“Perhaps we’re searching the wrong quadrant,” offered Tanya Olovski.
“Do you think we should rise to periscope depth to take another bearing?”
Mikhail smelled her sour breath and curtly responded.
“Have faith, Comrade. Just ready that manipulator arm.”
Deciding not to press her point, the electrician reached into the rubberized gauntlet that was set into the console. On the other side of the porthole, an elongated steel appendage suddenly came into view.
This arm had a single joint in its center and was tipped by a clawlike pincer.
Mikhail looked down at his watch, then readdressed the electrician.
“Position the edge of the claw so that it penetrates the uppermost strata of the seafloor, Comrade.”
By grasping the manipulator device that was set inside the gauntlet, Tanya guided the claw so that it began carving a U-shaped wedge in the sandy bottom.
“Increase speed to one-half knot,” ordered the captain coolly.
“One-half knot it is. Sir,” responded the alert helmsman.
The Seo Devil gradually picked up speed, and the furrow that its articulated appendage continued digging into the seafloor lengthened.
“I still think another periscope bearing is in order, Captain,” dared Tanya Olovski.
“Who knows, perhaps we encountered a current that sent us off course.”
Again Mikhail looked at his watch.
“Patience, Comrade,” he whispered.
“And where’s that faith I spoke of earlier? Don’t you trust your captain?”
Before the electrician could answer, the mini sub shook slightly as the tip of its articulated manipulator arm hit something buried in the sand below.
“All stop!” ordered the captain.
“Good, now take us back slowly, Comrade Sosnovo.”
The helmsman reversed the direction of the vessel’s tracked drive, and the Sea Devil backed up over the portion of the seafloor it had just traveled over.
“That’s good enough. Hold it right there,” instructed the captain.
There was a triumphant sparkle in Mikhail’s clear eyes as he looked to his right and grinned.
“Well, what are you waiting for, comrade? Dig up that cable and be quick about it. Don’t forget, I’ve got a four week leave waiting for me back at Kronstadt.”
The electrician guided the claw into the seabed. She seemed genuinely surprised when her efforts succeeded in snagging a thick black cable. She quickly got over her shock, and delicately clamped the pincers around the cable and carefully lifted it upward. It appeared to extend beneath the sand in both directions, and Mikhail was quick to identify it.
“It’s the new communications cable, all right. Even as we hold it before us, top-secret NATO dispatches are being directed through the fiberoptic elements that line the cable’s interior. And just think, comrades, soon this vital information will be all ours, without NATO ever being the wiser!
“Go ahead and insert the tap, Comrade Olovski. I’ll prepare to release the auxiliary cable that we carry at our side, and then we can get out of here.”
The electrician used the controls inside the gauntlet to insert a specially designed probe into the cable. This device was attached to a thin fiberoptic line that the mini-sub carried rolled up in a tight spool stored inside one of its empty torpedo pods.
“The splice is completed. Captain,” observed the electrician.
Mikhail Borisov looked her way and winked.
“Good job, my friend. Now let’s deliver our payload and be off for home. Comrade Sosnovo, come about to course two-three-two. And carefully, if you please.
Don’t forget that we’ll be paying out a cable of our own, and we certainly wouldn’t want to cause it to break.”
* * *
For the next quarter of an hour the Sea Devil continued crawling to the southwest. During this time Mikhail Borisov’s eyes remained glued to the monitor, which showed that their cable was feeding out smoothly.
“Our depth continues to decrease. Captain. We’ve just passed the forty-meter mark.”
Mikhail in jested the helmsman’s remarks and merely grunted in response. They were currently following the sloping seabed upward. This brought them ever closer to the rugged coastline that bordered this part of Oslo Harbor.
“We’ll continue up the slope until we reach a depth of thirty meters,” directed the captain.
“That should put us just north of the Norwegian village of Larvik.”
“But how will our operative ever find the end of the cable?” Yuri Sosnovo asked from the helm.
His gaze still set on the monitor, Mikhail answered.
“When we cut the cable, we’ll jettison the spool as well. Attached to this device is an ultrasonic homing beacon that will serve to direct our agent to these waters.
Since his cover is that of a fisherman, he shouldn’t be noticed as he recovers the spool and unwinds the remaining cable shoreward. Then he merely has to plug it into a transmitter in order for the Kremlin to know NATO’s operational schedule at the same time that the Norwegian command is informed of it.”
Mikhail had to admit that this was a brilliant operation, that only a genius like Admiral Igor Starobin could conceive of. Proud to be under this officer’s command, Mikhail ordered the Sea Devil to a halt when they reached a depth of thirty meters. Here the spool holding the rest of the cable was successfully released, and the captain issued the orders that would eventually lead them back home.
* * *
To safely reach the deep waters that lay outside Oslo Harbor, the Sea Devil traveled down the Norwegian coastline toward the city of Kristiansand. Once the lights of this town were off their starboard bow, they would change their course to the southeast. Then they would proceed to their rendezvous point with the whiskey-class submarine that would tow them back to the Baltic Sea.
The crew was genuinely relieved that the main part of their mission was over, and to properly celebrate, they passed out the remaining four oranges.
