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“Twenty knots,” Eric called out.
“Firing.” Mark pressed the key to fire their own torpedo and flipped the toggle to close the doors.
Eric Stone had watched him and reversed the engines once again. Again, the ship gave a mighty shiver as if all that power was trying to tear her apart.
“Sorry, old girl,” Hanley said under his breath and patted his seat’s armrest. He then spoke aloud. “Prepare autodestruct of our torpedo as soon as it’s abreast of the incoming Russian fish.”
“Ah,” Mark said with understanding.
Because they were still blasting the sea with active sonar pulses, they could track the two torpedoes in real time, unlike the Russian, who wasn’t pinging but relied on passive listening to find its prey.
In one corner of the main view screen, Hanley brought up a computer-enhanced sonar “picture” of the seas ahead of them. Between them and the Akula, the two torpedoes were hurtling toward each other at a combined speed nearing ninety knots.
“Helm, be prepared to slow again for another shot. The explosion’s going to ruin his ability to listen to us. When they blow, come right five points, so if he pops off a blind shot, he won’t get lucky.”
The two torpedoes raced at each other with mindless abandon and would meet less than a half mile off the Oregon’s bows. Just a few seconds more. Murph’s hand hovered over the autodestruct button, his eyes unblinkingly on the screen. If this didn’t work, they would have little time for evasive maneuvers.
The Akula’s captain never would have suspected his quarry would dare to keep charging at them. But there was a truism he obviously wasn’t aware of: Never play a game of chicken with a man you don’t know.
“Now!” Max, Eric, and Mark shouted at the same time.
Stone set about changing their course while ahead of the ship, a mushrooming ball of water was thrown twenty feet into the air.
Both torpedo icons disappeared from the screen, replaced by a hazy cloud of distorted acoustical returns.
“Okay, Helm, slow us down to twenty. Wepps, fire at will.”
Moments later, the Oregon unleashed her second torpedo, and the range was so close that the Akula didn’t have a chance. She was racing along the bottom, eking everything she could out of her machinery in hopes of reaching the edge of the continental shelf. The cacophony of sonar pings the Oregon was throwing into the sea would overwhelm the Akula’s displays should she try to go active herself.
They all saw it simultaneously. On the sonar screen they could see their torpedo racing in the Akula’s wake when the sub came to a stop in a little less than half her length.
Hanley reacted fastest of any of them. “Wepps, autodestruct now!”
Mark peeled his gaze from the monitor and typed in the appropriate command. The torpedo was so deep that there wasn’t even a ripple on the surface when it exploded less than five hundred yards from its target.
“What happened?” Eric asked.
“She hit something, a seamount of some kind, a boulder. Something,” Max posited. “Back off the engines so we can listen on passive.”
“Why’d you blow our torpedo?”
“Because when and if that sub is ever found, the investigators will conclude, rightly, that this was an accident. No need to advertise that they were being chased when they did a nosedive into the seafloor.”
By the time the ship slowed enough for the sensitive microphones to be deployed, the Akula was as silent as the grave.
Max roused himself. “Helm, get us back to the wreck ASAP.” He shot a glance at the battered Timex on his wrist. “Their torps would have hit eight minutes ago. The Chairman and the others are on borrowed time.”
He wouldn’t let himself think about the more likely scenario that they were all dead.
Panic kills divers. That was the first lesson from his crusty dive instructor when Juan had earned his scuba certification as a teenager. That was the last too. Panic kills divers.
He and Mike and Eddie had between six and eight minutes to get away. Plenty of time. No need to panic.
Cabrillo shoved his camera back into the dive bag strapped to his waist, took one last glance at Tesla’s remarkable contraption, and headed back toward the staircase.
“Mike, are you on your way to the Nomad?” Cabrillo asked, irked that the helium made him sound like a little girl.
“Yes. I even got a sample from the frame.”
