“Little Chick passing through minus five hundred feet. It won’t be long until we know,” the Commander commented.
Brooke found herself looking at a green dot — a new green dot — “Commander…”
“Wags? What the hell is that?”
At that moment on the Halibut, the sonar man pressed the headphones closer to his head and ordered quiet. “Sir… there’s something…”
The Russian sub had come through a thermal layer close to the Halibut. The temperature anomaly had effectively masked the sound signature of each sub to the other as well as to the control ship. Neither ship was aware of the other until they were practically on top of one another.
A huge wallop rocked the Halibut. The angle indicator bubble disappeared behind the edges of the scale as the boat pitched nearly ninety degrees. Fortunately, the pitch and yaw and subsequent righting had slammed most watertight doors within the ship closed. They weren’t sealed, but they were at least shut.
The Halibut’s captain shook off the ringing in his head, caused by its impact with the edge of the chart table at full force. As the boat righted herself, and he tried to ascertain what had happened, there was a loud bang. Immediately, the boat rose violently up, the hull popped and groaned, and everyone was slammed to the floor.
Aboard the modified Akula class Russian sub, Captain Vashilli was killed instantly when the conning tower was crushed and peeled back as easily as the top of a sardine tin, the result of the top of his sub slamming into the bottom of the forward hull of the older, heavier American sub. The tons of water pressure at that depth caused the entire Russian boat to implode as its pressure hull was violently breached and everything inside was instantly crushed. The huge explosive release of air had lifted the Halibut above it two hundred feet in only a few seconds.
The crew of the Halibut was reeling; each had been sledge hammered by the impact and floored by the rapid ascent from the explosive air. For the Halibut, it was the luck of the accident that the Russian sub’s conning tower, her weakest part, had hit her low and forward. The Halibut absorbed the impact of the top of the Russian sub’s conning tower across the full breadth of the hanger-reinforced hull. The crack in the forward part of the Halibut’s hull occurred over several seconds. That allowing the lone occupant of the forward torpedo room, Ensign Jack Hargroves, to ‘dog it down’ — turning the hatch wheel and securing the seal of the already slammed shut door. This valiant action prevented the flood that entered the torpedo room and drowned him from flooding the rest of the ship.
Halibut’s sonar man got to his senses and put on his headset. He reported what he heard: “Sir, I got a popping, crackling sound in my cans, consistent with a hull breach.”
The cold, dead hulk of what had been a noble Russian boat slipped deeper and deeper into the murky black. The two-man crew in the DSRV was jarred by the implosion of the sub, but had no idea what had happened. Their calls to Halibut went unanswered, causing them to think they were suddenly alone. “Henhouse, this is Little Chick, do you copy?”
Onboard the Halibut, the captain learned that his forward torpedo room was flooded, but sealed by a heroic selfless act. He made a mental note that if they survived this, he’d recommend Hargroves for the Medal of Honor, posthumously. He ordered the ballast adjusted to right the boat under the dead weight of the flooded bow. The few leaks that popped up were being handled by chocks, wedges, and leak collars. He agreed with his chief of boat that they were watertight and seaworthy, although unable to make full forward speed.
Down in the DSRV Little Chick, the crew members clicked into their four-point seat restraints and rotated to nearly vertical in an attempt to use their strong lights to see above them. As if they had turned on the high beams in a blizzard, the visibility got worse because the plankton and other organisms reflected light right back to the crew through the three-foot-thick polycarbonate front window of the DSRV. Still, being human, they invested a few more seconds in this futile endeavor than logic would have dictated. But it was enough time for the lights to catch a glimpse of an enormous black mass plunging downward toward them. The pilot of the submersible pulled back on the hand grips, and the machine did a sort of back flip as he gunned the small motors and tried, in an upside down orientation, to gain distance between them and whatever it was that was coming.
“Henhouse, this is McDonald. Henhouse, this is McDonald. Henhouse, what is your situation?” Brooke watched as the commander of the surface control ship she was on kept clicking the transmit switch and showing just the slightest bit of frustration over not being able to raise the sub and find out what had happened.
Then the magnetometer operator reported, “Sir, I recalibrated the Maggie and there is a mass concentration sinking fast at Chicken Coop One.”
The commander had two simultaneous thoughts. One: code-naming the operation after reading a nursery rhyme to his four-year-old daughter, when this retrieval looked like a lark, had been a mistake. Two: that the Halibut had sunk. He turned to his first officer. “What do you think, Hal?”
Hal lifted the peak of his Yankee’s cap, which had a small metal insignia of his rank in the middle of the interlocking N-Y (his only concession to being an officer aboard this U.S. Navy spy ship), and said, “Is Halibut’s VLF carrier still intact?”
“Good point; Wags?”
“Checking — yes sir, Henhouse is still broadcasting VLF.”
“Triangulate for position. Radio, try hailing ’em again,” the commander said.
“Henhouse, this is McDonald, what is your situation?”
The wave of relief swept through the boat as they heard, “McDonald, this is Henhouse. We have suffered a breech but we are contained and all watertight seals are holding. One fatality.”
“Any idea what hit you?”
“Whatever it was came out of nowhere. I’m guessing you didn’t experience any event?”
“No. Why?”
“That rules out a seaquake or tsunami.”
“Ben, we got a Maggie reading that something big just went down in your area. We thought it was you.”
“My sonar man said something before the bang. Said there was something in the water and then reported sounds consistent with a hull breaking up.”
Brooke got it right away, “Time to recalibrate your equipment, commander. Someone just snuck up on us.”
“And obviously he couldn’t see the Halibut either,” the commander countered. Brooke noticed he had switched into a mental state that could best be described as deep contemplation.
A few seconds later, he hit the switch on his mike. “Henhouse, can you continue your mission?”
That surprised Brooke.
“McDonald, assessing status of Little Chick now,” Halibut’s captain reported.
“Henhouse, advise when you know.”
Brooke got up and walked closer to the commander. “You really intend to continue as if nothing happened?”