She nodded. “We don’t have a choice, Captain.”
“Watch Officer,” Alexeyev said, “set up to jettison oxygen banks overboard.”
“Sir?” Shvets said, astonished. “Captain, if we do that, we’ll not only have no atmo control but no oxygen. And we’re under thick ice, sir!”
“I know, Shvets. Now follow your goddamned orders.”
Alexeyev didn’t blame young Captain Lieutenant Vilen Shvets for his outburst. The younger generation of officers were taught not to take orders blindly, but to think and contribute. Except in emergencies where “immediate actions” were called for. And ice or no ice, the immediate action for an oxygen fire submerged was to dump the oxygen overboard. No oxygen, no fire.
“Sir, we’re set up to blow oxygen overboard,” Shvets said hesitantly.
“Watch Officer, jettison oxygen,” Alexeyev said. He turned to Lebedev and leaned in close to her. “Well, that’s it,” he said quietly. “That’s the end of the mission.”
“Commencing O2 blow overboard, Captain,” Shvets said. The sound of rushing gas could be heard in the room, the sound continuing for half a minute. Alexeyev felt a mourning for all that life-giving oxygen leaving the ship. That meant he’d need to return to open water, where the first Gigantskiy had detonated and opened up a polynya, and where the second one was headed. But making turns toward open water would take him closer to the second Gigantskiy’s detonation point. But it couldn’t be helped. If the hull could hold up to the second detonation and maintain some kind propulsion, he could radio for help and save the crew.
All that assumed, of course, that the American — Hostile One — was on the bottom in pieces.
It was quiet in the control room of the USS New Jersey. It was also crowded, with watchstanders at every console. Captain Seagraves stood between the command console and the navigation plot. Not far from him, XO Quinnivan stood behind the attack center of the BSY-1 battlecontrol system. At the end of the row, the weapon control console was manned by Weapons Officer Styxx. Behind the command console, Officer of the Deck Pacino stood, rotating the display from navigation to weapons control to sonar. On the sonar screen for broadband, there was no sign of Master One. They could no longer hear him on narrowband and there’d been no transients. The Omega had disappeared.
“Attention in the firecontrol party,” Seagraves announced. “Firing point procedures, aim point number one for Master One, VPT door two, tube eleven, Tomahawk SUBROC, depth zero detonation.”
“Ship ready,” Pacino reported.
“Weapon ready,” Styxx called.
“Solution ready and input as aim point number one,” Quinnivan said.
Aim point number one was the opening of the rectangular ice wall area where Master One had withdrawn to, and from where he’d fired the supercavitating torpedo. Odds were, he was no longer there, Pacino thought, and had driven out the way he’d come, on a northward path, but aim point number two was ahead of him by five miles. Between the two detonations, they’d definitely do some damage.
“Shoot on generated aim point,” Seagraves ordered.
“Tube eleven, fire!” Styxx shouted as she rotated the trigger lever from the nine o’clock position to the three o’clock position.
The sound of the tube firing vibrated the deck, but wasn’t the ear-slamming explosion of a torpedo tube firing. A few moments later, the sound of the rocket motor ignition could be heard faintly from above them.
“I have Tomahawk SUBROC normal launch,” Senior Chief Albanese called from the sonar stack.
“Firing point procedures,” Seagraves announced, “aim point number two for Master One, VPT door two, tube twelve, Tomahawk SUBROC, depth zero detonation.”
The launch reports and actions were repeated, until the second Tomahawk SUBROC had lifted off from the open water overhead.
Pacino walked to the navigation chart and joined Navigator Lewinsky. “You have aim points one and two drawn in?”
“Inputting them now,” he said. A red circle appeared at the entrance to the ice-wall box. Lewinsky drew it to be a quarter mile in diameter. The blast damage zone would be bigger, certainly. A second red circle appeared five miles north of aim point one, also a quarter mile in diameter.
“Time of flight, XO?” Seagraves asked.
“Two minutes thirty seconds, Captain,” Quinnivan said. “Two minutes to go for unit eleven.”
“Torpedo in the water! Bearing two six one!” Albanese’s voice cracked as he made the announcement.
Pacino turned his command console display to sonar’s transient module, then to the broadband display. Streaking down the broadband waterfall was a loud trace, at constant bearing 261. Which meant it was coming right for them.
“Classify the torpedo, Sonar,” Seagraves snapped.
“It’s another Magnum, sir. A Gigantskiy.”
“Fuck,” Quinnivan said.
“Snapshot tube three in countermeasure mode, bearing two six one, immediate enable, high-to-medium active snake!” Seagraves ordered.
A snapshot was a quick reaction torpedo launch and usually ejected a torpedo with no firecontrol solution, just shot it out on a bearing line and hoped for the best. Ironically, it was a tactic picked up from the Soviet submarine force in the Cold War.
“Weapon ready!” Styxx said.
“Fire!” Seagraves ordered.
The deck jumped and Pacino’s ears slammed. He glanced at Lewinsky, then at Short Hull Cooper. A one megaton torpedo was inbound, and based on how badly they’d fared from the Gigantskiy detonation six miles away, if this one got closer than that, this mission was definitely over. Hell, the ship itself might be destroyed, he thought. For Pacino, there was no fear of death, not after the Piranha sinking and his near-death experience. He knew down to the marrow of his bones that life and consciousness didn’t end. But still, there was regret, regret at failure. At failing to win in battle against the Belgorod. And sadness at the thought of never seeing his father again. Or Rachel Romanov. Or his friends from the crew. And about Rachel, did she ever come out of the coma? Would she live? And if Pacino died, how would she react to the news?
“Snapshot tube four in countermeasure mode, bearing two six one, immediate enable, high-to-medium passive snake!” Seagraves ordered.
“Weapon ready!” Styxx said.
“Fire!” Seagraves ordered.
The deck jumped again, and again Pacino’s eardrums slammed.
“Line up tube three and four in CMT mode,” Seagraves ordered Styxx.
“Tube three is ready, Captain,” she replied.
“Snapshot tube three!”
The torpedo firing in countermeasure mode continued with tube three fired, then a second torpedo fired from tube four, when the sudden bang sound came from the west, the direction the ship was pointed. It was loud and abrupt, but there was silence afterward. Was it from outside the ship or from their own bow?
Quinnivan looked at Seagraves, his eyes wide. “Was that from us?”
Albanese turned to face the captain. “That was from the west,” he said. “Not our SUBROC, obviously. I’m guessing it was from Master One. Maybe something happened to him.”
“Isn’t it time for the SUBROC detonation, XO?” Seagraves asked Quinnivan.
Gigantskiy unit two experienced the signal from central command to start its engine and proceed on its assigned path to seek out the submarine target.
The engine started and the turbine spun up, the propulsor’s revolutions increasing until the build-up of thrust pushed it forward. The walls of the oversized torpedo tube rolled by the sonar seeker in the nosecone as the unit surged ahead, the open water cooler than the heated up water in the tube. The unit sped up to the ordered transit speed of forty-five knots, headed toward the estimated target’s position seven miles to the east-northeast. A few ship lengths from the launching point, the unit enabled and armed the one megaton nuclear warhead, the safety plate rotated to establish a clear and open channel between the low explosives and the high explosives, which would collapse the segmented plutonium into a dense sphere and start the fission explosion, which was the trigger for the thermonuclear reaction.