The Circle

by David Poyer

  * * *

  OVER the next hour, the red dot that was the submarine tracked very slowly south at between three or four knots. It formed a short trace under Matt’s pencil.

  Behind it, Ryan’s trail loitered back and forth. Packer had reduced speed. The pitching, though still violent, was less extreme, the assaults of the seas less frightening. Talliaferro called up to say the screws were staying in the water and that he had his snipes torquing down the foundation bolts on the gears and main shaft bearings.

  B41 was still dropping. Orris’s high voice reeled his readings off with increasing disbelief. Pedersen sucked air through his teeth as he logged them. At 1420, Sonar reported contact depth at sixteen hundred feet. At 1440, it was two thousand.

  At 1500, he reported the submarine was at 2,200 feet. The men at the plotting table eyed each other in doubt and something like fear. “He’s slowing,” said Evlin. His hand shook as he gulped coffee. It spotted the front of his shirt. “Taking longer to go every hundred feet. He’s got to be up against his crush depth.”

  The captain looked up from the red-backed book. “For the original Yankee-class, intelligence estimates sixteen hundred feet operating depth. Figure rule of thumb, crush depth half that again, that’s twenty-four hundred. He’s almost there.”

  “That’s just an estimate, sir.”

  “I don’t know, Al, they probably base it on something hard, like how thick the hull is. It’s probably a pretty good figure.”

  Sonar broke in then to say that B41 was at 2,400 feet.

  “God,” muttered Evlin. There were blots under the arms of his khakis. Dan was sweating, too, perspiration crawling like bugs down the backs of his legs. He still had to piss. He pushed the need away, as he had already several times in the last hour.

  Packer hit the lever of the 29MC. “How far above the bottom is he now, Orris?”

  “We have the bottom tracing along at thirty-seven hundred here. He’s still thirteen hundred feet above it.”

  “Have you got a solid paint on him? He’s not blending in yet, is he?”

  “Not yet, sir. I’m using the twenty-three’s highest frequency. There’s some fuzzing but I can still pick him out of bottom contour. Wait a second … he’s dropped again—twenty-five hundred feet.”

  “Jesus Christ,” muttered Packer. “Nobody knew they could go that deep. His crew’s not going to go along with this much longer.”

  Across his bent back, Dan caught Evlin’s eye. He wondered whether they were thinking the same thing.

  Crush depth … he knew what that was. Where the steel cylinder of a submarine failed in lengthwise stability, first wrinkling between the hull stiffeners, then folding like an accordion. Then the sea crunched it like a boot on a beer can. Nobody knew how deep it was. You could estimate it, but there was no way to tell exactly, short of destroying a boat and killing all her crew.

  The men down there knew that. They’d be hearing the hull squeal as it contracted. They could probably see it. The air would be getting hotter. Even before the hull collapsed, other systems—feed piping, sea chests, joints in the reactor coolant loop—would start to leak and break.

  What would that do to her commander?

  What would that do to his men?

  He found himself looking at the overhead, as if not a Soviet crew but Ryan’s was under a water column that weighed with eighty tons on every square foot. And hearing, every fifteen seconds, a hunting sonar drilling through it. When he pulled his eyes down, he saw Matt watching him. The radarman looked quickly away, at the deck.

  “Twenty-six hundred feet.”

  “Still got him, Orris?”

  “Lot of quenching, but he comes through enough to … switching to passive … Christ! Listen to that.”

  “Listen to what?” shouted Packer suddenly. “Tell us, man! It doesn’t do a damn bit of good unless I know about it!”

  “I can hear something. Squeaks, or scrapes. Popping. Must be ring frames, bulkheads warping as the hull compresses. Going back to active … horizontal range, ten thousand five hundred yards, bearing two-two-zero true.”

  The plotters bent. Ryan labored up a sea, labored down again. Dan sucked air in and out with mingled terror and gratitude. He had all of it he wanted. He could hear the wind. He could step outside right now and see, maybe not daylight, but at least the eerie glow of the wind-tortured sea.

  He wasn’t half a mile down, in endless cold and dark, wondering whether every inhalation would be his last.

  “Evaluator, Sonar: Contact at twenty-eight hundred feet. Nine hundred feet from the bottom.”

