Voyage of the Devilfish

CHAPTER 16

“What happened?” Captain Krakov was furious.

“Relief valve lifted on the tube. Captain. The weapon is still in the tube. Warrant’s working on it now,” the Weapons Officer reported.

“Can we shift the weapon to one of the other tubes?”

“Only tube four is set up for the SSN-X-27, Captain.”

“How long?”

“An hour to replace the valve, sir.”

“No. Reset the relief valve and line up to fire again.”

“Sir, it may work, but odds are it’ll just lift the valve again.”

“Today we shall test the odds,” Krakov said. “Reset the damn valve. Shut the outer door, drain the tube, bring the weapon back onto ship power and do a recheck. Thirty seconds!” Damned shipyard, Krakov thought. A ten-million-ruble cruise missile crippled by a forty-ruble relief valve. Now the power surge from reconnecting the missile might blow its circuit and leave him with a useless, inert bomb.

“Status,” Krakov demanded impatiently.

“Tube drained. Missile power is external. System checkout is… complete… no errors. Weapon is nominal, sir!”

“Flood the tube, open the door and reinitialize the launch sequence.” Goddamned relief valve, Krakov thought. This time it had better work.

“Sonar, Captain, what’s the status?” Toth shouted into the boom microphone.

“Conn, Sonar, several transients from Target One. Sounds like he shut the tube door and drained the tube.” He must be lining up for another try, Toth thought. Or it could still be an exercise. Did he have enough evidence to justify shooting the Russian? The Rules of Engagement still said no—

“Conn, Sonar, Target One has reflooded his tube… outer door coming open now…”

“Screw it. Snapshot, tube three. Target One!” Toth commanded.

“Missile on internal power, sir.”

“Stand by to fire on my mark,” Krakov commanded.

“Standing by, sir.” The Weapons Officer was on the phone to the torpedo warrant officer in Vladivostok’s first compartment in case the relief valve lifted again.

“Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Mark!”

“Fire!” the Weapons Officer called, punching the fixed-function key. For the second time that morning the ship shuddered, and for the second time Captain Krakov’s eardrums popped. Before Krakov could ask if the weapon was away, the pressure pulse of seawater had started the ejection of the waterproof canister holding the SSN-X-27 nuclear-tipped cruise missile. As the missile travelled the length of Vladivostok’s number-four torpedo tube, the missile’s accelerometers tied into the central processors reported the launch acceleration.

Two g’s. Twenty meters per second squared. The missile’s onboard computer compared the two g’s with the setting engraved in its read-only-memory software. The setting was 1.8 g’s. The onboard computer recorded its satisfaction. And armed the rocket-motor igniter. Destination: Norfolk.

Toth’s “snapshot” order was an automatic-action command, a quick reaction torpedo shot usually used only when fired on by a hostile submarine. It had been worked out for times when battle stations were not manned and only the OOD and fire-control technician were on hand. Ironically, the snapshot tactic had been derived from several detailed studies of Russian submarine tactics.

Without further orders. Lieutenant Culverson switched Pos One to line-of-sight mode and twisted the solution knobs to match the bearing and rate to Target One, then moved two steps aft to Pos Three and keyed the weapon in tube one to accept the solution. Set! Culverson said to himself. The Chief of the Watch had picked up the P.A. Circuit One system mike and shouted into it, distorting the announcement.

“SNAPSHOT TUBE THREE!”

The P.A. Circuit One order was for the torpedomen so they would know why one of their tubes was being remotely fired. It notified sonar, so the sonar technicians could prepare to track the weapon. And it automatically manned battle stations. Culverson reached for the trigger and rotated it to nine o’clock — the STANDBY position.

“Stand by!” he said, talking more to himself than to anyone in the control room. He pulled the trigger on the firing panel, set flush between the Pos Two and Pos Three consoles, past twelve o’clock to three o’clock — the FIRE position.

“Fire!” he called out. The deck jumped, the pressure-pulse of the torpedo room’s air-ram piston slammed the crew’s ears. With seeming detachment Toth checked the chronometer. Not bad. Culverson had pooped out the weapon in fourteen seconds. That had to be a COMSUBLANT record. The control room was already starting to fill with the battle stations watchstanders. Some looked haunted and grimly nervous, some simply drugged with sleep; the latter woke up quickly when they realized this was no drill.

