Silent Hunter

by Charles D. Taylor

  For his part, Stevan Lozak marveled at the ease of Imperator’s movement. It seemed impossible that anything that large could move with such grace—if that was indeed the word for the motion of over twelve hundred feet of submarine. Yet for men inured to life beneath the ocean surface, man’s machines were a picture of engineering grace.

  Seratov took advantage of her enemies’ weaknesses . . . of Houston’s howling propeller . . . of Imperator’s maneuvering. When the giant craft brought her bow around toward the pole sooner than anticipated, Lozak assumed that was to keep her tubes open to the potential threat and was forced to increase his own speed to avoid sonar detection. He was even more respectful when Snow backed the final few thousand yards into position. Lozak maneuvered to keep Houston as much between himself and Imperator as possible. There were ominous moments of anticipation in the Soviet control room, knowing how capable the American sonar was in detecting an Alfa at that speed. A quick snap shot would put Seratov on the defensive. But the howling from Houston masked their maneuvering and they crept into position astern of her, where there was only a minimal chance of being identified.

  When Sergoff indicated they had reached the desired position, Stevan Lozak realized for the first time that he had maintained a death grip on the shiny chrome bar behind the helmsman for the entire evolution. Now, as he released his grasp, he could feel the pain of tightened muscles relaxing. There was little color in his hands—his knuckles were pure white.

  “Okay . . . gently now,” Snow ordered. His sail area would surface in open water, but he hesitated to come up too quickly. There would still be heavy ice all around them. Easing more than a thousand feet of submarine through a small hole in the ice was a complex process. Surfacing too quickly would increase the chances for external damage. The entire process was a matter of increasing their bouyancy, blowing sea water from their ballast tanks while maintaining their stability as they slowly rose to the surface.

  “Easy now . . . easy . . .” The diving officer was talking to himself, oblivious to anyone else in the control room. He was doing the job originally designed for a computer. It seemed to Snow, as he tried to visualize from a position somewhere well above the ice, that it was like running a carrier up a trout stream. It didn’t seem possible that the sweating diving officer was handling the entire thing by himself.

  “Heavy ice contact forward.” That meant the bow would hold for an instant while the stern continued to rise. He shifted water to his trim tanks aft to make the bow lighter. Bouyancy accomplished the rest. “Ice contact starboard quarter.” The submarine rolled slightly, enough so that the motion could be felt in the control room.

  “Ice all sides, Captain,” the diving officer reported. “My keel is level. Request permission to blow all main ballast tanks.” There were beads of perspiration on the man’s forehead.

  “Go ahead.” Snow smiled. “Do it your way. You earned it, Fitz.”

  There was a rumble as high-pressure air forced the water from the ballast tanks. This was followed by an even steadier sound as Imperator rose upward through the remaining ice. Huge chunks broke away, rattling down the hull into the water. The sharp splashes echoed through the submarine. It seemed as if they were maneuvering in a tank after days of almost total silence under water.

  The submarine continued to rock slightly even after the sound subsided. “On the surface, sir.”

  “Captain,” the electronics officer called out, “I’ve got all sorts of stuff in the air—their aircraft, our aircraft. I got military radio circuits going a mile a minute.”

  “Do you read anything in the immediate vicinity?” Snow queried.

  “Negative. It’s all up in the air . . . nothing I can find on the surface.”

  “Keep a sharp eye . . . report if anything seems to be closing.” To his XO, Snow indicated the ladder up into the sail. “Come on, let’s see what the North Pole looks like.” He was halfway up the ladder before turning to Carol Petersen. “Have DC Central report to me on the bridge as soon as they know how long it will take to clear those spaces. We don’t belong up here.”

  When Imperator broke through the static cold of the arctic ice, satellites silently eyeing the great white expanse activated warning systems in Washington and Moscow. Only one object that large could possibly have been under the ice pack—Imperator. In Washington, not a soul could fathom why she would possibly breach the surface at that moment. In Moscow, no one paused to wonder why she’d reveal her position—at least they now knew where the monster was.

