Voyage of the Devilfish

CHAPTER 21

Admiral Caspar “Bobby” McGee, CINCLANT, exited the helicopter and hurried up the ladder rungs to the door of the DC-9 idling at the end of the runway. He had barely gotten to the top of the ladder when his aide pulled in the ladder and shouted go to the pilot. McGee had nearly been knocked off his feet as the pilot throttled up, the concrete of runway zero five immediately blurring outside the still open door as the aide struggled to shut it.

McGee had never taken seriously the notion of an attack on the U.S… Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, moves in the political chess game far away. That is, until a half hour before when the call came that a missile was on its way in.

The helicopter had landed in his front yard moments later, startling his sleeping neighbors. Now McGee listened to his aide’s briefing of the current threat — the positions of the enemy submarines, the status of the U.S. units tracking them. His conversation with Admiral Donchez replayed itself in his mind. How could he have not thought that a nation… or some renegade in it… with 27,000 nuclear weapons, a nation fractured apart, would never be tempted to use weapons one last time? How could General Tyler in particular so badly have misread the situation? A question for another day.

The NESTOR UHF satellite secure-voice circuit blooped, the crypto-gear making the strange noises that indicated its awakening. And as the DC-9 continued climbing to the east at full throttle, McGee took the call from the White House…

The President’s accent, clear even through the scrambled voice phone, grated on Admiral Donchez’s nerves. Particularly when the voice was saying something he disagreed with.

“Sir, we’ve got one-hundred-twenty covert Russian attack subs off the coast. One of them just launched a nuclear cruise missile, headed for me and—”

“Admiral, my advisors tell me you’re having it shot down, there’s no danger. And there won’t be any more missiles launched. I’ve just received assurances, and I believe them, from President Yulenski that this is a mistake… the deployment, the launch… He’s ordering the fleet back home right now, said he’d order the subs to surface—”

“Can he bring back the dead? Sir, I’ve been warning about this sort of thing now for days, no one wanted to hear it. General Herman X. Tyler didn’t want to hear any doomsday talk out of me. Shooting down this missile isn’t exactly a done deal, sir.”

“Dick,” Admiral McGee’s voice said on the three-way connection, “better listen to the President—”

“Donchez,” the President ordered, “tell your submarines not to fire on the Russian units. Have them call the Russians on underwater telephone-sonar and tell them to surface. If they won’t, well, then you can bump or collide with them, but do not shoot them. Clear?”

“Sir,” Donchez said, “we have a Los Angeles Javelin vertical-launch sub off the Russian northern coast right now. I have her on missile alert. One word from you and she’ll have twelve Javelins on their way.”

“Admiral, recall that submarine. Now, god damnit.”

“Admiral, McGee here. The situation is coming under control, don’t make it worse—”

“What’s your ETA to Pattern Charlie?” Donchez wanted to know when operational control of the fleet would pass to McGee, when he’d be 100 miles out of Norfolk.

“About ten minutes. I’ll contact you on NESTOR.”

“Roger, ten to Pattern Charlie, and will comply with your orders,” Donchez said, trying to keep the anger from his voice. “I’ll recall the Javelin sub. But I still recommend reconsidering retaliation—”

But the President had already hung up.

When the shock wave had hit the ship and the pod, Vlasenko had been bounced around hitting every surface in the pod. For a moment he wondered if he was blind, felt a warm drip and realized blood was flowing into his eyes.

The pod was turned on its side. The ship, he decided, must be in a terminal velocity dive for the ocean bottom. The rumbling sound of another weapon explosion in the first compartment indicated he had less than a few seconds to try to get into the control compartment and load anyone he could into the pod and detach. He wondered if they were close enough to thin ice for an attempt to escape. It was the only chance he had.

Vlasenko pulled the pod-release lever from the control panel and inserted it between spokes of the hatch-control wheel, then with a grunt pulled on the lever, using it as a pry bar until the wheel broke away. Now he pulled the steel rod out of the wheel and was shocked to see the wheel furiously rotate by itself. The rotating mechanism pulled the hatch-dogs — each a thick banana of steel holding the hatch shut — clear of the pod hatch jamb. He had to jump out of the way as the hatch flew sideways and into the pod. And Vlasenko found himself staring into the eyes of Admiral Alexi Novskoyy, whose arms were occupied holding the ladder. Vlasenko balled his fist and smashed it into Novskoyy’s face, and the admiral collapsed, falling away into the darkness of the shattered control compartment.

As the radioman handed Commander Henry Duckett the flash message, he felt the eyes of the crewmen on him, awaiting word to launch the Javelins. When he read the message the breath went out of him, partly relief, partly disappointment. He handed the message to Mills, the OOD.

