt into the sky. Without waiting to see if the other helo had taken off, Mirsky pushed the throttle to full power and set course for the western end of the hydroacoustic array.

“Petty Officer Mitrov, enter these coordinates into the Lira combat system.” Mirsky spoke tersely as he handed the rating a piece of paper. His head was still spinning. How could four American submarines be attacking the complex? Two contacts were detected at each end of the array barrier; Mirsky’s flight was to prosecute the ones to the west, as headquarters didn’t have a good position on the Project 885M submarine, Kazan. She was at last report off to the east of Bolshevik Island, but that had been some time ago. The pilot didn’t like the idea of helicopters and friendly submarines operating in the same area. They couldn’t communicate easily; coordination was all but impossible. He’d have to be very careful when he dropped his torpedo. Killing one of their own submarines, even in a chaotic battle such as this, would be a career-ending blunder — if he were lucky.

“Coming up on the minefield,” stated Malkoff. “We should be clear in about two minutes.”

“Very well, Nav.” Weiss leaned over toward the fire control consoles. He needed to prepare for the next phase of their escape. “Weps, make tubes seven and eight ready in all respects.”

“Conn, Sonar,” blared the speaker. “Regained Sierra one five on the towed array. Contact bears roughly one nine five, drawing left, heading southwest. She’s cavitating.”

“Run away! Run away!” squealed Segerson with a bad British accent. Mitchell had been right. Belgorod was running.

Jerry and Weiss both laughed. “C’mon XO, you’d run too if you saw four torpedoes heading your way!” chided Jerry jokingly. Segerson dismissed the reproach with a haughty wave.

“Conn, Sonar, possible explosion to the east. Acoustic countermeasures are masking bearings between zero seven five and zero eight zero.”

Weiss and Jerry looked at each other, perplexed. An explosion? The captain hit the intercom, “Sonar, how confident are you about an explosion?”

“Pretty sure, Skipper. The countermeasures lit off just a moment later.”

“Kazan? Or Walter?” Weiss wondered.

“Knowing our luck, Lou, I think Walter is toast. Those countermeasures, though, they bother me,” replied Jerry as he reached for the intercom with the UUV control center. “UCC, Conn, do you retain contact with either vehicle?”

“Negative, Conn. Countermeasure interference has masked all comms.” Ford’s report wasn’t a surprise. Jerry had expected as much.

Once again, the intercom squawked. “Conn, Sonar, own ship’s units are accelerating!”

Zhabin and his operators cheered when a torpedo from a PMK-2 mine hit one of their assailants and detonated. The explosion was clearly heard on Sever modules nine, ten, and eleven. Once the reverberation from the blast died down, there were no longer any signals from the contact — a confirmed kill.

After the initial shock, Zhabin managed to calm down and began adjusting the Sever system’s beamformer and signal-processing settings, trying to get the modules to look away from the jammers. He was only partially successful. Modules two through eight were still badly degraded, effectively useless. He still believed that there were at least three confirmed contacts, possibly four, and that they appeared to be attempting to penetrate the defensive barrier at the ends.

Concentrating on the outputs from the four good modules, he saw traces of several fast-moving objects circling near the minefield. That meant a number of mines had actively detected a target and launched their torpedoes. He was amazed that the Americans were so bold as to try a frontal assault. Looking to the south, Zhabin saw a submarine signature with a moderate left bearing rate. It was increasing speed quickly and was fitted with two screws—Belgorod was attempting to escape.

“Petty Officer Yolkov, inform central post that Belgorod is underway and is steaming to the southwest. Speed is eighteen knots and accelerating; she should be able to…” The officer suddenly ceased his report as another contact emerged from the noise clutter and into module nine’s field of view. The new contact had an unstable, blurry bearing, but it appeared to be moving incredibly fast.

Zhabin played with the controls in an attempt to tighten up the bearing display, but to no effect. After another twenty seconds, information started coming in from module ten and the fuzzy bearing trace seemed to split out into several close lines. The lieutenant inhaled sharply, it wasn’t just one contact; it was many. “Torpedoes!” he shrieked.

Carter’s Mark 48 torpedoes all began pinging nearly simultaneously. They were only four thousand yards away from the launch complex, and the transponders all sent back a strong coded homing signal, each beacon calling to a separate torpedo. After three solid echoes from the beacons, the torpedoes accelerated to attack speed — sixty-five knots — and dove. The weapons ignored the large target moving away to their right. Each torpedo was fixated on its own personal siren song. Two minutes later the first torpedo reached the Dragon launcher and struck one of the large concrete anchors, detonating on contact. Three more explosions followed in a ripple.

