Arctic Front

“Do as I say.”

“Yes, sir.”

To Lopez’s utter amazement Robert Brentwood chewed two aspirin without water as he punched in the coordinate vectors for the attack arcs, double-checking the distances and remembering the forty-mile-an-hour winds expected in the blizzard they’d seen racing south down the lake as they’d egressed Port Baikal. In any event Brentwood knew that with the two enemy subs’ exact “quadrant 8⁵” position known and the two subs being close to the surface, a direct hit wouldn’t be necessary. A half mile either way, even across the 8⁵ line into nearby 6⁵ or 5⁶ quadrants, would do the job. “I’d say that after that last salvo at Second Army they’re either into quadrant six five or just moving into five six. Here, southeast of—” He couldn’t pronounce it and spelled it, “S-B-E-G-A. Kow’d you say that, Johnson?”

“Asshole country, sir.”

Then Lopez had a suggestion. “Sir?”

“Yes?”

“Sir, could we pop one on Irkutsk?”

“Pop one?” In the fatigue that gives rise to silly laughter, even in the most introverted souls, during moments of high tension, Johnson and Robert Brentwood, a world apart in rank, broke up in common cause, Brentwood shaking his head, Johnson, tears in his eyes, looking across at Lopez. “Pop one! You dork!”

“Well, I’m telling you, Lopez,” said Robert Brentwood, right hand holding his head as if it were a basket of eggs, “I’m not gunning for civilians — nor is Freeman — but I like your idea. Matter of fact, I like it so much, if we get out of this I’m gonna see you get promoted.”

“Hell no, sir.”

“Only let’s spread the good news around a little, Lopez,” said Brentwood. “On behalf of Second Army and—” A stab of needlelike pain forced Brentwood to sit down abruptly on the bunk.

“You okay, sir?” asked Johnson anxiously.

“No. Son of a—” The pain passed but left him nauseated and dizzy for a few minutes. Johnson was trying not to look worried, but he was scared. As a Sea Wolf captain Brentwood had all the Soviet firing procedures down pat. Without him, Johnson doubted he could handle it—knew he couldn’t handle it.

Brentwood had Lopez strap his left arm against his chest, moved to the computer, triple-checked the coordinates, then stopped. Without looking around he announced, “Lopez, I’m gonna promote you whether you damn well like it or not.” He looked around at Lopez, on steerage, then forward a few feet to Johnson. “We are going to spread it around, boys. Johnson, how many cruise missiles on that raft?

“Eight, sir.”

“Right! With the four we already have that makes twelve. We’ll clobber the Stalingrad Division from behind with six. Won’t know what the hell hit them. Confusion’ll be worth as much to us as the casualties we inflict. And, gentlemen, let’s not be mean about this. We’ll split the other six with two for the KMK factory at Novokuznetsk, which we’ll fire first, and two we’ll donate to Akademgorodok, near Novosibirsk. The KMK factory,” he explained to Lopez, who hadn’t picked up on the name, “is where they make their tanks as well as these GSTs. And that leaves two for our two friends up north. Seeing they stole our technology, let’s demonstrate its accuracy, gentlemen. All right?”

“All right.”

“Okay. Let’s have a sonar ping,” ordered Brentwood, and the easy tone of a second ago was now replaced by his professional demeanor. “Come on, hurry it up.”

“Yes, sir.” Now they were on active sonar, Brentwood explaining, “Might as well be brazen about it. What’s that old man Freeman always says? L’audace, I’audace, toujours I’audace!”

“He stole it from Patton,” said Johnson.

“Who stole it from Frederick the Great,” said Brentwood. “Well, it’s ours now.”

The active’s “pings” were now bouncing, or “bonging,” back, telling them that they had a relatively thin ice roof no more than half a mile three degrees starboard.

“No problem, sir,” Johnson pronounced. “Looks as thin as a virgin’s—”

“Yes, yes, all right,” said Robert Brentwood, notoriously prudish about such matters, even in front of his sister Lana who, is a nurse had seen it all and had “done time,” as young David put it, with “Scumbag” La Roche.

Reaching the area of the thin ice, Brentwood ordered Johnson to take the sub to a depth of two thousand feet, approaching the sub’s crush depth, and at an off angle to the targeted ice patch. He then pulled the lever to release float charge. Two minutes later there was a gut-wrenching thud, and Brentwood immediately ordered the GST to fifty feet.

“Fifty feet, aye, sir,” came Johnson’s confirmation. At fifty feet he levelled the sub out, still surprised at how quickly the tiny GST, a seal compared to a whale in size, responded. The problem was not to let it get ahead of you and slam into the ice.

“Half speed,” Brentwood instructed Lopez, then to Johnson, “Twenty-five feet.”

“Twenty-five feet, sir… Levelling at twenty-five.”

“Very well. Man battle stations missile. Set condition one!”

“Condition one, aye, sir,” responded Johnson.

“Departments ready?” asked Brentwood. There were only two departments, Lopez’s and Johnson’s, but Brentwood knew that this was a time for tried and true procedures to steady their nerves.

“Steerage ready, sir,” reported Lopez, followed by Johnson’s, “Sonar ready.”

“Very well,” acknowledged Brentwood. “Neutral trim.”

Johnson made a slight adjustment to starboard.”Neutral trim, sir.”

“Stand by to flood tubes one and two,” ordered Brentwood, it being standard procedure on any missile submarine to be ready to fire torpedoes in defense of the ship should an enemy vessel try to interfere with the missile launch. “Completing spin up,” Brentwood advised them as he entered the final salinity and current corrections that would affect the missiles’ trajectories. “Spin up complete. Prepare for ripple fire.”

“Prepare for ripple fire,” responded Johnson.

“Fire one,” ordered Brentwood.

“Fire one. One fired.” There was a hiss of compressed air and a rasping noise, the sub rolling ten degrees port before regaining neutral trim.

“Fire two.”

“Fire two. Two fired.”

In less than three and half minutes all four cruise missiles had passed through their nose cones’ protective membranes, exited the ice-free hole, booster rockets engaged, and were en route to their targets. Lopez and Johnson exited the sub for the reloads, while Brentwood made copious notes on the GST’s performance as he prepared a course to take the sub toward thinner ice at the eastern shore after all salvos had been fired.

* * *

“In the spring, General,” said Professor Leonid Grigorenko, looking out on the frozen Ob Sea that was Akademgorodok’s private lake, “I hope you’ll find time to come out sailing with me and lrena.”

The gruff, heavy-browed Yesov shook his head. “Nyet, thank you all the same, Professor. I am no sailor. Besides, there will still be ice in the spring.”

“Oh, come now, Comrade. It adds to the adventure, yes?”

“Nyet.” Yesov looked about so that none of his aides at the professor’s cocktail party, to celebrate the success of the GST offensive, heard that he was leery of anything to do with water-including bathing, some had said. “I get sick in the Jacuzzi, Professor.”

“Ah, Marshal!” said Chernko, his familiarity claiming Yesov, marshal of all Siberian forces, as if he were a long-lost friend. “How goes the Thirty-first?”

“Well,” said Yesov curtly — he didn’t like Chernko, even if he was hailed in Novosibirsk for his GST plan. Yesov was willing to accept the general’s help, but to Yesov it had been too conditional altogether — Chernko telling them, insisting on what pleasures and luxuries, including dachas, he would get in return. Yesov despised him. Here was the Russian, a former KGB chief, now sucking up to the Western alliance in Moscow while slipping Novosibirsk vital