“Goddamn, sir, first they want us to hightail it up here, then they want us to cock the gun, then they want us to forget it and come on home.”

Duckett shook his head. “Secure battle stations, spin down the Javelins and bring us around to course three zero zero, all ahead two thirds. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

The speaker monitoring the radio communications of the F-14 had just tolled its unhappy message.

“I’ll be god damned, the Mongooses missed, I don’t believe it… they both missed. The cruise missile is still inbound…” The F-14 crew lapsed into stunned silence, the commentary on the Mongoose missiles coming to a sudden halt.

In the COMSUBLANT Flag Plot room Admiral Richard Donchez was the center of attention. Donchez’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Lieutenant Commander Kodiak.

“See if CINCLANT’s DC-9 is at the Pattern Charlie point. If it is patch in Admiral McGee.”

Kodiak nodded. Until McGee could get outside the 100-mile radius of the city Donchez would remain in command, but once the DC-9 hit the Pattern Charlie point McGee was to take over.

“Sir, the DC-9 is at Pattern Charlie,” Kodiak said. Donchez took the red radiotelephone handset from Kodiak and clicked the speak button. “Nathan Hale, this is Underdog, over.”

A longish silence, then: “Nathan Hale standing by,” McGee’s distorted voice replied. “Go ahead. Underdog. Over.” The speaker rasped McGee’s voice, ending with a beep as the NESTOR secure-voice signal made its way through the encryption equipment.

“Execute Pattern Charlie. Repeat, execute Pattern Charlie. Break. Acknowledge Pattern Charlie. Break. Over,” Donchez said, transferring operational control of all CINCLANTFLEET to the airborne admiral. This operation was now officially McGee’s problem, along with the President’s and General Tyler’s.

“Dick, McGee here. Copy your Pattern Charlie and acknowledge same. Break…” There was a pause, followed by McGee’s “Good luck, Dick, see you soon.”

When Donchez spoke, his voice was gravelly. “Kodiak, get on the horn to that F-14 driver. If he hasn’t figured it out yet, you ask him if he remembers what a Kamikaze is.”

Commander Henry Duckett heard the long, rumbling roar come through the hull followed by a vibration that started to shake the ship. The deck trembled, the rumbling got louder, then diminished to a dim growl, which after a moment faded, leaving Duckett’s small cabin in silence. Duckett went to the control room and stepped up on the Conn. Senior Chief Sonarman Jameson emerged from Sonar.

“The noise you heard was an explosion. Captain, a definite underwater explosion. Bearing was north-northeast, covered a broad sector. The bearing line points to an underice explosion.”

“Was it a hull breaking up?”

“No,” Jameson said, shaking his head. “There’s a sonar blueout for ten degrees on either side of the bearing.”

“A blueout? But blueouts can only be caused by bubbles and echoes from a… a nuclear detonation—”

Jameson gave him a look. “Exactly, skipper. We believe the explosion was nuclear… Was there any warhead test going on out here? Anything in the intel brief about Russian tests under the icecap?”

Duckett shook his head.

“Is there a chance there’s a U.S. boat up here?”

“If there is I’m not supposed to know about it,” Duckett said.

“British? French?”

“Don’t think so.”

But Duckett did know more than he was saying. The Squadron Twelve intelligence officer had told him about the weird Russian deployment. He’d also blabbed about a concurrent SNCP mission under the icecap, a secret OP involving covert surveillance. Who did the spook say was going north? “Devilfish?”

“Oh, God,” Duckett said slowly. Incredibly, the Russian must have gotten the Devilfish. With the Russian subs on the coastline, only Devilfish and Allentown were this far north, everyone else was tied down with the Russian attack boats. Which meant one thing. Allentown would have to go under ice and see for sure what had happened. Duckett had never liked that wiseass Michael Pacino and his screw-off boat, but they were American submariners.

“What’s going on?” The voice belonged to the XO, Lieutenant Commander Pat Bishop, a short, slight man with a high-pitched, nasal voice. Duckett couldn’t stand the voice, couldn’t stand the man. The XO was competent, but he was a weasel. More than once Duckett had found him compromising his orders. He had tried to transfer him but the thing had gotten snarled in typical navy red tape.

“You didn’t hear the explosion?” Duckett said. He turned to Jameson. “Any idea on range?”

“Negative.”

Duckett went to the aft part of the Conn and peered down at the chart table.

“Quartermaster,” he called, “plot a bearing line to this detonation.” The line pointed up under the icepack.

