Los Angeles Class

25

"Damage-control parties lay forward to the torpedo room!" Latham bellowed over the intercom. "Flooding in torpedo compartment! That is, flooding in the torpedo compartment!" He turned and locked stares with Gordon. "It sounds bad, sir!"

"I'm having to adjust forward trim," Warren announced, working his board behind and to the left of the helmsman and planesman positions. "We're taking on a lot of water forward."

"Stay with it," Gordon said. "Helm! Bring us around to new heading… one-seven-zero. Maintain depth!" If they started to go down by the head, he wanted it to be a short trip to the surface if he had to blow ballast.

"Conn, Sonar!"

"Sonar! Go ahead!"

"Picking up sounds of a submarine blowing ballast, sir."

"What?"

"It's Sierra One. I think… I think Sierra Five-zero fired at him, and he's going up on the roof! But he's damned close to the Kresta, sir! Sounds like the cruiser is right on top of him!.. "

This was fast becoming a comedy of errors … and would be funny if it wasn't so damned deadly serious. The Kresta must have confused the Sierra II with the Pittsburgh. That, or they thought the Sierra was a second American submarine.

But how was that possible? The Kresta and the Sierra had been working together. The ASW cruiser's skipper knew the Sierra was out there. So why…

"Conn, Sonar!"

"Yeah."

"Sir, picking up new contact, designated Sierra Five-one. Bearing three-zero-five, range ten thousand, speed… God, Skipper. Forty-five knots!" There was a pause. "Sierra Five-one identified. It's Mike Two, and he's coming in hell-bent for leather."

The Mike. Called in by the sounds of explosions, no doubt. Gordon could see the tactical layout, the unfolding of the situation in his mind's eye. The Kresta II's sonar people must have picked up the sounds of three submarines, where only one was known to be friendly. They had the Los Angeles to the southeast, a second target coming in from the west, and now a third underwater target coming from the northwest. They would have lost all of the sonar contacts each time the underwater explosions went off. And then, just when they'd hit the target to the southeast and were on the verge of driving it to the surface, they'd picked up one sub coming in at forty-five knots from the northwest, another coming almost directly toward them out of the west.

Someone had panicked, or simply made a bad call. The Kresta had fired an RBU-6000 spread at the second target. Apparently they hadn't hit it, but…

"Conn, Sonar! I have sounds of a collision! Sierra One just went afoul of Sierra Five-zero!.. "

Dubrynin was hurled over the safety rail beside the periscope position, as thunder boomed from directly overhead. He slammed onto the deck, pain exploding through his back and side. The control-room lights dimmed, as lighting fixtures shattered behind their protective cages.

He could hear the throb of the Voroshilov's screws… mingled with the hair-raising squeal of metal grating across metal. The Ivan Rogov heeled sharply to starboard as the grating shriek shrilled through the control room, as loud as the Trump of the Apocalypse.

Dubrynin had never considered himself religious, but his grandmother's teachings were flooding back now. They were all going to die, and he was not ready….

There was another crash, even louder, and a violent shudder ran through the stricken vessel. Water began spraying down from around the rim of the closed but undogged hatch in the overhead leading up to the conning tower, until a seaman reached up and sealed the hatch. Several more bumping, grinding sounds echoed down from overhead, and then the control room was death-silent, save for the groans of several injured men.

Grabbing hold of a console, he levered himself to his feet, testing his back, wondering if he were badly injured. Miraculously, everything worked, though he hurt like hell, and a biting pain shot through his uselessly dangling left arm. It felt broken.

"Damage control to the bridge!" he called, and he heard his order being relayed over the intercom. "Diving Officer! What is our status!"

"We are maintaining depth, sir, at one-three meters. Conning tower is awash. We have lost port-side trim and are listing to starboard by fifteen degrees. We may have flooding in the conning tower."

"But we're not sinking?"

"The situation is stable… for now,Captain."

He knew better than to check through the periscope. They'd just rammed the Voroshilov with the Ivan Rogovs sail, and the delicate optics would have been smashed, the housings themselves twisted into uselessness.

"Sonar Officer! Where is the Voroshilov?"

"Marshal Voroshilov is off our port beam, sir," Krychkov replied. "Range… a few meters. We're close. Sir, I'm also picking up a new contact. It is the Krasnoyarskiy Komsomolets."

"Never mind that! Are we clear above? Are we clear to surface?"

"Clear to surface, Captain."

"Bring us all the way to the surface, Diving Officer." He did not add if you can.

