Seagraves twisted the first T-handle and a resounding thump came from the hull, and the ship seemed to rise slightly from the water for just an instant. Seagraves looked back at the crowd.
“All hands, back up twenty yards,” he ordered as he dropped the first detonator to the ice. “This one’s going to be a bit more violent. You too, XO.”
When the crew had backed up, Seagraves twisted the second detonator, and a similar loud thump sounded, the bow lifting slightly out of the water, and then the secondary detonations started, and a tremendous explosion blew the bow wide open, shrapnel blowing over the ice and what was left of the open water, a huge billowing orange mushroom cloud rising over the ice and into the heavens.
After that, it only took the USS New Jersey four seconds to depart the surface. What was left of her hull hit the bottom seven hundred feet below less than two minutes later.
Seagraves wiped dust and soot off his parka, his hood, and his face, dropping the second detonator to the ice. Twenty yards up the slope of the hill, Pacino could swear he saw a tear streaking down the captain’s sooty face.
“Pilot, Engineer,” Chief Engineer Chernobrovin said in Systems Officer Trusov’s headphones. “We’ve lost the reactor.”
Trusov’s voice was biting over the intercom. “What do you mean, you lost it? Did it wander off somewhere?”
“Pilot, all reactor control rods are fully withdrawn from the core, but reactor coolant temperature is dropping, as is steam pressure to the turbines. We’re thirty seconds from reactor plant shutdown due to fuel exhaustion.”
Trusov looked over at Captain Sergei Kovalov. “Why the hell did they send us out with three percent fuel, Captain? Why?”
Kovalov looked at Trusov, frowning. “Continue on with battery power,” he said, as he vaulted out of his mission commander seat to the space behind his and Trusov’s seats, but in front of Vlasenko’s and Dobryvnik’s seat.
“Engineer, Pilot,” Trusov said over the intercom, “continue propulsion on the battery.”
“I’m raising the periscope,” Kovalov said. “I might be able to find open water from the Gigantskiy detonation from the light filtering down from above.”
The sudden and violent explosion from behind them shook the ship hard, the vessel heeling over thirty degrees, then slowly returning to an even keel. The overhead lights flickered, but mercifully, they stayed lit.
“Captain, what was that?” Trusov asked, even though she knew Kovalov knew as little as she did. “What bearing was it?”
“It was to the west,” Kovalov said, training the periscope to look behind them. “I’ve got nothing visually. No surprise,” he said, training the scope forward again.
Trusov turned her display to the navigation plot, which had been overlaid with ice thicknesses, showing where they’d been and the ice pressure ridges forming walls of this box-shaped area. The position of the Belgorod was plotted as a blood-red dot. The explosion had to have come from Belgorod, four miles aft of them. Perhaps one of the Status-6 units cooking off, but at a partial yield. If it had blown up at full strength of ten megatons, Losharik would have been blown to bits at this distance.
“Pilot, Engineer,” the intercom clicked. “Four percent battery life. I’ve got leakage in the sixth and seventh compartments from whatever that explosion was. I’m not starting the drain pumps since they would draw the battery all the way down.”
“Engineer, Pilot, concur,” Trusov snapped into her boom microphone. “We’re taking on water, Captain,” she said to Kovalov. “I hope you’ve got something on the scope.”
“Nothing yet,” Kovalov said.
“Pilot, Engineer, three percent battery and the boat’s taking on an up-angle from the leakage.”
“More like flooding,” Trusov muttered. “Understood,” she said into the intercom. “Maintain propulsion on the battery.”
It occurred to Trusov then that this was the day. This was the day. The last in her life. She, the Losharik crew and the rescued personnel from Belgorod would all die down here. She couldn’t think of a more desolate place to die than a cold, dark, drifting nuclear submarine trapped under polar ice. Whenever she considered the idea of her own mortality, she figured she would eventually die in some kind of battle, a conflict, perhaps, with the Americans. But never of old age. She’d always felt like a young soul, she thought. If she’d had previous lives, she imagined that she had died young in all of them. And now she would die young in this one.
“Two percent battery,” Engineer Chernobrovin announced on the intercom.
“Captain, it’s now or never,” Trusov said.
“Bring us five degrees to the left,” Kovalov ordered.
“You have something?” Trusov asked, as she pushed the joystick control of the rudder over, changing course by five degrees.
“Pilot, Engineer, one percent battery.”
“Captain, please tell us you have good news,” Trusov said, her voice too loud in the cramped cockpit.
“Pilot, Engineer, circuits are shutting down. Battery power is gone.”
“Blow all ballast!” Kovalov yelled.
Trusov hit the twin toggle switches to open the large-bore valves admitting high-pressure air from the main air banks to the forward and aft ballast tanks.
Two seconds later, the lights went out, the panel displays went out and the Losharik became a derelict, drifting collection of titanium, steel, cables, and electronics.
But in the room, Trusov could hear the sound of high-pressure air blowing into the ballast tanks. She took off her headset and leaned back in her pilot’s seat, pulling her hair out of her eyes. She shut her eyes. When she opened them, the dim light of battle lanterns lit the space in an eerie, shadowy semidarkness.
Maybe today wasn’t the day after all, she thought with relief, and as she did, she realized it seemed almost like a prayer giving thanks.
Captain Second Rank Irina Trusov grabbed her arctic parka and climbed out of the main egress hatch. She reached down and helped up Belgorod Captain Georgy Alexeyev, who looked around at the icescape around them.
Losharik had surfaced through a large polynya. If Trusov’s nav plot had been correct, this was on the path that the second Gigantskiy had taken on the way to the Americans, but it had blown up way too early. Off in the distance, she could see the rise of the pressure ridge that had been the target of the Gigantskiy. It had to be at least five nautical miles out.
She stepped to the aft part of the hull that was closest to thick ice and stepped off. The crew and the Belgorod rescued personnel were offloading whatever supplies they could grab. Battlelanterns, blankets, rations. But the boat’s up-angle had gotten worse and the upper rudder was no longer visible as the hull settled into the sea. There were only minutes left before the boat sank to the point that the water came in the egress hatch.
“Captain,” Trusov said to Kovalov, “should we shut the egress hatch and seal the boat? With the inter-compartment hatches shut, perhaps only the sixth and seventh compartments will be fully flooded. The boat could be salvaged.”