“Cap’n,” Bishop put in, “you’re not thinking of going north, are you?”

Duckett looked at the bearing line, calculating how long it would take to get to the pole.

“Because if you are, let me remind you this ship doesn’t have the depth control for an underice transit. It also doesn’t have a decent underice sonar — no SHARKTOOTH. We can’t rotate the fairwater planes vertical for penetrating ice with the sail, and even if we could, the sail isn’t two-inch-thick steel like on a Piranha, it’s fiberglass over aluminum. If you tried to smash through ice we’d wreck it. Besides, we don’t have the charts, damn little arctic gear, and we don’t have a clearance from COMSUBLANT. We’d have to radio in a request for clearance and we can’t transmit this close to Russia, they’d detect us…”

“You done?” Duckett asked quietly.

“Yes, I am.”

“Good, because you’re absolutely right. You got all the reasons not to go north.”

“Well, sir, I’m glad you agree,” and he moved off to his stateroom.

“God,” Duckett muttered, “where does NAVPERS even get these bozos?” The OOD, Lieutenant Mills, heard with pleasure the captain’s thought, which he shared.

“Off sa’deck,” Duckett said to Mills, “bring us around to the north, course zero one five, fifteen knots, head under the ice. Keep following the bearing to the explosions. Break out the underice procedure. It’s been a while since I’ve been under the icepack…”

Chief Engineer Delaney wasted no time giving the order to restart the nuclear reactor. The procedures he was about to execute would have made a civilian nuclear operator faint dead away… the emergency reactor startup procedure was so dangerous that it was not even practiced unless the ship was beyond fifty miles from land, and even then only with rigorous controls and supervision. This day Man Delaney would see how sharp the pencils of naval reactors’ design-engineers were. This startup would stress the reactor like it had never been stressed, including the shock from the Magnum hit. Delaney started with a reactor plant in poor condition. With less than minutes left on the battery in this reduced-load status, the running of the reactor main coolant pumps to get flow through the core would exhaust the battery in three minutes or less. The coolant inventory in the core was dangerously low from the previous fast leak from the starboard loop. It would be like trying to start up the Three Mile Island plant in the middle of the accident.

Delaney scanned the instruments. The primary coolant, without the heat input from the nuclear fissions, had cooled to 350 degrees. To warm it to 500 Delaney would be using an emergency heat-up rate. Usually the core was warmed gently at a degree per minute to avoid stressing the thick steel reactor vessel already made brittle by radiation. The emergency heat-up rate had never been done before, on any reactor. It might put enough stress on the plant to blow the head off the reactor vessel, or fracture the six-inch-thick steel.

Even if the warm-up went well the plant was only partly operational. The leak had dumped one coolant loop of highly radioactive water to the reactor compartment bilges. The port steam system was useless with the condenser isolated from the seawater flooding, which left one coolant loop and one steam generator to power one electrical turbine and one main engine. Assuming he could get the reactor critical fast enough.

Conventional wisdom held that nuclear reactors couldn’t explode like nuclear weapons. Natural uranium, melted together with the zirconium fuel metal and control-rod hafnium, ordinarily would not sustain a critical mass to explode like a bomb. Of course, the key was the natural uranium fuel. The reactor of the Devilfish was not a natural uranium low-power density core like a civilian land-based unit. The Devilfish’s fuel modules were packed with uranium-238, highly enriched uranium. The core had the power of a reactor thirty times its size. If the fuel modules ever did melt down there was a slight chance that the core could form a critical mass and go critical. The result would be a “prompt critical rapid disassembly”—jargon for a detonation. Well, if they melted down and went prompt critical, he wouldn’t be around long enough to worry about it.

He began his string of orders, each vital to waking the beast in the reactor compartment: “Check battleshort switch. Secure emergency cooling— shut XC-9. Pass the word to the Engineering Watch Supervisor, shut all scram breakers and equalize around and open Main Steam Two. Manderson, take the operational-mode selector-switch to cutback override, low-pressure cutout switch to low-pressure cutout, source range channel selector switch to star-up rate scram cutout. Ready? Start number-two main coolant pump in slow speed.” Petty Officer Manderson, the reactor operator, stood and pulled up on pump two’s T-handle. With a thump of check valves, the pump started. The battery amp-hour digital meter on the electrical panel immediately began clicking.

“Battery discharge rate is 800 amps, Eng,” the electrical operator said. Delaney frowned. They were sucking a tremendous current from an almost dead battery. This would be a helluva race against time.

“Apply latch voltage to inverter alpha.”

