Stephen Coonts - Arctic Gold

“Give it up, Benford! Put the gun down!”

“No!”

“If you think it’s cramped in here now, wait until twenty tons or so of seawater blast in through a porthole and smash you into a grease spot!”

“Shut up!”

Dean met Kathy’s eyes. He flicked his own gaze forward, to the place where she’d laid her pistol when she’d changed clothes. It was lying on a shelf on the starboard side, a few feet forward of Golytsin’s chair and well out of her reach… out of Golytsin’s reach, too, assuming he could move fast enough to grab it.

Dean glanced aft again to meet Kathy’s eyes, then ahead to the pistol again. She gave a barely perceptible nod.

If Dean could throw the Mir into a violent maneuver, knocking Benford off his feet, Kathy might be able to grab the other pistol and regain control.

Of course, Benford’s weapon might go off when he fell. The odds were not real good at the moment…

And then something collided with the Mir, knocking it sideways with the violence of a sledgehammer blow and sending Benford slamming against a bulkhead.

“What the hell?”

Kathy looked up at the TV monitor over Dean’s head and pointed. “Look!”

Dean glanced up, then looked again. Another submarine, bigger than the Mir, an ugly bug of a submersible painted dark red and with a pair of insect’s arms spread wide, had just slammed into the Mir’s aft port quarter.

And Dean saw Braslov’s leering face in the cockpit canopy.

SSN Dekabrist Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1210 hours, GMT-12

“Fire number one!” Kirichenko said.

The weapons officer brought his palm down on the firing button at his console. Kirichenko felt the slight bump through the steel deck, heard the hiss of compressed air forward.

“Number one fired electrically, sir!”

“Fire two!”

Again, a bump and a hiss.

“Number two fired electrically, sir! Both torpedoes running true and normal.”

“We have operational control of both torpedoes,” a michman seated at the weapons console announced.

“Estimate impact,” the weapons officer said, looking up at the clock high on the bulkhead, “in thirty seconds!”

SSGN Ohio Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1210 hours, GMT-12

“Torpedoes in the water!” Mayhew yelled over the intercom. “Two torpedoes, 650s, range seven hundred yards, closing astern! Estimate impact in thirty seconds!”

Grenville was just entering the control room again. “Release countermeasures!” he barked. “Helm! Hard right rudder! Ahead full!”

“Release countermeasures,” the weapons officer announced, “aye, aye! Countermeasures released!”

“Helm to hard right rudder, aye, aye! Ahead full, aye, aye!”

There was no panic, no urgency… just men performing their assigned jobs, according to long training and experience, with cool efficiency. Grenville was proud of them.

If the two torpedoes coming in on the Ohio ’s tail were 650s, they were the largest in the world-650mm wide and over 9 meters long, with warheads weighing close to one ton apiece. They would be wire-guided and wake-homing, and they were fast . Driven by a powerful closed-cycle thermal propulsion system, they could travel at fifty knots for up to 60 kilometers… or cruise at a more sedate thirty knots for a full 100 kilometers. As they sped from the Russian sub’s bow tubes, they trailed slender wires behind them, allowing the Russians to steer them toward the target. When they were close enough to acquire the target on their own, the Russians would cut them loose and they would home on the sound of the Ohio ’s screw.

The Ohio couldn’t outrun them, not at what amounted to point-blank range. By popping countermeasures, however, a pair of canisters releasing clouds of sound-reflecting bubbles astern, the Ohio ’s maneuver might be masked for a critical few seconds. The Russian skipper, Mayhew thought, had pushed things too close. The Ohio was barely seven hundred yards away-damned close for a pair of 650mm torps, he thought-and they might well miss on their first pass.

Of course, the Russian weapons officer would steer them around on their wires until they reacquired…

“Captain!” Mayhew called again. “Torpedoes in the water!”

“I know, Mayhew, I know-”

“No, sir! New torpedoes! It’s the ’Burgh ! He’s just popped two ADCAPs and is slamming them right up the bastard’s ass!”

SSN Dekabrist Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1210 hours, GMT-12

“Torpedoes running, Captain!” the sonar officer called.

“I know, Lieutenant. Our torpedoes-”

“ Enemy torpedoes, sir! Coming in from dead astern!”

“What?” Where in hell had a second American submarine come from?…

SSN Pittsburgh Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1210 hours, GMT-12

“Both torpedoes running hot, true, and normal, Skipper! Time to target, twenty seconds!”

“Very well.” Captain Peter Latham, CO of the USS Pittsburgh, glanced at the clock on the bulkhead. This was going to be damned close.

Ordered to cover the SSGN Ohio, the Pittsburgh had been lying back, staying quiet and staying out of sight. They’d been following the damned Russian for hours, ever since they’d picked him up near the location of the remote weather station. He’d clearly been hunting for the Ohio, but the op orders for the American subs had been to go weapons-free only if the Russians made hostile or provocative moves.

There was a lot of latitude to orders like that, and making the wrong decision could wreck a man’s naval career-assuming it didn’t kill him first. But firing a couple of torpedoes could definitely be construed as “hostile,” no matter how the weekend quarterbacks in Washington chose to interpret things later.

The Pittsburgh ’s advantage here lay in the fact that she’d been squarely behind the Russian boat… and therefore in the Russian’s blind spot. Between wake turbulence and the sound of your own screw, it was almost impossible to hear anything from directly astern, even the shriek of incoming high-speed torpedoes.

“Both torpedoes have armed,” the weapons officer said. “Both torpedoes have now acquired the target.”

“Very well,” Latham said. “Cut the wires.”

“Cut the wires, aye, aye.”

“Helm, come left four-zero degrees!”

“Helm come left four-zero degrees, aye!”

“Down planes, one-five degrees!”

“Down planes one-five degrees. Aye, aye, sir.”

It wouldn’t do to be too close to the Russian when those ADCAPs hit. Explosions under the ice could be unpredictable at best.

Latham kept watching the clock, counting down the seconds…

Mir Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1210 hours, GMT-12

ANOTHER SAVAGE JOLT ROCKED the Mir as Braslov’s submersible slammed into them from astern. Dean pulled the joystick hard over to the right, at the same time shoving the power control all the way forward. The electric motor whined as the Mir twisted hard to the right; the deck slanted sharply, and Benford fell, toppling clumsily into the seated Golytsin and the kneeling McMillan. On the TV monitor overhead, the other minisub swam out of the camera view, but they could hear the bumps and clatters as its keel dragged across the Mir’s upper hull.