“Sir, screw beats now bear three five three.”
“Very well.” Kulakov tensed. They had their bearing rate. “Stand by to fire.”
The talker had a new report. “Skipper, passive sonar contact bearing one seven two. Screw beats.”
Manriquez called softly to Ed Baum. “Stop everything you’re doing and start a plot on this contact.”
“Sonar evaluates contact as possible submarine at creep speed, high bearing rate.”
That last bit of information galvanized the control room crew. A rapidly changing bearing at slow speed meant the new contact was very close.
Manriquez took a shallow breath and released it. “Boomer, come right. Put the contact on our beam. As soon as we can determine his course, we’ll head for his baffles and try to slip away — ”
“Sonar reports transients! Torpedoes inbound!
Shit. “Launch a decoy! Right hard rudder, all ahead flank! Take her deep!” Manriquez paused for one microsecond, then said, “Fire one and two with a four-degree spread, and make them active homers.”
He felt the boat start to heel over as she built up speed and started to turn. He regretted having to fire, but his mission was to survive and report. Shooting at the other side was a good way to start a war, but he suspected that one was already under way.
“Captain, the American has returned fire! Two torpedoes inbound.”
Kulakov felt his heart flutter and then pump faster. “Emergency speed! Turn on the active sonar and track the American. Release a decoy!”
“Captain, the Russian’s gone active. Two of the torpedoes have a high bearing rate, the other two are still closing.”
Manriquez swore under his breath and started snapping out maneuvering orders. This was going to be a damned tight squeeze. They’d dodged two of the incoming torps, but the others were going to be tougher.
The two combatants maneuvered, dodging and turning at high speed as each tried to evade the weapons heading toward them. The Mark 48 torpedoes were faster than their Soviet counterparts, so that even though they were fired later, they reached the Soviet sub first.
Fired without correction for the target’s course and speed, Drum’s shots depended on the small active homer built into the nose of each torpedo to find and attack the target.
One Mark 48 had been fired to either side of the Ogarkov’s estimated position, so that whichever direction it turned, at least one would be in a position to see the Soviet sub.
In the end, both saw him and attacked. Detection range in the noisy water conditions off Petropavlovsk was so short that both torpedoes’ powerful sonars illuminated the Akula-class sub at point-blank range.
One struck amidships, the other aft — in the engine compartment. Ogarkov’s double-hull construction could not survive two hits. In addition to the salt water pouring through the two tears in the hull, the double shock wrecked equipment throughout the ship and threw men across compartments into steel bulkheads. With so much flooding there was no hope of saving the boat. Powerless, without any control at all, Ogarkov tumbled downward on its long journey toward the ocean floor.
Drum’s sonar operator heard the explosion, but he was too busy tracking the weapons headed toward them to report it. “Captain, those two torps have locked onto us!”
Manriquez glanced quickly at the scope over his shoulder; the strobes were getting wider and stronger. Jesus.
Ten seconds passed. Wait for it. Fifteen seconds. Now. “Launch two more decoys.”
Shot out of the sub’s signal ejector, the decoys hovered in the water and emitted sonar signals designed to confuse the guidance systems of the Soviet torpedoes. One was seduced by the decoys, turned toward them, and exploded. The other was too close and it hit the American submarine forward, just under the sail.
Manriquez, Adams, Baum, and everyone else in the control room were thrown to the deck and plunged into darkness, while one deck below, water shot in through a two-foot tear in Drum’s hull.
“Blow everything!” Manriquez shouted, trying desperately to counter the tons of weight being added to the hull as compartments flooded. It wasn’t enough.
Too heavy to maintain even neutral buoyancy, air bubbling from its vents and from the gash in its hull, the American sub followed its Soviet opponent down to the bottom.
Rear Admiral John Fogarty focused his night-vision glasses and watched as the long, dark shapes glided silently past his station and out to sea. Two Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines were under way — each nearly twice the length of a football field and larger than a World War II-era heavy cruiser. White foam churned by their massive propellers glistened momentarily in the moonlight and then vanished as if it had never been.
He tracked the SSBNs until they could no longer be seen and then heaved a small sigh of relief. The most dangerous moments for any ballistic missile sub were always in port. Anchored beside a supporting sub tender, the Ohios were nothing more than sitting ducks. But once they were at sea, the huge boats were so quiet that the Soviets could never seriously hope to find them. A significant percentage of America’s nuclear deterrent was now effectively invulnerable.
Fogarty turned to the lieutenant waiting with him. “Dave, get a signal off to COMSUBLANT immediately. Tell him the boomers are away.” Then he walked back to his office, past an empty anchorage.
The display map glowed with color-coded lights and symbols marking the position and alert status of every major Soviet military unit around the world. The symbols along the Soviet Pacific coast glowed bright red.
The President looked grim, an expression matched by every other man and woman around the table. “Are we sure that Drum was attacked, Admiral?”
“Very sure, sir. Our long-range acoustic sensors were tracking a large number of ships leaving Petropavlovsk, along with every other port on the Pacific coast. During the deployment, they detected two explosions, which they plotted inside Drum’s patrol area.”
Admiral Simpson frowned. “Since then she’s missed two communications periods and does not acknowledge her call. She was certainly attacked by the Russians, and barring a miracle, was sunk.”
“Does that tell us anything about Soviet intentions?”
Simpson shook his head. “No, sir.” He moved to the display map. “They’ve put every interceptor and SAM battery in the Far East on full alert. All surface ships and submarines in port are sortieing…”
“Toward our forces?”
“No, Mr. President. At least not yet. They’re deploying into what might be defensive positions.” White lines appeared on the map as he spoke.
“That’s good news at any rate.”
Simpson looked troubled. “I wish I could agree, sir. But the fact is, all of these are the very same actions the Soviets would take if they were contemplating additional attacks. Their exact plans are still unclear.”
“Damn.” The President closed his eyes and started rubbing his temples, trying to massage away the tension headache building there. No one spoke until he opened his eyes again. “What about your end of things, Fran?”