Seas of Crisis

organization chart of units, tactical boundaries, and lines of authority — previously almost opaque to Allied intelligence — revealed itself in crisp detail. The coding-decoding abilities in this military district were swamped by the clarion call from K-Three-three-five, and some people talked in the clear.

Amazingly, Jeffrey was able to hear Rear Admiral Elmar Meredov telling the leader of a regiment of maritime patrol bombers to get everything that could fly airborne. Meredov sounded confident, not cocky, fierce and direct, and on excellent personal terms with his subordinate. Then came an even bigger, unpleasant surprise.

“Remember my cardinal rule of sub hunting. Aircrews must assume that the first antisubmarine contact they make will not be the last. If one contact is actually held, you need to allocate forces between harassing that American sub and searching for another.”

“Understood, sir,” the regimental commander said.

“Don’t forget to have them look in the least likely places, Aleksei, including our continental shelf and especially the noisy water near the islands.”

This was useful to know for future reference, but Jeffrey grew extremely concerned. Meredov was, and would be, a formidable adversary, one who left nothing to chance and who knew that as far back as the Cold War, U.S. spy subs did sometimes work in pairs in Russian waters. If Carter is exposed…

Jeffrey intended to listen to the recording over and over, sifting and absorbing every syllable and nuance.

It took longer to see how the Russian strategic rocket forces reacted. Jeffrey, and everyone else in his strike group who understood what was happening, hated every minute ticking by. O’Hanlon kept reporting sniffs of snowmobiles and helos, fading in and out of his passive sonar detection range. So far as Torelli could figure, they were quartering the area between and around their pair of small islands. It also seemed as if they were examining the route of the undersea cable, wherever polynyas or flat-enough ice made the route practical to reach. If the two Seahorses still assigned to signals-intercept duty heard on their own passive sonars that someone was coming too close, they’d have to dip down beneath the ice and the task group would lose their vital electronic surveillance at the worst possible time.

Jeffrey gritted his teeth as a maritime reconnaissance aircraft roared overhead nearby, its slow speed of two hundred knots showing that it was on active patrol. It sounded different from previous ones, more of a throbbing whine than a growl. O’Hanlon said the engines were turbofans, making it a militarized version of the Tupolev-204, Russia’s newest, most numerous model of antisubmarine plane.

Besides magnetic anomaly detection, with a mental jolt Jeffrey saw a whole other reason to worry: His two ships had been in one place long enough that the warmed seawater exiting their steam condensor cooling pipes might be noticeable on infrared scanners aimed at polynyas downcurrent from the cable tapping site — where Challenger and Carter had no choice but to loiter, motionless, hooked up to the fiber-optic lines.

His heart missed a beat at an even worse thought.

An airborne gravimetric gradiometer, at close enough range, would see our reactor compartments, dead to rights.

Such airborne gravimeters did exist, used by civilian geologists. Jeffrey hoped that the Tupolev’s speed, its engine vibrations, and air turbulence near the sea would impair the resolution if the aircraft actually carried one. Again Jeffrey felt like a fly stuck to flypaper. He was annoyed at himself for not realizing these dangers sooner, but there was nothing he could do to avoid them anyway.

The Tu-204 went away and nothing unpleasant happened.

But after ten hours of waiting on excruciating tenterhooks, it became obvious that the Strategic Rocket Forces never would react to Jeffrey’s scheme with the Mark III decoy. The generals in charge, apparently, didn’t see what an American fast-attack by the North Pole near some missile subs had to do with their ICBM silos far inland. They were too smart — or too paranoid — to generate extra signals traffic, only to have it intercepted somehow, somewhere, by spies. Jeffrey, disappointed beyond words, couldn’t argue with their logic. In retrospect, this aspect of the intel grab was a long shot from the start.

Via the fiber-optic link between Challenger and Carter, he and Bell held a conference call with Harley and Kurzin. The decision they made was the only one they could make. Patch, release, and rebury the cable, smooth over any signs that the bottom had been disturbed, then press on with the mission. Maybe if Carter continued her radio surveillance while on the move with her Seahorses, something might still turn up. Kurzin stated darkly that there were other ways, once near the silo field, to gain the information he needed to help get inside.

Jeffrey already knew that Nyurba didn’t like good-byes, and Kurzin certainly wasn’t the type. He wrapped up simply. “Good luck. See you someday in a better place.”

The two ships parted, Challenger going west and Carter east. Challenger needed to keep up the cover that she was after the 868U at the furthest end of Russia. Carter had to put Kurzin’s squadron ashore in close coordination with Jeffrey’s schedule, or the double-teaming plan against the Russians would come unglued.

Chapter 18

As soon as he’d transferred to Carter again at the start of the second rendezvous, Dashiyn Nyurba had given a high priority to exercise. The rule of thumb for commandos in transit submerged on a submarine was to work out hard six hours a day. On Challenger this had been difficult, because her provisions for physical fitness were rudimentary. Carter’s Multi-Mission Platform, in contrast, included a superbly equipped PT room with two dozen of the latest workout machines — like a top-of-the-line health club without any windows, with rather Spartan decor, and with extra vibration damping and noise suppression engineered in. She also has an expanded sickbay, with two experienced combat trauma surgeons aboard, to treat incoming wounded from my squadron.

Nyurba could tell that he and his four SERT Seabees had lost conditioning during their unexpected, extended rehearsals with Commodore Fuller, when Kurzin had needed to send them back to Challenger at the end of the first rendezvous. By dint of effort and copious sweat, with Nyurba egging the others on, in the few days still available they built back toward the peak of strength and endurance they’d need in Siberia.

Tougher training now could mean less bleeding later.

As Nyurba climbed up the sail-trunk ladder and stood on the open grating at the top, the first things that struck him were the fresh, tangy salt air, the feel of the bracing wind on his face, and the immensity of the twilit sky above, a deep electric aquamarine. He drew in delicious lungfuls. He blinked to help his eye muscles focus, for the first time in weeks, at actual infinity instead of optical illusions within a virtual-reality helmet. He experienced, by the sudden lack of it, how claustrophobically confined he’d been inside Challenger and Carter and the minisub. Then, despite the extreme-weather clothing that he wore against the Arctic chill, he felt starkly naked as he stood in the tiny cockpit on Carter’s sail.

All parts of the submarine that he could see from outside, with the ship on the surface now, were coated bluish-white. This included the sail itself, plus her entire long rounded hull — and even the top of the rudder sticking out of the water, aft of where the teardrop-shaped hull tapered into the very cold sea. The radar-absorbent tinting, the first of its kind on a nuclear sub, had been applied when the ship was in dry dock; though the yard workers made jokes about it, the paint job didn’t seem funny to Nyurba at present. It was a matter of life and death.

What was missing was the minisub, no longer carried on Carter’s back. Since it couldn’t be deployed while Carter was surfaced — it weighed almost sixty tons, sitting high and dry — it had already been released and was waiting submerged with its two-man crew, away to port.

Above Nyurba, on the sail roof, two crewmen in white camouflage smocks — lookouts — peered through image-stabilized binoculars, their urgency and concern infectious. Carter’s photonics masts were both raised, though only by inches, their sensor heads spinning and bobbing as they scanned in every direction for threats on visual and infrared. The electronic support measures antennas atop both heads were