“Jesus Christ, Book. You moved her farther north than what I thought. Good thing, though. I was going to order you up here anyway.”
“May I talk to you alone, Admiral?”
Upon that suggestion, all personnel but the two vacated the operations room.
“Okay, Ken, you have pulled some sorry-ass stunts in my day, but you have got to let me in on this one. We are technically in Russian waters, and they don’t seem to mind. In fact, they seem to encourage it. NORAD’s at DEFCON 4, and I’m running my crews into the ground having them drop sonar buoys. Not to mention the icebergs.”
“Have you heard anything unusual?”
“No.”
“Damn,” Kenneth said. “I was sure that little fucker would head straight this way.”
“Who, Ken?”
“Stemovich. The bastard lifted the sub and nuked an unpopulated section of Russia. He’s got to be headed this way.”
“What? This is the asshole we spoke of before? Jesus Christ.”
Sukudo nodded.
“He toasted a missile, and the world hasn’t erupted?” Booker was in disbelief.
“That’s right. He put one right where no one would notice it but Mother Russia. Damn smart. Kept it out of the papers and yet got the US and Russian governments’ attention.”
“Ken, I’m not sure how to handle this.”
“The spooks think that he wants control of Moscow. They think that he thinks he can force the government to surrender, and he can start a new one.”
Booker still didn’t believe it. “Can it succeed?”
“It’s possible,” replied Sukudo. “Stranger things have happened.”
“Well, shit. We have to stop him. Right?”
“Right,” replied Sukudo. “And we can, if we can get to the War Eagle. I need your radio operators to find her and to signal her somehow to blow his ass out of the water, but only on my order. I don’t think we have much time left.”
Things started to move fast for Booker. “Can’t you contact her by satellite?”
“No. She’s running too deep. She’s got to come up. When she does, she has got to know what to do immediately. Any hesitation, and we could be in a deep, steaming pile of beauty.”
“All I have is one really important question for you, Ken.”
“What’s that?”
“What in the hell is a War Eagle?”
Sukudo smiled. “The last secret between us.”
Bumper knew the Saratov was slick, and he finally found out how slick. After losing her signal, he couldn’t get a lock for fifteen minutes. The computer kept projecting that her course should be dead ahead, but she simply wasn’t there. In another five minutes, he triangulated her position with the help of the radio frequency. She had turned south, and they had run right by her. “Conn sonar, course correction, bearing one-eight-nine.”
A gentle sway in the motion told him that the correction was taking place.
“How much time did we lose, Bump?”
“Fifteen minutes, sir. Sorry.” He expected Jim to be pissed.
“We’ll make it up.”
Bumper reconfigured his sonar and began scanning for the Saratov footprint. When the bow swung around, the computer could faintly track her again.
McLeary entered the RRCC to find O’Neil and Josh playing the child’s game of rock-scissors-paper. “Really? Considering what’s going on just outside of our tin can?”
“Nothing else to do. Our equipment’s tied up following the sub,” said O’Neil smugly.
“How’s that?”
“We’ve got a radio frequency off her. They’re just towing us along and don’t even know it. Sonar won’t admit to that.”
“That’s bullshit,” said a voice from the adjacent room. “You guys can only tell us if she’s in the area. You can’t track her.”
Josh smiled. “They hate it when someone else does their job,” he said.
“Fuck off,” said the voice.
The three men grinned.
McLeary liked what he heard. “There’s no reason to monitor the radio. Right?”
“Right,” replied O’Neil. “Sonar’s got her occupied. Nothing can come in even if we wanted it to.”
“Oh, I like the easy days,” said McLeary. “Paper covers rock.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Keep Your Eyes on My Hands
It came quite unexpectedly. Andri was the only one who was completely sure of their position, but Nick figured that they had to be somewhere near the Russian coastline, perhaps between the opening of the White Sea and the Barents Sea. The only disturbance they had encountered on their journey was when the complete Russian fleet sailed above their heads. At that time, the only evasive action Andri took was to dive deeper and make sure everyone stood still. He obviously knew more about the shortcomings of Russian sonar than the United States.
Their course had been so quiet that it began to worry Nick. He was not completely confident that the War Eagle was following, and he still didn’t have a plan for getting off the ship.
Since the whole mission had been one of haste and improvisation, Nick figured that it might be bad luck to break with tradition so late in the operation. Make it up as I go along. After all, he had lost all his options; he didn’t want to lose his luck.
“Bow. Ten degrees up, blow tanks,” barked Andri suddenly.
Nick gently pulled back on the yoke, and the ship began to rise.
“Come to periscope depth then reduce speed to one-third and hold course.”
With sweeping beauty, the Saratov lifted herself to the correct depth and held. Andri took his time as he peered through the periscope, scanning the horizon for any danger. Satisfied that he was safe, he made his way to the communications room and Marina. “You have the bridge, Sasha,” he said. “It’s time to send my message.”
Nick wanted to jump from his seat when he heard that. Marina didn’t know he was coming, and the radio was still on.
He burst through the door without knocking. She was quietly reading Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych and was startled by Andri’s sudden appearance.
“It is time for you to do your job, Marina. I hope you have studied the manual on how to use the equipment.” Andri looked down and saw the radio on and functioning. “Practicing,” he asked sarcastically. “Who are you calling?”
Marina fumbled for an excuse. “I didn’t know it was on. It made no sound.”
Andri looked closer and noticed the frequency and the repeater activated. “Were you trying to call someone working for the United States or perhaps leaving them a trail?” He dialed the set to a higher frequency and flipped off the repeater. “Tell me, slut, or I will feed you to my crew.”
Marina couldn’t answer.
“Tell me now!” he yelled.
The shouting immediately drew Sasha, with Nick on his heels. They found Andri towering over Marina, ready to bash her skull with the small chair of the radio operator.
“Captain, no!” Nick shouted, and he grabbed the chair from his hand.
“I have been betrayed! Do you know what she has done?”
“It wasn’t her,” Nick said. “It was me. I turned on the radio. She knew nothing about it.”
The confession stunned Andri. A man he had confided in turned out to be his traitor. He could understand it being anyone else, but Nicholas? Nicholas was a kindred soul for Andri. How could he have betrayed me?