Above and around them, the Arctic became a boiling cauldron. The sudden geysers of water created by new fissures were followed by immense waves that leaped into the air as great chunks of ice tumbled back to the sea, driven deep by their own weight. Icy water ran across the broad white expanse of the ice pack, puddling in depressions that increased to pond size until the ice broke away from the weight of the water.
One huge mound of ice pitched across Tambov’s bow, scraping heavily down one side, twisting the bow plane closure into a sealed compartment. Another fell against the sail structure, crushing the periscope opening and ripping the upper bridge access hatch away. The outer hull had been rent with dents and jagged holes from bow to stern.
As the initial chaos subsided, her captain gained enough control of himself to give the orders to get underway. To remain where they were was suicide.
It was preferable to face Imperator alone than to face elements that were beyond their understanding. Valves were opened and trim tanks began to fill as Tambov gradually settled away from the surface. It was at this stage that the captain found his diving planes were inoperative. All navigational sonars had been destroyed by the ice. A single hydrophone continued to function.
The only option left to Tambov’s captain was ninety-nine percent suicidal, but he held little doubt that he would soon be dead anyway. As his submarine increased her depth, he ordered two-thirds speed ahead and turned in Imperator’s direction. His tubes were loaded. If any of his electronic gear had been able to absorb the pounding of moments before, there might still be data in his torpedoes. Perhaps his active sonar might work. He wanted just one return ping, just one confirmation of Imperator’s position before he fired everything he could.
Imperator had drifted to a crawl at a range of eighteen thousand yards, a safe distance from the chaos ahead and a perfect position for firing on their target if it survived the sodium torpedoes. At two-thirds speed, the damaged hull of the Soviet submarine began to radiate a steady signature above the chaos around her that pinpointed them as a target for Imperator’s guidance systems.
To Carol Petersen, Tambov’s final charge at them was akin to a railroad train rushing headlong toward a solid rock headwall. Snow was as cool and detached as the captains in the novels she read in her youth. He saw no reason to use more than two fish—after all, their target was beckoning for them.
“Just like a gunfight,” Snow commented. “Only I have all the guns . . . I shot theirs right out of their hands. All they can do is throw a few stones at me.”
The last words were murmured as sonar reported a total of four torpedoes fired from the doomed Sierra. They meant nothing to Snow. His weapons officer was already energizing the same defensive mechanisms that had been so successful before. Soon, the miniature homing devices that had worked so well against Orel, the deadly ATMs, were exploding against the Russian torpedoes. The range was so close and the solution simple enough that the lasers were never activated.
As the last of Tambov’s torpedoes exploded prematurely, the Soviet submarine was hit by both of Imperator’s. With her pressure hull already damaged, there was little protection for the inner hull or the delicate mechanisms that kept her afloat. She spun out of control, spiraling toward the bottom at two-thirds speed, as the control room opened to the sea. Her captain had been right that his headlong charge toward Imperator would be suicidal. He had been wrong about his one percent chance. There had never been any chance at all.
The destruction of Tambov answered the initial question in both Washington and Moscow: the location of Imperator and, likely, those submarines remaining involved in the under-ice confrontation. Moscow had no immediate answers to the eruptions that damaged the ice pack. Washington understood exactly what had happened and emphasized that Imperator was continuing her mission.
The consortium’s position was elevated in the eyes of the White House power structure and, on their advice, Washington issued an ultimatum to the Kremlin: Remove all equipment and personnel one hundred miles from the Norwegian border over the next seventy two hours, and relinquish all demands that U.S. or NATO vessels remain south of the Norwegian Sea. In exchange, the destruction of Fahrion would be forgotten, an unfortunate international incident. Discussions would be opened that summer to discuss positioning of ballistic-missile submarines in restricted waters.
