“Port missile one ready, sir.”
Popov looked at his communications officer. “Any response?”
The officer returned his gaze with a faint shake of the head. “Still no reply, sir.”
The captain took a deep breath. “Fire port missile one.”
“Fire port missile one.”
The weapons specialist’s fingers danced over the console. A loud rushing sound echoed from above and the ship swayed on its keel.
“Port missile one away,” he said.
Popov turned to the turquoise ship displayed on the video monitor and watched for it to disappear.
35
Pitt stepped onto the bridge of the Macedonia to be met by Giordino’s voice blaring through the radio speaker. “Dirk, if you’re there, radio the Ladny that you’re aboard. They’ve got their finger on the trigger.”
“Let’s get her turned around first,” Pitt muttered aloud as Giordino repeated the warning.
He stepped to the helm console and disengaged the autopilot. He set the throttle, then spun the rudder control dial one hundred and eighty degrees to send the ship on a starboard pivot in the opposite direction. As he watched the tip of the bow begin to nudge right, Giordino’s voice blared once more through the radio. This time, his voice had an urgent tone.
“Dirk, I’ve spotted a flash from the Russian ship. They’ve fired! They’ve fired! Get off the ship now!”
Pitt coolly glanced at the radarscope, his brain responding in hyperdrive. He was no stranger to life-or-death situations, and, for him, time seemed to slow in those moments. His mind raced back to a pair of Russian warships they had passed in the Bosphorus a few days earlier. They were aged vessels, at least forty years old, showing rust and poor maintenance. Even the sailors appeared slovenly. It signaled to him that Russia’s frontline Navy, with its most modern ships and weapons, was deployed somewhere other than the Black Sea. That meant he had a chance.
He calculated that he had two, maybe three minutes tops, as his body began to move ahead of his thoughts. He adjusted the rudder controls, then sprinted toward the door, muttering, “Please let it be a torpedo.”
A few seconds later, Giordino brought the helicopter in tight alongside the bridge to give warning. Finding the bridge empty, he elevated the chopper and fell back. Pitt was running across the stern deck toward the submersible.
Giordino swooped in to pick him up, but Pitt waved him off, instead climbing onto the lift crane controls.
With quick precision, Pitt powered up the crane and swung the submersible out over the stern. The sub swayed over the angled tow line pulling the distant barge and splashed into the sea. Pitt reversed the cable spool attached to the lift line, allowing the submersible to fall back of the moving ship. Watching the bobbing submersible recede behind him, he saw the smoky trail of the approaching Russian missile.
He moved to return to the bridge but hesitated when he heard a loud pop. It came from the barge, angled far to Pitt’s left. He noted a small puff of smoke rising from the barge’s stern, then turned and raced to the Macedonia’s bridge.
Five hundred feet above the NUMA ship, Giordino watched Pitt’s defensive measure, then turned to the imminent threat. The incoming missile was skimming above the waves. At a quarter mile away, the missile dropped an object into the water and continued on its flight.
But the missile did not align on the Macedonia after Pitt had changed course. Instead, it flew past the ship and continued toward the horizon, where it would expire harmlessly once its fuel was spent.
So far, Pitt’s luck was holding. The Russians had fired an SS-N-14 Silex missile, whose payload was an underslung torpedo that was dropped near the target. While free of a missile strike, the torpedo was nearly as deadly.
Giordino searched the water for the torpedo, spotting its white-water tail as it bore down on the Macedonia. Pitt had turned the research ship away from the Ladny, so the assault would strike from the stern. Giordino watched helplessly as the homing torpedo locked onto the ship and raced toward its transom. The torpedo seemed to gain speed as it drew closer to the research ship until it struck paydirt—and exploded in a towering cloud of spray and debris.
36
The Ladny’s long-range camera showed an upheaval of sea and white smoke rising high into the air. Popov and his crew seldom had the opportunity to fire live weapons, let alone against an actual opponent. They stared at the video monitor with a mixed sense of wonder and satisfaction. But Popov’s pride turned to confusion as a ghostly image appeared on the screen.
It was the Macedonia, sailing past the dissolving smoke. The NUMA vessel was apparently still charging toward Sevastopol, completely unscathed. Popov looked to the combat screen to affirm he wasn’t seeing things. The red triangles of the two targets were still moving east, though now positioned parallel to each other rather than in tandem.
“What has gone wrong?” Popov yelled.
The executive officer shook his head. “It must have been a premature detonation.”
“Do we have a second missile ready?”
“Port missile two armed and ready,” the weapons officer said.