The Belgorod (K-329)
Moments ago
Captain Second Rank Yuri Stepanov, first officer and second-in-command of K-329, stared at his friend, mentor, and captain and knew that the moment had come. Drenched in sweat, Gorov was delirious with fever. Blood ringed the inside of his lips. The captain could barely stand, was talking nonsense, and seemed to be hallucinating. Also, despite not having witnessed the act, Stepanov was certain Gorov had had the weapons officer murdered in the torpedo room before launching the two nuclear Poseidons and had done both without consulting Stepanov.
It’s time, the voice said in his head, or we all die.
“Captain, I think it’s time you retire to your quarters,” Stepanov said, placing a hand on Gorov’s shoulder. “I will stand conning officer in your stead while you rest.”
The captain shrugged him off and, like a stage actor quoting Dostoyevsky, exclaimed, “Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Man loves life because he loves pain and fear. But life is given in exchange for these things, and that is the whole deceit . . . But he who overcomes pain and fear will himself be God. And this God will not be!”
Stepanov turned to Tarasov. “Take him to his stateroom and lock the door. Stay with him until the ship’s doctor arrives.”
Tarasov hesitated.
“That’s an order, Captain Lieutenant!”
The engineer nodded, hooked his arm under the stumbling Gorov’s armpit, and led him off the conn.
“Attention in the control room, the captain is not well, and I am temporarily assuming command. Lieutenant Blok, I relieve you of the conn. You are my junior officer of the watch.”
“I stand relieved of the conn, sir,” Blok said.
“Messenger, find the ship’s doctor and dispatch him to the captain’s stateroom,” Stepanov said.
“Aye, sir,” the messenger said and scurried away.
No sooner had he exhaled with relief at ending the circus that had been the control room than the loudspeaker reverberated with a report: “Torpedo salvo in the water! Bearing zero-zero-five.”
Stepanov knew that the American hunter-killer SSN 787 had been in trail, because the Belgorod’s cryptological specialist on board had decoded the coded sonar message. Unfortunately, the Virginia-class submarine was so quiet and its captain such a formidable tactician that they had not been able to detect, much less track, 787. The Americans had already fired two torpedoes in an attempt to destroy the Belgorod’s Poseidons, and now they obviously had circled around to finish the job.
“Sonar, Conn, how many torpedoes?”
“Conn, Sonar, two torpedoes, classified as . . . Russian Futlyar torpedoes.”
Stepanov felt the blood drain from his face at the news. The Futlyar torpedo was new, the latest and most advanced wire-guided model in the fleet, but only available in limited numbers. Only one submarine in the Northern Fleet was carrying them, and it was the most capable and deadly killer in the Russian submarine ranks—the K-560 Severodvinsk.
“The president has sent reinforcements to help kill the Americans,” someone in control shouted, and the rest of the watch standers cheered.
But Stepanov knew otherwise—he could feel it in his bones. The hopeful, celebratory mood in the control room immediately turned when he did not second the sentiment. The men could see from his expression that the torpedoes were not intended for their American adversary, but instead were meant for them.
“Fire control, track these torpedoes. Report their course, speed, and range, and tell me where they are headed.”
“Aye, Captain,” the senior fire control operator of the watch said.
He called me Captain, Stepanov thought with a prideful upturn of the corners of his mouth.
The Belgorod had two large, pressurized water reactors, two powerful propulsion turbines, and two screws. However, despite all this power, the ship was massive, with a displacement of thirty thousand tons, making it slow to accelerate and maneuver. Stepanov could not outrun or outturn one Futlyar torpedo, let alone two. Their best hope for survival was to be quiet and avoid detection. If the captain of K-560 had fired the salvo at the coordinates where the Belgorod had been when Gorov launched the Poseidons, there was a chance the torpedoes would search behind them and not detect them.
And if Fate is smiling on us, maybe the Futlyars will acquire the American SSN instead.
Unfortunately for the crew of the Belgorod, Stepanov quickly saw that Fate had other plans. The tactical picture deteriorated rapidly as his submarine and the American conducted torpedo evasion maneuvers and launched countermeasures at the same time. In an arena of swirling and churning ocean, noisemakers and bubble shields tried to distract and fool the hunters as two blind leviathans jockeyed for survival. In the end, both torpedoes chose the bigger target.
“Conn, Sonar, countermeasures have failed. Futlyar torpedoes one and two are in terminal homing on own ship. Impact in thirty seconds,” the sonar supervisor reported.
Death seemed a foregone conclusion, but he had one more trick up his sleeve. Like its Oscar II brother subs, the Belgorod was built with a double-hull design—a robust inner-pressure hull, fully encapsulated by an outer hydrodynamic hull. The large gap between the two hulls gave the Belgorod tremendous reserve buoyancy and served as a shock absorber against torpedo concussive effects. Also, unlike its American counterparts, which had only two watertight compartments—forward and aft—the Belgorod had ten . . . Ten compartments to isolate and contain flooding to dramatically increase survivability in the event of a hull breach. Finally, because the ship had been designed as a special missions platform for deep submersible operations, the shipyard had used a more expensive steel with higher tensile strength for the hull. Special bracing and reinforcements were also required for the wet hangar and the docking chambers in the submarine’s midsection. If any sub in the fleet could survive this attack, it was K-329.
“Diving officer of the watch,” Stepanov said. “Twenty-degree up bubble and stand by for emergency blow on my mark.”
“Twenty-degree up bubble, aye, sir,” the dive said and ordered the planesmen to tilt the stern planes and bow planes to ascend rapidly. As the bow tipped upward and the floor began to tilt, the diving officer stood and placed his hands on the emergency blow activation levers in the overhead above his chair at the ship’s control panel. “Standing by for emergency blow on your mark.”
“Fifteen seconds until torpedo impact.”
Getting shallow was their only chance for survival. At deep depths, the water pressure would fill a breached compartment in seconds and make escape impossible. But on the surface, he gave his crew a chance.
If I time it perfectly, I will create vertical separation between the torpedoes and the bottom of the hull.
He knew from his engineering studies that the force of an explosion decreased exponentially with increasing distance from the point of detonation. The shock wave might even help push the boat to the surface.
The up angle on the sub was at twenty now, the most severe angle permitted by procedure, and Stepanov’s calves strained as he leaned forward while gripping the railing that encircled the periscope stand for support.
“Ten seconds until impact . . . Nine . . . Eight—”
“Emergency blow!” he shouted, praying he’d factored in the optimal amount of latency for both reaction time and the pressurized air system to force the hundreds of thousands of liters of water from the ballast tanks.
The diving officer activated the levers as he shouted, “Emergency blow, aye!”
The roar of compressed air reverberated through the ship, and Stepanov felt the massive submarine buoy upward. And somewhere that sounded very far away, he could hear the sonar supervisor’s voice on the control room speaker.
“Detonation in three . . . Two . . . One . . .”