Manderson grabbed the pistol grip in the center of the panel and rotated it to the RODS IN position as he pulled it out from the panel face. The chronometer in the maneuvering room over the door clicked off the seconds. The digital amp-hour meter of the plant-control panel clicked three times a second, each click bringing the ship closer to total loss of power.

“Group one rods latched,” Manderson said, releasing the pistol grip.

“TO, pull rod group one to criticality. Nine decades per minute startup rate. Give me heatup of the reactor to 500 degrees.”

Delaney then announced on Circuit Two, a general announcing system in the aft spaces of the ship: “ENGINEERING WATCH SUPERVISOR, COMMENCE COOLANT DISCHARGE FROM THE PORT LOOP. PRESSURE BAND 1600 TO 1800.”

Manderson began pulling the control rods out of the core and the group-one rod position indicator clicked up at tremendous speed. Manderson fought to keep the springloaded pistolgrip switch in the RODS OUT position. Usually during a fast recovery startup, control rods were quickly pulled to criticality at a rate of five decades per minute, ten times the rate of a civilian reactor startup. Today the engineer had ordered pulling at nine decades per minute, the needle at the top of the gage face. This reactor would fry them to a nuclear crisp if the startup didn’t go perfectly.

“Start number four main coolant pump in slow,” Delaney ordered, as reactor power entered the power range. Manderson pulled on its T-handle. The amp-hour meter on the electric plant control panel ticked off the life of the battery.

“Eng,” the electrical operator said, “we’re losing the battery! I’ve gotta lower voltage!”

“No way,” Delaney said. “C’mon, Manderson, heat this bitch up. Pull the rods.” Manderson pulled rods out of the core with the pistolgrip switch. As the rods passed 16 inches out the temperature-needle swam off 350 degrees and headed upward, a second later reading 390, 410, 420, 435, 450, 470. As the core heated, the sound of a creaking, shrieking noise could be heard forward from the direction of the reactor compartment. Manderson yelled over his shoulder, “Sir, it’s gonna blow, thermal stress—”

Delaney yelled back, looking at the dangerously low battery voltage.

“Keep pulling, it’s our only chance—”

“500 degrees, sir.” Delaney grabbed his P.A. microphone. “ENGINEERING WATCH SUPERVISOR, EMERGENCY WARMUP THE STARBOARD TURNBINE GENERATOR.”

“Sir, only seconds left on the battery!”

“Hold on!” Actually, Delaney knew, the electrical operator was just as helpless as he was to keep the battery from dying. If they lost power now there would be no main coolant pumps circulating hot water to the boilers, no steam and no turbine generators. The ship would never recover. It was now, or never. The only acknowledgment from the Engineering Watch Supervisor was the howl of a turbine starting to come up to full revolutions in one massive burst of steam, sounding like a jet engine spinning up to full power. Delaney had never heard so welcome a sound.

A shout came at the door from the EWS, a sweating chief. “Starboard TG at 3600 RPM! On the governor and ready for loading!” Delaney was calling to the electrical operator before the EWS had finished. “Shift to a half power lineup on the port TG.” The electrical operator didn’t need to be told. As he paralleled in the turbine generator’s bus to the battery-powered vital bus, the battery breaker tripped open, the battery completely exhausted. There had, literally, not been a half-second to spare.

The torpedo room was a wreck, a flooded hellhole. Pacino stood in three feet of water, looking at the devastation. He had no idea how the flooding had been stopped. There was not a living person in the space, only men floating facedown in the water. Someone must have died stopping the flooding and had saved the ship.

Shattered weapons were scattered throughout the compartment, dumping explosive self-oxidizing fuel into the water, and self-oxidized fuel was reactive enough to burn underwater, Pacino realized. The water must be flowing into the battery well through the seams of the well’s deck hatch… which meant that chlorine gas would be pouring out of it at any minute.

Pacino reached into the overhead, opened a cubbyhole, pulled out a gas mask and put it on, inhaling stale copper-flavored air. The battery hatch blew open, sending up a pressurized geyser of green chlorine gas. Once the cloud escaped, the water in the space rushed into the battery well. There would be maybe ten or twenty seconds before the battery exploded, Pacino thought. He took a deep breath, unplugged his hose from the manifold of the air line and ran back up the ladders to the control room, thinking that he had not seen a living soul since slapping Rapier’s cheek.

As he rounded the bend at the top of the stairs at his stateroom door, it occurred to him that the lights were still on. In spite of the flooded battery. The engineer must have gotten the reactor critical! He hurried into Control, feeling the first glimmer of hope in a very long time. When the battery exploded below, it was a searing thump. He finally made it into the control room two decks up from where he had unplugged his hose. Lungs near bursting, he found the manifold above the smoking wreck of the Pos Three panel and plugged in. When he had sucked in a few breaths he was glad to see other air hoses snaking through the space. And he saw Rapier still sitting limp on the bench seat, but wearing a gas mask and looking at Pacino.

