To Kill the Potemkin (34 page)

Fogarty
slammed
his fist on the console.
"But we can't shoot her that deep. A Mark thirty-seven will implode at
twenty-five hundred feet."

Sorensen
nodded.
"You're right, Fogarty,
but when this Alpha took a shot at us, I figure he bought himself a
nuke. Our
job now is to survive... and his is to see we don't."

Fogarty
stared at
the screen. "We
wouldn't... Springfield wouldn't... Jesus, we can't—"

"Fogarty,
prepare
to feed the guidance
system on a Mark forty-five."

Fogarty
hesitated. Sorensen just stared at
him, and Fogarty, numb, began punching buttons...

"Attention
all
hands. Battle stations,
nuclear. Control to weapons, load tube six with a Mark forty-five."

In
the torpedo
room Lopez bit through his
cigar. He stood up and crossed himself. "Johnson, cut loose a Mark
forty-five. Open the door."

Four
torpedomen
moved along the rack and
unbolted the torpedo from its mooring. A fifth opened the torpedo door.
Carefully, they slid it onto the guides, and pushed it into the tube.
Lopez
closed the electronic locks in the proper sequence and ran the circuit
tests.
"Torpedo room to control," he said into his headset, "Mark
forty-five loaded in tube six."

"Control
to
weapons, arm warhead."

Hoek
was having
trouble breathing. He
responded in a scarcely audible whisper and pushed the coded numbers
into his
keyboard. "Mark forty-five warhead armed and ready."

"Flood
tube."

"Flooding
tube,
aye."

In
the sonar room
Sorensen and Fogarty could
only listen to the commands as they passed back and forth over the
intercom.

The
carbon
dioxide scrubber on
Potemkin
was back in operation
and the air was
fresh. Federov watched the sonar console.

Barracuda
was not on the screen. Federov didn't know if she was sunk
or whether signal interference in the deep sound channel prevented him
from
hearing her. He had heard neither implosions nor a train of debris
settling
toward the bottom.

"Engineering,
how go the stern planes?"

"This
is engineering. We can move them."

"All
right. Prepare for maneuvering. Slow speed. Let's be quiet."

On
Sorensen's screen the Alpha decreased speed and became quieter.

"Sonar
to control, range now four
thousand yards and holding. He's looking for us. Depth three eight zero
zero
feet."

"Control
to sonar, activate target-seeking sonar." And pray he comes to his
senses
and backs off...

Sorensen
looked at Fogarty, punched the button and a wave of high-pitched sound
pulsed
out of
Barracuda
's
bow
in a narrow sound ray aimed directly at
Potemkin.

Popov
screamed in
pain, his eardrums ruptured
by
Barracuda
's
target-seeking
sonar. Federov rushed to the sonar console. The pulse of sound that
appeared as
a bright streak on the screen was like a sharp jab in his guts. Their
sonar had
found him.

"All
ahead full.
Right full
rudder."

For
thirty seconds
Potemkin
's engines
pushed her through a sharp
turn. "All stop," commanded Federov. "Level the planes."

The
American
target-seeking sonar gave him an
exact fix on
Barracuda. Potemkin
was gliding on her
planes back toward
the American's position. If a torpedo was coming right at him, he had a
chance
to evade by diving. The question rattling through his mind was whether
or not
the American torpedoes had an enhanced capability like their sonars.
His
choices were back off and run, or fight. If he ran,
Dherzinski
would
never escape, the
Potemkin
would be fatally
compromised by film and
Barracuda
would surface and report that
Potemkin
already had fired
one torpedo. Which would bring out the whole damn United States Navy to
hunt
him down... He looked at Alexis, who had taken his position at the
firing
console. His friend was reading his mind, sharing his thoughts. He
waited.

"Activate
targeting sonar."

The
waiting was
over. "Targeting sonar
activated. I'm getting one signal, Captain, from
Barracuda.
He hasn't
fired."

Federov
moved to
the weapons station. This
was his to do. "Alexis, take the helm."

"Yes,
sir..."

Federov
pushed
the button. "Torpedo
away."

