“Sir!”
Nakhimov turned toward the plot table along one side of the control room. His navigating officer, Senior Lieutenant Pokrovsky, beckoned him over. The younger man had just finished marking off their logged progress using a compass divider and parallel rulers. He indicated a small cross near the end of the line he’d just drawn across the chart. They were far out in the Northern Atlantic, more than eight hundred nautical miles off the French coast. “We’re passing through Checkpoint Omega now, Captain.”
“And within five minutes of your predicted time,” Nakhimov said, after checking the submarine’s chronometer. He clapped Pokrovsky on the shoulder. “Good work, Ivan.”
Then his smile faded. They’d reached the coordinates where he was instructed to open his sealed orders from Moscow. Now he would learn the real purpose of this top-secret voyage. Unfortunately, this same process also served to remind him yet again that he was no longer the sole master aboard his own vessel. He turned to his executive officer, Captain Second Rank Arshavin, “Invite our guest to my cabin, please.”
Arshavin nodded and took a handset from the bulkhead beside him. He punched a button to connect to the aft berthing compartment reserved for their passengers. “Colonel Danilevsky will report to the captain’s quarters at once. Repeat, at once.” He disconnected without waiting for a reply.
Nakhimov shook his head. “You might have been a bit more… polite, Maxim,” he commented dryly.
“The fellow’s supposed to be a soldier,” his executive officer said dourly. “He shouldn’t need me to hold his hand.”
Podmoskovye’s captain bit down on a laugh. Like him, none of his senior officers were happy to be saddled with a complement of hired gunmen from this so-called Raven Syndicate masquerading as genuine naval infantry and Spetsnaz commandos. Their leader, Konstantin Danilevsky, might once have held the rank of colonel in the Spetsnaz, but that didn’t change the fact that he was now only a mercenary working for the highest bidder — and no longer solely a loyal servant of the State. Unfortunately, even his preliminary orders from the Kremlin required him to treat Danilevsky as a coequal for the duration of this mission. So far, distasteful and awkward though this unprecedented power-sharing arrangement was, it hadn’t caused any real trouble. The ex — Spetsnaz officer had been wise enough not to interfere with day-to-day operations aboard the submarine while it was underway. But now Nakhimov couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that might be about to change.
His cabin, little more than a curtained alcove, was just a few steps away from the control room. He wasn’t especially surprised to find the Raven Syndicate leader already there waiting for him out in the narrow corridor. Large as it appeared from the outside, most of Podmoskovye’s hull space was taken up by her twin nuclear reactors, minisub hangars, torpedoes, and other consumable stores. The living space actually set aside for her 135 officers and ratings, and now, twenty more commandos, was astonishingly small, especially by the standards of those unused to service aboard submarines. Nakhimov’s broom closet — sized room gave him more privacy than anyone else in his crew.
The captain swept the curtain aside and coolly nodded Danilevsky in ahead of him. The other man, several inches taller and more powerfully built, perched carefully on the small bunk while Nakhimov sat down at his built-in desk. He waited until the curtain was drawn again before commenting. “I assume that we’ve reached this Omega point of yours?”
“That’s correct, Colonel,” Nakhimov confirmed. He opened a small cabinet and entered the combination on his safe. It clicked open, revealing two sealed manila envelopes, one bearing his name and rank, the other that of Danilevsky. Each was marked most secret. commanding officer’s eyes only.
Frowning, he tore open his own envelope. It contained several pages of closely written text. Slowly, his eyes widened. The document, signed by President Piotr Zhdanov himself, outlined the role his submarine was expected to play in an operation code-named MIDNIGHT, which was already in progress. The plan’s combination of intricate deception and treachery — all culminating in the massive application of lethal force — left him shaken to his core. If everything worked as Zhdanov anticipated, Russia would achieve a strategic victory without precedent in world history — and all in less than an hour’s time. But if anything significant went wrong, this operation could easily trigger a war Russia could not win… a war that no one could win. And now the responsibility for making sure MIDNIGHT succeeded rested squarely on his shoulders — and on those of his Raven Syndicate counterpart.
Suddenly finding it surprisingly difficult to breath, Nakhimov carefully put the sheaf of orders down on his desk. He turned to Danilevsky. To his astonishment, he realized that the other man had only casually skimmed the contents of his own envelope before setting it aside. “You knew about all of this? Before we sailed?”
The Raven Syndicate mercenary smiled icily. “Of course.” His dark eyes held no trace of humor at all. “Do you have a problem with that, Captain?”
Abruptly remembering exactly what Danilevsky and his men were expected to do if the need arose, Nakhimov shook his head stiffly. “No.”
For the first time, he fully grasped the horrifying fact that he and his sailors were now confined three hundred meters below the surface of the sea, trapped inside a relatively small steel cylinder with a group of hardened killers. In the past, Podmoskovye had carried Spetsnaz soldiers bound on other missions. These men, however, were different. They would kill for financial gain, not because it was their patriotic duty.
Lazily, the other man handed over his copy of their orders and waited while the captain locked them safely away again in his safe. Then he rose. “With your permission, I’ll rejoin my troops.”
After Danilevsky left, Nakhimov breathed out. Gathering his composure, he headed back to the control room. The safest road now was that of duty. He had his orders and they must be obeyed — no matter how hazardous they appeared, both to himself and to the Motherland.
Faces alight with curiosity turned toward him when he reentered the dimly lit control room. It was an open secret throughout the submarine that their actual mission would only begin once the captain opened his special orders from Moscow. Duty roster or not, all of his senior officers had wanted to be on hand when Podmoskovye reached Checkpoint Omega.
Ignoring his subordinates for a moment, Nakhimov took a message pad and rapidly scrawled a status report and request for updated intelligence, as directed by the top-secret orders he’d just read. Finished, he tore the sheet off the pad and held it out to his radio officer, Lieutenant Leonid Volkov. “Encrypt this and send it to Moscow at once. With maximum security.”
“Yes, Captain.” The younger officer took the message and scanned it quickly. His eyebrows rose. He sat down at his station and rapidly entered the clear text into their encryption machine. A display showed the much shorter sequence of numbers, special characters, and letters now ready for transmission. Then he swiveled toward the senior petty officer manning the communications board. “Launch Relay One.”
Throughout the Cold War, communication between nuclear submarines at sea and their fleet headquarters had been extremely difficult. Two-way radio contact was only possible if submarines came to periscope depth — greatly increasing their vulnerability to detection and attack by hostile forces. Absent that, it was only possible for shore stations to transmit one-way, extremely low frequency signals that could be picked up by submarines operating far below the surface. Now, however, the Russian navy, like its American rival, had developed new communications systems to address these problems.