Kilo Class

“SHOOT!..STAND BY TWO.”

“Track 4063 bears 293…SET.”

“SHOOT!”

In the sonar room they heard the metallic thuds of the weapons leaving the tubes, then near silence as the engines of the big, stealthy torpedoes powered them forward. Only the faintest tremor disturbed the smooth slow movement of Columbia.

“Both weapons under guidance, sir.”

“Arm the weapons.”

“Weapons armed, sir.”

The Torpedo Guidance Officer, standing next to the CO in the attack area, watched on their screens as the torpedoes moved menacingly through the water, their speed setting slow, quiet and deep, sonars passive. Streaming out behind were the thin, supertough electronic wires, along which would flow the commands into the computer brains behind the warhead.

The four-mile journey took nine minutes and thirty-six seconds, at which point the first torpedo got passive contact to port — it was ready to attack.

Boomer snapped instantly, “IGNORE THAT! It’s Chabanenko’s decoy — do NOT release the weapon. Switch to active search.”

The guidance officer hesitated for a fraction of a second, then he steered the torpedo past the lead destroyer, watching it cruise on, into the “box”…searching…searching…searching for a submerged target across a long thousand-yard swath.

One minute later, it reported firm active contact close to port, and now it transmitted its lethal short, sharp “pings.”

“Weapon One release to auto-home,” ordered Boomer.

Columbia’s Mk 48 swiftly adjusted course, accelerated to forty-five knots, and locked on, with chilling indifference, to the black hull of K-9, which was moving southwest two hundred feet below the surface at nine knots, oblivious to the mortal danger that now threatened. The acoustic barrier, which had made Boomer’s task so difficult, now made detection of the telltale active “pings” impossible for the Russian Captain. Neither he, nor the Chinese Commander who accompanied him, knew what hit them.

Boomer Dunning’s torpedo smashed into the Kilo 120 feet from the bow and exploded with deadly force. It blasted a four-foot hole in the pressure hull, a gaping wound — no one on board survived for more than a minute as the cruel waters of the North Pacific surged through the submarine, forcing her to the bottom.

Back in Columbia Boomer Dunning heard the unmistakable sharp bang as the Mk 48 hit home. But that was all, the roaring acoustic barrier of the Russian warships blotted out the loneliest sound any sonar operator ever hears — the endless tinkling noise of broken glass and metal that echoes back as a warship sinks to the bottom of the ocean. It was 0555, on the morning of September 3, just as the sun was beginning to cast the rose-colored fingers of dawn along the eastern horizon of the Pacific.

“That’ll do,” said the CO of USS Columbia.

He now turned his attention back to the second torpedo, also under tight control, and now well on its way across the “box,” almost one mile astern of the Admiral Chabanenko. It too ran at a slow and deliberate pace, deep and quiet, crossing into the box almost halfway along the line between the two easterly escorts.

Boomer watched the Guidance Officer drive the torpedo toward the target area. He saw it pick up the frigate Nepristupny’s threshing screws to starboard, but did not have to warn against letting it loose this time. He ordered the torpedo switched to active search, and fifteen seconds later it reported a new contact to port, which could only be a submarine.

“There he is,” rasped Boomer. “Release to auto-home.”

“Contact six hundred yards…closing.”

“MALFUNCTION, SIR — TORPEDO MALFUNCTION. LOST ACTIVE CONTACT.”

“TRY PASSIVE.”

“MALFUNCTION, SIR. Nothing coming back up the wire…it must have broken, sir.”

“Stand by three.”

“Captain…sonar…I have underwater telephone on the bearing.”

“Jesus, he must be talking to his fucking self.”

“Nossir. He’s talking to someone else.”

“You got the interpreter down there?”

“Yessir. He’s saying it’s between two submarines…we’re checking the call signs in the book right now, sir… they seem to be calling a third boat.”

“JESUS CHRIST!!”

“Captain…sonar. The third boat is not answering. Call signs work out…from an export hull…and a Russian boat…trying to reach another export hull.”

A chill shot through Boomer Dunning’s churning stomach. There could be but one answer. The Typhoon is still there. Unbelievably. Grotesquely, still there. And he, Commander Cale Dunning, had come within about thirty seconds of starting World War III by accident. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” said the CO of Columbia. “STAND DOWN THREE TUBE…we will not, repeat not, be firing.”

The picture in his mind was one of absolute clarity. He had assumed two Kilos were in the box, and he had hit one of them, and apparently gotten active contact on the other, just before he lost his second torpedo. Now the remaining Kilo was talking to the Typhoon, which had been there all the time, both of them trying to figure out what had happened to K-9…the Kilo that was just about arriving at the bottom of the Pacific. With all hands.

There was little doubt as far as Boomer was concerned. If there was a Russian submarine in attendance, it was clearly the Typhoon. “Can I risk firing again? Answer: NO. I have just been goddamned lucky not to have started World War III, by blowing up a Typhoon Class Russian nuclear, which was built specifically to fire inter- continental ballistic missiles. I plainly cannot knowingly take that risk.

“I am already in the deepest possible crap. I had no POSIDENT of the Kilos. Acoustic or visual. Let’s face it, I fired on the off chance. Right here is where I back off, and throw myself on the mercy of SUBLANT.”

Boomer ordered Columbia deep and fast, to clear the datum and head east, away from the impending chaos. He handed the ship to Lieutenant Commander Krause and retired to his cabin to prepare a signal to the Black Ops Intelligence Cell. It was around 1300 in Norfolk.

He wrote his signal carefully: “Kilo Group attacked north of Onekotan. Unable to obtain fire control solution on any submarines. Fired two Mk 48’s into center of two-mile square box formed by remaining four escorts. Torpedoes set for active pattern search. One explosion heard. Subsequent telephone traffic, underwater call-signs, strongly suggest one export hull sunk. Intercept also strongly suggests continued presence of Typhoon Class submarine in the group. Do NOT intend further attack. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.”

Boomer ordered Columbia to periscope depth and accessed the satellite. He transmitted his signal at 0630, Eastern Daylight Time. At 0647 Admiral Arnold Morgan, the President’s National Security Adviser, almost had a heart attack. At the time he was having a cup of coffee and a roast beef sandwich with the CNO, Joe Mulligan, in the Pentagon, and the craggy ex-Trident driver had calmly read the message to the NSA.

“What the hell does he mean, mea maxima culpa? What kinda bullshit’s that?”

“You ever been an altar boy?” asked the staunchly Irish Catholic head of the US Navy.

“A WHAT?”

“An altar boy — you know, a kid who assists the priest during the mass, rings the bells, lights the candles… holds the water during the consecration.”

“Hell no. In my part of Texas we played baseball on Sunday mornings. Mea catcher.”

“Arnie, I accept that my great office requires that I fraternize with those of a heathen persuasion, such as yourself. However I think you should know the routine of a God-fearing family such as mine. Each Sunday at the foot