The lower row of three launch tubes was heaved upward by the shock wave and the expanding gas bubble. The upper set folded in the middle as the blast and inertia from the lower tubes thrust them upward and back. The pulsating bubbles first pulled the tubes toward each other, then violently pushed them out again, only this time sideways. Five of the launch tubes were crushed, flattened like beer cans over much of their length, while the sixth was badly bent and distorted around its center. The supporting I-beams were twisted like pretzels and wrenched free from the now-crushed cylindrical supports.

“Conn, Sonar, multiple explosions bearing one eight five!” cried out the sonar supervisor. A boisterous cheer broke out in control, but they weren’t done yet and Weiss quickly suppressed the celebration. “SILENCE IN CONTROL!” he thundered.

As the noise died down, Weiss turned and pulled on the intercom’s switch. “Sonar, report. What do you hear?”

“Skipper, it sounds like someone kicked over an organ — multiple ‘gong-like’ noises and lots of banging metal. That launcher got thumped real hard.”

Jerry rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Rest now, my friend, we have the watch,” he whispered. Then glancing up at the periscope stand he saw Weiss looking down. Jerry extended his hand and grasped Weiss’s firmly. “Well done, Captain. Now, let’s get the hell away from this beehive!”

Mirsky could hear the two Klimov turboshaft engines shrieking above his cockpit. He’d pushed them well beyond the red line on the RPM gauges, and he prayed they’d hold together. Both Helix helicopters were doing better than 150 knots — racing toward the last reported location of a probable American submarine.

Toggling his mike, he passed instructions to his wingman. “Red 45, disregard standard tactics. Drop three RGB-48 buoys to the northeast of the datum, triangular pattern. I’ll do the same to the northwest.”

The flight commander was desperate to get sensors in the water as soon as possible. If the American was trying to disengage under the cover of the countermeasures, he’d be moving faster than usual, which meant the two helos couldn’t afford the time needed to hover and dip. Besides, the dipping sonar would be badly affected by all the noise in the water; the passive RGB-48 sonobuoy with its much lower frequency range would not. The only problem would be in finding enough open water to drop the buoys safely. A crushed sensor wouldn’t do them any good.

Mirsky pulled the Helix into a sharp, low hover as Mitrov verified the sea surface below was free of large ice chunks, and then started dropping the buoys. Once in the water, the sonobuoy released its hydrophone assembly, which sank to a depth of fifty meters.

It wasn’t even a minute before Mitrov barked, “Contact, bearing one three five. Target appears to be moving to the northwest at moderate speed.”

“Got you, you bastard,” growled Mirsky, smiling. Pulling up on the controls, he put his machine back into flight mode, streaking low over the water toward the ice-encrusted shores of October Revolution Island. He had to give the American captain credit; running along the rocky coast took courage. The water wasn’t even forty meters deep. Clicking his mike, Mirsky ordered his cohort to follow. “Red 45, submerged contact heading northwest. Fly twenty-five kilometers along course three two zero. Drop another sonobuoy pattern and stand by to release ordnance!”

“CONN, SONAR, TORPEDO IN THE WATER! BEARING ZERO FOUR EIGHT!” blasted the intercom speaker. Weiss was stunned, his expression asked, “How did they know?”

Jerry spun about and looked at the WLY-1 acoustic intercept receiver; it remained silent. Pointing to the blank display he shouted, “The torpedo hasn’t enabled! Turn to the right!”

Weiss caught on quickly. “Helm, right full rudder! Steady on course zero seven zero!”

Carter rolled to starboard as the rudder bit, swinging the bow hard right. The incredibly high bearing rate meant the weapon was close — very close, and yet the torpedo’s seeker continued to remain silent as it roared past them. There wasn’t time to ask any questions as the intercom blared once again. “Conn, Sonar, new contact bearing zero five five! No, correction. Regained Sierra one six, drawing left rapidly!”

“Range to target?” shouted Jerry instinctively.

“Three eight double oh yards and decreasing!” answered Segerson tensely.

“Bearing rate is left thirteen degrees per minute!” added Owens.

“Jesus! She’s right on top of us!” uttered Weiss.

“And may not know it, Lou!” exclaimed Jerry as he snapped his fingers. “Shoot, for God’s sake! Shoot!”

“Snapshot! Sierra one six, tube eight! Minimal enable run!” yelled Weiss.

