Collision alarms began screaming, circuits popped, sirens went off. Every soul aboard expected the sea to pour into the ship.
In the torpedo room the solid steel bulkhead bulged into the compartment and snapped back into place with a thundering bang. The young torpedomen were terrified. One dropped to his knees and began to pray, holding a crucifix.
"Get on your feet, Baker," Chief Lopez ordered. "Seal the hatch." He yanked the young sailor to his feet and pushed him toward the rear of the compartment. Johnson, the mate, already was spinning the wheel. If the torpedo room flooded, the ship theoretically would remain buoyant if water could be kept out of the other compartments.
Lopez braced himself for a sudden pitch forward, praying to the Virgin of his childhood for the pressure hull to hold. Making a grinding noise, the keel of the Russian sub slid down the starboard side of the hull, rolling Barracuda over to the right and sending men sprawling. There was a lurch, another metallic crunch… and the ships separated. Baker lay screaming on the deck, his leg fractured.
Barracuda swung back to the left and righted herself. On top of the fire-control panel Zapata's glass cage slid to the steel floor and shattered. Miraculously uninjured, the scorpion skittered away and hid in the shadows of the torpedo racks.
Lopez rushed to the fire-control panel and saw that one of the outer-tube-door indicators had changed from green to red. Tube number four was ruptured, having been the exact point of impact by the tip of the Russian sub's stern plane. Lopez was certain the inner door would burst open.
"Torpedo room to control. Tube number four open to sea."
In the control room an indicator light on Pisaro's diving panel changed from green to red. He blanched.
"Torpedo tube number four open to sea," he said, making the greatest effort to sound calm.
"Blow all ballast tanks, surface," ordered the captain.
As water was expelled from the ballast tanks, the sub slowly began to rise.
"Fire yellow distress rocket."
"Rocket away."
"Control to torpedo room, damage report."
"Torpedo room to control. Tube number four open to sea. Inner door is holding. We've got a small electrical fire here."
"Casualty report."
"We got a man with a busted leg."
"Attention all hands. Damage control team to torpedo room, on the double. Corpsman to torpedo room."
"Sonar, where's the Russian?"
Sorensen switched on the active sonar, afraid of what he might hear. Instantly an erratically pulsating sphere of sound expanded around Barracuda.
He stared at his screen. It took him a moment to realize that the sonars on the starboard side of the hull were damaged. He played with his console to compensate.
"Fogarty, switch to bottom scanners. Sonar to control. I hear no reactor noises. He's lost power."
Fogarty activated the down-searching bottom scanners and made contact. "Oh no," he said, and closed his eyes.
Sorensen looked at Fogarty's screen and slowly removed his headphones. He switched on the overhead speakers. Shaking his head he said, very quietly, "Sonar to control, he's sinking. He's already down to two thousand feet. He's going down without power. He can't blow his tanks."
Sorensen began to fidget. The sub was going to sink until the pressure of the sea became too great. Then she would implode. What they had feared would happen to them a moment before was about to happen to the Russians. The Soviet sub was too heavy. Somehow the collision had left her without power, and she had no pumps and negative buoyancy. In a few seconds her hull would rupture, the sea would come crashing in and instantly raise the atmospheric pressure in the boat to the point of incandescence. In a blinding flash the Russians would fry before they were crushed. None would live long enough to drown.
Springfield entered the sonar room and stopped in midstep. Sorensen was pale. Fogarty looked like he was watching an execution.
Sorensen said, "Three thousand feet."
The captain stared at the screen in disbelief. "Three thousand feet." The sub already was far deeper than any other submarine had ever dived.
Springfield didn't need this, the Navy didn't need this, the Russians certainly didn't need this. There would be a Court of Inquiry. The Russians would make their own investigation and it was going to be one hell of a mess.
"Thirty-one hundred feet," said Sorensen. He imagined the scene aboard the Russian sub… the men in there knowing they had only moments to live, some praying, others weeping or gone mad with panic and fear. But most, he was sure, were trying their best to make their machinery do the impossible. They were trying to get power to the pumps to blow her tanks and make her rise—
"Good God," said Sorensen, "they fired a torpedo."
He stood up and backed away from the console. On the screen the slowly sinking blip divided in two. They heard the whine of an electric motor. A guide wire between the blips was clearly visible. Someone aboard the doomed sub was attempting to steer the torpedo.
With her tanks blown Barracuda was rising swiftly. They were going to die on the surface.
Springfield shouted, "Evasive maneuvers. All ahead full. Right full rudder." But before the helm could respond, the torpedo went awry and plunged straight down to four thousand feet.
While all eyes were on the torpedo, the Russian sub imploded — painfully loud cracks separated by a fraction of a second as each of the ship's compartments ruptured in close sequence. At tremendous velocity the sea poured through the fractured pressure hull pushing the air inside into a smaller and smaller bubble until the air itself exploded, blowing out the bulkheads between the individually pressurized compartments. The explosions and fires lasted only the briefest instant until the full weight of the sea smashed the hull and everything in it into tiny, scarcely recognizable fragments.
Debris filled Barracuda's sonar screens. A cloud of tiny blips drifted to the bottom and scattered over a vast area.
"My God, my God…" Springfield said over and over. "Did you get it all on tape, Sorensen?"
"Yes, sir…"
"Seal that tape and bring it to my cabin."
"Aye aye, sir."
"You people in here are not to say a word about this to anyone. Understand?"
"Aye aye, sir."
Springfield returned to the control room. "Take her up to the surface, Leo. We'll have to send off a message to ComSubLant. You have the conn. I'm going to inspect the torpedo room."
14
In the operations center on Kitty Hawk the sonar contact alarm had sounded with a waspish buzz, On the screen the blip representing Swordfish had divided like an amoeba and had resolved into two separate contacts, both of which were heading directly toward Kitty Hawk. A moment later the echo-ranging sonars of the surface ships had begun to interfere with one another, and the blips had dissolved into electronic chaff.
Admiral Horning had realized that he was caught in a terrible dilemma. Neither sub had been positively identified as Barracuda, although he was certain that one was his nemesis.
With a sudden roar of propulsion machinery, both subs had descended below the thermal layer, and the sonar data became increasingly erratic until the sounds had stopped altogether. Helicopters had dropped sonar buoys around the carrier, but the noises generated by the huge ship garbled everything. This was the penultimate moment. Barracuda had to slow to fire her torpedoes, and a thousand pairs of eyes had scanned the horizon, expecting the deadly white streaks at any moment.