She climbed up on the steps set into the side of the bomb, found the oxygen manifold, a pipe as big around as her head. She pulled the package from her left pocket — it’s bulge never noticed by the now-dead mechanic — tore the backing from the adhesive on the device and pressed it hard against the warm pipe. From her inner left sleeve, she pulled off a quarter-meter length of fiber-reinforced adhesive tape and wrapped it around the device and the pipe. She pulled another length off her right sleeve, double wrapping the device to the pipe. She uncovered the electronics package, turned the time delay to three minutes and armed the device.
Three minutes, she thought. Would that be enough to get outside the blast radius of the atmospheric controls room?
She knew she didn’t have long to wait. She hurried down the passageway, took the steps of the ladder back to the zero one deck and walked quickly to her room. She’d barely had time to hide the PSM pistol before the Semtex — and the bomb — exploded.
“Sonar, do we still have contact on Master One?” Seagraves asked.
“Master One has faded,” Albanese said. “He might have decided to bug out after firing that supercavitating torpedo.”
Pacino looked at Vevera. “We may have to blow off this mission and limp home. We can only fight the ship as well as McDermott Aerospace and Shipbuilding designed and built it. If they’d hardened that thrust bearing against shock, we’d still be in the fight.”
Vevera nodded, his face downcast. “Maybe mention that to your dad when we get home. He’s got the juice to tune up those goddamned drydock rats.”
Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev bit his lip and tugged on his uncomfortable five-point seatbelt. He needed to stand, he thought, but with the nuclear-tipped torpedo to be fired in the coming moments, programmed to detonate only seven or eight nautical miles out, he knew the ship would soon be taking another hard shock. He shifted his display to the navigation plot, with the overlaid ice walls drawn in by the navigator along with their track in and out of the ice wall rectangle where they’d shot the first Gigantskiy and later, the Shkval. Navigator Maksimov had drawn in what she thought the boundaries of the open water were, at the original ice target and the Shkval impact point.
They’d lost contact on the American — Hostile One — but it was a good bet that he was at the open water location, either surfaced or hovering beneath it. There were no longer any of the noises that had accompanied his movement in the water. Perhaps, Alexeyev thought, he’d shifted to an emergency propulsion system, but he could only guess based on what he knew about Russian submarines.
He’d positioned the Belgorod at the opening of the ice wall box, hovering and facing east. According to the chart, he had almost six nautical miles northward clear before he’d have to maneuver once he headed north. There was no doubt, trying to drive a big submarine like Belgorod through these ice obstacles at flank speed would be like driving a city bus though downtown Moscow at 150 clicks while blindfolded. And hitting an ice wall at speed could rupture the hull easily. Alexeyev had decided to withdraw north for the six-mile run at fifteen knots, which would get him to the turning point to proceed due west in a little over twenty minutes, which meant he’d only be halfway to where he could turn west ten minutes after the explosion.
He’d debated with Lebedev the idea of increasing the northward speed, but the risks of impact to ice were just too high. He had to rely on the seven-mile distance from the impact point of the Gigantskiy and the thickness of the ice pressure ridge separating him from the box-shaped area.
“Procedures for Gigantskiy unit two launch,” Alexeyev announced to the central command post watchstanders.
After the litany of readiness reports, Alexeyev ordered the Gigantskiy to launch in swim-away mode, since its diameter was much smaller than the diameter of the Status-6 tube it lay in. After engine start, it would roll out on the chassis with the rollers inserted into the tube. Sonar would be able to monitor it to make sure it had a normal launch.
He realized the room was silent, and that the watchstanders were waiting for him to make the order. “Fire tube five, Gigantskiy unit two,” he called.
“Firing five,” Weapons Officer Sobol replied, hitting her trigger fixed function key.
The sound of the Gigantskiy leaving was faint. Alexeyev wondered if he were really hearing it, or simply imagining it.
“Sonar Officer?” he barked at Senior Lieutenant Palinkova.
“Torpedo is away, Captain, and nominal engine start. Unit is speeding up to approach speed, forty-five knots.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Alexeyev said to Lebedev. “Mark the time. Watch Officer, spin the ship to course north and when on course, put on fifteen knots.”
He got out of his seat — he promised himself, just for a moment, while the Gigantskiy sailed off on its long run to the target — and stood at the navigation chart display and watched while Navigator Maksimov, buckled into her jump seat at the navigation console, traced out the estimated location of the Gigantskiy torpedo, updating its position every fifteen seconds.
“Ship is on heading north,” the boatswain reported from the ship control console.
“All ahead standard, turns for fifteen knots,” Captain Lieutenant Shvets ordered.
Alexeyev looked forward to the under-ice sonar, which Palinkova had started up, leaving her post at the sonar console to Captain Lieutenant Sobol, who was no longer needed at the weapons control console. Alexeyev glanced at Lebedev, who was tugging at her own safety belt. She must have had the same thoughts Alexeyev had, debating standing up from the console.
“Sonar Officer, make sure you are calling out if ice ahead is clear,” Lebedev snapped at Palinkova.
“Yes, Madam First. Ice ahead is clear, five hundred meters, ma’am.”
The violent explosion roared through the compartment. Alexeyev grabbed a safety handhold on the navigation console and managed to keep his feet. The lights went out and the room started to fill with smoke. For thirty long painful seconds, Alexeyev felt an odd paralysis, like in a nightmare when he couldn’t move his arms or legs. Finally his central nervous system seemed to snap out of it. He heard his own voice croak out, “What the hell was that?”
The emergency phone circuit clicked, the emergency phone piped into the ship’s general announcing speakers, although raspy and faint. But it was still unmistakably clear this time. “Central Command, this is Glavny Starshina Yeger, in the zero three deck. There’s been a fire and explosion in the auxiliary machinery room. The entire room is gone and there’s smoke and fire. It’s an oxygen fire!”
“All hands,” Alexeyev barked into the general announcing speakers, “fire in auxiliary machinery room. All personnel, don emergency air breathing masks. Rig ship for fire in the second compartment. Fire-fighting teams, muster in the zero two level with Chief Yeger.”
Alexeyev looked at Lebedev after he’d strapped on his mask. “You know what the procedure calls for,” he said quietly.