World in Flames

shock wave grew in intensity, the sound of the explosion that had occurred several miles away, but not close to the Alfa sub, now shaking Roosevelt violently.

Either the Mark-48 from the Roosevelt had taken out the first torpedo fired by the Alfa or the latter had taken out the first “fish” fired by the Roosevelt. In any case, the Alfa’s first torpedo was no longer a threat to the Roosevelt, and the Roosevelt’s first fish had not sunk the Russian.

“Holy livin’—” Emerson began. He had never seen anything like it on his screen, the explosions creating a frenzy of lines that made no sense. “Overload,” he said in an understatement that was lost in Control crew’s attempts to keep the Roosevelt steady.

“Zero speed,” ordered Brentwood, and only now could Emerson see his three sonar screens returning to something like normal. The muffled sound of the pumps that never stopped could now be seen registering on the “hash” of ice grind and clacking shrimp.

* * *

“Kuda on uskol? — Where’s he gone — Petrov?” Yanov asked his sonar man. Their screen, too, was fuzzy. “Where’s the bastard—”

The sonar operator was still getting “flood-over” from the explosion of the first torpedo that the Alfa had fired at the American. Or was it sound wave residue from one of the Americans’ torpedoes? Then came a second explosion, as loud as the first, but again, it barely shook the double-bottomed titanium hull of the Alfa, the sub merely yawing slightly in the concussion waves.

“He’ll dive to near crush depth,” predicted Yanov.

Brentwood was waiting. It would be another four minutes before the last of the three torpedoes he had fired was due to make impact with target Bravo. With two fish exploded, he could only hope his third would be lucky. He was also wondering if he’d done any damage to the Alfa through concussion, though he knew that unlike the Sea Wolf, whose hull could be ruptured even if a torpedo didn’t actually hit it but exploded some meters away, an Alfa was more resilient to being punctured by the massive pressure waves, its state-of-the-art double titanium hull the envy of every other submariner.

“TTI for target Delta,” cut in Emerson, picking up a trace, “three minutes.”

“Perhaps we should have fired another one,” said Zeldman.

It wasn’t a question — more a suggestion — and the only time Brentwood had ever heard his executive officer even slightly nervous, except possibly when Zeldman had confided that Georgina Spence had proposed to him rather than he to her.

“No, Pete, we did all right with three. We fire another one now we’re in cover of ice grind, we negate us being up here. I’m banking on them thinking we’ve gone down, deep into the trench to hide, looking for somewhere to hole up. Let Ivan think we’ve gone deep under the sound smother of the explosions. He’ll be listening for us away down there, and we’re up here only three hundred feet from the roof — nice and cozy in the ice clutter and—”

He never finished. Suddenly Roosevelt yawed violently, hard left, then right, and she was sliding, the control room crisscrossed with the hissing spraying of leaks that suddenly exploded into vapor jets under the pressure of 187,000 pounds per square foot.

“Flooding in the engine room, flooding in the engine room…”

“See to it, Chief!” called Brentwood. “Where’s the Alfa, Sonar?”

“Don’t know, sir…” called Emerson, his voice rising, scared.

“Keep it down,” Brentwood counseled him. “Watch him. Find him for me, son.”

“Yes — yes, sir.”

Behind him, Brentwood could hear the damage reports coming in on the intercom as Zeldman tried to steady the motion of the sub via trim and rudder control. Amid the chaos Emerson realized that the Roosevelt’s third torpedo hadn’t knocked out the last of the fish fired by the Alfa but must have been thrown off course, its thin control wire to Roosevelt inadvertently severed in the sub’s turn as they’d headed up. The result was that the Roosevelt’s third torpedo, away and running, its radar-homing head now uninhibited by wire control, had probably overshot the oncoming Russian torpedo and zeroed in on the Alfa instead. Either this, or the Russian torpedo homing in on Roosevelt had exploded against subsurface ice, creating the concussion now causing the leaks which were not only flooding the engine room but which were making it impossible to see in Control.

Emerson heard a tentative cracking sound, and in a sudden, gut-wrenching moment, was sure they were breaking up until the sensors, at least those that were still in operation, told him it was the ice above that was fracturing and breaking up from the thwacks of the explosions. But then he felt the sub sliding— backward down the slope.

For a split second Brentwood was tempted to order the engines near full power but resisted creating a giveaway vibration that would give the Alfa, if the explosions had not got her, the Roosevelt’s precise position on the shelf. Hopefully, though, the Alfa was well away by now, hunting for him somewhere in the deep of the Spitzbergen Trench.

Watching his men running fast but each man clearly knowing what he was doing, he took a momentary pride in how well they had been trained, as within minutes the fierce spray of water that had seemed like an ice-cold steam shower in Control was subsiding. But then he felt the sub still sliding, almost imperceptibly to start with, but gathering speed like a heavy trunk on an incline of gravel. It stopped, slid a little more, and halted again. It was difficult to tell exactly just how far they were from the edge of the slope where it plunged away in the sudden drop into Molloy Deep that was fifteen thousand feet straight down.

Emerson, switching to earphones because of the noise of the hissing water, tried to gauge how far they were from the edge by the sound of what seemed like rock debris tumbling down the slope, scraping the hull, then suddenly disappearing on the sound curve. He figured they were less than four hundred feet from the drop-off.

Brentwood was already getting the good news that the leaks had been stopped in the engine room and that now everything seemed secure — the reactor seemed fine — when a damage report told him that a number of hydraulic lines had been severed so that ballast tanks couldn’t be blown — to evict the water with air and thus make them lighter. It meant the sub couldn’t rise. “And the integrity of the safety hatches,” as the video display informed him, had been breached.

No one spoke for several minutes as the full implications of their situation sunk it. They had evaded the Hunter/Killer only to—

“Sir!” It was Emerson, excitement jolting him out of the sudden gloom.

“Who do you mean?” said Brentwood sharply, injecting a shot of discipline after the chaotic moments occasioned by the blast of the explosion. “Do you want me or the officer of the deck?”

“Sorry, sir. OOD.”

“Very well.”

“Mr. Zeldman, sir. She’s breaking up.”

“You sure?” said Brentwood.

“Yes, Captain — it’s—”

“Amplify,” ordered Brentwood. There was the most awful sound Brentwood had ever heard coming in from the hydrophones and filling the Roosevelt—a sound like a great whale groaning in agony.

“Her bulkheads,” said Zeldman. “They’re giving way.”

“We got her, sir,” said Emerson, exultant, looking around at the faces clustering anxiously around him.

“Or is it a feint?” asked Brentwood.

“Emerson?” Brentwood repeated. “What do you think?”

“I…” They could see the doubt taking over his face. “I–I’m not sure, sir.”

“Keep listening.”

“Don’t think it’s a feint, sir. That groan — I mean, the amplitude is too—”

Brentwood felt someone bump him and looked sharply at the men gathered around the sonar. “What the hell is this — the county fair? Everyone back to his post.”

“They’re going down, sir,” said Emerson, more confidently now. “Think they’re goners.”

“Like us,” said someone in Control. Brentwood looked about, ready to tear a strip off the sailor, but said