Abe Danilov sipped at a cup of steaming black coffee. The hell with the Kremlin doctors! He loved his coffee at times like this, and if there was ever a time to indulge in one of the few luxuries he felt he could still enjoy, this was it.
He had paid his silent respects to Anna once the chronometer indicated a new day had arrived. Perhaps it was for the last time… since he realized that the terrible efficiency of that killing machine, Imperator, was drawing him further away from ever being by Anna’s side again.
Houston had accounted for two of his submarines; he laid the blame at the feet of both captains. But Imperator had destroyed two more, and he couldn’t censure either of his commanding officers for those losses. Olympia had been sunk by Poltava, though he had little hope that she would survive the next few hours. He also had doubt about the chances for Ryazan beyond this day — she had turned to challenge Imperator. Now there was Houston sitting out in front of him. She was an attractive target.
Danilov eyed Stevan Lozak carefully. While the efficient Sergoff continued to perform his duties quietly as they waited silently in the lee of the pressure ridge, Lozak had hopped about the control room like a brightly feathered bird with his tail on fire. Seratov’s captain was a fine man operationally, but Danilov was now sure that the man lacked the patience for senior command. Get in a fight, he thought to himself, and there’s no finer man to have at your side than Lozak. But get in a comer, and it’s the Sergoffs of this world who save your neck.
Danilov eased over to Lozak as he would to an old friend. “Captain, we are ready to get underway. Before we do, I would like to emphasize a few points again. If we projected their path of advance correctly, a little more than thirty kilometers from us is a Los Angeles-class submarine that has already killed two others just like us. They are very good fighters… and they have ears like bats!” He hung on the last word, stretching it out. “There is no reason for them to hear the slightest thing at this range.”
“Of course not, Admiral—”
“I’m not finished, Captain.” Danilov’s attitude was so different from anything Lozak had experienced in their many cruises together. The admiral gripped his elbow tightly. “Of even greater concern to me is that Imperator may be as close as sixty or seventy kilometers. She has the ears of a thousand bats… and she destroys submarines… in ways no man has ever experienced before.”
Lozak nodded slowly. While he may have command of his Seratov, Danilov still had total control.
“Both Admiral Reed and this Snow… the one who commands Imperator… are ruthless men. They have no concern — none whatsoever — about how many more hours you live.”
“Nor do I feel any different about them, Admiral,” Lozak interrupted.
“Now, to extend the number of hours we plan to continue living, we don’t make a sound. We let Reed finish off Poltava.” He paused to allow Lozak to digest that bit of information. “While Reed is concentrating on taking one more of our submarines out of the picture, we are going to depart our little nook ever so silently. We are going to remain as near to the ice as possible, but there will be no use of the navigational sonar. We’ll assume there will be no pressure ridges of more than fifty meters’ depth. If there are…” He shrugged with a fateful grin. “Proceed at three knots. By the time any other submarine picks us up at that speed, we will have fired on them. Send a messenger around to each space on this ship — don’t miss a soul — and make sure there is no unnecessary movement, no talking, no leaving station for any reason — if someone has to piss, use a bucket.”
“Right away, Admiral.” He was no longer a party to the decisions. They had been made without his advice. If there was a single positive note to his exclusion, he assumed that Sergoff had not been included either.
But on that point he was dead wrong. Sergoff had even insisted, politely but firmly, how Danilov should handle his impetuous young captain.
The captain of Ryazan had no idea where Admiral Danilov was lurking. He assumed that his commander had chosen to go silent to evaluate the situation and that he would appear at a moment he deemed critical. The one thing the captain understood at this moment was that he was the only opposition facing Imperator. For what little he had gleaned from copied messages and his sonar’s interpretation of far-off battles everything within the giant submarine’s path was ruthlessly eliminated.
Ryazan’s captain had been brought up through the officer corps under Abe Danilov’s tutelage and he had retained a single, vital lesson — never copy someone else’s mistakes. He knew he could not survive if he tried to escape, or if he sought refuge among the pressure ridges. Head on, his enemy seemed invincible.
It appeared that his only opportunity was to go silent and allow Imperator, now moving rapidly in his direction, to pass. Ryazan would be most difficult to detect astern of her. If he could somehow escape detection, he would fire a full spread of torpedoes at her stern. Though he had no idea if she was equally impervious from the rear, he was sure that strategy had yet to be employed. It was worth a try. And, after all, he was also following his mentor’s dictum—“You will never meet a live Soviet submariner who has successfully run from his enemy.”
Ryazan hovered silently near the ice with each of her crew glued to their stations. They were lost in their own interpretation of eternity.
“Range to contact now?” Snow called out, noting the increase in his heartbeat with a touch of pride. The spirit of the hunt was exposing a hedonistic self he’d been unaware of. Never in his entire career had he fought in any battle. But now that he had experienced the taste of blood, new sensations within his body had come to the surface for the first time. His blood was racing faster — he was sure of that. He could almost imagine it pounding through his veins, just as the books explained it. It was adrenaline — pure and simple.
“Last range was thirty-eight thousand, Captain.”
“What do you mean, last range?”
“That’s when we lost contact, Captain.”
“Lost contact… what lost contact?” Snow sputtered. “Sonar reported it a minute or two ago,” the XO offered tentatively.
“I didn’t hear a thing—” Snow began.
“That’s correct,” Carol Petersen interrupted. “Look at the imager. It disappeared as soon as sonar lost him.” Her finger circled the space the contact had occupied within the holographic imager.
Snow stared dumbly at the spot. It was empty! He could see Imperator; Houston was near the damaged Soviet submarine. But there was simply nothing where the next target should have been.
“Forget it… never mind,” Snow began. “My mind was somewhere else… give control back to the computer. We’ll have to depend on the memory until we regain contact.”
Carol punched the data request into the terminal. Within seconds the image of a tiny submarine returned. “That’s the exact location where we lost contact,” she said. She tapped at the keyboard again and added, “We’ll have projected motion in a moment.”
As she finished her last words, the image of the Soviet sub darted to a new location as if encouraged by an invisible hand. “Projected range… thirty-one five if she maintained course and speed.”