Clive Cussler - Mirage

“You got it. Mark, let’s tell this guy he picked the wrong dance partner. Hit him with the active sonar, maximum gain, and keep hitting him until I tell you to stop.”

Murph gave a wicked grin and fired off sonar pings. The returns showed the Akula hadn’t yet started to make her escape.

“She’s still sitting there, and her torpedoes are staying deep.”

“Waiting around to see her fish hit the wreck. Bad mistake, my friend,” Max said. “You should have hightailed it the moment you fired. ’Course, you couldn’t know that we were listening or know that we can track you.”

Eric Stone rushed into the op center and took the helm seat next to Murph. With the exception of the Chairman himself, young Mr. Stone was the best helmsman aboard and could thread the Oregon through the eye of a needle if necessary.

“Eric, bring us about and let’s get him within range of our torpedoes.” The Akula could take such a relatively long shot because she was firing at a stationary target, but to hit a moving opponent required a shortening of the distance. “Wepps, get our own fish readied.”

“Roger that. Looks like the sonar woke ’em up. The Akula’s starting to move. The continental shelf drops away about twenty miles from here, and once she goes over, she’ll dive like a stone and we’ll lose her for sure.”

The Oregon began cutting a long arc through the sea as she chased the fleeing Russian sub, and with her vastly superior speed, there was little chance the sub would get away.

“Tubes one and two are flooded,” Mark announced moments later. “Outer doors are still closed. And, just to remind you, we need to slow to twenty knots for them to open. Otherwise, we can damage the torpedoes.”

“Noted,” Max replied.

They’d cut the range down to six thousand yards, and Hanley kept at them. Five minutes had elapsed since the first shots were fired. The torps would hit the wreck in about two more. Max needed to end this quickly if he was to get back on-station and coordinate any necessary rescue operation.

“Contact!” Mark shouted. “He’s fired on us! Torpedo coming straight in.”

“Helm, full reverse. Slow us to twenty knots. Wepps, open those doors as soon as you can and fire. Eric, once the torpedo’s away, take us back up to thirty knots.”

At that speed, they wouldn’t be traveling much slower than their own weapon. The two men didn’t understand Max’s strategy but carried out his orders nevertheless.

The ship physically shuttered as the impellers went into reverse, glasses rattled on tables, and crewmen were forced to brace themselves against anything solid due to the massive deceleration.

“Twenty knots,” Eric called out.

“Firing.” Mark pressed the key to fire their own torpedo and flipped the toggle to close the doors.

Eric Stone had watched him and reversed the engines once again. Again, the ship gave a mighty shiver as if all that power was trying to tear her apart.

“Sorry, old girl,” Hanley said under his breath and patted his seat’s armrest. He then spoke aloud. “Prepare autodestruct of our torpedo as soon as it’s abreast of the incoming Russian fish.”

“Ah,” Mark said with understanding.

Because they were still blasting the sea with active sonar pulses, they could track the two torpedoes in real time, unlike the Russian, who wasn’t pinging but relied on passive listening to find its prey.

In one corner of the main view screen, Hanley brought up a computer-enhanced sonar “picture” of the seas ahead of them. Between them and the Akula, the two torpedoes were hurtling toward each other at a combined speed nearing ninety knots.

“Helm, be prepared to slow again for another shot. The explosion’s going to ruin his ability to listen to us. When they blow, come right five points, so if he pops off a blind shot, he won’t get lucky.”

The two torpedoes raced at each other with mindless abandon and would meet less than a half mile off the Oregon ’s bows. Just a few seconds more. Murph’s hand hovered over the autodestruct button, his eyes unblinkingly on the screen. If this didn’t work, they would have little time for evasive maneuvers.

The Akula’s captain never would have suspected his quarry would dare to keep charging at them. But there was a truism he obviously wasn’t aware of: Never play a game of chicken with a man you don’t know.

“Now!” Max, Eric, and Mark shouted at the same time.

Stone set about changing their course while ahead of the ship, a mushrooming ball of water was thrown twenty feet into the air.

Both torpedo icons disappeared from the screen, replaced by a hazy cloud of distorted acoustical returns.

“Okay, Helm, slow us down to twenty. Wepps, fire at will.”

Moments later, the Oregon unleashed her second torpedo, and the range was so close that the Akula didn’t have a chance. She was racing along the bottom, eking everything she could out of her machinery in hopes of reaching the edge of the continental shelf. The cacophony of sonar pings the Oregon was throwing into the sea would overwhelm the Akula’s displays should she try to go active herself.

They all saw it simultaneously. On the sonar screen they could see their torpedo racing in the Akula’s wake when the sub came to a stop in a little less than half her length.

Hanley reacted fastest of any of them. “Wepps, autodestruct now!”

Mark peeled his gaze from the monitor and typed in the appropriate command. The torpedo was so deep that there wasn’t even a ripple on the surface when it exploded less than five hundred yards from its target.

“What happened?” Eric asked.

“She hit something, a seamount of some kind, a boulder. Something,” Max posited. “Back off the engines so we can listen on passive.”

“Why’d you blow our torpedo?”

“Because when and if that sub is ever found, the investigators will conclude, rightly, that this was an accident. No need to advertise that they were being chased when they did a nosedive into the seafloor.”

By the time the ship slowed enough for the sensitive microphones to be deployed, the Akula was as silent as the grave.

Max roused himself. “Helm, get us back to the wreck ASAP.” He shot a glance at the battered Timex on his wrist. “Their torps would have hit eight minutes ago. The Chairman and the others are on borrowed time.”

He wouldn’t let himself think about the more likely scenario that they were all dead.

Panic kills divers. That was the first lesson from his crusty dive instructor when Juan had earned his scuba certification as a teenager. That was the last too. Panic kills divers.

He and Mike and Eddie had between six and eight minutes to get away. Plenty of time. No need to panic.

Cabrillo shoved his camera back into the dive bag strapped to his waist, took one last glance at Tesla’s remarkable contraption, and headed back toward the staircase.

“Mike, are you on your way to the Nomad?” Cabrillo asked, irked that the helium made him sound like a little girl.

“Yes. I even got a sample from the frame.”

“Good. Eddie, we’re going to have to jam ourselves into the air lock. Once we’re in, emergency ascent.”

“Roger. Emergency blow once you and Mike are aboard.”

That’s going to cost me, Juan thought.

In an emergency ascent, the cylindrical hull of the submersible disconnected from the rest of the craft, all the motors, battery packs, and ancillary equipment. The crew compartment would shoot to the surface like a cork, taking them out of the blast range, but it also meant that about a million dollars’ worth of sub components would be left behind to be blown into oblivion.