  Packer was rubbing his throat. Pedersen had gone pale, his head cocked into his earphones as if he, too, could hear the sluggish scream of plastically yielding steel. Evlin’s hands shook as he polished his glasses. Bryce was there, too, he realized. The XO must have come in very quietly. He leaned against the bulkhead, watching silently as a ghost.

  “Seems to have stopped dropping,” said Reed into the waiting, harsh as a saw cut. “Holding at twenty-eight hundred. Sounds like more pumps on the line.”

  “Something gave,” whispered Packer. “He took it down, and down, till something fucking let go. You still got him, Orris? Can you distinguish him from the bottom?”

  “Yes, sir, he’s almost in the jelly, but we can make him out. If he was two, three hundred feet lower … stand by … stand by … is that another pump?”

  The 29MC cut off. They all stared at the little grille the voices came out of. With a sort of spasm, Bryce stuck a Camel into his mouth. The captain lighted it for him wordlessly, Bryce leaning into the yellow luminescent waver of flame.

  Dan was leaning over the surface scope when he thought he saw something. A speckle, a sudden small bright point had flared up as the fan of light swept around. He frowned down at it. It painted once again, fainter, then didn’t show for the next three sweeps. A small contact, or sea return? The bright pip in the center that was Ryan was surrounded by a seething green halo. He decided it was sea return. A freak wave, reflecting radar for a moment, then subsiding back into the confused maelstrom that surrounded them.

  He forgot it as Reed’s voice broke from the intercom, too loud. “Machinery noise. Main reactor pumps on! Main shaft, reduction-gear tonals! He’s blowing main ballast!”

  “The son of a bitch’s coming up,” said Bryce. His voice caught, and he coughed out smoke.

  And Packer said, lifting his head, “Go to general quarters now, Mr. Evlin, if you please.”

  * * *

  WHEN the running and shouting had subsided, the rapid bong of the alarm had cut off, the compartment was crowded again. Dan found himself wedged between two petty officers. They smelled as rank as he knew he must himself. He finished buckling his helmet and put the headset back on.

  The weapons stations had been trying to reach him. “Torpedo control manned and ready.”

  “Mount fifty-two, manned and ready.”

  He acknowledged and said rapidly, looking over Evlin’s shoulder, “Torpedo Control, Mount fifty-two: Submarine is going to full power and rising rapidly. Train out on uh, on zero-four-zero relative.”

  “We going to shoot, sir? What kind of ammunition you want us to load?”

  “Captain, the gun wants to know what kind of—”

  “Armor-piercing,” snapped Packer. He turned back to Evlin. As he was repeating the order to the mount, Dan heard the captain say, “What’s your plan, Al? Assuming he’s surfacing?”

  “I guess to hold contact, sir. Report it to CINCLANTFLT. And stand by to render assistance.”

  “Not good enough. If he broaches, I want to be alongside in about four minutes. Let’s go to full speed, get over where Orris thinks he’s headed.”

  The sonarman said over the intercom, “B forty-one still blowing all tanks. Sounds like emergency blow. Now at one thousand feet. Very loud transients. All pumps are running at full speed. Stand by for a ping.… Mark, nine thousand seven hundred yards, bearing two-two-five, up do
ppler, repeat, up doppler. He’s coming right! He’s coming around toward us!”

  “Keep calm, Orris. Al, keep your bow to him, follow him around.”

  Dan calculated the new relative bearing and put it out over his circuit. The deck tilted as Ryan’s abused turbines shook the hull. The men snatched for handholds.

  “Combat, Bridge: I need a course to steer.” Norden. Dan realized he hadn’t been relieved, either. Well, it looked like Packer was right: This was the end of the game. Evlin gave him two-one-five and told him to get his lookouts alert, the target was trying for an emergency surface.

  God, he had to piss. For a second he thought about handing the phones to Pedersen. But he couldn’t. Not now. Not looking at Packer’s face, set like granite.

  “Mark, range eight thousand eight hundred yards, bearing two-three-zero, still up doppler, still in a right turn.”

  “Very well.” Packer looked across the plot at him. “Mr. Lenson, it’s possible he’ll broach, then lose the bubble in his tanks and sink. We might have to pick men out of the water. What’s the status of the motor whaleboat?”

