“Sir, yes, sir. I supervised the software load personally, a month ago, before the refit had been scheduled.”
“Don’t we also have two Shkvals?”
“Yes, Captain, sorry, I failed to mention the Shkvals.”
“I want them tube loaded. We’ll move weapons when we’re submerged. Once they are in the torpedo tubes, I want them checked hourly for high temperatures.”
“Yes, Captain, I’ll put a weapon move plan together and present it to you once we clear restricted waters.”
“Well, people, you’d better get your departments ready to put to sea,” Alexeyev said, trying to make his voice sound forceful, while looking toward the end of the pier, awaiting Admiral Zhigunov, who was now ten minutes late. Just then the admiral’s black limo drove up and Zhigunov got out and waved Alexeyev over. Alexeyev half ran to the end of the pier.
As he left the group of women officers, the navigator looked appreciatively at the retreating form of Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev. He was tall, slender, in good shape and had a thick head of amazingly shining dark black hair that swooped over his forehead to his ears, his hair just slightly longer than regulations allowed. Matveev called his hair “politician hair,” the kind of looks only Kremlin elected officials sported. He had blue eyes that could freeze water when he was angry or boil a woman’s blood when he smiled. He had rugged features, thin cheeks below strong cheekbones and a ruler-straight jawline, and he was one of those men who seemed to have a perpetual five o’clock shadow, and it made him look tough, masculine and strong. For the part of a front-line nuclear submarine commander, Maksimov thought, he looked like he had been cast by Moscow’s movie industry.
His personality was hard to crack, though, she thought, the captain seeming somewhat remote, lost in thought, sometimes having to be prompted to concentrate on a briefing or a conversation. All too often, he seemed mentally somewhere else. The first officer, in a moment of being angry at him, once called him autistic, but that certainly wasn’t the case. Of course Alexeyev had people skills — after all, look at that gorgeous beauty he was living with — but his remoteness and mentally distracted nature were a weakness, and he needed a good first officer to help him. It was a shame, Maksimov thought, that she couldn’t be his first officer. That bitch Lebedev was one of those officers who was in the Navy just to advance her own career and become the fleet’s first female commanding officer. With her, there was no thought of patriotism or spirit for the ship. Or to help her captain. As if reading her thoughts, the first officer looked at her and frowned.
“Navigator,” Lebedev said coldly, “I suggest you get aboard and make sure you are ready to lay in a course once the captain has his orders.”
Maksimov saluted her. “Yes, ma’am. By your leave.”
“Dismissed,” Lebedev said. “That goes for you too, Weapons Officer and Engineer. Let’s get this mission going.”
“Won’t the captain be briefing us in the wardroom before we sail?” the engineer asked.
“If he does, you’ll be the first to know. Come on, let’s get aboard. Weapons Officer, you’re driving us out. May I suggest you get yourself to the bridge and study the current and charts? And make contact with the tugs and pilot, make sure they’re ready.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sobol said, seeming glad to get away from the overbearing first officer, stepping quickly across the gangway to the hull.
At the end of the pier, Alexeyev walked up to Zhigunov and rigidly saluted the older man, who waved a salute back.
“What’s going on, Admiral? What’s the mission?”
“It’s very bolloxed up, Georgy,” Zhigunov said, his deep voice even more gravelly than usual. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Alexeyev, who nodded and accepted the admiral’s lighter flame, inhaling the smoke of some foreign brand the admiral had managed to get his hands on. “We were sending Novosibirsk and Voronezh to the Gulf of Oman to provide a routine escort for the Iranian Navy’s testing of our new fast reactor on the Kilo-class submarine Panther. But the Medved’ Grizli worm uploaded into the Iranian computer systems — presumably by the Americans — destroyed the Iranian Navy’s ability to send destroyers and frigates to sea with the Panther and completely grounded their air force, and so the Iranians sent Panther to sea early before the worm could affect submarine computer systems. And you know the rest of the story, Georgy, the Medved’ Grizli cyberattack crossed over and infected our systems, and our surface fleet is still down hard, as are the naval air assets. Somehow we submariners were fortunate and the submarines’ systems remained intact, but we have further firewalled them off from the rest of the Navy’s systems. All the more reason to get Kazan submerged as soon as possible, to avoid this damned cyberattack infecting your boat.”
“Yes, Admiral, I’m with you so far. But something worse happened, right, Admiral?”
Zhigunov sighed. “Yes, Georgy. Somewhere in the Gulf of Oman, the Americans managed to steal the Panther.”
“What?”
“I know. Serious shit, Georgy. We still don’t know exactly how or where it happened, but we think an American submarine brought in commandos who took the Panther while she was submerged at periscope depth at slow speed. So the operation orders for Voronezh and Novosibirsk changed from simply escorting Panther to test her reactor into a search-and-destroy mission to sink the Panther. And there must be an American submarine that is escorting her out of the Arabian Sea and into the Western Hemisphere. That’s where you and Kazan come in. If Voronezh or Novosibirsk fail, you are the insurance policy. You’ll establish a barrier search at Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and lie in wait for the Panther and her escort submarine to exit the Indian Ocean and enter the South Atlantic. And when they do, put them both on the ocean bottom.”
What had followed were three straight days of steaming at 100 % reactor power, reactor recirculation pumps in fast speed, making good 35 knots speed-over-ground, from the Kola Peninsula through the GI-UK gap between Greenland, Iceland and the U.K. and into the North Atlantic, their loud transit unavoidably alerting the Americans’ sonar web laid at the bottom of the sea, acting as a trip wire and notifying them of when a loud submarine left the northern waters for the Atlantic. Down past the United Kingdom, past France and now at the latitude of the northern shores of Spain. From here, their track took them around western Africa and south to the South Atlantic, to Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, where Kazan would establish her barrier search.
If Voronezh and Novosibirsk succeeded, there was nothing for Kazan to do but cruise home, the whole mission a fool’s errand. But if they failed, it meant the operation would become real for Kazan. Very real indeed, Alexeyev thought. Certainly, as a patriot, he wanted his competitor submarines to succeed. But as the captain of Kazan, he wouldn’t mind if they failed. It could put Alexeyev and his crew into a position of glory. And really, what military commander didn’t relish the idea of glory?