Cold Choices

of them. According to his plot, the nearest object approached no closer than two thousand yards on Seawolf’s port side.

* * *

The Russian sensor buoy listened carefully as the sound from Seawolf grew louder. Its sound receivers covered a wide range of frequencies, and now it isolated tones, pulses, rhythmic sounds that were not only man-made, but fit its detection criteria. It still waited, though. It detected and classified the sounds from the intruder within minutes, but would they persist? Would they change?

They didn’t change, but grew steadily louder at a constant rate. The sounds made by Seawolf were no louder than a household appliance, but the buoy had more than enough to work with.

The buoy’s computer was smart enough to recognize this as an approaching vessel, so waited, gathering and recording sounds. Finally, the intensity began to fade, at the same rate it had increased, and the bearing rate changed dramatically. The buoy realized that the submarine was moving away. It had gotten all the information that it was going to get, and it was time to report to its masters.

It uploaded its recordings and all target data, along with a message, into a small float, one of three located at the top of the buoy. The computer verified that the surface was clear of large ice chunks, and then released a catch. The float silently shot up toward the surface.

Seawolf was several miles away when the Russian sensor buoy broke the surface and broadcasted her presence.

7. INCIDENT

4 October 2008

Severodvinsk

Barents Sea, five nm south of the Amga Buoy Line

Petrov was in the aft auxiliary machinery compartment when the summons came over the intercom: “CAPTAIN TO CENTRAL POST.” There was an urgency in the speaker’s tone, and Petrov wondered what new disaster had befallen them. There was no sign of anything amiss in the engineering plant. Chief Engineer Lyachin had just been showing him the improvised repairs to one of the motor generators, and Petrov had praised his resourcefulness.

Heading forward from the sixth compartment, Petrov used the process of elimination to try and bound the problem. The reactor and propulsion plant were both functioning within safe limits. If not engineering, then weapons? Unlikely, since they weren’t exercising those systems. Sailors saw him coming and flattened themselves against the passageway bulkheads, or ducked into doorways. The captain was in a hurry.

Sensors? Possible, he thought. Communications? Also a possibility. Each new suggestion made him increase his pace. As he leapt through the watertight doors, Petrov clutched the red case containing his IDA-59M close to his chest. The self-contained breathing apparatus was issued to everyone on board a Russian submarine and was designed to provide fifteen minutes of breathable air. That was long enough for a person to evacuate a compartment filled with thick, choking smoke.

In the central post, Kalinin started his report as soon as Petrov came into “It’s an alert, sir-an Urgent message from Northern Fleet Headquarters. I’ve ordered the boat to communications depth. Sonar reports no contacts.”

Petrov’s anxiety quickly changed to curiosity, mixed with impatience. He thought, “I hope it’s something other than a drill this time.”

There were several levels of importance or precedence used in fleet messages. “Routine” messages were the administrative trash that he and the rest of his officers plowed through every day. “Priority” messages concerned fleet operations, and were handled quickly, if the communications commander wanted to keep his job. “Urgent” messages had to be passed instantly. If America attacked, the fleet would be warned by an Urgent alert message.

The cautious Kalinin, like any good starpom, would not usually have maneuvered the boat without permission from his captain, but this was an exception. With an alert message, there could be no delay. Minutes might count. Petrov nodded his approval of Kalinin’s actions and asked, “Is Mitrov ready?”

“Yes, comrade Captain. He’s in the communications post and will keep us appraised.”

Petrov watched the depth gauge rise. They’d been loitering near the edge of the sea ice, a hundred meters down. At that depth, Severodvinsk had to trail a long wire antenna to receive any signals at all, and they were limited to simple one-word codes — like “Alert!” That was the tradeoff with extremely-low- frequency communications. A submarine could receive messages at deeper depths, but they were incredibly short owing to the low bandwidth — little more than a “bell ringer” telling a boat to make contact. They’d received just such a message, calling them toward the surface where they could receive a more detailed message using a faster system.

“Slow to three knots.” Petrov’s order was echoed by the deck officer and the watch section engineer. It went against his grain to slow the boat, but it was necessary. As they ascended, they’d start bumping into ice floes on the surface. Severodvinsk’s sail was strengthened, but she wasn’t an icebreaker.

“Deck Officer, make your depth twenty meters.”

Once the top of her sail was close to the surface, they could receive the very-low-frequency transmission through the sail-mounted antenna assembly. Designed for use by submarines under the Arctic ice pack, where raising an antenna was not always possible, this specially designed system used four flat antennas that were flush with the top of the sail.

They’d have to come shallower than twenty meters to get a good signal, but Petrov wanted to make sure there was no one up there first, by raising a periscope and having a look around. He wasn’t too worried about exposing his position. These were Russian waters. Any aircraft overhead would have a red star on the side, and with the ice, it was unlikely there were any surface vessels.

But prudence demanded he know for certain. And then there was always the possibility of a large and virtually silent iceberg. He’d see one of these frozen monsters long before they could detect it with their collision- avoidance sonar. Mikhail Shubin, the deck officer, announced “Twenty-five meters,” and Petrov moved to the periscope. When Shubin announced, “Twenty-two meters, leveling off,” Petrov ordered “Up periscope” almost before Shubin finished his report.

Petrov held his face against the eyepiece and rode the scope up. At twenty meters, the optics barely cleared the surface. The idea was to expose as little of the scope as possible. In a calm sea, a few centimeters above the water was plenty. Waves made it harder. Today there were large swells and it was still raining.

He quickly turned the scope in a circle, first searching on the horizon and the surface of the water, then a second rotation to search above the horizon. The periscope was extended to its full height, and with most of the barrel still underwater the rocking of the boat didn’t make it easy to finish the safety search quickly. Long practice had taught him how to make a fast scan.

As Petrov ordered “Down periscope!” Kalinin checked his watch and said, “Thirty-two seconds.”

The captain reported, “No contacts. Make your depth sixteen meters.” He frowned, an artist rating his latest performance. “That was too long, I had to slow down because of the chop. There must be a gale blowing. There are good-sized waves up there, in spite of the ice.”

The periscope image was recorded on a hard drive and then displayed on a TV monitor in the central post. Kalinin and Petrov reviewed it together, looking for any contacts that might have been missed on the first quick viewing — all standard procedure.

Although a color image, it was nothing but grays, with a dark mottled sky and darker gray water that occasionally lapped over and smeared the periscope lens. This close to the edge of the ice pack, the ice floes were different shapes and sizes, dancing on the waves as they were tossed about by the wind. Under a clear sky, Petrov had seen them splashed with blues and greens. Now they were dirty, almost greasy, uneven lumps.

He’d been born in the north, and he’d served in the Northern Fleet his entire career, but that only allowed him to cope with the environment better than men from the south. No amount of acclimatization would allow a wise