Countdown

CHAPTER 18

Surfaced, the Revolutsita had no trouble picking up the satellite-relayed communication from Kandalaksha. Krasilnikov's address to the Russian people was still ringing in Dobrynin's ears when the call from Karelin had come through.

"Are all systems in readiness, Comrade Captain Dobrynin?"

Karelin's voice was curiously flattened after being scrambled at the fleet headquarters, then descrambled aboard the Glorious October Revolution.

"Yes, Comrade Admiral. All missile guidance systems have been programmed with the appropriate coordinates. We are ready to fire the first on two minutes' notice."

"Very well. In the name of the Ruling Council, I hereby direct you to fire missile number one at precisely 1530 hours, Moscow time."

"But, might not the rebels capitulate, Comrade Admiral? Surely-"

"They will not surrender, not so long as they assume we are bluffing.

Once a city dies, they will know that we are in deadly earnest. Frankly, I suspect that the surrender will come through within ten minutes of the destruction of the target… just long enough for Leonov's people to receive confirmation that the city is gone. Then they will come around."

"Yes, sir." Dobrynin felt sick. He showed nothing, however, in his face. Strelbitski was standing close by his side, and the eyes of every man in the communications compartment were on him. "Of course. It will be done according to your orders."

"Excellent." Karelin's voice nearly purred. "I am counting on you, Comrade Captain. Do not let me down."

"The order decodes as "Sink the Typhoon, sir."

Montgomery nodded. It was as he'd feared. "God in heaven."

"There's more."

"What is it, son?"

"It says, 'Radio intercept indicates Typhoon will launch on own city about 1530 hours local time. Prompt action necessary to prevent Russian conflict going nuclear." It's signed 'Scott,' Captain."

"I concur, sir," a second communications chief said. The message had been decoded, as required, by two different men in the communications suite.

It was now being presented to the Captain and the XO.

Montgomery looked at Harris expectantly. "Bob?"

"Authenticated, Captain."

"I concur. Well, if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says so, we'd better get on with it. God damn, but that's fast action for Washington, though. They must be shook to have acted that fast on this thing. Okay.

Reel in the cable. Let's clear for action."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

Backing out of the communications shack, Montgomery strode forward to his accustomed place in Galveston's control room/attack center. "Mr. Harris, what is our weapons status, please?"

"Tubes one through four loaded and ready to shoot, Captain. ADCAP Mark 48s, primed, hot and ready."

"Very well. Bring us onto a heading of zero-zero-five. Make depth one hundred feet. Bring us ahead slow."

"Come to bearing zero-zero-five, make depth one hundred feet, ahead slow, aye, sir."

"Weapons officer!"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll have the bow doors open, Mr. Villiers. But quietly.

Crank 'em open by hand."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Montgomery felt the deck tilt beneath his feet as Galveston swung around in a great, slow circle, then began descending once again into her element.

For most of his adult life, Richard Montgomery had trained for this moment, had dreamed about it, wondering whether he would be able to meet the test if and when the time finally came. He was an attack boat skipper, and one of the best. The Los Angeles attack submarine had been designed to handle many missions, but her most important, the one she'd been built for above all others, was to track and kill Russian boomers. In a nuclear war between East and West, America's survival might well depend on whether a few men like Dick Montgomery could take down monsters such as that Typhoon out there under the ice before they could target New York or Washington from their Arctic bastions.

As the threat of global nuclear holocaust had receded, Montgomery had assumed that his particular skills and training in tracking Russian PLARBs would never be called into play.

Submarines had been employed in numerous military actions through the last decade, from the Gulf War to the scrape last year with the Russians off Norway, but he'd thought the old game of stalking their boomers was over.

Evidently, he was wrong.

Would the Russians really launch on one of their own cities?

Washington seemed to think so, and it was not part of his job to question his boss's orders. Not long ago, a cruise missile from the Galveston had helped sink the Indian carrier Viraat, part of an action fought to stop the Indo-Pakistani war from going nuclear. The Gal's skipper then had been Gerry Hawkins. What had he thought of his orders at the time?

