World in Flames

way, he suckered us.”

Without a word of reproach or the merest suggestion that Zeldman should have waited a bit longer before deciding to release the MOSS, Brentwood turned his attention to the tracking vector to see if the Russian torpedo was changing course, curving away toward the simulator Zeldman had fired. Maybe the Russian fish was a “line- of-sighter,” its computer nose not radar-homing but merely compensatory, set to adjust its heading according to Sea Wolf’s speed and heading but not an electronic lock-on. But then Sonar reported a blip coming through the subsurface shrimp and ice clutter, the blip now being received aboard Roosevelt, the Russian torpedo’s active pulse shooting ahead, the torpedo homing in on the bounce-off from the target.

“TTI?” he asked Sonar again.

“Five minutes, forty seconds, sir.”

“Definitely a homer, then,” said Zeldman. It was his way of suggesting they should fire their warhead torpedoes now.

Brentwood was thinking so fast that a dozen images simultaneously jostled for attention in his brain, the most bothersome that of the Soviet captain firing at such long range. Surely the Russian must know a Sea Wolf would hear his torpedo coming and immediately change course to avoid—

“He mustn’t be homing on our hull,” said Brentwood suddenly. “SOB’s locking onto our prop signature.”

“If he’d been close enough for that, sir,” suggested Zeldman, “we would’ve been hit by now.”

Damn it, Zeldman was right. It had to be hull lock-on, the surface area of the MOSS too small, not giving off the same echo as the Sea Wolf’s larger displacement hull. The only chance was for the Sea Wolf to go to maximum speed, despite the increasing noise her pumps would make, and try to outrun the Russian torpedo. But no sooner had Brentwood given the order for burst speed than Emerson reported two other torpedoes racing for them in “fan” formation, one fired to intercept at a point forward of the Sea Wolf’s present position, the other aft of it.

Brentwood knew he could turn tail and run — and the geometric and trigonometric vectors spewing out of the computer told him that even if the Russian torpedoes were of their fastest class, with a maximum range of thirty- five miles, the Roosevelt might be able to evade the middle of the three torpedoes. At this point he still had a five-mile head start. But it would be, as they’d said at Balaclava, “a close run thing.” It would mean he couldn’t weave but would be committed to a straight-line retreat — not only directly from the approaching middle torpedo but also in front of the Russian sub. And if the Russian was faster than the Sea Wolf — though only the Alfa class was — then the Russian would outrun the Roosevelt. But then, if the Russian was an Alfa and fired another one at closer range, even the Sea Wolf’s burst speed would be unable to evade him.

“TTI five minutes,” reported Emerson.

“All right,” replied Brentwood. “Switch on our active. Let’s try to see what he is. Might as well use it — he knows where we are anyway.”

But even as Emerson pushed the button and heard the distinctive ping of the active pulse passing out from the Roosevelt, he felt guilty, that he was betraying her, so ingrained was the operator’s code of silence. It was as if a priest had been ordered to break a sacred rite, the Sea Wolf’s mission to listen only on passive — not to betray their lethal load by making their own noise. It was a catechism drilled into him from his very first days in Bledsoe Hall in Groton. But if Emerson had doubted the order, Zeldman didn’t. Brentwood’s decision to go active was the right one. With its awesome missile load, the Roosevelt couldn’t preserve America’s nuclear sea-strike capability if it couldn’t survive.

“TTI four minutes thirty seconds,” said Emerson. The MOSS was long gone, out of play, none of the Russian torpedoes curving off to go for the bait. Now the pongs — the echoes of Roosevelt’s active pulses coming back at over three thousand miles per hour — were registering in high-pointed sine waves on the computer screen that Emerson had now linked to the “Chinese library.” This was the sonar operators’ name for the library of “ping/pong” sounds that, taking into account water salinity, thermal inclines, hot vent upwelling, temperature, and currents, sought to match sound peak ratios to hull size.

“Looks like a small one to me, sir. A Hunter-Killer. Plus or minus four thousand tons.” Brentwood could now see the digitized speed readout, an estimate that the active pulse made possible. Emerson was shaking his head in disbelief. He’d never seen a sub coming in at them at over forty-three miles an hour. It was at once terrifying and awe-inspiring.

“Goddamn it,” said Zeldman. “An Alfa.”

“TTI four minutes,” said Emerson, his voice now tauter than before.

Still watching the sonar screens, Brentwood informed the firing control and tracking party, “Target designations as follows. Bravo, Charlie, Delta — three fish. Got it?”

“Target designations Bravo, Charlie, Delta.”

Brentwood shot a glance at the Russian’s incoming vector. It had changed slightly to zero four nine. “Bring the ship to zero four nine.”

“Zero four nine, sir.”

Four seconds later, Roosevelt was on the zero-four-nine heading, the new vector for target Bravo. Brentwood called for the range, then announced, “Angle on the bow — starboard one seven. Firing point procedures. Master one zero. Tube one.”

“Firing point procedure master one zero. Tube one,” came the confirmation, immediately followed by, “Solution ready, sir. Weapons ready. Ship ready.”

Brentwood was watching the bearing. “Final bearing and shoot. Master one zero.”

The bearing and speed of the target were confirmed, and Brentwood heard the firing control officer take over. “Stand by! Shoot! Fire!… One fired and running.”

“Shift to zero zero five,” Brentwood ordered as the Roosevelt was brought about onto the vector for the second torpedo.

“Zero zero five, sir.”

“Very well. Fire two.”

“Fire two… Two fired and running, sir.”

“Shift to one seven three.”

This took a little longer as the 360-foot-long Roosevelt turned through almost 180 degrees in an east-west semicircle to bring her on line with target Delta, the third torpedo fired by the Alfa, clearly meant to interdict aft of her should she try to run that way.

“Easy — don’t want to stretch the wire,” Brentwood heard the diving officer say, referring to the wire that the Mark-48, the top of its line in the U.S. torpedo arsenal, would trail behind it via which the torpedo would receive fire control and tracking party guidance until it got close enough to the target for its radar-homing computer to take over.

“On one seven three, sir.”

“Very well. Fire three.”

“Fire three… Three fired and running, sir.”

Zeldman was now ready for the order to turn and run and go deep, but it wasn’t given.

Instead Brentwood ordered, “Diving officer, we’re going up. Take her to three hundred feet. Maximum angle thirty degrees.”

“Take her to three hundred — slowly,” said the diving officer. “Minimum incline. Don’t snap the wire.”

The diving officer repeated the instructions, but the man on trim and one of the planesmen couldn’t believe their ears. And it got worse, though it wasn’t evident at first, because the direction in which they were going was taking them away from the Alfa toward the northern side of the Spitzbergen Trench. It was at eight hundred feet, Roosevelt’s up angle increasing beyond ten degrees in a slight upwelling current from the sea bottom, causing Zeldman and Brentwood to hang on to the scope island’s rail.

The diving officer held on to the roll bar above him, closely monitoring the planesmen. “Watch the bubble… watch the bubble… ” he advised, fatherly, calmly. “Slow her down… Don’t want to slam up against the ice. That’d be a ‘short’ to write home about.”

What the planesmen couldn’t figure out was why in hell Brentwood would take them off to the shallow waters on the north shoulder of the deep trench, the seabed sloping gently away to the top of the trench.

“Three hundred feet, sir,” reported the diving officer.

Suddenly everything was blurred — instruments, tightly secured as they were, rattling like cutlery. Then the