Terminal Run

The bow section of the SSNX Devilfish rose slowly out of the surface as the stern section began to sink. Twenty miles astern of her, the two remaining Tigersharks were turning circles, searching for targets.

Captain Michael Pacino lay on the aft sloping deck of the control room with Vermeers screaming silently in his face. He opened his eyes and tried to sit up, but it felt as if every bone in his body were broken. The lights were out except for the emergency battery-operated battle lanterns, which were flickering dimly. Pacino opened his mouth to speak, when suddenly his hearing returned and Vermeers’ voice slammed into his eardrums, shrieking, “Have to abandon ship, sir!”

Pacino managed to stand, leaning heavily on Vermeers, and allowed himself to be dragged to the middle level, where men and equipment were being evacuated through the hatch. Pacino felt his legs give, and his body slammed into the bulkhead, the world spinning around him.

“… there are more Tigersharks out there! Hurry!” Vermeers shouted at the crew at the escape trunk. “By the time we hear their rocket engines, they’ll be here. Now, go!”

Pacino felt himself pulled and pushed up the ladder and into the escape trunk. He felt he was about to vomit, and tried to hold it. There was a circle of light above him, a searchlight so bright it hurt his eyes, slamming his eyes flat in his eye sockets, until he realized it was the sun — the ship was on the surface. He was pulled out of the hatch onto the tilted deck topside, and had a momentary impression of the sail ripped off the hull and the aft part of the ship in the water, the deck inclined in a severe aft pitch. He staggered on his feet as other crew members were pulled out of the hull. His stomach lurched and he threw up on himself. Then the world grew dim.

Michael Pacino fainted and fell off the hull and splashed in the water on the port side of the hull, the same side that the Tiger shark torpedo approached.

“Vickerson!” Vermeers called. “Get the captain to a life raft!” The young lieutenant dived into the water carrying a spare life jacket. She caught up to Pacino, strapped his limp form into it, and towed him around the stern of the sinking ship to one of the life rafts floating on the other side.

Pacino came to as the last of the men and emergency equipment were pulled from the hull. The smashed-in nose of the ship tilted toward the sky as the ship began to sink to the depths. Pacino saw the forward escape trunk hatch sink below the waves, the hull taking water forward, until only the place where the nose cone should have been poked slightly above the waves, until it too vanished in a ring of foam.

He saw it go and looked dejectedly down at the life raft. The mission had failed. Four cruise missiles had gotten by the Devilfish, and the Tigersharks had gotten them instead of the Snare.

“Give me some binoculars,” Pacino said to Vickerson.

As she handed them over, the sea where the Devilfish had been exploded in a volcano of foam. A second explosion came ten long seconds later. For the next two minutes the foam rained down on the life rafts.

“What the hell was that?” Pacino asked.

The sonar chief looked over at him, shaking his head. “Two more Tigersharks, Skipper. We got out just in time.”

“Did we lose anyone, Vickerson?” Pacino asked.

She looked at him sadly. “We only evacuated forward, sir.

Aft was flooded and had a major steam leak. We couldn’t get the hatch open. None of the nukes made it out.”

Pacino sighed.

“Binoculars, sir?”

“Which way is east? I want to find the bearing to the Snare. Is there any chance we hit it?”

“We couldn’t tell, sir,” the sonar chief said.

Victor Krivak floated in the sea, his face exposed, his mask half off, his regulator blown away from his face. For a half hour after the explosion of the Snare he floated there, breathing but unconscious, floating with the buoyancy of his wet suit, the buoyancy compensator filled with air before he left the escape trunk.

A booming roar sounded through the seas, from the east.

“What was that?” Pacino asked. He looked over at one of the other life rafts, where Vermeers scanned the sea with his binoculars. “Did you see anything?”

“No, Captain,” Vermeers called over, “but it was from the bearing of the Snare. I think we got her.”

Pacino nodded, looking over the horizon at the bearing. Fingers of foam from an underwater explosion reached for the sky. “Excellent.”

“Vickerson, did you pull the pin on the emergency beacon?”

“Half an hour ago, sir,” she said. “I thought we had aircraft orbiting to the west.”

“Maybe the beacon didn’t work,” Pacino said.

“Then this will be a long wait,” Vickerson said.