Maksimov calculated on her pad computer, then looked up. “Ten days, Captain.”
“So, if we cut rations now and have forty days left, with ten days to get home and no contingency, we have thirty days left here on-station. But we are a Yasen-M-class submarine, and a fifty-day loadout fills our boat. The American Virginia-class is half our size, people, with double the crew. How many days of food do you think they have left? Like us, they can’t exactly pull into Cape Town and go grocery shopping. And if it’s bad for the Virginia-class, what can it be for the Panther? Her test mission was set for a week. They maybe had ten days of food for the whole crew. Now there’s probably a third of that number aboard now with the commandos who took her and presumably some officers from the Virginia-class to sail her. That would stretch her food from ten days to thirty. Which means, officers, the Panther just ran out of food. So you tell me, Mr. Supply Officer, in that situation, would you be poking along at six knots, extending your ex-filtration for two months, or would you increase speed to maximum and be on starvation rations for only two weeks?”
Yakovlev looked down at the table and mumbled something.
“Speak up when the commanding officer asks you a question, Yakovlev!” Lebedev said sternly.
“Yes, ma’am. Captain, I’d increase speed to maximum,” he said.
“So, people,” Alexeyev said, looking at the room’s officers, “we revise our sonar search plan for the Panther at maximum speed on her reactor and the Virginia-class running forced circulation and fast speed reactor recirculation pumps.”
“What if they just slow down for the five hundred or so kilometer passage through the Cape of Good Hope, Captain?” Weapons Officer Sobol asked. “If they’re creepy-crawling when they go around the horn, we might never detect them.”
“Doing that would add weeks to their trip,” Alexeyev said. “They’re starving now. I think they’ll risk it. I also think that means they won’t be taking the Cape wide, going down by Antarctica. I think they’ll come right down the center of the shipping lanes, going on a great circle route back to the American east coast. I’ve positioned the barrier search center point along that route, north and west of Cape Town. Let’s see if our calculus proves out. Meanwhile, Mr. Supply Officer, cut all rations in half, starting after the evening meal.”
“Perhaps one good meal before we cut rations, Captain?” Yakovlev asked.
“No. That would seem like a celebration, Supply Officer,” Alexeyev said, his voice somehow disconnected and distracted. “We will not be celebrating on this ship until the targets are on the bottom and we are on our way home. Anything else?” No one spoke. Alexeyev looked at the chief engineer, Captain Third Rank Matveev. “Fine. Engineer? I want to see you in my sea cabin.” Without another word, he stood and made his way back to his sea cabin, his gaze staring at something miles away.
The officers hastily gathered up their pad computers and cleaned off their cups and hurried to the passageway. Lebedev was somewhat annoyed that Captain Alexeyev hadn’t asked her along to his sea cabin to talk to Engineer Matveev about whatever was on his mind. The first officer looked at the navigator, who was almost at the wardroom door.
“Madam Navigator, stay a moment, if you don’t mind,” Lebedev said, forcing her expression to depart from its usual harshness. Maksimov nodded, inhaling. Lebedev could tell the navigator was bracing for a reprimand, but it was occurring to Lebedev that while Maksimov was usually about as far from an ally as Lebedev could imagine, today, Maksimov’s questioning attitude to the captain was in complete synchronization with Lebedev’s own thoughts. And Maksimov had demonstrated integrity and grit confronting the captain on his possibly faulty assumptions, as well as showing a penetrating intelligence, heretofore masked by her weaponized femininity. Lebedev began to think her initial impressions of the youthful navigator might have been too hasty. She could have been judging the too-pretty officer by her physical appearance, and doing that violated everything Lebedev stood for. Maksimov sat back down, crossing the table to be able to sit opposite the second-in-command rather than at her usual seat to the first officer’s immediate right.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“What do you think, Navigator?” Lebedev asked, looking at Maksimov, turning to find the teapot and refilling her cup, handing Maksimov a fresh cup, hoping her own facial expression had softened from her usual frown as she extended the teapot.
“Captain’s making a pretty big gamble, Madam First,” Maksimov said, accepting the cup from the first officer and holding it so Lebedev could pour tea into it.
Lebedev agreed, but decided to try to frame an argument that would express loyalty to the captain, however lame such an argument might be. Theatrically, she shrugged. “He has to do something. He made a tactical decision. Let’s see if it plays out.”
“Madam First, if those target subs get past us, there will be hell to pay with the Admiralty.”
“We all need to quit thinking that way,” Lebedev said gently. “Think positive. We will nail these damned targets and prevail. Before we pull into port, we will paint two small American flags on our conning tower to commemorate the kills. Shut your eyes, Nav. Can you see it in your mind?”
Maksimov smiled at her. Lebedev realized that in all her association with the young navigator, this was the first time Maksimov had smiled in Lebedev’s presence.
“Don’t worry, Nav,” Lebedev continued gently. “We’ll win this thing. I believe it in every cell of my body. And you should too. This is the Kazan. We are the supreme nuclear attack submarine on the planet.”
Maksimov nodded. “I like that, Madam First.” She stood up. “By your leave, ma’am?”
“Dismissed, Navigator,” Lebedev said, smiling back at Maksimov.
The navigator left, and Lebedev was alone in the wardroom, staring at the whiteboard. Maksimov had hit the nail on the head, Lebedev thought. Alexeyev’s gamble was extreme. And possibly stupid. But without antisubmarine aircraft to help them get a position of the targets, the oceans were simply too big. The chances of detecting the American and rogue Iranian subs were so low that she would have to think ahead to what would happen to her career if the submarines made it all the way to American shores.
In Captain Georgy Alexeyev’s sea cabin, Chief Engineer Alesya Matveev entered, finding a seat at the small table opposite Alexeyev’s command chair.
“You wanted to see me, Captain?” Matveev prompted.
“There is an urgent communication from the engineering directorate that evaluated the casualties on Voronezh and Novosibirsk.”
“But Captain,” Matveev said, “Our boats sank from getting hit with a nuclear strike.”
“A debrief of the surviving crewmembers of the Novosibirsk revealed that under the shock impact of the nuclear weapon, the atmospheric control equipment in auxiliary machinery room number two disassembled and caused complete chaos. You can imagine. Hydrogen. Oxygen. The oxygen storage banks. Complete loss of emergency breathing air. An explosion in machinery two would doom the ship. And apparently, it did. The explosion from machinery two was strong enough to cause the reactor vessel to jump on its mountings, resulting in a dual rod ejection accident. The fuel overpowered and caused a steam explosion and blew the lid off the vessel and blew melted nuclear fuel all over the third compartment and irradiated the entire crew. So. Machinery two is essentially one big design flaw.”