“Most important, the Akulas can dive to almost two thousand feet,” Botkin interjected with barely masked pride.
Abakov bent slightly at the waist to study the chart. “I understand now, but still, the K-363 could be anywhere.”
Scott said, “True, but if Zakayev has plans to attack the summit meeting in St. Petersburg, the K-363 has to stay within range of the target. That narrows the search somewhat.”
The starpom, sandwiched between Scott and Botkin, pointed to a marked spot in the Arctic Ocean far north of the Il-38 patrol line established by NorFleet.
“What he’s pointing to,” Scott said, “represents the maximum theoretical distance from which an SS-N-21 can reach its target: sixteen hundred nautical miles. But Zakayev won’t stray that far. I’m willing to bet he’s somewhere within a sixty-degree arc due north of Olenya Bay. And not too far from land.”
“Why do you think so?” Alex asked.
“Because,” Scott said, “that’s what I would do if I were going to attack St. Petersburg. The attack is the only thing that matters — not playing tag with the Russian Navy. And the shorter the range to the target, the less chance there is of intercepting and destroying the missile.”
“Even so, how will we ever find the K-363?” said Alex.
“Our best chance is to hear her, get her three-hundred-hertz sound signature on sonar. It won’t be easy, but if we can find her, we can kill her.”
Alex, elbows on the table, put her head in her hands. “Kill her. How?”
“Antisubmarine torpedo,” Scott said.
“Okay, so we or the Russians blow the K-363 to bits. What happens to her nuclear reactor?”
“Depends. If the reactor compartment isn’t damaged, it sinks along with the rest of the ship. If it is—
say, the core’s blown open — the fuel assemblies will end up on the sea floor.”
Alex raised her head. “You know, don’t you, that the Russians have been dumping naval reactors at sea for decades. It’s one of the biggest problems Earth Safe has faced. There have been thousands of cubic meters of radioactive waste dumped off the continental shelf of the Kola Peninsula. Then there’s the Atlantic Ocean. In 1986, when the K-219 went down six hundred miles east of Bermuda, she had two reactors and was armed with ballistic missiles. The missiles each had two one megaton warheads with about two hundred pounds of plutonium, which has a half-life of about twenty thousand years. This one wreck has the potential to be an ecological disaster of epic proportions. Someday the reactors and warheads will deteriorate and their radioactive materials will eventually poison the sea. If the K-363’s reactor is destroyed underwater, it will be even worse.”
“You’re assuming it’ll be destroyed,” Scott said.
Alex gave Scott a look. “Can antisubmarine torpedoes differentiate between a reactor compartment and the other compartments of a submarine?”
“No. But Akulas are double-hulled boats, and anti sub torpedoes are designed to penetrate the outer hull, collapse the inner hull, and flood and sink the submarine, not blow the whole ship to hell.”
Abakov said, “If a torpedo hit the outer hull of the reactor compartment, would the explosion be powerful enough to destroy the reactor?”
“Not necessarily. Reactor containment vessels are designed to withstand heavy damage. Chances are the reactor would hold together.”
“Then again, it might not,” Alex said.
Botkin said, “Excuse me, Captain Scott, but Communications say they are receiving a ZEVS.”
Communication links aboard the K-480 had been reconfigured to receive both U.S. and Russian satellite burst transmissions.
“ZEVS?” asked Alex.
“To communicate with submerged submarines, the U.S. and Russian navies broadcast extremely-low-frequency transmissions, known as ELF,” Scott said. “The U.S. ELF transmitter is up on Michigan’s upper peninsula; the Russian ELF transmitter, which they call ZEVS, is located in Archangel.”
“So how do they work?”
“ELF and ZEVS transmissions can penetrate hundreds of feet below the surface of the sea to summon a submarine to periscope depth to receive coded burst transmissions from satellites in earth orbit. Trouble is, ELF data transmission rates are so damn slow that a submarine’s identity code takes minutes to arrive, which forces the sub to loiter near the surface, where it’s vulnerable while recovering its burst transmission.”
“Request permission to come to periscope depth to receive ZEVS,” said the starpom.
“Very well,” Botkin said.
“Kapitan, please double the sonar watch,” Scott said. “I don’t want to be caught napping by Litvanov.”
Crabbing against a setting current, the K-363 crept down the western coast of Norway.
“Depth to keel?” Litvanov said from the periscope stand.
Veroshilov had his lower lip trapped under his front teeth. The Norwegian coast was host to graveyards of ships that had blundered into unmapped seamounts and scarps.
“Sounding!” roared Litvanov.
“Ten fathoms, Kapitan.”
Litvanov racked the scope’s magnification control through a series of detents into high power. “Take a look,” he said, turning the scope over to Zakayev.
He saw a pair of headlights moving south on a road carved from the living rock of the peninsula that formed the western bank of Vest Fjord. On the peninsula’s tip he saw a lighthouse warning seafarers of shoal water.
“See any good restaurants?” Litvanov laughed. “The Norwegians make a fantastic fiskepudding with haddock. Maybe we can send a man ashore to get some.” He laughed again.
Zakayev wasn’t amused. Litvanov had insisted on cruising in littoral waters virtually up against the Norwegian coast to avoid detection and to stand clear of commercial shipping lanes. But the fear of running aground had set the crew’s teeth on edge and made Veroshilov argumentative. So far they had encountered only Norwegian and Japanese fishing boats and a few rusty coastal luggers. And Litvanov was thinking of food. Well, let him, Zakayev decided. There wasn’t much time left to think of things that once made life enjoyable.
He stepped away from the scope and beckoned the girl to have a look too.
“Quick now: What do you see?”
“Lights. Strings of moving lights shimmering on the water.”
The SC1 speaker hummed, then: “Kapitan — sonar contact! Bearing three-two-zero, converging.”
Litvanov took a quick look at the CCP’s sonar repeater with its sloping trace line and saw an unidentified contact closing in on the K-363. He sprang to the periscope stand and pushed the girl aside.
He saw her string of lights. Red and green running lights on a vessel standing out of Vest Fjord. To Litvanov’s night-adapted eyes there was something about her top hamper…. He switched to infrared and a spectral image danced before his eyes: a heat bloom from the turbines and exhaust stacks of a frigate-size ship.
“Switch to narrow band sonar,” Litvanov commanded.
“Aye, Kapitan.”
“Come right twenty degrees.”
The helmsman acknowledged Litvanov’s order.
On the sonar repeater the sloped line had disappeared, replaced by a horizontal row of bouncing green spikes. The sonar system needed time to filter and compare the received sound frequencies with signatures archived for the purpose of identification.
“Periscope down.”
“What is it?” Zakayev said.
Litvanov stood by the periscope stand with arms crossed on his chest, not moving a muscle. “Maybe nothing. Then again…”
The row of bouncing signature spikes on the CCP monitor had frozen while the computer searched its memory for a matching set. They meant nothing to Zakayev, yet had taken on a life of their own. He sensed that the next few minutes were critical to their mission.