  Messages went out to aircraft in both countries. Until the moment Imperator surfaced, there had been no information for either side concerning what had taken place beneath the ice. Now, one of the combatants had appeared. The Russians wished to dispose of it. The Americans raced to Imperator’s defense.

  Houston slowed at four thousand yards. Reed intended to give Imperator plenty of room to maneuver when she prepared to dive. At three thousand yards, he checked on the underwater telephone to determine how much longer they’d have to wait.

  At almost the precise moment Houston secured engines, one of the sonarmen cried out, “Torpedo . . . port quarter . . . closing fast.” Up to that moment, with the raucous sounds they had been emiting themselves, coupled with the ice rattling off Imperator’s hull, there had been no chance to identify anything else. It had seemed so dangerous that Reed commented only seconds before to Ross that this was the perfect time for an attack. At this recognition of the fact, he’d stopped the propeller to listen—and they’d been greeted by the most terrifying report a submarine could hear.

  “More than one . . . two definite . . . both range gating . . . three-second intervals . . .”

  While the Americans had been creating their own sound effects, Abe Danilov observed Lozak with pride as the captain eased Seratov into a perfect position. There had been more than enough time to creep stealthily the last few thousand feet. The only errant noise had been the flooding of the tubes and the muzzle doors snapping open, but that had taken place during their approach while Houston was still making noise. Abe Danilov even commented to Sergoff that it was the simplest of firing exercises designed for cadets in their first year—one had only to hit a standing target! Two torpedoes had been fired. A third and fourth were ready for emergency use while the other two tubes were being reloaded. There was no need to dive. It was an old-fashioned straight shot.

  Houston’s choices were limited. The high-speed Russian torpedoes gave them less than ninety seconds to evade from the moment they left the tubes. Yet she was unable to turn adequately in either direction, and her speed was limited! It seemed that any maneuver would just offer the torpedoes more opportunity. Houston was just below the ice, perfectly trimmed, ready to move into position to surface. Reaction time was negligible.

  With reports of the closing torpedoes ringing in Reed’s ears, the realization came to him that there was nothing—nothing at all—they should be doing. Flooding the ballast tanks would just be an assist to the Russians; they would sink a little faster. “Blow your main ballast tanks, Ross . . . quick . . . give it all you’ve got.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Never mind . . . no way we can get away now . . . collision alarm,” Reed shouted as he switched on the PA system. Somehow, he had to get to Imperator! “We are under torpedo attack. We will try to surface. Prepare to abandon ship.”

  The crew in each space heard the last words repeated over and over again. Most were unable to understand his meaning. No one abandons submarines! Either everyone survived or everyone went down with the ship. But no one abandoned . . .

  The first torpedo hit aft, blowing a hole directly into the reactor compartment. Seawater shorted out the electrical system. Only those on the upper deck survived the blast or flooding. The second one hit low, bursting into the torpedo room. Water flooded through the vast rupture in the hull. The last torpedo malfunctioned at the final moment, diving erratically beneath Houston, mercifully prolonging her final agony.<
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  Houston had been rising toward the ice as water rushed from her ballast tanks. The second blast lifted her more quickly. The bouy pointed gradually higher from the weight of the water flooding aft. Then her nose crashed through the ice at an awkward angle. Houston resembled an immense sea lion as her entire bow struggled to climb up on the ice. Then she slid backward until less than the first fifty feet poked from the water; a section of her sail appeared above the surface, gracelessly canted to one side.

  Inside the hull, fear and darkness were eased by emergency lights. The force of the blasts flung the crew about the confined spaces like so many rag men. The luckiest had been hurled into each other. Many others were unconscious or dead from violent contact with heavy and sharp-edged equipment. Ross had been thrown sideways into the first fire control console. He lay in a heap, his forehead crushed, blood flowing from his mouth and ears.

