Jerry Perez’s eyes danced between the clock and the needle climbing up the dial.

“Skipper, fifteen knots, coming up fast,” he reported. “Twenty seconds since splash.”

The Toledo raced away from where they had heard the sinking mortars. They were a hundred and fifty yards from where Zillich first detected the splashes. It might not be fast enough. The Grisha might have led them, too. They might be racing directly toward the sinking depth charges instead of away from them. There was no way to know. Despite all the highly technical gear around them and the well-trained crew, sometimes they had to rely on gut instinct.

“Twenty knots. Twenty-five seconds.”

There wasn’t anything to do now but run and pray they were fast enough. The mindless, death-dealing bombs were sinking down into the cold, dark water. There would be a detonation. It would come in half a minute now.

“Twenty-five knots. Thirty-two seconds.”

“Left full rudder,” Glass suddenly ordered. “Steady course north.”

Toledo heeled over like a fighter plane abruptly banking hard left, trying to gain advantage in a dogfight. Edwards and Glass grabbed the plot table to hang on. The compass dial spun so fast now that the numbers were a blur. The sub’s speed dropped to twelve knots as the bow spun around to the new course. Then the boat shot straight ahead again.

Edwards glanced at Glass and asked, “Knuckle?”

“Yep,” Glass answered with a grin. “I’m giving them something to keep them busy for a few minutes.”

When the boat made the abrupt turn, its huge rudder shoved vast amounts of water into a swirling vortex. The massive eddy would stay there for many minutes after the sub ran away. More important, the tower of moving water would bend the probing sonar pulses from the ships on the surface. That would cause a huge return, one large enough and strong enough that it might convince a sonar operator that he was locked on to a submarine.

“Twenty knots, forty-seven seconds.”

“How far?” Glass yelled. He needed to know the distance Toledo had traveled away from the presumed splash point. The sudden twisting turn had moved them off in a new direction. The straight-line distance back was what was important. The plot was the quickest way to find out.

Perez glanced at the “bug,” the little dot of light projected on the plotting table that showed the boat’s position. He eyeballed the distance from the “bug” to where they had heard the splashes. He began his answer.

“Four hundred…”

The blast was deafening.

Books and coffee cups flew across the room, their crashes adding counterpoint to the reverberating cacophony of the blast. Dust, shaken out of the nooks and crannies of the overhead, settled to the deck, giving the space an eerie, foggy feeling.