Terminal Run

The Tigershark torpedo in pursuit sensed that its rocket fuel was running out, and the warhead of PlasticPak explosive detonated a thousand yards aft of the retreating form of the Devilfish. The pressure wave of the explosion ripped into her aft hull moments before the ship roared out of the sea. The aft hull was breached in the number three ballast tank from the Tigershark as the hull arced and flew back down toward the water of the Atlantic. The deceleration forces of the ship hitting the water caused everything that had been accelerated aft to be suddenly thrown forward, and the forces were strong enough to cause equipment to fly off foundations and rip the deckplates off their mountings. The USS Devilfish came to rest floating on the surface, a barely recognizable hulk with a flattened sonar dome, a crushed sail, and a burned and broken aft hull.

The ship began taking water aft and settled slowly into the sea.

The eleventh and twelfth missiles shook the deck as they left the ship. Victor Krivak grinned as he waited for Unit One Oh Seven to rise to twenty meters, mast broach depth, so he could flood the escape trunk and leave the Snare before the American search vessels and planes found her here at the base of the missile flame trails. There was the chance that she would escape and make it around South America for the trip to Red China, but the carbon processor was probably too far gone in its catatonic state to evade any search-and-destroy antisubmarine action. The pressure gauge in the escape trunk began to rise, slowly at first, then smartly to the depth of sixty-five feet — the American pressure gauges marked in feet — where Krivak began the procedure to flood the airlock. He had already pulled on his combined buoyancy compensator and tanks, his fins and his mask, and his supplies were tied to him by a tether.

He ordered the local panel to open the vent valve to the interior of the command module, and when the valve indicated open, he ordered the flood valve opened, bringing seawater into the chamber. The chamber water level rose rapidly with warm Atlantic seawater, until it climbed to the level of the upper hatch. The control panel and Krivak’s head were in an alcove behind a steel curtain, with a bubble of air trapped there. Krivak shut the vent valve and allowed the chamber to rise in pressure until it was equalized to the seawater. The pressure in the chamber rose slowly. When it was the same as the surrounding ocean, he would open the top hatch and get out of here.

The first-launched Tigershark woke later than the other units, in time to hear the carnage as the second-and third-launched units tore each other apart in mutual explosions. The Tiger shark started its engine and began a slow target-seeking circle, but there was nothing but the cloud of bubbles from the previous explosions. A second and third circle, with wider diameters, revealed nothing in the seas. The Tigershark rotated its fins and aimed shallow, hoping for a target above the layer.

The unit was amazed at how close the target was. and yet how invisible it had been from below-layer. The Tigershark armed the warhead, circled around to give itself some room, jettisoned the first stage, and lit off the rocket motor, the target growing in its seeker.

Krivak ducked under the steel curtain below the open upper hatch of the escape trunk of the Snare. He pushed with his flippers and rose until his head protruded out of the hatch. He put his hands on the upper surface, knowing that he had only twenty seconds before the Snare took control of the hatch and shut it on him, and the hydraulics were strong enough to cut him in half. So naturally, the tether of his equipment bag got hung up on a manual valve handle. Krivak debated leaving the equipment, but ducked back down, freed the tether, and pushed rapidly back up, his eye on the hatch. He swam out of the ring of the hatch, the equipment package following, and he pulled it all out of the hull. The hatch began to shut slowly behind him. He reached down to the hull and tapped it twice in farewell, then kicked to the surface.

Tigershark Unit One saw the target grow larger and larger until it blotted out all else, and just before it made contact with the fat submerged hull it detonated the PlasticPak explosive. The stern section of the submarine target came open in a violent explosion that separated the forward half of the ship from what was left of the aft half. The shock wave of the explosion reached out for the swimmer leaving the target’s hull.

There was nothing left of the Tigershark when the orange flame ball of the explosion had collapsed and cooled and disintegrated into a mass of a quadrillion vapor bubbles. Just as the explosion calmed and the front half of the hull of the target began to sink, two more Tigersharks swooped down on it and blew it to molecules just before it reached its crush depth.