  Reed lunged for the interior phone. “Engineering . . . can you give us any power?”

  He was greeted with silence.

  He tried other spaces . . . but there was no answer from any of them. The interior communication system was dead.

  Then Houston rolled another ten degrees to starboard, slipping further backward. She was being dragged down by the rapidly increasing weight of sea water flooding her spaces.

  Supporting himself on a railing, Reed recognized the quartermaster gripping the chart table, his eyes fixed on Reed. “Abandon ship,” Reed called to him, pointing at the 21MC speaker behind the man. “All stations . . .”

  The quartermaster stared dumbly, wiping blood from the comer of his mouth before the concept dawned on him that the admiral was giving an order. He turned slowly, as if in a dream, and called in a husky voice over the ship’s general announcing system, “Abandon ship . . . abandon ship . . .”

  There was little time to do more than scramble as Houston again slid backward. There were four hatches in a 688 class, but only the forward one and the sail were above the water. There wasn’t a soul who escaped the engineering spaces.

  It was light near the pole during the wee hours of the morning, but the temperature remained below zero. Sailors leaped toward the ice dressed only in dungarees and T-shirts. Some fell back in the icy water, struggling against instant numbness for a handhold. The injured men lucky enough to be near the forward hatch were passed out to others on the slanted deck who were forced to push them into the water, hoping someone would get them to the edge of the ice. Houston, groaning against the weight of her rapidly filling hull, was again wrenched violently backward until water first lapped at the edges of the forward hatch, then cascaded through the opening.

  One of the last to emerge was Andy Reed. The sail seemed at an impossible angle when he struggled through the tiny hatch and leaped into the open sea. He thrashed through the numbing water to the edge of the ice, where grasping hands reached to pull him out. He was half dragged, half carried away from the open water as the submarine’s bow pointed higher into the air. When they were no more than fifty yards away, Houston lurched once more. This time she pointed her nose directly at the clear sky above, before slipping rapidly backward. Huge air bubbles erupted on the surface. Floe ice crashed about with a roar. And then there was nothing but surface debris among the chunks of ice.

  Seratov—Abe Danilov—had been rewarded for patience.

  Snow slammed his fist against the metal side of the sail. Come on—get tough, he wanted to shout. But he couldn’t, not with the XO staring in wonder at his captain’s outburst. Why the hell was he giving in to his emotions now? He pressed the button to the control room and bawled into the speaker: “Break out one of those helos forward, on the double. Tell Colonel Campbell he’s in charge of Houston survivors. No time to arm . . . just get the closest one on deck and into the air. I’ll have orders for the crew by the time they’re warmed up.” An involuntary shudder coursed through his body. Why was he having second thoughts?

  He should leave Houston’s survivors where they were . . . there should be no other choice. Wasn’t that right? Weren’t they all in danger? His first responsibility was to Imperator and her crew—and the mission. He should pull the plug right now. But he could help those men . . . and he had to ventilate that computer area. God, how he needed Caesar!

  It wouldn’t take more than a few moments. Get Andy Reed back with him—then send the bird back—just the fuselage of the helo would suffice to protect the others until he could surface again. Once they were inside, there would be warmth and some medical supplies.

  He snapped on the speaker to control again. His first decision had to be right! “Double the medical supplies aboard that bird. Just toss in some extra kits. We’ll worry about what’s in them later.” His entire body shook now . . . never before.

  A wounded man. Snow reasoned, who was about to freeze to death, wasn’t particular about the quality of his medical supplies. He peered impatiently over the top of the sail as the gull-wing doors folded back to reveal the helo rising on the elevator. Two crewmen were already unfolding the rotors. A third was cramming additional supplies inside. The pilot and copilot could be seen through the front, already strapped into their seats. Colonel Campbell waved toward the bridge.

  Snow flipped the switch to sonar. “What have you got on the Russian? Is he closing?” Imperator’s active sonar was on the bottom of the hull, a hundred feet below.

