It was like old times, Mancuso thought, with Jones as lead sonarman. The submarine came right, pointing her bow-mounted sonar array at the path that Clark was taking. Ramius arrived a minute later to observe.
“How come you didn’t want to use the “scope?” Mancuso asked.
“A hard thing to see one’s home and know that one cannot—”
“There he goes.” Jones tapped his ringer on the video display. “Doing turns for eighteen knots. Pretty quiet for an outboard. Electric, eh?”
“Right.”
“I sure hope he’s got good batteries, skipper.”
“Rotating-anode lithium. I asked.”
“Cute.” Jones grunted. He tapped a cigarette out of his pack and offered one to the Captain, who forgot for the moment that he’d quit, again. Jones lit it and took on a contemplative expression.
“You know, sir, now I remember why I retired . . .” His voice trailed off as Jonesy watched the sonar trail stretch off in the distance. Aft, the fire-control party updated the range, just to have something to do. Jones craned his neck and listened. Dallas was about as quiet as she ever got, and the tension filled the air far more thickly than cigarette smoke ever could.
Clark lay nearly flat in the boat. Made of rubberized nylon, its color scheme was green and gray stripes, not very different from the sea. They’d thought of some white patches because of the ice to be found in the area in winter, but then it was realized that the channel here was always tended by an icebreaker, and a rapidly moving white spot on a dark surface might not be a terribly good idea. Mainly Clark was concerned about radar. The submarine’s sail might not have been picked up through all the clutter, but if the Russian radar sets had a moving-target-indicator setting, the simple computer that monitored the returning signals might well lock in on something traveling at twenty miles per hour. The boat itself was only a foot out of the water, the motor a foot higher than that and coated with radar-absorbing material. Clark kept his head level with the motor and wondered again if the half-dozen metal fragments that decorated his anatomy were large enough to be seen. He knew that this was irrational—they didn’t even set off an airport metal-detector—but lonely men in dangerous places tended to develop unusually active minds. It was better, really, to be stupid, he told himself. Intelligence only allowed you to realize how dangerous things like this were. After such missions were over, after the shakes went away, after the hot shower, you could bask in the glow of how brave and clever you were, but not now. Now it just seemed dangerous, not to say crazy, to be doing something like this.
The coastline was clearly visible, a clean series of dots that covered the visible horizon. It seemed ordinary enough, but it was enemy territory. That knowledge was far more chilling than the clean night air.
At least the seas were calm, he told himself. Actually a few feet of chop would have made for more favorable radar conditions, but the smooth, oily surface made for speed, and speed always made him feel better. He looked aft. The boat didn’t make much of a wake, and he’d reduce it further by slowing when he got close to the harbor.
Patience, he told himself uselessly. He hated the idea of patience. Who likes to wait for anything? Clark asked himself. If it has to happen, let it happen and be done with it. That wasn’t the safe way, rushing into things, but at least when you were up and moving, you were doing something. But when he taught people how to do this sort of thing, which was his normal occupation, he always told them to be patient. You friggin’ hypocrite! he observed silently.
The harbor buoys told him the distance from the coast. He cut his speed to ten knots, then to five, and finally to three. The electric motor made a barely audible hum. Clark turned the handle and steered the boat to a ramshackle pier. It had to have been an old one; its piles had been splintered and abraded by the harbor ice of many winters. Ever so slowly, he pulled out a low-light ‘scope and examined the area. There was no movement he could see. He could hear things now, mainly traffic sounds that carried across the water to him, along with some music. It was Friday night, after all, and even in the Soviet Union there were parties going on at restaurants. People were dancing. In fact his plan depended on the presence of nightlife here—Estonia is livelier than most of the country—but the pier was derelict, as his briefers said it would be. He moved in, tying the boat off to a piling with considerable care—if it drifted away, he’d have real problems. Next to the pile was a ladder. Clark slipped out of his coverall and climbed up, pistol in hand. For the first time he noted the harbor smell. It was little different from its American equivalent, heavy with bilge oil and decorated with rotting wood from the piers. To the north, a dozen or so fishing boats were tied to another pier. To the south was yet another, that one piled up with lumber. So the harbor was being rebuilt. That explained the condition of this one, Clark thought. He checked his watch—it was a battered Russian “Pilot”—and looked around for a place to wait. Forty minutes until he had to move. He’d allowed for choppier seas for his trip in, and all the calm had really done for him was to give him the additional time to meditate on how much a lunatic he was for taking on another of these extraction jobs.
Boris Filipovich Morozov walked outside the barracks where he still lived, staring upward. The lights at Bright Star made the sky into a feathery dome of descending flakes. He loved moments like this.
“Who’s there?” a voice asked. It had authority in it.
“Morozov,” the young engineer answered as the figure came into the light. He saw the wide-brimmed hat of a senior Army officer.
“Good evening, Comrade Engineer. You’re on the mirror-control team, aren’t you?” Bondarenko asked.
“Have we met?”
“No.” The Colonel shook his head. “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel.”
Bondarenko gestured at the sky. “Beautiful, isn’t it? I suppose that’s one consolation for being at the far end of nothing.”
“No, Comrade Colonel, we are at the leading edge of something very important,” Morozov pointed out.
“That is good for me to hear! Do all of your team feel that way?”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel. I asked to come here.”
“Oh? And how did you know of this place?” the Colonel wondered.
“I was here last fall with the Komsomol. We assisted the civil engineers in the blasting, and siting the mirror-pillars. I was a graduate student in lasers, and I guessed what Bright Star was. I did not tell anyone, of course,” Morozov added, “But I knew this was the place for me.”
Bondarenko regarded the youngster with visible approval. “How goes the work?”
“I had hoped to join the laser team, but my section chief press-ganged me into joining his group.” Morozov laughed.
“You are unhappy with this?”
“No—no, please excuse me. You misunderstand. I didn’t know how important the mirror group was. I’ve learned. Now we’re trying to adapt the mirror systems to more precise computer control—I may soon be an assistant section leader,” Morozov said proudly. “I am also familiar with computer systems, you see.”
“Who’s your section chief—Govorov, isn’t it?”
“Correct. A brilliant field engineer, if I may say so. May I ask a question?”
“Certainly.”
“It is said that you—you’re the new Army colonel they’ve been talking about, correct? They say that you may be the new deputy project officer.”
“There may be some substance to those rumors,” Bondarenko allowed.
“Then may I make a suggestion, Comrade?” Morozov asked.
“Certainly.”
“There are many single men here . . .”
“And not enough single women?”
“There is a need for laboratory assistants.”
“Your observation is noted, Comrade Engineer,” Bondarenko replied with a chuckle. “We also plan a new apartment block to relieve the crowding. How are the barracks?”
“The atmosphere is comradely. The astronomy and chess clubs are very active.”
“Ah. It has been time since I played chess seriously. How tough is the competition?” the Colonel asked.
The younger man laughed. “Murderous—even savage.”
Five thousand meters away, the Archer blessed his God’s name. Snow was falling, and the flakes gave the air the magical quality so beloved by poets . . . and soldiers. You could hear—you could feel the hushed silence as the snow absorbed all sound. All around them, as far up and down as they could see, was the curtain of white that cut visibility to under two hundred meters. He assembled his subunit commanders and began organizing the assault. They moved out in a few minutes. They were in tactical formation. The Archer was with the lead section of the first company, while his second-in-command stayed with the other.