Both of the torpedoes from the destroyer were still out there and one of them had caught a good scent of its intended target. Its electronic brain had found Toledo and shifted its sonar to home in on the sub.

“Depth to the bottom?” Glass asked.

“Depth five-zero feet under the keel,” Jerry Perez answered.

“Bring me down to ten feet. Do it quick!”

Perez gulped. “But, Captain—”

“Now!”

“Yes, sir.”

Toledo charged ahead, speeding along just above the muddy bottom, her screw churning up great clouds of sediment behind the racing submarine. The debris presented the Russian torpedo with a huge target. It shifted its steering vanes slightly to attack the new, larger, more inviting objective.

The second torpedo found the same enticing target. They both zoomed in for the kill.

The near simultaneous explosions erupted on the floor of the fjord just aft of the sub. The detonations shook Toledo violently.

As soon as the reverberations stopped, Glass picked himself up off the deck and shook his head to clear it. He expected to hear the roar of water under the crushing pressure of the depth or the reports from watchstanders telling him of a dying ship. Instead he saw his crew also climbing back to their positions, shaking off the blow. Incredibly, they were still alive and fighting.

Then his stomach sank. Their forward speed was dropping down in a hurry.

“Reactor scram. Loss of both turbine generators,” the engineering officer of the watch, the officer in charge of operating the reactor plant, reported, right on cue.

The explosions had caused the reactor’s control rods to drop to the bottom of the core, quenching its nuclear reaction. The turbine generators, the source of the sub’s electrical power, were also off-line. That could have been from the scram, or from some other damage. There was no way for anyone to tell yet.

All Glass knew for certain was that Toledo’s run for freedom had been stopped in its tracks. The main engines were useless without steam from the reactor to drive them. The battery could give them a little power and the emergency propulsion motor could push the boat for a few minutes, but at a slow creep.

“Still hold two incoming weapons in active. Bearing two-six-five. Both weapons on the same bearing.” Sonar was still working and Master Chief Zillich was on the job, reminding them there were still two Russian torpedoes playing around out there, looking for them. “Udaloy coming up in speed. Own ship weapon on that bearing is in reattack.”

In addition to the two remaining Russian torpedoes that were still racing at them, there were four of Toledo’s fish heading out toward the Russian surface ships. Glass still needed a way to defeat the incoming weapons. He couldn’t outrun them now without the reactor.