Cassidy didn’t hesitate. “We’ll share, Major.” He caught the supply officer’s eye and called him over. After a brief conversation, he told the translator, “Dinner for your people will be in twenty minutes.”
“We have no money. Nothing with which to pay.”
“Zeya is down the valley, isn’t it?”
“Yes. East. The Japanese attacked. I shot down a few.”
“With Su-27’s?”
“Yes, good plane.”
“My first name is Bob.” Cassidy held out his hand. “Yan Chernov.”
“Let’s have a long talk while you eat. I want to know everything you know about the Japanese.”
The sea was calm, with just the faintest hint of a swell. The boat rocked ever so gently as it ghosted along on its electric engines. Fog limited visibility and clouds blocked out the night sky. A gentle drizzle massaged Pavel Saratov’s cheeks as he stood in Admiral Kolchak’s tiny cockpit atop the sail. He took a deep breath, savoring the tang of the sea air, a welcome contrast from the stink of the boat. Alive. Ah, how good it was. Unconsciously he fingered the lumpy new scar on his forehead, a jagged purple thing that came out of his hairline and ran across above his left eye, then disappeared into his hair over his left ear. The fragments of the Japanese shell that struck the bridge had torn off half his scalp. The corpsman had sewn the huge flap of skin back in place, and fortunately it seemed to have healed. The scar was oozing in several places — an infection, the corpsman said. He smeared ointment on the infected places twice a day. Every morning he used a dull needle to give Saratov an injection of an antibiotic as the crew in the control room watched with open mouths. Saratov always winced as if the needle hurt mightily. He had inspected the bottle of penicillin before the first injection. The stuff was grossly out of date, but since it was all they had, he passed the bottle back to the corpsman without comment and submitted to the jabs. An hour before midnight. Here under the clouds, amid the fog, it was almost dark, but not quite. A pleasant twilight. At these latitudes at this time of year the night would not get much darker. At least the clouds shielded the boat from American satellites. He wondered if the Americans were passing satellite data to the Japanese. Perhaps, he decided. Saratov didn’t trust the Americans. Behind Saratov, the lookout had the binoculars to his eyes, sweeping the fog. “Keep an eye peeled,” Saratov told him. “If the Japanese know we are here, we will have little warning.”
As his wound healed, Saratov had ordered the boat northward, keeping it well out to sea. He lay in his bunk staring at the overhead and eating moldy bread, turning over his options. He refused to make a radio transmission on any frequency. The danger of being pinpointed by radio direction finders was just too great. One evening the boat copied a message from Moscow. After it was decoded, Askold delivered it to the captain, who read it and passed it back.
“Captain, Moscow says to go to Trojan Island. I have never heard of it.”
“Umm,” Saratov grunted. “It’s not on the charts.”
“It is a submarine base, inside an extinct volcano, near the Kuril Strait. It was a base for boomers. Abandoned years ago.”
“What will we do, Captain?”
“Hold your present course and speed. Let me think for a while.”
Trojan Island. After several days of thought, Saratov decided to try it, because the other options were worse. Now he spoke into the sound-powered telephone on his chest. “XO, will you come up, please?”
When the executive officer was standing beside Saratov in the cockpit, he said, “The island is dead ahead, Captain. Four miles, if our navigation is right.”
“I haven’t been here in twelve years,” Saratov muttered. “I hope I haven’t forgotten how to get in.”
“Amazing,” the XO said. “A sub base so secret that I never heard about it.”
“You weren’t in nuclear-powered submarines.”
“What if there is nothing there anymore?”
“I don’t know, Askold. I just don’t know. It’s a miracle the P-3’s haven’t found us yet. Sooner or later they will. I thought about stopping a freighter, putting all the men aboard and scuttling the boat. We have an obsolete submarine, the periscope is damaged, we’re running low on fuel and food, and we have only four torpedoes left. We’ve done about all the damage we can do”' “Yes, sir.”
The XO concentrated on searching the fog with binoculars. They heard the slap of breakers on rocks before they saw anything. Probing the fog with a portable searchlight, Saratov closed warily on the rocky coast at two knots. At least the sea was calm here in the lee of this island. He finally found rocks, rising sheer from the sea. It took Saratov another hour to find the landmarks he wanted, mere fading gobs of paint smeared on several rocks. He was unsure of one of the marks — there wasn’t much paint left — but he kept his doubts to himself. After taking several deep breaths, Saratov turned the boat, got on the heading he wanted, then ordered the boat submerged. In the control room, he ordered the michman to take the boat to a hundred feet, then level off. While this was going on, he studied the chart he had worked on for an hour earlier that day. “I want you to go forward on this course at three knots for exactly five minutes, then make a ninety-degree right turn. If we go slower, the current will push us out of the channel.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
“If we hit some rocks at three knots we’ll hole the hull,” one of the junior officers said, trying to keep it casual. “This is a dangerous place to get into,” the captain replied, trying to keep the censure from his voice. Now didn’t seem the time to put junior officers in their place. “Sonar, start pinging. Give me the forward image on the oscilloscope.”
As the submerged boat approached the island, the hole in the rock became visible on the scope. Pinging, afraid of going slower, Saratov aimed for the tunnel. Around Saratov, everyone in the control room was sweating. “This is worse than Tokyo Bay,” the XO remarked. No one said a word. All eyes were on the oscilloscope. As the sub entered the hole, Saratov ordered the speed dropped to a knot. He crept forward for a hundred yards, watching the scope as the sonar pinged regularly. The chamber ended just ahead. With the screws stopped, the chief began venting air into the tanks. The sub rose very slowly, inching up. When the boat reached the surface, Saratov cranked open the hatch dogs, flung back the hatch, and climbed into the cockpit. The boat lay in a black lagoon inside a huge cavern. That much he had expected. What Saratov had not expected were the electric lights that shone brightly from overhead. A pier lay thirty meters or so to port. Standing on the pier were a group of armed men in uniform: Russian naval infantry. Saratov gaped in astonishment. One of the men on the pier cupped his hands to his mouth and called, “Welcome, Captain Saratov. We have been waiting for you.”
17
Several of the armed naval infantrymen, Russian marines, on the pier were officers. As the submarine was secured to the pier, Saratov saw that one officer wore the uniform of a general. When the soldiers had pushed over a gangplank, the general skipped lightly across like a highly trained athlete. He didn’t bother to return the sailors” salutes. Saratov didn’t salute, either. The general didn’t seem to notice. He stood on the deck, looking up at the dents and scars on the sail and the twisted periscope. “How long will it take to fix this?” he asked, directing his question at Saratov. “If we had the proper tools, perhaps two days for this damage. The missing tiles will take several weeks to repair, and the new ones may come off again the first time we dive.”
The general climbed the handholds to the small bridge. “My name is Esenin.”
“Saratov.”
“Shouldn’t you be saluting or something?”
“Should I?”
“I think so. We will observe the courtesies. The military hierarchy is the proper framework for our relationship, I believe.”
Saratov saluted. Esenin returned it. “Now, General, if you will be so kind, I need to see your identity papers.”
“We’ll get to that. You received an order directing your boat to this base?”
Saratov nodded. The general produced a sheet of paper bearing the crest of the Russian Republic. The note was handwritten, an order to General Esenin to proceed to Trojan Island and take command of all forces there. The
