The keypad sparked and briefly burst into flames. Anna waved her hand at the flames, which died out, leaving it smoking slightly. She operated the door handle and the door opened. She looked around, saw no one, and shut the door behind her. She walked down the rows of weapon control electronics, each a modular part of the larger “second captain” AI system that was woven into the fabric of the entire ship, from ship control to reactor control to battlecontrol to sensors. She found the cabinets that she had been seeking, one that controlled the large-bore tubes for the Gigantskiys, the other two for the 53-centimeter torpedo tube banks. She needed to open all three cabinets, even though one would prove useless since the torpedoes were gone but for the VA-111 Shkval supercavitating torpedo loaded in one of the tubes. But Anna had not been able to find out which torpedo bank the Shkval was in, so she would have to make her modifications to both port and starboard bank small-bore tube controllers.
She opened all three cabinet doors and withdrew her wire-cutting and crimping tool from her other coverall pocket. She knew which circuit she was looking for, but her knowledge came from memorized schematics, not physical drawings. She had to identify the major electronics cards first, then the wires connecting them. She found the first module and its signal wire, cut it, removed the insulation, then prepared it to be terminated on the device she withdrew from her left sock.
The device was a white phosphorus grenade, slightly smaller than the size of a can of sardines. She turned the wire around the first termination lug of the grenade, tightened the termination lug, then wound the other end of the wire at the second lug. She tucked the grenade into a void between racks of computer card modules, then performed the same operation on the other two panels. If this had been correctly implemented, a command to launch a weapon would put a small current through the wire that now included the grenade in the circuit, and when it did, the casing of the grenade would rupture and expose the tetraphosphorus to the air of the ship. The white phosphorus was highly flammable and pyrophoric — that is, self-igniting — upon exposure to air. When the casing was cracked, it would explode into toxic flames and ruin the entire cabinet. There would be no weapons leaving the ship after that.
Or, at least, so Anna hoped. She inserted the next two grenades, then closed the cabinet doors, stepped back to make sure it looked like they hadn’t been tampered with, then cracked the electronics room door. The space was empty. Anna slipped back through the door, wiped soot off the door keypad with her sleeve, then quickly withdrew the way she had come. She shut the door of her stateroom behind her and breathed in a sigh of relief.
“Pilot, vertical surface the ship,” Pacino ordered Dankleff at the ship control station.
“Vertical surface, Pilot, aye.” Dankleff hit the diving alarm, since the rig for ultraquiet had been secured after the thrust bearing failed. The shrill and loud OOOOOO-GAAAAAH roared from the speakers. “Surface, surface, surface!” Dankleff announced on the 1MC. “Three hundred feet. Two-fifty. Two hundred. One-fifty. Easing positive rate to five feet per second. One hundred feet. Eighty. Seventy feet. Sixty, and sail’s broached. Fifty, forty-five, forty, thirty-nine feet. Ship is surfaced, sir. Recommend starting a low-pressure blow on all main ballast tanks.”
“Prepare to low pressure blow all main ballast tanks,” Pacino said.
“Officer of the Deck, I have trouble here,” Dankleff said. Pacino hurried to Dankleff’s seat to look over his shoulder at his flatpanels.
“What’s up, Pilot?”
“Main induction failure. Head valve is stuck shut.”
“Is it possible it’s just an indication problem? A failed instrument?”
Dankleff looked over his shoulder at Pacino. “We’ll need to get on top of the sail to find out.”
“Conn, Radio!” the overhead speaker rasped. “We have flash traffic off of COMM-1.”
“Bring it to control,” Pacino said to the overhead, but the radioman was already there with a pad computer, thrusting it into Captain Seagraves’ hands. Seagraves read it and passed it to Quinnivan, who pulled his reading glasses out of his pocket and read the message. By then, Seagraves had pulled the 1MC shipwide announcing system’s microphone out of the overhead.
“Attention all hands,” Seagraves voice boomed throughout the ship. “This is the captain. We have immediate and urgent orders to fire upon and sink the Belgorod. Man battlestations.”
Pacino traded glances with Lewinsky. This operation had transitioned from surveillance to combat in a single one-sentence radio message.
“Attention in the firecontrol party,” Seagraves said to the room as the additional watchstanders rushed in to take over from the section tracking party’s watchstanders. “My intention is to open torpedo tube door number one to a Mark 48 ADCAP in offense mode and torpedo tube door number four to a Mark 48 in countermeasure torpedo mode. We will dial in an assumed solution for Master One. I believe Master One is withdrawing to the narrow entrance of this closed-in region of ice and he will fire on us from there. Once we’re in position, we will fire the offensive weapon, and if we detect a counterfire, we’ll shoot the CMT weapon.” Seagraves looked at Pacino. “Officer of the Deck, vertical dive to two hundred feet and spin the ship to face west.”
As Pacino executed Seagraves’ order, Quinnivan turned to the captain. “Should we try to detonate the mines, Captain?”
“The SEALs seem to think they didn’t survive the shock wave of the Gigantskiy torpedo,” Seagraves said.
“Can’t hurt to try, sir.”
“It’s an active sonar pulse, XO. It would give away our exact bearing. When we’re hovering, we’re not making enough noise to be detected.”
“We’ll make noise once that torpedo leaves the ship.”
“True, XO. We can try the sonar pulse after we fire tube one.”
“Good plan, Captain.”
“Ship is in position, Captain,” Watch Officer Vilen Shvets announced from his starboard side seat at the command console. “We’ve hovered and spun to heading zero eight seven. Request permission to hit Hostile One with an active sonar ping to identify his range.”
Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev was strapped into his portside seat at the command console with his five-point seatbelt cinched up tight.
“Attention in central command,” he said to the room. “My intentions are to fire the Shkval in tube six at Hostile One. We will ping active on him first to get a target data package to insert into the Shkval. We expect only a one-in-three chance of a kill with that weapon. If we are unable to confirm target destruction, we will launch the second Gigantskiy torpedo in ultraslow speed mode, and withdraw rapidly, put distance between us and the detonation point, getting ice walls between us and the point of detonation. Everyone clear?”
The room was silent. He looked at Lebedev, who nodded solemnly. Her reminders on the last mission to announce his intentions — and to seek, and take, advice — had improved his performance, he thought. Perhaps he did live inside his own head a little too much.