His career, Dubrynin thought, was over, a casualty of this so-called Cold War. He should have checked before surfacing, but had thought they were clear. The Board of Inquiry would find him guilty of negligence. And they would be right. There were extenuating circumstances to be sure — the Voroshilov firing on his submarine, the clouding of the sonar picture by the RBU explosions all around. Perhaps they'd been fooled by the Krasnoyarskiy's unexpected arrival out of the Rogovs baffles.

None of that mattered. The Board of Inquiry would need a scapegoat for the collision. And he would be the easiest target.

Somehow, it didn't matter. Oh, it would matter later, of course, and he would fight the inevitable ruling. But right now, he had to save his last command….

Randall clung to the steel frame of the rack, struggling against a most unSEALish surge of panic. It was as though he were back in the Russian sub again, trapped in a slender metal-walled pipe, plunged into darkness, with water thundering in.

This was, in fact, much worse than his time aboard the crawler sub; at least he'd had emergency lighting there, and the inflow had been a trickle compared to this.

But he felt the same catch at his throat as he contemplated a claustrophobic drowning, trapped aboard a flooding submarine in the icy depths of a sea most Americans had never heard of.

"I can't reach it!" he heard O'Brien's voice calling in the darkness to his left. "It's Flood Feed One! I can't reach it!"

He wasn't sure where the others in the compartment were. He'd heard Chief Allison announcing the flooding from the intercom, aft… and someone was groaning in the dark just in front of him. But it felt like he might be the closest to O'Brien, who evidently was trying to breast the force of the infalling water in order to shut it down.

"Drownproofing was never like this," he said aloud, and he released the bunk frame and started following the sound of O'Brien's voice. Then a new thought occurred to him, and he almost burst out laughing. "I wonder if water is still my friend?… "

"It sounds like the Russian boat is on the surface alongside the Kresta," Rodriguez informed him. "Both vessels at all stop. Can't hear Mike Two, though. He's on the far side, masked by the hull noises."

"What hull noises?"

"Sir, I don't know how bad it is over there, but it sounds like a mess. I'm hearing some minor flooding, and I'm hearing something… I think it's on the Kresta, that might be some hull plating partly torn open and banging on the hull."

Damage-control efforts would be under way on both of the Soviet vessels, as they were proceeding on board the Pittsburgh. Like him, their skippers would be concentrating on saving their ships.

But before long, they would be thinking about getting the damaged vessels back to port, and that gave Gordon an idea, if they could stop the Pittsburgh's flooding….

O'Brien fell again. "I can't make it! The water's too strong!"

"Here, kid!" It was Randall, yelling above the roar from just behind him. He felt strong hands grab his boondocker work shoes, levering him forward on the slippery deck. "I've got you braced!"

Unsteadily, he pushed against the SEAL's hands, and moved forward, assisted by Randall's steady shove. Almost two feet of water covered the deck, and movement was more like swimming than crawling.

As water surged and pounded over his head, threatening with each breath to strangle him, he reached all the way forward and grasped the thick, cold vertical cylinder of Feed Line One. "I've got the pipe!" he shouted, gasping through the flood. "Help me push up on it!"

The pressure against the soles of his shoes increased, and he was able to work his way up, hauling himself erect against the pipe. Hand over hand, he pulled his way up the pipe. The split joint where the water was coming in was impossible even to approach; the water pressure was so high it was like trying to pierce a solid steel barrier, and the pounding stream threatened at any moment to break a bone or wrench him free of his handhold and slam him back across the pitch-black compartment.

"O'Brien!" Allison yelled. "Where are you?"

"I'm at Feed One! I've got it! I've got it!"

With Randall bracing his unsteady feet, he walked his hands up past the incoming stream, found by touch alone through numbed fingers the shape of the cutoff valve, grabbed the wheel, and started turning it.

And the water pressure died away, falling to a hard stream, then a fine mist… and then the water flow was stopped.

O'Brien clung there to the valve for a moment, gasping hard with each breath. He was also shivering, but that didn't matter. He'd managed to get to the valve.

"Great job, kid!" Randall's voice said.

Then there was a bang and clang from forward, and light spilled into the torpedo room as the main passageway hatch opened up. Scobey was there, leading a damage-control party armed with spanners, pry bars, and breathing gear. Water spilled out over the doorway's combing, but it was already starting to drain away.

"You're too late, big C!" O'Brien called.

"Looks like. Geeze, you guys made a mess of things!"

Reaching out, O'Brien leaned his hand against a bare patch on the bulkhead, trying to hold himself up on shaking knees.

