If only he had listened to Pyotr Piredenko!
He had not listened then, and he was not listening now. Piredenko and the nuclear experts gathered at Plesetsk were crying wolf at the door, but fortunately, they were only crying to Oberstev and Colonel Cherbykov. As far as Oberstev could tell, no one else aboard the Timofey Ol’yantsev and no one in Vladivostok was yet aware that they had entered the window of meltdown.
He intended to see this thing through. Red Star depended upon him.
In fourteen hours, at the other end of the window, he would have to make yet another decision. He preferred to not think about it yet.
Oberstev was with a crowd larger than he liked in the combat information center of the ship. Instead of tracking hostile, or potentially hostile, naval and aviation targets, the CIC was serving as the communications center between Vladivostok and the Sea Lion.
Chairs had been brought into the center for him, Cherbykov, and Sodur, but he found himself on his feet more often than he was seated, leaning over the acoustic telephone operator and listening to the reports from Gennadi Drozdov. They could also be heard on the overhead speakers, but Oberstev stayed close to the operator, as if his presence would urge Drozdov into discovery.
At that moment, Drozdov was 5,100 meters below sea level, reporting that the submersible was at an altitude of forty meters above the seabed.
The Sea Lion had been engaged in the search for over thirty-four hours now, operating its sonar array robot a few meters off the irregular bottom, with Drozdov and Pyotr Rastonov alternately leading the crews.
Oberstev knew the Americans were concentrating their efforts to the northeast, but he was ignoring them, especially after his conversation with Piredenko.
“Other than the meltdown data, there is nothing conclusive, General,” Piredenko had said.
“You have run how many scenarios of the model now?” Oberstev asked him.
“Over a hundred.”
“And of that hundred scenarios, was any particular sector of the area of operations chosen as a favorite landing spot by the computer?”
“Uh, I, well, just a moment, General.”
After a long time, Piredenko said, “General, there are no connections between any one run of the model and another.”
“What sector?”
“The southwest, General, but…”
Oberstev had hung up on him.
And ordered the Sea Lion to focus on the southwest part of the search grid.
For thirty hours, now.
“They must be incompetents down there,” Sodur said.
“What makes you think so?” Alexi Cherbykov asked.
“I’d have located the bloody thing by now.”
“I think,” Oberstev said, “that you will assist the crew on the next dive, Colonel Sodur. Yes, I believe that would be good experience, a boon to your career.”
The sudden ashy color flooding Sodur’s face suggested otherwise.
Cherbykov left the center, then returned with glasses of tea for Oberstev and himself.
“Thank you, Alexi.”
“It may be a long night, General.”
“It may be.”
But twenty minutes later, the acoustic telephone, relayed over the speakers in the ceiling, erupted with Drozdov’s excited yell, “We’ve found it!”
September 9
Chapter Fifteen
“Hey, boss, sorry to get you out of bed,” Jack Evoy said, not sounding sorry at all. Probably because his sleep had not come in a series of continuous eight-hour chunks in the past week, either.
“What’s a bed?” Unruh asked him.
“Call my wife. She knows what an empty one is. Look, Carl, we had JPL,ˮ — the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena — “move a KH-11 into stationary orbit over the Pacific yesterday so that we’d have constant surveillance.”
“I believe you,” Unruh said, sitting up on the side of the cot which threatened to tip over, trying to rub his eyes with one hand and spot his cigarettes on the desktop at the same time. He gave up on his eyes and reached for the crumpled package. It was empty.
He was planning on quitting, anyway.
“So,” Evoy went on, “we’ve been monitoring on infrared tonight.”
“I believe that, too.”
“We’ve got ships on the move.”
“What? Whose ships?”
“Commonwealth. Kirov and Kynda and their escorts. The sonobuoys tell us the Winter Storm has also dropped her search pattern and changed course. They’re all making top speed.”
“Shit. Have you got headings on them?”
“Yup, boss, we do. They’re going to visit the Ol’yantsev, which happens to be outside of, south of, our target area”
“Analysis?”
“Their submersible has found it. Or found something. Well know more in a little while.”
“Good, Jack. In fact, great.” Unruh stood up, stifling a yawn.
“You going to promote me?”
“No, but I may buy you dinner.”
“It’s going to have to be one damned good dinner.”
“Keep me posted. HI call the boys in the Pacific and get it up on the plotting boards.”
The Bronstein was making full turns, headed back into the impact zone.
They had met a task force, one coming out of Hawaii, Wilson Overton assumed. An aircraft carrier, a cruiser, a bunch of destroyers, and some other types. A seagoing tug had taken over the tow of the Los Angeles, and the frigate had immediately turned around and started back, moving out ahead of the task force, leaving it behind.
Overton was glad of it. He had begun to feel stranded, aboard a ship that was going to be where the action, and the story, was not.
He was on the bridge, sitting on his stool at the back, trying to be unobtrusive, and staying out of everyone’s way. Every time he stood up, or went to take a leak, the naval types gave him reproachful looks.
He could see the log readout and knew the ship was making twenty-five knots. It rose and fell with a reassuring rhythm in seas that would be frightening from lower down, from the main deck. Occasionally, a wave crashed over the bow, white water roiling down the length of it. It had started to rain an hour before, and visibility would probably be less than a quarter-mile in daylight. Big windshield wipers slapped away on the windows, almost hypnotizing.
It was almost daylight, or seemed like it. Two big searchlights were on and aimed at angles off the bow. Every once in a while, Overton saw a small boat, just a flash of white hull, as the frigate passed them. Most of the ships that had been massed at the supposed impact point had scattered when the research vessels began their search patterns. Overton felt some responsibility, some might say culpability, in regard to the civilian boats. He remembered Carl Unruh asking him not to publish the coordinates.
But he had. And fifty rather idiotic skippers had gathered at 26°20′ North, 176°10′ East. Only the lack of detail relative to the precise seconds had kept them away from the actual point of impact.
But he had been listening to the scanners, had heard of the near collisions, the shouts to get out of the way, as the civilians clustered around the search vessels. It was probably the reason the officers on the bridge bestowed such silent loathing upon him.
He had also overheard conversations between the bridge and the combat information center and understood that a lot of the smaller boats had left the area as the weather worsened, headed for Midway Island, which relieved him to some degree. Still, there were around twenty-five larger ships cruising somewhat aimlessly around the impact zone.