Goliath

Goliath’s torpedoes slamming into the Scranton’s projectile.

“Conn, sonar—sir, one of Sierra-2’s torpedoes just detonated our own ship’s unit.”

Cubit and his XO make eye contact. “An antitorpedo torpedo?”

“Conn, sonar, Sierra-2 second torpedo just went active. Bearing two-fourthree … Sir, Sierra-2’s torpedo is an Mk-48! Range, twenty-seven hundred yards and closing very fast—”

The sweat-streaked faces of the crew turn to their captain. The Mk-48 is the most lethal torpedo in the world, its seeker head designed to hunt down and destroy enemy subs at great distances—and the Scranton is well within striking range.

The hunter has become the hunted.

“Helm, right full rudder, steady course north. Dive, mark your depth—”

“Nine hundred feet,” the diving officer reports, his pulse racing, his bladder tightening.

“Maintain a fifteen-degree down angle—”

“Conn, sonar, torpedo range now fifteen hundred yards. Impact in eighty seconds—”

“Sir, we’re passing nine hundred feet. Nine-fifty. Nine-sixty …”

The helmsman looks up at the diving officer. The sub’s deep-water tolerance is only 950 feet.

Cubit stares at the second hand sweeping across the face of the gold pocket watch his grandfather had given him long ago, after the leukemia and the futile chemotherapy had taken the life out of the gruff old man. I won’t be needing this now, Tommy. Keep it close to you, and I’ll find a way to be there when you need me …

“WEPS, prepare to launch countermeasures.”

“Aye, sir, preparing to launch countermeasures.”

“Depth now passing one thousand feet. One thousand fifty …”

Cubit blinks away perspiration from his eyes, his brain dissecting the numbers, his lips moving silently as his mind calculates. Surviving a torpedo attack at close range requires steady nerves and more than a bit of luck. He recalls a favorite expression of his old skipper aboard the Toledo: When it comes to actual combat, a coward will shit his pants, while a brave man merely pisses.

The computer on board the pinging Mk-48 validates Scranton as its target, the projectile increasing its speed to sixty knots, pinging faster …

“Conn, sonar, torpedo bearing two-one-seven, range seven hundred yards … torpedo has acquired … torpedo is range-gating!”

“Launch countermeasures! Helm, hard left rudder, steady course two-seven-zero. Dive, thirty-degree up angle—”

Two acoustic device countermeasures are expelled into the sea and begin spinning, their gyrations simulating the Scranton’s propeller.

The sub lurches, rolling hard to starboard as her screw catches the ocean, driving the sixty-nine-hundred-ton ship upward, her hull plates groaning under the stress, her terrified crew tossed sideways.

“Conn, sonar—torpedo impact in thirty seconds—”

“Chief of the Watch, conduct a one-second emergency blow of all main ballast tanks.”

“One-second blow, aye, sir!” Struggling to stand against the thirty-degree up angle, the chief auxiliary man reaches above his head, grabbing the two gray handles of the ship’s emergency blow system, and, with a great lunge, thrusts them upward.

A deafening sound rips through the sub as 4500 psi pressurized air is released from the air banks into the five main ballast tanks surrounding the Scranton’s pressurized hull, thereby expelling their water to drastically lighten the ship.

The incoming torpedo homes in on the noise.

Almost immediately, the Chief of the Watch depresses and pulls down on the “chicken switches,” holding on as the Scranton surges upward like a beach ball from the bottom of the pool.

Lost in the “knuckle” of noise, the incoming torpedo continues descending, following the countermeasures until it has hopelessly lost track of the evading submarine. Running out of fuel, it spirals downward and implodes in the deep recesses of the North Atlantic.

“Conn, sonar, torpedo destroyed!”

Sighs of relief, cheers, and a few whispered prayers of thanks rise in a chorus from the nerve-wracked crew.

Cubit mops perspiration from his face. “All stop.”

“All stop, aye, sir.”

“Dive, vent the main ballast tanks.”

“Vent the tanks, aye, sir.”

“Sonar, Captain, where’s Sierra-2?”

“Conn, sonar, I lost contact, sir.”

“Where’s the Typhoon?”

“Sir, Sierra-1 has changed course to two-six-zero, range thirty thousand yards, moving away from us at twenty knots. She’s running, Skipper.”

Aboard the Typhoon

“Load torpedoes one and two,” Captain Romanov orders. “Match bearings. Prepare to fire.”

“Not yet, Kapitan,” Ivan Kron calls out. “Range to bearing is less than two hundred meters. She’s right behind us and still closing.”

This is madness, is the man trying to ram us? “Let’s shake her loose. Helm, right full rudder, come to course zero-eight-zero—”

“Kapitan, two more contacts, much smaller, closing on both propeller shafts. I’m sorry, sir, I thought they were biologics.”

Aboard the Goliath

Simon Covah stands before one of the immense Lexan viewports, the reinforced glass casting its crimson glow across his flesh-and-steel face. A powerful outer light in Goliath’s flattened triangular bow ignites, the intense lighthouselike beacon piercing the darkness of the sea, illuminating the stern of the fleeing Typhoon.

You are a boy who computes equations like Einstein and grasps science like an overheated dog slurps water. You see things differently, your brain able to dissect problems in ways alien to your colleagues. You are fourteen and you wear the same overcoat you’ve worn since grade school, but you’ve just been enrolled in Moscow’s most prestigious university. You are a sheep among thousands of wolves. You spend your days alone in your room, bored with your studies, but lacking the money and companions to occupy your time. Your mind is a sponge that cannot be saturated, so you feed it Shakespeare and Bach and Ludwig van, wondering what pain life has in store for you next.

Covah watches as two of the sleek, steel gray hammerhead shark-shaped minisubs close quickly upon the Russian sub’s twin screws. This time, I am the predator. This time, I am the wolf.

The Typhoon rolls hard to starboard, attempting to distance itself. Goliath banks like a 747 jumbo jet, its bow sensors locked on the Russian sub, its superior hydrodynamic design mirroring the exact movements of its prey.

The two remotely operated mechanical sharks move into position behind the Typhoon’s churning propeller. Steel mouths yawn open, revealing small launch tubes.

With an expulsion of pressurized gas, a lightweight torpedo is fired from the open mouth of each minisub. Launched at point-blank range, the two projectiles slam into the heart of each of the Typhoon’s propeller assemblies, detonating right on the twin seven-blade screws in an explosion of searing hot bubbles and steel.

Aboard the Typhoon

The double explosion buckles the Russian sub, jolting it forward, the screams of the Iranian trainees quickly