Quinnivan smiled. “Why, Captain, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you swear. It sounds good coming from you.”
Seagraves smirked and nodded.
The high-pitched sonar ping shrieked again, followed seconds later by a low frequency ping. Pacino’s ears were still ringing when Albanese said, “Master One’s thrusters are shut down, and he’s started back up. Revolutions increasing, Captain. He’s at two zero RPM.”
“Bearing?” Pacino asked.
“Two seven zero but I’ve got near-field effect. He must be right on top of us. Bearing is shifting rapidly. Contact is in our baffles now, Captain. I only have him on the rear-facing sonar on the rudder and he’s faint. He’s now bearing… zero eight five.”
“He’s going east again,” Pacino said.
“But why?” Seagraves asked.
“Captain, OOD, I have a torpedo tube door opening transient and a high frequency tonal that wasn’t present before,” Albanese said, his voice half an octave higher than usual.
“He’s going east, drives right past us and opens up a tube door,” Quinnivan said. “He’s going to shoot at an ice wall.”
“With a Gigantskiy torpedo?” Seagraves stepped to the navigation plot. “How far are we from when he stopped and spun around to the west in the first place, Navigator?”
“About thirteen thousand yards, Captain,” Lewinsky said, measuring on the electronic surface of the chart.
“That’s way too close to shoot a nuke, Skipper,” Quinnivan said.
“I have a torpedo in the water!” Albanese shouted. “Torpedo in the water, rough bearing from rear-facing, zero eight five!”
Pacino looked at Seagraves and Quinnivan. “We’re on the bottom, facing away from him. If he’s launching at an ice wall thirteen thousand yards out, we’re about to be next door to a hell of a shock wave. Is it safe to be on the bottom? Is it safe to have the shock wave hit our stern first?”
Seagraves bit his lip. “Which do you want more, Mr. Pacino? Propulsion or sonar?”
“One’s pretty much useless without the other, sir.”
“Let’s stay put,” Seagraves said. “But pass the word in all spaces, rig for shock.”
“Aye, sir,” Pacino said. “Pilot, pass the word to all spaces, rig ship for collision.”
“Torpedo is receding,” Albanese said, regaining his calm, his voice normal again. “I’ve lost the signal to Master One and torpedo is faint on the rear-facing.”
“Very well, Sonar,” Pacino said. “Any idea the speed that Gigantskiy goes?”
“Sixty knots,” Quinnivan said. “In about four minutes, we’re going to know how our day is going to end.”
“Or our week or month,” Seagraves said.
“Safety settings?” Alexeyev asked Weapons Officer Sobol, who had left the sonar and sensor console lineup and returned to the starboard side’s battlecontrol console.
“Anti-circular run is in. Standoff range is out,” she said. “We’re closer than ten miles, so I’ve defeated the interlock.”
“Unlock codes inserted?”
“Yes, Captain. Weapon status on nuclear arming is green.”
“Attention in central,” Alexeyev said. “Prepare to fire on the ice wall, large bore tube one, Gigantskiy unit one, weapon course zero eight five, weapon departure in swim-out mode, direct contact mode enabled, command detonate at six point five nautical miles enabled, run-to-enable one thousand meters.”
“Ship is ready, Captain,” Shvets said.
“Weapon is ready, Captain,” Sobol said.
“Battlecontrol targeting ready,” Senior Lieutenant Pavlovsky said from the battlecontrol console.
“Fire Gigantskiy unit one,” Alexeyev ordered.
“Fire Gigantskiy unit one, aye, Captain, and I have torpedo engine ignition,” Sobol said. “I have torpedo rollout. And torpedo is clear of the tube, Captain.”
“Sonar?”
“Weapon is steady on course zero eight five, Captain,” Palinkova reported from the sonar and sensor console, where she’d taken over for Sobol. “It’s a good shoot.”
“It’s not good till we see if it gets all the way there and detonates as it’s supposed to,” Alexeyev said, glancing at Kovalov, who shook his head slowly.
“Attention in central command,” Alexeyev said. “All hands strap in. Seat belts on and tight.”
20
1343:03.96 Unit One CPU energized.
1343:04.50 Nuclear unlock codes received, unlock codes verified correct.
1343:05.88 Target parameters loaded. Unit safety settings loaded. Nuclear yield selected.
1344:12.39 Unit receives signal to start engine.
1344:13.42 Unit’s engine started.
1344:14.58 Rollout from torpedo tube commenced.
1344:15.69 Rollout from torpedo tube complete. Unit is in open water. Unit speed, 5 knots.
1344:20.11 Unit steady on course 085. Unit speed, 20 knots.
1345:10.23 Unit steady on course 085. Unit speed, 40 knots.
1345:12.56 Unit steady on course 085. Unit speed, 60 knots. Spooled cable distance from launching ship, 130 meters.
1350:00.00 Spooled cable distance from launching ship, 10,450 meters.
1352:07.09 Spooled cable distance from launching ship, 11,667 meters. Unit is at point of command detonation. Unit spins arming plate, lining up low explosives with high explosives.
1352:07.10 Unit’s CPU provides signal to low explosive to detonate. Low explosives detonate. Flame path to high explosives operational. High explosives begin detonation.
1352.07.11 High explosives compress two halves of plutonium sphere. Plutonium becomes completely spherical. Plutonium neutron level cascades to runaway. Nuclear detonation expected in approximately—
The fission bomb explosion of Gigantskiy unit one formed a plasma that expanded from the close confines of the weapon’s plutonium compartment into the heavy water compartment. Up to that point, the nuclear explosion was generating energy from the elimination of mass from the heavy plutonium nuclei splitting into two lighter atoms, with the product atoms weighing less than the original plutonium. The missing mass was converted to energy in the form of explosive heat. As the plasma blew outward, it enveloped the heavy water cans, the heavy water able to fuse together to form helium atoms, and again, the resulting products were lighter than the heavy water at the start of the reaction, the difference in mass converted to pure energy, and the fission bomb became a fusion bomb, also known as a hydrogen bomb.
The plasma expanded outward from the central point and quickly devoured the weapon. Fifty meters to the east, a monolithic ice wall extended from the sea floor to an ice ridge range above. The plasma expanded and reached out to the wall. The surface of the ice wall began to vaporize and become a plasma itself, the electrons of the water molecules flying off into space.
One second after detonation, a half mile hole was blown into the ice wall and the ice overhead opened up into open water, the explosion blowing high into the atmosphere. On the other side of the explosion from the ice wall, the detonation caused a pressure wave to extend outward, at first spherically, but when it hit the shallow bottom and the ice overhead, it reinforced itself into a solid wave spreading out cylindrically.
Six-and-a-half nautical miles from the torpedo explosion, the shock wave hit the Russian submarine Belgorod. A half mile farther out to the west, the shock wave encountered the bottomed hull of the American submarine New Jersey.