The demands were too stringent for the Kremlin to accept. It meant admitting defeat in a war that had never taken place—not in the eyes of the public! There was no purpose in accepting such terms—“capitulating” was the word some used, while others in the Kremlin called it “negotiating”—not until Abe Danilov reported back to them. Dawn was breaking in Moscow when the Kremlin refused further discussion.
10
REED LICKED HIS lips. “We’ll take the cripple first, Ross.” Better to get rid of that one before he went after Danilov.
“Roger, Admiral.” Ross’s tone of voice reflected a lack of enthusiasm. ‘
“You don’t want to take that one, do you?” Reed stated flatly. There was a fine line between following orders smartly or quietly accepting something you didn’t want to do. Ross was near that line.
“It’s a feeling,” Houston’s captain stated flatly.
“What do you feel?”
Ross’s eyebrows rose. He shrugged. “Someone’s behind us.”
“Danilov?”
Again Ross shrugged. There was nothing that could justify his feeling. “I guess so. I don’t know how he got there.”
“You’ve got more than a feeling.”
“Nope. Just the trace of our path over the last eight or ten hours.” He led Reed over to the table where their course had been recorded. “Remember, it wasn’t so long ago yesterday that Danilov was in front of us. Now look at this swing of ours, way out to port, sunk one, hung out there for a while, moved back in toward the middle of that box, sunk a second on the way. Now we’re going after a cripple and there’s still no sound out there that would indicate someone’s going to help it.” He was leaning on his elbows, tracing their path with his index finger as he spoke. Now he looked up and held Reed’s eyes. “There’s a lot of space between where we began that big swing and where we are now . . . and it just seems to me that Danilov ought to be somewhere in there.” He tapped it with his finger. “Look at all that water, Admiral. At one time, there was a bunch of submarines. Now four are gone . . . just two left and one a cripple. . . and we haven’t heard from Danilov since he disappeared back there—”
“And Abe Danilov is one foxy character,” Reed interrupted. “Right?”
“Right.” Ross nodded. He looked up again. “Worth thinking about?”
Reed held the other’s eyes for a second, then called over his shoulder, “Range to the cripple?”
“Twenty-two thousand. He’s making about ten knots, Admiral.”
“In a little more than an hour, he’ll be just about on top of us if we wait right here,” Reed noted. “I can’t imagine he’s got much left for listening gear. I’ll go halfway with you, Ross. How about if we just shut up for a while? We’ll sit here, and we won’t make any noise to speak of. Try to rise slowly so we’re in line with that cripple. We’ll listen sharp for anything else. At ten thousand yards, we’ll put two torpedoes into her, then we’ll go looking for Danilov.” He cocked his head to one side, searching for agreement in Ross’s eyes. “We’ll still have a few tubes ready if she should sneak up on us,” he added.
Ross smiled halfheartedly. “I guess if I can convince you to meet me halfway—” He never finished the sentence, his expression changing rapidly as he realized that he’d won a moral victory. “Sounds better to me than before.” As he turned toward his OOD, Ross still had a feeling that something was missing. Houston was his ship. But the Admiral had given as much as he was going to.
Abe Danilov sipped at a cup of steaming black coffee. The hell with the Kremlin doctors! He loved his coffee at times like this, and if there was ever a time to indulge in one of
the few luxuries he felt he could still enjoy, this was it.
He had paid his silent respects to Anna once the chronometer indicated a new day had arrived. Perhaps it was for the last time . . . since he realized that the terrible efficiency of that killing machine, Imperator, was drawing him further away from ever being by Anna’s side again.
Houston had accounted for two of his submarines; he laid the blame at the feet of both captains. But Imperator had destroyed two more, and he couldn’t censure either of his commanding officers for those losses. Olympia had been sunk by Poltava, though he had little hope that she would survive the next few hours. He also had doubt about the chances for Ryazan beyond this day—she had turned to challenge Imperator. Now there was Houston sitting out in front of him. She was an attractive target.
