Voyage of the Devilfish

At least the UHF Aux unit was all right electrically though its hydraulics were inoperable. It would need to be raised manually with a hydraulic jack handpump. Novskoyy thought of his fleet waiting for instructions, like a pistol with the safety off and the trigger pulled almost to the firing point. The collision had forced his hand. There were no further thoughts of a diplomatic solution His next transmission to the fleet would be the order to execute missile launch. He should never have delayed, should have given the go-code from the first. What had to happen had always laid there like an inevitability, predetermined… He had finished connecting the manual hydraulic pump to the line to the UHF Aux mast hydraulic manifold when the ship abruptly shuddered. Novskoyy looked to Ivanov, bending over the sonar console. Ivanov looked back at Novskoyy, dawning comprehension on his face. As the deck vibrated from a scraping noise below, Novskoyy hurried to the sonar console.

“What is it, Ivanov?” Novskoyy asked.

“Listen,” Ivanov said. Outside the hull, from below, came the whooshing sound of a propulsion screw, a big one, the noise growing louder even than the scraping noise. The whooshing rose to a crescendo and then passed, growing quieter. After one last shrieking scraping noise all that could be heard was the screw.

“A submarine,” Novskoyy said… Either one of the Russian Pacific Fleet attack boats coming to stop his mission, or, and more likely, the American attack ship that Dretzski had alerted him to. Four loud BOOMS reverberated from outside the hull— from the direction the intruding submarine had gone after it stopped scraping the underside of the Kaliningrad’s hull. Ivanov stared at the sonar console, flipping rapidly from one graphic display in the software to another. Without looking up he gave his report to Novskoyy.

“It’s an American attack submarine. Admiral. Piranha class. Probably up here to spy on us—”

“How could it have found us?”

“They are leaving the area at maximum RPM, sir. We must neutralize them…” Novskoyy’s own instructions to the Northern Fleet submarines allowed, even encouraged, the firing of a warshot torpedo at any foreign submarine if there was a collision or clear evidence of foreign surveillance if both vessels were under the cover of the polar icecap. Ivanov knew this.

“No,” Novskoyy said. The molniya go-code for attack still had to be transmitted to his deployed fleet.

“Sir,” Ivanov said, “the intruder is getting away, we must prosecute them, your standing orders to the fleet, sir. We can return here after the American is on the bottom—”

“No. We will remain here. There is an urgent radio—”

“Sir,” Ivanov persisted, “the American must be expecting an attack and will be planning to release his own weapons. Sir, isn’t it a question of defending ourselves?” Novskoyy waved an acknowledgment. By his lights, Ivanov was right. After the sinking of the American sub in 1973 the U.S. submarine fleet had no doubt been spoiling for revenge, but would the American shoot at them in what everybody considered peacetime? He proceeded to answer his own thought… They would if they linked his transmissions to his attack fleet off the coast. What if they had broken the encryption codes and were reading his communications. Then they would try to sink the Kaliningrad before he could complete the attack molniya to the fleet… There was no choice — the transmission would have to wait.

“Ivanov, submerge the ship, lock in the firecontrol targeting instructions for the American submarine and launch a 100-centimeter Magnum to the target aimpoint.”

Ivanov paused. The watchstanders paused. The room’s conversations died.

“Sir, a nuclear weapon could damage this ship. I’ll have to overpower the reactors and use the polymer system.

Would the admiral consider a 53-centimeter unit? Or several?”

The conventional 53-centimeter torpedoes had conventional explosive warheads, not nuclear ones.

“Not fast enough. The Piranha will get away and the 53-centimeter unit would run out of fuel. Launch the Magnum and get us out of the area.”

“Aye, Admiral.”

USS DEVILFISH

“Captain, damage reports are in,” Stokes said, replacing the phone handset in the cradle. “We’re hurting. Evaporator and lithium bromide air conditioner are out. Just about every piping system we’ve got is leaking from the couplings and joints. Bilges are filling up with water — nothing the drain pump can’t handle. Worst leaks look to be primary coolant, and the radiation level in the reactor compartment is climbing. But we’ve got full propulsion. Hovering system up forward is leaking both high pressure air and seawater. We’re trying to isolate the leaks. But the hovering system is down hard. Sonar’s got a real problem. The towed array is dead. We must have crushed the fiberglass fairing on top of the hull, maybe severed the cable. Total loss of narrowband sonar on Target One—”

“Status of the spherical array?”

“Still okay, sir.”