Kilo Class

They now raised the mast and accessed the satellite, calling in their position, and their plans for the next twenty-four hours. Then they collected their own signal, originated by SUBLANT, just half an hour before.

K-9 and K-10 still heading east in Kara Sea. In company with escort as previously stated. 252400AUG, position 78N 90E, speed 10 knots on the surface. Heading for Strait of Vil Kitskogo south of Bolshevik Island. Good hunting.

Boomer took the message into the navigation area where Lieutenant Wingate located the correct chart and placed a mark on the spot where the American satellite had recently photographed the Russian convoy. The navigator made a few measurements. “We’re doing it, sir. I have us four hundred and eighty miles closer to the Bering Strait…and once we’re under way, moving much faster.”

Topside, the mechanics and the two electricians took turns fitting the new transducer. The job would take more than two hours. While they worked, the men could feel a weather front coming in from the north. The wind was rising. Even more eerie was the dull roaring sound they heard. It seemed to be only a few miles away, and by 0300 they could see a heaving wave far out on the horizon, rumbling and cracking over the ice, slowly rolling toward them. The Captain was on the bridge when the crew saw it, and he turned his binoculars to the Arctic phenomenon. The wind was now whipping the snow off the top of the giant ice wave as it ground its way toward Columbia.

“In one hour, that ice wave is gonna arrive here and crush this ship like a tin can,” snapped Boomer. “How close to ready are the guys on the transducer?”

“FORTY MINUTES, SIR,” someone yelled. “Two more waterproof seals.”

Boomer turned his glasses back to the north and tried to get a distance fix on the line of ice slabs rising twelve to fifteen feet in the air in an upward pressure ridge hundreds of yards long. All around Columbia there were nothing but endless flat ice fields, and the jagged wall of rafted ice, possibly two miles off their starboard beam, now fractured the smooth, level plain of the Arctic snowscape.

Boomer leaned forward on the edge of the bridge to steady the binoculars. He wanted to see if he could discern movement on the ridge to equate with the distant thunder of the floes. But the wind seemed to whip between the glasses and his eyes, which were watering uncontrollably — the involuntary tears freezing hard on his cheeks within seconds.

But there was movement. He was sure of that. In the pale sunlight he could see the great chunks rise up, and then make a prolonged roll forward, forcing more ice upward and onward.

“Jesus Christ,” muttered the CO to the crew on deck. “This ice is on the move…but I don’t want to go back under with the ice detector still up the chute. We can’t stay up here…this polynya’s gonna start closing in on us real soon.”

He wondered how long they had, but as he stood there, he could hear a kind of high shrieking sound, punctuated by an almighty CRACK! as a mile-long split suddenly appeared in the ice to port, and then, just as suddenly, closed again.

Boomer Dunning had never seen anything as dangerous as the shifting floes that formed Columbia’s lethal harbor.

“When can you have those seals tight?” he called to the electrician.

“Thirty minutes, sir.”

“Okay, keep at it,” Boomer replied. In his mind, he knew he might lose this race as he turned to stare at the ponderously rolling wall of ice, rumbling closer.

Mike Krause came on the bridge, his tall, slim frame lost in the bulk of his heavy-duty Arctic kit. He instinctively turned toward the rumble, raising his binoculars. “Christ,” he murmured gazing out at the moving wall. “We don’t wanna hang around in the path of that fucking lot for very long, sir.”

“You’re right there,” replied the CO. “But we don’t want to go under without the ice detector either. We’re just slightly between the rock and the hard place right here.”

“How much longer to fix the transducer, sir?”

“Latest estimate was thirty minutes.”

“Christ, sir. That pressure ridge looks about ready to crush us in the next ten.”

“I’ve been trying to get an accurate fix. It’s difficult…but one thing’s for sure…that ridge looks a lot closer now than it did fifteen minutes ago.”

“Yup. And the noise level is rising…sounds higher…like a scream. Guess that must be from the floes grinding together. Can you imagine the forces behind that pressure, sir?”

“Can I ever. And I wonder where it starts from…how many miles away, either the wind or the current is causing the wave to happen.”

Just then the roar of the ice grew louder, and suddenly there were three explosions off the starboard side as the five-foot-high walls of the polynya split apart, sucking in water and sending great slabs of ice cascading into the water around Columbia.

“Guys, we’re gonna have to get outta here,” Boomer called to the electricians as icebergs ten feet wide and heavy as cast iron banged against Columbia’s casing. “How quick can you make it work?”

“Might be through in fifteen.”

The sound of the ice was growing so loud Boomer had to shout to be heard. The thunderous rumble was now replaced by a howl like a rising wind, a penetrating screech regularly interrupted by the distinct crash and thump of massive ice blocks tumbled one on top of the other.

Worse than the hellish din was the grinding of their harbor walls as they closed in on them. What had been a thirty-yard channel to starboard was now only about ten yards wide, and it kept splitting, edging closer.

Boomer reckoned they had ten minutes. Mike Krause would have guessed five. Both men could now see the jagged shapes of the slabs, like an Ice Age Stonehenge, rolling in from the right of the submarine, each massive slab landing with a staggering KERRRUMP.

“Two minutes, sir…gimme two minutes…we’re almost there…it might not last forever…but it’ll work for a few days.”

Boomer held his nerve. “Great job, guys,” he said, gripping the edge of the bridge as a new landslide of ice crashed into the polynya, rising up in the water, scraping the hull of the Black Ops submarine and causing deafening noise inside. The entire ship vibrated, and for the first time the crew experienced a chilling fear.

But still Boomer Dunning did not order the bridge cleared. Two more minutes ticked by, and the wall of the polynya was flush against the starboard hull, pushing Columbia back across the narrowing polynya. Topside they could hear nothing above the bedlam of the moving ice.

The chief electrician’s cry of “Repair complete, sir!” was whipped away by the wind. The first time Boomer and the XO realized the transducer was in place was when the five-man team began clambering down through the hatch, two of them with numb, frostbitten fingers.

“Clear the bridge!” Boomer commanded as he and Mike Krause dropped down the ladders behind the repair party. Hatches were shut behind the topside watchmen, and just before 0400 Boomer ordered the main vents open and buoyancy adjusted to help them down.

Columbia began to sink below the treacherous crush of the moving ice cap, which would shortly render the polynya nonexistent. The upward fathometer was working perfectly, and at 150 feet, Boomer put them on a new course. “One-nine-zero…speed twenty-five…depth six hundred.”

Before them stretched a long, slightly curving eight-hundred-mile course across the ten-thousand-foot deep Canadian Basin. At twenty-five knots, they would make it in thirty-two hours…1130 on the morning of August 27. Whether or not they would be able to surface when they cleared the permanent ice and reached the waters of the Beaufort Sea was, at this stage, a matter for pure conjecture. What mattered that moment was their last-minute escape from the viselike grip of the Arctic ice cap.

Halfway along their course, four hundred miles south of Hall Knoll, they would cross the 80th parallel. Boomer considered it unlikely that they would find a spot to surface around here, and he was nervous about time. He understood the critical need for the Columbia to be in position awaiting the arrival of the Kilos. He was determined that he would have the element of surprise — the advantage of the stalker who sets his own ambush. He was not about to squander his advantage by wasting valuable hours trying to batter his way