  “Uh, I haven’t checked it since last night, sir, but we got the falls and davits chipped free then, and Chief Bloch was going to spray some of that glycol on them. It would help to call away the kinnicks—I mean, the boat crew, get them warming the motor up and stuff.”

  “Do it, Al,” said Packer. Evlin was reaching for the 21MC when a sudden bell blasted their ears. Heads snapped around. A red light was pulsing on the bulkhead to Sonar.

  “Screamer, screamer! High-speed screws—torpedo in the water, bearing two-three-five! Torpedoes incoming! Nixie noisemaker switch on!”

  Packer spun on his heel and bolted through the door to the bridge. A second later, the EOT pinged and Ryan heeled. Evlin whipped the protractor around to point away from the sub’s last position. “Bridge, Combat: Recommend continuing right at hard rudder, steady on zero-five-five.”

  “Roger zero-five-five. Main Control, give me emergency flank power, now! If we don’t have casualty power aft, we better get it on in the next four minutes, or our troubles are over, hear me?”

  Dan didn’t hear Talliaferro’s answer. It was strange. He seemed to be frozen emotionally, but his eye had gone straight to the clock above the plot and his brain was making calculations in it seemed hundredths of a second. Eight thousand yards at fifty knots—his ballpark division was a fraction under five minutes from torpedo tube to their stern. No, they were at fifteen knots, accelerating to flank—say they’d be making twenty by the time the torps arrived—same calculation, but drop the overtaking speed by the average speed of the ship. Anyway, they didn’t have over eight or nine minutes. He searched his mind for something he could do. He couldn’t think of anything. Turn tail and haul ass, turn on the noisemaker—that was about it. There weren’t any defenses against an acoustic torpedo once somebody sicked it in your direction.

  Just one of them usually sank a destroyer.

  When he looked up from checking his life vest, the clock had advanced another minute. Beneath it Evlin frowned at the plot. Matt lifted his pencil from a red arrow, marking it with a neat circled T.

  “I didn’t think he’d shoot,” the operations officer said. “But I guess I was wrong.”

  Ryan swayed and hammered as a sea hoisted her tail. The deck plates buzzed. The whine of the blowers, thirty feet behind them, wound upward into a crazy howl. Over it, he heard Orris screaming, “I hear it. I hear pinging! High-freq noise spoke bearing two-three-eight. Coming in louder. Two or three of them, can’t tell—”

  Evlin hit the 29MC. “Better shut your sound gear down, Aaron. An explosion close aboard could knock it out.”

  “Roger, out.” Curt and cold. Just like Reed, Dan thought. He suddenly remembered his own torpedoes.

  “Sir, permission to spin up the gyros on the Mark forty-threes.”

  “Do it,” said Evlin. “We can’t launch on this bearing, but if he misses with this salvo, we’ll come around at flank and drop ours on his head.”

  “You satisfied he’s hostile now, Lieutenant?” asked Pedersen. Evlin nodded shortly.

  From the corner of his eye, Dan saw the clock click over again. Another minute gone.

  Out of nowhere, he was back in Bancroft Hall. Listening to the echoing clamor in the corridors as a hundred plebes shouted at once, “Time tide and formation wait for no man, sir! Six minutes, sir!”

  His earphones said, “Gyros coming up on both SLTTs. Starting circuit warm-up. Sir, will they fire from Sonar or here?”

  “I don’t know yet. We may have to do an urgent attack. Be ready to fire local control on word from me.”

  As they acknowledged, he glanced at the clock again. Three more minutes. Till the machines streaking after them through the frigid black water overtook. Sometimes torpedoes broached in heavy seas. He wished he knew whether the noisemaker was working. Then he wished they had their own torpedoes in the water to distract him from a second attack. Unfortunately, the 43s were short-range weapons. If only the Asroc was working!

  Ryan was moving now, still not at flank speed—steam plants took time to accelerate—but getting there, and rolling like a drunk running from cops as she charged through the following seas. But not nearly fast enough, he thought, to outdistance a fifty-knot torpedo.

  “Main Control, Bridge: Did you ever get power to the Nixie?”

  “Stand by, sir, checking on that now.”

  The clock showed two minutes to go.

  “Hold on to something,” said Pedersen. Dan grabbed a pipe in the overhead and bent his knees. The Soviets liked big warheads, the kind that broke legs when they went off.

