Commodore Fuller put an end to the silence. “Last I heard, Carter was under repair in New London after heavy damage and casualties from a failed raid against Axis-occupied Norway.”
Nyurba’s hackles went up again immediately. “That raid did not fail due to even a single mistake made on site. The intelligence that led to the raid, and the operational security required to support it, are what failed.” Operational security meant overall secrecy to maintain surprise.
Jeffrey was taken aback at Nyurba’s vehemence. Clearly he was someone with a quick temper, someone to not make angry, especially not off duty in a bar.
“Commander Charles Harley remains in command of Carter,” Nyurba stated, “for everything that that should tell you. He won the Navy Cross for bringing his ship and the surviving SEALs back in one piece!”
Jeffrey felt a pang of grief. He had a strong hunch that two SEALs he’d grown fond of, who’d been with him on earlier raids staged from Challenger, had died on Carter’s mission to Norway. Because compartmentalization was so strict, none of his efforts to discover the fate of those comrades had yielded one clue.
But that was months ago. And from what he did hear through the grapevine, Captain Harley had reason enough for his own bereavement, from the losses he suffered on that mission, ambushed by waiting German forces through no fault of his own. It said something that, even given the shipyard working round the clock with the highest priority, it took many precious months to make Carter ready for action again. Harley’s Navy Cross was second only to the Medal of Honor as a naval combat decoration.
Jeffrey barely knew Harley, and wondered what leading him into renewed battle might be like. Would he flinch, after the prior setback, as some did? Would Harley overcompensate and become too reckless? Jeffrey caught himself staring into his coffee mug. He took another sip before addressing Nyurba.
“Why aren’t you on Carter now?”
“My team had to go for extra training stateside. The rest of the squadron was training too, on an island in northern Canada, pretending to be a science research expedition.”
“An ice station?”
“Except on land, not a drifting floe. They were brought south, scattered, then made their way to New London in small groups to not draw attention from Axis spies working in the U.S. It was more secure to fly us five in the SERT cadre to Pearl. It also allowed me to meet you sooner, to perform indoctrination.”
“Who’s in command of your special ops company?” Jeffrey’s orders said the commandos reported to him as strike group boss, but further details rested in that still-sealed inner pouch.
“An Air Force lieutenant colonel, Sergey Kurzin. You’ll meet him when we rendezvous with Carter. And although we’re called a special operations squadron, we are in fact organized for this mission like an infantry company.”
Jeffrey couldn’t hide his surprise. “Why Air Force?”
Nyurba frowned. “I probably said too much…. But I do need to emphasize something, to you and your key officers, before another hour goes by. You must have this thoroughly clear before we even begin to approach the strait, because it will affect all decisions you make from here on.”
Jeffrey wondered how much Nyurba knew and wasn’t allowed to let on yet. He was a senior officer, with the same rank that Jeffrey had held until this evening. At Nyurba’s level, he could have been leading a conventional Seabee brigade, over two thousand men. Whatever he was really up to had to be extremely unconventional. “Go ahead, Commander.”
“For purposes of this mission, for this mission to succeed, it is imperative that Carter remain undetected.”
Jeffrey tried to not sound condescending. “I admire your loyalty to Captain Harley’s crew and Colonel Kurzin’s people, but that’s true of every submarine on every mission, Commander.”
“Commodore, you don’t understand. Perhaps the wording in the orders you’ve read seemed too routine. My own orders are clear cut. I’m to convey to you in no uncertain terms that this is not in the least routine. Carter’s invisibility throughout is paramount. Her having ever been where she will be must remain unsuspected from now until after our mission goals are achieved, and for decades beyond. Decades. If necessary to preserve Carter’s total stealth, should it come to that, Challenger and all aboard, from this moment forth, are expendable.”
Chapter 3
Thirty-six hours later, at 0900 local time, Jeffrey held a planning huddle with Bell, Sessions, and David Meltzer around the digital navigation table toward the rear of Challenger’s control room. The Bering Strait choke point was coming up fast, and critical decisions were needed on routing and tactics.
Lieutenant Meltzer, as brand-new ship’s navigator and part-time commodore’s executive assistant, was handling himself with commendable professionalism. A Naval Academy graduate like Bell, Meltzer spoke with a Bronx accent that got thicker under combat stress. He always walked, in the ship or ashore, with a strut on the cocky side, chest puffed out, as if daring the Navy — or life in general — to keep giving him more difficult things to do. Jeffrey, who’d grown up in St. Louis and done Navy ROTC at Purdue, liked this attitude; Meltzer was popular and admired among the junior officers as well, and respected without reservations by the chiefs and other enlisted people. More visibly ambitious than Sessions, and more socially poised and outgoing, he took being made a department head in stride.
To Jeffrey’s practiced eyes, there was no sign of jealousy among the men who’d remain for a while yet as lieutenants, junior grade. If anything, the feeling shipwide was one of a group bond renewed, and strongly validated, by their shared Presidential Unit Citation. Jeffrey could sense this in the busy control room, packed with two dozen people sitting at consoles or standing in the aisles, each doing some specialized task, or helping or teaching or learning.
The tactical plot was updated for the umpteenth time. The surface wind came from the south, at force four — about fifteen knots — strong enough to cause whitecaps. The same wind created enough noise that Challenger’s advanced passive sonars could use ambient ocean sounds, instead of telltale active pinging, to detect any silent collision threat — even an errant mine — in time to avoid it, if people stayed on their toes. With prevailing currents coming from southeast, across a fetch of open water whose temperature in early summer was well above freezing, the risk of encountering an iceberg soon was minimal; the Bering Sea only froze during winter. Jeffrey knew this would change, menacingly, once they got above the Arctic Circle — near the summertime reach of the polar ice cap, and closer to massive coastal glaciers from which the biggest icebergs calved.
Jeffrey had an unobstructed line of sight to the big displays on the bulkheads at the front of the control room, because Challenger possessed no old-fashioned periscopes. Instead, data from photonics masts, which retracted into the sail — conning tower — when not in use, would electronically feed imagery to full-color, high-definition plasma screens that many crewmen could observe simultaneously.
“The photonics mast control console,” Jeffrey said to Bell.