Later that day, as the Soviet hunter/killer group passed the North Pole, they conducted wholly original subsurface games. At a little more than three hundred miles from the geographical pole, they cavorted like a school of oversize dolphins in more than two thousand meters of icy water.
Though Danilov had never seen Imperator, he entertained visions of her in his mind. According to the limited reports he’d received, she sacrificed nothing in maneuverability to achieve her immense size. The admiral knew that Imperator was exceedingly fast. Her hull design included experimental design concepts that imitated the dynamics of a fish. Combining knowledge of Snow’s personality with tapes of his style when he commanded attack submarines, Danilov developed a picture of what they might encounter. Contrary to what would normally be assumed, his immense quarry was not necessarily an easier target. Because drawings of her weapons suite were unavailable, he had to assume that her defenses were conducted by a computer that detected and analyzed threats. He then assumed it must counter them from individual defensive sectors along the sub’s length.
Admiral Danilov alone decided when attacks were successful or thwarted. Three times before the end of the day, Novgorod and Smolensk had been sunk. Imperator’s retaliatory capabilities remained an unknown, and underestimating them could bring failure. His responsibility was to prepare his commanding officers for the unknown. Yet even Sergoff was unaware that his admiral bore a healthy fear of Imperator’s powers.
There is a point in time when media involvement in a sensitive political situation may evolve into acceptance of a fact before it has occurred. It is almost impossible to pinpoint when the turnabout takes place, for it is a state of mind rather than an actuality. This oddity can happen in any country at any time. Two factors are required — the will of the people to believe what they are told, and the desire of the media to control their attention and be accepted. It becomes a matter of suspending belief — or disbelief.
This was happening by the third day of Imperator’s voyage. From the American vantage point, the Russians might just as well have been occupying the Northern Flank. Americans pictured in their mind’s eye the Norwegians fighting a valiant, losing battle against Russian hordes sweeping across the country’ in blitzkrieg fashion. Though there was hardly a footprint in the snow around the Soviet border with Norway, the description of Russian forces poised for battle was enough to make invasion an accepted fact. Television news directors fought for viewers with a “what if” campaign that terrified the average American much as his parents had been in 1962—the specter of mass destruction became paramount.
In the Soviet Union, which possessed total control of media events, the probability that American submarines were moving and would soon challenge Soviet forces in the Arctic graduated into a cross-ocean attack. Once again, it appeared that the Motherland faced a challenge no less fierce than Hitler’s strike into their heartland almost half a century before. The Soviet citizen was easily convinced that the Americans were finally making a move against their country.
There was little difference in the manner information was provided. In the free media, analysis of a situation became reality in the competition for viewers’ attention. The controlled media was designed to get the people behind their government as a mass reaction to aggression. Both efforts were successful. Both might have been under the same system, because they brought the results that the media forces demanded — control of the viewers.
Citizens of both countries desperately needed to see something positive, anything that might win the day against fear.
6
THE DEEP WATERS of the northern Pacific quickly became shallow as Imperator rose to the surface for the first time south of the Aleutians. The lights of Dutch Harbor were visible to port when they navigated the shallows near the island city shortly before midnight under Caesar’s total control. After a late-night conversation on the underwater telephone, Reed and Snow concurred that Imperator would maneuver independently until exiting the Bering Strait into the Chukchi Sea. After the two Soviet submarines failed to report, intelligence monitors indicated the Russians had ordered their other boats to remain to the south, trailing the Americans at a safe distance. The Bering Sea was extremely shallow — no place to conduct undersea battle. Imperator would operate primarily on the surface. Cloudy weather that time of year would automatically negate Soviet intelligence satellites.
Beyond the Aleutians, Imperator’s sonar identified sounds of surface ships approaching the rendezvous point a little more than a hundred miles to the northwest. Three hours later, with skies turning pale to the east, the amphibious force witnessed the approach of a massive black sea monster. A gray, choppy sea washed against a hull that seemed as long as an aircraft carrier. Any man among them who knew submarines understood how much more lay beneath the waves.
Two amphibious transports were ready to transfer their field-equipped marine contingents to the submarine. In less than three hours, under the protection of a solid cloud cover, Imperator received marines and their supplies. Air-cushioned landing boats, mechanized landing craft, and helicopters converged on the submarine, transferring their cargo into well-marked holds that appeared in the massive hull. The submarine swallowed over fifteen hundred men and their equipment as fast as they could be transported. When she was full, the mysterious submarine disappeared to the north faster than any surface ship they’d ever seen. Before the crews of the amphibious ships returned to their bases to report this wonder, Imperator would already have completed her mission and would no longer remain a secret.
Gulls from the Pribilof Islands, sensing a foreign presence invading their environment, swooped low. Hovering over Imperator’s sail, as curious as any cat, they searched for a life form that might identify this creature. But there was nothing — no animal appeared, there were no sounds, Nothing of any concern to a gull.
Overhead, satellites automatically reoriented to this aberration in the Bering Sea. Infrared sensors detected minute changes in the water and air temperatures, but there was nothing to be gained that wasn’t already known. Soviet fishing boats lounged off the nearby Pribilofs and further north by St. Lawrence Island. They would be efficiently nudged aside by Coast Guard patrol craft at the first sign that sophisticated sound gear had replaced fishing nets.
Carol Petersen was aware of Snow standing behind her in the computer center before he spoke.
“You certainly do concentrate, don’t you,” he exclaimed. “I was outside for a while, wandering up and down in front of these windows, even waving. You were so intent I was actually afraid I’d startle you if I just barged in. So,” he concluded with amusement, “I finally barged in — after knocking — and still”—he shrugged—“nothing.”
“Pull up a chair, Captain. Perhaps I do get a little paranoid sometimes, sitting down here all alone with Caesar as a companion. It can be rather disconcerting when he’s able to answer a question before I’m quite sure how to enter it. I’m beginning to think he’s taught himself how to read minds.”