He
steered the
torpedo toward
Barracuda
at forty knots, trailing its guidewire behind.

Barracuda
's
sonar screens
blazed with red blips. "Sonar to control, he's fired a torpedo,
wire-guided, speed forty knots. Torpedo range three seven zero zero
yards and
closing."

No
more
hesitation. No more options. The
Russian had not backed off. "All stop. Prepare to fire Mark forty-five.
Set detonation for maximum depth."

Hoek
watched on
his screen as the single red
blip that was
Potemkin
began to blink. His hand
trembled over the keys,
then a spike of pain shot down his left arm. He could barely whisper,
"Set
detonation for maximum depth, aye."

"Fire
one."

Hoek
reached for
the button, but his hand
never made it. Clutching his chest, gasping for breath, he fell to the
deck.

"Good
God, I
think he's had a heart
attack," Springfield shouted, and ran toward the weapons console.

Springfield
punched the buttons. "Chief,
fire one."

Lopez
muttered a
prayer and pushed the
button. The Mark forty-five leaped out of the tube and immediately
nosed over
for a fast run to maximum depth.

"Evasive
maneuvers. All ahead flank.
Left full rudder."

The
warhead would
explode in two minutes. By
then
Barracuda
should be three miles away, and at
that distance she
should withstand the Shockwave that would pass through the water like a
nuclear-powered tidal wave—except the Russian torpedo was still coming
at them
at forty knots.

Springfield
looked at Hoek lying behind the
weapons station. Luther bent over the weapons officer, pumping his
chest.
Barracuda
was coming around a tight turn at speed and they
were leaning
into the deck. Torpedo alarms were sounding, but to Springfield it was
almost
as if they were echoes from another ship in another ocean on another
planet.
Suddenly the door to the sonar room opened and Sorensen stood there,
looking
around the control room, eyes blazing. The torpedo was gaining on them,
he
said.

Popov
had fainted
from the acute pain of his
ruptured eardrums. Federov snatched away his earphones and pressed them
to his
ears. On the screen he saw
Barracuda
fire a
torpedo, turn one hundred
eighty degrees, then begin to accelerate away. Could
Barracuda
outrun
his torpedo? For a brief moment he continued to guide the missile, but
then
heard the active sonar in the Mark forty-five—it was unlike any sonar
he had
ever heard. And then he knew. The American torpedo was diving, was
already
below two thousand feet.

"Evasive
action,"
he ordered.
"Left full rudder. Dive! Dive! Flank speed! It's nuclear!"

Potemkin
turned and
accelerated, and though the stern planes failed to respond quickly, the
forward
motion was enough to snap the torpedo's guide wire. The fish was now on
its
own, he no longer had control of it.

"The
wire's cut,"
shouted Pisaro.
"It's running wild." On the sonar screens the Russian torpedo went
awry.

Barracuda
's
control room
dared
to hope.

Sorensen,
standing in the control room door,
turned back to Fogarty. His face said he was not ready to celebrate.

"Quiet
on the
boat," Springfield
ordered. "Right full rudder. Engineering, give it all you've got."

The
echo ranger
in the Mark forty-five
torpedo immediately
recognized
Potemkin
,
ignoring
the frequencies of
Barracuda
and the Russian torpedo.

The
two torpedoes sped past each other, missing a collision by fifty
yards. The Mark forty-five closed on
Potemkin
.

Inside
the Russian torpedo a relay snapped and the guidance switched to
an active sonar homing system. The transducer heard and recognized the
surge of
sound from
Barracuda
's
pumps, and the onboard computer smoothly turned the rudder to the left.
The
torpedo homed in on
Barracuda
's
engine room compartment.

Sorensen
heard the torpedo's high-pitched homing sonar as it bounced off
Barracuda
's hull.
Barracuda
's
speed was now up to twenty knots, but the
torpedo was rapidly
closing the gap. Three minutes, four?... He stood up, took off his
earphones
and turned off the overhead speakers.

"I
guess I'll be going to the beach. What say, kid, join me in a few
rays?"

