“Yes, sir. Certainly. Then I need to get moving at once.”
“One other thing before I end the call. Rear Admiral Meredov, for your vigilance and dedication throughout this difficult time, I’m promoting you to Vice Admiral.”
Meredov grinned broadly. “Thank you, Mr. President!”
“You deserve it. I’ll put the formalities in motion. You rate a more senior aide now, of course, so I’ll promote yours to captain, first rank…. Captain Fuller, good luck to you, and good hunting.” The president’s image vanished. Meredov and Jeffrey glanced at each other, amazed, but still mutually wary.
“I need to get a message to Washington for them to send an ELF to Challenger telling her to raise a mast and signal her location to us, and once the mast is up inform her of the wolf pack concept. And I need transportation back to her. I also need the specs for your underwater acoustic communication systems, so I can speak to the Russian captains and make sure we coordinate and distinguish friend from foe. A map of any minefields. And of bottom-moored and under-ice hydrophone nets.”
“Irina!”
The admiral’s aide appeared at once. He told her she’d just been made Captain, First Rank Malenkova, by her commander in chief himself. She practically jumped up and down with glee. He ordered her to put everything in motion, messages and data disks.
“There’s one other matter we need to discuss,” Meredov said as Malenkova left the room.
“Yes?” Jeffrey was made apprehensive by Meredov’s manner.
“All I can do is inform you now but give you no help later.”
“Well, Vice Admiral Meredov, then inform me.”
“Our latest-model UGST torpedo includes a new target homing sensor. Something specifically designed for use against nuclear submarines under the ice cap.”
Jeffrey began to get worried. “Go on.”
“The common tactic of hovering between ice keels to suppress radiated noise and avoid giving an echo to hostile active sonar?”
“I’m familiar with the concept.”
“This new warhead has a miniature gravimetric gradiometer. Optimized to detect and attack the density discontinuity from the reactor compartment of a stationary nuclear submarine.”
“This is actually operational, now, deployed on your subs?”
“Nine-seven-one-As, our Bars-Threes, what you call the Akula-Twos, do have them.”
“I wouldn’t want to be hit by such a weapon.”
“That’s why I’m informing you. You’ll need to be careful with your underice tactics. Very careful. A friendly fire accident between a Bars and Challenger would spoil everything we’ve worked so hard for. Not to mention sinking your ship.”
I must warn Harley somehow, pronto. Were Carter sunk, she’d surely be identified. Blame would instantly shift back to America. Everything achieved today would be lost, in a way Meredov can’t imagine.
Chapter 32
Jeffrey was strapped in the front seat of the Yak, flying north at five hundred knots to land on one of Meredov’s icebreaker-cruisers. The icebreaker and Challenger were already rushing toward each other at flank speed for a rendezvous.
Jeffrey was still under tremendous stress to act out a part, which was suddenly far more complex. Helping Carter escape, forever unidentified as who she really was to maintain the masquerade of German guilt, remained as critical as ever — but wasn’t nearly enough. The President of Russia had to stay in power, amid unanticipated rough-and-tumble Moscow dirty politics set off by the missile launches and EMP. Otherwise a fulminating Kremlin might use hydrogen bombs against Germany after all, or a pro-German faction might seize control and reverse every one of Jeffrey’s and Kurzin’s achievements. The key to preventing an ouster or coup was to swiftly deliver what the Russian president personally demanded for revenge and closure: a sunken German Amethyste-II. Jeffrey had to do this while faking cooperation with Akula-IIs whose captains would keenly watch his every move.
The dead Amethyste’s wreckage must be real, and verifiable. The Russians have deep-submersible minis that can inspect any hulk and debris on the bottom well past ten thousand feet down.
Just like when Meredov confronted him with imagery of Challenger hiding against the Bering Strait spires, he needed a convincing answer when there seemed to be no answer at all.
And then he remembered. He knew one and only one place in this theater where an Amethyste hulk did exist: in the Canada Basin, where Bell and Harley recently blew one to pieces. Because of the timing of that engagement relative to satellite overflights, the restricted geography, the terrible acoustic conditions, and the known lack of unfriendly hydrophone grids nearby, he was confident that the Russians knew nothing.
But he realized something else. Meredov was too smart. He could turn from back-channel friend into deadly enemy, if those fickle Kremlin winds indeed shifted drastically again. Jeffrey needed to get out of his jurisdiction, quickly, to keep open some plausible deniability if Meredov ever did change loyalties.
“Sir,” the Yak’s pilot said over the intercom, “the admiral is on for you. A translator is at his end in case required.”
Jeffrey, expecting the call, used the headset in his flight helmet. “Admiral, we have an agenda to resolve without delay.”
“Concur,” Meredov said. “State the agenda.”
Radio reception was much better, eighteen hours after the distant EMPs. “What submarines are available for the wolf pack?”
“Two Akula-Twos. K-One-five-seven and K-Three-three-five. Their names are Wild Boar and Cheetah.”
“Both have the gravimeter-homing torpedoes.”
“Yes.”
“High-explosive, or nuclear?”
“Some of each.”
“Where are they now?”
Meredov gave coordinates. They were charging toward near the place where Challenger would meet the icebreaker, Cheetah coming from northwest and Wild Boar from north, most of the time at their flank speed — thirty-five knots. They were using sprint and drift to not be blindsided by the supposed German, and to make a tactically safe linkup with Jeffrey’s submarine. They’d all come together close to where Jeffrey knew Harley would be aiming for the end of the shallow continental shelf, which lay far northeast of Pevek, way up under the cap. And Meredov’s hydrophone nets were catching whiffs of the Amethyste II — the actual Carter—enough to localize her general area.
Challenger, after dropping Jeffrey off at the initial meet with an icebreaker, had snuck east while Jeffrey claimed that Bell was lurking to make a nuclear strike. The plan had been for Challenger to stealthily escort Carter, bearing the commandos, safely home in the final phase of the mission. This plan had gone out the window, except Harley didn’t know it yet and ELF was much too slow to send him a meaningful update. Jeffrey was glad the Yak pilot and Meredov couldn’t read his face.
Jeffrey had to do things that made total sense to Meredov, but which somehow herded the pseudo-German sub toward the central Canada Basin. And he had to accomplish this without Carter getting unmasked or destroyed on the way.