Via the fiber-optic link between Challenger and Carter, he and Bell held a conference call with Harley and Kurzin. The decision they made was the only one they could make. Patch, release, and rebury the cable, smooth over any signs that the bottom had been disturbed, then press on with the mission. Maybe if Carter continued her radio surveillance while on the move with her Seahorses, something might still turn up. Kurzin stated darkly that there were other ways, once near the silo field, to gain the information he needed to help get inside.
Jeffrey already knew that Nyurba didn’t like good-byes, and Kurzin certainly wasn’t the type. He wrapped up simply. “Good luck. See you someday in a better place.”
The two ships parted, Challenger going west and Carter east. Challenger needed to keep up the cover that she was after the 868U at the furthest end of Russia. Carter had to put Kurzin’s squadron ashore in close coordination with Jeffrey’s schedule, or the double-teaming plan against the Russians would come unglued.
Chapter 18
As soon as he’d transferred to Carter again at the start of the second rendezvous, Dashiyn Nyurba had given a high priority to exercise. The rule of thumb for commandos in transit submerged on a submarine was to work out hard six hours a day. On Challenger this had been difficult, because her provisions for physical fitness were rudimentary. Carter’s Multi-Mission Platform, in contrast, included a superbly equipped PT room with two dozen of the latest workout machines — like a top-of-the-line health club without any windows, with rather Spartan decor, and with extra vibration damping and noise suppression engineered in. She also has an expanded sickbay, with two experienced combat trauma surgeons aboard, to treat incoming wounded from my squadron.
Nyurba could tell that he and his four SERT Seabees had lost conditioning during their unexpected, extended rehearsals with Commodore Fuller, when Kurzin had needed to send them back to Challenger at the end of the first rendezvous. By dint of effort and copious sweat, with Nyurba egging the others on, in the few days still available they built back toward the peak of strength and endurance they’d need in Siberia.
Tougher training now could mean less bleeding later.
As Nyurba climbed up the sail-trunk ladder and stood on the open grating at the top, the first things that struck him were the fresh, tangy salt air, the feel of the bracing wind on his face, and the immensity of the twilit sky above, a deep electric aquamarine. He drew in delicious lungfuls. He blinked to help his eye muscles focus, for the first time in weeks, at actual infinity instead of optical illusions within a virtual-reality helmet. He experienced, by the sudden lack of it, how claustrophobically confined he’d been inside Challenger and Carter and the minisub. Then, despite the extreme-weather clothing that he wore against the Arctic chill, he felt starkly naked as he stood in the tiny cockpit on Carter’s sail.
All parts of the submarine that he could see from outside, with the ship on the surface now, were coated bluish-white. This included the sail itself, plus her entire long rounded hull — and even the top of the rudder sticking out of the water, aft of where the teardrop-shaped hull tapered into the very cold sea. The radar-absorbent tinting, the first of its kind on a nuclear sub, had been applied when the ship was in dry dock; though the yard workers made jokes about it, the paint job didn’t seem funny to Nyurba at present. It was a matter of life and death.
What was missing was the minisub, no longer carried on Carter’s back. Since it couldn’t be deployed while Carter was surfaced — it weighed almost sixty tons, sitting high and dry — it had already been released and was waiting submerged with its two-man crew, away to port.
Above Nyurba, on the sail roof, two crewmen in white camouflage smocks — lookouts — peered through image-stabilized binoculars, their urgency and concern infectious. Carter’s photonics masts were both raised, though only by inches, their sensor heads spinning and bobbing as they scanned in every direction for threats on visual and infrared. The electronic support measures antennas atop both heads were steadily feeding data for analysis below; airborne surface-search radars were the ESM technicians’ main worry. The depth here was less than ninety feet, and too soon Carter wouldn’t be able to dive at all if she’d wanted to.
Nyurba didn’t bother with binocs; he didn’t need them. Flat ice floes, the occasional jutting berg, smashed-up bergy bits, and slush were all around. So were birds and seals — resting on the floes and bergs, or flying or slipping into and out of the water. Their noises were familiar; they’d been coming over the sonar speakers in Carter’s control room the whole time she worked her way southeast to the edge of the solid cap and onward into the marginal ice zone. Then she’d blown her main ballast tanks in spurts while the crew hoped the sounds, if detected by the Russians, would be mistaken for whales cavorting.
What was unfamiliar to Nyurba was this sensation of being so terribly exposed. Every minute counted. But this was the only way to get the German minisub into practical range of the mainland, almost a hundred miles further south through the increasingly less ice-choked and ever more shallow East Siberian Sea. From here the mini’s fuel load was just enough to make the trip there and back only once, even at slow speed, and this would never do for shuttling eighty commandos with all their equipment to the beach. The idea of towing the mini once released had been rejected early on: Carter wasn’t designed for it, improvised tow cables would foul her sternplanes or rudder, and any pitching in rough seas would whipsaw the minisub violently. It had been known for months that, as part of the overall mission concept, Carter would need to surface and serve as a special operations taxi until the distance to Russian soil became much shorter.
Captain Harley stood shoulder to shoulder with Nyurba, in the cockpit that was officially called the ship’s bridge. Carter was stopped, dead in the water. She rolled and pitched in the moderate swell, the same swell that made the chunks of ice in all directions bob rhythmically, almost hypnotically. A phone talker was next up through the sail trunk. He squeezed in beside Nyurba, but Harley already had an intercom headset on and was plugged into the bridge connection. He was frowning, his thin lips pursed, his blue eyes darting everywhere with a power of perception that impressed Nyurba. His own instincts from prior land combat screamed to crouch low, keeping his head down, but Harley stood extra erect, setting an example that all those with him were quickly inspired to follow. He took evident pride, even relish, in steering his ship and leading his crew into harm’s way on his country’s most vital strategic business.
“Control, Bridge,” Harley said, “tell Colonel Kurzin we are ready.”
Nyurba’s job was to help supervise from the bridge — the highest available vantage point — and to interface with Captain Harley on any sudden tactical emergencies.