Nimitz Class

“Yessir.”

“Meantime I want to get the best picture I can of his masts at CPA. ‘Posident,’ they said. ‘Posident’ they shall have.”

Fifteen minutes went by, and now the Kilo was seven miles closer than he was at first contact, two miles to the south of Columbia.

“Up periscope…Here, Bill, you’re the official observer. You’ve got to tell the CNO it was a real live Kilo. Take a look.”

Bill Baldridge peered through the lenses, across the gray waters, at the tiny masts coming and going with the long swell…“Yup. Tallies close enough with the book. It’s hard to be sure, but that’s no trawler.”

“Down periscope. Firing in five minutes. Sonar, make sure you get full recordings.”

“Sonar, aye.”

Three minutes later…“Captain — sonar…target dynamicstop, sir. He’s stopped snorkeling. I’m getting transients on the bearing in broad band, but the lines have all gone. He’ll be all quiet in one minute.”

“Shit.”

The sounds and signs from the Kilo died away. One minute passed, and Boomer Dunning made his decision, to fire at range three thousand yards on predictions from the last-known bearing, sending the Mk 48 torpedo off quietly at thirty knots, staying passive until sixty seconds from impact. Then Columbia’s Torpedo Guidance Officer would go to active sonar for dead accurate direction, and simultaneously accelerate the missile on its way, leaving its hapless target without hope, or even time for retribution.

“Stand by one…”

“Last bearing check…”

“Shoot!”

In the sonar room they heard the dull metallic thud of the big wire-guided torpedo launch out of the tube. Columbia shuddered faintly.

“Weapon under guidance, sir…”

“Arm the weapon.”

“Weapon armed, sir.”

One minute passed…“Weapon two thousand yards from target.”

“Sonar—Switch to active. Single ping.”

“Aye, sir,” called the sonar officer as he hit the button which would send the powerful telltale beam straight down the predicted bearing of the Kilo, and then echo back to give them a last-minute check on the fire control solution.

260713SEP02. 54.40S, 60.00W.

Course 255. Speed 5. East of Burdwood Bank.

Depth 16 meters.

“Captain — sonar…one active transmission…loud…bearing Green 135…United States SSN for sure. Real close.”

“Stand by Tube Number Two. Set targets bearing Green 135. Range three thousand meters. Depth one hundred meters. Shoot as soon as you’re ready.”

^{Waiting for the Kilo: U.S. navy’s Submarine Barrier Southwest of the Falklands}

“Hard right. Steer zero-three-five. Shut off for counterattack. Full ahead…ten down…two hundred meters.”

“Two Tube fired, Captain.”

“Captain — sonar…torpedo active transmission…possibly in contact. Right ahead… Interval nine hundred meters…”

Turned straight toward his enemy, charging forward at maximum speed, in the reckless, but classic, Russian torpedo evasion maneuver, Captain Georgy Kokoshin snapped out his last command…“Decoys…Thirty down…”

The American torpedo slammed into the top of his bow, detonated with savage force, blasting a huge hole in the pressure hull. The water thundered in for’ard, flattening the bulkheads.

Captain Kokoshin looked up at the five-foot high, three-inch-thick steel door which protected him, just in time to see it catapulted toward him, exploding inward before eighty-six tons of solid water pressure. He died in his Navy uniform on active duty. But not on behalf of Mother Russia, the nation he had served for all but the last five months of his working life.

Back in Columbia, they had already picked up the incoming Russian torpedo, which, in a lightning, last-ditch reaction, the Kilo’s weapons team had got away.

“Captain — sonar…Possible discharge transient on bearing.”

Boomer Dunning was calm. “Captain, aye…Ahead flank. Right full rudder…thirty down…nine hundred feet… Decoys one and two.”

“Torpedo — torpedo — torpedo…bearing two-six-zero…sweep mode…moving left. Fast…still in sweep mode.”

“Rudder amidships,” snapped the captain.

“Still moving left…but fainter, sir. She’s missed.”

“Yes, she has,” replied Commander Dunning. And he turned to Bill Baldridge and added, in the rich, salty, language of their calling, “Beats the shit out of me how he got one away at all.”

And now he ordered his ship to surface and was quite surprised that the swell in the ocean had died down very quickly. Off to the west about a mile away, they could see a smooth area on the surface of the water. All alone now in this bleak and desolate South Atlantic seascape, Columbia turned toward it and drove along the surface, through the calm and now flat gray waters, to identify, formally, the remains of their “kill.”

There was not much to see, really. A lot of oil, a few small bits of wooden wreckage, and unsecured items which looked like Navy jackets and other items of clothing that had been blasted out upon the torpedo’s impact. The rest, the heavy steel structure, weapons, engines, and the ship’s company, rested now on the floor of the ocean, two and half miles below.

Commander Dunning, Bill Baldridge, and Lieutenant Wingate stood up on the bridge and stared down at the minute remnants of the Kilo.

Down on the casing, a half-dozen crew members were taking a closer look, just a final check for bodies. Russian bodies, they supposed. But there were none.

No one said anything for a few minutes, possibly out of an unconscious mark of respect for the unknown dead. But suddenly a young sailor shouted out: “Hey, what’s that right down there? Right there, where I’m pointing.”

But no one else could see anything. And the sailor looked up to the bridge, embarrassed at his outburst, in front of the captain. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “But I could a sworn I saw a coupla hundred dollar bills floating right there, in the oil.”

Only Lieutenant Commander Baldridge smiled.

Epilogue

1100 Thursday, October 10. The Pentagon. Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Third Floor, E Ring.

Robert Macpherson presided over this particular debriefing meeting personally. Seated around him in the conference room were the Secretary of State, Harcourt Travis, the CJCS, General Josh Paul, the CNO, Admiral Scott Dunsmore, the Intelligence Director, Vice Admiral Arnold Morgan, and the man who had tracked the Russian Kilo from day one until it was finally destroyed, Lieutenant Commander Bill Baldridge. Major Ted Lynch of the CIA was invited to sit in, having compiled a dossier on the Iraqis’ financial involvement in the Jefferson disaster. At 1115, the President of the United States was expected to join them,