Authors: Edward L. Beach
With the sounding of the alarm, furious activity struck the missile base. There had been planning, and drills. Now the base commander was thankful for his insistence on them. Other depth charges would soon be ready to be rolled into the lagoon, and the cranes could swing still others almost into its center. Numerous small guns and two large 100-millimeter anti-aircraft rifles would also be manned, although they would be useless unless the strange submarine surfaced. Most important of all, the torpedoes could be brought into action in three minutes from a standing start.
At least a minute had elapsed since the first depth charge. They had all been set deep, but nevertheless the surface of the polynya was roiled with disturbed water, and the periscope had disappeared. Shumikin grabbed the observation post telephone. “Sonar!” he barked, “Where is that submarine?”
“It's going away, Commander! Right after the depth bombs we heard it speeding up!”
“Well, keep the contact! It was your negligence that let it come up on us without warning! You should have reported at once on the battle intercom! Don't repeat your error or it will go very hard with you!”
“We guarantee it, Commander! The error is regretted, but we did not knowâ” Shumikin banged the telephone down with irritation. He was in no mood to listen to excuses, especially when his subconscious told him there might be a certain amount of justification to them.
He pushed the call for the torpedo room. “Torpedo!” he shouted in the same tone. “When will you clowns be ready with those fish?”
“About a minute, Commander! We're going as fast as we can!”
“Very well! Hurry!” He slammed the phone into its cradle, leaped out of the observation post and ran toward the hatch leading down into the torpedo room. He was almost in a frenzy. He knew well what the strange submarine was up to. He knew as soon as he realized it must be an American. Already he regretted
the depth charges. They had only alerted the enemy. It would have been better to surprise him with the torpedoes. Having detected the silo base, perhaps even having photographed it, the American submarine commander was undoubtedly hightailing it to find a place from which to inform Washington. This must be prevented at all costs! If these torpedomen were ever to beat their three-minute record, now was indisputably the time!
By his presence in the torpedo room he hoped to galvanize his men into even greater effort. But in this he was disappointed, for even to his nontechnical eyes they were working as rapidly as possible. Shumikin had the good sense to desist from his exhortations as soon as this was clear to him, and finally there came the moment when both torpedoes could be fired, fortunately at a still well-defined sonar target. He congratulated himself also on having acceded to the demand of the senior torpedoman that there be a suitable wait, more than half a minute, before firing the second torpedo. Else they might interfere with each other, the man had said, rendering both of them harmless. How nearly he had come, in his impatience, to overriding the torpedoman's obvious professional training! But now both torpedoes were on their way, and at least one of them, most likely both, would certainly home on the target. Sonar should shortly hear two muffled explosions, and he would then know he had at least protected the grave secret entrusted to his care.
As for Grigory Ilyich Zmentsov and his ship, the heroic
Novosibirsky Komsomol
, it was too bad, but a painful duty now devolved on him. He would spend all day composing a fitting epitaph in the form of a message describing how they had sacrificed their lives in the service of their country. He would begin this difficult chore immediately, with the highest personal priority, as soon as sonar reported the two explosions. . . .
Walking deliberately, Shumikin left the torpedo compartment and went down another hatchway leading to the sonar room. It would be good to be there in person, both to ensure the highest performance of its personnel, whose attainments he had had reason to doubt recently, and to be able to report that he had personally witnessed the results of the initiative he himself had been forced to take in performance of his duty.
The depth charge meter in
Manta
's control room had gone wild, but it had also indicated that all the depth charges were at some distance below. Not many in her crew had experienced depth charging. The ship's hull vibrated resoundingly, despite its extraordinarily solid structure. The noise was tremendous. Pipelines, frames, cableways, even the very bulkheads with their great watertight doors shook spasmodically with every explosion. Buck Williams, after a quick reassuring look at the depth charge meterâthe tests, months ago, had convinced him the gadget really workedâtook a perverse pleasure in the initiation his crew was getting.
Cushing
's crew too, for that matter. He, at least, had experienced it all before.
