He looked aft first. There was the Grisha, its masthead light low on the horizon. Next he looked forward and pulled the flashlight from his hip pocket. He aimed directly at the raft and tapped out the Morse letter D.
“A light, a light!” Maria said. Clark turned back forward, saw it, and steered for it. Then he saw something else.
The patrol boat behind Clark was a good two miles off, its searchlight looking in the wrong place. The Captain turned west to see the other contact. Mancuso knew in a distant sort of way that Grishas carried searchlights, but had allowed himself to disregard the fact. After all, why should searchlights concern a submarine? When she’s on the surface, the Captain told himself. The ship was still too far away to see him, light or not, but that would change in a hurry. He watched it sweep the surface aft of his submarine, and realized too late that they probably had Dallas on radar now.
“Over here, Clark, move your ass!” he screamed across the water, swinging the light left and right. The next thirty seconds seemed to last into the following month. Then it was there.
“Help the ladies,” the man said. He held the raft against the submarine’s sail with his motor. Dallas was still moving, had to be to maintain this precarious depth, not quite surfaced, not quite dived. The first one felt and moved like a young girl, the skipper thought as he brought her aboard. The second one was wet and shivering. Clark waited a moment, setting a small box atop the motor. Mancuso wondered how it stayed balanced there until he realized that it was either magnetic or glued somehow.
“Down the ladder,” Mancuso told the ladies.
Clark scrambled aboard and said something—probably the same thing—in Russian. To Mancuso he spoke in English. “Five minutes before it blows.”
The women were already halfway down. Clark went behind them, and finally Mancuso, with a last look at the raft. The last thing he saw was the harbor patrol boat, now heading directly toward him. He dropped down and pulled the hatch behind himself. Then he punched the intercom button. “Take her down and move the boat!”
The bottom hatch opened underneath them all, and he heard the executive officer. “Make your depth ninety feet, all ahead two-thirds, left full rudder!”
A petty officer met the ladies at the bottom of the bridge tube. The astonishment on his face would have been funny at any other time. Clark took them by the arm and led them forward to his stateroom. Mancuso went aft.
“I have the conn,” he announced.
“Captain has the conn,” the XO agreed. “ESM says they got some VHF radio traffic, close in, probably the Grisha talking to the other one.”
“Helm, come to new course three-five-zero. Let’s get her under the ice. They probably know we’re here—well, they know something’s here. ‘Gator, how’s the chart look?”
“We’ll have to turn soon,” the navigator warned. “Shoal water in eight thousand yards. Recommend come to new course two-nine-one.” Mancuso ordered the change at once.
“Depth now eight-five feet, leveling out,” the diving officer said. “Speed eighteen knots.” A small bark of sound announced the destruction of the raft and its motor.
“Okay, people, now all we have to do is leave,” Mancuso told his Attack Center crew. A high-pitched snap of sound told them that this would not be easy.
“Conn, sonar, we’re being pinged. That’s a Grisha death-ray,” Jones said, using the slang term for the Russian set. “Might have us.”
“Under the ice now,” the navigator said.
“Range to target?”
“Just under four thousand yards,” the weapons officer replied. “Set for tubes two and four.”
The problem was, they couldn’t shoot. Dallas was inside Russian territorial waters, and even if the Grisha shot at them, shooting back wasn’t self-defense, but an act of war. Mancuso looked at the chart. He had thirty feet of water under his keel, and a bare twenty over his sail—minus the thickness of the ice . . .
“Marko?” the Captain asked.
“They will request instructions first,” Ramius judged. “The more time they, have, the better chance they will shoot.”
“Okay. All ahead full,” Mancuso ordered. At thirty knots he’d be in international waters in ten minutes.
“Grisha is passing abeam on the portside,” Jones said. Mancuso went forward to the sonar room.
“What’s happening?” the Captain asked.
“The high-frequency stuff works pretty good in the ice. He’s searchlighting back and forth. He knows something’s here, but not exactly where yet.”
