“We must charge the batteries, Askold. If we cannot do it here, we will never get into the mouth of the bay and back out.”
Askold bit his lip, then repeated the snorkel order to the chief. As luck would have it, within thirty minutes the sub entered a line of squalls. Heavy swells and rain in sheets hid the snorkel head. The rocking motion of the boat, just under the surface, made the sailors smile. They knew how rough it was up there. Saratov drank a cup of tea in the wardroom while Esenin and his number two, the major, silently watched. Then Saratov went to his cabin and stretched out on the bunk. He couldn’t sleep. In his mind’s eye he saw airplanes and destroyers hunting, searching, back and forth, back and forth … The sonar operator called the P-3 sixty seconds before it went directly over the submarine. The duty officer immediately ordered snorkeling stopped and the electric motors started. The plane went by, fifteen seconds passed, then it began a turn. “He’s got us,” the watch officer said. “Call the captain.”
Saratov heard that order as he came along the passageway. “Take it down to a forty meters,” Pavel Saratov said after the chief reported the diesel engines secured. “Left full rudder to one zero zero degrees.”
“Left full rudder, aye. New course one zero zero.”
Esenin came to the control room. A moment later the major arrived, just in time to hear the sonar operator call, “Sonobuoys in the water.”
He began calling the bearings and estimated ranges of the splashes as the navigator plotted them. “Let’s get the boat as quiet as we can, Chief.”
“Aye, Captain. Slow speed?”
“Three knots. No more. And go deeper. Seventy meters.”
“Down on the bow planes. Up on the stern planes,” the chief ordered. The michman on the planes complied. Saratov looked at his watch. The time was a bit after 0300. “P-3 is coming in for another run, Captain. He sounds like he’s going to go right over us.”
“Keep me advised.”
“Steady on new course one zero zero.”
“Keep going down, Chief. One hundred meters. Somebody watch the water-temp gauge. Let me know if we hit an inversion.”
“There should be an inversion,” the duty officer muttered, more to himself that anyone else. “This is the Japanese current.”
“P-3’s going right over our heads.”
“Come left to new course zero four five.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Saratov noted Esenin’s facial expression, which was tense. The major, standing beside Esenin, looked worried. “One hundred meters, Captain.”
“Make it a hundred and fifty.”
“One fifty, aye.”
“How deep is the water here?” the major asked the navigator, who didn’t even check the chart before he answered. “Six miles. We’re over the Japanese trench.”
“So what happens if we can’t lose this airplane?”
“He puts a homing torpedo in the water.” The navigator looked at the major and grinned. “Then we die.”
“Two hundred meters, Chief,” the captain said. Passing through 170 meters, the temperature of the water began to rise. The duty officer saw it and sang out. “Just how deep can this boat go?” the major asked the XO. “Two hundred meters is our design depth.”
The captain missed this exchange. He was wearing a set of sonar headphones, listening with his eyes shut. At this depth the boat creaked a bit, probably from the temperature change, or the pressure. Saratov heard none of it. He was concentrating with all his being on the hisses and gurgles of the living sea. Ah yes…, there was the beat of the plane’s props. He opened his eyes, glanced at the sonar indicator, which was pointing in the direction of the largest regular, man-made sound. The enemy airplane was almost overhead … now passing … Splash! A sonobuoy. Or a torpedo. “Deeper, Chief. Down another fifty meters.”
“Aye, Captain.”
More sonobuoys. Going away. Well, at least the P-3 didn’t have the sub bracketed. The crew was searching for something they had, then lost. “I think they have lost us, Chief. Now they’ll try to find us again. Hold this depth, heading, and speed.”
A wave of visible relief swept through the men in the control room. Saratov took off one of the sonar earphones and asked Esenin, “Those shells we welded to the deck — how much pressure are they built to withstand?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’ll find out, eh,” said Pavel Saratov. “You can tell them when you get home,” he added, and rearranged the earphones.
Atsuko Abe read the message from Agent Ju and snorted in disbelief. “How can we believe this?”
“We cannot afford to ignore it,” said Cho, the foreign minister, speaking carefully. “If there is one chance in a thousand that Ju is correct, that is an unacceptable risk.”
“Don’t talk to me of unacceptable risk,” Abe snarled. Cho had been one of the most vocal proponents of taking the Siberian oil fields. Today they were in the prime minister’s office off the main floor of the Diet. He normally used this office to confer with members of his party. Abe shook the paper with the message on it at Cho. “We lost fifteen Zeros to the American Squadron two days ago. The generals believe we will be able to hold our own from now on, but that is probably just wishful thinking. The essential military precondition to the invasion of Siberia was local air supremacy. It has been taken from us.” Cho said nothing. “Last night two hundred civilians and thirty soldiers were killed in a railroad ambush a mere fifty kilometers north of Vladivostok. Guerillas murdered a whole trainload of people in an area that is supposed to be secure, an area that is practically in our backyard.”
Abe straightened his tie and jacket. “This morning in Vladivostok, the heads were dumped on the street in front of Japanese military headquarters.”
Abe looked Cho straight in the eye. “I can prevent the news being published, but I cannot stop whispers. Corporate executives know their employees are being slaughtered. No Japanese is safe anywhere in Siberia. The executives are demanding that we do something, prevent future occurrences.”
Cho gave a perfunctory bow. “The United Nations is moving by fits and starts to condemn Japanese aggression. When that fails to deter us, someone will suggest an economic boycott. The Russians are very active in the UN — THEY are shaking hands and smiling and preparing to nuke us. They are willing to do whatever it takes to win. I ask you, Cho, are you willing? Cho?”
“Mr. Prime Minister, I advocated invasion. I firmly believe that possession of Siberia’s oil fields will allow this people to survive and flourish in the centuries to come. That oil is our lifeblood. It is worth more to us than it is to any other nation.”
Atsuko Abe placed his hands flat on his desk. “Without air supremacy we will be unable to resupply our people in Siberia this winter. Air supremacy is absolutely critical. Everything flows from that.”
“I see that, Mr. Prime Minister.” Cho’s head bobbed. “The American Squadron at Chita must be eliminated. The generals tell me there is only one way to ensure that all the planes, people, equipment, and spare parts are neutralized: we must strike with a nuclear weapon.”
Cho blanched. “This is the crisis,” Abe roared. “We are committed! We must conquer or die. There is no other way out. We have bet everything— everything — our government, our nation, our lives. Do you have the courage to see it through?”
“This course will be completely unacceptable to the Japanese public,” Cho sputtered. “Damn the public.” Abe slapped his hands on the desk. “The public wants the benefits of owning Siberia. A prize this rich cannot be had on the cheap. We must pay for it. Nuking Chita is the price. We cannot get Siberia for one yen less.”
“The Japanese people will not pay that price.”
Abe waved Ju’s message. “I am not suggesting that we nuke Moscow!
Open your eyes, man. The Russians are trying to nuke us!”
“It is the use of nuclear weapons that is the evil, Mr. Prime Minister. You know that as well as I. Once we attack Chita, we may be forced to launch missiles at other targets, including Moscow. Once it starts, where will it stop, Mr. Prime Minister?”
Abe brushed aside Cho’s words, pretended that he hadn’t heard. “Military necessity requires the destruction