So had Rich. Buck had felt actual pleasure carrying out Rich's order to stay at periscope depth despite the shattering, smashing blows being inflicted, the dust storm raised inside the ship, even the knowledge that somehow one of the charges might be set shallow enough to do actual harm. It had been his evaluation, concurred in by Richardson and substantiated by the depth charge meter, that the Soviets would have to set the charges deep. Otherwise they would risk unacceptable damage to their own installation, in particular their precious silos. The guess had proved correct. And then, when the last of twenty explosions had died its reverberating death, he was able, with the greatest composure, to seize the temporary cessation of the attack to order depth increased and the reactor to deliver power to the waiting turbines.
It had all been too easy. First the inspection of the missile base. Then, the depth charge attack had removed any doubt of Soviet intention to safeguard knowledge of its existence in the Arctic, even at the cost of direct, hostile, military action. Now no power on earth could prevent the
Manta
from making known what she had discovered. Buck heaved a deep sigh, and at that moment heard the scream from Schultz, ten feet away in his sonar room. “Torpedo!” Schultz shouted the word, shouted it with all the force and all the voice at his command.
Buck did not wait for the sweeping motion of Richardson's hand. “All ahead emergency! Take her down!” Instantly he could feel the tilt of the deck, the bite of the suddenly accelerated screws. Tom Clancy at the diving station and the engineers in the
maneuvering room were slamming all their pent-up tension into execution of the order. But there was too little time. The range was much too short. Even as the air vented from the negative tank, adding its whistle to the now silent compartment and its quota of air pressure which he could feel on his ears, there was a vicious jolt, a violent resounding blow, and the high-pitched sound of an explosion combined with rending metal. Buck could hear something, metal fragments, rattling on the hull.
Simultaneously, steady, fantastically heavy vibration began to be communicated to
Manta
's rugged structure. Buck and Rich were both looking at the annunciators, when, unbidden, the starboard annunciator turned to Stop.
“Starboard shaft is stopped! Maneuvering says the starboard shaft is damaged! They've stopped it because of heavy vibration!” The telephone talker stuttered in his panic.
Buck snatched the nearest handset out of its cradle. “Maneuvering, Captain here. How bad is it?”
“That explosion must have been right on the starboard propeller, Captain! She started vibrating like crazy right after! I had to stop it, sir!”
“Are you taking water? How's your shaft seal?”
“The engineroom's okay! We're checking the stern room now!” Buck held the instrument to his head while he waited. “The seal's been damaged, Captain! The stern room's taking water! Request the drain pump on the stern room bilges!”
“Tom! Take the angle off the boat! Start her back up! Stern room, open your drain-pump suction! We'll put the pump on as soon as she's lined up! Maneuvering, get some men back aft and tighten the gland! Where's Mr. Langforth?”
“He's just run back there! So did Mr. Steele.”
“Good! Keep me informed about the leak!” Buck turned to Abbott, who was gripping the other side of the periscope-stand guardrail, staring at him. “Jerry! Get on aft as fast as you can! We've got to know how bad we're flooding!”
To Clancy, Buck said, “Tom, how are the stern planes?”
“They're moving slower than before, but I think we've still got them, Captain! We're taking the angle off now!”
“Have someone check the hydraulic pressure, and get a report from the after room on how the stern planes are operating!”
“Aye, aye, sirâpassing five hundred feet! Twenty-five degrees down, decreasing!”
Buck and Rich could feel the angle lessening as Tom Clancy followed instructions.
There was another cry from Schultz. “Torpedo! Another one!” His scream was of pure terror.
Manta
was still in a headlong dive, her port engine still racing. Buck did not hesitate. “Right full rudder!” he ordered, his tense voice sharp with urgency. “Tom, keep the angle on!”
Manta
rolled to starboard, leaning into the turn like a rollercoaster car. Her gyrocompass repeaters began to spin. She had almost reached full speed but had slowed markedly with the loss of one engine, and now even more as the rudder drag took effect. The whirling port propeller, driven with the maximum output of the reactor and steam generators, was cavitating heavily because of the increased hull resistance. Its noise came clearly through the hull. Richardson's face was immobile. Buck suddenly had the impression that he was not there at all.
