Torpedo!

CHAPTER 1

Duty aboard a U.S. Navy nuclear ballistic missile submarine can be boring. The days stretch out, each day the same as the one preceding it. The watches are stood, six hours on and twelve hours off. The crew sees only the interior of their ship and each other for weeks on end. Once clear of the land the nuclear submarine submerges deep into the element it has been built for and doesn’t emerge again into the world of fresh air and sunshine until the long patrol is over and the submarine is only a few miles from its home port.

The U.S.S. Sharkfin was 12 hours out of the Strait of Gibraltar on course 278 degrees true, destination New London, Connecticut. There was a subdued air of festival on board. The Sharkfin had been at sea for more than 60 days, prowling the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, the computers in its sophisticated fire control systems clicking steadily as they constantly adjusted the firing trajectories for targeting the submarine’s 16 nuclear ICBM missiles at cities and military installations within the Soviet Union.

Mealtimes are the occasions when the boredom of the patrol is relieved for a little while. The cooks and bakers are experts, the food varied and plentiful, selected and prepared to appeal to eye and palate and to maintain health in an artificial atmosphere.

The Sharkfin’s off-watch crew streamed into their messroom for the noon meal, laughing and talking. The bright red and blue tables and benches provided a cheerful accent to the soft pastel colors of the compartment’s bulkheads and the hull overhead. As the enlisted men moved to the mess tables they observed an unwritten law of segregation. Those men who had graduated from the specialized nuclear training schools ate together as a group. The remainder of the crew ate at their own tables.

“Surf and Turf,” a messcook announced as he put a platter of steaming food down at one end of a mess table. “Lobster and steak and you get two kinds of pie for dessert with ice cream.”

“What kind of lobster is this?” a black electronics technician asked. “This lobster doesn’t have any claws, buddy.”

“Florida lobster,” the messcook said. “That kind of lobster doesn’t have claws but it’s mighty good.”

A burly torpedoman broke a lobster tail in his hands and speared a piece of the white meat on his fork. He dipped it in a bowl of melted butter and chewed slowly.

“Tastes like shrimp only maybe a little better,” he said. “I might just retire to Miami when I get my time in. A man could catch some of these every once in a while and eat mighty good.”

“You’d better learn to speak Spanish if you go to Miami,” the electronics technician said. “I read somewhere that the Cubans have just about taken over Miami, they even have street signs in Spanish down there.”

The men on sonar watch on the Sharkfin weren’t listening for the approach of an enemy. They were primarily concerned with the sonar search patterns that were being beamed out ahead and to each side of the submarine’s bow. The Sharkfin was running at a depth of 400 feet on a course that would take it to the north of the Ampere Seamount, an underwater mountain peak that reached upward from a depth of 15,800 feet to within 130 feet of the sea’s surface.

There was a chance that the Sharkfin’s sonar operators might have heard the whining, high-pitched noise of a torpedo racing up the submarine’s wake but it was a remote chance. The Sharkfin’s big seven-bladed propeller was turning fast enough to drive the huge submarine at a steady twenty knots, making just enough noise to almost muffle any sound that came from directly astern. The torpedo zeroed in on the Sharkfin’s spinning propeller and exploded with a roar.

The force of the explosion twisted the Sharkfin’s propeller to one side and ripped open a hole in the submarine’s stern.

Water, which is not compressible, was hurled back and away from the area of the explosion. Then, obeying the inexorable laws of physics, the displaced water smashed back in a giant water hammer that opened wide the hole that the explosion had torn in the submarine’s stern.

Driven by the tremendous pressures of the sea, more than 12 tons to the square foot, at 400 feet, a ram of water roared into the Sharkfin’s air-filled hull and raced forward through the ship. The air ahead of the water ram was suddenly compressed, much as the air in the cylinder of a diesel engine is compressed by a piston until it ignites spontaneously. When the compressed air ahead of the water ram reached the Crew’s Messroom its temperature was already above 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The Sharkfin’s crew died, their lungs seared to wet ash, their flesh incinerated on their bones before the water ram reached them.

The stricken submarine shuddered and slowed, its interior utterly still, filled with water. A silent blizzard of charred paint flakes eddied throughout the ship, swirling in the darkness as the Sharkfin coasted downward on a long, planing descent into the black sea.

Three miles astern of the Sharkfin a sonar operator on a submarine turned to his Division Officer.

“The weapon was tracked into the target, sir. An explosion was heard. The target’s propeller noises stopped after the explosion. We echo-ranged on the target. It increased depth steadily. We lost contact when the target was at a depth of twelve thousand feet. The target was definitely sinking, sir.”

The Sonar Officer nodded and spoke briefly into a telephone. In the ship’s Command Center the ship’s Captain put down his telephone and turned to his Navigator.

“Chart the operation as for a practice firing of a torpedo. Our course, target’s course, track distance, the usual things.” He paused and thought for a moment.

“Estimate the target’s angle of descent to the bottom. Begin with a ninety-degree down angle and open that up at five-degree increments. Put that into the computer and give me an estimated area on the bottom where the target is resting.”

“I’d guess a descent angle of about forty-five degrees,” the Navigator said. “Provided all her watertight doors were open, sir.”

“They should have been open,” the Captain said. “He had no reason to suspect anything and it was time for the noon meal.”

“It’s nice to know the weapon worked perfectly.” The Gunnery Officer, a young, heavy set man with a small blond mustache smiled self-consciously.

“In time of war your weapons had better work perfectly,” the Captain said. “We are not at war. Not yet. We can only hope the target is down in water so deep the other side can’t find her. If they do find her God only knows what kind of an international stink will be raised or what will happen to us if our masters decide they can’t take the heat and say we acted without orders.” His deep-set, somber eyes turned toward the Navigator.

“Set a course back to our regular patrol area. Secure from Battle Condition One. Tell the cooks to serve the noon meal.”

His eyes blinked twice and he turned and ducked through a bulkhead door opening.

“And hope the other side doesn’t come after us while we’re eating our dinners,” he muttered to himself as he entered his small cabin.