“Conn, Sonar, own ship unit… normal launch,” Toth’s earpiece intoned. With the same odd detachment, Toth gave the next order, wondering briefly about his peculiar feelings, or lack of them, as if he were watching the scene from far away.

“Snapshot, tube four. Target One.” The same sequence happened, looking so similar it could have been an instant replay. Culverson hunched over the Pos Three console, still standing up, ready to steer the weapons.

“Conn, Sonar, own ship’s second fired unit, normal launch. First fired unit active, now homing. Second fired unit active.”

“Detect on one! Acquisition, unit one, sir!” Culverson was flushed. “Detect on two… detect… detect… acquisition, unit two, sir! Loss of wire-guide continuity on both, Skipper!”

The first explosion rocked the ship, heeling the deck over to a 15-degree angle to starboard. The second explosion came as the ship was righting herself, preventing her from heeling over to port. Toth allowed himself the beginning of a smile. Until sonar came over his headset.

“Conn, Sonar, explosions from Target One and hull breakup… wait… Conn, we have… oh God, a rocket motor ignition from bearing to Target One!” Tom’s half-smile drooped into slack-mouthed shock. His snapshot had been too late to stop the AKULA’s missile-launch.

The impact of Devilfish’s collision with the OMEGA had thrown all twenty-one control room watchstanders into the overhead, Pacino included. A nasty cut showed on the Diving Officer’s forehead from flying up into the inboard induction manifold. Supply Officer Alan Crane was barely conscious, lying in an uncoordinated heap under the Time Bearing Plot table. Pacino was only bruised, he had grabbed a handhold on the Conn’s sonar console. The ship had rolled into an odd port-list with a severe aft-trim, canting the deck 20 degrees to port and 15 degrees aft, leaving the forward starboard corner of the room at least ten feet higher than the afterport corner. The room was eerily silent, except for a slight hiss from a leaking emergency air-manifold fitting. Pacino recovered first.

“Helm, all ahead full and cavitate,” he ordered. “Diving Officer, give me max down angle on the ship with fairwater and sternplanes.”

“Maneuvering answers all ahead full, sir,” the helmsman called, rubbing his waist where the seatbelt had taken his full weight moments before. “Screw is cavitating.” There was a groaning, scraping noise from aft and a crunching noise from above.

“Sail’s scraping the ice, sir,” the Diving Officer said.

“And we musta hit the OMEGA, Skipper,” Stokes said, rubbing his bruised neck. “That must be the scraping sound aft.”

“Stokes, check for damage, all spaces.”

“Aye, sir,” and Stokes pulled a phone off of the deck to his ear.

Rapier got himself to his feet, stunned after wrenching his shoulder falling onto the Pos Two console. Pacino waited, hoping the ship could get deep again using her speed. It took a long, tense minute for the ship to respond, bumping and scraping on the ice and on the omega’s hull, but finally the noises and vibrations stopped and the boat picked up speed. The deck grew steep but the listing angle came off. The digital-depth gage, frozen at 125 feet since the accident, began clicking, at first slowly, then beating out a rapid staccato burst of clicks.

“Two hundred feet, sir,” the Diving Officer called out.

“Speed fifteen knots. No ordered course.”

“Helm, all ahead flank,” Pacino ordered. “Maneuvering cavitate, left-hard rudder, steady course two seven zero. Diving Officer, pull out at 1500 feet.” It was an emergency order given in a purposefully calm voice. Pacino’s commands seemed to bring the crew to life, glad for orders to bring them out of their shock.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM! The main coolant check valves slamming the piping from the order to go to flank speed. Their descent from the ice had made a hellish cacophony. As the ship descended, the hull popping and cracking from the pressure, Pacino wondered if the OMEGA crew had started tracking them yet. Were they too in shock, wounded, not able to respond? Okay, you bastard, Pacino thought, here I am. Come and get me.

