“I’m not sure what it is, sir, only that we’re making more noise than we’d like to and I don’t know what the hell to do.”
“How about changing speeds?”
“There’s a direct correlation. When the revolutions increase. the sound does too. And then it seems to level off above thirty knots.”
“Once we’re over thirty it doesn’t matter?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that. I don’t think it gets any worse. Captain.”
“We’ll have to live with it then.” Helena’s captain replaced the phone, but he did not go back to sleep. In a world where silence was everything, where it could mean the difference between life and death, he was slowly creeping into his enemy’s lair. His enemy was awake and waiting for him, and Helena was shaking cow bells as she approached.
Aboard Seratov, it was Stevan Lozak who eventually understood the unusual noise emanating from an object well ahead of Imperator. When the sonarmen had been unable to determine its source, and the computer could not match the sound against its memory, Danilov called for Seratov’s captain.
Lozak listened to the recordings, compared them to others in the memory bank, studied the movement of the sound that Sergoff had carefully plotted, then placed a plastic overlay of Sergoff’s over his chart.
“You seem to know what you’re looking for,” Danilov murmured curiously.
Lozak shook his head unconsciously, then looked up with surprise to see that it was the admiral who had addressed him. “I have an idea but I’m not sure.”
Sergoff saw what the captain was doing. “Perhaps it’s not another of those noisemakers the Americans have been using.”
Lozak looked up at Sergoff. “What’s the range now?”
“It’s much too distant to tell. We haven’t got a perfect position on it.”
“Its movement seems to be north, a little northeast maybe?”
“It would appear to be north… right at us.”
Lozak smiled. “It’s not moving with the current and it’s well ahead of Imperator.” He looked at Danilov, tilting his head to one side in speculation. “It seems to be following much the same pattern I laid out earlier. But Admiral Reed wouldn’t be calling attention to his plans, would he?” he mused softly to himself. “I’ll wager, Admiral, that we have propeller cavitation sounds now from a submarine that either has a defect or has been damaged somehow. I have to assume Admiral Reed has sent this submarine out toward what he may project as our location. See!” He pointed excitedly and retraced the projected route of an American submarine along the line he’d pointed out to Danilov earlier.
“Our first target,” Sergoff murmured.
“Do we want to give away our position by attempting to sink her?” Lozak asked. Their target was near the edge of the solid ice with open spaces in the floe ice overhead.
Danilov’s smile faded to be replaced by a thin-lipped grimace. “One of the reasons that Admiral Reed would send one of his submarines along this route is because he anticipates where we are. If we let it pass by, then we will have to begin a stem chase. Whether we give ourselves away by sinking this one, or with the racket we’ll make chasing them, they’ll be able to find us. Better to try a standoff weapon while we have the opportunity. They can’t be absolutely sure of the distance it will travel, and we have an extensive lead above us that could close if the wind picks up on the surface. My suggestion is to eliminate this one while we have the opportunity — before it’s beneath the pack for good.”
The ice could easily close in above them at any time. The major problem they now discussed was the range to the American boat. Depending on her speed, she might take a few hours before she came within range of their rocket-launched torpedoes. Timing was so vital — it would be very close. The American could very easily be saved by the ice.
Abe Danilov decided to return to his stateroom to rest. It was near midnight and the fifth day was drawing to a close. His tiny stateroom allowed space only for a bunk, a tin commode and sink that both folded into the bulkhead on one side, and a desk that folded out on the opposite side. The latter lay open and was covered with papers, but he was too tired to leaf through them. He sat down heavily on the bunk with a great sigh. Bending over slowly to remove his shoes, he experienced a brief dizzy spell — though it passed within seconds. The damn doctors were right, he thought. Everything should be done more slowly as you get older. But that didn’t mean he had to like it!
Tomorrow could be the beginning of the longest day of his life. He paused to remember the disciplined existence at his first naval school, the pressure that was constantly exerted on each cadet to account for every movement every minute of the day. There was a purpose…
After carefully rolling his dirty clothes into a ball and placing them in a bag, he removed a fresh uniform from the tiny closet and lay it carefully on the single chair beside his bunk. He could be called at any time.
Then he removed the next of Anna’s letters from the packet in the back of the desk drawer. It was a letter that made him laugh to himself. Severodvinsk! The ends of the earth had nothing on that place. But it was also the shipyard where his first command had been built. Admiral Gorshkov had been kind enough to let Anna and the children journey to that miserable spot with him.
His Anna was a city girl, so she’d looked forward to a new adventure: “…let the snow and cold come as long as we’re all together…” was about what she had said. And winter took hold of Severodvinsk with a vengeance. That winter of 1969-70 had become the longest winter of her life. They were even cut off at times from Arkhangelsk, the closest imitation of a city in that region. He was sometimes trapped by a blizzard at the shipyard for two or three days at a time, and Anna was left with the children in that little apartment where the steam pipes never stopped clanking and the smelly old lady they shared the kitchen with never stopped talking. Anna reminded him how Boris was still at the diaper stage, how Eugenia whined for six months, and Sergei teased them both unmercifully until his father threatened to deposit him in a snow drift.
Much of the unpleasantness was overlooked as Danilov prepared his ship, the largest missile submarine ever built.
It was an honor to receive that command, and he even had been allowed to bring his family there, regardless of the conditions. What great times those were, he thought, as he turned to Anna’s letter.
I remember the nights you came through the door in your greatcoat, covered with snow, and I always waited my turn while you made a fuss over the children. You’d shake the snow from your hat and place it on Eugenia’s head. Sergei would rush for the broom and brush the snow off your coat before you hung it in a corner. Then Boris, who would be jumping up and down and screaming for attention when he wasn’t hanging on your pant leg, would be the first one to be picked up. One by one, you’d lift them up over your head and they’d scream in mock terror. I sometimes used to imagine that you would forget yourself when it came my turn and lift me over your head and bump me against the ceiling. You never did. You were a gentle bear…
Severodvinsk was the end of the world, he realized now, but what a wonderful place it was then. When spring came and muddy water ran down muddy streets, he had taken his submarine out for sea trials. Those were days he could never forget — his first command — when it was the pride of the fleet. That’s when Anna had told him one night that she had finally realized that there was no doubt in her mind that the parental obligations were now firmly established — she would take care of the children and her husband would take care of the submarines. It had taken Sergei Gorshkov, when he came to Severodvinsk for the submarine’s commissioning, to explain to her that this was as it should be, that a man like her husband owed as much to the Motherland. It was refreshing so many years later to consider Anna’s remembrances and gain an entirely different perspective on their life together.