Mir
Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap
82° 34' N, 177° 26' E
1209 hours, GMT–12
Dean held the Mir in its climb. For the past couple of minutes, he’d been listening to the swish and zip of clothing being changed behind him and trying not to picture Kathy stepping out of those baggy pants and wiggling into her survival suit. She was, he thought, quite attractive.
He found himself thinking about Lia instead. Safe in Ankara, Rubens had said yesterday. Was she back in Washington yet? Or still overseas? . . .
“This doesn’t look too bad,” Kathy’s voice said a moment later.
He risked a glance back over his shoulder. Golytsin was slumped in one of the seats, the leggings of his survival suit on, but the rest bunched up behind his waist and back. Kathy, in another blue dry suit, knelt in front of him, looking at an angry red slash just below his rib cage. She had the sub’s first-aid kit open and was applying a wad of sterile gauze.
“I told you,” Golytsin said. “Just a scratch.”
“Yeah, a scratch bleeding like a stuck pig,” Kathy said. “But this should stop the—”
“It hardly matters,” Benford said. “He’s going to die anyway. You all are.”
Dean looked past Kathy and the Russian. Benford was standing all the way at the aft end of the compartment, stooped slightly under the low overhead, and he had a Makarov pistol in his hand.
SSGN Ohio
Arctic Ice Cap
82° 34' N, 177° 26' E
1209 hours, GMT–12
“We’re cavitating, Captain!” Mayhew said.
“Captain, Con!” a voice called over the intercom at the same instant. “We’re cavitating!”
The damage was done. “Helm! Maintain turn! Come to new heading two-six-zero! Ahead half!”
“Helm maintain turn to new heading two-six-zero, aye! Ahead half. Aye!”
Even at a creeping pace of four knots, the sudden turn had been enough to make noise in the water. The trouble was that the Ohio, over 560 feet long and with a submerged displacement of 18,750 tons, did not stop on a dime or turn inside her own length, and Grenville had to goose the old girl to give her rudder some bite to the water.
The cat was well and truly out of the bag now, dripping wet and making a hell of a racket . . . but that was better than scoring an own goal by ramming the Pittsburgh.
The question now was what the Russian was going to do about it.
SSN Dekabrist
Arctic Ice Cap
82° 34' N, 177° 26' E
1209 hours, GMT–12
“Got him, Captain!”
Captain First Rank Valery Kirichenko looked up as the sonar officer called over the intercom.
“Talk to me, Lieutenant.”
“Sir! We have sounds of propeller cavitation to starboard, bearing two-five-zero, range approximately five hundred meters. Target aspect changing, and appears to be turning away from us, to port. I’m getting increased power plant noise as well. I believe he is accelerating.”
“Excellent! Stay with him!”
Kirichenko’s orders required that he find and neutralize any enemy submarines operating within a twenty-kilometer perimeter around the GK-1 if hostilities commenced. The Lebedev had passed him the word hours before that American commandos were boarding the ship and that an American Ohio-class submarine had surfaced alongside.
The Americans had made it so easy . . . but then the game had turned dark as the Dekabrist slipped closer to the enemy. The American vessel had suddenly submerged, making the challenge of finding her that much more difficult. He knew approximately where the enemy vessel was, but not precisely. He’d hoped the sounds of scraping ice and opening bow doors would have enticed the Americans into doing something rash—and noisy—but there’d been nothing.
Until now.
“Helm!” Kirichenko ordered. “Come right eight-five degrees, to new heading two-five-zero! Increase speed to twelve knots!”
“Yes, Captain!”
Five hundred meters. They’d been so close! But the American sub was turning away, which made her an easy target.
“Stand by to fire torpedoes one and two,” Kirichenko said. “On my mark! . . .”
Mir
Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap
82° 34' N, 177° 26' E
1209 hours, GMT–12
“Everyone stay calm,” Benford continued. “But you will do as I say. Or you’ll all die sooner, rather than later.”
“Harry!” Kathy cried, pulling back a little from Golytsin. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m not going to jail for murdering Richardson!” he said. “The damned Russians double-crossed me . . . tried to put the blame on me. Well, they’re not going to get away with it!”
“We’re not trying to blame you,” Dean said. He was kicking himself. That was his pistol, the one he’d carelessly dropped on a seat after coming on board the Mir. He was trying to remember . . . how many cartridges should be left?
He didn’t know the Makarov well, but he knew the Walther PP series and he’d read once that the Russian Makarov was based on the tried-and-true PP design. Walthers had eight-round magazines, so the chances were good that the Makarov had an eight-round mag as well.
But how many rounds had he fired in the short, savage firefight on board the GK-1 just now? There’d been his first shot . . . then three quick ones. . . .
He couldn’t be sure—things had happened so fast—but he was pretty sure the pistol only had one shot left. Maybe two . . .
“Yes, you are!” Benford cried. There were tears on his face now, and his hands were shaking. Not good . . .
“Harry, it’ll all be okay!” Kathy told him. She started to rise, but he swung sharply, pointing the pistol at her.
“Don’t move, you little bitch! Damn it, no one believes me! It . . . it wasn’t supposed to be this way! I did everything they wanted me to do, and then they always wanted more! And now they want to double-cross me! Well, I’m giving the orders now!”
“Listen here, Benford,” Dean said.
“No, you listen!” The pistol swung back to point at him. “You . . . you just get me to the surface, understand? And get me out of this fucking box!”
The stress, Dean thought, must have been building on the man for days. From the sound of it, he was having a bout with claustrophobia as well, first locked up in that stores closet on the Russian platform, and now crammed into the Mir. That and his fear at being caught for the murder . . .
The trouble was that if he fired that pistol in here, it could very easily kill them all. The hull of the Mir was as thick and rigid as the hull of the GK-1, designed to withstand the incredible pressures of the abyss . . . which meant that a bullet fired in here would bounce wildly around the crowded compartment until it hit someone—or cracked one of the quartz viewing ports forward, or smashed some piece of equipment vital to their continued survival.
“The pressure on the hull outside, Benford,” Dean said, keeping his voice low and level, “is roughly one half ton pressing down over every square inch. Do you know what will happen if you put a hole in one of our viewing ports with that thing?”
“Don’t make me find out!”
“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, knoc
king 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. . . .
25
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.
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.
Stephen Coonts' Deep Black: Arctic Gold Page 37