“This is it, Skipper,” said Buck softly. “Just like the last time, only we've lost half our power. It's all we can do!” He spoke almost with resignation.
“What's our depth now, Buck?” asked Rich, not stirring from his position, braced against the double angle on the ship.
“Passing six hundred feet. We'll have to take the angle off her pretty soon, even if we can contain the leak!”
“Buck,” said Rich, speaking somberly and slowly, “Keith did one thing for us that we didn't appreciate at the time. It's almost as if I could hear him all over again. Do you remember the depth the
Cushing
reached?”
“Yes. He told us fourteen hundred pounds sea pressure. That's over three thousand feet!”
“If the
Cushing
could go that far below her design depth, so can we, Buck! Even with a bad leak. But that torpedo won't! It's our only chance! Tell Tom to keep the angle on and level her off at fifteen hundred feet!”
Buck nodded shortly, his eyes wide as he took it in. The memory of Keith's last moments was strong in him as he deliberately gave the orders. There was silence in the control room, and in all the other compartments. The silence of men
who realized the risk but who also understood the necessity for it. If ever they were to put their faith in the men who had designed and built their ship, who had given it a marvelous power plant and a magnificent hull to go with it, now was the time. Damaged or no, there was no other choice.
One thousand five hundred feet was far below
Manta
's designed depth, yet far short of the depth sustained by the
Cushing
's stout hull before its inevitable and catastrophic collapse. The
Manta
was there in slightly more than a minute, and as Clancy began to level off, the immense pressure of the sea was already obvious. During the descent there had been creaks in the solid structure, as the implacable squeeze drove everything inward upon itself. Light partition bulkheads were bowed, drawers and sheet-metal doors were jammed shut. Even some of
Manta
's steel interior decks were curved upward or downward, where their girders were compressed lengthwise. All depth gauges had reached their limits and had been secured, the valves communicating to the sea closed tightly. So had most of the sea pressure gauges, only a few of which could register the 670 pounds per square inch the depth produced. A special watch had quickly been set up on all sea connections, throughout the ship, with special emphasis on the periscopes and propeller shafts. Most particularly on the port shaft and its thrust bearing, now also taking increased pressure from the depth as well as the drag imposed by the dead starboard shaft. As expected, its oil temperature had immediately begun heating up.
Everyone aboard was subconsciously aware of an unwonted rigidity in
Manta
's heavy framing. Flecks of paint popped off as the squeeze minutely compressed the steel, and it seemed to settle itself, almost as though with flexed muscles and a look of defiance, at holding back the malevolently waiting sea. Steel shapes cannot be alive, and yet there was the indisputable aura of elemental struggle about them as they held fast.
Manta
's speed on one shaft had been reduced to fifteen knots with the rudder hard over, and the overloaded propeller was thrashing loudly. Buck left the rudder on for one more full circle to render the disturbance it made in the water as nearly impenetrable as possible, then put the rudder amidships and let her steady on a course away from the polynya. Resistance eased, the furiously cavitating screw became more quiet, but not
completely so, and
Manta
's speed increased to nineteen knots.
The real battle, as everyone was well aware, was taking place in the stern room, where the inrush of water must be somehow contained, where Tom Clancy's two assistants and the entire engineering department, backed up by Jerry Abbott, were at full stretch. There were no illusions about what was going on. The water must be spurting in with maniacal force, sufficient to break an arm or rip off clothes and skin. The proper treatment for any leak is to reduce the pressure behind itâexactly opposite to what they had done. With the damaged shaft stopped, the seal where it exited from the
Manta
's hull could be clamped down tightly by its huge peripheral bolts, but to do this under the best of conditions men would have to reach into nearly unreachable places, jammed, confined, with hardly the room to swing a wrench. Only now they would also be confronted with a roaring spray with the force of fifty fire hydrants issuing from behind these same bolts. But no news, in this case, must be good news. They must be coping with the leak, somehow.