He felt the faint, far-off quiver of Pittsburgh's engine, and her movement through the water.

He wondered where they were heading next.

"We're almost home free, skipper," Latham said. His face was drawn, and blue rings emphasized the hollow, worn-out look to his eyes, but he was grinning.

"Thanks to our escort," Gordon said, jerking a thumb at the overhead. He looked at the chart. Pittsburgh was now about halfway through La Perouse Strait. Mys Kril'on, the southernmost tip of Sakhalin Island, lay fifteen miles to the north. The Japanese island of Hokkaido, the point at Soya Misaki and the port city of Wakkanai lay twenty-five miles to the south.

Overhead, the dull, monotonous throb of a surface ship's screw accompanied the Pittsburgh like a sheltering blanket, as it had for the past three days.

The tactical problem off Mys Yelizavety had been a serious one. The collision between the Sierra II and the Kresta would be bringing in Soviet ships from every quarter, and the second Russian submarine, the Mike, was only a few miles away and closing fast. Pittsburgh had been in no position to run. There'd been considerable damage to her torpedo room and the flood lines connected with it, and repairs would take a day or two at least… a day or two when they couldn't be moving more than a few knots.

With two damaged vessels to care for, the approaching Russian ASW vessels would be blanketing the entire area, banging away with their sonar, searching for the American sub… which might have gotten away, or which just possibly had sunk. They wouldn't know for sure, and they'd be damned certain to do their best to find out.

And so, Gordon had taken a chance… but it had given him a better hope of escaping from Okhotsk than simply turning and running, a move that would have had him cornered, caught, and pinned within a few hours. Carefully, quietly, he'd worked the Pittsburgh in close to the stricken Kresta II. While the Sierra II had ridden clumsily on the surface off the Kresta's starboard beam, the Pittsburgh had ridden just beneath the surface off her port. Before long, the Soviet Mike had entered the area, banging away with sonar, searching for the missing American.

And found nothing. From any one direction's vantage point, Pittsburgh's sonar shadow would appear to blend with those of the Kresta and the Sierra, and those two vessels were making a hell of a lot of noise besides.

In another hour, the Soviet escort vessels had begun to arrive, and the Kresta had fired up her port shaft. Apparently, her starboard screw had been damaged in the collision, possibly by biting into the Sierra's sail, and was being left offline. At a steady, sometimes faltering ten knots, the Kresta began steaming south.

Gordon had been gambling that the Kresta's port was Vladivostok, but it had been an educated gamble, and one that had paid off. The only ports inside the Sea of Okhotsk large enough to accommodate something as big as a Kresta class cruiser were Magadan — primarily a submarine base— and Nikolayevsk-na-Amure, at the northern end of the Tatar Strait. Vladivostok was the major Soviet Pacific port, headquarters of their Red Banner Pacific Fleet, with the largest and best-equipped anchorage and port facilities.

Vladivostok was almost certainly her home port. Even if not, the city was the best place around for the Kresta to receive repairs. From the sound of the water banging and clanking over loose hull plates and a badly gashed keel, she was going to need to be dry-docked for a long time to come.

And Vladivostok was on the Sea of Japan, on the far side of La Perouse Strait.

The trip had taken three days at a painful, ten-knot crawl, with several stops along the way. Pittsburgh had dogged the Kresta every step of the voyage. The ASW escort had ringed the two stricken vessels in and were pinging noisily, searching for any lurking American subs, but they simply could not see the Pittsburgh in her comfortable tucked-in hiding place beneath and behind the Kresta. The Kresta herself might have spotted the unwanted guest on that voyage, but either her sonar had been knocked out by the collision, or her captain was relying on the flotilla's screening escorts. She wasn't pinging, and if her sonar watch was listening, all they could hear were the sounds of their own damaged hull as it plowed slowly south through roughening seas.

"Mr. Latham," Gordon said, "let's say good-bye to our friends."

"Can't say I'll miss them, Captain."

"We'll cut our speed and drift deep. After their tail-end Charlie passes, we'll turn south."

"You're going into Japanese territorial waters?"

"That's the idea. We won't exactly be welcome, but we can put in at Otaru. They have decent facilities there. We can complete our repairs and report our situation."

Japan had a love-hate relationship with nuclear energy. While avid in their quest to become self-sufficient in energy production with nuclear reactors, they refused to allow vessels suspected of carrying nuclear weapons into their waters. Pittsburgh possessed no nuclear weapons — the Tomahawk cruise missiles in their VLS tubes forward all possessed conventional warheads on this voyage — but the fact that she could carry them made her suspect.