There were 150 men aboard the Typhoon out there, as opposed to thousands aboard the Viraat. Their deaths might save tens of thousands, even millions of lives if that PLARB could be killed before it loosed its deadly arrow.

But submariners share a special bond, no matter what flag they sail under. The shared experience of patrolling, month upon month, in the cold and unyielding night of the oceans where the slightest mistake can expose the entire crew to the implacable wrath of the submariner's real and constant enemy, the sea, somehow bypasses national boundaries, alien cultures, and even politics.

But not loyalties. Never loyalties. The submariner's devotion is to his boat, his shipmates, and his captain; the captain's devotions are to his boat, his men, and to the trust invested in him by the government he serves.

There was no question of disobeying those orders.

"Bow doors are open by hand, Captain," the weapons officer announced.

"We are ready to fire."

"Very well. Stand by." He took his place at the search periscope.

"Let's take her in nice and smooth, gentlemen.

Under the ice."

"Admiral Tarrant, sir? This just came out of decoding."

Tarrant accepted the flimsy from the communications officer, scanning it quickly. It was from Admiral Scott, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a few terse lines, it described Krasilnikov's radio broadcast, explained that the Russians were expected to launch a nuclear missile into their own homeland at or about 1530 hours, and said that the U.S.S. Galveston had been ordered to intercept and sink the Russian sub before it could launch.

Tarrant glanced at his watch. Less than thirty minutes. This was bad, very bad.

"Says here this broadcast from Moscow took place half an hour ago. Why the hell didn't we pick it up?"

"We got something, Admiral," the communications officer replied.

"Recorded it. Intelligence's got it now, but it might take a while to translate."

"God damn. The world could blow up around our ears while we're trying to translate a damned radio program. Okay." He picked up a nearby telephone handset and punched in a number.

"CIC", a voice answered. "Officer of the Watch Wilkins speaking."

"This is Admiral Tarrant. What's our current defense posture?"

"Alert state three, Admiral."

"Come to full alert. Pass the word to the rest of the battle force."

"Yes, sir. Uh… what is it, Admiral? An attack?"

"Son, we're just about to shove a stick square into the middle of a hornets' nest. Inside of thirty minutes, they're gonna be coming at us all out, and they're going to be looking for blood."

"Control room, Sonar."

"Captain here. Go ahead."

"Ice-breaking noises now at zero-one-eight. No target motion.

Range now within forty thousand yards."

"Very well. Helm, come right to zero-one-eight. Increase speed to ten knots."

"Steering right to zero-one-eight, increase speed to ten knots, aye, sir."

"Bring us up to two hundred feet."

"Coming to two hundred feet, aye, sir."

Montgomery did some fast calculations in his head. Extreme range for a Mark 48 Advanced Capability torpedo running at its top speed setting of fifty-five knots was seventeen and a half nautical miles, thirty-five thousand yards. That would give it a running time of just under nineteen minutes. He glanced at the clock on the attack center bulkhead. Damn! If he launched right now, it would still be a squeaker.

To delay longer would mean the torpedoes could not arrive until after the 1530 hours deadline. Would the Russian boomer launch anyway as soon as it heard the sound of the approaching ADCAP? That depended on its orders. It was equally possible the Russians would break off their missile run in order to maneuver. As long as they didn't fire that damned nuke…

"Weapons officer!"

"Weapons, aye."

"Fire one."

Lieutenant Villiers slapped the heel of his hand across a red button on the torpedo firing console in front of him. A green light shifted from one side of a status display to the other, and a hollow-sounding shush echoed faintly through the control room. Unlike earlier submarine classes, a Los Angeles sub's torpedo tubes were mounted amidships, two to either side of and just below the attack center, and the sound was easily transmitted through the inner hull.

"Torpedo one fired. We have positive guidance."

