“Mister Fabrini, prepare for a Yankee search,” he said softly.
Kristen knew they would have little choice but an active sonar search. The contact had been nearly impossible to find and would be hard to reacquire as they came around. Kristen felt the canted deck begin to level off as the Seawolf slowly rose up off the sandy bottom. She heard Brodie whisper commands to engage the pump-jet, ordering the Seawolf around slowly.
Kristen turned her attention back to listening for the strange sound. She focused on the area to the rear of the Seawolf as they turned to port. Sweat dripped from her forehead and chin; her coveralls were drenched. But she noticed nothing, not even the stale air around her or the expectant stares of men on her as they waited for her to find their antagonist.
Through her headphones, she heard numerous other sounds cluttering up the water, making it difficult to isolate the particular sound she was searching for. Slowly, she dismissed each superfluous sound, filtering out the clutter, forcing her exhausted brain to work. Then she heard it. “Bearing three-four-seven and coming around fast,” she reported. “He’s still close. I can hear voices in engineering.”
“Snapshot, Weps,” Brodie ordered over the microphone. “I want them active the moment they leave the tubes, Andy.”
“Bearing now three-five-zero,” Kristen reported.
“Hold your course, helm,” Brodie ordered, still issuing commands from the sonar shack. Fabrini was standing by the active search panel, ready to initiate a powerful sonar search to quickly give them an exact range to the target. There was no doubt it was close and they were now in their opponent’s baffles. But Brodie waved Fabrini away from the active search sonar.
“All right, Andy, fire one,” he ordered smoothly.
Kristen heard the first torpedo leave the tube, its propeller turning to full speed as the torpedo’s own sonar went active. Kristen immediately got a return off the other submarine.
“Fire four!” Brodie ordered.
The second torpedo left the tube and also went active immediately. Kristen heard the torpedoes racing toward the target as well as their sonar lashing the other sub.
“Range seven hundred yards!” Fabrini reported using the return signal from the torpedo sonar to get the exact position of their antagonist.
Kristen knew what was about to happen. The other submarine had no chance. She briefly heard alarms, and then, for the first time, the submarines propeller as it began turning faster. But then the first MK-48 ADCAP torpedo hit. It was followed a few moments later by the second.
Kristen heard the detonations and felt the Seawolf shake slightly as the shock wave of the twin blasts reached the hull. There was no doubt they’d killed the other boat. The two blasts would have severely damaged the entire aft section of the submarine, and Kristen was betting the entire engineering compartment was already flooded.
“Bring us to periscope depth, standby on the diesel generator,” Brodie ordered abruptly, apparently having already put the dying submarine out of his thoughts.
Kristen continued to listen to the submarine, hearing the bow tanks blowing in a vain attempt to surface. She could clearly hear the alarms and screams in both Russian and what she thought might be Arabic coming from the submarine. Then she heard something extremely unsettling. She turned her head toward the other sonar operators, and saw their questioning looks.
“What was that?” Greenberg asked.
The sound had been a loud hissing, like cold water droplets on a hot surface.
“It’s their reactor,” she replied. “We cracked their reactor vessel. Cold seawater is rushing in.”
Chapter Twenty Eight
Captain Zuyev knew the Iranian crew was not ready for the fight ahead of them. Given a few more weeks, they might have been. But it was now quite clear to Zuyev that not only the Iranians, but his own political leaders had underestimated the American’s reaction to Iran seizing the Strait of Hormuz. All the bluster and threats of possible nuclear war — a bluff for certain — had failed to prevent the Western powers trying to regain the Strait. He was in the tiny radio room and accepted the message from his communications officer. It had just been decoded and Zuyev quickly read it.
“Captain?” Ahadi asked anxiously.
They’d received no more word about the battle outside the Strait of Hormuz and had assumed the Western powers had withdrawn to lick their wounds and reconsider their failed attempt. Zuyev had hoped that diplomacy would become the order of the day, and the crisis would end. But the message was the worst possible news. “The Gagarin is lost,” he said simply. “Her distress buoy started signaling seven hours ago.”
“But that’s impossible,” Ahadi exclaimed. “We’re perfectly silent once we’re on our fuel cell.”
“We don’t know if the Gagarin was running on her reactor when she was lost,” Zuyev reminded Ahadi.
Ahadi concluded, “This means the Americans or the British have made it through the barrier.”
Zuyev finished reading as the printer delivered another message, this one for Ahadi. “That will be our new orders.” Zuyev hoped those orders wouldn’t order the Borei into action. They were pushing the men hard, but they weren’t ready yet. If they stumbled onto an American SSN, they would be in big trouble.
Ahadi read the orders and then explained, “We’re ordered to stay hidden and take no offensive action that might threaten us; however, we are authorized to fire on any American or British warship as long as we don’t compromise our position.”
Zuyev immediately suggested what Ahadi was thinking, “All right, let’s refuel the hydrogen and oxygen tanks, then shut down the reactor and go dark. If we sit quietly, they’ll never find us.”
“What about training?” Ahadi asked.
“Battle drills,” Zuyev responded curtly. “We haven’t much time left.”
Chapter Twenty Nine
Graves was worried as he watched Kristen seated in front of the spectrum analyzer. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since their duel with what they assumed had been the Gagarin. The Seawolf was now searching for the Borei somewhere in the Persian Gulf. Over the past twenty-four hours, much of the crew — including himself — had been able to get a few hours of sleep. But, to his knowledge, Kristen hadn’t.
“How long has she been going at it?” he whispered to Fabrini.
“At least twelve hours,” Fabrini replied in a whisper. “The fact is no one else can hear what she’s hearing, sir.”
“She’s not going to be hearing much if she doesn’t get some sleep,” Graves replied as Brodie entered.
Graves was equally worried about Brodie, who was all but mainlining coffee to stay functioning. The National Command Authority wanted the Borei found before the Western Allies determined they could wait no longer to take out the Islamic Republic’s nuclear threat, and their window for finding the Borei was shrinking.
“Anything?” Brodie asked as he entered the shack.
Fabrini glanced at Kristen. Graves saw that she looked to be on her last leg. Her normally perfectly ordered hair had slowly scattered into a mess, her usually immaculate uniform was crumpled like an unmade bed and showed the stains from brief cat naps on the floor of the sonar shack.