stretches another five hundred miles miles into the Sever-naya Zemlya island group, two days away. There were no more ice floes, but well-charted shoals along the Central Kara Rise kept them well south, inshore, leaving the Nordenshel'da Archipelago to starboard as they made their easterly swerve through the narrow Strait of Vil'kitskogo, south of the Severnayas.
Which was where U.S. Surveillance first saw them clearly on photographs taken by 'Big Bird' as it passed silently overhead.
Lieutenant Ramshawe liked satellite photographs. However similar, however grainy, however routine they were, he looked forward to keying in through his computer to Intelink, the National Reconnaissance Office's private Internet system of secure and encrypted cable networks. Jimmy could pick up surveillance photographs taken from anywhere in the world on the NRO-built constellation of satellites that endlessly circled the globe.
He always scrolled down to find anything of interest in the China Sea, and habitually had a look in the Bering Strait and along the Kamchatka Peninsula where the big Russian Pacific Fleet operates. He rarely, if ever, found anything worth researching, but that never stopped him looking. Ramshawe was one of the most natural-born Intelligence officers ever.
In summertime he always checked out any Naval activity in the seas to the east of the Severnayas. Up to that point the ocean was essentially Russian. They patrolled it, ran Navy exercises, and tested ships all along that coastline from way back in Murmansk for more than one thousand miles to the east of the Kola Peninsula.
Sometimes there were halfway interesting pictures, perhaps showing a new Russian warship, but mostly Jimmy found himself looking at the routine functions of a near moribund Navy. East of the Severnayas, however, was the place to spot fleet transfers, and it was important that the United States knew precisely where big Russian warships were stationed. Essential, in fact.
Today Jimmy was taking serious note of a four-ship convoy pushing along the north coast of Siberia. He zeroed in close, and then pulled right back. 'Shit,' he muttered. 'That Siberia's a bloody big place. Gotta be the biggest place in the world.'
He was right too. Siberia represents one-twelfth of the entire land mass of the planet earth. It might be cold, and it might be lonely, and it might have a somewhat chilling history. But small, it's not.
Jimmy stared hard at the three ships, pulling up a square overlay that would tell him the identities of the four Russian ships moving east from the Barents to the Bering.
'Here we go,' he said to himself, as the insert caption box flashed up onto his screen. One good-sized frigate, the Neustrashimy. 9,000-tonner, guided missiles… one bloody great icebreaker… this big bastard out in front, right? One Akula II nuclear submarine. One Sierra Type nuclear submarine, believed to be one of two Barracuda Class ships. Hunter-killers. Type 945… All on the surface… nothing secret… routine summertime fleet transfer, Northern Fleet to PacFleet. No problem.
The Lieutenant knew about Russian Akulas and he knew about Sierras. Barracudas were a mystery. With only one operational, there was really only one Type 945 ever seen in open water. For the past five years, the entire term of Jimmy Ramshawe's service in Fort Meade, the ship had only been out a half dozen times, so expensive was she to run.
He keyed in one of his most highly classified CD-ROM pages, and pulled up the details, noting the high speed and deep diving depth of the Russian's most pricey attack submarine, first-in-class, named the Tula. He also noted they were planning, in a halfhearted way, to fit her with cruise missiles with a 1,600-mile range. But apparently not for another year.
He pulled up the picture and looked at the shot of her, running through cold, calm seas, a clear white bow wave breaking up over her deck and splitting at the sail, to form two swirling vortices on both sides of the hull.
'Looks like a bloody dangerous piece of work to me,' he muttered. 'Wonder where they keep the other bugger.'
He scrolled back the page to the operational section, and noted there was some doubt whether the second hull was ever completed. If it wasn't, he read, it's probably in the Northern Base at Araguba, possibly in a covered dock. If it did get as far as Sea Trials, we never saw it.