Danilov eyed Stevan Lozak carefully. While the efficient Sergoff continued to perform his duties quietly as they waited silently in the lee of the pressure ridge, Lozak had hopped about the control room like a brightly feathered bird with his tail on fire. Seratov’s captain was a fine man operationally, but Danilov was now sure that the man lacked the patience for senior command. Get in a fight, he thought to himself, and there’s no finer man to have at your side than Lozak. But get in a comer, and it’s the Sergoffs of this world who save your neck.
Danilov eased over to Lozak as he would to an old friend. “Captain, we are ready to get underway. Before we do, I would like to emphasize a few points again. If we projected their path of advance correctly, a little more than thirty kilometers from us is a Los Angeles-class submarine that has already killed two others just like us. They are very good fighters . . . and they have ears like bats!” He hung on the last word, stretching it out. “There is no reason for them to hear the slightest thing at this range.”
“Of course not, Admiral—”
“I’m not finished, Captain.” Danilov’s attitude was so different from anything Lozak had experienced in their many cruises together. The admiral gripped his elbow tightly. “Of even greater concern to me is that Imperator may be as close as sixty or seventy kilometers. She has the ears of a thousand bats . . . and she destroys submarines . . . in ways no man has ever experienced before.”
Lozak nodded slowly. While he may have command of his Seratov, Danilov still had total control.
“Both Admiral Reed and this Snow . . . the one who commands Imperator . . . are ruthless men. They have no concern—none whatsoever—about how many more hours you live.”
“Nor do I feel any different about them, Admiral,” Lozak interrupted.
“Now, to extend the number of hours we plan to continue living, we don’t make a sound. We let Reed finish off Poltava.” He paused to allow Lozak to digest that bit of information. “While Reed is concentrating on taking one more of our submarines out of the picture, we are going to depart our little nook ever so silently. We are going to remain as near to the ice as possible, but there will be no use of the navigational sonar. We’ll assume there will be no pressure ridges of more than fifty meters’ depth. If there are . . .” He shrugged with a fateful grin. “Proceed at three knots. By the time any other submarine picks us up at that speed, we will have fired on them. Send a messenger around to each space on this ship—don’t miss a soul—and make sure there is no unnecessary movement, no talking, no leaving station for any reason—if someone has to piss, use a bucket.”
“Right away, Admiral.” He was no longer a party to the decisions. They had been made without his advice. If there was a single positive note to his exclusion, he assumed that Sergoff had not been included either.
But on that point he was dead wrong. Sergoff had even insisted, politely but firmly, how Danilov should handle his impetuous young captain.
The captain of Ryazan had no idea where Admiral Danilov was lurking. He assumed that his commander had chosen to go silent to evaluate the situation and that he would appear at a moment he deemed critical. The one thing the captain understood at this moment was that he was the only opposition facing Imperator. For what little he had gleaned from copied messages and his sonar’s interpretation of far-off battles everything within the giant submarine’s path was ruthlessly eliminated.
Ryazan’s captain had been brought up through the officer corps under Abe Danilov’s tutelage and he had retained a single, vital lesson—never copy someone else’s mistakes. He knew he could not survive if he tried to escape, or if he sought refuge among the pressure ridges. Head on, his enemy seemed invincible.
It appeared that his only opportunity was to go silent and allow Imperator, now moving rapidly in his direction, to pass. Ryazan would be most difficult to detect astern of her. If he could somehow escape detection, he would fire a full spread of torpedoes at her stern. Though he had no idea if she was equally impervious from the rear, he was sure that strategy had yet to be employed. It was worth a try. And, after all, he was also following his mentor’s dictum—“You will never meet a live Soviet submariner who has successfully run from his enemy.”
Ryazan hovered silently near the ice with each of her crew glued to their stations. They were lost in their own interpretation of eternity.
“Range to contact now?” Snow called out, noting the increase in his heartbeat with a touch of pride. The spirit of the hunt was exposing a hedonistic self he’d been unaware of. Never in his entire career had he fought in any battle. But now that he had experienced the taste of blood, new sensations within his body had come to the surface for the first time. His blood was racing faster—he was sure of that. He could almost imagine it pounding through his veins, just as the books explained it. It was adrenaline—pure and simple.
