Stephen Coonts - Arctic Gold

Dean chanced a quick glance over his shoulder. Kathy was wrestling with Benford, struggling for control of the pistol. Dean snapped the stick over to the left and hauled back, praying there was enough oomph in the electric motors to pull off this sudden a maneuver. Minisubs were not jet aircraft, and the sluggishness of the Mir’s response reminded Dean of the bumper cars at an amusement park he’d gone to as a kid.

The Mir came left and started to climb, directly into Braslov’s submarine…

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

“Ten seconds to impact!” Mayhew called over the intercom.

The COB put an intercom mike to his lips. “All hands! All hands brace for impact!”

Thunder boomed through the Ohio, the force slamming Grenville hard against the Mk. 18 periscope mount. A second explosion followed hard on the heels of the first, the twin detonations ringing like hammer blows. This is it! he thought as the deck heeled far over toward starboard, threatening to invert the boat.

Only as the Ohio began swinging back toward a normal orientation did Grenville realize that the explosion had not been that of a Russian torpedo detonating against the Ohio ’s hull.

“Torpedoes passing close astern!” Mayhew warned. “They’re homing on the countermeasures!”

Grenville heard them now, the high-pitched whine of torpedoes passing very close to the Ohio, sounding close enough to touch…

The Pittsburgh ’s ADCAPs had struck their target first. The Russian torpedoes, still racing toward the Ohio, had taken the bait and homed on the cloud of bubbles, punching through and into the clear, cold, empty water beyond.

Grenville and the officers and men crowded into the Ohio ’s control room collectively held their breath as the whine dwindled into the distance.

“Con, Sonar!” Mayhew called. “I have major flooding and breakup noises close to port!”

“Helm, reverse turn,” Grenville ordered. “Come left one-eight-zero degrees!”

“Reversing turn, helm left one-eight-zero degrees! Aye, sir!”

He tried to picture what must be happening on board the Russian sub right now, just a few hundred yards to port. The ’ Burgh ’s ADCAPs must have winged squarely into the Russian boat’s stern, tearing out the main ballast and aft trim tanks, the engine room, the generators… maybe even the nuclear power plant. Forward, men would be struggling in absolute darkness as freezing-cold seawater blasted into compartment after compartment.

It was every submariner’s nightmare, no matter what the uniform they wore or flag they sailed under.

Grenville’s concern now was to steer away from the collapsing wreckage lest the Ohio become tangled in the debris… and also to put some distance between the Ohio and those Russian torpedoes.

The torps would have been wire-guided. If the enemy weapons control officer had already cut them loose before the ’ Burgh ’s ADCAPs hit, they would be operating under a search program, one that would swing them about in a large circle until they reacquired their target, or found a new one. If the wires had still been attached, though, when the Russian sub exploded, all steering commands had suddenly ceased. Depending on what the final set of programmed instructions was telling them, the torpedoes might go into automatic search mode, or they might simply continue running, descending into the depths.

Until Grenville knew which was the case, he intended to put as much maneuvering room between his command and those Russian torpedoes as he could manage.

Mir Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1211 hours, GMT-12

Braslov’s minisub was twice to three times the size of the Mir, an ugly, cigar-shaped monster perhaps eighty or ninety feet long. It had the blunt, rough-hewn character of a construction vehicle, and Dean imagined that it was used for heavy lifting around the GK-1, hauling and attaching sections or drill tube. It mounted two shrouded propellers aft, plus smaller directional thrusters for tight maneuvering.

Its sheer size, however, gave Dean and the Mir an advantage. As the larger submersible passed overhead, Dean brought the Mir’s bow up and around to the left. Reaching down with one hand, he slipped his arm into the open framework of the controller for one of the Mir’s mechanical arms. As his hand closed on the squeeze-grip handle inside, there was a whine of servomotors and the arm on the Mir’s port side jerked spasmodically, then extended itself, grippers wide open.

He missed. He’d been trying to jam the Mir’s arm into one of the propeller shrouds on the other sub, but there was no kinesthetic feedback to the thing, and he couldn’t feel what he was doing, or judge distance and reach. The Mir’s arm flailed wildly, banging uselessly off one of the construction sub’s tall rudders.

He tried coming right again, tried getting above the other craft.

Behind him, Golytsin and McMillan continued struggling wordlessly with Benford.

The shock wave struck, slamming into the Mir from above and from the left. Dean heard the roar, like far-off thunder, but the jolt ringing through the Mir’s hull was sharper and more insistent. The Mir tipped hard to port as loose gear and equipment crashed from storage racks and a water pipe somewhere on the port side broke with a shriek of high-pressure water.

The Mir very nearly flipped over, but somehow Dean brought the stubborn little craft back onto an even keel. He heard a loud thump behind him. When he glanced back, he saw Benford flat on the deck, evidently unconscious, with Kathy standing over him, the Makarov in her hand. Golytsin, bare-chested, was getting up off the deck, his hand pressed against the oozing wound in his side.

“Nice maneuver,” Kathy told Dean. “Give us some warning next time!”

“Wasn’t me,” Dean told her. “Shut off that water pipe! Golytsin! You know how to work the arms on this thing?”

“Da…”

“Then help me! Get up here and take that sucker apart!”

Braslov’s construction craft was just ahead, apparently dead in the water. Dean could see a large, white numeral 4 painted on the upper starboard side.

“What was that explosion?” Kathy wanted to know.

“Damned if I know,” Dean said. “It wasn’t us; that’s all I know. Golytsin! Can you disable that bastard’s props?”

“If you get me close enough to the stern, yes.”

He was studying the other craft narrowly in the glare from the Mir’s outside work lights. It didn’t appear to be damaged, but it wasn’t going anywhere at the moment. It appeared to have a very slight negative buoyancy, but it was still upright, still intact under the terrible, crushing pressure outside.

He cut the forward power back by half and pulled the Mir into a tight turn until the other minisub’s stern was directly ahead and below. Dean didn’t want to spend too much time here; other Russian construction subs might have launched from the GK-1 and be in the vicinity.

But if he, Golytsin, and Kuthy could cripple Number Four, that would be one sub, at least, that would not pursue them to the surface.

Nomer Chiteereh Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1211 hours, GMT-12

Braslov groaned and opened his eyes. That had been an underwater explosion, and one close by. A smear of blood glistened on the control panel in front of him- his blood. That explosion had slammed him forward, momentarily stunning him. He raised a hand to lightly touch his forehead; it came away wet with blood.