piercing.
The seaman closest to the alarm held true to his training. Most men would have remained frozen for a few crucial seconds as their brain processed the source of the intrusive noise, but he moved with the speed of a cat and hit a toggle that muted the klaxon. Half of the red battle lamps began to pulse as a visual cue that an emergency was under way.
Time seemed suspended as the men exchanged nervous glances. They now faced two dangers: one, the American cutter that had been listening for sounds in the abyss with a towed sonar array that could pick up the slightest anomalous noise — one Cold War story told of how a Soviet sub had been tracked for its entire four- thousand-mile journey because one crewman popped his gum whenever he was alone — and, two, whatever the boat’s sensors had detected was life-threatening enough to warrant a tripped alarm.
The answer to that second danger came moments later when a wisp of smoke coiled from one of the overhead ventilators. Even as the crew turned to watch, that wisp became a white, opaque torrent.
More than drowning, submariners feared fire.
And it was obvious that the boat was burning.
The captain’s gaze swept the bridge, pausing for only the briefest moment on one particular figure before moving on. There would be no help there. He focused on his executive officer. “XO, lock down that fire no matter what it takes. Silence must be maintained.”
“Sir,” the man said, and rushed forward where the smoke seemed to be thickest.
“Sonar, sit-rep?” the captain asked with studied disinterest. He needed to show his crew there was no need to panic. Inside, his guts felt oily.
“Contact still drifting,” the sonarman replied, one hand pressing the headphone so tightly, his fingers had gone white.
“Did he hear us?”
“He heard, all right. He just doesn’t know what he heard.”
“If you were him, what would you do?”
“Sir?”
“Answer me. If you were listening on his passive array and heard that alarm, what would you do?”
“Um,” the sailor hesitated.
“Simple question. Tell me. What would you do?”
“I would turn my ship to our bearing and tow the array once again, hoping to pick up another transient emission.”
The captain knew the correct answer, the one his young sonarman had given, but his instincts told him to abandon the bridge and follow his XO. The fire was the immediate emergency. The American cutter was secondary. And yet training dictated otherwise. He must remain on the bridge. It was a good leader’s ability to acknowledge the disconnect between instinct and training that kept crews alive. The most immediate threat to the sub wasn’t the fire at all. It remained the Coast Guard vessel.
He waited with the rest of his men, his eyes glued to the big clock over the planesman’s station. The cutter continued to drift and listen on her passive array.
At the six-minute mark, he let out a little of the breath he felt he’d been holding since the alarm sounded. At seven minutes, he exhaled the rest.
“I think he’s missed us, boys,” he whispered.
Just then, the XO returned.
“Sir, it was a small grease fire in the galley. Nothing’s been damaged.”
“Captain, the cutter’s engines just came back online. She’s gaining seaway.”
“Is she turning?”
The wait seemed endless, but the young sailor suddenly turned to look at his captain, a big grin splitting his face. “She’s headed due south and is already up to eight knots.”
“Well done, everyone,” the captain said in an almost normal tone of voice. He looked over at the stoic face of Admiral Pytor Kenin. He wasn’t sure what to expect, so he was pleasantly surprised that the man gave him a grudging nod of respect.
Kenin had been leaning against a bulkhead and suddenly pushed himself erect and called out, “Evolution complete.”
The red battle lights clicked off, and overhead lamps bathed the sub’s control room in stark white light. Technicians who’d been unseen moments before entered the space to check on equipment, while the sailors manning the various stations got up from their seats. Their bodies were as exhausted and tensed up as if this had been a real encounter and not a training exercise. And yet there was a feeling of self-satisfaction among them for a job well done.
“Congratulations, Captain Escobar,” Kenin said when he reached the man’s side, a hand extended for a shake. He spoke English, the only language the two men shared.
“For a moment I thought we had failed,” Jesus Escobar admitted. “A most inopportune time for a simulated fire.”
“A good sub captain can handle one crisis at a time; the great ones can handle more.”
Escobar allowed himself a smile at the compliment.
Kenin continued, “This completes your training, Captain. You and your men are ready to put to sea.”
“The cartel will be pleased to hear that. They’ve spent a great deal of money on this venture, and it is now time that our new toy be put to use.”
“Didn’t you tell me when you arrived here at Sakhalin that you would need just two runs up to California from Colombia for your cartel to turn a profit?”
“Yes,” Escobar replied, smoothing down his dark mustache. “With just a skeleton crew and enough fuel for the trip up and back, we can load several hundred tons of cocaine into this boat.”
“You’ve proven to me that you will manage much more than two runs, my friend.” Kenin threw an arm around Escobar’s shoulder, which emphasized the physical difference between the two. Where the Colombian narco-trafficker was built like most submariners, five foot six and lean of muscle, the Russian admiral brushed the ceiling at six foot three. He was a typical bear of a man, solidly built and possessing an iron constitution. “Tonight I will hold a celebration in honor of you and your men and the three long months you’ve trained here. Tomorrow you will sleep that off, and tomorrow night, under cover of darkness, we will release your boat from the floating dry dock and you will head home.”
“You do us an honor, Admiral.”
“Debrief your men, Captain, and I will see you later.”
Kenin turned to climb the ladder up into the Tango’s sail, where one of his men waited to open the outer hatch. The simulation had lasted for nearly five hours, and Kenin was desperate for some fresh air, but he would have to wait a while longer. The 300-foot sub lay in the bowels of a fully enclosed floating dry dock nearly three times its size, which itself was docked at a near-derelict Navy station that Kenin used as his own private domain. He dropped down an exterior ladder and crossed a movable ramp to a catwalk that ran the length of the dry dock. The cavernous space smelled of the sea on which the Tango floated, oil, and rust. Powerful lights on the ceiling could do little to dispel the gloom.
He walked with a long-legged, hurried stride, as was his custom, and reached a flight of stairs that would take him to an exterior hatch. It was only when he passed through that door and stepped onto the open deck that he filled his lungs with air. The sun had long since set, and the breeze was freshening. The temperature stood at about forty degrees, and he knew from experience that once winter hit, minus forty would be the norm.
Another ramp led to the old Navy pier. The dock was failing concrete and frost-heaved pavement with gnarls of weeds growing wherever the cracks allowed. Obscuring his view landward were dilapidated warehouses whose paint had long been scoured off by the winds that shrieked down from Siberia. A car was waiting for him, its driver standing erect at the first sign of Kenin’s emergence from the dock.
The man saluted smartly and opened the rear door. Kenin slid into the rich leather seat and immediately pulled his encrypted cell phone from his pocket. There was no signal inside the sub, and he’d missed a dozen calls. For now he’d return just one, from his aide-de-camp, Commander Viktor Gogol.
“Gogol, it’s Kenin.”
“Admiral, how did it go?”