Novskoyy’s eyes were open but the pattern of the deck tiles swam in and out of focus. Slowly he moved his aching arms to get them underneath himself, pushed himself up, felt a shock of pain from his backside, where he had hit the periscope. His shoulders and head throbbed, but nothing seemed broken. He got to his feet, noticing that the list of the deck was not his senses deceiving him but evidence that something serious had happened to the Kaliningrad. Something… what? What hit them? A problem with the polynya closing in would have been slow, an ice raft drifting toward them. Novskoyy looked at the compartment. Deck Officer Ivanov was lying face down in the periscope well, unconscious or worse. Men were climbing into the compartment from the ladder aft. The medic’s assistant hurried to Ivanov, who was opening his eyes and trying to move his head.

“What happened?” Ivanov asked, grimacing. Novskoyy didn’t answer. He looked around the space at the computer screens, each one blank. The computers must have crashed from the impact. He went to the central breaker panel and switched off the master breaker switch for the combat computers, then reset it. The screens flashed for a moment, then went blank. He hoped the large frame machines were rebooting themselves. Hurry up, Novskoyy thought, looking at the screen on the communications console. Finally it did blink back to life, the words on the screen reading:

Novskoyy grimaced. A polite computer. The message vanished, replaced by a status readout. He went to the panel, where officers were again manning the consoles, Ivanov ordering the ship-control and deck officers.

Novskoyy scanned the status readout, frustrated, staring at one line buried in the status display:

The impact of whatever… whoever… had hit them had either snapped off the multifrequency antenna or rendered it useless. Would he be able to transmit follow-up orders to his fleet? He hunted through the status panel, looking for the indication of the auxiliary antenna. What the computer screen read was:

At least the UHF Aux unit was all right electrically though its hydraulics were inoperable. It would need to be raised manually with a hydraulic jack handpump. Novskoyy thought of his fleet waiting for instructions, like a pistol with the safety off and the trigger pulled almost to the firing point. The collision had forced his hand. There were no further thoughts of a diplomatic solution. His next transmission to the fleet would be the order to execute missile launch. He should never have delayed, should have given the go-code from the first. What had to happen had always laid there like an inevitability, predetermined… He had finished connecting the manual hydraulic pump to the line to the UHF Aux mast hydraulic manifold when the ship abruptly shuddered. Novskoyy looked to Ivanov, bending over the sonar console. Ivanov looked back at Novskoyy, dawning comprehension on his face. As the deck vibrated from a scraping noise below, Novskoyy hurried to the sonar console.

“What is it, Ivanov?” Novskoyy asked.

“Listen,” Ivanov said. Outside the hull, from below, came the whooshing sound of a propulsion screw, a big one, the noise growing louder even than the scraping noise. The whooshing rose to a crescendo and then passed, growing quieter. After one last shrieking scraping noise all that could be heard was the screw.

“A submarine,” Novskoyy said… Either one of the Russian Pacific Fleet attack boats coming to stop his mission, or, and more likely, the American attack ship that Dretzski had alerted him to. Four loud BOOMS reverberated from outside the hull — from the direction the intruding submarine had gone after it stopped scraping the underside of the Kaliningrad’s hull. Ivanov stared at the sonar console, flipping rapidly from one graphic display in the software to another. Without looking up he gave his report to Novskoyy.

“It’s an American attack submarine. Admiral. Piranha class. Probably up here to spy on us—”

“How could it have found us?”

“They are leaving the area at maximum RPM, sir. We must neutralize them…” Novskoyy’s own instructions to the Northern Fleet submarines allowed, even encouraged, the firing of a warshot torpedo at any foreign submarine if there was a collision or clear evidence of foreign surveillance if both vessels were under the cover of the polar icecap. Ivanov knew this.

“No,” Novskoyy said. The molniya go-code for attack still had to be transmitted to his deployed fleet.

“Sir,” Ivanov said, “the intruder is getting away, we must prosecute them, your standing orders to the fleet, sir. We can return here after the American is on the bottom—”

“No. We will remain here. There is an urgent radio—”

“Sir,” Ivanov persisted, “the American must be expecting an attack and will be planning to release his own weapons. Sir, isn’t it a question of defending ourselves?”

Novskoyy waved an acknowledgment. By his lights, Ivanov was right. After the sinking of the American sub in 1973 the U.S. submarine fleet had no doubt been spoiling for revenge, but would the American shoot at them in what everybody considered peacetime? He proceeded to answer his own thought… They would if they linked his transmissions to his attack fleet off the coast. What if they had broken the encryption codes and were reading his communications. Then they would try to sink the Kaliningrad before he could complete the attack molniya to the fleet… There was no choice — the transmission would have to wait.

