Admiral Gorshkov, Abe Danilov’s mentor since his early days in higher naval school, came down from Moscow to the wedding. There was no one else Anna knew except for some of his navy friends. But the admiral treated her as if she was the finest woman in Russia — she would never forget that. Gorshkov, a naval hero in the Great Patriotic War, had just been awarded the Order of Lenin by Khruschev, and he wore it proudly during the ceremony when he brought Anna down the aisle. When the KGB saw that, the Danilovs were never troubled again.
As Danilov now lay in his bunk, savoring that first letter she had given him, he knew more than ever how much he owed to that woman. And now she was dying…
The stars were as crisp and cold as night itself. Hal Snow cherished being alone with the sea at these rare moments. Such isolation enhanced the affinity between a man and his vessel, and there were so few opportunities. Now, solitary and at peace with himself, he intended to savor each moment. In a way, as he luxuriated in this rare moment of serenity, he also felt a sense of wonder at being the commander of a vessel designed to be one of man’s most feared weapons.
But the latter feeling passed quickly. Most of his mature life had been spent aboard other such weapons. Although Snow had commanded attack submarines, he’d also done his time on the guided-missile boats, where there had never been any opportunity to experience this feeling. They dived immediately on leaving port, transited to an assigned position, and surfaced only at the end of a patrol. There had been a kind of rapport between him and his boats then, but it had been more a relationship with a single objective — his missiles.
The link between Snow and the stars, as close to spiritual as he would ever come, was broken by a blinking light on the nearby console. The elevator was about to arrive on the bridge. It would be Carol Petersen. When he mentioned fifteen minutes before how good coffee would taste in the crisp sea air, she insisted on bringing back some mugs since it was time anyway for one of her instrument checks.
She stepped out of the red dimness of the elevator, extending an oversized mug as she moved next to him. “Be careful. Still hot as hell… insulated mugs. I already burned my tongue.”
“Thanks,” he replied, his voice muted. It seemed a sin of some kind to talk too loudly when only the soft splashing of the whitecaps broke the still air. There was no sound from Imperator. She was as silent as the heavens. “See those stars up there.” He pointed a finger to the northwest.
“Not quite. My night vision’s still weak.” She strained to look beyond his finger.
“You should have been wearing your night goggles.”
“I was. But I had to take them off to read the instruments.”
“Can we still be seen from up there?” His head arched back to look straight up above them.
“Just a little. We copied everything transmitted by their satellite from the time we got underway. The shield’s almost a hundred percent effective. We picked up the men on the bow until everything was stowed. Now, other than you, everything seems to be secure. You stand out like a beacon.”
“Me?”
“That’s correct, Captain.” She laughed lightly. “One thing no one seemed to think about was shielded clothing on the bridge. No satellite’s sophisticated enough to pick up a nose peeking out from under the visor of a cap… or your icy breath,” she added, noticing the frosty vapor as they talked.
“We could run on the surface at night with no one on the bridge, and no satellite could—”
“But if something was looking for temperature changes on the ocean surface, we’d sure as hell be making it.”
For Snow, the allure of man and nature at sea was fast disappearing. Man and his technology would deny one of the last of his pleasures. Hal Snow had agreed to come back to command Imperator because he was searching for nights like this one. His final command in the regular navy had been a Trident submarine, and he retired when new orders would send him ashore. There was no way he’d ever have become an admiral. Both he and the senior officers in Washington knew he wasn’t cut out to plan strategy while other men took the ships to sea.
Snow was a maverick, and made everything much simpler for many of his friends when he put in his retirement papers. None of them would have to feel guilty about his being passed over for promotion.
Snow gulped down the last of his coffee, then checked his watch. “I hate to say it,” he sighed, “but it’s about time to take her down.” It was necessary to exercise the ship as she had been designed. Imperator would be in her natural element — submerged.
Peering toward Carol in the darkness, he remembered rather than perceived her features. She was attractive, not the most beautiful woman he’d ever known, but appealing enough when he considered she was a hell of a lot smarter than he was. That was the guideline he’d always utilized to consider women, and the fact that she was still interesting, regardless of her brains, had bothered him. When he realized she was’ a highly competent scientist, it was even more difficult to acknowledge a feminine charm that hadn’t been overwhelmed by her intelligence. With two divorces behind him, and a mostly jaded outlook toward women in general, Snow found it doubly hard to acknowledge Carol Petersen.
“If you don’t mind,” she answered, “I’d prefer to stay on the bridge for the time being. Couple more readings I need to check, and besides, Imperator can’t submerge with me still up here.”
“Is that what you want to check?”
“Partially. A few other things, too. They worked in the fishbowl. I just want to see if a few hours of open ocean steaming has any effect on them.”
“All right. I’ll follow through with the normal dive procedures.” Without another word, Snow was gone.
Carol Petersen had the unique position as the navy’s only seagoing computer controls officer without ever having spent a day in the U.S. Navy. There had been arguments — strong, intemperate ones — that a woman never had, and never would, belong on a submarine. The consortium decided otherwise.
Her final check on the command control console tying the bridge to the main computer would confirm Caesar’s ability to report readiness for diving of the entire vessel to the captain. Turning up the soft background light on the console, she pressed a variety of buttons. The results were instant responses to her queries. Then she turned to the blank screen at one side. Taking a pencillike instrument from her pocket, she printed a single word on the screen — sonar. Her word glowed briefly before fading from the screen. It was replaced by a series of printed reports on the status of each of the many sonars installed on Imperator. Satisfied, she printed another word — dive. Again the screen glowed with a status report of current conditions throughout Imperator. Then Snow ordered preparations for diving. She watched as the reports began to change. The computer was now informing her as conditions altered around the ship. The navy had reluctantly sent her to sea on an attack sub to better understand the normal daily routine — she’d adapted as well as any man!
Every condition imaginable had been simulated in the fishbowl to ensure that Imperator avoided probable detection by going out on sea trials. The sub had functioned superbly then and there was no difference now.
A metallic voice rang across the bridge. “Imperator is about to submerge. It is impossible to complete all preparations as long as the bridge is occupied. Would you be so kind as to go below to the control room.”