Seas of Crisis

oriented autopilot.

Yet he could tell that his deepest self was becoming worn down. He knew that following orders, though they formed his sworn and inescapable duty, would be no excuse on a higher plane or in a court of law. Violating Russian sovereignty, in the premeditated way he would do it, was an act of aggressive war. He’d snuck onto neutral or Allied soil before, but never like this. The ultimate mission goal amounted to a crime against humanity, if viewed in isolation from its benefits. The necessity and the benefits were pure theory, based on wargame simulations only, no matter how credible that modeling effort might be. The pressure on Jeffrey, and the corrosive effect on his soul, felt immense.

Nyurba’s morbid mood, probably just standard preinsertion heebie-jeebies, must be contagious…. Yes, it’s just the usual doubts and fears before any fresh mission gets rolling.

Jeffrey liked this rationalization, conveniently invented though it was. The notion — delusion? — of normal prebattle stage fright fit well with his newfound get-the-job-done amoral compass. The inner compass was a survival tool, for which he expected he’d sooner or later pay a heavy price. But that would come afterward, when he could afford to let his conscience return and try to reconcile his actions with his own value system, his ethics, his religious beliefs. He’d find out then, the hard way, here or in the afterlife, if reconciliation was even possible. In the meantime he needed to shake these too-distracting ideas off.

It occurred to him that boomer captains and crews must have gone through the same sort of agonizing issues often, wondering how they’d feel if they got an order to fire their missiles. But those orders never came, whereas Jeffrey’s orders sat on the desk, in writing. Though there truly was no precedent for what he and his people had to do, thinking like a boomer captain could help a little for Jeffrey to cope.

And while he might be lonely, he didn’t need to be alone. He went into Challenger’s crowded control room, with men at every console, and icons dancing on the displays. As Challenger and Carter steamed in company away from the rendezvous point, secured from battle stations but maintaining ultraquiet, Jeffrey began to feel mentally restored. The human company, the active motion of his strike group, the collective sense of purpose, were excellent tonics. He quickly returned to his normal self, the driven warrior. The surest sign of this was that another important tactical insight sparked within his brain.

He asked Bell for a moment with him in the captain’s stateroom; it was larger than his office, and he welcomed the slightest change of scenery. They went inside.

“Sir?” After all that had been discussed on Carter, Bell wondered what Jeffrey could possibly want to go over now.

“For a while the most immediate threat is blundering into a Russian sub, at random, point blank.”

Acoustic conditions under the ice were as bad as ever. All active sonars remained secured, except for the covert comms link — no enemy could detect its energy buried in the pack-ice noise.

“Concur, sir,” Bell answered. “My worst fear would be a Russkie boomer using their favorite under-ice tactic.” Hovering stationary, hugging a thin spot in the cap from below, and masked to the sides by ice keels. “Killing time, nearly dead silent, prepared in the event that a missile launch order comes through.” Low-frequency radio signals traveled well through Arctic ice.

“We might not hear them on passive sonar until we ran right under one. And he hears us too, from above and in our baffles. Raw survival instincts kick in, he greets us with a snap shot up our ass. Carter returns the favor from behind us in self-defense. World War Three is on, a bit prematurely, by accident.”

“Not appetizing.”

“So I want you to establish a special gravimeter watch.”

“Commodore?”

“At short range our gravimeter should be able to pick up the density discontinuity of a motionless nuclear sub’s reactor compartment, or compartments.” The thick shielding, the massive containment vessel, the heavy uranium core; some Russian submarine classes had two separate nuclear reactors.

Bell nodded, seeing what Jeffrey was getting at now. “If the other sub isn’t moving, it’s the only way to get very much advance warning that he’s there…. We can signal Carter and maneuver to avoid, and maybe not lose our stealth.”

“That’s what I was thinking. Make sense, Captain?”

“Absolutely. I’ll talk to my XO…. I like that. A special under-ice lookup gravimeter watch.”

“I’ll be in my office. Don’t hesitate to disturb me.”

Bell went into Challenger’s control room, to speak with Sessions. Jeffrey went the other way through the corridor, the few steps aft to the XO’s stateroom. He opened out the VIP rack above the one that Sessions used, climbed up and fully dressed except for his shoes, got comfortable, and grabbed some badly overdue sleep. He slept like a rock, dreamlessly and peacefully.

The sneaky approach toward Siberia took five days and covered almost two thousand nautical miles. They never did encounter another submarine. A message from Commander, U.S. Strategic Command came through, via extremely low-frequency radio that could penetrate deep seawater. The cipher said the mission was confirmed, a definite “go.”

Jeffrey received the news with no little trepidation. It made him admit to himself that, unconsciously, he’d been hoping the scheme would be canceled and the strike group would be recalled.

No such luck.

With this final mental barrier toward the reality of his duty now broken down, he put the remaining transit time to good use. Data disks in his inner orders pouch, opened while on Carter, included scripts to study to prepare for the role it would soon be his burden to play. Since Colonel Kurzin had told Nyurba and his four men to return to Challenger and work with Jeffrey on his Russian language skills and acting ability, he modified those original orders; lone mental rehearsals weren’t his preferred style. Challenger’s crew included a RuLing — a Russian linguist — but that chief wasn’t cleared for crucial portions of the mission.

Instead, the SERT Seabees and Jeffrey talked through versions of the script out loud. They assumed different parts, ranging from the Russian and American presidents to hypothetical hawkish Kremlin advisors, outraged German diplomats, and the senior person in Siberia whom Jeffrey expected to meet with — his back-channel contact, one Rear Admiral Elmar Meredov. Jeffrey’s orders included an intelligence file devoted just to Meredov — his personal biography, a copy of his service record, and an assessment of his psychology by a CIA profiler.

By the end of the five days of rigorous practice and no-holds-barred critiques, Jeffrey felt as ready as he’d ever be.

“It’s time,” Nyurba told him. “We part ways, you and I, until whenever.” Before Jeffrey could say something maudlin or gloopy, Nyurba cut him off. “There’s a serious risk you’ll come across to the Russians as overrehearsed.”

Jeffrey was taken aback. “You mean, too smooth? Too glib?”

“You’re supposed to be responding to all these horrible goings-on as if they’re completely new to you.”

“I love how you put that.”

Nyurba, who still reminded Jeffrey of a latter-day Genghis Khan, placed one big and powerful hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder.

“Remember what I told you. Real life doesn’t follow a script. These runthroughs were only to give you a basic idea.”

“Yup. An idea.”

“When you’re there, don’t rush your thought processes. Don’t let the other side rush you, either. Set a deliberate, gradual pace from the start. Then stick to it.”

“Steady, unhurried, not rushed.” Jeffrey repeated the words, mostly to himself, as if they were a mantra.

A messenger arrived to say the minisub was ready for boarding. Jeffrey wordlessly escorted the Seabees aft to the hangar airlock trunk. He shook hands with Nyurba and his team; he wouldn’t be going with them to Carter. The second, final rendezvous had a very different purpose.