“Ivanov, submerge the ship, lock in the fire-control targeting instructions for the American submarine and launch a 100-centimeter Magnum to the target aimpoint.”

Ivanov paused. The watchstanders paused. The room’s conversations died.

“Sir, a nuclear weapon could damage this ship. I’ll have to overpower the reactors and use the polymer system. Would the admiral consider a 53-centimeter unit? Or several?”

The conventional 53-centimeter torpedoes had conventional explosive warheads, not nuclear ones.

“Not fast enough. The Piranha will get away and the 53-centimeter unit would run out of fuel. Launch the Magnum and get us out of the area.”

“Aye, Admiral.”

“Captain, damage reports are in,” Stokes said, replacing the phone handset in the cradle. “We’re hurting. Evaporator and lithium bromide air conditioner are out. Just about every piping system we’ve got is leaking from the couplings and joints. Bilges are filling up with water — nothing the drain pump can’t handle. Worst leaks look to be primary coolant, and the radiation level in the reactor compartment is climbing. But we’ve got full propulsion. Hovering system up forward is leaking both high pressure air and seawater. We’re trying to isolate the leaks. But the hovering system is down hard. Sonar’s got a real problem. The towed array is dead. We must have crushed the fiberglass fairing on top of the hull, maybe severed the cable. Total loss of narrowband sonar on Target One—”

“Status of the spherical array?”

“Still okay, sir.”

“Well, we’ll just have to keep tabs on Target One on broadband.”

“Captain,” Rapier said, turning from the Pos Two console he’d been studying, “Target One’s in the baffles now. We can’t hear him. Recommend you come around right or left twenty degrees and bring him out.” Pacino shook his head. Rapier frowned, not understanding.

“Mark range to the collision,” Pacino ordered.

“Two thousand yards,” Stokes replied, looking at the geographic plot. Minimum weapon standoff range for the Russian’s torpedoes, Pacino thought.

“Conn, Sonar,” Pacino’s headphone intoned, “Uh, transients now from bearing zero seven zero, edge of the starboard baffles… Conn, Sonar, we have a detect on an active sonar… it’s a quick pulse-range check omega’s transmitting Blocks-of-Wood active sonar in a beam at us, verifying our range…”

Good. The OMEGA had heard them and was responding. The range check was a classic Russian tactic immediately before a torpedo shot. The officers in the space, most of them wearing the same headphones Pacino wore, turned to look at him, waiting for him to get the ship out of trouble, or into it.

“Well, XO,” Pacino said, “it seems the OMEGA may be hostile, after all. Are we ready to shoot?”

“Sir,” Rapier said, thinking of the Russian submarines lurking in the seas off the coast of his hometown, “let’s kick his ass.”

The next few minutes seemed to go by in a blur, whether the result of the injury he had sustained in the collision or the stress of the moment, Novskoyy wasn’t sure as he watched Ivanov and the team of officers submerge the ship and head east away from the American submarine, trying to get enough distance from it so that the safety interlocks on the Magnum torpedo would allow warhead aiming — too close and it could home in on the launching ship. The conversation in the space seemed to swim by Novskoyy’s ears rather than register in them.

“REAR GUARD sonar range to target, 1500 meters,” Ivanov called out.

“Magnum torpedo loaded in tube six. Flooding tube six now,” said Weapons Officer Chekechev.

“REAR GUARD range to target, 2000 meters. Target range meets firing criteria. Target bearing 280, speed 65 clicks.” Ivanov.

“Magnum in tube six weapon power on, gyro at nominal RPM, computer self-check complete. Target solution locked in,” from Chekechev.

“Open outer door, tube six.” Ivanov turned to Lieutenant Katmonov, the Ship Control Officer. “To Engine Control, overpower both reactors to 110 percent power.”

Chekechev: “Tube six outer door open. Magnum fuel turbopump pressure increasing, increasing—”

“Engine Control reports both reactors at 110 percent power,” reported Katmonov. “Ship’s speed, 80 clicks.”

“Magnum fuel pressure in limits. Computer ready indication,” said Chekechev.

“Firing status?” Ivanov asked.

