“I was too anxious.”
“I would have been more sorry if you weren’t,” Danilov answered, remembering his own eagerness as a young skipper. He had been lucky then, Those were always exercises when he was younger. Today, Stevan Lozak could have died from his impetuousness.
Danilov took another tentative sip of tea. It was getting cool, and strong tea turning cold lost its attractive bite so quickly. He glanced up as Sergoff knocked on the entrance to the wardroom.
“Admiral, there has been an explosion astern on our flank. A submarine appears to have been sunk. There were no other blasts—”
“And do you have any clue as to who is the winner?” Danilov was irritated because Sergoff hadn’t begun the conversation by answering that first.
“There is no confirmation. According to your orders, there was to be an identifying code from any of our submarines that scored a success. There has been nothing of the sort over sonar.” He paused. “The other submarine is active and appears to be moving in this direction, though sonar has nothing absolute for identification… I think it is an American Los Angeles-class.”
“Why didn’t you just explain that as soon as you came in here?” He had been counting on surrounding Imperator without any outside threat. “I can do without the suspense.”
Sergoff had experienced Danilov’s outbursts for so many years that he knew there would be more. “Admiral, there is no confirmation. We are still waiting for something firmer, since it is a long way off. But I think you should join us in the control room… both of you,” he added, nodding to Stevan Lozak.
The sun never set at the North Pole that time of year. There were twenty four hours of daylight, and when the sun was at its apex the temperature might soar above freezing. It marked a changing of the season. At midday, puddles formed where everything had been frozen solid for more than half a year. Such weather also affected the ice formations. Open stretches of water showed more movement. Pressure ridges formed and disappeared more easily. There were few weather fronts in the spring, and day after day there would be nothing but brilliant sun and cloudless skies. The endless intensity of cold was being transformed into constant change. This was the time of year the polar bears moved off the ice to summer on land.
It was superb weather for flying and just as perfect for satellites to sense anything out of the ordinary near the earth’s surface. Neither the Russians nor the Americans expected to insert special operating forces without the other’s knowledge. It was simply a matter of who would be the first to launch their aircraft and how much time it would take to counter the other’s move.
The consortium decided it really had little to fear from that sighting of Imperator. The press was wholly involved in the posturing between Washington and Moscow. Only days before, there were few people on the street of any major city in the world who could have answered any questions about the Norwegian border with Russia, more or less know that it existed. Now, any human being with access to television or radio understood not only its location, but the details of what was taking place there and the impact it had on the entire world. The Northern Flank became as familiar as Korea or Vietnam or Lebanon. Once again the superpowers were involved in a situation that might drag the rest of the world into their private disagreement.
Word was received in Washington that the Russians had dispatched their aircraft carrying special arctic troops — even before the satellite reported it! That meant that the Thule-based American forces were off the ground shortly afterward. Then the president of the U.S. contacted the Kremlin offering to turn his planes around if the Soviets would do the same. When neither side could agree, the press soon unearthed the details. Imperator was all but forgotten, much to the relief of the consortium, because the actions of submarines beneath the ice were limited to speculation.
Both the Americans and the Russians made an effort to relay details of these events to their submarines. But this time, the only submarine that was able to find a polynya and surface for regular message traffic was Olympia. She was approaching a point between the pole and the Lincoln Sea, off northernmost Greenland, at maximum speed. Once her captain understood the implications of the message he had just received, he turned on a more direct course for his rendezvous point just beyond the North Pole.
Score one for Caesar, Hal Snow muttered under his breath. Sonar had obtained two contacts well ahead of Imperator, beyond where Snow had anticipated them. While the sonarmen strained to identify them, Caesar’s printout appeared satisfactory. Both the Akula- and Sierra-class submarines were newer to the Russian fleet than the Alfas, and what they may have sacrificed in speed and depth, they made up for in quieter running and improved listening devices. And they were no less dangerous. Their mission was to seek out and destroy enemy submarines and their designers had learned much from the Americans.
“There’s no way that Alfa could still be ahead of us.” Snow was calling from sonar to Carol Petersen. He wanted everyone to understand exactly what it was he feared. “We must have passed him. Are you sure there’s no casualty in the towed array?” He was concerned about the hydrophones they were towing at the end of a long cable.
“It’s operating normally.” Carol interrupted before anyone in sonar could answer. “Caesar has double-checked it. It’s electronically perfect. As a matter of fact, it’s doing quite well on our own noisemakers. Captain. Caesar has identified them right down to the company who made them. I also removed all traces of them from his memory and had him start over. Same printout. There’s no casualty. We passed the Alfa. He was dead quiet.”
“Well, sooner or later he’s got to come out if he’s trying to box us in. Once he does we’ll hear him.” Snow really hadn’t intended to repeat what was running through his mind. There were tinges of uncertainty in his voice. “And with all the noisemakers we keep throwing out, I think we’re going to confuse them all on which is the correct target.” That was his purpose — but you couldn’t fool a good sonarman for long.
“One thing to keep in mind, Captain: the Akulas and Sierras have a lot better ears than that Alfa. They’re going to be able to pick us out better than he will.”
“At least we know where they are.”
He was interrupted by one of the sonarmen. “Wait one… something new to starboard.” His hands fiddled delicately with the dials in front of him. “Submarine contact.” The hands finally stopped, suspended in midair, as he leaned back slightly to listen, eyes closed. “Yeah, it’s a submarine all right… still a long way off… no range for a while, Captain… but I’ll bet it’s another Alfa.”
“You got that one, Carol?”
“Got it, Captain. He’s right… almost beat Caesar on that one. He estimates it at close to ninety miles just aft of the starboard beam. Only an Alfa would sound like that at that range.”
“We have one more advantage,” Snow concluded resolutely. “Imperator can still travel at slow speed less than five miles from them without being detected by listening gear. They’d have to ping on us right in their backyard to be sure where we are. So we’re going to light off everything. We’ll put on a show they can’t overlook. Then go silent.”