“Solution ready,” called Segerson.
“Weapons ready,” Owens followed instantly.
“Ship ready,” announced Malkoff.
“Shoot on generated bearing!” Weiss roared.
“Set… standby… shoot!” reported the fire control technician.
Down in Carter’s torpedo room, the firing valves on the port and starboard tube nests popped open, releasing high-pressure air to the tube’s air turbine pumps. The spinning turbine blades drove an impeller that gulped hundreds of gallons of seawater and thrust it forcefully into the tube. The massive pulse of seawater boosted the two-ton torpedoes into the ocean at nearly thirty knots. Seconds later, the four torpedoes’ own engines came to life and the torpedoes accelerated smoothly and quietly.
“Normal launch!” shouted the fire control tech. “Torpedoes are on course one eight three, first set at two eight knots, the second at four zero knots, run-to-enable seven five double oh yards!”
LT Owens then did a quick double take; she didn’t like what she saw. “Captain! Loss of wire continuity on weapon number four!”
“Understood,” replied Weiss calmly, he wasn’t surprised. Statistically, it was a long shot to retain all four wires. Turning to Jerry, he asked, “Do we still accelerate the three torpedoes to sixty-five knots?”
Mitchell paused while he did the mental math. At forty knots, the torpedoes would need an additional two minutes or so to reach the enable point, where the seekers would start pinging. He shook his head; the Russians wouldn’t be able to react quickly enough. He decided he’d rather keep all four weapons. “Negative, Captain. Bring all weapons to forty knots.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Weiss said then, looking at his stopwatch, counted down the time until his next order. “Weps, accelerate units one and two to forty knots, cut the wires, and shut the outer doors.” Weiss gestured for Segerson to follow up on the torpedoes’ status. Pivoting, the captain ordered, “Helm, all ahead standard. Dive, keep us close to the bottom!”
Captain-Lieutenant Mirsky didn’t even bother taxiing to the runway. He frantically waved the ground crew away, turned the aircraft to face the wind, and then gunned his machine. The Ka-27M helicopter leapt into the sky. Without waiting to see if the other helo had taken off, Mirsky pushed the throttle to full power and set course for the western end of the hydroacoustic array.
“Petty Officer Mitrov, enter these coordinates into the Lira combat system.” Mirsky spoke tersely as he handed the rating a piece of paper. His head was still spinning. How could four American submarines be attacking the complex? Two contacts were detected at each end of the array barrier; Mirsky’s flight was to prosecute the ones to the west, as headquarters didn’t have a good position on the Project 885M submarine, Kazan. She was at last report off to the east of Bolshevik Island, but that had been some time ago. The pilot didn’t like the idea of helicopters and friendly submarines operating in the same area. They couldn’t communicate easily; coordination was all but impossible. He’d have to be very careful when he dropped his torpedo. Killing one of their own submarines, even in a chaotic battle such as this, would be a career-ending blunder — if he were lucky.
“Coming up on the minefield,” stated Malkoff. “We should be clear in about two minutes.”
“Very well, Nav.” Weiss leaned over toward the fire control consoles. He needed to prepare for the next phase of their escape. “Weps, make tubes seven and eight ready in all respects.”
“Conn, Sonar,” blared the speaker. “Regained Sierra one five on the towed array. Contact bears roughly one nine five, drawing left, heading southwest. She’s cavitating.”
“Run away! Run away!” squealed Segerson with a bad British accent. Mitchell had been right. Belgorod was running.
Jerry and Weiss both laughed. “C’mon XO, you’d run too if you saw four torpedoes heading your way!” chided Jerry jokingly. Segerson dismissed the reproach with a haughty wave.
“Conn, Sonar, possible explosion to the east. Acoustic countermeasures are masking bearings between zero seven five and zero eight zero.”
Weiss and Jerry looked at each other, perplexed. An explosion? The captain hit the intercom, “Sonar, how confident are you about an explosion?”
“Pretty sure, Skipper. The countermeasures lit off just a moment later.”
“Kazan? Or Walter?” Weiss wondered.
“Knowing our luck, Lou, I think Walter is toast. Those countermeasures, though, they bother me,” replied Jerry as he reached for the intercom with the UUV control center. “UCC, Conn, do you retain contact with either vehicle?”
“Negative, Conn. Countermeasure interference has masked all comms.” Ford’s report wasn’t a surprise. Jerry had expected as much.
Once again, the intercom squawked. “Conn, Sonar, own ship’s units are accelerating!”
Zhabin and his operators cheered when a torpedo from a PMK-2 mine hit one of their assailants and detonated. The explosion was clearly heard on Sever modules nine, ten, and eleven. Once the reverberation from the blast died down, there were no longer any signals from the contact — a confirmed kill.
After the initial shock, Zhabin managed to calm down and began adjusting the Sever system’s beamformer and signal-processing settings, trying to get the modules to look away from the jammers. He was only partially successful. Modules two through eight were still badly degraded, effectively useless. He still believed that there were at least three confirmed contacts, possibly four, and that they appeared to be attempting to penetrate the defensive barrier at the ends.
Concentrating on the outputs from the four good modules, he saw traces of several fast-moving objects circling near the minefield. That meant a number of mines had actively detected a target and launched their torpedoes. He was amazed that the Americans were so bold as to try a frontal assault. Looking to the south, Zhabin saw a submarine signature with a moderate left bearing rate. It was increasing speed quickly and was fitted with two screws—Belgorod was attempting to escape.
“Petty Officer Yolkov, inform central post that Belgorod is underway and is steaming to the southwest. Speed is eighteen knots and accelerating; she should be able to…” The officer suddenly ceased his report as another contact emerged from the noise clutter and into module nine’s field of view. The new contact had an unstable, blurry bearing, but it appeared to be moving incredibly fast.
Zhabin played with the controls in an attempt to tighten up the bearing display, but to no effect. After another twenty seconds, information started coming in from module ten and the fuzzy bearing trace seemed to split out into several close lines. The lieutenant inhaled sharply, it wasn’t just one contact; it was many. “Torpedoes!” he shrieked.
Carter’s Mark 48 torpedoes all began pinging nearly simultaneously. They were only four thousand yards away from the launch complex, and the transponders all sent back a strong coded homing signal, each beacon calling to a separate torpedo. After three solid echoes from the beacons, the torpedoes accelerated to attack speed — sixty-five knots — and dove. The weapons ignored the large target moving away to their right. Each torpedo was fixated on its own personal siren song. Two minutes later the first torpedo reached the Dragon launcher and struck one of the large concrete anchors, detonating on contact. Three more explosions followed in a ripple.