Suddenly a voice on the P.A. screamed from a speaker: “CONN, MANEUVERING, HALF POWER LINEUP ON THE STARBOARD TG, PROPULSION SHIFTED TO THE STARBOARD MAIN ENGINE. PROPULSION LIMIT, AHEAD STANDARD.”

Pacino reached for the microphone. “ENGINEER, CAPTAIN,” Pacino’s voice boomed throughout the ship! “AHEAD STANDARD! MAX TURNS!” Then as an afterthought: “TOXIC GAS EMERGENCY IN THE TORPEDO ROOM. ALL HANDS DON EMERGENCY MASKS.”

Ahead standard, 16 knots, was all the speed the ship would make with one main engine. Pacino walked through the space, the men dazed except for the XO, and grabbed the helmsman’s seatbelt. With a click and a gentle nudge, the helmsman collapsed to the deck on top of the Diving Officer. Pacino kneeled on the seat, looked up at the gyrocompass, still functioning. He watched as the speed-indicator needle came off the peg and pointed up to 16 knots, then turned the helmsman’s wheel to port, bringing the ship around to a course of zero three zero to get back to the polynya. Flying by the seat of his pants as he was, he could overshoot, undershoot or drive right or left of it. But one thing was very clear. They were still under thick ice. If he couldn’t get to the polynya, he and his crew would join his father at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

For the SSN-X-27 cruise missile, it was time. Time to detonate the device in the nosecone. A thick steel plate in the detonator train rotated, lining up two pieces of the main detonator. The electrical system sent a spark to the main detonator, and it exploded into a ball of flames. The flames propagated to the igniters, six pie-shaped explosive charges set in a circle around a doughnut of plutonium surrounded by a can of heavy water, the deuterium. The flame front reached the six igniters. Two microseconds later the igniters imploded the plutonium doughnut inward, collapsing it into a massive ball.

Lieutenant Commander Todd Nikels didn’t need to be reminded of what a Kamikaze was. He estimated the SSN-X27 cruise missile to be about 500 feet ahead, beginning to fly over the deserted submarine piers below. The F-14’s wings were already swept back, ready to let him go supersonic. Nikels slammed the keys on the port console forward to the stops and felt a burst of acceleration as the thrust threw the massive jet toward the missile ahead. The missile grew, and within seconds it was just slightly to starboard and above, putting out a visible hot gas exhaust in the dawning light.

Nikels pulled the control stick back, aiming the F-14’s right-wing leading edge at the missile. As the jet passed through MacH 2 the starboard wing sliced through the cruise missile forward of its intake-duct. The missile, already exploding, blew itself apart in pieces that flew backward in the airstream outside the F-14. The cruise missile was destroyed, making it almost harmless, only its cloud of poisonous and radioactive plutonium a concern. Compared to a nuclear explosion, the contamination was almost minor. That was the good news for Nikels.

The bad news was that his starboard wing had been cut off at the fuselage reinforcement, ripping out the starboard engine compressor, turbine and intake duct with it. The debris from the ripped-off wing and engine removed both tail vertical stabilizers and the starboard horizontal stabilizer. The fuel, contained in the wings and the central fuselage, instantly caught fire, enveloping the already spinning aircraft in flames. Nikels watched his aircraft disintegrate. As it began to tumble out of control, he felt the blast of air when the canopy flew off the cockpit. Only then did he realize his radar-intercept officer. Brad Tollson, had started the ejection sequence. Nikels tried to pull his arms tight into his ribcage and grab the ejection seat curtain above his head, but apparently Tollson was too far ahead of him. The ejection-seat rockets fired while Nikels was still trying to pull his arms in toward his body. The cockpit flew away from him. As he cleared the canopy his flopping right arm was torn off by the force of the 1200-knot jet-stream. Nikels stared at his shoulder, at blood flying off into the slipstream. Now the rest of the F14 exploded, transforming it into a fireball. As blood poured out of his shoulder wound, Nikels lost blood pressure, and with it consciousness… Mercifully.

Two seconds later his parachute opened, a mere ten feet from the concrete of Norfolk Naval Station’s Pier Seven. Nikels hit the concrete at over 600 knots, his body scattering down the narrow strip some 200 feet. Almost immediately it became covered with radioactive contamination from the plutonium/deuterium fusion bomb he had just destroyed.