transportation infrastructure. Other than aircraft flights, or plodding cargo ships taking the Northern Sea Route in the brief Arctic summer, the only way from Moscow to Vladivostok — even today — was the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The trip in one direction took a week. To lessen the chance that secret messages would be intercepted, and to increase protection against an electromagnetic pulse attack — which might be nuclear or nonnuclear — fiber-optic cables were used as an alternative to satellite communications and shortwave radio. Fiber-optic cables covering long distances could either be laid underwater, or on land. Moscow years ago chose some of both. This provided redundancy, in case one cable broke down, as sometimes happened. It also saved money, because even with the need for icebreakers or commercial submarines to help lay a fiber-optic trunk line along the whole north coast of Russia, this was still far cheaper than stringing or burying lines across the heartland anywhere except along the Trans-Siberian Railroad’s right of way. The railroad ran through the southernmost part of Siberia, more than a thousand miles from the Arctic coast. And between the two, north-south, were dozens of Russian military installations of all kinds.
Intermediate lines branched off the Arctic undersea cable, to reach into Siberia like fingers. Most of these branch lines existed due to the major rivers flowing north, draining into the different seas that fringed the Arctic Ocean itself. These rivers formed the primary transportation and heavy logistics arteries in that whole part of Russia. In winter the rivers froze solid, becoming ice highways for trucks. In spring and summer, when the waters, due to snow-thaw runoff, drained millions of square miles of Siberian interior, the biggest rivers were navigable. Then cargo ships would use them, serving small, seasonal ports up to hundreds of miles inland.
One of these rivers, the Lena, supported the western edge of the jurisdiction of the rear admiral with whom Commodore Fuller would try to meet. Another, the Indigirka, led to very near that admiral’s central base. A third, the Kolyma, near the eastern edge of the admiral’s turf, was the logistical route to the ICBM field that was Kurzin’s and Nyurba’s target, and was also their planned route of egress if all went well. A smaller river, the Alazeja, on the Siberian mainland coast at the spot that was closest to Genrietty and Zannetty, happened to cut diagonally southeast — down and to the right on the map — from near the Indigirka’s delta toward the Kolyma near the missile field. The missiles were three hundred miles in a straight line from the admiral’s office, but that route on the ground was impassable.
The Alazeja’s mouth was where Kurzin, Nyurba, and their men would sneak out of the water. Nyurba dreaded this part. The Alazeja was one of the most polluted rivers in the world. The continental shelf near its mouth was a major Russian nuclear-waste dumping ground.
“They’ve got it,” Kurzin said tightly.
Nyurba turned back to the bulkhead screen showing the divers. And there it was, a cable as thick as his wrist, unearthed. Pairs of SEALs, dive buddies, went to work at each of the opposite ends of the trench they’d dug, exposing more of the cable, while the cameraman and the safety monitor watched. They signaled they were ready, then all stepped well away, upcurrent, using the play available on their lifeline tethers.
“Hyperbaric work chamber pressurized to depth at the keel, one-eight-zero feet,” the SEAL chief in the command center reported. “Atmosphere gas mix correct. Chamber is ready.”
Kurzin acknowledged. He went to a different console. Nyurba joined him there. The technician sitting at the console accessed the look-down imagery on one of his displays. He activated a low-power blue-green laser range finder. An aiming reticule appeared on his other console screen. He began to manipulate his trackmarble and joystick. A grapnel lowered itself from a big open hatch in
On camera, the SEAL safety monitor made an okay sign with one hand. The technician continued lifting, until the grapnel, holding the cable, withdrew back inside the Multi-Mission Platform’s outer hull.
“Cable now in place in hyperbaric work chamber,” the SEAL in the command center stated. The chamber was a pressure-proof compartment in
“Recall the divers,” Kurzin ordered.
The SEAL chief spoke into his lip mike. The SEAL on the bottom made hand signals to the others. They double-checked that all their tools were still attached to their lanyards. They made sure that their lifelines weren’t tangled. They swam up toward the look-down cameras, and disappeared through the hatch into the work chamber.
The SEAL chief activated different cameras. These showed the work chamber. It was in there that the SEALs would begin the highly classified steps, first developed by the National Security Agency, that were needed to tap an undersea fiber-optic cable. The cable now was locked in place on what resembled a surgical operating table. The SEALs removed their scuba and dry suits, no longer needed since they were in a shirtsleeves environment, where the atmosphere was safe to breathe at a depth of one hundred eighty feet — five and half times sea-level air pressure, enough to hold back the ocean below.
They unreeled a rubber hose connected to
“Chamber high-speed fans are on.”
The SEALs opened small lockers in a bulkhead of the work chamber, removing new tools and supplies. They dried everything using special lint-free absorbent cloths, and donned disposable white garments, including hats and masks, like the outfits worn in a technological clean room. The high-speed fans scrubbed the atmosphere, purging it of lint and dust and even shed skin cells. The men put on long rubber insulation gloves and rubber boots, and stood on thick rubber mats. Once done with their complex task, Nyurba reminded himself, they’d begin a lengthy decompression in a different chamber, ready to rejoin the full commando squadron only as
The SEALs began to cut away the cable’s outer armored sheath, which gave the cable its structural strength. Then they peeled back the softer waterproofing layer under the armor, revealing the working innards of the cable. The most dangerous part of the process now, from the perspective of the SEALs, was avoiding the power cable that ran beside the eight cladded fiber-optic strands. The power cable carried thousands of volts, needed to power the signal amplifiers that a trunk fiber-optic cable required every few miles. Nyurba knew that fiber optics weren’t superconductors — they did suffer signal loss with distance. Whether the trunk cable was strung underwater or on land, automated amplifiers had to be part of the system. Electricity to run the optical amplifiers needed to come from somewhere. Land lines could use local power suppliers along their routes. Undersea cables brought that power with them.
Slowly and carefully, they separated the eight cladded fiber-optic strands, to be able to work on them individually. Inside every strand, through a thread of glass the thickness of a human hair, a stream of coherent laser light carried information at a rate of about twenty billion bytes per second.
With devices resembling instruments for microsurgery, they painstakingly inserted the ends of even smaller glass threads of their own into each of the Russian ones. These threads, Nyurba had been told, drew off the signal without reducing its strength enough for the Russians to notice. The delicate threads were connected to optical amplifiers, and the output of those amplifiers was fed to
“Commodore,” Sessions said, “
Jeffrey was expecting this. “Phone Talker, inform Systems Administrator that
“Fire Control, signal
Bell told COB to put the hull-mounted photonic sensor imagery onto one of the main vertical display screens.
They watched as a pair of divers from