ship turned quicker than the torpedo, which missed.
When he was firing his last fish, Saratov saw the rockets” muzzle blast and knew the moment was at hand.
As the scope went into the well, he ordered, “All ahead flank; come right ninety degrees.”
He looked at the faces staring at him. “Antisubmarine rockets,” he said as the sonarman called the splashes. The second torpedo went off under the frigate’s keel, tearing the bow off. The noises of the sea rushing in and bulkheads collapsing were audible in the sub even without a headset. The men just started to cheer when the submarine shook under a hammer blow. “Starboard side, Captain. It hit the outer hull. Yes, and holed it.”
The chief started giving rapid-fire orders. The holed tank was quickly identified and air pumped into its mates in an attempt to preserve buoyancy and keep the sub from impacting the bottom of the bay. While all this was going on, Saratov consulted the chart. He used a ruler to plot the course he wanted to the fault, then ordered the rudder over.
The odor of feces was quite noticeable. Someone had lost control of his bowels. Maybe several people had. Hanging on to the bulkhead, General Esenin never took his eyes off Pavel Saratov. “It could have been worse,” Askold said philosophically. Amid the confusion, the sonarman said to no one in particular, “We’re going to die.”
A squalid, shoddy monument to bureaucratic stupidity and inefficiency, the city of Irkutsk in central Asia nevertheless stunned first-time visitors by the spectacle of its setting. The extraordinary waters of Lake Baikal, on whose shores the town sat, were a dark blue, almost black under the shadows of drifting clouds. The lake was so deep that it was once thought to be bottomless. In truth it was a huge inland sea 375 miles long, containing one- fifth of the planet’s fresh water. The surface stretched away until it merged with the horizon. Towering along the western shore of the lake was a range of high mountains, still snowcapped from the previous winter. More rugged, craggy blue mountains lay to the south and east. Since arriving in Irkutsk, Yan Chernov had not taken the time to admire the view. He spent every minute in meetings with generals and colonels who had flown in from Moscow. “You will escort a strike on Tokyo,” he was told. Amid the transports with Aeroflot markings at the base sat a half- dozen Mig-25’s, elderly Mach-3 single-seat interceptors. These planes, Chernov was told, would actually carry the bombs. Of all the planes the Soviets had built through the years, which the Russians had inherited, only Mig-25’s had a chance against Zeros. Mig-25’s could use their blazing speed to outrun the Japanese interceptors — dash in, drop their weapons, and dash away before the Zeros could shoot them all down. A Moscow general with an amazing display of chest cabbage held up one finger. “Only one,” he said. “Only one has to get through.”
Another strike launched at the same time would target the Japanese missile-launch facilities on the Tateyama Peninsula. Chernov knew the colonel leading that strike, although not well. The problem with the Mig- 25’s, which was the reason for these meetings and conferences, was their limited range. The bombers would have to be fueled from airborne tankers several times to make this flight, one far longer that anything the Mikoyan designers had ever in their wildest fantasies envisioned for their superfast fighter. Like all Soviet fighters, the Mig-25 had been designed to defend the homeland. Getting the tankers into position to refuel the Migs prior to and after their dash was Chernov’s job. He was to escort them and defend them from Zeros. Just listening to the Moscow generals and their staffs explain the mission, annotate charts, assign frequencies and call signs, and talk about the whole thing as if it were possible — indeed, as if it were a routine military operation — Chernov didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The whole thing was ludicrous. At the very start of this exercise in military stupidity, Chernov tried to explain to the staff weenies that the Sukhois didn’t have much of a chance against semi-stealthy Zeros: “Zeros are a technological generation beyond our plane. Two generations ahead of the Mig-25,” he said. None of the brass was interested. He would do as he was told — it had all been decided in Moscow. Now Chernov sat and listened and made notes. He looked out the window and watched the second hand of the clock on the wall sweep around and around, counting off the minutes. Dawn was still several hours away. An hour before man-up time, the briefers were finished. The pilots were told to relax, make a head stop. Chernov wandered over toward the barracks and found an empty bunk.