  He was braced when a faint thud came up from below, as if someone had dropped a paint can on the next deck down. “What was that, sir?” asked Lipson.

  “Damned if I know,” said Evlin.

  Packer came back from the bridge, almost at a run. He shouted into Sonar, “What you got, Orris?”

  “High-speed screw passed us stern, circling to starboard now, sir.”

  “Son of a bitch,” muttered the captain. He stood there, hand halfway to his mouth.

  “Combat, Bridge: This is Main Control. We have some kind of problem in the after fireroom.”

  Packer was on the intercom like a pouncing tiger. “What kind of problem?”

  “Don’t know yet, Captain. All we got was a double growl on the two JV from the boiler face. Nobody on the line when we answered. Then steam pressure started to drop. Fast.”

  Packer hung on the intercom, his face strained. Suddenly he pointed to Dan. “You. After fireroom. Find out what’s going on. Then back here, on the double; run all the way. Chief, take his phones. Got it? Why are you still here? Go, go, go!”

  * * *

  HE charged down ladders headfirst, nearly breaking his neck when his hand slipped on the rail. He slammed down into the inboard passageway and splashed aft into ankle-deep water. It wasn’t much more than a hundred feet, but it felt as long as a cross-country course. A weird whine grew ahead as he ran. The passageway rolled around him, like the Crazy Hallway in a fun house. He caromed off a steel stiffener, but didn’t stop. Halfway there the passageway went dark, lighted only sporadically by battle lanterns. Their batteries wouldn’t last much longer—

  In the dimness ahead, something black and wormlike uncoiled from the deck. His legs faltered, and he started to skid, trying futilely to brake on the wet tile.

  The whine became the loudest sustained noise he’d ever heard, like a five-inch gun going off second after second. The black worm was men being vomited out of the after fireroom. They came up through the narrow scuttle as if propelled by compressed air. He screamed as loudly as he could, trying to ask what was happening below, but he couldn’t even hear himself over the incredible sound. Anyway, they weren’t looking at him. They were in panic flight.

  He looked down into the hole. Then, before he could think about it, grabbed the handhold and dropped his legs in.<
br />
  Somebody else was trying to come up. For a moment they fought in the darkness, in the mind-obliterating din. Dan stamped down, felt something snap. The other didn’t even slow, climbing right over him as he hugged the slick steel rungs. When the man was past, he swung back on the ladder and descended as fast as he could.

  Eleven feet down his boots dropped into ice-cold water, then hit a deck he couldn’t see. Instantly, he clapped his hands over his ears.

  The noise was like the worst earache he’d ever had, unbroken sound so great he couldn’t interpret it except as pain. The air was impenetrable with steam or smoke. He spun blindly, searching for some clue. What were they fleeing? He took a step away from the ladder, and almost fell over it.

  The torpedo danced on the grating between the boiler faces, jerking and howling as its propeller chewed a white-hot torrent of sparks off the solid steel of the boiler mounting. It was dark green and huge, fifteen or twenty feet long, two feet thick. Flame and smoke and the unbelievable sound blasted out of it from a hole in the propeller hub that was rapidly brightening through dull red to cherry-hot. The tail lashed about like a dying snake’s, smashing a fin against a safety rail, prop clattering against the grating. Pieces from its tail shroud whanged around the space like grenade fragments.

  A figure materialized out of the smoke and steam, bent as if trekking into a blizzard. A rag masked the lower half of his face. As he advanced, Dan saw he was dragging a hose over his shoulder.

  Lenson took two steps and jumped over the vibrating torpedo. It jerked upward as if to get him, and he tripped. A scream ripped his throat as he thought he was falling into the prop. But his hand got the rail and yanked him forward.

  The man saw him. WESSMAN was stenciled on his shirt. No words, they took their positions by drill, the boilerman on the nozzle, Dan behind him, hauling more hose off the reel, until Wessman got to the weapon’s tail and pulled back the bail. A blast of mist hit the howling engine. He played it there for a few seconds. The water exploded into steam, joining the whirling cloud that filled the compartment like a sauna. Then he moved the jet forward, playing it back and forth, cooling the whole weapon from the tail to the bluntly curved, dented, scarred raw metal of the warhead.