Phoenix Sub Zero

The blast force propagated upward, blowing to bits the reactor-compartment tunnel, flexing its pressure against the forward and aft bulkheads, the bulkheads bulging away from the blast but holding. The pressure of the blast was joined by the high energy of 520-degree steam as it escaped from the reactor systems. But within seconds the fireball of the blast was spent, the shock waves from the explosion had traveled outward into the rest of the ship and into the surrounding water and ice, and the explosion lost momentum, attenuated and died. The high-pressure gases from the explosion vented themselves out the hole at the bottom of the hull, debris and metal also falling through, until the compartment pressure was equalized with the seawater outside. Cold seawater flooded into the compartment, and when it mixed with the multiple jets of high-energy steam, sent moaning noises into the ocean.

Finally the seawater robbed the reactor systems of their energy, and the violence of the incident ended. The reactor compartment remained flooded, the equipment ruined and smashed, most of it off its foundations, some of it washed into the sea from the keel hole.

The submarine’s middle compartment was, for practical purposes, gone. The forward and aft compartments, physically, survived, except for the interconnections between them running through the reactor compartment. The men in the forward compartment were isolated from those aft. Pew of them were conscious.

Captain Kane pulled himself groggily off the deck and found himself surrounded by blackness. He turned on a bat the lantern and shivered from the sight, and the cold.

Chapter 34 Saturday, 4 January

LABRADOR SEA, NORTHWEST OF GODTHAAB, GREENLAND

CNFS HEGIRA

“Countdown proceeding. Commander,” al-Maari reported.

“Launch minus twenty seconds. Missile on internal power, gas generator rock motor ignition charge voltage climbing.

Twelve volts, relay contacts shutting … now. Gas generator ignition in two seconds …”

Sharef listened for the sound of the tube’s gas generator solid rocket fuel igniting. It was really not a rocket at all but a charge of solid fuel that, when ignited, would exhaust into a large reservoir of water piped to the aft end of the missile tube. When the hot rocket-exhaust gas hit the reservoir tank the water would flash to steam and pressurize the tube, thrusting the missile from the tube with high pressure. The missile would float to the surface enveloped in the steam from the gas generator and ignite its first-stage rocket motor when it was free of the water. After a six-second burn, the missile would have enough velocity that its jet engine could kick in and lift it to an altitude of ten kilometers, when the ramjet engine would take over and boost the missile to supersonic speed and take it up to eighteen kilometers. The flight to Washington would be over before Hegira had made forty kilometers north on the way home.

“Launch minus ten seconds, we have gas generator ignition.

Five seconds, sir.”

Sihoud turned toward Ahmed, whose face had broken into lines of triumph.

Sharef looked at the deckplates.

When Captain Pacino had shut the homemade rotary switch, electrical current had flowed through the wires he had strung, until relay R141 down in the forward space of the torpedo room felt the electrical energy hit its electromagnetic coil. The magnetism pulled the relay’s mechanism closed, completing the circuit to the ignition voltage to the Vortex battery ignition systems.

Vortex tube one, the tube on top, was first in the sequence.

A small can of flammables felt the electrical voltage from a spark kit, blowing the can into incandescence. Within milliseconds the flame front propagated to the solid rocket fuel of the Hiroshima missile, the fuel burning violently, the flames spreading across the diameter of the missile’s aft end until the rocket motor achieved full thrust. The missile began to accelerate out of the tube, the rocket motor pushing the weight of the missile and the inertia of the water between the missile nose cone and the skin of the ship. The missile began to move, slowly at first, then picking up speed, the space aft of it opening up. The hot rocket-exhaust gases accumulated in the small space aft of the rocket, the pressure in the tube soaring like that at the base of a gun barrel in the moments after the gunpowder was lit off. The missile continued to move forward, but in the second hundred milliseconds after ignition, the pressure in the tube proved too much for the metal of the tube.