They winced as the howling winds snapped sharp crystals of sleet into their faces. It bounced off their goggles with “a crack, bit into their exposed cheeks, then dripped down through heavy mufflers onto their necks. The low sail area rose out of the hull like a knuckle. There was little protection as the wind whipped spray off the white-caps that swirled about the hull.
“Yes… yes, I have it,” Danilov exclaimed. His words disappeared into the wind, but Lozak had caught them, noted the angle of the admiral’s binoculars, and swung his on the same bearing. “Almost four points to starboard, maybe five hundred…” His last words were swept away by the winds.
Lozak steadied his arms on the bridge railing. A sheet of snow and sleet from a floating cake of ice swirled across his line of sight. For a moment the range opened to five or six hundred yards and he caught a glimpse of the sea buoy Danilov had pointed out. He bent to the speaker just below the bridge railing, “Come left two degrees.” He knew exactly where he was, or he at least had a better idea than the radarman below who had reported at least three different locations for the sea buoy in the past sixty seconds. The channel was wide now. His only concern would be any other craft foolish enough to venture into Polyarnyy in this weather without informing the port control. “Increase your speed to seven knots,” he ordered.
Danilov turned toward the captain and nodded. Even though the admiral’s face was mostly covered, Lozak recognized that familiar smile of contentment that appeared whenever they cleared the buoy and headed into the open sea. Only Danilov’s cheeks showed and they were a bright red from the stinging sleet. But he nodded again, which was also habitual at this stage of the cruise, and he leaned over to Lozak’s ear. “I’m going below now. You’ll be able to dive shortly after you’re clear of the peninsula. It should be soon.” He clapped the other on the shoulder and was quickly through the hatch into the control room.
The surface of the Barents Sea was no place for a submarine on a day like this, and the bridge was certainly no place to tarry. For perhaps the fifth time that morning, Danilov found himself at the chart table, hands in pockets, studying the thin red line signifying the path Seratov and her two sisters would follow to a point in the Chukchi Sea well north of the Bering Strait. They would take a northerly course that would bring them between Franz Josef Land and Spitsbergen. An almost constant course would take them within a hundred miles of the North Pole. At an average speed of thirty-five knots, they would arrive at a point slightly north and west of Point Barrow and about five hundred miles north of the Bering Strait after three days at sea. Sergoff had calculated that Imperator would take about four days to reach a point south of the Bering Strait if she was not intercepted before then. Though departing a day after Imperator, Danilov would be waiting on the fifth day. That one day was designed to track Imperator if she made it through the Bering Strait. Abe Danilov wanted every possible bit of information fed into his computers before their cat-and-mouse game began in earnest.
“How long has it been dead in the water?” Snow inquired.
“About three hours, Captain.” The chief sonarman turned a control switch to allow another of his operators to search for the reported spy ship. If it could be found, the source would be electronically isolated by the computer, then transferred to the sonar console. “A maritime patrol aircraft picked it up on the surface due west of us and stuck with it. It took a while to locate in the catalog after we intercepted their report. Classified it after a time as a Moma-class intelligence collector.”
“Never heard of them.” Snow had given up his futile attempt at listening on the headphones.
“Neither did I, Captain. It was listed in there, but it was buried pretty deep. They were originally buoy tenders built in Poland. They’re little bulldogs — about two hundred forty feet, fifteen hundred tons, two diesels, two shafts — the type that would probably just plow through a sea of cement if they had to.”
“Not a bad cover. Who the hell’s supposed to pay attention to a buoy tender bobbing along?” Snow shook his head in wonder. “Except there’s nothing out here to tend for thousands of miles. Christ, they’re smart. Never miss a trick.”
The sonarmen hadn’t paid much attention to searching for the little Soviet ship until the watch changed. One had been assigned to look it up in the intelligence manuals. It was a habit Imperator’s men had been taught at Snow’s insistence — never take anything for granted. There’s something hidden, he repeated time and again during their training, in everything you perceive until you prove otherwise. So one of them had looked up the Moma class and noticed that some, even though they’d been reclassified as intelligence ships, had retained their buoy-handling cranes. And the previous year, two of them had been equipped with a highly sophisticated passive sonar system. An immense hydrophone unit, not as yet classified in the West, could be lowered over the side with the crane. A structure had been built on their stems that intelligence assumed was a computerized evaluation system for the sonar, along with a satellite relay to shore.
“No kind of sound from her?” Snow inquired, as if he needed reassurance.
“Not a thing. She’s stopped just about on top of our path of advance according to the position that patrol plane called into his base — probably using her engines to maneuver a little bit — station keeping. I guess.”
Snow considered the consequences. Given time, the Russians would record enough sound data on Imperator to thoroughly analyze this mystery ship. Without ever seeing her visually, they could construct a reasonably accurate picture of what they faced. There was no doubt in Snow’s mind that right now those hydrophones were riveted on his bearing and that very picture of Imperator might be developing. Every sound radiating from her could be recorded on tape and relayed by satellite to a land station for final analysis. They could create such an accurate picture of Imperator that they’d figure out everything but the color of his skivvies. It was a very neat effort.
“What’s the range now?” Snow asked.
“Nothing firm, sir, since she’s not moving. I’d say, figuring our own advance the last few hours, that she’s a little more than a hundred miles now.”
“Fair enough. No reason to spread our legs and give them a free look. We’ll take it out/’ As he left the blue-lighted sonar room, he added over his shoulder, “We’ll see how our Tomahawks work in a few minutes, Chief.” Snow’s orders were to take out anything in his way — no need to create an international incident if he could solve the problem himself.
Submarines on patrol acted quite the opposite of other military units when they were out on their own. Their appearance when surfaced — evil and intimidating — became their personality when they dived. They became hoodlums cruising the depths, sneaking about the darkened abyss of the oceans seeking trouble. Communications with their bases, or any higher authority for that matter, were rare. Totally on their own, each decision by a commanding officer was an interpretation of his final orders before departing. No man could delve into the future to see what might challenge each mission, so the captain of a submarine became a god unto himself. The right or wrong of his actions would be considered when, or if, he returned.
General Quarters was sounded from the control room. Snow overruled the computer. He would run the attack himself Caesar would run a dummy attack, and the results would be compared afterwards. Snow hoped that each new evolution could be handled totally by a human being and then matched with Caesar’s solution before he would trust the master computer — Snow was still from the old school.