Ian Slater - World in Flames

“TTI four minutes thirty seconds,” said Emerson. The MOSS was long gone, out of play, none of the Russian torpedoes curving off to go for the bait. Now the pongs — the echoes of Roosevelt’s active pulses coming back at over three thousand miles per hour — were registering in high-pointed sine waves on the computer screen that Emerson had now linked to the “Chinese library.” This was the sonar operators’ name for the library of “ping/pong” sounds that, taking into account water salinity, thermal inclines, hot vent upwelling, temperature, and currents, sought to match sound peak ratios to hull size.

“Looks like a small one to me, sir. A Hunter-Killer. Plus or minus four thousand tons.” Brentwood could now see the digitized speed readout, an estimate that the active pulse made possible. Emerson was shaking his head in disbelief. He’d never seen a sub coming in at them at over forty-three miles an hour. It was at once terrifying and awe-inspiring.

“Goddamn it,” said Zeldman. “An Alfa.”

“TTI four minutes,” said Emerson, his voice now tauter than before.

Still watching the sonar screens, Brentwood informed the firing control and tracking party, “Target designations as follows. Bravo, Charlie, Delta — three fish. Got it?”

“Target designations Bravo, Charlie, Delta.”

Brentwood shot a glance at the Russian’s incoming vector. It had changed slightly to zero four nine. “Bring the ship to zero four nine.”

“Zero four nine, sir.”

Four seconds later, Roosevelt was on the zero-four-nine heading, the new vector for target Bravo. Brentwood called for the range, then announced, “Angle on the bow — starboard one seven. Firing point procedures. Master one zero. Tube one.”

“Firing point procedure master one zero. Tube one,” came the confirmation, immediately followed by, “Solution ready, sir. Weapons ready. Ship ready.”

Brentwood was watching the bearing. “Final bearing and shoot. Master one zero.”

The bearing and speed of the target were confirmed, and Brentwood heard the firing control officer take over. “Stand by! Shoot! Fire!… One fired and running.”

“Shift to zero zero five,” Brentwood ordered as the Roosevelt was brought about onto the vector for the second torpedo.

“Zero zero five, sir.”

“Very well. Fire two.”

“Fire two… Two fired and running, sir.”

“Shift to one seven three.”

This took a little longer as the 360-foot-long Roosevelt turned through almost 180 degrees in an east-west semicircle to bring her on line with target Delta, the third torpedo fired by the Alfa, clearly meant to interdict aft of her should she try to run that way.

“Easy — don’t want to stretch the wire,” Brentwood heard the diving officer say, referring to the wire that the Mark-48, the top of its line in the U.S. torpedo arsenal, would trail behind it via which the torpedo would receive fire control and tracking party guidance until it got close enough to the target for its radar-homing computer to take over.

“On one seven three, sir.”

“Very well. Fire three.”

“Fire three… Three fired and running, sir.”

Zeldman was now ready for the order to turn and run and go deep, but it wasn’t given.

Instead Brentwood ordered, “Diving officer, we’re going up. Take her to three hundred feet. Maximum angle thirty degrees.”

“Take her to three hundred — slowly,” said the diving officer. “Minimum incline. Don’t snap the wire.”

The diving officer repeated the instructions, but the man on trim and one of the planesmen couldn’t believe their ears. And it got worse, though it wasn’t evident at first, because the direction in which they were going was taking them away from the Alfa toward the northern side of the Spitzbergen Trench. It was at eight hundred feet, Roosevelt’s up angle increasing beyond ten degrees in a slight upwelling current from the sea bottom, causing Zeldman and Brentwood to hang on to the scope island’s rail.

The diving officer held on to the roll bar above him, closely monitoring the planesmen. “Watch the bubble… watch the bubble… ” he advised, fatherly, calmly. “Slow her down… Don’t want to slam up against the ice. That’d be a ‘short’ to write home about.”

What the planesmen couldn’t figure out was why in hell Brentwood would take them off to the shallow waters on the north shoulder of the deep trench, the seabed sloping gently away to the top of the trench.

“Three hundred feet, sir,” reported the diving officer.

Suddenly everything was blurred — instruments, tightly secured as they were, rattling like cutlery. Then the shock wave grew in intensity, the sound of the explosion that had occurred several miles away, but not close to the Alfa sub, now shaking Roosevelt violently.

Either the Mark-48 from the Roosevelt had taken out the first torpedo fired by the Alfa or the latter had taken out the first “fish” fired by the Roosevelt. In any case, the Alfa’s first torpedo was no longer a threat to the Roosevelt, and the Roosevelt’s first fish had not sunk the Russian.

“Holy livin’—” Emerson began. He had never seen anything like it on his screen, the explosions creating a frenzy of lines that made no sense. “Overload,” he said in an understatement that was lost in Control crew’s attempts to keep the Roosevelt steady.

“Zero speed,” ordered Brentwood, and only now could Emerson see his three sonar screens returning to something like normal. The muffled sound of the pumps that never stopped could now be seen registering on the “hash” of ice grind and clacking shrimp.

“Kuda on uskol? — Where’s he gone — Petrov?” Yanov asked his sonar man. Their screen, too, was fuzzy. “Where’s the bastard—”

The sonar operator was still getting “flood-over” from the explosion of the first torpedo that the Alfa had fired at the American. Or was it sound wave residue from one of the Americans’ torpedoes? Then came a second explosion, as loud as the first, but again, it barely shook the double-bottomed titanium hull of the Alfa, the sub merely yawing slightly in the concussion waves.

“He’ll dive to near crush depth,” predicted Yanov.

Brentwood was waiting. It would be another four minutes before the last of the three torpedoes he had fired was due to make impact with target Bravo. With two fish exploded, he could only hope his third would be lucky. He was also wondering if he’d done any damage to the Alfa through concussion, though he knew that unlike the Sea Wolf, whose hull could be ruptured even if a torpedo didn’t actually hit it but exploded some meters away, an Alfa was more resilient to being punctured by the massive pressure waves, its state-of-the-art double titanium hull the envy of every other submariner.

“TTI for target Delta,” cut in Emerson, picking up a trace, “three minutes.”

“Perhaps we should have fired another one,” said Zeldman.

It wasn’t a question — more a suggestion — and the only time Brentwood had ever heard his executive officer even slightly nervous, except possibly when Zeldman had confided that Georgina Spence had proposed to him rather than he to her.

“No, Pete, we did all right with three. We fire another one now we’re in cover of ice grind, we negate us being up here. I’m banking on them thinking we’ve gone down, deep into the trench to hide, looking for somewhere to hole up. Let Ivan think we’ve gone deep under the sound smother of the explosions. He’ll be listening for us away down there, and we’re up here only three hundred feet from the roof — nice and cozy in the ice clutter and—”