Stretched out, trying to relax, trying to put it all in perspective, he felt the insanity sweep over him. He felt as if he were drowning. Nuclear weapons. Nuke Tokyo. Mushroom clouds. Millions dead. If any of the Migs got through, that is. And afterward, meeting the tankers, trying to get enough fuel to make it back to a Russian-occupied base … “What if the Japanese retaliate?” someone had asked the Moscow brass, only to be told, “The Japanese don’t have nuclear weapons.”
“We hope,” Yan Chernov said loudly. “President Kalugin is absolutely certain.”
“Bet he said that in a telephone call from his dacha on the Black Sea,” one of the junior pilots said, and his comrades laughed. The Moscow brass frowned, then pretended that they had heard nothing. The men weren’t happy, but they had never heard anyone in uniform suggest Japan might be a nuclear power, so the possibility of thermonuclear retaliation seemed remote. Getting to Japan was the worrisome part. Well, if the Zeros didn’t get them, the usual Russian leadership and efficiency problems would ensure this complex plan ground to a halt well before the planes landed safely back at Irkutsk. Chernov lay in the darkness, trying to relax. Sleep was impossible. Man-up time in less than an hour. His thoughts began to drift. Scenes from his youth growing up on a collective farm flashed through his mind. He had wanted something more, and so had applied himself faithfully and diligently to gain top honors in school. The work paid off. He had been noticed. So what had he gained?
His life had been a great adventure. Truly. The flying, the new and different places, the exhilaration of combat, the thrill of victory — a man would never have gotten any of that back on the collective farm, with that eternal wind always blowing, howling across the plain, scouring away seed, soil, hopes, dreams, everything. If his father and mother could only see how far he had traveled along this road. He was seized with the most powerful longing. Oh, if only he could spend another day with his parents, sitting in their tiny cottage, looking out the door at the plowed fields as his father talked about the earth. All that was over. Gone. In a few hours, he would be dead and none of it would matter.
The submarine bumped once, scraped along the seafloor for a few feet, then settled into the muddy bottom of Sagami Bay and began tilting ever so slowly to port. “Captain,” Esenin said sharply as the list passed five degrees. Even he was holding on. Six degrees … “At twelve degrees, we lift her and try another spot.”
Eight … “We are so close,” Esenin muttered. Ten degrees … barely moving … Then all movement stopped. A sigh of relief swept the control room. “Fifty-two meters,” someone said, reading the depth gauge. Suddenly Saratov realized how tired he was. He had to hang on to the chart table to remain erect. “Here we are, General. Wounded, running out of air, with exhausted batteries, and the entire Japanese NAVY searching for us. I don’t know how much time we have.”
The tense hours had taken their toll on Esenin. He had to summon the energy to speak. “You have gotten us here, Saratov. That is the critical factor. At this place, we can save Russia.”
“Right.” The sourness in Saratov’s tone narrowed Esenin’s eyes. “We leave this spot when and only when I say.” Esenin looked into every man’s face. “I am taking two divers with me. We will exit through the air lock. We will open a container and put one of the weapons onto the sea floor. Then we will come back inside and you will move the boat one mile west along the fault, where we will do it again. When the last weapon is on the bottom, you will take us out of here.”
Esenin glanced at his watch. “When will the weapons detonate?” Saratov asked. “In twelve hours. Planting each weapon will take an hour, plus an hour to move the boat — seven hours total. That will give us five hours to exit the area.”
“We don’t have seven hours,” Saratov told him. “You might have one or two. Three at most.”
“You think they’ll be on us by then?”
“I guarantee it.”
Esenin’s lips compressed into a thin line. “The warheads are armed now, aren’t they?” Pavel Saratov asked. “Do you know that, or are you guessing?”
“The box.” He nodded at the box on Esenin’s chest. “It could only be a trigger.”
“We decided that detonation of the weapons at sea would be preferable to letting them fall into enemy hands. Fortunately for us, that necessity did not arise. Still, it might. If it does, I have faith that Major Polyakov will do what has to be done. He will have custody of the box while I am outside the boat.”
Esenin took off the box and placed it on the chart table. He opened it. “As you can see, there is a keyboard for typing in a code.” He punched in a four-digit number with a forefinger. “There,” he said. “The code is entered. Now the circuitry is armed.”
