from their Arctic bastions.
As the threat of global nuclear holocaust had receded, Montgomery had assumed that his particular skills and training in tracking Russian PLARBs would never be called into play.
Submarines had been employed in numerous military actions through the last decade, from the Gulf War to the scrape last year with the Russians off Norway, but he'd thought the old game of stalking their boomers was over.
Evidently, he was wrong.
Would the Russians really launch on one of their own cities?
Washington seemed to think so, and it was not part of his job to question his boss's orders. Not long ago, a cruise missile from the Galveston had helped sink the Indian carrier Viraat, part of an action fought to stop the Indo-Pakistani war from going nuclear. The Gal's skipper then had been Gerry Hawkins. What had he thought of his orders at the time?
There were 150 men aboard the Typhoon out there, as opposed to thousands aboard the Viraat. Their deaths might save tens of thousands, even millions of lives if that PLARB could be killed before it loosed its deadly arrow.
But submariners share a special bond, no matter what flag they sail under. The shared experience of patrolling, month upon month, in the cold and unyielding night of the oceans where the slightest mistake can expose the entire crew to the implacable wrath of the submariner's real and constant enemy, the sea, somehow bypasses national boundaries, alien cultures, and even politics.
But not loyalties. Never loyalties. The submariner's devotion is to his boat, his shipmates, and his captain; the captain's devotions are to his boat, his men, and to the trust invested in him by the government he serves.
There was no question of disobeying those orders.
'Bow doors are open by hand, Captain,' the weapons officer announced.
'We are ready to fire.'
'Very well. Stand by.' He took his place at the search periscope.
'Let's take her in nice and smooth, gentlemen.
Under the ice.'
'Admiral Tarrant, sir? This just came out of decoding.'
Tarrant accepted the flimsy from the communications officer, scanning it quickly. It was from Admiral Scott, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a few terse lines, it described Krasilnikov's radio broadcast, explained that the Russians were expected to launch a nuclear missile into their own homeland at or about 1530 hours, and said that the U.S.S. Galveston had been ordered to intercept and sink the Russian sub before it could launch.
Tarrant glanced at his watch. Less than thirty minutes. This was bad, very bad.
'Says here this broadcast from Moscow took place half an hour ago. Why the hell didn't we pick it up?'
'We got something, Admiral,' the communications officer replied.
'Recorded it. Intelligence's got it now, but it might take a while to translate.'
'God damn. The world could blow up around our ears while we're trying to translate a damned radio program. Okay.' He picked up a nearby telephone handset and punched in a number.
'CIC', a voice answered. 'Officer of the Watch Wilkins speaking.'
'This is Admiral Tarrant. What's our current defense posture?'
'Alert state three, Admiral.'
'Come to full alert. Pass the word to the rest of the battle force.'
'Yes, sir. Uh… what is it, Admiral? An attack?'
'Son, we're just about to shove a stick square into the middle of a hornets' nest. Inside of thirty minutes, they're gonna be coming at us all out, and they're going to be looking for blood.'
'Control room, Sonar.'
'Captain here. Go ahead.'
'Ice-breaking noises now at zero-one-eight. No target motion.
Range now within forty thousand yards.'
'Very well. Helm, come right to zero-one-eight. Increase speed to ten knots.'
'Steering right to zero-one-eight, increase speed to ten knots, aye, sir.'
'Bring us up to two hundred feet.'
'Coming to two hundred feet, aye, sir.'
Montgomery did some fast calculations in his head. Extreme range for a Mark 48 Advanced Capability torpedo running at its top speed setting of fifty-five knots was seventeen and a half nautical miles, thirty-five thousand yards. That would give it a running time of just under nineteen minutes. He glanced at the clock on the attack center bulkhead. Damn! If he launched right now, it would still be a squeaker.
To delay longer would mean the torpedoes could not arrive until after the 1530 hours deadline. Would the Russian boomer launch anyway as soon as it heard the sound of the approaching ADCAP? That depended on its orders. It was equally possible the Russians would break off their missile run in order to maneuver. As long as they didn't fire that damned nuke…
'Weapons officer!'
'Weapons, aye.'
'Fire one.'
Lieutenant Villiers slapped the heel of his hand across a red button on the torpedo firing console in front of him. A green light shifted from one side of a status display to the other, and a hollow-sounding shush echoed faintly through the control room. Unlike earlier submarine classes, a Los Angeles sub's torpedo tubes were mounted amidships, two to either side of and just below the attack center, and the sound was easily transmitted through the inner hull.
'Torpedo one fired. We have positive guidance.'
The Mark 48 ADCAP torpedo was wire-guided, at least for the first part of its run. It was being steered by an enlisted man at the weapons board, who tracked it through its own passive sonar relayed down the unraveling wire that connected it with the Galveston. Responding to those signals, the crewman could in turn send steering instructions back down that same cable, using a small joystick on the console before him.
Silently, Montgomery ticked off twenty seconds.
'Fire two.'
The second ADCAP lurched from Galveston's number-two tube.
Shots under the ice were always risky, the sonar picture obscured by reflections from the 'roof.' Montgomery wanted to make certain of his kill.
'Number two away. Running on positive guidance.'
Montgomery glanced at the clock on the bulkhead. It now read 1511 hours.
How long would it be before the Russians heard Galveston's approaching torpedoes?
'Captain! Sonar! High-speed screw, bearing one-nine-five!'
'What!'
'Confirmed, Captain! Torpedo in the water! Range, estimate less than eight thousand meters. Speed fifty to fifty-five knots.'
Damn the Americans and their superbly silent submarines! How had a Yankee attack sub managed to slip to within a few miles of the Revolutsita?
Or… could the attacker be another Russian sub? One loyal to the Leonov faction and attempting to halt the firing of the Revolution's missiles?
