“You still have a contact, Sonar?” asked Robert Brentwood.
“No, sir. He’s still hiding in the ice scatter or he’s gone away.”
“Very well. Angle on the bow?”
“Sixteen degrees, sir,” answered Zeldman.
“Very well. Contact fuse torpedo in tube one ready?”
“Contact fuse torpedo in tube one ready, sir.”
“Angle on the bow?”
“Sixteen degrees, sir.”
“Very well.” It would mean that with the sub at two hundred feet below the ice roof, the contact-fused Mark-48 torpedo, leaving it at fifty-four miles per hour, should hit the ice roof several hundred yards away at plus or minus six seconds.
“Fire contact fish.”
“Contact fish away.” There was only a slight tremor through the sub. In five seconds Emerson and Link turned down the volume, having no intention of being deafened for life. The explosion was loud enough, the sub trembling while the preparation for the missile firing sequence continued.
“Torpedo room, you all ready to go?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sonar, I want you to send out active radar bursts to the surface, ahead of the ship.”
The ping of the active mode and the hollow, almost singsong sound of the return echo could be heard by all in Control, and Emerson and Link could see the “fragged” or fragmented echoes, the middle of the arcs missing or segmented as the echo returned. It told the sonar operators that the sound from the active pulse was not returning in the middle of the band, telling them an enormous hole, hundreds of yards across, had been blown in the ice, the segmentation of the return echoes indicating that some surface ice was floating back into the hole blown out by the torpedo.
The Roosevelt’s missile tubes were now open, water rushing in through the narrow spaces between each of the six 114,000-pound D-5 missiles and the elastomeric shock absorber liners that would help stabilize trajectory.
“Sonar to control,” came Emerson’s voice. “Contact! Bearing two-seven-niner. Distance fifteen thousand yards. Speed thirty knots.” It was approximately nineteen miles away. Twelve minutes.
“Con to sonar,” said Brentwood. “I hear you.” Next he called missile fire control.
“Weapons officer here, sir.”
“I want warheads deactivated. I say again, deactivate warhead-arming circuit. Enough gas/steam to clear interface.”
He heard the confirmation from the weapons officer. If there was alarm in Zeldman’s or anyone else’s mind, they did not show it. Everyone was too busy.
“Sonar, sir. Contact confirmed hostile by nature of sound. I say again, hostile!”
Robert Brentwood didn’t hesitate. He ordered, “Firing point procedures…” convinced that it was more than likely that the hostile, whether it previously intended to or not, would now certainly fire its torpedoes within range, interpreting the sound of Roosevelt’s icebreaking torpedo as an attack upon it.
If and when the hostile did this, Brentwood determined he would fire four of his Mark-48 wire-guided homing torpedoes at the hostile, hoping to “triangulate” him so that no matter which way he turned, Roosevelt would get him. Unless he got Roosevelt first.