“Ready to fire.”

“Fire tube six on my mark,” Ivanov ordered. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Markf “Firing six!” The ship trembled, just slightly, as the heavy large-bore weapon left the tube.

“Engage the polymer system and report ship’s speed,” Ivanov ordered.

“Magnum turning to attack course.”

“Polymer system engaged. Ship’s speed increasing to eighty-five clicks,” Katmonov intoned. Chekechev: “Magnum steady on attack course.” Katmonov: “Ship’s speed increasing to ninety clicks.” Chekechev: “Magnum speeding up to attack velocity.”

Ivanov: “Status of the target?” Chekechev: “Target no longer registers on REAR GUARD. Must be on the other side of the Magnum now. Confirmed. Magnum is on the bearing to the target. Target noise masked by Magnum noise.”

“Very good. Range to the aim point?”

“Aimpoint range, fifteen kilometers. Ship’s speed, ninety-one clicks. A record, sir.” Ivanov took it in. The most a Russian submarine had gone before was eighty clicks, at least in his memory. Chekechev: “Aimpoint range, sixteen kilometers. Four kilometers to go till outside blast-damage zone.” Katmonov: “Ship’s speed, steady at ninety-one clicks.”

“Target status?” Ivanov asked. Chekechev: “Still masked by the Magnum.”

“Aim point range?”

“Range to aimpoint, sixteen point five kilometers.”

They were going east at record speed, the polymer slipping down the metal of the hull, greasing their way through the cold water. With every passing minute they drove further from the aimpoint of the Magnum torpedo, closer to safety. But at the same time they also drove further from the polynya, pushing transmission of Novskoyy’s molniya order further into the future. He interrupted the smooth functioning of the three-man fire-control team: “Deck Officer,” he said to Ivanov, “turn the ship around and drive us back west to the polynya.”

“But sir,” Ivanov shot back, shocked, “that will put us in the blast zone—”

“Turn the ship, course, due west.”

Ivanov stared at Novskoyy. Then: “Admiral, I can’t do that. It means this ship will be destroyed.”

“Conn, Sonar, more transients from zero seven zero Conn, Sonar! Torpedo in the water! Large-bore weapon screw pattern! It’s… Jesus, it’s a Magnum!”

“Skipper,” Rapier said, one hand on his earpiece, “the son of a bitch just launched a nuke at us!” Pacino said nothing. The OMEGA had just responded as he’d hoped. This was the confrontation he’d been waiting for. He took a deep breath and issued a string of orders.

“Helm, all stop.” He watched as the speed indicator went from 34 knots to near zero, aware of the eyes on him.

“Offsa’deck, shift propulsion to the Emergency Propulsion Motor. And relay the word to maneuvering: group scram the reactor, secure all reactor main coolant pumps, engage emergency cooling, shut main steam valves one and two and secure steam to the engine room.”

Rapier, standing down by the fire-control console, looked at Pacino, sweat breaking out on his forehead. Pacino had, after all, just ordered the ship to be completely shut down, the only lights remaining supplied from the battery. Finally Stokes found his voice: “Sir, that torpedo’ll be running up our ass in about three minutes. We’ve gotta run.”

Rapier joined in, looking at the chronometer. “Sir, we can’t play possum here under the ice. With the reactor dead and no steam and without a hovering system we’ll need to go two knots on the Emergency Propulsion Motor just to maintain depth control. That kind of currentdraw will kill the battery in twenty minutes, maybe less. Under the ice we can’t recover from that. We could try to restart the reactor right now and we’d never make it.” There was no time to argue. Pacino looked Rapier in the eyes.

“XO, when we shut down, that torpedo will never hear us. It’ll go by like we’re invisible. Besides, if we run we’ll either hit a pressure ridge and sink from a ripped-open hull or get killed from the nuke — we can’t outrun that SOB, it goes sixty god damned knots.”

Stokes’ hand shook as he picked up the P.A. Circuit Seven microphone to maneuvering in the engine room and passed the orders. As the reactor was shut down the ventilation fans whined to a halt. The room grew immediately stuffy and lights winked out in the overhead. The heart and lungs of the USS Devilfish had stopped. She drifted south in the current, a 100-kiloton nuclear warhead crashing toward her at 60 knots.