“Last range was thirty-eight thousand, Captain.”
“What do you mean, last range?”
“That’s when we lost contact, Captain.”
“Lost contact . . . what lost contact?” Snow sputtered. “Sonar reported it a minute or two ago,” the XO offered tentatively.
“I didn’t hear a thing—” Snow began.
“That’s correct,” Carol Petersen interrupted. “Look at the imager. It disappeared as soon as sonar lost him.” Her finger circled the space the contact had occupied within the holographic imager.
Snow stared dumbly at the spot. It was empty! He could see Imperator; Houston was near the damaged Soviet submarine. But there was simply nothing where the next target should have been.
“Forget it . . . never mind,” Snow began. “My mind was somewhere else . . . give control back to the computer. We’ll have to depend on the memory until we regain contact.”
Carol punched the data request into the terminal. Within seconds the image of a tiny submarine returned. “That’s the exact location where we lost contact,” she said. She tapped at the keyboard again and added, “We’ll have projected motion in a moment.”
As she finished her last words, the image of the Soviet sub darted to a new location as if encouraged by an invisible hand. “Projected range . . . thirty-one five if she maintained course and speed.”
Snow studied the picture cautiously. He had to avoid the snap decision he had almost made. Contact could have been lost for any number of reasons. The Soviet could be exactly where he was projected . . . or he could have gone dead in the water, deciding silence was the best of all possible worlds. He couldn’t have continued at the same speed or they wouldn’t have lost contact at that range.
There was no indication of equipment casualties. The Russian must have understood what awaited him. If it was my decision, Snow concluded, I’d let my enemy come to me.
Carol studied Snow’s face closely. His facial expression, which had been so animated by anger moments before, recovered its original perspective. The muscles in his face relaxed, his features softened, and his eyes grew distant as he attempted to project his mind into that of the Soviet skipper. Caesar could not think for him. The computer would again become irreplaceable if contact was regained—but for the moment they depended on a single human being.
�
�Put him back,” Snow requested softly. “The Russian submarine . . . instruct Caesar to move him back to the last known position. I think . . . that’s where he is,” he concluded more firmly. “What would his range be when we’re on his beam . . . if he remained in position?”
Carol read figures from the screen: “Ten thousand three hundred.”
“Too close.” Snow turned to his OOD. “I don’t want to get too far inside his torpedo range. At about twenty thousand yards, let’s start a wide swing to starboard. Then we’ll double back. I’ll keep an eye on it.” He smiled guiltily. “I promise.”
Carol had been observing Snow with interest. He was becoming the perfect example of a split personality, one minute a captain closely integrated with his crew, the next reverting to his own image of a warrior who thoroughly enjoyed the killing. It was a new side, one that had appeared only after departing the fishbowl. Andy Reed had once explained to her that the consortium had decided on Snow because of his consistency. With all his problems in managing his personal affairs, his ability to captain a naval vessel remained constant. A shudder coursed slowly down her spine as she considered what might have altered this uniformity that had been such a strong part of his career.
Then she trembled involuntarily, aware his eyes were suddenly holding her own. He’d caught her staring! She was unable to look away, yet she was scared for some reason to hold his gaze for too long.
Snow solved her problem. “We’ll get him, just like the others. But I don’t want to take any chances. Imperator’s tough, but we’re not totally invincible. Every once in a while, these man-made wonders need a little help from their masters.”
Ryazan’s captain waited and watched. His own sonar team recorded an accurate picture not only of Imperator as she neared them, but of Poltava’s anticipated execution astern of them. What the captain desired was the impossible—some action, some sound, some natural occurrence that would distract Imperator for just long enough so that he could empty his tubes. He had no idea of what that miracle might be, but his patience was superb—he had no other option.
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