Dobrynin at once discarded that possibility. Some of the recent Soviet submarine designs, building on technology liberated from the West, were extremely quiet. Typhoons, for example, were among the most silent submarines in the world's oceans. But if this was a Russian attack sub it was most likely what the West called an Alfa, a small boat designed for high-speed interceptions… and the pumps for an Alfa's liquid sodium-cooled reactor were distinctive, and extremely noisy. There was no way that the Revolution's sonar officers could have missed an Alfa's approach!
So the torpedo was an American one, probably one of their wire-guided ADCAPS, with a range of less than twenty miles at fifty-five knots, and carrying a 300-kilogram high-explosive warhead.
Why had they fired? Possibly, they feared an ICBM launch on the continental United States. Whatever their reasoning, there was no time to analyze it. Dobrynin was faced now with a critical tactical decision. Should he stay put and carry out the launch sequence already begun, hoping to get the missile aloft before the torpedo hit; or should he button up and dive, seeking maneuvering room beneath the ice in an attempt to avoid the torpedo and keep his options open for a launch later?
'Sokolov!' he yelled. 'Abort the count! Secure missile hatch and prepare to dive!'
'At once, Comrade Captain!'
'Is this wise, Comrade Captain?' Inevitably, Strelbitski was there, at Dobrynin's elbow, his thin lips tight with disapproval.
'We could still carry out our orders before the torpedo reaches US.'
'Damn you, Strelbitski. I have a duty to this vessel and to these men.
We will fire the cursed missile… if we survive the next five minutes!' He snatched up a microphone. 'Torpedo room! This is Dobrynin!'
'Torpedo room here, Captain.'
'Torpedo status!'
'Eight tubes loaded, Comrade Captain. One through four with Type 65!
Five through eight with Type C-1!'
The Type 65 was the largest and deadliest torpedo in the world, a 650mm-thick, nine-meter-long wake- or active-sonar-homer that could travel twenty-seven nautical miles at fifty knots, or fifty-four miles at thirty knots. Type C-1s were older, smaller torpedoes with smaller warheads and a range of eight miles.
Typhoons mounted tubes for both sizes, arrayed four-over-four across the huge submarine's broad, bluntly rounded bow.
'We will use the Type 65s,' Dobrynin ordered. 'Set running speed at fifty knots.'
'Comrade Captain! The missile hatch is secure. The submarine is ready to dive.'
'Then dive him, damn you! Dive!' The Typhoon's deck trembled as water thundered into the sub's ballast tanks. 'Set depth to… set depth at twenty meters. Come to one-eight-five, speed fifteen knots!'
Strelbitski stared at him, open-mouthed.
'We still have a few tricks in our weapons locker, Comrade Comnissar.'
The man's face was pale. He looked frankly terrified. 'What is it you intend to do?'
Dobrynin did not reply. He was staring at the attack center's overhead, focusing on the faint, far hum of the American torpedo, audible now, and swiftly growing louder.
Sixteen long minutes had passed since the torpedoes had been fired.
'Torpedo one has acquired the target, Captain,' the weapons officer announced.
'Cut it loose.'
Freed of the wire connecting it to the Galveston, the torpedo went to active homing, sending out a stream of sharp pings that reflected from the hull of its slow-moving target and returned like a radar echo, guiding the ADCAP torp toward its prey.
'Torpedo two has acquired.'
'Release it.'
Now two Mark 48s howled through the water, skimming a few yards beneath the jagged, downward thrust of the ice-roofed surface. The target was less than two miles ahead.
'Now!' Dobrynin roared. His eyes were squeezed shut as he pictured the shifting relative positions of submarine, torpedoes, and ice. 'Full speed ahead! Come right to three-five-zero! Engineering! I want one hundred ten percent on both reactors, now! Kick his ass!'
Slavnyy Oktyabrskaya Revolutsita shuddered, heeling sharply to the right as the helmsman swung the giant sub into a hard starboard turn. Strelbitski grabbed for a brass stanchion and clung to it, his eyes very large as he stared up past the attack center's fluorescent lights.
Ping!
The sound of the torpedoes actively hunting the Revolutsita echoed through the sub's double hull like a hammer blow.
Ping! Just a little farther into the turn…
WHAM!
The Typhoon, already heeling a good twenty degrees to starboard, slewed even farther onto the beam, flinging men, clipboards, loose papers, and unsecured gear into the bulkhead. In the crews' quarters, off-duty personnel were unceremoniously dumped from their bunks; in the torpedo room one of the racked monsters burst its steel bonds and smashed across the compartment, crushing two torpedomen to death and pulping the legs of a shrieking third.
Then the Typhoon rocked back to port, hurling her bruised and battered crew back in the opposite direction, before steadying at last in a precarious balance between the two extremes.
And around the sub thundered the booming roar of echoes gone mad.
'Hit!' someone yelled, as the boom rumbled through the water, caressing the Galveston.
'Belay that!' Villiers shouted back. 'It exploded too soon!'
Then the second torpedo went off, closer to the sub. The second blast's underwater shock wave, riding close on the heels of the first, caught the attack sub and shoved her, hard. Her bow came up… and the sail rocked into a rugged mass of ice protruding down from the ceiling, the deepest thrust of a major pressure ridge. Sparks dazzled from a bank of electronic gear, and smoke began billowing through the compartment.
'Fire!' someone yelled as the lights dimmed. 'Fire in the control room!'
'Captain! This is the sonar officer. I cannot get a clear picture.
Wide-band noise and transients-'
'Never mind that. Is the sonar still operational?'
'Yes, Captain. But it will be several minutes before we have full sensitivity again.'
'We don't need it. We have them! Helm! Bring us back around to one-nine-zero!'
The Typhoon had been shaken when the American torpedoes had struck the ice, but was otherwise undamaged. Dobrynin had acted deliberately, turning away from the torpedoes and going to full speed, a maneuver that had attracted the notice of the torpedo's passive sensors and drawn them along. He'd noticed, during his maneuvering here an hour before, the presence of several major pressure ridges, where the ice, piled high by wind and currents, thickened into inverted ranges that posed a serious threat to submarines operating close to the ice.
Or to torpedoes. He'd been taking a gamble; Revolutsita could have smashed one of those ridges with her
