Phoenix Sub Zero

But even over the noise of the roaring emergency blow system, Daminski could hear the wailing sonar system of the lead torpedo in pursuit. The depth indicator unwound, 500 feet, 400, 350, but the screaming siren of the torpedo sonar system grew louder. Daminski could hear the torpedo’s screw itself, a whooshing sound just outside the hull. He turned away from the depth indicator on the ship control panel. It had spun to sixty feet as the bow of the ship blew out of the water, climbing at her tremendous velocity until the sail came out, then the long length of black hull, her underside painted a dull anticorrosion red, until gravity dragged her back, the deck already coming back to level as the ship fell back into the sea, the splash raising a cloud of water vapor in a 300-foot diameter around her. Her downward momentum then carried her under again, the hull vanishing from the surface, only the upper half of the sail breaking through the waves.

It was at that moment that the first Nagasaki torpedo detonated, the weapon having followed the target as it went shallow, as if the torpedo had expected it. The explosion was centered below the reactor compartment, the explosive force directed upward, breaching the hull and rupturing a steam generator and its main coolant piping, the seawater smashing into the compartment. The second Nagasaki detonated farther aft, beneath the turbine generators of the aft compartment, the hull breaching there too, the water filling the space. The third torpedo was a dud, the detonation from the second knocking the detonation train off, the preexplosive failing to detonate the high explosive and the unit disintegrated.

The fourth torpedo impacted the aft section of the forward compartment, blowing a twenty-foot gash in the lower level, the blast smashing through two decks and tearing apart the navigation space aft of control before the water came flooding in. Daminski had a quarter-second to turn and see the deckplates flying upward in slow motion as the blast disintegrated the aft part of the room. The last torpedo detonated at the flank of the forward compartment, forward of the control room. The wall of water from the aft of control had washed its way to the plot tables by the time of the last explosion and its unmerciful water came blasting in from the forward end.

* * *

The lights went out as the plot table came off its mountings and smashed into Daminski, who would have hit the deck but instead splashed into seawater. He expected the impact of the table to kill him, but he was still conscious as the darkness came, not from death but from the seawater shorting out the battle lanterns.

Five feet to port, Dan Kristman was knocked into Tim Turner by the force of the invading wall of water, the force of their collision breaking bones, Kristman’s ribs and Turner’s arm and collarbone. The two officers flew forward into the ship control seats, knocking Turner out, snapping Kristman’s neck, the bodies collapsing into the rising water.

Kevin Skinnard, sitting at Pos Two, was carried through the door to sonar and into a sonar-display console, the glass screen spider-webbed by the impact of his head. He was stunned but conscious when the unit blew sparks all around him as its power supply shorted out in seawater, an arc flashing in front of his face before the water filled the room, the battle lanterns in sonar surviving and illuminating the submerged room with a dim smoky light. Skinner tried to move, to swim, the water forcing its way into his lungs paralyzing him with shock. He had a fraction of a second to recall childhood nightmares of drowning, seeing ships sinking in deep water, wetting his bed after seeing a movie about the Titanic, upset too because his teddy bear was soaked. His father had preached confronting his fears, and as an adult he had, going into submarines in part to show himself that the fear of deep water — which he’d never told any of the sublant shrinks about — had been overcome. Now he knew that fear had finally come for him. Eventually the pressure of the increasing depth burst his lungs, the bubbles rising sideways toward a bulkhead instead of up toward the overhead.

The ship must be rolled nearly horizontal, he thought.

It was his last thought.

* * *