The detonators caused the 1500 pounds of high explosives to go up in one final, colossal fireball. The torpedo exploded, vaporizing into fifty thousand fragments, and its awareness stopped, ending in a fulfilled blackness. The explosion was focused in the exact direction of the maximum magnetic flux of the hull-sensor, putting 90 percent of the explosive force toward the enemy hull. Short of a nuclear weapon, it was the best, perhaps the only way to kill a doublehulled submarine. The force of the torpedo’s blast melted through the outer steel hull of the fifth compartment of the OMEGA, exactly amidships, vaporizing a hole fourteen feet in diameter. The annular tank space was the location of the external battery canisters, and the blast, though somewhat attenuated by the energy expended in breaking through the outer hull, blew the battery canisters into flat plates and scattered the remainder to the bottom of the sea. The force of the blast was lessened by the canisters absorbing the energy of the expanding hot gases. The burst next sought out the titanium inner hull, initially finding the external heavy frames bent into hoops, with the sheet titanium stretching between each frame. Four frames were forced inward, breaking them apart. The titanium skin welded onto the hoop-shaped frames was blown inward, creating a gaping eight-foot-diameter oblong hole. The rest of the explosive force was, as designed, concentrated inward, ready to unleash its deadly force on the interior of the hull.
The blast shouldered aside the titanium and came rushing into the interior of the submarine, to find that it was inside a storage tank of fuel oil for the emergency diesel generator.
Since the fifth compartment was aft of and adjacent to the reactor compartment, the fourth compartment, the oil served as a liquid-shield for the sixth compartment, the turbine room. From the outside, the physical result of the Mark 50 torpedo’s explosion, the pride of COMSUBLANT and DynaCorp International Underwater Systems Division, was little more than a dead battery and a small oil spill. The story was inside.
The blast of the American torpedo they had stumbled into caused the deck of the control compartment to jump, though slightly.
“What was that?” Ivanov asked.
“I heard an explosion,” Chekechev said.
“What’s sonar indicate?” Novskoyy demanded.
Ivanov: “Sonar is out, so is fire-control. The communications and navigation consoles are still up. We must have had a computer casualty in the fifth compartment. All the computers located there are dead. Without sonar and fire-control we can’t shoot any more weapons.”
Novskoyy reset the computer power-breaker. No use. The sonar and fire-control computers were lifeless.
And without sonar and fire-control, as Ivanov had said, Kaliningrad was no longer an offensive-weapon system, was no longer able to track the American submarine or shoot at it again. But they could hope the American would be on the bottom within the hour, the Magnum torpedo inflicting their revenge. The Magnum had fuel for 60 to 90 minutes of pursuit, and it had only been 23 minutes since it was launched. But without sonar and fire-control, Novskoyy thought, it would be difficult to return to Severomorsk. Well, at least the communications computer was still up and running, he only needed to reach the polynya to transmit the attack order, the molniya… Without sonar, there was no way of him detecting that the Magnum had turned around and was heading back to the aimpoint a mere eight kilometers from the west side of the polynya.
Ivanov looked over at Novskoyy, a phone in his hand.
“The communications circuits are intact. Admiral. Once we reach the polynya you will still be able to transmit your message.”
Novskoyy nodded, the man echoed his own thoughts, which turned bitter as he muttered, “I wanted to put all the computers up forward in the first compartment but Vlasenko insisted that the systems be split out. If all four had remained up forward as I had envisioned the ship would be at full capacity—”
“Not full, sir,” Ivanov said, looking at the damage-control display, “the oil-shield tank in compartment five is ruptured. The inner hull is compromised over more than half the circumference. Another explosion like that last one and we could be cut in half.”
“There will be no more detonations. The Magnum will be taking care of the American and very soon.”
“I wish we had some sonar. Admiral. Without it we’ll have to guess at the boundaries of the polynya. And there is no way to see if the Magnum has turned toward us.”
“We will find the polynya,” Novskoyy pronounced. “And the Magnum will find the Americans.”
Kaliningrad continued west, nearing the pressure ridge at the east end of the oval-shaped polynya.
Lieutenant Commander Todd Nikels pulled the F-14 into a final five-g turn and grunted against the g’s as the plane whipped around on an approach vector to the SSN-X-27 cruise missile.
“Fifteen seconds to intercept,” Tollson, the radar-intercept officer, called out. “Yeah, that’s it. Okay, radar contact, I’m looking at five miles, come on, close the bastard, it’s only doing maybe six-hundred knots.” Nikels pulled up his MASTER ARM switch and armed the Mongoose heatseeking missiles, then held his breath, waiting for Tollson to call the firing point. At this hour of the morning he didn’t expect to see the target missile at all.
“Range, one point five miles… come left five degrees… that’s it… stand by, and… FIRE!” Nikels pushed the launch button on the control stick and felt the plane jump as the rocket motor lit up the sky in front of him and the Mongoose left the rail on the port wing enroute to the target. Momentarily blinded, Nikels blinked rapidly while he spoke into the intercom.
“Firing one.”
“Roger,” Tollson said, “FIRE.” Nikels hit the stick button again, and again a Mongoose missile lit up the night sky as it flew away. This time Nikels had clenched his eyes shut so he would have the night vision to follow the missile to see if he got a kill.
“Fire two. Are you tracking?”
“Got’em,” Tollson said. Nikels looked out ahead at the Mongoose tracks as the heatseeking missiles flew on toward the cruise missile fired by the Vladivostok as it neared the boundary between the air base and the naval base, passed over a fence and was now officially over Norfolk Naval Base…