Nimitz Class

bridge light to starboard, and the quick-white to port. The span passed overhead at 0141. A ferry crossed west to east up ahead, but well clear of the oncoming freighter and her shadow.

They were two minutes short of the shallow sandbank in the middle of the south lane — the one with two wrecks already on it — when the first danger signal flickered into life. Up ahead, running hard toward them, almost on the middle line of the shipping lanes, was an oncoming contact. They could see she was very wide on her course, going fast, rounding the right-hand corner marked by the Kizkulesi tower. What they did not know, at this stage, was that she was a twenty-thousand-ton Rumanian tanker.

The submarine would meet her just as they too had to swerve to the center to avoid the second wreck. There was not sufficient water here to go deep and get under her. There was only thirty meters at best charted on the edge of the shoal. The tanker drew about ten meters. Unseen would need at least twenty more.

Admiral MacLean and Jeremy Shaw had about five minutes to come up with something. Their options were running out.

“Christ! This thing is a fucking size,” the CO reported as he peered again through the periscope.

Then, just to compound matters, he spotted what looked like another ferry up ahead, crossing east to west right in their path. Then the totally unthinkable happened. The sonar officer called suddenly, “Control Sonar…our leader’s revolutions are decreasing, sir.”

Jeremy Shaw showed signs of real strain for the first time. “Jesus!” he exclaimed. “We really do not need this. No wonder it’s fucking illegal.”

Unseen was now on an underwater collision course with the Russian freighter’s screws, a life-threatening maneuver for everyone who sailed in the submarine.

Captain Shaw recovered his composure…“Revolutions twenty…turn fast starboard two-four-zero.”

Now the Russian freighter too began a long starboard swing toward the docks on the European side, but at least he kept going. The navigator called out that the fifteen-meter wreck was passed. But the Rumanian tanker kept coming, five hundred yards now, still too wide.

Jeremy Shaw and Admiral MacLean knew the shallow-drafted ferry could go straight over the casing provided it missed the fin and periscopes. But if the submarine pressed on down the left side of the down lane, they would be unable to avoid being mowed down by the Rumanians, who were not only blind to the submarine, they were running too wide and too fast.

Unseen was unable to move right because of the shoal and the twenty-meter wreck, unable to veer left because that would take her onto the Kizkulesi bend, and, while the tanker might miss them, they had no way of knowing that another big merchant ship was not driving round on the inside of the bend.

All the admiral could do was to suggest they make like a “dead pig”—that is, show as little periscope as possible, drifting just below the surface with the south-running current, easing over the sandbank, making no speed until they could go deep around the next corner. “That should keep us marginally out of the line of collision with the tanker, and the Turkish radar operators will take us for a hunk of flotsam,” said the admiral.

“If their helmsman makes even one minor mistake, he’s going to break this submarine into two very large pieces,” muttered the captain.

It was a passive maneuver, and the more courageous for that. But it was their only option. Within seconds they heard the propeller of the big tanker come thrashing down their port side, missing them not by the two hundred yards Admiral MacLean had estimated — cutting his normal safety margin by 60 percent — but by about forty yards.

The swirling turbulence in the wake of this massive hull, twenty thousand tons of steel barging through the narrow waterway, threw the submarine well off-course. She swiveled fifteen degrees to port before she steadied. “Ah yes, we’re heading straight toward Asia now — that was rather a novel way of doing it,” the admiral muttered.

“Not so bad, sir,” said the navigator. “We’re a bit late for our turn to the south round this bend anyway. I’m happy on the western side of the channel. The water’s deeper.”

Just then, a new call rang out in the Royal Navy submarine, which was still making like a “dead pig,” with only her periscope showing intermittently. “Control Sonar…new contact! Designated track four-three. Bearing one-eight-five.”

“Christ!” snapped the CO. “This is a big bastard and we’re right ahead of him, bang in his path. Put him at seven hundred yards. Give him twelve knots. Bloody hell, he’s in the wrong lane.”

“We’ll have to go deep,” snapped Admiral MacLean. “Jeremy…half ahead…four zero revolutions…five down…thirty meters…call out the speed.”

“Sir…”

“Two knots.”

“Christ. He’s turning. Midships. Starboard thirty.”

The CO barked, “Down all masts. Ease to ten…steer one-eight-three…thirty-one meters.”

“Twenty-five, sir.”

Then the sounder called the depth below the keel, “Sounding ten meters, sir.”

“Slow ahead.”

“Still one-eight-five. He’s louder. All other contacts blanked.”

“Thirty-one meters, sir.”

“Sounding five meters, sir.”

The admiral: “Yes, here he comes, Jeremy. That’s his bow pressure pushing us down. Foreplanes full rise.”

“Sounding two meters, sir.”

“Nice and level, Jeremy. Don’t want to put the propeller in the mud.”

“Right, sir. Depth holding…that’s the suction along his hull.”

The admiral gave out his last commands: “Half-ahead. Four zero revolutions. Seventeen and a half meters…but keep her level at first, Jeremy.”

The words of the sounding operator—“Two meters, sir”—were almost drowned out in the roar of the big freighter’s props as she thundered overhead, charging through the water at twelve knots.

“Track four-three right astern. Bearing zero-zero-four, sir. Very loud. Doppler low. Same revolutions, one- two-four.”

Admiral MacLean stepped aside as the submarine headed back up toward the surface of the mile-wide and now deeper waters of the harbor of Istanbul. Slowly Unseen climbed to periscope depth as she silently entered safer waters.

Fifteen minutes after the near-miss, life was just about back to normal in the control room and plainly the worst was over. Captain Shaw handed over to his first lieutenant, joined the admiral and Baldridge for a cup of tea in the wardroom.

“I’m sorry I was a bit pushy there, Jeremy,” said Admiral MacLean. “But I reckoned I’d seen a lot more of those shallow-water, close-quarters situations than you had.”

“Absolutely, sir. I was getting a bit mesmerized looking through the periscope. Anyway I think I had missed the navigator’s clue that we were in deeper water, and could go under him. Thank you, sir.”

Unseen headed out of the wide southerly channel which flowed past the eastern shoreline of the old city of Istanbul. There was more than fifty meters of water here, and less than three miles to the open reaches of the Sea of Marmara.

Jeremy Shaw wondered when they should send in a satellite message to the duty officer in Northwood. “And one to Washington?”

“I’d say we ought to do it right away,” said the admiral. “We’ve done it. And that’s that.”

“Do you have a code word for a successful mission, Bill?” asked the captain.

“Sure do—home run—that’s what they’re waiting for. Straight to Admiral Morgan, Fort Meade, Maryland. It’s nine o’clock at night there, but he’ll be around in his office, waiting to hear.”

The CO sent for a messenger to take a drafted signal for transmission. Then he left the wardroom, leaving