“Get down there, Patch!” Dankleff yelled, but Pacino was already vaulting aft to get to the ladderway to the middle level so he could get forward to the middle level hatch to the first compartment.
Pacino could hear coughing over the intercom, then Varney’s excited voice calling out, “We have smoke in the torpedo room! Fire in the torpedo room!”
Dankleff’s deep voice boomed overhead from the loudspeakers, “Fire in the torpedo room, fire in the torpedo room, all hands don emergency air masks, all personnel off watch, lay to the second compartment forward hatch and await instructions from the first compartment.”
Lieutenant Commander Rachel Romanov leaned over Mercer’s seatback at the BQQ-10 stack.
The display resembled a radar scope, the center representing Vermont herself, with concentric circular markings at regular distances going outward, each ring a mile from the one inside it, the outer ring at the eighty-mile point, forty thousand yards, the supposed limit of active sonar detection.
“Hit it,” Romanov said. Mercer uncovered a protective cover over a fixed function key and mashed it. An earsplitting booming shriek sounded from forward, going from a bass growl and howling to a high-pitched scream, the noise sounding for endless seconds until it stopped.
On the display, a bright green ring moved outward from the center, illuminating dull green splotches as it grew, the dull green considered to be noise with zero Doppler — the Doppler effect that of changing the frequency of a transmitted pulse by virtue of the speed of the target’s pulse reflection. If Mercer chose, he could filter out anything slower than a desired speed setpoint, but Romanov had told him to keep the filter off, to catch Panther or Master One if either of them hovered with no motion.
To the south, the six o’clock position on the display, a bright orange blotch lit up, an arrow superimposed on it, denoting speed, the system labeling it with 10 knots. Then to the southwest, multiple small orange blotches, all of them labeled with longer arrows pointing southwest, all reading 40 knots.
And then the money shot. South-southwest, bearing 205, a large orange spot with no arrow, the system labeling it, 0 knots. Romanov pointed to it, smiling to herself that she’d ordered the Doppler filter taken off. God, she thought, active sonar was wonderful. Damned shame they could only use it when their position was already known to the enemy.
“That’s him, Captain. Master One, in all his glory. Range thirty-seven miles.”
“Seventy-four thousand yards?” Quinnivan said, stunned. “That fooker can hear us from nearly forty miles away? What goddamned sonar set is he using, and can we fookin’ buy one?”
“Maybe he picked us up on a transient,” Seagraves said. “Pump seal going bad putting out a noise, or a failed sound mount.”
“We were scanned just after we left Norfolk by the Colorado, Skipper,” Quinnivan said. “We were quiet as a mouse.”
“Or maybe the Yasen-M is just a better submarine,” Romanov said.
“You’d better hope not, Nav,” Seagraves said.
“Those small contacts at forty knots, torpedoes, presumably fired by Panther?” Seagraves said, staring at the display on the command console. “And Panther is the contact due south at ten knots?”
Mercer nodded. “That’s my read, Captain.”
Romanov smiled. Panther had lived.
“Ping again,” Seagraves said to Romanov. “See if Master One truly has zero speed with incoming torpedoes heading for him, of if he’s just running at a right angle to our line-of-sight.”
“Aye, Captain. Mercer, hit it again.”
A second time the blasting sound rang out from forward. On the display screen, another green circle grew outward from the center point, this time hitting the southern contact—Panther—showing it closer, then the torpedoes farther from them, but closer to the large contact to the southwest, which had moved quite a bit, the contact headed due west. But he was at the far range of detection unless Mercer adjusted the scale.
“Coordinator, we have a firing solution,” Lomax called from pos one, “based on the two ping returns. He’s moving west at thirty-five knots, present range, thirty-eight thousand five hundred yards, recommend horizontal salvo.”
“Damned shame we’re out of SubRoc nukes,” Romanov said to Quinnivan. “They’d sure come in handy right about now.” The XO nodded, then looked at the captain.
“Sir, recommend firing point procedures,” Quinnivan prompted.
“Firing point procedures,” Seagraves called to the watchstanders in the room, “tubes one through four, Master One, horizontal salvo, ten second firing interval, high-to-medium active snake, run-to-enable twenty thousand yards! Tube one!”
“Set,” Lomax reported from the attack center’s pos one.
“Stand by,” Spichovich said from the weapon control console.
“Shoot!” Seagraves ordered.
“Fire!” Spichovich called, hitting the trigger fixed function key. “Own ship’s unit fired electrically!” The deck jumped violently and Romanov’s ears were slammed by the water-round-torpedo tank’s high pressure air venting into the ship.
Romanov looked at Mercer, who listened and then called, “Own ship’s unit, normal launch!”
The litany of reports continued three more times, and three more times Romanov’s ears slammed.
“Go active again,” Seagraves ordered Romanov. “If he zigs, we’ll need to steer the weapons.”
But before Romanov could make the order to Mercer, he yelled from his console, “torpedo in the water, bearing to Master One, now multiple torpedoes!”
The ventilation ducts had stopped blowing air. Either Dankleff or Abakumov stopped ventilation to stop feeding the fire and to keep it from spreading.
Pacino slid down the ladder’s smooth stainless steel rails, his boots thumping on the middle level deck as he exited the alcove for the ladderway and ran forward, pausing only to grab an emergency breathing mask, pulling it on over his head, this mask a fireproof covering that protected his entire head, with a large opening for vision, the hose feeding the mask at the front leading down to a regulator meant to be strapped to a person’s belt. Pacino adjusted the mask on his face, immediately choking from lack of air. He plugged the high-pressure hose fitting at the end into a recessed manifold in the overhead and took a breath. The regulator was working, the hose feeding canned, dry air into the mask, but it was life-giving air nonetheless. He clipped the regulator to his belt, took a deep breath, unplugged from the air manifold and ran down the passageway to the hatch to the first compartment, which Varney or Ahmadi had shut to contain the smoke.
Pacino rotated the hatch latch to the open position and forced the hatch open. He stepped inside, the temperature inside at least ten degrees hotter than the second compartment, which was a bad sign. He reached up to find the air manifold by feel, and realized that his wandering the ship and memorizing the air manifold locations had been a good investment. He could barely see in the dense smoke as he unplugged from the aft manifold and walked forward, the dense smoke forcing him to feel his way past the rack-stowed weapons to the forward portside console. The console was lit by a dull red glow from the lower port torpedo tube, tube six. Which had a tube-loaded Shkval supercavitating torpedo. The same volatile weapon that had exploded in a torpedo tube of the Russian submarine Kursk, causing every weapon aboard to detonate, taking the sub to the bottom and leading to the deaths of all hands. Pacino plugged in his hose at the manifold above the torpedo control console.