The Mark 48 ADCAP torpedo was wire-guided, at least for the first part of its run. It was being steered by an enlisted man at the weapons board, who tracked it through its own passive sonar relayed down the unraveling wire that connected it with the Galveston. Responding to those signals, the crewman could in turn send steering instructions back down that same cable, using a small joystick on the console before him.

Silently, Montgomery ticked off twenty seconds.

"Fire two."

The second ADCAP lurched from Galveston's number-two tube.

Shots under the ice were always risky, the sonar picture obscured by reflections from the "roof." Montgomery wanted to make certain of his kill.

"Number two away. Running on positive guidance."

Montgomery glanced at the clock on the bulkhead. It now read 1511 hours.

How long would it be before the Russians heard Galveston's approaching torpedoes?

"Captain! Sonar! High-speed screw, bearing one-nine-five!"

"What!"

"Confirmed, Captain! Torpedo in the water! Range, estimate less than eight thousand meters. Speed fifty to fifty-five knots."

Damn the Americans and their superbly silent submarines! How had a Yankee attack sub managed to slip to within a few miles of the Revolutsita?

Or… could the attacker be another Russian sub? One loyal to the Leonov faction and attempting to halt the firing of the Revolution's missiles?

Dobrynin at once discarded that possibility. Some of the recent Soviet submarine designs, building on technology liberated from the West, were extremely quiet. Typhoons, for example, were among the most silent submarines in the world's oceans. But if this was a Russian attack sub it was most likely what the West called an Alfa, a small boat designed for high-speed interceptions… and the pumps for an Alfa's liquid sodium-cooled reactor were distinctive, and extremely noisy. There was no way that the Revolution's sonar officers could have missed an Alfa's approach!

So the torpedo was an American one, probably one of their wire-guided ADCAPS, with a range of less than twenty miles at fifty-five knots, and carrying a 300-kilogram high-explosive warhead.

Why had they fired? Possibly, they feared an ICBM launch on the continental United States. Whatever their reasoning, there was no time to analyze it. Dobrynin was faced now with a critical tactical decision. Should he stay put and carry out the launch sequence already begun, hoping to get the missile aloft before the torpedo hit; or should he button up and dive, seeking maneuvering room beneath the ice in an attempt to avoid the torpedo and keep his options open for a launch later?

"Sokolov!" he yelled. "Abort the count! Secure missile hatch and prepare to dive!"

"At once, Comrade Captain!"

"Is this wise, Comrade Captain?" Inevitably, Strelbitski was there, at Dobrynin's elbow, his thin lips tight with disapproval.

"We could still carry out our orders before the torpedo reaches US."

"Damn you, Strelbitski. I have a duty to this vessel and to these men.

We will fire the cursed missile… if we survive the next five minutes!" He snatched up a microphone. "Torpedo room! This is Dobrynin!"

"Torpedo room here, Captain."

"Torpedo status!"

"Eight tubes loaded, Comrade Captain. One through four with Type 65!

Five through eight with Type C-1!"

The Type 65 was the largest and deadliest torpedo in the world, a 650mm-thick, nine-meter-long wake- or active-sonar-homer that could travel twenty-seven nautical miles at fifty knots, or fifty-four miles at thirty knots. Type C-1s were older, smaller torpedoes with smaller warheads and a range of eight miles.

Typhoons mounted tubes for both sizes, arrayed four-over-four across the huge submarine's broad, bluntly rounded bow.

"We will use the Type 65s," Dobrynin ordered. "Set running speed at fifty knots."

"Comrade Captain! The missile hatch is secure. The submarine is ready to dive."

"Then dive him, damn you! Dive!" The Typhoon's deck trembled as water thundered into the sub's ballast tanks. "Set depth to… set depth at twenty meters. Come to one-eight-five, speed fifteen knots!"

Strelbitski stared at him, open-mouthed.

"We still have a few tricks in our weapons locker, Comrade Comnissar."

