Seas of Crisis

“Good,” Harley said. “An illusion of normalcy.”

“Agree, sir. Can’t hurt.”

Harley used his intercom mike, sounding as always brisk and precise. “Helm, Bridge, ahead one-third, maintain present ship’s heading, using rudder as required. Make turns for three knots, inform maneuvering room that steam throttle will need to be opened wider due to drag of large moored load.”

Harley listened on his headset, and seemed satisfied. “Very well, Helm.”

Water churned aft of Carter’s rudder. The mooring lines creaked and seawater squirted from between their strands as they drew extra tight, but they held. Carter and the floe began to move, slightly crabwise until the helmsman found the rudder deflection that kept the lash-up on a straight course.

“Sir,” the phone talker said, “Colonel Kurzin reports special topside watch is set to monitor for gaps in cloth and possible problems with mooring.”

Harley made eye contact with Nyurba. He wasn’t smiling now.

“Let’s hope the Russians don’t notice we aren’t moving quite like the rest of the sea ice…. And that we don’t get in someone’s way in the Northern Sea Route shipping lane, so an icebreaker comes pay a visit to shove us aside.”

Nyurba just nodded. He could think of other things that might go wrong. When the sea ice around them now began to dwindle, as they eased their way toward the Alazeja River mouth, they’d appear more and more like an errant floe with a peculiar mind of its own. Given the restricting bottom contours and extremely shallow depth in this whole area, Carter would have to follow a course that bucked the trend of normal floe drift. At least the prevailing wind and surface current were mostly in their favor.

“Phone Talker,” Harley said crisply, “inform Colonel Kurzin that nonessential personnel may go below.”

“Colonel Kurzin acknowledges, sir.”

“Very well,” Harley said. “Helm, Bridge. Right five degrees additional rudder, use auxiliary maneuvering units to aid the course change, make your course one-five-five. Make turns for four knots.”

The helmsman acknowledged. Nyurba glanced aft. The white rudder shifted slightly, ropes creaked and ice groaned, and the floe began to rotate compared to those around it. Their heading steadied, south-southeast.

“We’re leaving a bit of a wake,” Nyurba said to Harley.

“Pump jet’s cavitating too. Can’t be helped. It’ll die down somewhat when the floe gets up to speed.”

“Understood, Captain. But what if an aircraft comes close?”

“I’ll order all stop till it’s gone. If a wake-anomaly ASW satellite’s watching, even if they can pick us out from all this environmental clutter, they might think they’re seeing turbulence from a misshapen part of an ice keel. Right now my biggest worry is the sea ice gets too crowded and we hit something big, or need to nudge our way through with force to keep going.”

“Would the mooring lines hold if that happened?”

“Depends. We hit too much warm air, the mooring spikes could melt free on their own.”

Nyurba grunted. There wasn’t much he could say. He just hoped that this stunt was so reckless and offbeat that the Russians would never guess at the truth. In a few hours at four knots, with Carter’s surfaced draft displacing over thirty feet, her keel would almost be brushing the bottom. Even if the Russian Navy drove them off by nonlethal means, the mission would end in embarrassing failure — raising questions in Kremlin minds that would preclude a similar mission attempt in the future. The catastrophic result, Nyurba knew, as Commodore Fuller had put it succinctly, would be Apocalypse Soon or Apocalypse Later.

Chapter 19

Weps, Bridge,” Harley said blandly, “deploy Seahorse III unit from tube six to examine our projected track for obstructions or mines.” This was the probe that had studied the undersides of floes, while the units from tubes seven and eight listened in for Russian signals. Harley waited a beat. “Very well, Weps.” He turned to Nyurba. “Mines are doubtful in these parts, I think, but you never know. And an uncharted wreck could ruin our whole day.”

“Yep.”

“You can stay up here or not, Commander,” Harley said. “Your choice, but please don’t feel you have to keep up with me. You need your sleep before we make landfall. I rather doubt I’ll get much myself for a while. ESM room says we’re being tickled by Bear-F radars, now and again. So far, just intermittent routine search sweeps, but it could get exciting later.”

“Captain, is that your way of telling me to sleep well?”

Harley grinned broadly, enjoying himself. “Take a nice nap. We’ll be fine.”

Nyurba turned away.

“ESM, Bridge, aye,” he heard Harley say into his lip mike. “ESM, Bridge, wait one.”

The change in Harley’s tone caught Nyurba’s attention.

“Commander, the NSA boys say they have something for you.”

“What?”

“Here. Talk to them.” Harley handed Nyurba his headset.

“Where’s Colonel Kurzin?” Nyurba asked the phone talker.

The young crewman used his microphone. “Sir, Colonel Kurzin is topside, aft.”

Nyurba pulled the headset on, and spoke to one of the NSA signals analysts. The Seahorses had overheard what was encoded as a routine administrative supply requisition, but the context — once flagged and decoded by the supercomputer — revealed the schedule of the next shift change for the silo crews at the missile field that was the special ops squadron’s ultimate destination and target. The analyst gave Nyurba the information.

“Captain,” Nyurba asked with sudden impatience, “can the phone talker by the colonel be patched into this intercom?”

“Negative. The circuits are incompatible.”

“Phone Talker,” Nyurba said, “inform Colonel Kurzin that…” He tried to choose how to phrase it. Intel reports had amply confirmed that silo crews rotated every three days. But because of deception tactics such as dummy activity at Russian missile fields, no one could be positive when real shift changes took place. Satellite imagery analysts in the U.S. had, with care, formulated a best estimate. Now, too late, it was realized they’d been wrong. “Next shift change is in four to six hours.”

The phone talker repeated this stark fact into his mike, verbatim, then waited for an answer.

“Colonel Kurzin says, excuse me, sir, he says ‘Shit.’ ”

“Your boss is nothing if not pithy,” Harley said.

“I need your rig,” Nyurba told the phone talker. He returned Harley’s intercom headset and donned the sound-powered phones. “This is Commander Nyurba,” he told the crewman at the other end. “Have Colonel Kurzin put on your rig.” He waited.

“Kurzin.”

“Nyurba here, sir.”

“If the next change is in only two days, then the one after that is in five days, not six like we were told.”

“I know, sir,” Nyurba said. “It’s either that or wait for the following one, in eight days.”

“We can’t afford to loiter or dawdle! I won’t add three extra days in-country, with thirty times the risk! We’d destroy our coordination with Challenger too!”

“Then we have to make the approach march over four days, sir, not five. The men will arrive exhausted, going straight into the assault.”

“Don’t you think I know that? We have no choice…. All right. So be it. At least now we know what we needed to know.” Kurzin sighed. “Meet me in the command center in ten minutes…. We’ve got to rework our entire schedule and the whole damn duty roster among eighty men. Find different route waypoints and encampments, change everybody’s man-packed loads, less food and more ammo. Christ.”

“Sir, we have almost a full day before we reach shore.”