“Holy Mother Mary, Ivan just launched a broadside at us!”
Listening on in sheer terror as the signatures of two separate torpedoes filtered in through his headphones, Lester Warren found that his worst nightmare had at long last been realized — they were at war!
The frantic call from the sound shack caught Captain Matt Colter and his XO huddled around the plotting table.
“Damn it?” cursed Colter. “I should have known this Ivan would be the type to shoot first and ask questions later. Let’s return the favor. Lieutenant Sanger, hit ‘em with tubes one, two, and three. Then release our MOSS Mk-70 decoy out of tube number four.”
“You got it. Captain,” answered the alert weapons’ officer as he punched the buttons of the ship’s Mark 101 A fire-control system.
Seconds later, the sound of four exploding blasts of compressed air filled the control room with a resonant roar. The deck beneath them quivered as the now-empty tubes began filling with water to compensate for the great weight they had just lost.
“All four weapon’s running straight and true,” observed the breathless weapons’ officer.
“Then let’s get the hell out of here!” yelled Colter. “Take her down deep and quick, Mr. Marshall. I want to leave a knuckle in the water that those Red torpedoes will never be able to follow.”
As the muted whining sound of the turbines engaging filled the control room, the Defiance seemed to lurch forward in a sudden burst of speed. The helmsmen made the most of this additional momentum, and the 5,000-ton vessel canted hard on its side and initiated a tight, spiraling dive into the black depths below. With all the grace of a jet fighter, the sub made a corkscrew maneuver that left a hissing vortex of agitated seawater in the ship’s baffles.
“Five hundred feet,” observed the diving officer coolly.
Tightly gripping the rail behind the chart table, Matt Colter absorbed this information. His practiced gaze scanned the compartment, and he watched how the crew fought to keep their balance as the deck violently tilted from side to side. The g-forces proportionally increased to a point where loose objects such as unsecured coffee mugs and rulers began crashing to the deck.
The digital knot indicator that lay mounted on the forward bulkhead before the harness-constrained helmsmen registered twenty-one knots. Yet the turbines were just getting warmed up and before this maneuver was over they would be shooting through the water at a speed of over twice their present one.
“Seven-hundred and fifty feet,” said the diving officer.
The boat canted hard on its left side and seemed to momentarily shudder as it penetrated a depth to which few other man-made vessels could safely hope to venture. As the hull began to groan in protest of the great water pressure it now encountered. Colter looked over and caught the concerned gaze of his XO.
“Well, Mr. Layman, do you think we shook those Red fish yet?”
The XO answered directly.
“I’d say there’s a damn good chance that we did. Skipper. We’re getting awfully close to our depth threshold, and now might be a good time to pull out of this dive and see what’s behind us.”
Almost to punctuate this response the diving officer dryly called out, “Nine-hundred feet.”
Colter held back his reply until the depth gauge read an even thousand.
“Helmsmen, pull her up and hold us at nine-hundred and ninety feet. Make your new course one-six-zero.”
Glancing up at the knot indicator, the captain disgustedly called out to his XO.
“Damn it, All Get on the horn to the chief and tell him to get the lead out of this old lady’s pants. We need at least forty knots, and we need it now!”
As the XO alertly nodded and picked up the nearest handset. Colter addressed his next remarks to the quartermaster.
“Mr. Lawrence, patch in the sound shack with our overhead speakers, and activate the remote pickup.”
This allowed the captain to talk directly to the sonar room, with the response filtering back through the public address system for all inside the control room to clearly hear.
“Mr. Roth, this is the captain. Do you read me?”
“I hear you, sir,” returned the tense voice of the senior sonar technician.
Noting this tension, Colter responded.
“Good. Now take a deep breath and tell me, did that little knuckle we left behind do the trick?”
Stanley Roth’s voice remained strained as he responded.
“It looks like our decoy took care of one of ‘em, Captain. Yet the other one wasn’t so easily fooled and is still on our tail. Range is thirty-thousand yards and starting to close.”
“Damn!” cursed Colter, whose eyes flashed to the knot counter.
“Where’s that additional speed, XO?”
With the intercom handset still cradled up against his ear, Al Layman could only hunch his shoulders as the digital indicator seemed to remain locked on thirty-five knots.
“Helmsman, swing us around to bearing one-zero-zero. And make it crisp!”
The captain’s forceful directive was met by such a sharp turn to port, the loose material that had already been deposited on the deck careened across the floor. Forced to further tighten his grip to keep from being flung to the deck himself, Matt Colter locked his gaze on the speed counter. His glance seemed to narrow as the indicator suddenly rose one, two and three complete knots.
“That’s more like it!” cried the captain.
“Yet since it’s doubtful we can outrun that damn fish, we’re going to have to lose it another way. Planesman, bring us up to a depth of three-hundred feet and do it quickly.”
As the seated seaman responsible for operating the ship’s two sail-mounted planes yanked back on his airplane-type steering column, the bow angled sharply upward. This change of course caused those sailors not having the luxury of stabilizing seat harnesses to grasp some support to keep from being flung backward.
Matt Colter gripped a rail. With the sweating palms of his hands rubbed raw by the tubular steel his grip had locked onto, the captain watched as the depth gauge passed the six-hundred-foot mark. Doing his best to ignore the excruciating pain that shot up his wrists. Colter queried.
“Mr. Roth, what’s that torpedo doing?”
An awkward moment of silence forced the captain to repeat his question. It was now met by a stuttering response from the mounted speakers.
“Uh, sorry about that, sir. But I’m afraid the news is still grim. The fish is coming up with us, and has now closed the gap to eighteen thousand yards.”
Instinctively, Colter’s gaze went to the digital speed counter. It registered a blistering forty-three knots, and since any additional speed on their part was highly unlikely, the captain held back on venting his fury on the chief engineer.
“We’re approaching three hundred feet. Captain,” observed the diving officer.
“Torpedo’s still closing, sir,” added the intense voice of Stan Roth. “Range is now down to twelve thousand yards.”
Matt Colter caught his XO’s somber stare. The two senior officers seemed to be attempting to silently read each other’s thoughts when a sudden flash of inspiration gleamed in the captain’s eyes.
“The damn ice!” reflected Colter fervently.
“We’ll head right on up to the surface, and then plow back down into the depths. And if we’re lucky, that torpedo will breach and smack right into that ever-loving ice!”
The barest of grins broke out on the XO’s previously worried face, and this was all that Colter needed to convince him to put his hastily conceived plan into action.