They'd averaged twenty knots for the crossing, sometimes dashing at Pittsburgh's full underwater speed of thirty-five knots, but stopping frequently to listen… and sometimes crawling at a painful five knots to avoid the notice of hunters above. In all, it had taken almost thirty-five hours, but the timing had let them slip into the shallow waters of the bay well after dark.
It seemed as though the Sea of Okhotsk was unusually busy. Sonar had racked up another twelve contacts since entering the Sea of Okhotsk. According to the boat's log, her last mission in these waters only a few weeks ago had encountered relatively little traffic until she'd deliberately surfaced to attract Soviet attention. Perhaps the heavy patrols were simply a reaction to the American sub's penetration so recently. Or perhaps the Soviets were engaged in fleet maneuvers.
"Sonar, Conn," he said. "What's the bearing on Sierra Two-seven?"
"Conn, Sonar," Rodriguez's voice came back. "Sierra Two-seven now bearing two-zero-four. Estimated range, six to eight thousand yards."
Gordon leaned into the periscope eyepiece again, trying to pierce the darkness. This was the spot where they were supposed to meet their Russian contact. Sonar had reported a contact in the area — Sierra Two-seven — and reported that it sounded like a trawler or fishing boat, with a single screw making turns for five knots.
But… was it the contact, code-named "Stenki" after a historical Cossack leader? Or a KGB or MVD border patrol boat? Pittsburgh was now prowling southeast along the Siberian coast, barely thirty miles offshore. Technically, they were still in international waters, but that technicality was so slender Gordon wasn't going to hang a wish upon it, much less a 6,900-ton submarine. The Sea of Okhotsk was a Soviet sea, open only to their military traffic and a few — a very few — commercial vessels operating close inshore. It was known that the Sea of Okhotsk was one of the Soviet Navy's bastion areas, heavily guarded regions where their Typhoons and Deltas and other SSBN boomers lurked, under the watchful protection of surface fleet elements and attack SSNs. It was also the downrange target area for Soviet missile tests for launches from central Asia. It was no wonder Moscow didn't like American intruders in these waters.
And here, within the shallow Sakhalinskiy Zaliv, was close aboard one of their most sensitive shipping channels, the marine highway leading from one of their most secret ports at Nikolayevsk, down the Amur Estuary, then north into the Sea of Okhotsk.
Gordon wondered again if the highly secret operation involving his four packages was somehow targeted against Nikolayevsk. It seemed likely. Most other ports and shipbuilding facilities were close enough to the open sea that U.S. submarines could come very close indeed, in some cases entering the harbors themselves to identify and photograph Russian subs and warships.
There … a fleck of green-yellow brightness, momentarily visible between the rolling surge of the waves. Something was giving off a lot of heat, visible as a fleck of brightness against the blacks and grays of the night.
"Down scope. Helm, come to two-zero-four. Make turns for eight knots."
"Helm to two-zero-four, aye. Making turns for eight knots."
Minutes dragged past. When Gordon again ordered "Up scope," and leaned into the eyepiece, he could make out the ghostly shape of the trawler ahead, a cluttered relic of a fishing boat, its diesel engine glowing brightly in the infrared. It appeared to be loitering, its engines barely turning over, less than five thousand yards away.
He still needed to verify that it wasn't a Soviet AGI trawler, one of their vast fleet of slow and decrepit-looking former commercial craft outfitted with the electronics allowing them to serve in a reconnaissance and electronic surveillance role. AGI trawlers were stationed worldwide, hanging about missile test ranges and major ports and bases, shadowing U.S. ships during fleet maneuvers and training exercises, carrying out, in fact, many of the surveillance missions American submarines had been tasked with during the past thirty years.
He checked the time… 0255 hours. It was time….
A bright light winked on from the trawler's bridge, flashing rapidly in Morse. "He's signaling," Gordon said. "K… V… R… N."
"Message confirmed," Latham said. "That's our man."
"Log it," Gordon said. "Aye, sir."
He continued studying the other vessel for another several moments, searching for something, anything amiss or suspicious. There wouldn't be, of course. He had to trust his orders, which had told him in exacting detail that he would meet a small commercial craft like this one at this spot, transmitting the code characters K-V-R-N every half hour, at five till and twenty-five after the hour.
"What's the depth under keel?"
"Eighty-nine feet, Captain," Carver replied.
He felt like he was sitting in a box. A very small box. "Okay. Let's get this over with and get the hell out. Alert the divers and tell them they're good to go."
"Aye aye, sir."
The sooner they delivered the packages and got out of there, the happier Gordon would be.
Randall leaned back against the cold, green-painted steel of the escape trunk. He was packed in with Mr. Johnson so tightly it was nearly a lover's embrace. "You ready?"
Johnson nodded, a bit nervously, Randall thought. Both wore wet suits, masks, and flippers. They wore Draeger LAR V closed-circuit rebreathers over their chests, the twenty-four-pound units almost touching as they faced each other in the trunk.
"Okay," Randall said. "Remember to breathe out on your way up."
Again a short, jerky nod for an answer.
Randall reached up for the WRT valve and turned it, then opened the vent that regulated the pressure inside the escape trunk. He kept his eyes on Johnson's face the whole time. As he understood it, the four operatives had gone through a thorough class in rebreather and submarine lock-out procedures at Camp Perry, Virginia, the CIA's training camp for field-ops agents.
But a few weeks of training was no substitute for experience… or SEAL training, which emphasized long hours of practice in tight quarters underwater, and in the infamous SEAL drownproofing, which was designed to reduce or eliminate a man's normal fear of drowning. Escape trunks on submarines were so tiny that even SEALs sometimes felt a touch of claustrophobia when they were locked inside, and the water started rising.
The water was gushing in, now, swirling about their feet… and on up their legs. Johnson was breathing in short, hard gasps, now, as he lowered his mask across his eyes and placed his mouthpiece between clenched teeth.
"Relax, Mr. Johnson," Randall told him. He tried to reach up and reassuringly pat the man's shoulder, but the space inside the escape trunk was too restricted. "Just a walk in the park."
Another nod.
"Slow your breathing. Long, slow breaths." Again the nod… but Johnson's breathing did steady a bit.
SEALs were sometimes tapped for this sort of mission— "baby-sitting," they called it, helping field operatives of any of several intelligence services to get from the submarine to the shore. Each SEAL on this op was responsible for one of the CIA men; and Johnson belonged to Randall.
The escape trunk was two-thirds full now, and Randall closed the vent. The water kept rising, however, the pressure building, until at last it churned and bubbled up past their chins. Reaching high, Randall hit the blow valve, then opened the outer hatch. Water surged over their heads, and Randall squeezed his mask tight on his face, then cleared it. Working more by feel than by sight in the dark water — the light in the escape trunk hardly seemed to penetrate the water at all — he guided Johnson up the trunk and out into the open water.