Goliath

“Aye, sir, preparing to launch countermeasures.”

“Depth now passing one thousand feet. One thousand fifty …”

Cubit blinks away perspiration from his eyes, his brain dissecting the numbers, his lips moving silently as his mind calculates. Surviving a torpedo attack at close range requires steady nerves and more than a bit of luck. He recalls a favorite expression of his old skipper aboard the Toledo: When it comes to actual combat, a coward will shit his pants, while a brave man merely pisses.

The computer on board the pinging Mk-48 validates Scranton as its target, the projectile increasing its speed to sixty knots, pinging faster …

“Conn, sonar, torpedo bearing two-one-seven, range seven hundred yards … torpedo has acquired … torpedo is range-gating!”

“Launch countermeasures! Helm, hard left rudder, steady course two-seven-zero. Dive, thirty-degree up angle—”

Two acoustic device countermeasures are expelled into the sea and begin spinning, their gyrations simulating the Scranton’s propeller.

The sub lurches, rolling hard to starboard as her screw catches the ocean, driving the sixty-nine-hundred-ton ship upward, her hull plates groaning under the stress, her terrified crew tossed sideways.

“Conn, sonar—torpedo impact in thirty seconds—”

“Chief of the Watch, conduct a one-second emergency blow of all main ballast tanks.”

“One-second blow, aye, sir!” Struggling to stand against the thirty-degree up angle, the chief auxiliary man reaches above his head, grabbing the two gray handles of the ship’s emergency blow system, and, with a great lunge, thrusts them upward.

A deafening sound rips through the sub as 4500 psi pressurized air is released from the air banks into the five main ballast tanks surrounding the Scranton’s pressurized hull, thereby expelling their water to drastically lighten the ship.

The incoming torpedo homes in on the noise.

Almost immediately, the Chief of the Watch depresses and pulls down on the “chicken switches,” holding on as the Scranton surges upward like a beach ball from the bottom of the pool.

Lost in the “knuckle” of noise, the incoming torpedo continues descending, following the countermeasures until it has hopelessly lost track of the evading submarine. Running out of fuel, it spirals downward and implodes in the deep recesses of the North Atlantic.

“Conn, sonar, torpedo destroyed!”

Sighs of relief, cheers, and a few whispered prayers of thanks rise in a chorus from the nerve-wracked crew.

Cubit mops perspiration from his face. “All stop.”

“All stop, aye, sir.”

“Dive, vent the main ballast tanks.”

“Vent the tanks, aye, sir.”

“Sonar, Captain, where’s Sierra-2?”

“Conn, sonar, I lost contact, sir.”

“Where’s the Typhoon?”

“Sir, Sierra-1 has changed course to two-six-zero, range thirty thousand yards, moving away from us at twenty knots. She’s running, Skipper.”

Aboard the Typhoon

“Load torpedoes one and two,” Captain Romanov orders. “Match bearings. Prepare to fire.”

“Not yet, Kapitan,” Ivan Kron calls out. “Range to bearing is less than two hundred meters. She’s right behind us and still closing.”

This is madness, is the man trying to ram us? “Let’s shake her loose. Helm, right full rudder, come to course zero-eight-zero—”

“Kapitan, two more contacts, much smaller, closing on both propeller shafts. I’m sorry, sir, I thought they were biologics.”

Aboard the Goliath

Simon Covah stands before one of the immense Lexan viewports, the reinforced glass casting its crimson glow across his flesh-and-steel face. A powerful outer light in Goliath’s flattened triangular bow ignites, the intense lighthouselike beacon piercing the darkness of the sea, illuminating the stern of the fleeing Typhoon.