'Funny name, Barracuda, for a bloody Russian,' he said to his empty office. 'That's a big, vicious warm-water fish, never found far beyond the tropics. I've seen a picture of my dad catching one in the Caribbean. Barracuda! Up there in the arse end of nowhere, north of the bloody tundra, inside the Arctic Circle. Doesn't make bloody sense. It's like the Jamaican Navy calling their bloody ships Walrus or Polar Bear. Like Nelson Mandela being elected President of Iceland.
'Where's the national identity? Silly bastards. There's never been a bloody barracuda within a thousand miles of Russia. Ought to be Sturgeon Class, or Killer Whale. Or Sea Lion. Fancy having your best attack submarine, in icebound Arctic waters, named after an overgrown tropical goldfish.'
He wandered out to find a cup of coffee, and then wandered back, still wondering about the Barracuda. 'I think I'm right,' he said. 'Don't wanna clobber the old Ruskies for nothing, though. I'd better check it out… '
He hit the keys, pulling up barracuda, the fish not the warship. He clicked the mouse onto 'game fish.' Then he found Gamefish of North America, written by the greatest writer about fishing there's ever been, A. J. McLane, author of the Encyclopedia of World's Fishing.
'Here we go,' he said. 'Page 240. There's a whole section on 'em, right before the bloody sharks.'
He scanned the pages and swiftly found out he was right.
Barracudas do not venture into cold water, and the illustrations were beautiful. He decided to read a little from the opening paragraph, and found out that this fish has a diabolical set of teeth, two lines of a razor-sharp gnashers, and, wrote A. J., the disposition of a cornered wolf… its bite can be poison… the mere sight of it can nearly induce cardiac arrest.
So, indeed, could the subtle prose of Mr. McLane. Almost. Because the next paragraph, right there on page 240, halfway down the text, contained the sentence… yet in shallow water, old razormouth has the speed of a rocket. And that very nearly did send the young Intelligence Officer directly into cardiac arrest.
OLD RAZORMOUTH! When did he last hear that? Jimmy's mind raced, but his heart stopped. It always did when he thought he was on to something. He took a deep slug of coffee, and exited the barracuda section of Game Fish. He hit the keys for his secret file, logged into the index.
Christ! It was nearly a year ago. September 2006.
Here we are… OLD RAZORMOUTH 600 AFFIRMATIVE. Signal sucked off the Chinese Navy satellite — original source: U. S. SIGINT listening station in the underground bunker at Kunia, Hawaii. Rock solid.
Lieutenant Ramshawe considered the unlikely possibility that some Chinese Admiral had landed six hundred barracudas, as forecast. Six hundred. Affirmative. That last word implied a clear suggestion that the subject had been mentioned before. Otherwise, thought Jimmy, old Admiral Tai Mai Hook would have sent a signal that read: 'Holy shit! I've just caught half the world's population of barracudas.'
No. Affirmative meant something that had been expected. Or half expected. And it was not a netful of fish. Old Razormouth, the barracuda, on a Navy satellite, had to be code for Russia's most dangerous attack submarine. But what about 600? The Russians only have one operational. I suppose the number could refer to anything — depth beneath the surface… hours running time… a radio band… stockpiles of torpedoes… miles from home base… missile range… or even dollars… maybe the Chinese have bought the bloody thing.
Lieutenant Ramshawe decided he had better things to do than try to connect a year-old, four-word Chinese satellite signal with a perfectly innocent-looking Russian Naval Fleet Transfer along the Siberian coast.
'Nonetheless,' he muttered. 'I'll be keeping a weather eye on those four little bastards creeping through the frosties. 'Specially Old Razormouth.'
They were at the eastern end of the Laptev Sea now, still hugging the coast, having already passed the 5,600-square-mile delta of the River Lena, which, like the Ob', flows clean across Siberia from the center of Asia. Ahead of them was the fifty-mile-wide strait between the northern headland and the southernmost island, the gateway to the East Siberian Sea.
