batteries was currently charged to ninety percent, but one never knew when
that additional ten percent of capacity would spell the difference between
life and death for a submarine and its crew.
This skipper, however, after a brief communications foray to the
surface to monitor the group ashore’s progress, had decided that the
weather was too bad, the seas too rough, to inflict the nausea-inducing
pitch and roll of a submarine near the surface on its crew. He fled the
surface and returned to the depths, where the motion of the storm above
them was imperceptible. The crew had all looked relieved at that decision.
Pah! The men ashore would hardly have it so easy. Even safe inside
the ice cavern, the scream and howl of the winds alone would have been
daunting. The winds had built steadily throughout the night until
sixty-knot gales, at times growing to hurricane force, now scoured the
desolate island.
“Captain,” a young lieutenant said suddenly. His quiet voice echoed
in the tomb-like control center. “The other submariner I think–yes, it’s
her.”
The skipper stepped away from his normal post in the center of the
small room, and stationed himself behind the sonar operator. “Where?”
The younger man pointed at the waterfall display. “It’s barely
distinguishable from the background noise yet, Skipper, but this appears to
be a line from her main propulsion equipment.” He pointed to a series of
dots that looked to Rogov’s untrained eyes to be merely part of the noise.
Rogov allowed a trace of satisfaction to tug at the corner of his
mouth. So far, all was going according to plan, although neither the
Russians on this boat nor their larger counterpart knew it. The
Oscar-class nuclear cruise missile submarine was one of the most potent
ship-killers in the Russian inventory today. Equipped with SS-N-19
Shipwreck missiles, it had a tactical launch range of over three hundred
nautical miles. It could obtain targeting data from any other platform,
including the Tupelov Bear aircraft or the Ilyushin May-76 reconnaissance
plane. When properly aligned, it could also download targeting data from
Russian surveillance satellites, relieving it of the necessity of obtaining
enemy positioning data from its own organic sensors.
The Oscar’s deployment had been suspended in the first few years
following the breakup of the Soviet Union, but had resumed in 1995. It
roamed with impunity the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean, occasionally
making forays into the smaller Atlantic. Her torpedoes, twenty-eight feet
long and over five feet in diameter, could crack the keel of an aircraft
carrier with one well-placed shot.
As it would soon, if necessary. He smiled, wondering what his Cossack
ancestors would have thought of him, riding this massive underwater
seahorse into battle again. A far cry from the days when his ancestors had
swept out of the mountains and across the plains, decimating Ukrainian and
Russian troops with their bloody sabers. While today’s Cossack might
depend on invisible electrons and satellite data instead of a finely honed
blade, the principles remained the same–attack, attack, attack.
The Americans would remember that soon.
0800 Local
VF-95 Ready Room, USS Jefferson CVN-74
The Ready Room was one of the larger single compartments on the
aircraft carrier, and served as both a duty post and a central point of
coordination for the VF-95 squadron. Ten rows of high-backed chairs took
up the forward starboard portion of the room, arrayed in front of a
chalkboard and overhead projector. The port side was a general
congregating area, and its bulkheads were ringed with hard plastic couches
and the all-important squadron popcorn machine. A battered gray table
protruded from one bulkhead. Bird Dog, Gator, and their squadron
commanding officer were gathered around it.
Bird Dog glared down at the chart spread out before him. A series of
standard Navy symbols was penciled in on it, connected with a faint line
representing the track of the contact. The Greenpeace ship had been
meandering around the area south of Aflu for two weeks now, and there was
still no discernible pattern to her movement.
“I still don’t see what the hell is so damned important about flying
out to take a look at that ship,” Bird Dog grumbled. “Why not send an S-3B