popcorn machine. A battered gray table protruded from one bulkhead. Bird Dog, Gator, and their squadron commanding officer were gathered around it.
Bird Dog glared down at the chart spread out before him. A series of standard Navy symbols was penciled in on it, connected with a faint line representing the track of the contact. The Greenpeace ship had been meandering around the area south of Aflu for two weeks now, and there was still no discernible pattern to her movement.
“I still don’t see what the hell is so damned important about flying out to take a look at that ship,” Bird Dog grumbled. “Why not send an S-3B out instead? That way she can look for that Oscar at the same time.”
Commander Frank Richey fixed him with a pointed glare. “Lieutenants aren’t asked to decide what’s important, mister,” he snapped. “If the United States wants to make sure her citizens can count beluga whales in the North Pacific in peace and quiet, then we’re gonna make sure that happens. You got it?”
Bird Dog heard Gator, seated next to him, sigh and move away imperceptibly. Bird Dog nodded, acknowledging the rebuke with bare courtesy. When he was the commanding officer of a squadron — if that day ever came, which was looking more and more unlikely these days — he would remember what it was like to be a frustrated junior pilot, blooded on one cruise but still not considered an important enough member of the team to be fully briefed on the mission.
Fully briefed. He snorted. The skipper thought it was enough that he understood his flight profile, knew what his weapons load-out was, and was able to make the F-14 Tomcat dance around the sky like a ballerina. But no one ever bothered to talk about the bigger issues — why the United States was here in the first place, and just what the hell babysitting a group of peaceniks and long-hairs on a Greenpeace boat had to do with national security.
Although, he had to admit, the powers that be had proved right about the Spratly Islands. There, their routine surveillance of the rocky outpost in the South China Sea had been the first step in building stronger ties with the small nations that rimmed that body of water.
Still, would it have cost the skipper anything to give him a better explanation? He sighed. Maybe he’d wander down to the spook spaces later today, see if any of the Professional paranoids that lived in the Carrier Intelligence Center, or CVIC were willing to discuss the mission with him. Somehow, he had the feeling that if he just knew more, he might be a whole hell of a lot more interested in the mission than he was at this point. If it hadn’t involved flying, it would have been a complete waste.
“So, I take it you’ve got the big picture now?” his skipper said, distracting him from his thoughts.
“Yes, sir, Skipper,” Bird Dog replied. “We’ll fly a routine surveillance mission over this area,” he said, tracing out a large square on the chart in front of him. “I’m to report the location of the Greenpeace ship, drop down to one thousand feet for a quick pass over her for rigging, then we’re to take a quick look at all the islands. Make sure none of them have moved.” Bird Dog winced as he heard the sarcasm in his voice. Damn it, when was he going to learn to keep his mouth under control?
“There’s islands bear close watching sometimes, Gator said softly. “Remember?”
“Hell, yes,” Bird Dog said in the same tones. “But that was Asia. The Aleutian Islands are part of Alaska — American property! Do you really think that they’re going to be blowing up like the Spratly rocks were?”
Gator shook his head sadly. “That’s what they pay us for, shipmate — to make sure that they don’t.”
Tim Holden, first mate on board the third and largest ship in the Greenpeace inventory, kept his hands firmly wrapped around the overhead stabilizer bar. The steel rod ran from port to starboard near the ceiling of the bridge on board the ship. In rough seas like today’s, crew members virtually hung from it, suspended like bats in order to keep their balance.
The former fishing boat had a deep draft, its keel extending some thirty feet below the thrashing waves around it. Even with that, though, the ship bobbed and twisted in the waves, her powerful diesel engines straining to keep her bow pointed into the long line of heavy swells that extended out to the horizon. Holden watched the helmsman make minor adjustments to their course. The man had good sense, far more than most of his counterparts, and could be trusted to take immediate action without Holden giving rudder orders for every small course change. It relieved the strain of standing watch in heavy seas. Although just why he was out here in the first place was something of a mystery. He knew what the Greenpeace people said. He’d paid attention during all the briefs, had been impressed by their starry-eyed innocence and fanatic dedication to their cause, but it still didn’t make much sense to him. Spending months watching for the occasional appearance of a pod of whales and trying to develop a complete census of the creatures didn’t strike him as doing much for world peace and endangered species. It’d be a hell of a lot more effective if the Navy put a couple of torpedoes up the ass of Russian fishing vessels that harvested them. Well, at least the wages made up for part of the misery of bobbing around like a cork in this storm.
He paused, squinting at Aflu. From this distance, the twenty-mile-long island was only a smidgen on the horizon, a bleak white outcropping of ice and rock. While the uninhabited island had played a major role in World War II, today it served mostly as a landmark for fishing vessels and ecologists searching for schools of fish and pods of endangered whales.
Like his current passengers. A nice enough herd, if a bit single-minded. After four weeks of listening to their unflagging enthusiasm, their nightly dinner speculations about the state of whales in the northern Pacific were starting to take on a wistfully plaintive note. As much as he begrudged it, he’d found himself eager to find something to cheer them up. One whale — that would do for starters.
Holden scanned the horizon again. He’d pit his experienced seagoing eyes against their array of techno-toys and sonar monitors any day.
Finally, he saw what had caught his attention. There was something between the Serenity and Aflu, a trace of darker color against the roiling blue-black, whitecapped ocean. He took two quick steps forward to the front of the bridge, grasped the railing there with one hand, and lifted binoculars to his eyes. The picture came into sharper focus.
Yes, something definitely was there. He reached for the ship’s telephone to call the scientists, already grinning with anticipation at the childish cries of glee that would shortly be filling the bridge.
“She’s surfacing, sir,” the sonar technician said.
“What the hell-?” the Kilo’s skipper muttered. He leaned over the sonar console, his face almost next to his technician’s. “Any indication she’s having trouble?”
“Could be, sir,” the technician replied. “I thought I saw some instability in her electrical sources.”
Rogov watched the Kilos commander analyze the possibilities in his mind. A reactor failure, a casualty of some sort, or, worse yet, every submariner’s nightmares — fire. He waited for a few minutes, then decided to intervene, and shoved himself through a mass of technicians and sailors to the sonar console.
“It is not our business,” he said neutrally. “We have our mission — nothing must interfere with that.”
“There are one hundred and seventy-eight men on that submarine,” the skipper said. “If they have to abandon ship, we have to be there to pick them up immediately. Otherwise, even with the protective life rafts, they have no hope of survival.”
Rogov shook his head from side to side almost imperceptibly. “The mission,” he reminded the skipper.
For the first time, the man showed some signs of fighting spirit. “May God rot your soul,” the normally passive submariner snapped. “You saw what that sea does — ten minutes, at the most. We must-“
“And just where will you put all these men, Captain?” Rogov asked. “Have them standing in line in your tiny passageways? Will you jettison your torpedoes to make room for them in those tubes? No,” he concluded, “even if you were to reach them, you have no room for them on board. If they have problems, they must solve them themselves. I’m sure their captain is a resourceful man.”
“They could get to shore. Your camp there — at least they’d have a chance!”
Rogov stiffened. The breach of operational security was unforgivable. While every sailor on the submarine knew that the boat had surfaced, had noted the absence of the forbidden figures that had boarded it in Petropavlovsk, few knew any details of the larger mission. The captain himself had been Ordered to ensure that his crew remained absolutely silent on the matter, and to crush any speculation immediately. To blurt it out now, within earshot of every junior sailor in the control room, was completely unacceptable.
“A word privately?” Rogov said, moderating his tone to a respectful murmur. “Perhaps there are options-”
