Stoke dropped the phone and raced down the wide staircase, taking the steps three at a time.
“A ll ahead two-thirds, make your depth one hundred,” Captain Lyachin said. “Fifteen degrees down on the bow planes.”
“Ahead two-thirds, depth one hundred meters, fifteen down,” came the reply.
Lyachin took a slow drag on his Sobranie. It was the most expensive Russian cigarette but worth every ruble. “Come to heading two-zero-two.”
“Aye, Captain. Turn on my mark, course two-zero-two. Speed, eighteen knots. Depth, one hundred meters… mark.”
“Diving downward, course two-zero-two.”
“Two-zero-two, aye.”
“Speed eighteen knots.”
“Speed eighteen knots, aye.”
“We’ll slip right under that fat tourist barge bastard’s belly,” Lyachin said, grinning at his XO.
“A brush with the angel of death,” the XO replied, smiling, “and he won’t even know it.”
A second later, the blast of the boat’s alarms began sounding, an awful din that turns every submariner’s stomach. Dim red emergency lights began flashing in the CCP. Every man at his post stared at his screen in disbelief. The XO scrambled, moving from post to post, assessing the situation.
“What the hell is happening?” Lyachin said.
“We still have propulsion, sir, reactor normal, but all our operating and propulsion systems have been… co- opted.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Lyachin shouted. He’d never heard the word co-opted and he didn’t like words he’d never heard.
“No longer in our control, sir. It’s as if… as if the sub is operating independently. We’ve lost the helm, the diving planes, and
… holy mother of God!”
“What?”
“The two torpedoes in the forward tubes just went live, sir! They’re showing ‘armed’ on my panel! And the… my God… outer doors of tubes one and two… they’re opening, sir, on their own. Tubes flooded… what the hell is going on?”
“Weapons Officer, shut everything down. Disarm! Now!” Lyachin said. “Go to Fail-Safe! Kill it!”
“Can’t execute, Captain. Nothing on my panel is responding.”
“Torpedo room, close the outer doors. Helm, come right to one-eight-zero.”
“Helm is frozen at two-zero-two, sir! She’s maintaining a heading directly to the target, sir.”
“Torpedo room?”
“Outer door controls not responding. Both torpedoes armed. Active guidance to target. Launch sequence countdown has been initiated.”
Lyachin went white. “How long have we got?”
“Sixty seconds to launch, sir.”
The captain looked at his XO.
“The entire boat has been infected,” he said.
“Infected?”
“Fifty seconds to launch.”
“Some kind of cyberweapon. We’re about to sink an American cruise ship, Aleksandr. Go forward and see if there’s anything you can do to stop that from happening.”
The XO stared into his captain’s eyes with stunned disbelief for a millisecond and then he bolted from the CCP. Both men knew there was nothing to be done.
“Thirty seconds, Captain.”
Control of their submarine, and their fate, had been snatched from them in the blink of an eye. And by whom? They would never know.
“Fifteen seconds. Ten. Five…”
Lyachin closed his eyes and waited for the muffled explosive sounds that would signal the end of a very long and distinguished career in the Russian Navy. Not to mention the end of his life, blindfolded, his back to a wall at Lubyanka Prison in Moscow.
Fourteen
Stokely Jones smoked soles down the ship’s starboard B Deck corridor, careening from one bulkhead to the other as the liner pitched and yawed in the heavy seas. He stopped just outside stateroom 222 and slid the card key into the slot. He found his bride just the way he’d left her-stunned, scared, still bleeding and huddled in the corner on the floor.
He knelt beside her, kissed the top of her head, and examined the wound more carefully. Stitches could wait, but he had to stop the bleeding. He scrambled into the head, grabbed a terry hand towel, and soaked it in warm water. Then he carefully folded it into a workable compress. Looking for something to secure it with, he spotted a pair of pantyhose hanging over the shower door.
“We’ve got to get out of here, honey,” he said quietly once the compress was firmly in place on her temple. Her eyes went wide with fear as he pulled two life vests from the cabinet above her.
“What? What is it, Stokely?” she asked, her eyes wide with terror. “Are we sinking?”
“No. But I saw something I didn’t like,” he said, grabbing her rain gear and his from hangers and her pair of running shoes. “Up on deck. Here, put these on. I’ll help you get to your feet.” As she struggled into the clothing, he put his own life vest on, then helped her with her own.
“What did you see?”
“Maybe nothing. But it sure as hell looked like the wake of a torpedo. Could have been the wake of a sub’s periscope maybe. Either way, it was headed toward us at high speed and it didn’t look promising.”
“A torpedo? Somebody’s firing a torpedo at a cruise ship?”
“Doesn’t make any sense, I know. That’s why I hope to God I was just seeing things. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Our muster station. Where we had the drill back in Miami. That’s where we board the lifeboat.”
“Stokely Jones, this is the last time I will ever, I mean ever — ”
She never finished that sentence.
Two massive explosions rocked the mammoth vessel. One torpedo, from the sound of it magnetic and not impact, had struck amidships, probably exploding directly beneath the Fantasy ’s keel. If that fish had broken the ship’s back, Stoke figured they had about forty-five minutes before she went down with all hands.
And then the second torpedo impacted just forward of the stern. The engine compartment, Stoke thought, feeling the big ship instantly start to lose forward momentum as the big bronze screws stopped turning. After two decades in the U.S. Navy, he could hear when a screw was loose in the bilge. Now all he could hear were the screaming alarms throughout the huge liner. He waited for the captain to make his announcement.
“Attention, all passengers. This is your captain speaking. We have sustained cataclysmic damage. A damage assessment is already under way. However, in the interest of everyone’s safety I am taking no chances. I am now issuing the order to abandon ship. All passengers must report immediately with their life jackets to their assigned muster stations. The crew will assist you in boarding the lifeboats. I repeat, this is your captain speaking… abandon ship. This is not a drill, I repeat, this is not a drill.”
Stoke, with Fancha in his arms, was already en route to the lifeboat muster station.
A board Nevskiy, Lyachin struggled to maintain his composure as his boat continued on a collision course with the now sinking American liner. He stared through the periscope in horror as fire spread and the massive cruise ship’s bow angled sharply down. If there were to be a secondary or tertiary explosion, thousands of innocent civilians could lose their lives.
Including the men aboard his command.
