anticipated and prepared for each downward arc of the bow, they were able to stay on their feet and perform their tasks even when the sea swirled around them; and in those moments when the deck was free of water, they worked at top speed and made up for lost time.
The tallest of the three crewmen stepped away from the gun, glanced up at the bridge, and signaled the captain that they were ready to begin.
Gorov threw out the last of his tea. He gave the mug to Zhukov. “Alert the control room.”
If his risky plan to use the breeches buoy was to have any chance to succeed, the submarine had to match speeds perfectly with the iceberg. If the boat outpaced the ice, or if the ice surged ahead by even a fraction of a knot, the messenger line might pull taut, stretch, and snap faster than they could reel out new slack.
Gorov glanced at his watch. A quarter past nine. The minutes were slipping away too quickly.
One of the men on the forward deck uncapped the muzzle of the gun, which had been sealed to keep out moisture. Another man loaded a shell into the breech at the bottom.
The projectile, which would tow the messenger line, was simple in design. It looked rather like a fireworks rocket: two feet long, nearly five inches in diameter. Trailing the nylon-and-wire line, it would strike the face of the cliff, explode on impact, and fire a four-inch bolt into the ice.
That bolt, to which the messenger line was joined, could slam eight to twelve inches into a solid rockface, essentially fusing it with the natural material around it, extruding reverse-hooked pins to prevent extraction. Welded to granite or limestone — or even to shale if the rock strata were tight enough — the bolt was a reliable anchor. Certain that the far point was securely fixed, a man could travel to shore on the messenger line if necessary, climbing hand over hand. Depending on the angle of approach, he could even convey himself in a simple sling suspended from a pair of small Teflon-coated steel wheels with deep concavities in which the line traveled, propelled by a vertical hand crank. Either way, he could take with him the heavy-duty pulley and a stronger line to rig an even more reliable system from the other end.
Unfortunately, Gorov thought, they were not dealing with granite or limestone or hard shale. A large element of the unknown had been introduced. The anchor might not penetrate the ice properly or fuse with it as it did with most varieties of stone.
One of the crewmen took hold of the handgrips, in one of which the trigger was seated. With the help of the other two men, he got a range fix and a wind reading. The target area was thirty feet above the water line. Semichastny had marked it with the floodlight. Compensating for the wind, the shooter aimed to the left of the mark.
Zhukov put up two flares.
Gorov lifted his night glasses. He focused on the circle of light on the face of the cliff.
A heavy
Even before the sound of the shot faded, the rocket exploded against the iceberg fifty yards away.
“Direct hit!” Zhukov said.
With cannonlike volleys of sound, the cliff fractured. Cracks zigzagged outward in every direction from the tow rocket's point of impact. The ice shifted, rippled like jelly at first, then shattered as completely as a plate glass window. A prodigious wall of ice — two hundred yards long, seventy or eighty fee high, and several feet thick — slid away from the side of the berg, collapsed violently into the sea, and sent shimmering fountains of dark water more than fifty feet into the air.
The messenger line went down with the ice.
Like a great amorphous, primordial beast, a twenty-foot-high tidal wave of displaced water surged across the fifty yards of open sea toward the port flank of the submarine, and there was no time to take evasive action. One of the three crewmen on the deck cried out as the small tsunami crashed across the main deck with enough power to rock the
The water poured away through the bridge scuppers, and the boat wallowed back to port. A secondary displacement wave hit them with only a small fraction of the force of the first.
On the main deck, the three crewmen had been knocked flat. If they hadn't been tethered, they would have been washed overboard and possibly lost.
As the crewmen struggled to their feet, Gorov turned his field glasses on the iceberg again.
“It's still too damned sheer.”
The tremendous icefall had done little to change the vertical topography of the leeward flank of the berg. A two-hundred-yard-long indentation marked the collapse, but even that new feature was a sheer plane, uncannily smooth, unmarked by ledges or projections or wide fissures that might have been of use to a climber. The cliff dropped straight into the water, much as it had before the rocket was fired; there was still no shelf or sheltering niche where a motorized raft could put in and tie up.
Gorov lowered his night glasses. Turning again toward the three men on the forward main deck, he signaled them to dismantle the gun and get below.
Dispirited, Zhukov said, “We could edge closer, then send two men across on a raft. They could match speeds with the berg, ride close to it, somehow anchor themselves to it, and just let it tow them along. Then the raft itself might be able to serve as the platform for the climbers to—”
“No. Too unsteady,” Gorov said.
“Or they could take explosives over in the raft and blast out a landing shelf and operations platform.”
Gorov shook his head. “No. That would be an extremely risky proposition. Like riding a bicycle alongside a speeding express train and trying to grab on for a free trip. The ice isn't moving as fast as an express train, of course. But there's the problem of the rough seas, the wind. I'm not sending anyone out on a suicide mission. The landing shelf must already be there when the rafts reach the ice.”
“What now?”
Gorov wiped his goggles with the back of one ice-crusted glove. He studied the cliff through the binoculars. At last he said, “Tell Timoshenko to put through a call to the Edgeway group.”
“Yes, sir. What should he say to them?”
“Find out where their cave is located. If it's near the leeward side… Well, this might not be necessary, but if it
“Move?” Zhukov said.
“I'm going to see if I can create a landing shaft if I torpedo the base of the cliff.”
“The rest of you go ahead,” Harry insisted. “I've got to let Gunvald know what's happening here. As soon as I've talked to him, I'll bring out the radio.”
“But surely Larsson's been monitoring every conversation you've had with the Russians,” Franz said.
Harry nodded. “Probably. But if he hasn't been, he has a right to know about this.”
“You've only got a few minutes,” Rita said worriedly. She reached for his hand, as if she might pull him out of the cave with her, whether he wanted to go or not. But then she seemed to sense that he had another and better reason for calling Gunvald, a reason that he preferred to conceal from the others. Their eyes met, and understanding passed between them. She said, “A few minutes. You remember that. Don't you start chatting with him about old girlfriends.”
Harry smiled. “I never had any.”
“Just young ones, right?”
Claude said, “Harry, I really think it's foolish to—”
“Don't worry. I promise I'll be out of here long before the shooting starts. Now the rest of you get moving. Go, go.”
The ice cave was neither along the leeward flank of the berg nor near the midpoint of its length, where the Russian radioman had said the torpedo would strike. Nevertheless, they had unanimously decided to retreat to the snowmobiles. The concussion from the torpedo would pass through the berg from one end to the other. And the hundreds of interlocking slabs of ice that formed the ceiling of the cave might succumb to the vibrations.
As soon as he was along, Harry knelt in front of the radio and called Larsson.
