“Madam First?” Alexeyev asked.
“I guess it will work, Captain. I’ll feel a lot better when that goddamned Gigantskiy is gone and we’re still okay.”
Alexeyev reached over and clapped Lebedev on the shoulder. “Madam First, we’ll be home safe in two weeks.”
Lebedev and Kovalov stood. “I’d better start up Losharik,” Kovalov said.
“I’ll brief the central command post crew,” Lebedev said. As she left the captain’s stateroom, once Kovalov had walked down the passageway, she unzipped her coveralls slightly and pulled out a small, silver crucifix she secretly wore around her neck. She kissed it, her eyes shut, then put it back in her coveralls, looking around to make sure no one had seen her.
The watch officer’s voice crackled through the ship on the shipwide announcing speakers. “All Losharik personnel, report to the Losharik.”
“Captain, Officer of the Deck, Master One has started back up. I’ve got flooding noises. I think he’s vertical diving from the open water overhead.” Senior Chief Albanese looked over his shoulder. “I recommend we set up to follow him.”
“Bring her off the bottom, Mr. Pacino,” Captain Seagraves said, “and hover at four hundred while we figure out what he’s doing.”
“Pilot, insert a positive rate and hover at depth four hundred,” Pacino ordered Dankleff.
“Insert a positive rate and commence hovering at four hundred feet, Pilot, aye,” Dankleff acknowledged.
“OOD,” Albanese called, “Master One is putting on fast revs. I’m getting him over a hundred RPM on one seven-bladed screw, bearing two five five. One-twenty RPM now and still increasing. One-fifty. One-eighty. Two hundred RPM.”
“Jaysus,” Quinnivan said, leaning over Albanese’s sonar stack. “He’s hauling ass. What the fook is he doing?”
“Two hundred forty RPM, sir, and now steady on two-fifty.”
“He must be going flank on that one screw,” Pacino said to Seagraves and Quinnivan.
“Probably backtracking on his original course on his way here,” Lewinsky said, “so he can avoid hitting an ice wall. He knows his previous path is safe.”
“But what’s the hurry?” Quinnivan mused.
“Put on turns on the EPM,” Seagraves ordered Pacino. “We’ll do what we can to follow him.”
“Pilot, all ahead one third,” Pacino ordered Dankleff. “Steer course two five five.”
“All ahead one third, Pilot, aye, steer two five five, and Maneuvering answers, all ahead one third.” Dankleff paused a moment, listening to his tactical circuit from the maneuvering room. “OOD, Maneuvering reports only three knots possible on the emergency propulsion motor.”
“Very well,” Pacino said. His face suddenly drained of color and he looked at Seagraves. “Something’s up, Captain. Something very bad.”
“What’s on your mind, Mr. Pacino?” Seagraves asked. “You’ve got that ‘someone walked on your grave’ look that Mr. Dankleff told me about on the Panther run.”
“Sir, I can only think of one reason Master One would want to go to flank under ice in a situation like this. He’s trying to establish stand-off distance. He’s about to shoot us.”
“What’s the status of the message on the fookin’ VLF loop?” Quinnivan asked.
Pacino dialed radio on the 1JV and spoke into it, then looked up at the XO. “Three letters aboard, three to go. The first two are our callsign, so it’s definitely a message for us. But it will be another full hour before we can decode the message.” He looked at Captain Seagraves. “Captain, if we’re about to get shot at, we should turn around and head back to the polynya. If we sustain damage, we could vertical surface.”
“Another good thing about Mr. Pacino’s recommendation, Skipper,” Quinnivan said. “We could get our message traffic instantaneously if we pop up the sail from open water. That’ll save us an hour. Plus, we could see if our radios are working.”
“Mr. Pacino,” Seagraves said, “turn us around and bring us to the open water, and write a draft situation report we can try to transmit on the HDR or COMM antenna. Once I approve it, load it into the buffer and into a SLOT buoy — just in case the antennae are broken. And as important, if we can get the sail out of the water, we can get a precise navigation fix and collapse the SINS fix error circle.”
“Understood, Captain,” Pacino said. “Pilot, right full rudder, steady course zero eight zero. Navigator, confirm a course back to the open water. Then get ready to get a satellite fix aboard, then transcribe our exact position for the radio SITREP.”
Captain First Rank Sergei Kovalov climbed into the left-hand commander’s seat in Losharik’s cockpit. To his right, Captain Second Rank Iron Irina Trusov buckled into the pilot-in-command’s seat. Behind Kovalov, the navigator, Captain Third Rank Misha Dobryvnik occupied the navigation console, and to his right, First Officer Ivan Vlasenko manned the mission-control console. In the fourth titanium spherical compartment aft, Chief Engineer Kiril Chernobrovin manned the reactor control room. The sixth spherical compartment contained the reactor and steam equipment, the seventh the main engine.
Kovalov strapped on his wireless headset and keyed the microphone on the tactical circuit. “Reactor Control, Captain, status of reactor startup?”
Chernobrovin’s voice was dull as he answered, disappointment in his tone. “Captain, I’m executing a pull-and-wait startup. We’ve been shut down too long. We’re non-visible, sir, with nothing showing up on startup range neutron level. I have no idea how much reactivity I’ve inserted into the core.”
“Engineer, this is a tactical situation,” Kovalov said sternly. “I need that reactor online and I need it now.”
“Sir, I might put too much reactivity into the core before it reads out on instruments. We could go supercritical. We could go prompt critical. It could run away, explode and rupture the hull.”
Kovalov sighed. “What’s your pull and wait interval?”
“Sir, I’m shimming out for five seconds and waiting for fifty-five.”
“Engineer,” Kovalov said, peeved, “that’ll have us in the power range in a week. I need power now. So I’m ordering you to pull for ten seconds and wait for twenty. You got that?”
“Yes, Captain, pull ten, wait twenty.” Chernobrovin’s voice was just this side of panic, Kovalov thought.
“How many amp-hours do we have on the battery?”
“At present discharge, sir, the battery has six hours, but if you use the thruster, that’ll drain us a lot faster.”
“Fine. Reactor Control, disconnect power umbilical from Belgorod and take us to internal power on the battery. Prepare to undock on Belgorod’s signal.”
Kovalov looked at Trusov. “Hope you can hold your breath,” he said. “No atmospheric controls until the engineer gets this reactor started. Let’s go over the undock checklist.”
As Kovalov and Trusov went over the checklist, the ship began to tremble with the vibrations from Belgorod’s starboard screw taking them up to flank speed. Kovalov turned to look back at Vlasenko. “We’d better hope the ice hasn’t shifted since we covered that ground.”
“If it does, Captain,” Trusov said, “we should be prepared to emergency undock.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Kovalov said, but he had deep doubts.
23
Captain Third Rank Svetlana Anna, the commander of the test wives, peeked out from the doorway of her VIP stateroom suite down the passageway toward the captain’s stateroom. When the last senior officer entered the room, she walked aft to the ladder to the zero two deck, continuing down to the zero three deck, where the weapon control electronics were kept. She arrived at the forward bulkhead, where the door to the electronics room was shut, a primitive push-button lock on the door. With the expertise gained from her recent practice, she withdrew a package from her pocket the size of pack of cigarettes, placed it on the lock’s keypad, and pushed an authorization button, then an activation button.