“When I get home I’m going to have my mother cook up a big potful of Ukrainian borscht,” said Yuri Sosnovo as he peeled the skin off his precious piece of fresh fruit.
“To my taste, there’s no finer food in all the motherland.”
“All I’m craving is some lean red meat,” observed Oleg Zagorsk.
“Back home in the Taiga, the men of my village will be preparing for the first elk hunt of the spring. Now there’s a meat that never fails to put a smile on even the most finicky youngster’s face. Have you tasted a piece of fresh elk liver before, Captain?”
Mikhail Borisov answered from the helm, where he lazily monitored the autopilot.
“I can’t say that I have, Comrade.”
The usually tightlipped Siberian passionately responded.
“That’s too bad. Sir. Because to my people, there’s no finer delicacy on this planet. Legend says that to partake of the raw liver brings the hunter good fortune.”
Tanya Olovski was seated at the trim controls and shook her head disgustedly.
“Sounds pretty sickening, if you want my opinion. How can you compare such a revolting thing to a crisp red apple, some sweet grapes, a wheel of tangy cheese, and a loaf of crusty black bread? Now that, comrades, is real eating!”
The Siberian was all set to argue otherwise, when a warbling electronic tone filled the cabin with a piercing noise.
“It’s the collision alarm!” screamed the captain, who reached down to halt the mini-sub’s forward velocity.
Just as his hand pulled back on the throttle, the vessel shuddered wildly and rolled hard on its right side.
The lights blinked off, and the crew went tumbling to the pitching deck.
Mikhail Borisov slammed into the fire-control console with such force that he had the wind knocked out of him. Gasping for air and unable to speak, he looked on as the red emergency lights popped on.
Through the dim red haze he saw tha
t the vessel remained tilted precariously on its side. Struggling to scramble over the assortment of tangled bodies was the dexterous figure of Oleg Zagorsk. Somehow the Siberian managed to reach the diving station, and with his hands on the joystick, he began directing water forward to aft via the pump, and vented the forward trim tank straight to the sea.
As trim was regained, the angle of the deck lessened and the rest of Sea Devil’s complement were able to stand upright once more. This included the boat’s captain, who rubbed his bruised shoulder and somehow found the words to express himself.
“Our integrity seems to be intact. But what in the hell did we hit?”
The electrician alertly moved to the forwardmost portion of the compartment, activated the bow spotlights, and opened the viewing port. Greeting her was a puzzling checkered wall that she all too soon identified.
“It’s a sub net!” she exclaimed.
The captain joined her.
“Well I’ll be, it is a sub net.”
“Do you think we can get around it?” asked the electrician.
“Why waste the effort?” returned Mikhail.
“All I have to do is take a little swim with the net clippers, and we can be on our way again in no time at all.
Comrade Sosnovo, would you be so good as to prepare the diving chamber for me?”
The captain turned and began his way aft. The air lock was located amidships, beside the battery well.
From an adjoining locker he pulled out a black rubber wet suit and a self-contained, closed-circuit oxygen rebreathing apparatus. He wasted no time donning this gear and climbing down into the cramped air lock.
As the hatch was sealed overhead, Mikhail activated the pump lever and a stream of icy cold seawater began flooding into the chamber. The fluid quickly filled the compartment, and though the resulting pressure was most uncomfortable, he opened the valve of his oxygen tank and took several deep breaths. There was little extra room inside the chamber, and he awkwardly reached down to twist open the lower hatch. It was with great relief when his efforts paid off and he was able to slip out into the murky depths.
The net clippers were stowed behind the port torpedo pod. He readily located them and swam forward to begin the task of cutting a hole in the net large enough to allow them safe passage. His extensive training was put to the test as he began the physically demanding job of clipping the wire mesh cable.
The cold water was beginning to numb his bruised limbs, and it took a supreme effort to grasp the handles of the clippers and apply enough pressure to penetrate the wire. Time after time he had to repeat this painful process, until he was all but exhausted and still found himself with three more cable sections to cut away.
Most divers would have long since abandoned their efforts and returned to the boat to get a replacement.
But Mikhail was much too proud to do such a thing.
As a Spetsnaz officer, he had a tradition to uphold.
For he was representative of the motherland’s toughest underwater warrior, and as such, would complete the job to its very end.
It was as he placed the head of the clippers up against the coiled strands of the third section that a distant throbbing whine caught his attention. This sound seemed to intensify, and he knew in an instant that it was the signature of an approaching surface ship. Ever fearful that their collision could have set off a sensor of some sort, Mikhail grasped the handle of the clippers with a renewed intensity.
One strand away from completing the job, the water exploded with a series of resounding blasts. Though these were most likely only weak scare charges designed to frighten an adversary into panicking and giving himself away, Mikhail took them very seriously. And it was fortunate that he did, for just as he snipped through the final link of netting, a deafening blast reverberated from the waters above. The force of this concussion knocked him off the net and threw him into the side of the Sea Devil with a dull thud. He found it difficult to breathe, and with the swirling black depths beckoning him to merely let go and surrender to the cold call of eternity, the commando’s instincts took over. His limbs were heavy as he pulled his weary body down to the re-entry hatch and gratefully slipped inside the chamber.