The man's face was pale. He looked frankly terrified. "What is it you intend to do?"

Dobrynin did not reply. He was staring at the attack center's overhead, focusing on the faint, far hum of the American torpedo, audible now, and swiftly growing louder.

Sixteen long minutes had passed since the torpedoes had been fired.

"Torpedo one has acquired the target, Captain," the weapons officer announced.

"Cut it loose."

Freed of the wire connecting it to the Galveston, the torpedo went to active homing, sending out a stream of sharp pings that reflected from the hull of its slow-moving target and returned like a radar echo, guiding the ADCAP torp toward its prey.

"Torpedo two has acquired."

"Release it."

Now two Mark 48s howled through the water, skimming a few yards beneath the jagged, downward thrust of the ice-roofed surface. The target was less than two miles ahead.

"Now!" Dobrynin roared. His eyes were squeezed shut as he pictured the shifting relative positions of submarine, torpedoes, and ice. "Full speed ahead! Come right to three-five-zero! Engineering! I want one hundred ten percent on both reactors, now! Kick his ass!"

Slavnyy Oktyabrskaya Revolutsita shuddered, heeling sharply to the right as the helmsman swung the giant sub into a hard starboard turn. Strelbitski grabbed for a brass stanchion and clung to it, his eyes very large as he stared up past the attack center's fluorescent lights.

Ping!

The sound of the torpedoes actively hunting the Revolutsita echoed through the sub's double hull like a hammer blow.

Ping! Just a little farther into the turn…

WHAM!

The Typhoon, already heeling a good twenty degrees to starboard, slewed even farther onto the beam, flinging men, clipboards, loose papers, and unsecured gear into the bulkhead. In the crews' quarters, off-duty personnel were unceremoniously dumped from their bunks; in the torpedo room one of the racked monsters burst its steel bonds and smashed across the compartment, crushing two torpedomen to death and pulping the legs of a shrieking third.

Then the Typhoon rocked back to port, hurling her bruised and battered crew back in the opposite direction, before steadying at last in a precarious balance between the two extremes.

And around the sub thundered the booming roar of echoes gone mad.

"Hit!" someone yelled, as the boom rumbled through the water, caressing the Galveston.

"Belay that!" Villiers shouted back. "It exploded too soon!"

Then the second torpedo went off, closer to the sub. The second blast's underwater shock wave, riding close on the heels of the first, caught the attack sub and shoved her, hard. Her bow came up… and the sail rocked into a rugged mass of ice protruding down from the ceiling, the deepest thrust of a major pressure ridge. Sparks dazzled from a bank of electronic gear, and smoke began billowing through the compartment.

"Fire!" someone yelled as the lights dimmed. "Fire in the control room!"

"Captain! This is the sonar officer. I cannot get a clear picture.

Wide-band noise and transients-"

"Never mind that. Is the sonar still operational?"

"Yes, Captain. But it will be several minutes before we have full sensitivity again."

"We don't need it. We have them! Helm! Bring us back around to one-nine-zero!"

The Typhoon had been shaken when the American torpedoes had struck the ice, but was otherwise undamaged. Dobrynin had acted deliberately, turning away from the torpedoes and going to full speed, a maneuver that had attracted the notice of the torpedo's passive sensors and drawn them along. He'd noticed, during his maneuvering here an hour before, the presence of several major pressure ridges, where the ice, piled high by wind and currents, thickened into inverted ranges that posed a serious threat to submarines operating close to the ice.

Or to torpedoes. He'd been taking a gamble; Revolutsita could have smashed one of those ridges with her sail, damaging her periscopes or satellite-communication gear.

The gamble had paid off, however, when the torpedoes had stopped tracking the Typhoon and started homing on one of those ridges.

Probably, the lead torpedo had exploded on the ice, and the shock wave had thrown the second into the ice as well. In any case, Revolutsita was unharmed.

And now, Dobrynin had become the hunter, and the Americans the prey.