Kilo 31
Colonel Rogov returned to the submarine after the initial camp setup,
leaving the Spetsnaz commandos huddled inside their sleeping bags inside
the creaking, groaning cave carved out of the cliff. The small raft had
barely made the trip back to the submarine safely, taking two waves
completely over it and being turned into a miniature version of its mother
ship several times.
He watched the men move around the submarine’s control center, noting
with disdain the black circles under their eyes and the fatigue in their
every movement. Europeans, all of them. The strong Slavic stock of their
ancestors bred out of them and diluted by the effete blood of inbred
royalty. None of them would have lasted long under his command. And none
of them could have endured the conditions ashore in the ice cavern.
Not that the submarine’s crew would have seen it that way. They saw
themselves, he knew, as vastly superior to the Western Europeans that
inhabit France, Germany, and England. He snorted. If they only knew.
Approximately half of the crew was Russian, the last remnants of a grand
race that had done its best to extinguish everything noble and superior in
its bloodlines in the coups that destroyed the czars’ line. The remaining
crew members were primarily Ukrainian, with a few mongrel Georgians,
Azerbiijanis and Armenians thrown in. All in the latter group were at
least half Polish, some even with strong German stock mixed in with the
historic blood that had first flourished in the fertile steppes of the
Ukraine and in the high, craggy mountain regions of Azerbaijan, Georgia,
and Armenia. Had they but seen what they would become, he doubted that any
one of them would have chosen to consort with the invading hordes that
swept east from Europe from century to century. Instead, they would have
preferred to fight to the last man and woman, chosen defeat over the
hybridization and bastardization of their blood.
Not so with his ancestors. The Cossacks, driven out of their homeland
surrounding the Black Sea and on the Crimean Peninsula, had remained a
closed, insular nation without a country, warlike and incapable of being
defeated. The best the Russians could manage was to drive them out into
the vast desolation of its most eastern areas, consigning them to Mongolia,
Siberia, and the rugged alien terrain of the eastern Soviet Union. Yet
even centuries of forced relocation had failed to extinguish their strong
tribal instincts, their sense of who and what they were. Primary among
those attributes was their identity as Cossacks.
He watched the men again, noting the pale faces, the languid, almost
feminine movements as they carefully monitored the complex array of
sensors, weapons, and electronics installed on the small submarine. Such a
powerful submarine, even for its small size. The Kilo combined ham-handed
Russian design with frighteningly advanced electronics and computers
obtained from Japan, Korea, and yes, even the United States. A powerful
ship, one that deserved better than the masters she now had. That would
change.
He felt the submarine captain watching him uneasily. He turned and
faced the man full on, letting him see the disdain flicker at the edges of
his normally impassive expression. This man most of all would have to go.
His hesitation when one of his crew members had been swept into the icy sea
was just further evidence of his unfitness for command. While he might
possess the requisite technical and tactical knowledge required of a
commander, he lacked the single most important ingredient–the iron will so
necessary for transforming a collection of equipment and machinery and men
into a potent, irresistible fighting force.
The present situation illustrated that point perfectly. The Kilo
submarine lingered ten miles away from the island, barely making
steerageway through the silent ocean. Hours ago, the sharp pops and groans
of the ice floe had subsided as the sun sank back down below the horizon.
Now, the ocean was a silent, dark cloak of invisibility.
Had Rogov been the skipper, the submarine would have been snorkeling,
topping off the last bit of charge on its batteries in preparation for any
immediate tactical need to stay submerged for hours. True, the bank of