The next thing Mikhail remembered was being pulled out of the air lock by the concerned electrician. As the hatch was sealed behind him, he managed to cry out excitedly.
“For the sake of Lenin, get us off the bottom and out of this forsaken spot!”
It was the warrant officer who vented the ballast, while the chief engineer activated the mini-sub’s single propeller and guided the vessel through the hole that Mikhail had just cut for them. There was a loud grating noise as one of the frayed ends of the net scraped up against Sea Devil’s hull. But this was nothing compared to the thunderous blasts that awaited them as they passed through the net and entered the deep waters of the Skagerrak.
“Secure for depth charges!” screamed the exhausted captain.
This frantic cry was met by a reverberating concussion that slammed the mini-sub downward and shook it from side to side like a shark tearing apart its prey.
Again the crew of four was thrown to the deck as the blast was followed by one of even greater intensity. As the lights faded, a scared-female voice shouted out into the blackness, “They’ve got us for sure! We don’t stand a chance!”
“Like hell we don’t!” shot back Mikhail Borisov.
“Comrade Sosnovo, is our engine still on line?”
With only the red emergency lights illuminating the cabin, the chief engineer picked himself off the deck and limped over to the helm.
“The power train is still operating. Captain.”
“That’s music to my ears!” replied the Captain, who momentarily cringed when another depth charge detonated above them.
“Open that throttle up all the way,” he added.
“And perhaps our Norwegian friends will tire of this senseless game and let us go in peace.”
The captain knew that it was very likely that the surface units only had a general idea of where they were located. The standard NATO tactic was for such ships to indiscriminately drop ordnance in the hope that their suspected quarry would panic and take some sort of foolish action that would give them away. In such circumstances, Mikhail was trained to keep under way at all costs. Since shock tests showed that underwater explosions affected a vessel the size of Sea Devil far less than a normal-sized submarine, it was to their advantage to get as far away from the barrage as possible.
There was a self-satisfied smirk on the captain’s face as the next explosion that greeted them was significantly more distant. Several other similarly weakened blasts followed, and only then did Mikhail stand upright and exhale a full sigh of relief.
“You can relax. Comrades. They’ve lost us, all right.”
With the cabin still bathed in the red emergency lighting, the captain added.
“Helmsman, plot the quickest course to the rendezvous point. And keep those throttles wide open. I’ve got a four-week leave waiting for me back at Kronstadt, and not even the entire Norwegian fleet is going to keep me from using it.”
The air route from Prestwick airport to Holy Loch took Commander Brad Mackenzie over a variety of Scottish landscape. From the copilot’s seat of a Sikorsky S-70 Seahawk helicopter, he viewed the lush scenery, which included forested hillsides, deep blue lochs, and several quaint villages. It was a gray and overcast afternoon. Mac was weary after his long flight in from Andrews Air Force Base, and as he yawned, the pressure in his ears suddenly equalized. This allowed him to better hear the tape that the pilot had just placed into the cockpit’s cassette player. From the intercom blared forth the spirited sound of massed pipers.
Mac identified the song that they were currently playing as “Scotland the Brave.”
“I hope that you don’t mind the music, Commander,” said the Seahawk’s young female pilot.
“I just got transferred here from Norfolk and have really fallen in l
ove with the music of this country.”
“Is this your first visit to Scotland?” asked Mac.
She nodded.
“To tell you the truth, this is the first time I’ve ever been out of the States before.”
As a medley of familiar pipe tunes emanated from the elevated speakers, Mac began instinctively tapping his foot to the beat.
“You know, I practically grew up with this music. My great-grandfather originally came from the Inverness area in the Highlands. Why, I even know how to blow the pipes.”
“Now that’s something that I’ve always wanted to learn,” reflected the pilot as she smoothly guided the Seahawk over a ridge of rugged hills and into a broad valley. A wide river cut this plain, that was filled with a conglomeration of houses, factories, and highways.
“That’s the River Clyde,” offered the pilot.
“To our right are the outskirts of Glasgow, while beneath us is the city of Greenock. That body up ahead of us is the Firth of Clyde, where Holy Loch is situated.”
Mac was somewhat familiar with the landscape, since he had visted the naval base once before. Yet he had never seen it from this lofty vantage point. He took in the bustling docks of Port Glasgow and could just make out Gare Loch, where the English submarine base at Falsane was located.
The Seahawk began losing altitude as they whisked over the town of Gourock and began their way over the sparkling waters of the Firth of Clyde. Here Mac spotted a single submarine headed out to sea. Even though he had seen such a sight many times before, he sat forward excitedly to examine this vessel more closely. It had a sleek black hull and a prominent sail that didn’t hold any hydroplanes. As Mac spotted the two sailors who occupied the sail’s exposed bridge, the chopper pilot spoke out.
“That submarine is certainly awesome looking. I wonder if it’s one of ours.”
Mac was quick to reply.
“Actually, it appears to be a Brit, most probably one of their new Trafalgar-class nuclear-powered attack vessels. You can tell it’s not one of ours because of the absence of hydroplanes on the sail.”
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