“I pray to God that our Mk-70 MOSS that we just got out of refit is on line. If so, fire tube number one.”
“I show a green light on MOSS availability, Captain,” replied the weapon’s officer coolly.
“Proceeding to fire.”
Mac looked on with amazement as the deck shook and the compartment filled with the hissing sound of compressed air.
“I show a clean launch, Captain,” reported the weapon’s officer.
“All ahead emergency! Come to course two-five zero instructed William Foard.
Mac had to tightly grip the side of the chart table to keep from tumbling over as the helmsman turned his steering yoke and the Bowfm rolled hard on its left side.
“How much water do we have beneath us. Lieutenant Murray?” asked Foard, who kept his balance by holding onto a steel handrail.
The sub’s bespectacled navigator was standing beside Mac and alertly answered.
“Not more than one hundred and twenty five feet, sir.”
“Damn!” cursed the captain.
“What’s the status of those fish, Chief Langsford? And do you have our Mk-70 as yet?”
The sonar operator replied while pressing his headphones to his ears.
“The torpedoes haven’t responded to our change of course yet. Captain. MOSS is headed off on bearing zero-six-six, and is really churning up a storm.”
Mac was most familiar with the weapon known as the Mk-70 MOSS. This device was an ROV of sorts, designed to simulate the Bowfm’s sound signature for the purpose of leading an attacking acoustic homing torpedo astray. It apparently proved its worth when the sonar operator excitedly reported.
“One of the fish has taken the bait, sir. It’s going after MOSS with a bone in its teeth!”
“And the others?” asked Foard.
The chief held back his response until the racket that was being channeled into his headphones temporarily sorted itself out.
“They’re coming this way, Captain.
They just completed their course change, range now down to one and a half miles.”
Finding himself with one less threat to worry about, Foard tensely beat the side of his thigh with his right fist and proceeded to think out loud.
“Since it’s obvious that we can’t outrun or out dive them, we can either prepare ourselves to take a hit, or gamble that we can shake them some other way. Yet if we can’t go deep to put a knuckle in the water, how about if we try it going the opposite direction?”
Satisfied with this plan of attack, the captain instructed the planes man to send the sub shooting toward the surface. Not even stopping to consider what would happen if they were to encounter another vessel up here, Foard directed the crew to hang on.
“Torpedo range is down to one mile and still closing, sir,” reported the sonar operator.
With his eyes glued to the depth gauge and the knot indicator mounted above the seated planes men the captain verbally willed his command onward.
“Come on baby, you can make it. Come on!”
“Depth is down to forty-five feet, Captain. If we don’t pull out soon, we’re going to breach!”
Ignoring this warning from the frantic diving officer, Foard cringed when the sonar operator added, “Range is down to three-quarters of a mile. Both torpedoes are following us up.”
“Hold tight, men!” ordered the captain, who directed his next instructions to the diving officer.
“We’re going to breach like a frigging whale. Lieutenant Lawrence.
And as soon as we hit the water, I need you to put on emergency ballast and get us wet again real quick. I’m counting on the racket that we’re going to leave topside to give those two fish a fit, and that’s when we’re going to try to sneak off back into the depths.”
Mac braced himself for this unorthodox maneuver to take effect. The angle of the deck beneath him was extreme, and he had to grip the edge of the chart table so tightly that it was digging into the palms of his hands. Yet he didn’t dare let go, or he would end up sliding backward into the aft bulkhead along with the broken coffee cups, ashtrays, and other assorted implements that had already tumbled in this direction.
“We just passed twenty-five feet,” observed the helmsman.
“Torpedo range is down to one-half mile,” added the chief tensely.
“Here we go!” shouted William Foard, who wisely braced himself for the powerful concussion that followed.
Mac wasn’t so prepared, and was thrown to the deck as the submarine went shooting through the Firth’s previously calm surface bow first, and then went crashing back down into the water. As he blindly grabbed the leg of the radar console, Mac heard the roar of onrushing ballast. And before he could pick himself up, the angle of the deck reversed itself and he went sliding in the opposite direction.
It wasn’t until they were at a depth of thirty feet that Mac was able to stand upright. He found himself perched against the weapons console. Beside him, his Scot colleague was likewise holding on for dear life.
They traded a long, concerned glance as the voice of the sonar operator broke the tense silence.
“I’ve lost the torpedoes in the knuckle that we left behind up there, Captain. The water’s still sizzling topside!”
A hopeful grin turned the corners of Colin Stewart’s mouth, and just as Mac was about to exhale a relieved sigh of his own, the sonarman added, “Damn it, one of them is following us down! Somehow it’s still on its wire. Range is a quarter of a mile and closing.”
With this, the mood in the compartment turned instantly dark once again. Mac could now see fear reflected in the eyes of the Scotsman. For the first time since the alert, Mac had the feeling that they weren’t going to make it after all. This heaviness stayed with him even as the captain optimistically cried out.
“This old lady’s not licked just yet. Open those throttles wide. Chief, and bring us around hard on course zero-eight-zero. That fish is going to have to really prove itself to catch the USS Bowfin!”
And from the weapons room of the Ladoga, Seaman Third Class Vasili Buchara watched the madly spinning spool from which their sole remaining wire guided torpedo derived its target’s location. Even though a great victory was about to be theirs, the Uzbek felt no joy.
Instead his feelings still smarted from his humiliating confrontation earlier with the sub’s zampolit.
Shamed and hurt by this encounter, only one thing mattered to Vasili, and that was to avenge his dishonor.
And the only way he knew how to properly re353 taliate was to hurt the object that meant the most to the obese political officer. He’d shame Tartarov’s command!
Vasili could picture the sweating zampolit, and the rest of the ship’s officers, in the Ladoga’s attack center right now, basking in the glory of the victory that would soon be theirs. As if these buffoons knew what the real meaning of heroism was! As far as Vasili was concerned, they were all cowardly fools who could never hope to stand up to a man like Mikhail Borisov.
It had been this same brave commando who had told Vasili that a candidate for the Spetsnaz had to have a mind of his own and not be afraid to show some initiative.
And this was exactly what the young Uzbek would display as he reached forward and severed the torpedoes’ fiberoptic wire with a single push of the disconnect button.
Mac had been in the process of bracing himself for the inevitable explosion that was bound to engulf them any second when the Bowfm’s sonar operator cried out in astonishment.
“It’s gone! One moment it was right on our tail, and then in the blink of an eye, the darn thing just disappeared.
Its wire must have broken.”
A moment of stunned silence followed as this unexpected news was digested. Yet this was all too soon followed by a chorus of relieved cheers. Not prepared to celebrate just yet, Captain Foard raised his hands overhead to quiet his men and then forcefully addressed them.