Segerson jumped between consoles, making sure the targeting data was good. Once he was satisfied, the fire control technician grabbed the firing key handle, rotated it to the left and called out, “Set… stand by… shoot!”

The two Helix helicopters barely slowed down as six more sonobuoys were laid out in two triple chevron patterns. Both sensor operators picked up their prey quickly and verified the target was passing amazingly close along October Revolution Island. Mirsky stationed Red 45 ten kilometers to the north, in case his torpedo missed, updated the contact’s course and speed, and hit the attack button.

The Ka-27M automatically positioned itself over clear water right along the target’s projected path. Once the fire control computer was satisfied the vehicle had met the necessary flight conditions, it released a UMGT-1 torpedo. Mirsky immediately pulled the helicopter away from the ocean’s surface and announced, “Weapon dropped!”

The torpedo plunged underwater and drifted lazily for a moment as the seawater-activated battery came up to power. The propulsion motor accelerated the weapon to forty-five knots as it executed a large circle search; the acoustic homing head began pinging. On its second pass, the torpedo detected a faint echo, but with lots of Doppler. Peeling out of its search pattern, the weapon shot toward its target at full speed. Seconds later it impacted and exploded.

Mirsky saw the plume from the explosion break the surface and reach skyward. Petty Officer Mitrov cheered at their apparent success. But the flight commander wasn’t ready to congratulate himself just yet; he was more seasoned than that and knew he could have just as easily hit a rock. With an impatient voice he growled, “Shut up and search for the target, you fool! Red 45, monitor your sonobuoys for any sign of the contact; stand by to execute your attack!”

The Mark 48 ADCAP torpedo catapulted out from the lower port torpedo tube and turned hard left as soon as it was under power. Segerson had set the weapon to run at slow speed initially, to make sure the torpedo’s seeker had enough time to acquire and lock on to the target. It was a good call. The acoustic homer enabled a scant seven hundred yards from the Russian attack submarine. Between the strength of the return and the high Doppler shift, the seeker’s logic readily locked onto the echoes and accelerated to attack speed.

There was very little the crew of Kazan could do. By the time they understood what was happening, the Mark 48 torpedo was at sixty-five knots and had already closed to less than four hundred yards. No decoy or countermeasure could save them now. The weapon hit aft, striking near main engineering and shredding a ten-foot hole in the hull. The submarine heeled over sharply, angling downward, and plowed into the bottom at almost twenty knots — its shattered hull lay within a stone’s throw of Toledo.

Weiss allowed himself a deep sigh of relief once he heard the explosion. He didn’t need a report from sonar; everyone heard the blast through the hull. There were no cheers in the control room this time, just silence as the adrenaline high started to wear off. Even Jerry felt a little ragged, but he’d been there before, and recovered more quickly. “Nice shot, XO,” he said quietly.

“Thank you, sir. Can we go home now?” Segerson’s little quip got a chuckle out of everyone in control.

Laughing, Jerry replied, “Don’t look at me. I don’t have the conn.”

Weiss looked down at his XO’s earnest expression and shook his head in amusement. “Oh, very well. Helm, left standard rudder. Steady on course zero two zero.”

The captain then hit the intercom switch. “Sonar, Conn, stay alert and keep your ears sharp to the west. There’s an Akula out there and I really don’t want to have to do this a second time.”

Ten minutes later, Carter passed under the ice pack and over the drop-off into the Nansen Basin. Weiss took his boat deep and slowed down. Jimmy Carter maintained her northerly course until both Jerry and Weiss were confident that they had given Vepr the slip. Only then did the boat turn for home.

Vice Admiral Gorokhov had bolted from the command center as soon as the Sever monitoring detachment had reported incoming torpedoes. He ran as fast as he could to the cliff’s edge and looked out into the mouth of the Shokal’skogo Strait with his binoculars. With the exception of a slightly darker hue of brown in the water around the mooring buoy, everything looked as before. And yet, he feared that the scene would be drastically different one hundred and eighty meters below the surface.

“Admiral! Admiral!” yelled Kalinin as he approached his senior officer. “Sir, one of the Ka-27M helicopters reports that it has successfully engaged an enemy submarine. That makes two confirmed kills!”

Gorokhov spun about seething, “I don’t give a damn about how many American boats we’ve destroyed, Captain! I want divers down on the launcher complex immediately! I need a full and complete damage report, and I need it NOW!”

“Yes… yes, Comrade Admiral. At once,” stammered Kalinin as he turned and ran back to the hut.