Arctic Gold

Dean pulled the diving mask on over his head, making sure the straps were tight at the back. The faceplate was triangular, covering his mouth as well as his nose and eyes. He checked the controls on his rebreather pack; air was flowing, though it had a faintly bitter chemical taste to it.

“Radio check,” Taylor’s voice said in Dean’s ear. “Sound off. One-one, okay.”

“One-two, right.”

“One-three, check.”

The SEALs ran down the line, identifying themselves by fire-team number. Each of them wore a tightly fitting hood over his head, with a short-range radio receiver next to the ear, a microphone pressed up against the throat. They would be able to talk while underwater.

“One-four, okay,” Dean said.

“Two-one, ready to rock.”

There were no portholes, of course, or TV monitors. Dean was aware of the faint vibration through the deck and the curved bulkhead at his back as the craft’s powerful electric motor drove it forward. Moments later, the deck tilted up sharply, and he felt the vibrations lessen.

“We’re at ten to twenty feet,” Taylor told them. “Twenty yards off the Lebedev’s starboard side. Commander Hartwell says we’re sending the signal now.”

Lieutenant Commander Hartwell was the SEAL officer forward, acting as copilot, navigator, and sonar operator for the ASDS. A coded sonar chirp would be easily picked up through the Ohio’s new Lockheed Martin AN/BQQ-10(V4) sonar-processing system, alerting the sub that it was time to surface and commence the diversion.

Minutes dragged by as the deck rocked gently beneath Dean’s feet. The minisub’s commander must be juggling his trim and ballast tanks, trying to keep the ASDS at a motionless hover beneath the surface.

“Right,” Taylor said, still listening to his earpiece. “The Ohio is surfacing.”

And Dean could hear it now, a kind of heavy, crackling thunder filtering through the thick steel hull of the ASDS, sounding both muffled and very close.

“That’s our cue,” Taylor said, removing the headset. “Let’s get wet! Hoskins!”

“Sir!”

“You make sure our… ah… guest makes it to the roof.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

The SEALs stood in the cramped compartment, gathering up their gear in tightly secured satchels, checking straps and buckles on one another, making sure everything was cinched tight and that there was no loose equipment to tangle, trip over, or fall. The SEAL behind Charlie Dean turned him around and tugged at several straps, then checked the settings on the Drager unit secured to his chest before clapping him on the shoulder and motioning him forward.

Dean waited in line, then, as the SEALs, two by two, entered the lock-out chamber. Since the ASDS was hovering just a few feet beneath the surface, they didn’t have to lock the doors and pump water in and out of the chamber each time. Instead, the air pressure inside the submarine kept the seawater from entering the lock-out chamber; when it was Dean’s turn to go, he ducked his head to step through into the spherical compartment and saw black water lapping in the open, circular hatch in the deck. Hoskins, the SEAL assigned to get him to the surface, pointed and gave him a gentle shove. Careful not to snag his baggy suit on the hatch combing, and with his waterproof gear bundle clasped tight in one hand, Dean stepped into the water, sliding down a pole extended from the side of the hatch for the purpose, letting himself sink.

Deep, blue-green water closed over his head, and he felt the sharp bite of the cold at exposed portions of skin at wrists and ankles. The dry suit kept the rest of his body dry, however, and the temperature overall seemed cool but not cold. For a scary instant, claustrophobia threatened to close him in and paralyze his breathing, but he forced himself to stay calm and to continue to pull in each breath at a slow, steady pace. His Marine training kicked in, and he began to move to one side, getting out from under the open hatchway above him.

Air rasped through his face mask, dry and cold. Unlike a standard SCUBA rig, the Drager unit received his exhalations without releasing a telltale column of bubbles.

The red lighting inside the ASDS had allowed the men’s dark adaptation to kick in during the hour-long cruise after releasing from the Ohio. Dean found himself adrift in a surreal blue-green cosmos with crystal-clear visibility, but where it was almost impossible to judge scale or distance. The ASDS loomed directly overhead; to his left was a curving steel cliff extending for some distance into the depths-the underwater portion of the Lebedev’s side. Beyond the ASDS, there appeared to be a ceiling of tortured, convoluted ice, the surfaces smooth and rounded but piled and folded into fantastic geometries that teased and tricked the eye.

The surface of the water around the ship appeared clear of ice, however. Sunlight blazed and danced with the movement of the water, with shafts of light entering from above almost parallel to the surface. Below, the blue- green emptiness deepened into midnight black, a yawning gulf far beneath Dean’s gently stroking swim fins.

Toward the aft end of the Lebedev, Dean could see the vast and shadowy shapes of the ship’s massive screws, along with several cables that appeared to descend straight down into blackness. In the opposite direction, toward the bow, he could just make out a shadowy something snug against the Lebedev’s side, but details were lost in the blue-green haze of ice-roofed water and scattering sun dance from above.

Dean was having some trouble. Though skilled with re-breathers as well as standard SCUBA gear, thanks to Marine training decades before, he’d never used a full-face mask, and each time he breathed out, he tended to loosen the mask’s seal with his face slightly. Icy water had already seeped in between the mask and his face and was collecting now at the bottom of the faceplate, salty at his lips. Awkwardly, one-handed because he was still holding his gear, he tried to clear it, pushing down on one side, turning his head, and exhaling hard to force the water out.

“Team one!” Taylor’s voice said over the underwater radio. “Deploy…”

Dean felt a sharp tug at his elbow; Hoskins hovered at his side, jerking his thumb up toward the surface. Dean’s mask still wasn’t clear, but he nodded and followed the SEAL toward the gleaming, shifting light, knowing he could remove the mask once he broke the surface. Several gentle kicks were sufficient to propel Dean toward the rust-streaked steel cliff ahead, then straight up along the Lebedev’s side. In another moment, his head broke the surface.

He and three other SEALs had surfaced directly alongside the ship, which towered over them now, the side black against an intensely blue sky. They were so close that the chop of the water bumped them up against the metal; anyone on deck wouldn’t have been able to see them without leaning out over the starboard rail.

Hoskins and another SEAL had taken up positions in the water several yards out from the ship, kicking gently to stay on the surface while holding submachine guns to their shoulders, the weapons trained at the railing above. They were the fire team one water security element, carrying special CAR-15s modified for use in seawater, with sound suppressors on their muzzles and with laser-sight targeting modules attached to their rails. “Water security,” in this instance, meant staying in the water to provide cover for the rest of the SEALs as they went up the side. They’d already pulled out the tight-fitting plastic plugs in muzzles and receivers that kept the salt water out of the weapons and were training them now on the ship’s main deck.

A black rubber boat had been inflated and secured to the ship’s side with a length of white line and a powerful ceramic magnet with a mooring eye. Some of the SEALs had already removed fins, face masks, and Draeger units and tossed them into the boat, freeing them for the ascent. It was amazing how swiftly the evolution was proceeding. These men, Dean realized, had practiced this sort of maneuver time after time after time, until they had the closely choreographed movements down perfectly.

“Ladders up,” a voice said.

“Deck clear,” said another.

Dean turned in the water and saw that two more SEALs had used long, telescoping poles taken from racks on the outside hull of the ASDS to raise a pair of boarding ladders up the side, hooking the upper ends of the ladders over the Lebedev’s gunwale. As soon as the narrow chain ladders were in place, the SEALs of teams two and four were on their way up, moving swiftly and with an elegant and death-silent economy of motion.

“Fire team two, on deck!” a voice called over the radio. “Target! Engaging!…”