Mancuso lifted a phone. “Five-inch room, launch two noisemakers.”
A pair of bubble-making decoys was ejected from the port-side of the submarine.
“Good, Mancuso,” Ramius observed. “His sonar will fix on those. He cannot maneuver well with the ice.”
“We’ll know for sure in the next minute.” Just as he said it, the submarine was rocked by explosions aft. A very feminine scream echoed through the forward portion of the submarine.
“All ahead flank!” the Captain called aft.
“The decoys,” Ramius said. “Surprising that he fired so quickly . . .”
“Loosing sonar performance, skipper,” Jones said as the screen went blank with flow noise. Mancuso and Ramius went aft. The navigator had their course track marked on the chart.
“Uh-oh, we have to transit this place right here where the ice stops. How much you want to bet he knows it?” Mancuso looked up. They were still being pinged, and he still couldn’t shoot back. And that Grisha might get lucky.
“Radio—Mancuso, let me speak on radio!” Ramius said.
“We don’t do things that way—” Mancuso said. American doctrine was to evade, never to let them be sure there was a submarine there at all.
“I know that. But we are not American submarine, Captain Mancuso, we are Soviet submarine,” Ramius suggested. Bart Mancuso nodded. He’d never played this card before.
“Take her to antenna depth!”
A radio technician dialed in the Soviet guard frequency, and the slender VHF antenna was raised as soon as the submarine cleared the ice. The periscope went up, too.
“There he is. Angle on the bow, zero. Down “scope!”
“Radar contact bearing two-eight-one,” the speaker proclaimed.
The Captain of the Grisha was coming off a week’s patrolling on the Baltic Sea, six hours late, and had been looking forward to four days off. Then first came a radio transmission from the Talinn harbor police about a strange craft seen leaving the docks, followed by something from the KGB, then a small explosion near the harbor police boat, next several sonar contacts. The twenty-nine-year-old senior lieutenant with all of three months in command had made his estimate of the situation and fired at what his sonar operator called a positive submarine contact. Now he was wondering if he’d made a mistake, and how ghastly it might be. All he knew was that he had not the smallest idea what was happening, but if he were chasing a submarine, it would be heading west.
And now he had a radar contact forward. The speaker for the guard radio frequency started chattering.
“Cease fire, you idiot!” a metallic voice screamed at him three times.
“Identify!” the Grisna’s commander replied.
“This is Novosibirsk Komsomolets! What the hell do you think you’re doing firing live ammunition in a practice exercise! You identify!”
The young officer stared at his microphone and swore. Novosibirsk Komsomolets was a special-ops boat based at Kronshtadt, always playing Spetznaz games . . .
“This is Krepkiy.”
“Thank you. We will discuss this episode the day after tomorrow. Out!”
The Captain looked around at the bridge crew. “What exercise . . . ?”
“Too bad,” Marko said as he replaced the microphone. “He reacted well. Now he will take several minutes to call his base, and . . .”
“And that’s all we need. And they still don’t know what happened.” Mancuso turned. ” ‘Gator, shortest way out?”
“Recommend two-seven-five, distance is eleven thousand yards.”
At thirty-four knots, the remaining distance was covered quickly. Ten minutes later the submarine was back in international waters. The anticlimax was remarkable for all those in the control room. Mancuso changed course for deeper water and ordered speed reduced to one-third, then went back to sonar.
“That should be that,” he announced.
“Sir, what was this all about?” Jones asked.
“Well, I don’t know that I can tell you.”
“What’s her name?” From his seat Jones could see into the passageway.
“I don’t even know that myself. But I’ll find out. “Mancuso went across the passageway and knocked on the door of Clark’s stateroom.
“Who is it?”
“Guess,” Mancuso said. Clark opened the door. The Captain saw a young woman in presentable clothes, but wet feet. Then an older woman appeared from the head. She was dressed in the khaki shirt and pants of Dallas’ chief engineer, though she carried her own things, which were wet. These she handed to Mancuso with a phrase of Russian.