They had to stay outside the narrow sonar cone in front of the torpedo, the area where the weapon sensed its prey.

Miller couldn’t believe his own words when he next yelped.

“Conn, sonar. Two torpedoes! Bearing zero-two-one and zero-one-eight! Signal strength is increasing!”

Crawford groaned. Two torpedoes—the son of a bitch was using standard Russian tactics. He had fallen into a trap. The bastard must have been “ice picked” out there somewhere, just waiting for him to amble by. Had it been the same sub that had made the distress call? Why would they be shooting at someone who was trying to help them?

“Torpedoes bear zero-two-one and zero-one-eight! Still closing. Both are active!”

How the hell could they manage to evade these two deadly weapons bearing down on them and then turn and shoot that bastard?

No way to outrun them.

Maybe they could lose them up there in the ice. That was their only hope.

“Dive, make your depth one-two-zero feet.”

Gerson stared hard at Crawford. “Skipper, there are ice keels hanging down to at least one hundred and fifty feet!” he protested. “We hit one of those and we’re dead!”

Crawford shouted right back, “We don’t outsmart those torpedoes and we’re just as dead. I’m hoping they lose us in the ice.”

Miami angled upward and raced for the new depth. There was no time for anyone to spy the massive ice keel dead ahead. At thirty knots, they were outrunning the ability of the underice sonar to see what lay ahead of them. The keel only jutted downward to ninety feet, but that put it even with Miami’s main deck.

The jagged chunk of ice started to print out on the display. The sonar watchstander shouted a warning. It was too late.

When the sub slammed into the keel, the mass of granite-hard ice raked hard into Miami’s sail, shearing it off neatly. Tons of cold seawater flooded into the control room through the hatch, the chopped-off periscopes, and the dozens of other hull penetrations. The boat stopped dead. The men on board were slammed forward with the momentum, smashing into whatever unyielding piping or equipment protruded there.

She had just lurched to an abrupt stop, just begun to settle and sink away from the ice keel with the sudden weight of the inflowing water, when the two Russian torpedoes arrived simultaneously.

One passed under the engine room and exploded, ripping a massive gash through the thick steel of the sub’s skin. Ice-cold water rushed in through the immense rupture. The force of the explosion lifted the massive main turbines off their bedplate and slammed them sideways into the hull. The huge steam pipes ripped free and poured live steam into the engine room, scalding everyone there.