Still, the 'Burgh had been damaged, and no nation could refuse her the right of a safe harbor while she completed her repairs.

"Maneuvering, Conn. Slow ahead. Make turns for three knots." That would keep her barely under way. "Mr. Carver, down planes fifteen degrees. Take us down to two-eight-zero feet." The water here in the strait ran around 360 feet.

"Conn, Maneuvering. Making turns for three knots."

"Down planes fifteen degrees. Make depth two-eight-zero feet, aye, sir."

Minutes passed, as the Los Angeles boat drifted deeper and still deeper into the eternally night-shrouded depths. Above, the last of the Russian convoy escorting the Kresta to a safe haven at Vladivostok chugged overhead, oblivious to the Pittsburgh's presence. Except for infrequent spot checks, they'd given up on the active pinging two days before, when it was obvious that the American was either long gone… or sunk.

After fifteen minutes, drifting silently at 280 feet, Gordon gave his next orders. "Maneuvering, ahead one-half. Make turns for fifteen knots. Helm, bring us left to new course one-nine-five."

"Conn, Maneuvering. Increasing speed to one-five knots, aye."

"Coming left to new course one-nine-five, aye aye, sir."

For the first time in three days, the 'Burgh was free of her blanket. She began gliding into a broad left turn, heading south once more. At fifteen knots, she began closing with the Japanese coast.

"Conn, Sonar! Torpedo in the water! Correction, two torpedoes in the water! Coming in hot from astern."

"Sonar, Conn! Confirm that!"

"Confirmed! Two torpedoes. Range five miles, speed fifty-five knots!"

"Maneuvering! Give me full power! All ahead! Give me all you've got!"

"Maneuvering, aye! All ahead!"

"Where the hell did they come from?" Latham asked.

"Sonar, Conn! Where did those torps come from?"

"Not sure, Captain. The torpedoes… wait a sec. Wait a sec…. " The silence dragged on for several moments. "Got him! Captain, it's Mike Two! He must have been trailing the convoy, just in case! He's popped two torpedoes into the water at long range, and he's starting to speed up. Bearing… zero-eight-five, range five miles. I can only hear him because he's cranked up to full speed. He's coming after us at forty knots!"

Gordon felt the tremble of speed and power through Pitts-burghs control-room deck. "Quartermaster! How far to Japanese waters?"

Dandridge moved calipers across a chart. "Eight miles, sir."

At full speed… about thirteen minutes. The torpedoes would reach them first.

Besides, torpedoes were notorious in their inability to distinguish man-made niceties like national boundaries.

He wondered what the Russian captain was thinking, however. There could be no doubt that the Pittsburgh was in international waters. His firing those torpedoes constituted an act of war.

Well, these were the people who'd fired upon a civilian airliner, Flight 007, after she'd twice flown through Soviet airspace, but then emerged over international waters.

These same international waters, now that he thought about it.

The minutes dragged past.

"Mr. Carver! Depth under keel?"

"Depth below keel… eight-zero feet, sir."

"Mr. Latham, range and time to impact."

"Near torpedo now at two thousand yards, and closing. Time to impact… "

The oncoming torpedoes, chasing the Pittsburgh,which was moving at better than thirty-five knots, had a closure rate of about twenty knots. Two thousand yards… about one nautical mile… make it about…

"Three minutes, Captain."

"Thank you."

"Mr. Carver. Who do you have on the planes?"

"Archie Douglas, sir."

"Okay. Douglas, in a couple of minutes, I'm going to have you angle down on the bow planes ten degrees. You will hold them there until I tell you to bring them back up, and when I do, you'll have to move very sharply. If you're slow, we slam into the bottom. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir!" Douglas said.

"Okay. Stay alert."

The problem with what Gordon was about to try was that a 360-foot submarine with a 7,700-ton submerged displacement did not maneuver on the proverbial dime. A minute passed, then two.

"Nearest torpedo now three hundred yards, Captain," Latham reported. His voice was as cold as ice. "Impact in thirty seconds!"

"How far to the second torpedo?"

"Range four hundred yards."

"Okay, we'll hope for the best. Stand by, everybody. Mr. Latham, give me a countdown."

"Aye, sir! Impact in twenty seconds! Nineteen… "

"Mr. Douglas! Down planes ten degrees!"

"Down planes, ten degrees!" The deck tipped precipitously. "COB! Stand by the CM!"

"Ready, sir!"

"Impact in thirteen… twelve …"

"Release countermeasures!"

"Countermeasures away!"

"Up planes, Mr. Douglas! Take us up! Hard as you can!"