  “Negative, Captain. He probably went deep . . . lots of decoys in the water He sure as hell wants to confuse things.”

  “A course . . . direction . . . anything!” He knew the shaking would stop once they had contact. “Where’s he headed?”

  “He started to open his range slightly when he pulled the plug . . . then he seemed to reverse course. As best as we can figure, he may be circling toward our stern now.”

  “Okay, sonar, call me with anything, anything at all. We’ve got survivors on the ice.” Snow switched to the control room. “Is Miss Petersen in the control room?” He’d almost said “Carol!”

  “Negative, Captain. She went below as soon as they vented the equipment room.”

  “Can you get her on the 21MC?” Carol . . . and Caesar . . . working together.

  “No communications down there as yet, sir.”

  “Send a messenger down. Have her call the bridge immediately.” There were so many factors—too many. He turned to study the Houston survivors with his binoculars. There were a half dozen of them stumbling through the snow and ice, waving their arms at him. It was a bizarre sight—men in pants and shirt sleeves near the North Pole . . . and he could sense their fear. Too many factors . . .

  “Captain, I have a flight of aircraft approaching on radar—very low. There’s no response from them on the interrogator. I don’t think our own people have picked them up yet.”

  “Range?”

  “About one two five miles . . . closing at about four seven five miles per hour . . . still no answer on the interrogator.”

  “Roger, stand by the lasers . . . starboard section. Anything in the sky knows who we are already, so these probably aren’t our guys coming in on the deck.”

  “Roger, Captain, preparing starboard lasers.”

  “DC Central—how much more time do you need? We’re running out up here.”

  “Can you spare another five minutes, Captain? We still have some insulation smoldering down here.”

  Snow could feel the tension in every muscle of his body. Aircraft coming in on the deck, men beginning to freeze to death on the ice, a Russian Alfa somewhere below intent on destroying him . . . and Caesar was inoperative! “Make it fast. I may have to pull the plug any moment. Status is changing fast up here.” Too many factors . . .

  With a roar in the silent arctic air, the helo lifted off and banked sharply toward the frantic survivors. Snow watched through his binoculars as they tried to run, but their feet sank into the hard snow or slipped on ice hummocks invisible in the whiteness about them. Their energy was disappearing so quickly in the frigid air that
panic already enveloped them.

  Survival was primary to all of them, all except Andy Reed. As he shuddered violently against the cold, he yearned for revenge against the man who had just sunk Houston.

  Carol Petersen waited anxiously outside the entrance to the computer spaces. The protective mask she wore was tight around her face. Little drops of perspiration collected at the base. She was uncomfortably aware of the hissing sound she was making with each breath.

  A damage control party pushed their way past, dragging a power cable. She was forced back against the bulkhead by a burly sailor who shouted something incomprehensible at her. But the smoke was gradually clearing from the passageway, and the emergency lanterns were almost as clear as the normal lighting. The shadows they cast were strange and frightening in the organized confusion around her.

  She jumped at the hand that grasped her shoulder from behind. “Okay to go in now, Miss Petersen . . . detectors are reporting clean air . . . but don’t take off your mask right away.”

  Carol nodded as the sailor loosened the dogs around the hatch and pulled it back. She found perhaps an inch of water covering the deck as she stepped inside. Leaning back through the hatch, she saw that the damage control party had already moved on to the next compartment. Forget it, she said to herself. Nothing serious at this point. She’d catch up with them as soon as she checked each of the systems. With no power to the space, there wasn’t an immediate hazard.

  But as she worked, moving from unit to unit, she noticed that it was getting deeper—not quickly, but it was sloshing over her shoe tops as the ship rolled gently from side to side.

  Abe Danilov was close to completing his mission. Only one object remained in his path. Then he could return to Moscow and his Anna. Anna . . . the name excited him as it flickered through his mind . . . Anna . . . the loyal wife who had written all of those letters, one for each day . . . the dying woman who was trying to live long enough for him to come home one more time . . . and there were only two days left!