He pushed the call for the torpedo room. “Torpedo!” he shouted in the same tone. “When will you clowns be ready with those fish?”
“About a minute, Commander! We’re going as fast as we can!”
“Very well! Hurry!” He slammed the phone into its cradle, leaped out of the observation post and ran toward the hatch leading down into the torpedo room. He was almost in a frenzy. He knew well what the strange submarine was up to. He knew as soon as he realized it must be an American. Already he regretted the depth charges. They had only alerted the enemy. It would have been better to surprise him with the torpedoes. Having detected the silo base, perhaps even having photographed it, the American submarine commander was undoubtedly hightailing it to find a place from which to inform Washington. This must be prevented at all costs! If these torpedomen were ever to beat their three-minute record, now was indisputably the time!
By his presence in the torpedo room he hoped to galvanize his men into even greater effort. But in this he was disappointed, for even to his nontechnical eyes they were working as rapidly as possible. Shumikin had the good sense to desist from his exhortations as soon as this was clear to him, and finally there came the moment when both torpedoes could be fired, fortunately at a still well-defined sonar target. He congratulated himself also on having acceded to the demand of the senior torpedoman that there be a suitable wait, more than half a minute, before firing the second torpedo. Else they might interfere with each other, the man had said, rendering both of them harmless. How nearly he had come, in his impatience, to overriding the torpedoman’s obvious professional training! But now both torpedoes were on their way, and at least one of them, most likely both, would certainly home on the target. Sonar should shortly hear two muffled explosions, and he would then know he had at least protected the grave secret entrusted to his care.
As for Grigory Ilyich Zmentsov and his ship, the heroic Novosibirsky Komsomol, it was too bad, but a painful duty now devolved on him. He would spend all day composing a fitting epitaph in the form of a message describing how they had sacrificed their lives in the service of their country. He would begin this difficult chore immediately, with the highest personal priority, as soon as sonar reported the two explosions…
Walking deliberately, Shumikin left the torpedo compartment and went down another hatchway leading to the sonar room. It would be good to be there in person, both to ensure the highest performance of its personnel, whose attainments he had had reason to doubt recently, and to be able to report that he had personally witnessed the results of the initiative he himself had been forced to take in performance of his duty.
The depth charge meter in Manta’s control room had gone wild, but it had also indicated that all the depth charges were at some distance below. Not many in her crew had experienced depth charging. The ship’s hull vibrated resoundingly, despite its extraordinarily solid structure. The noise was tremendous. Pipelines, frames, cableways, even the very bulkheads with their great watertight doors shook spasmodically with every explosion. Buck Williams, after a quick reassuring look at the depth charge meter — the tests, months ago, had convinced him the gadget really worked — took a perverse pleasure in the initiation his crew was getting. Cushing’s crew too, for that matter. He, at least, had experienced it all before.
So had Rich. Buck had felt actual pleasure carrying out Rich’s order to stay at periscope depth despite the shattering, smashing blows being inflicted, the dust storm raised inside the ship, even the knowledge that somehow one of the charges might be set shallow enough to do actual harm. It had been his evaluation, concurred in by Richardson and substantiated by the depth charge meter, that the Soviets would have to set the charges deep. Otherwise they would risk unacceptable damage to their own installation, in particular their precious silos. The guess had proved correct. And then, when the last of twenty explosions had died its reverberating death, he was able, with the greatest composure, to seize the temporary cessation of the attack to order depth increased and the reactor to deliver power to the waiting turbines.
It had all been too easy. First the inspection of the missile base. Then, the depth charge attack had removed any doubt of Soviet intention to safeguard knowledge of its existence in the Arctic, even at the cost of direct, hostile, military action. Now no power on earth could prevent the Manta from making known what she had discovered. Buck heaved a deep sigh, and at that moment heard the scream from Schultz, ten feet away in his sonar room. “Torpedo!” Schultz shouted the word, shouted it with all the force and all the voice at his command.
Buck did not wait for the sweeping motion of Richardson’s hand. “All ahead emergency! Take her down!” Instantly he could feel the tilt of the deck, the bite of the suddenly accelerated screws. Tom Clancy at the diving station and the engineers in the maneuvering room were slamming all their pent-up tension into execution of the order. But there was too little time. The range was much too short. Even as the air vented from the negative tank, adding its whistle to the now silent compartment and its quota of air pressure which he could feel on his ears, there was a vicious jolt, a violent resounding blow, and the high-pitched sound of an explosion combined with rending metal. Buck could hear something, metal fragments, rattling on the hull.
Simultaneously, steady, fantastically heavy vibration began to be communicated to Manta’s rugged structure. Buck and Rich were both looking at the annunciators, when, unbidden, the starboard annunciator turned to Stop.
“Starboard shaft is stopped! Maneuvering says the starboard shaft is damaged! They’ve stopped it because of heavy vibration!” The telephone talker stuttered in his panic.
Buck snatched the nearest handset out of its cradle. “Maneuvering, Captain here. How bad is it?”
“That explosion must have been right on the starboard propeller, Captain! She started vibrating like crazy right after! I had to stop it, sir!”
“Are you taking water? How’s your shaft seal?”
“The engineroom’s okay! We’re checking the stern room now!” Buck held the instrument to his head while he waited. “The seal’s been damaged, Captain! The stern room’s taking water! Request the drain pump on the stern room bilges!”
“Tom! Take the angle off the boat! Start her back up! Stern room, open your drain-pump suction! We’ll put the pump on as soon as she’s lined up! Maneuvering, get some men back aft and tighten the gland! Where’s Mr. Langforth?”
“He’s just run back there! So did Mr. Steele.”
“Good! Keep me informed about the leak!” Buck turned to Abbott, who was gripping the other side of the periscope-stand guardrail, staring at him. “Jerry! Get on aft as fast as you can! We’ve got to know how bad we’re flooding!”
To Clancy, Buck said, “Tom, how are the stern planes?”
“They’re moving slower than before, but I think we’ve still got them, Captain! We’re taking the angle off now!”
“Have someone check the hydraulic pressure, and get a report from the after room on how the stern planes are operating!”
“Aye, aye, sir — passing five hundred feet! Twenty-five degrees down, decreasing!”
Buck and Rich could feel the angle lessening as Tom Clancy followed instructions.
There was another cry from Schultz. “Torpedo! Another one!” His scream was of pure terror.
Manta was still in a headlong dive, her port engine still racing. Buck did not hesitate. “Right full rudder!” he ordered, his tense voice sharp with urgency. “Tom, keep the angle on!”