"COB! Blow stern tanks!"

"Blowing stern tanks, aye, sir!"

"Five… four… "

Pittsburgh's bow swung up, ponderously … but faster, then faster still. The deck sloped so steeply that Gordon and others grabbed for handholds, as BM1 Douglas hauled back on the wheel controlling the dive planes like a pilot pulling out of a dive… which was, in fact, precisely what he was doing.

There was a sudden, scraping shock aft as her tail brushed the seabed. "Three… two… "

The explosion came a second early, and propelled the Pittsburgh forward and up like a vast, surging kick in her stern. Lights dimmed, then came back on. The deck rolled ominously, but then the helmsman corrected and the Pittsburgh continued her rise.

A second explosion detonated astern, but more distant this time. The rising submarine shuddered.

"My God!" Latham said. "You suckered those torps into the seabed!"

He nodded, too strained to trust himself to speak. The torpedoes fired from the Mike, close to the surface, had raced toward the Pittsburgh at a depth of around a hundred feet, guided by the Weapons Officer aboard the Russian vessel. When the torpedoes got close, the Soviet WO had nosed them over, homing on her propeller noise at the last moment.

Gordon had taken the 'Burgh down so deep that she'd scraped bottom, released countermeasures, and swung back toward the surface. The torpedoes, traveling considerably faster than the sub, had simply not been able to react in time and had slammed, one after the other, into the sea floor.

But they weren't clear yet….

"Faster!" Vetrov shouted. "Filatev! I need more power if we're to catch this bastard!"

"Captain," the Shtorman, the navigator, said. "We are close to Japanese waters. We may already be across the line…. "

"I don't give a fuck about that. Follow orders!"

"Sir, it is my duty to—"

"Follow orders, Shtorman, or I will have you arrested on the spot!"

"Yes, Comrade Captain."

He turned, glaring at Lobanov, the boat's political officer. "Do you have any criticisms, Toad?"

"No, Captain."

"That American vessel was responsible for the crippling of two of the Pacific Fleet's vessels. He also invaded our sovereign waters and may have made off with secret information. I will not see him escape!"

"It would be best, Comrade Captain," Lobanov said, "to kill the American outside of Japanese waters."

"The line is blurred, Lobanov. We have him!" He shook a fist at the forward bulkhead. "Vam kryska! the Russian proverb, literally "For you there is a lid," was the equivalent of the American "I've got you now!"

"Quartermaster! How far are we from Japanese waters?"

"Sir, we're probably inside the twelve-mile line now. It's pretty hard to tell exactly, of course… but I think we've already crossed."

"TMA. Where's our friend?"

"If he's still coming hot and heavy, Captain, he'll be close," Carver said. "Range three thousand, bearing zero-five-zero. We could use another sonar fix."

But for that they would have to slow down. Even Rodriguez couldn't hear anything but rushing water when the Pittsburgh was hurtling along at thirty-five-plus knots.

Of course, the same was true for the Mike. Had he broken off the chase? Or followed the Pittsburgh across the line?

"Maneuvering! Slow to one-five knots. Helm! Come left two-five degrees!"

"Maneuvering, aye. Slowing to one-five knots."

"Helm, coming left two-five degrees, aye aye, sir."

"Sonar, Conn. As soon as you have your ears, tell me where he is."

"Sonar, aye." Seconds passed. "Sir! Contact still astern! Range three thousand yards, bearing zero-five-zero! Speed estimated at twenty knots."

"Bang on with your TMA," he told Latham. "Helm, come left to new course… zero-nine-zero. Weps? I need a solution, and fast."

"Working!.. "

"Conn! Sonar! Torpedo in the water! He's launched!"

"Torpedo Room! Snapshot, three, two!.. "

No time to wait for the target solution. If he could put his return shots in the water, Lieutenant Walberg could steer them in by sonar track… and it might make the other guy flinch….

O'Brien heard the words over the intercom, words he'd hoped he would never hear: "Torpedo Room! Snapshot, three,two!.. "

Chief Allison, standing on the other side of the compartment, nodded. "Fire three." O'Brien's hand came down on the big red button. With a loud hiss and rushing sound, and a lurch transmitted through the torpedo-room deck, the first fish slid out into the sea.

"Three fired!"

"Fire two!"

He hit the second button. "Two fired!"

"All hands, rig for collision!" the captain's voice called. The deck tilted to starboard; the Pittsburgh was in a hard turn.

He thought he could hear a new sound now, the shrill, high-pitched whine of an approaching torpedo….