Shipley picked himself off the deck, grabbing one of the watches who had fallen on top of him. “You okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All stop!” he shouted.
Lieutenant Weaver scrambled up the ladder. “You okay, Skipper?”
“I’m fine; get back below.”
“Dive! Dive!” Anton shouted. Water rushed into the conning tower. Mamadov grabbed the main vent manifold handles and pulled them all the way back. The sound of seawater filling the ballast tanks echoed through the compartment.
“Right full rudder. Level off at twenty-five meters.”
The sound of metal scraping metal came from above for a few seconds before it stopped. The Whale and the Squallfish had separated.
“What the hell was that?” Nizovtsev asked.
“We just got run over,” Anton said.
He looked at Antipov. “Send a Mayday message to the OTC. Tell him we have collided with an unauthorized vessel in the area.”
Around him, sailors and officers rushed, turning valves and rerouting electric and water lines. Water was roaring in from a warped main hatch.
“Sir, recommend we go no lower. We should surface immediately,” Gesny said.
Anton nodded. This was peacetime. The Great Patriotic War was more than twelve years ago. He had for a moment, without thinking, reverted to the tactics of that war: go deep and evade. “You are right, XO. Sonar, where is the contact?”
“Sir, his screws have stopped.”
“We have contact with the OTC. He is closing our area.”
“Then let’s get on the surface before they show up.” Anton looked at the sonar operator. “You still have the intruder?”
“Sir, he is all stop. Last bearing was two eight five.”
“We need to know where he is before we surface. Turn on the sonar and ping him,” Anton said.
“Damage report?” Shipley shouted through the hatch.
A full minute passed before Weaver spoke up.
“We are showing no damage forward, sir.”
The XO’s head poked up through the hatch. He looked up at Shipley and climbed the rest of the way out. “I’m here to relieve you.”
“XO, I need you below. I still have the conn. Get me a course to get us the hell out of here.”
The sound of a sonar pinging reverberated through the hull of the Squallfish.
“Sir!” Weaver shouted. “I think they have us.”
“Have us. We ran across them,” Shipley said quietly.
“I have a submarine surfacing!” sonar shouted.
Shipley and Arneau exchanged glances. Shipley squatted. Give me all ahead full, Lieutenant Weaver.” He looked up at Arneau. “Get down there with Van Ness and get us the hell out of here. We are going to have the entire Soviet Navy raining down on us inside of an hour. If they’re going to catch us, they’re going to have to do it in international waters.”
SEVENTEEN
The diesels kicked in. Slowly at first, then the Squallfish knifed through the water away from the point of collision.
“Tell CHENG I need those batteries ASAP!”
“He’s working them, sir!” Weaver shouted from below.
Shipley lifted his binoculars.
“I have a submarine surfacing off our starboard beam!” one of the watches shouted.
Spinning his binoculars in that direction, Shipley saw the forward section of a submarine rising at a forty-five-degree angle out of the water, splashing down as the tower surfaced. Must have been at depth, he thought at first, seeing the angle of the rise. Then he realized that they could never have collided if the other submarine—Damn! He had hit a Soviet submarine in their waters.
The periscope was pushed to one side. Before the Squallfish merged into the fog, the one thing he noticed was that the damaged submarine had no snorkel. He spun the glasses to the stern. In that quick instant before the fog closed around them, he saw that the Soviet submarine had no main induction valves.
As the Squallfish sped off hidden in the fog, Shipley heard the clang of a hatch hitting a deck.
“Logan, you get a photograph of that submarine?” Shipley shouted down the hatch.
“I got it, sir; I got it. Did you see. .”
The rest of Logan’s sentence was lost in the wind as Shipley stood. He wrinkled his face, feeling the burn of blood forcing its way into his cheeks.
“Twelve knots, Skipper, heading to fifteen!” Arneau shouted from below. “On course zero two zero. Distance to narrows is ten miles!”
Shipley acknowledged. Would they cover ten nautical miles before the Soviet Navy closed the narrows?
The cold from the past hour on the bridge seemed to evaporate as the Squallfish ran from Soviet Navy units somewhere off their starboard side. How quick the Soviets reacted would determine their margin of survival.
The main hatch flew open, slamming onto the deck. Anton scrambled up the ladder and onto the bridge. His first looks were on the damaged periscope and bridge stanchions. Whatever hit them had done this, but overall it was minimum damage. It could not have been a large merchant. Motion caught his attention off his port bow. His eyes widened as the stern half of a submarine disappeared into the fog.
“Damn!” He turned to the sound tube and lifted the brass protective cover. “XO! Call the OTC and tell them we have collided with the other submarine in the exercise.”
“There is another submarine?”
“I just saw one disappear into the fogbank on a northerly direction.”
“But—”
“I know. They should have told us. They didn’t. Now we have this.” He was furious. Admiral Katshora should never have allowed the second submarine into the exercise without telling him. Submarines had been lost by collisions at sea and under the sea.
On board the lead destroyer, the merchant captain’s report had finally been read ashore and included in the consolidated daily sighting message sent to Admiral Katshora. He had read it while eating an early breakfast of bread, cheese, kasha, and two cups of tea. He also had discounted all the sightings except the one near Iceland and the one off the northern coast of Norway. Those two were probably American or British, who kept a continuous patrol trying to catch his submarines when they ventured forth.
He found both amusement and frustration whenever he read of the American and British patrols. They searched for something seldom sent forth. He had the finest submariners in the world, who only lacked modern submarines to sail. Atomic power would change that.
He grunted when he read the short message on the sighting near the mouth of Kola Bay. He looked at the time of the sighting: late yesterday afternoon. No one would be foolish enough to be in Soviet waters. He would find and sink them just as he did the Germans. Once again his sightings report was filled with sea life erroneously identified as submarines.
The telephone rang in his cabin. As he picked up the receiver, his door burst open and Doctor Zotkin rushed into the cabin, shouting something about his K-2 project being rammed by a merchant vessel. And what was Katshora going to do about it? The doctor’s reputation and tests were at stake. Katshora calmly hung up the receiver.
He wondered for a moment what the expression would look like on Zotkin’s face if he picked the good doctor up by the seat of the pants, tossed him into the passageway, and kicked his ass all the way to the bridge. No one came into an admiral’s cabin without first being invited, much less burst into it shouting at one.