Ramius went aft. The navigator had their course track marked on the chart.
'Uh-oh, we have to transit this place right here where the ice stops. How much you want to bet he knows it?' Mancuso looked up. They were still being pinged, and he still couldn't shoot back. And that Grisha might get lucky.
'Radio-Mancuso, let me speak on radio!' Ramius said.
'We don't do things that way-' Mancuso said. American doctrine was to evade, never to let them be sure there was a submarine there at all.
'I know that. But we are not American submarine, Captain Mancuso, we are Soviet submarine,' Ramius suggested. Bart Mancuso nodded. He'd never played this card before.
'Take her to antenna depth!'
A radio technician dialed in the Soviet guard frequency, and the slender VHP antenna was raised as soon as the submarine cleared the ice. The periscope went up, too. 'There he is. Angle on the bow, zero. Down 'scope!'
'Radar contact bearing two-eight-one,' the speaker proclaimed.
The Captain of the Grisha was coming off a week's patrolling on the Baltic Sea, six hours late, and had been looking forward to four days off. Then first came a radio transmission from the Talinn harbor police about a strange craft seen leaving the docks, followed by something from the KGB, then a small explosion near the harbor police boat, next several sonar contacts. The twenty-nine-year-old senior lieutenant with all of three months in command had made his estimate of the situation and fired at what his sonar operator called a positive submarine contact. Now he was wondering if he'd made a mistake, and how ghastly it might be. All he knew was that he had not the smallest idea what was happening, but if he were chasing a submarine, it would be heading west.
And now he had a radar contact forward. The speaker for the guard radio frequency started chattering.
'Cease fire, you idiot!' a metallic voice screamed at him three times.
'Identify!' the Grisna's commander replied.
'This is Novosibirsk Komsomolets! What the hell do you think you're doing firing live ammunition in a practice exercise! You identify!'
The young officer stared at his microphone and swore. Novosibirsk Komsomolets was a special-ops boat based at Kronshtadt, always playing Spetznaz games
'This is Krepkiy.'
'Thank you. We will discuss this episode the day after tomorrow. Out!'
The Captain looked around at the bridge crew. 'What exercise??'
'Too bad,' Marko said as he replaced the microphone. 'He reacted well. Now he will take several minutes to call his base, and?'
'And that's all we need. And they still don't know what happened.' Mancuso turned. ' 'Gator, shortest way out?'
'Recommend two-seven-five, distance is eleven thousand yards.'
At thirty-four knots, the remaining distance was covered quickly. Ten minutes later the submarine was back in international waters. The anticlimax was remarkable for all those in the control room. Mancuso changed course for deeper water and ordered speed reduced to one-third, then went back to sonar.
'That should be that,' he announced.
'Sir, what was this all about?' Jones asked.
'Well, I don't know that I can tell you.'
'What's her name?' From his seat Jones could see into the passageway.
'I don't even know that myself. But I'll find out. 'Mancuso went across the passageway and knocked on the door of Clark's stateroom.
'Who is it?'
'Guess,' Mancuso said. Clark opened the door. The Captain saw a young woman in presentable clothes, but wet feet. Then an older woman appeared from the head. She was dressed in the khaki shirt and pants of Dallas' chief engineer, though she carried her own things, which were wet. These she handed to Mancuso with a phrase of Russian.
'She wants you to have them cleaned, skipper,' Clark translated, and started laughing. 'These are our new guests. Mrs. Gerasimov, and her daughter, Katryn.'
'What's so special about them?' Mancuso asked.
'My father is head of KGB!' Katryn said.
The Captain managed not to drop the clothes.
'We got company,' the copilot said. They were coming in from the right side, the strobe lights of what had to be a pair of fighter planes. 'Closing fast.'
'Twenty minutes to the coast,' the navigator reported. The pilot had long since spotted it.
'Shit!' the pilot snapped. The fighters missed his aircraft by less than two hundred yards of vertical separation, little more in horizontal. A moment later, the VC-137 bounced through their wake turbulence.
'Engure Control, this is U.S. Air Force flight niner-seven-one. We just had a near miss. What the hell is going on down there?'
'Let me speak to the Soviet officer!' the voice answered. It didn't sound like a controller.
'I speak for this aircraft,' Colonel von Eich replied. 'We are cruising on a heading of two-eight-six, flight level eleven thousand six hundred meters. We are on a correctly filed flight plan, in a designated air corridor, and we have electrical problems. We don't need to have some hardrock fighter jocks playing tag with us-this is an American aircraft with a diplomatic mission aboard. You want to start World War Three or something? Over!'
'Nine-seven-one, you are ordered to turn back!'
'Negative! We have electrical problems and cannot repeat cannot comply. This airplane is flying without lights, and those crazy MiG drivers damned near rammed us! Are you trying to kill us, over!'
'You have kidnapped a Soviet citizen and you must return to Moscow!'
'Repeat that last,' von Eich requested.
But the Captain couldn't. A fighter ground-intercept officer, he'd been rushed to Engure, the last air-traffic- control point within Soviet borders, quickly briefed by a local KGB officer, and told to force the American aircraft to turn back. He should not have said what he had just said in the clear.
'You must stop the aircraft!' the KGB General shouted.
'Simple, then. I order my MiGs to shoot it down!' the Captain replied in kind. 'Do you give me the order, Comrade General?'
'I do not have the authority. You have to make it stop.'
'It cannot be done. We can shoot it down, but we cannot make it stop.'
'Do you wish to be shot?' the General asked.
'Where the hell is it now?' the Foxbat pilot asked his wingman. They'd only seen it once, and that for a single ghastly instant. They could track the intruder-except that it was leaving, and wasn't really an intruder, they both knew-on radar, and kill it with radar-guided missiles, but to close on the target in darkness? Even in the relatively clear night, the target was running without lights, and trying to find it meant running the risk of what American fighter pilots jokingly called a Fox-Four: midair collision, a quick and spectacular death for all involved.
'Hammer Lead, this is Toolbox. You are ordered to close on the target and force it to turn,' the controller said. 'Target is now at your twelve o'clock and level, range three thousand meters.'
'I know that,' the pilot said to himself. He had the airliner on radar, but he did not have it visually, and his radar could not track precisely enough to warn him of an imminent collision. He also had to worry about the other MiG on his wing.
'Stay back,' he ordered his wingman. 'I'll handle this alone.' He advanced his throttles slightly and moved the stick a hair to the right. The MiG-25 was heavy and sluggish, not a very maneuverable fighter. He had a pair of air- to-air missiles hanging from each wing, and all he had to do to stop this aircraft was? But instead of ordering him to do something he was trained to do, some jackass of a KGB officer was-
There. He didn't so much see the aircraft, but saw something ahead disappear. Ah! He pulled back on the stick to gain a few hundred meters of altitude and? yes! He could pick the Boeing out against the sea. Slowly and carefully, he moved forward until he was abeam of the target and two hundred meters higher.
'I got lights on the right side,' the copilot said. 'Fighter, but I don't know what kind.'