Fogarty
was unable to speak. Found himself rising like a zombie to follow
Sorensen. He felt nothing as he and Sorensen moved through the control
room,
barely heard Springfield order in a curiously bland voice, "Flank
speed,
stern planes down twenty degrees, sail planes down twenty degrees."

The
planesman was staring at the sonar repeater, not able to accept what
he saw. The helmsman wet his pants. Springfield stepped quickly across
the
control room to the helmsman's station, and pushed over the joystick
himself.

The
radiomen were trying to send up a communications buoy. Pisaro looked as
though
he had swallowed his tongue. Cakes was frozen in a hatchway, a tray of
coffee
in his hands. The tray slipped out of his grasp and crashed to the
deck. He
stayed immobile.

Sorensen
and
Fogarty proceeded aft.

In
the
maneuvering room there was silence.
The nucs monitored their instruments with undistracted attention. After
all,
the system had never been pushed to the limit. A technician's dream
come true.

In
the engine
room Sorensen peeled off his
jumpsuit and entered Sorensen's Beach in his red Bermuda shorts. He
snapped on
the sunlamps and put on his sunglasses.

Fogarty
came in.
They pulled out the mat and
sat there. Zapata crawled out of the shadows and looked at them.

The
Mark
forty-five reached its maximum depth
six hundred feet above
Potemkin
.
A spherical shell of high explosive ignited, imploding a perfect sphere
of
plutonium that instantly reached critical mass.

The
warhead
exploded.

In
a millionth of
a second a fireball thirty
yards in diameter erupted into a mass of superheated steam. The sudden
impulse
of energy pushed out a shock wave that slammed into
Potemkin
with the
force of a freight train. Her titanium hull was not designed to
withstand that
much asymmetric overpressure and ruptured in a dozen places. At four
thousand
feet the pressure of one hundred twenty-two atmospheres killed
Potemkin
in eight seconds.

Federov's
last
thought was of the hand of God
grabbing his ship and crushing it in His fist.

The
giant bubble
of highly radioactive water
vapor continued to expand, pushing above it a waterspout that rose one
hundred
feet into the air. The bubble rose swiftly to the surface, where it
erupted
over an area the size of a football field. A large wave radiated over
the
surface, and the steam was slowly diluted and dispersed in the
atmosphere. When
the waterspout fell back into the sea after a few seconds, all visible
traces
of a nuclear explosion vanished. All that remained was the sonic record
heard
by SOSUS and the sonar operators on
Dherzinski
twenty miles away.

Sorensen
and
Fogarty heard the explosion at
the same time that the shock wave rolled through
Barracuda.

Sorensen
said
only, "He didn't move
after he shot his wad. He thought he was too deep to get hurt."

Fogarty
sat
perfectly still, his mind numbed,
seeing only a picture of his toy submarine diving into Lake Minnetonka.

The
Russian torpedo did
not
function perfectly. It struck
Barracuda
twenty feet
forward of the
reactor.

Exploding
on
impact, the warhead punched a
hole six feet in diameter in the pressure hull, directly into the
control room.
The full, lethal force of the explosion struck Springfield, Pisaro,
Hoek, Cakes
and the others in the control room. Cracks radiating from the rupture
opened
around the circumference of the hull.

Barracuda
broke in half.

The
blast
expended itself against the,
forward bulkhead, which caved into the officers' quarters and galley.
The aft
bulkhead resisted the blast, and the stern broke away and began to sink.

Eight
thousandths
of a second after the
explosion ripped
Barracuda
in two, the sea and the
laws of physics
finished her.

In
the bow, only
the new steel installed at
Rota failed to shatter in the succession of implosions. Lopez, the
torpedo gang
and the damage-control team of Davic and Willie Joe died in the last
implosion.

In
the stern,
water poured into the reactor
compartment, instantly cooling the reactor vessel, which became brittle
and split open. The primary
coolant water, saturated with radioactive isotopes and pressurized to
sixteen
hundred pounds per square inch, exploded into the flooding compartment
and
became mingled with the sea.