Kilo Class

the same place in about eleven days. Boomer will be waiting…”

“Brilliant,” rasped Admiral Morgan. “We got ’em.”

“Yes. We got ’em, if Commander Dunning and his team feel they can make a trans-Polar underwater run,” said Admiral Mulligan, grimly. “And, if the conditions are right in the Chukchi Sea. Still, if the Russians can run this little convoy through the ice, I guess we can, too. Does Boomer have anyone on board with any experience?”

“He has some himself,” replied Admiral Dixon. “He’s worked up there under the ice…but more important his XO, Mike Krause, knows a lot about it. I’m not sure if he ever went right through. He may have a few years ago.”

“But, hell, we don’t even know if they have the right charts and books on board, do we?” asked Mulligan.

“Yes, we do,” replied Admiral Dixon. “They haven’t.”

“Beautiful,” said Admiral Morgan. “You got a plan, John?”

“We get our ice skates on,” said Admiral Dixon. “I’ll draft a signal, and we’ll put it on the satellite…we’ll probably have to make an air drop with extra supplies, information, and spares…. Where do you think, sir? Somewhere up by Jan Mayen Island? That way Boomer won’t have to hang around waiting.”

“Right. West of the island, I’d say,” replied the CNO. “You better get moving on this, right now.”

The periscope of USS Columbia broke the surface of the rough, gale-swept North Atlantic just southwest of Torshavn in the Faeroe Islands at midnight local time, on August 22. Comms accessed the satellite and reported the submarine’s position: 62.00N, 7.00W. They sucked off a message from SUBLANT.

Commander Dunning ordered Columbia down into smoother waters and waited for the printout of the communication. He was not, however, in any way prepared for what he read:

Assess K-9 and K-10 heading EAST along North Siberian coast in company with one Typhoon Class on inter- Fleet transfer, four modern ASW escorts, one Arktika Class icebreaker, and a Fleet replenishment ship. Opportunities for attack by you in N. Siberian waters and Bering Strait considered minimal, and too dangerous.

Proceed forthwith to deep water in Aleutian Basin via Polar route. Report any special requirements for navigational advice, books, charts, spares, equipment ASAP, and in time for air drop west of Jan Mayen by MPA AM 24th. Report position in time for drop.

Latest ice reports Point Barrow area and Beaufort Sea will be passed to you within twenty-four hours, and as they become available.

Boomer gulped. “Under the Pole… holy shit… MIKE!.. get a look at this…”

Lieutenant Commander Krause read the message. “I’ve never been right through, sir,” he said. “But I’ve been halfway and back twice…both times from the other end, up through the Bering Strait. In fact it’s not that bad in the deep water, but there are a few awkward spots north of Point Barrow, where the bottom shelves right up, and you can get ice-pressure ridges coming down a hundred and twenty feet below the surface — a couple of our submarines have been forced back over there…ran out of real estate where the downward ice ridges almost hit the shoals on the bottom.”

“Shit,” said Boomer. “Are you sure we’re ready for this?”

“I guess we better be. That message from SUBLANT was an order.”

“Right. What do we need?”

“A couple more charts, and a couple of books, hopefully Commander Anderson’s account of his journey in 1958, plus a couple of more recent patrol reports. We’ll also want additional upward-looking fathometer spares. Plus spares for the periscopes, which are apt to get knocked around in the overhead ice. Still, it’s the right time of year. We might be all right…I’ll round up our navigator and check out all the gear, then get a signal off to SUBLANT.”

Boomer studied the chart and estimated the distance to the rocky Norwegian island of Jan Mayen as 750 miles. “Tell ’em we’ll be at 72N 10W for the drop point, waiting at periscope depth. Make it a floating package with a dye marker,” he said. “We’ll listen out on UHF channel thirty-one thirty hours from now.”

“Aye, sir.”

With that, the long black hull of Columbia accelerated toward the deep Arctic waters, over the Icelandic Plateau, toward the Eggvin Shoal. There, in difficult shelving water, the icy Maro Bank guards the western approaches to Jan Mayen, on the edge of the winter pack ice.

“Steer course 355 for six hundred and fifty miles,” said Boomer. “Speed twenty-five. Depth six hundred.” He turned to Lieutenant Wingate and added, “Right there we’ll come right to 015 for four hours and make that our pickup spot.”

The Commander then called for a navigation meeting with Lieutenant Commander Krause and Lieutenant Wingate one hour hence. The time passed swiftly—Columbia came to periscope depth to pass their rendezvous signal, and Boomer elected to stay for twenty minutes, pending a reply from SUBLANT. It arrived via the satellite almost immediately:

Drop point confirmed 72N 10W. Floating package dye marker. UHF 31. 0600 local August 24. MPA from US Naval Air Station Keflavik, Iceland, to make rendezvous. Call-sign BLUEBIRD ONE FIVE. Transmit UHF for homing 0550.

Columbia went deep again, and the three officers gathered in the navigation area, where the CO asked Lieutenant Wingate for his preliminary plan.

“I suggest we head north in deep water, sir…up between Greenland and Spitzbergen, and then enter the Arctic Ocean, under the pack ice, through the Lena Trough — that’s right here where the permanent ice shelf begins. We’ll be on course 035 after the drop point, with an adjustment after two hundred miles to course 000. We wanna make that adjustment right at the Greenland Fracture zone…right here, sir…over the Boreas Abyssal Plain… it’s fifteen thousand feet deep there.”

“Yup, Dave. I got it. Then you’re plotting us straight on for another seven hundred miles running due north, straight at the Pole?”

“Yessir. Right to here…where it says Morris Jesup Plateau. At that point the water is suddenly going to get appreciably more shallow…this is the one-thousand-meter contour right here at the northern tip of the plateau. Our sounder will show it like an underwater cliff, shelving up from three thousand to a thousand meters in twenty miles. By then we will have curved around to 310,…take us a couple of hundred miles south of the Pole itself.”

“Good call, Dave,” said Lieutenant Commander Krause. “That way we’ll avoid all that crap when the compasses go berserk and start spinning around. What do they call it? Longitude roulette?”

“Well, sir, I’ve never worked under the ice. But I know our gyros get real confused north of 87. Something to do with the lessening of the Coriolis effect as you reach the earth’s spin axis. Anyway, if you reach the Pole, every direction is, obviously, south.”

“That’s it. If you stand on the North Pole and take a few paces in any direction, you have to be heading south, toward Russia, Canada, the Atlantic, Pacific or wherever. Hard to know which. That’s longitude roulette.”

“Yessir. We just gotta avoid violent changes of course, otherwise the gyros go ape. I got a book of words here that explains it. But in my view we’re better to avoid the whole damn shemozzle, and stay south…right here, straight across Hall Knoll…our entire journey from here to the Bering Strait is four thousand miles…but we’re only under the polar ice cap for fifteen hundred miles…three days at our speed. Not bad, right?”

“Good job, Dave,” said Boomer. “I guess Hall Knoll is about our halfway point…and right here you got a course change?”

^{THE POLAR ROUTE. The most dangerous submarine journey in the world — sealed in, under the Arctic pack ice for three days, running deep and fast, from the Atlantic straight through to the Pacific.}

“Yessir. A whole lot of small course changes just past the Pole will put us about south for a beeline on Point Barrow. We’ll cross the Canada Basin in about a day and a half, and hope to come out from under the permanent ice on the coast of the Beaufort Sea, right opposite Point Barrow.”

“Right there we have the only really difficult area,” said Lieutenant Commander Krause. “That last hundred