Today’s meeting would feature not only the explosive Stanislav but his Chief of Staff and First Deputy Commander of the Navy, Vice Admiral Pavel Zhabin, who despite being a rank below Zhigunov himself, used the rank of his boss as a weapon, having sent Zhigunov dozens of blisteringly furious emails when things hadn’t gone to plan.
Zhigunov took a deep breath as the screen lit up, but the expected view of the Admiralty’s ornate secure conference room didn’t appear, but rather a room much like the one Zhigunov occupied, this one with the emblem of the Pacific Fleet on the wall behind the man in the room. It was Admiral Andreyushkin, the commander of the Pacific Fleet. Stanislav and Zhabin were slightly delayed. Soon the right side of the screen lit up with the Admiralty conference room, Stanislav and Zhabin seated together in the room, the screen’s left half devoted to the figure of Andreyushkin.
Before he could even greet the senior admiral and his chief of staff, Stanislav began, his voice so furious it wavered.
“Are either of you aware what happened an hour ago?” he demanded. Zhigunov glanced briefly at his pad computer. He had cleared out all his messages just before walking into the room so he wouldn’t be blindsided by the admiral.
“No, Admiral,” Zhigunov said.
“What about you, Andreyushkin?”
“I have no information, Admiral,” Andreyushkin said, his voice low.
“Well, gentlemen,” Stanislav spit, as the word ‘gentlemen’ were an epithet, “allow me to display for your edification this video clip, taken from our newest Comsomolets satellite I spent fuel to retask to monitor the Gulf of Oman, since your submarines were both late to get in-theater.” Stanislav’s pronunciation of ‘submarines’ dripped with contempt. He’d come up through the surface navy and had always been annoyed at submariners, Zhigunov thought.
The screen changed to an overhead view of the calm, deep waters of the Gulf of Oman. Suddenly the ocean burst into foam and spray as a Kilo-class submarine blasted out of the water after performing an emergency blow. The Kilo was elongated — the modified Iranian submarine that his command’s submarine Voronezh had been tasked with escorting into the Indian Ocean.
Zhigunov watched in horror as the video showed four commandos emerging from the sea and invading the submarine, being helped onto the deck by multiple men in wetsuits, the bags of equipment being loaded onto the Kilo submarine, a huge raft being inflated on her foredeck, then the commandos pulling the crewmembers onto the raft, finally re-entering the hull and shutting the hatch behind them. Zhigunov had clamped his hand over his mouth as the Kilo submerged beneath the raft, until the square of ocean in the video only showed the raft and the crewmen on it. Finally the video winked out and the snarling face of Stanislav returned to the screen, the frowning first deputy commander likewise glaring at the camera with a dark expression.
“So, you first Admiral Andreyushkin. Your submarine Novosibirsk was due in the Gulf of Oman four days ago. I’m told it’s still two days away, off the coast of the Saudi peninsula, south of Oman. Why is your submarine late to its position to rendezvous with and escort the Panther?”
Zhigunov watched as Andreyushkin swallowed hard. “Sir, the Iranians took the Kilo to sea nearly a week early. What happened?”
Normally Stanislav couldn’t be taken off his relentless interrogations, but this time he sat back heavily and glared at Zhabin. “Something disastrous. The Americans successfully cyber-attacked the Iranian computer systems. The worm they uploaded caused the crashing of all systems related to their surface ships and their air force and navy aircraft. Their aircraft are grounded and their surface warships are welded to the pier. The Iranians were worried that the Kilo might be attacked by the same worm, so they thought it was safest to get it into the Indian Ocean immediately before any submarine systems became affected, so they jumped off early.
“But there’s more. Somehow the worm injected into the Iranian systems found its way into ours. And now our naval air assets are grounded. Our surface ships are bricked. And there’s no telling when we will recover, when we’ll be able to fly. Gentlemen, the reason I’m so fixated on the performance of your submarines are that you are all we have. There will be no overflights by Il-114s or helicopters. There will be no destroyers or frigates or even patrol torpedo boats. We are relying completely and totally on you. So, now, tell me, Admiral Andreyushkin, what is going on with your submarine?”
Andreyushkin sighed. “The Novosibirsk suffered a material failure in the reactor system, Admiral, that required shutting down and flying in replacement parts and technicians to fix it before the boat could get underway again.”
“A material failure? The only failure I see here is you, Andreyushkin, you and your miserable maintenance facilities. I wouldn’t trust those lazy alcoholics with fixing my lawnmower. And their incompetence is your incompetence. You failed. You failed the Navy and you failed the motherland.”
There was no doubt, Stanislav could make a grown man cry in a hundred words or less. At least his own reprimand would be demonstrably not his fault, Zhigunov thought. At least he hoped.
“And you, Admiral Zhigunov. Your command’s submarine Voronezh was likewise scheduled to be at the rendezvous point at Bandar Abbas four days ago. Where in bloody hell was it? Why was it late?”
“Sir, Admiral, I routed it through the Suez Canal and the canal closed for almost a week, for what turned out to be an operation by our own—”
“I don’t care why the canal was closed,” Stanislav said, cutting him off, and pointing at him, his hand trembling, either from his anger or his age, or perhaps both. “It’s just another damned excuse. You should have routed your ship around Africa and sent her on her way the week prior. The intelligence bulletins were practically shouting about trouble in the Suez. Did you listen to them? No. You let that idiot son of yours linger for another week in port and then sent him the shortcut to the Gulf of Oman by a route you should have known would be problematic.”
There had been absolutely nothing in the intelligence bulletins about the Suez Canal, Zhigunov knew. He’d learned long ago to read them carefully enough that he could pass a comprehensive test on them from memory alone. Which meant Stanislav was blowing off steam — who in his right mind would sail eight thousand kilometers farther around a continent if he could go the direct route through a canal? Had he done that, right now he’d be getting flamed on by Stanislav for having taken the long, slow route to the rendezvous point.
Stanislav must have gotten his ears boxed by the president, Zhigunov thought, and was taking his ire out on Andreyushkin and Zhigunov.
Stanislav took a drink from his water glass, his tirade apparently leaving him with a dry mouth. He pointed at the screen again, his face furious.
“I expect both of you to make this horrible situation right. Your orders are no longer to escort the nuclear-powered Kilo submarine to the safe test area. Your new orders are to find the Panther and destroy it. Sink it before the Americans or whatever rabid dogs stole our submarine can take it apart and study it. Am I making myself clear? Zhigunov, what will be your orders to Voronezh?”
“To find the Panther and sink it.”
Stanislav looked at the screen. “Do you think that will be easy?”