"What's our depth?"
"Depth one hundred ten feet, Captain. One hundred thirty feet beneath our keel."
"Thank you, Mr. Carver."
"Now on new heading, two-zero-five, Captain."
"Thank you. Sonar! Conn. Where's our friend?"
"I've lost him astern, Captain. We're going too fast. Last-known position would put it three thousand yards astern."
"If it completed the turn as advertised," Walberg said, looking at his TMA board, "it's now twenty-five hundred yards astern, closing at twelve knots. Time to impact, six minutes, ten seconds."
"COB. What's the running time on a Soviet Type C?" That was the standard 533mm wire-guided torpedo in general use in the Soviet Navy.
"Well," Master Chief Warren said, "eight nautical miles at fifty knots… make it nine minutes thirty."
Gordon checked the big clock forward. The enemy torpedo had been in the water a little less than two minutes out of a total run time of nine and a half minutes. It would catch up to them… but if they could dodge it that one time, the torpedo wouldn't have the fuel for a second pass.
"Depth beneath keel."
"Deepening, Captain. Depth beneath keel now one-eight-five feet."
"Diving Officer. Take us down to two-zero-zero feet."
"Make depth two-zero-zero feet, aye, sir."
"Let's see if it chases down after us."
"So… this is how you spend your spare time?" Randall asked.
The deck was tilting sharply forward. They were diving again, and from the faint, trembling shudder in the bulkhead, they were moving full ahead, tearing a hole through the water. They'd all heard the double detonation of Pittsburgh's torpedoes striking home. They must be running now to escape a final Soviet salvo.
"You know what they say, sir," Chief Allison said. "Submarine duty is ninety-nine percent boredom, sitting around on your ass wishing something would fucking happen. It's that last one percent that keeps life interesting."
"It's pretty much the same in the Teams," Fitch said. "You're bored most of the time, except when you're scared shitless."
"You people have a favorite watering hole ashore?" Randall asked. The sailors in the torpedo room didn't exactly seem nervous, but the air was tense. The question was meant to vent some of the pressure.
"Huh?" Boyce said. "Sure, coupla places. The Ram and Ewe was our favorite, until the bike gang took it over."
"Bike gang?"
Several of the torpedo-room crew started telling him about their last liberty ashore at the Tup 'n' Baa. Minutes passed….
"Time to impact, forty seconds," Walberg announced.
That was if the torpedo were racing up their ass. Pittsburgh was still moving too fast to detect the noise of its approach. Gordon was doing this all by the numbers, placing a hell of a lot of faith in the probability that the enemy torp was where he thought it was.
"Stand by CM."
"Ready with the countermeasures, Captain."
"Time to impact, thirty seconds."
Gordon waited out the seconds in a control room gone utterly silent, though as he listened, it seemed that the air was crackling with suppressed tension.
"Time to impact, twenty seconds."
He picked up the microphone for the boat's 1MC circuit. "All hands, this is the captain! Grab hold, everybody. This is going to be rough!" He released the transmit key and found the Diving Officer, at his station behind the helm and planes-man. "Mr. Carver! Blow ballast, full up planes! Put us on the roof!"
"Full up planes, aye aye, sir! Blow ballast!"
"Release countermeasures!"
"Countermeasures away!"
The Pittsburgh shuddered, then gave a mighty belch as water was forced from her ballast tanks by blasts of compressed air. Bow nosing high, she started to rise.
Faster now, and faster still. "Depth now one hundred feet!" Carver called. "Eighty feet! Sixty… fifty… "
They could all hear the high-pitched whine coming from astern, now, as the torpedo tried its simple-brained best to mark them down.
"Thirty feet! Broaching!.. "
The deck was slanted now at a sixty-degree angle, forcing everyone to cling to the nearest stanchion, table or console just to keep from being flung against an after bulkhead. For a moment, the Pittsburgh seemed to hang suspended there, halfway between sea and sky, trying, incongruously, to fly… before her bow began to descend in a fearsome blast of spray and shuddering, wrenching white noise.
Gordon felt the Pittsburgh's nose come down, felt the shock as her forward keel struck the water.
"Helm! Bring us to starboard! Hard over! Sonar! Can you track that torpedo?"
"Negative track, Captain!"
"We're at plus five by the TMA," Walberg said. "Plus eight… plus nine… "
"The torpedo missed, Captain," Rodriguez announced. "I have its screws, bearing two-zero-five, directly ahead of us, and opening the range. Damned thing passed right underneath us as we grabbed for daylight."
A few more seconds passed, as Gordon tried to find his stomach.
"Conn, Sonar. Torpedo has just gone inactive, sir. I've lost it."
Gordon nodded. "Very well. Maneuvering, ahead slow. Helm, bring us to new course two-zero-zero." He exchanged a long look with Latham and Warren and the other men at their stations. "I'm tired of this game, gentlemen. Let's go home."
"So," the thug said. "Have you heard?"
John Wesley Cabot frowned. The man sitting opposite him, seedy, a bit oily, reminded him of a thug, a heavy from an old movie, with his drooping mustache and shifty dark eyes.
"If you mean, have I heard the Pittsburgh is returning to port today, yes. Of course."
"What are we going to do about it?"
"My dear Grigor, what can we do about it? Your people had their chance. I gave you the information they needed. If they can't be more efficient in their operation—"
"Damn you. We lost one of our newest submarines! The captain was related to one of our most prestigious naval commanders!"
"I'm sorry for you, Grigor. I really am. But I did my part. It was up to your people to do theirs."
He looked away from the Russian — ostensibly a junior clerk at the Russian embassy, but in fact an agent for the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency. Outside, the sun was shining brightly, as people — shoppers, mothers, businessmen, lawyers — went about their daily routine. He'd used this Chinese restaurant, trendy and upscale, several times before to transact business with this man and others over the past year or so.
"What happened… was very bad, Mr. Cabot. Very bad."
"Indeed, yes! A Soviet submarine, firing on one of our submarines, inside Japanese territorial waters? Yes. What will the world press have to say about that?"
"The incident is being, as you people say, hushed up. The story appeared in several Japanese papers, but we have taken steps to ensure that it goes no further. The Japanese government is not particularly stable just now. If word came out that a nuclear submarine had exploded and sunk within a few miles of their coastline, their environmentalist factions would go wild. It is in their best interests that they cooperate with us in our salvage and cleanup efforts."