It was the captain who broke the silence. “Confirmation on that hit… did it impact the target?”
“It’s a mess out there, Captain — hard to separate. I think I still have cavitation on that bearing…” His voice trailed off as he strained to differentiate the full spectrum of noise through the rolling waters. The grinding of disturbed ice floes magnified the confusion.
“What about their other fish?” The captain’s voice was demanding.
“Still in search well above our port quarter. They could have been depending on the wire when our torpedo hit.” The second sonarman interrupted. “No chance. They’d already turned on the horses and were changing course. Wire had to be busted before.”
“Own speed eighteen, Captain.”
“Passing through nine hundred feet… decrease your angle,” the chief whispered to the planesman. “We’re still gaining speed.”
“My rudder is straight, Captain. Do you have a new course?”
“Is that fish still searching up there?” The captain was sensing victory — not that his enemy was sunk, but that he had also escaped the second torpedo.
“Still circling… no change in depth.”
“Chief, level off at twelve hundred… what course are you passing now, helm?” The captain’s breath was coming in short gasps. He could feel his heart thumping. Could he have held it when they started maneuvering? Hell, no. He’d never stopped talking — just good, healthy fear.
“Now passing one one two, Captain.”
“Steady up on one three zero.” That would be almost a reciprocal course from the torpedo’s origin.
“Captain, I still hold the Alfa. I have a burst of cavitation… also sounds like she’s going deep.”
Olympia’s torpedo had burst directly above Novgorod’s port bow plane, the pressure of the blast forcing both bow planes into a full dive position. With the submarine increasing speed, she instantly pitched into a sharp dive.
Her captain was one of the first to pick himself off the deck after the shattering explosion. Emergency lights outlined a crumpled pile of bodies thrown to starboard by the blast. The men handling the control surfaces remained strapped in their chairs. The political officer, who never once moved from his white-knuckled position by the chart table, had been flung against a stanchion. Blood now flowed from an ugly gash on his forehead across his neatly pressed uniform. The slant of the deck was increasing quickly with the planes at the full dive angle. They were falling rapidly from the relative security of the ice overhead.
“Up angle,” the captain shouted, “up angle… up angle.”
“I can’t, Captain.” The planesman was straining at the controls. “They’re jammed.”
“Help him,” the captain shouted, pointing at a sailor struggling to his feet. “He can’t do it by himself.” He waved his hands in the direction of the control panel. “Help him.”
He stared impotently for a few seconds as the two men struggled over controls which would not respond. The angle was now critical. Those trying to regain their feet slid across the deck, frantically grabbing for any handhold.
“All back full,” the captain called. “Blow the forward main ballast tanks.”
The diving officer rose to his hands and knees, crawling to the controls that would blow high-pressure air into the ballast tanks. There was no roaring sound of water flushing from the tanks. Again he went through the motions before he cast a desperate glance over his shoulder. “I’m getting nothing, sir… main ballast blow system doesn’t respond.”
Novgorod’s angle was beyond anything she’d been designed for. She began to shudder as the backing engines turned a propeller that struggled furiously against the downward flight of thirty-five hundred tons. Not a man had been killed by the impact of the torpedo. Some bulkheads had been fractured, but it was not a killing hit. Yet Novgorod was passing five hundred meters, her bow long past the critical angle for survival. Her ballast tanks remained as full of sea water as before. Now the rumble of her turbines and the high-pitched yowl of her single shaft desperately straining against gravity could be heard for miles through the icy waters.
Her captain refused to relinquish his grip. By then, it was as if he was swinging from a bar above his head. He had seen the depth gauge pass six hundred meters… eight fifty… a thousand. “Impossible!”
He could sense the hull rupturing. The immense pressure of the depths cracked Novgorod’s once-powerful hull like an egg. He was aware of the screams about him as the submarine exploded inward. And then there was nothing as the crumpled junk drifted to the sea floor almost four thousand meters below.
Olympia remained on the same heading until the executive officer came over to the captain and rested a hand on the man’s arm. “Captain, do you intend to remain on this heading for the time being?” The answer was obvious but it was the easiest way to start.
The captain looked down at the reassuring hand, then peered about the control room. No one else was nearby. Each man seemed to have a specific job to accomplish. “Negative. Do you have a recommendation?”
“Suggest we resume course and speed as recommended by Admiral Reed, sir.”
“Very well. Secure battle stations. Set the normal underway watch. Check our current location. We may just have some catching up to do so that Andy doesn’t have to wait for us… and you should have the comm officer prepare a short action report for me when we surface for messages.”
Stevan Lozak remained in his control room as Seratov moved away rapidly to the north. He had followed Danilov’s wishes and taken his submarine deep, over six hundred meters, and eventually he had sped away behind the distraction of noisemakers that no listening device could penetrate. Abe Danilov understood that although Imperator might be as fast as the Russian Alfas, she could travel only as fast as Admiral Reed’s Los Angeles-class submarine. Not even the awesome Imperator would be allowed to race boldly into the lion’s den without Reed nearby.
For Abe Danilov, this was an opportunity to rest once again. It seemed that those doctors in the Kremlin were correct. At his age, men in his position required more rest, more time to prepare mentally for the taxing work that lay ahead. He hated to admit it, but mental exercise was growing more tiresome each day they were at sea. There was no problem with his strategy. His ability to sustain a mental picture of the vast stage they were covering, and placing the surviving submarines in their appropriate positions, was better than he remembered. Mission awareness was simplistic as far as he was concerned. He understood what Reed and Snow were attempting, and had no doubt in his own mind how they intended to go about it.
Though Abe Danilov remained a bear when it came to analyzing an enemy’s strategy, he also possessed a comparative weakness — he failed to comprehend at this stage his increasing dependency on Anna’s letters. Her neatly handwritten memories redeemed choice events of his past, rekindling a desire to return to the happiness of those days. He now desperately wanted to partake of the joys that he had so often missed because of duty, even if he was limited to exercises of the mind. He realized what kind of father he had been, returning home each time as a hero to his children — yet he was a father they really never knew. He saw’ himself as he must now be in their eyes: an authority figure in a greatcoat covered with snow. But he never really knew them. He loved them and they loved him, but much of his affection had been distributed in choking doses over short periods of time.