George Wallace - Hunter Killer [Movie Tie-In]

Instead of asking for more information, Gruver snorted. “Yeah, damned government geeks! They gotta have their mitts in everything.”

Ustinov allowed the breath to escape from his lungs. The NYSE techie had bought the cover story, just as the controllers had maintained he would. Just in case, Ustinov changed the subject as subtly as he could. “Hey, Chuck, we need to get together and have some fun for a change. I found a great new joint down in the Village, on Sullivan between Prince and Houston. It is the best jazz in the city, and you know how great jazz attracts great women. I even have an idea of somebody I might invite to go. How does tomorrow night sound?”

“You’re on, my communist comrade. We been bustin’ our hump on this project and we owe ourselves a night on the town.”

Ustinov was smiling when he hung up. He dreaded having to spend a whole evening with that dweeb, Gruver. He had just sailed a high fastball right past the guy’s bat for a strike and the guy didn’t even know he was up to bat.

He congratulated himself on coming up with such a patently American metaphor as he stood, headed for another cup of tea and a better look at the lovely Marina, the princess of cubicle twenty-six.

Commander Sergei Andropoyov stood in the corner of the K-475 control room and watched as his crew operated. A few months before they were a motley gaggle of ill-trained novices. After untold hours in the trainers, they were now performing like a precisely matched set of complicated gears.

So, too, it appeared, was his brand-new submarine.

Dimitriy Pishkovski stood beside the periscopes, scrutinizing each panel and gauge spread in front of him. To his right, one michman was pumping water to the various trim tanks to compensate for stores and material they had loaded aboard for the long mission. Keeping the weight of the boat balanced, on an even keel, would be a vital and continuing task. It was even more important on this initial dive when they had no experience to draw on, just the designer’s best theoretical calculations. One misplaced digit in some obscure computation somewhere and they could plunge to the bottom. Or, embarrassingly, not be able to dive at all.

At the forward end of the control room, a meter in front of Pishkovski, two other michmen tested the bow and stern planes. Working together, the two sets of planes, located far forward on the hull and just in front of the screw all the way aft, controlled both the up-and-down motion of the sub and the fore-and-aft angle.

All was in readiness. The pride was obvious in his voice when Pishkovski called out, “Captain, we are ready to submerge.”

Andropoyov nodded and glanced around the control room one more time. He was satisfied with what he saw. A slight smile played at his lips. “Very well, First Officer Pishkovski. Submerge the ship.”

Pishkovski ordered, “Michman Tetryasoi, open the ballast tank vents. Full dive on all planes. Make your depth thirty meters.”

The vents opened on command, allowing air to escape from the huge ballast tanks that wrapped around Gepard ’s thick pressure hull. As the air roared out of the top of the tanks, water flooded in the open grates in the bottom. Gepard sank lower and lower into the inky black water until there wasn’t even a ripple on the surface of the ocean to betray her presence. At thirty meters, the sub leveled off and headed out into the Barents Sea.

Michman Tetryasoi pumped water to and from several of the trim tanks, compensating for minor inaccuracies in the engineers’ calculations. An extra five thousand liters pumped to the forward trim tank, while another ten thousand liters pumped from the after trim tanks. Pump some; then watch the bubble in the glass tube of the inclinometer. Pump a little more; watch some more. After a few minutes, Tetryasoi nodded that he was satisfied. Gepard was ready.

Pishkovski stepped over to stand shoulder to shoulder beside Andropoyov. “Captain, the engineers at the Severomorsk Design Bureau did well.”

Andropoyov nodded. “Yes, Dimitriy. It appears they did well.” He glanced around the busy control room one more time. “Dimitriy, I will be down in my stateroom. It is time to open our orders and see what Admiral Durov’s plans are for us and our shiny new toy. Please stay here and supervise. Call me when you detect the K-461 or if there’s any sign of an American boat tailing us.”

Commander Andropoyov accepted Pishkovski’s nodded acknowledgment. He turned and disappeared down the ladder.

Igor Serebnitskiv descended the ladder from the bridge of the Volk , seeking the warmth of the control room. The sea spray coated his thick black beard with a matting of ice. More frozen spray clung to his heavy fur cap and bridge coat. Soon, though, the melting ice puddled at his feet on the immaculately clean deck.

Serebnitskiv accepted a glass of steaming hot tea someone offered him. He stood there, still dripping, and sipped the liquid as he watched the K-461 . She, too, disappeared below the waves, an hour behind the K-475. He ordered a course out to the northeast, staying close to the coastline. They would pass within a kilometer of Zsapadnyy Kil’din, the island that guarded the eastern approach to Murmansk.

Despite his political connections and the rather corrupt way he had achieved his position in the Navy, Igor Serebnitskiv was an experienced and capable submarine captain. He knew the tricks and games of playing with the Americans out here in these forbidding waters. His equipment was no match for theirs, but he knew his cunning and intellect evened the playing field. Connections and politics served him well in the morass of the Russian military, but it took skill and guts to patrol beneath these frigid waters.

Serebnitskiv knew that the sea noise close to the shore would hide his older, noisier boat from the listening ears of the inevitable American submarine out there. He would hide here in this acoustic underbrush until he could dash across the shallow Pechorskoye More and keep cover again in the noise of Novaya Zemlya, the haunting, forbidding island that separated the Barents Sea from the Kara.

He was aware that Admiral Durov had ordered Andropoyov to take a direct route to the test area. The American submarine would certainly detect K-475. They would realize they had found something new, something unexpected swimming out to sea from Polyarnyy. In their excitement, they would miss the Volk as she steamed a circuitous route well to the east. The American would never suspect he was sailing into a trap, the wily wolf snared by his own hungry greed as he stalked the newborn lamb.

The trap was a well-planned one, but Serebnitskiv knew he would have to move quickly if he hoped to get into position. The problem with taking the long way around was that it took longer. There would be no time for niceties, like communicating with the Central Command. No matter. He relished the independence of being in command at sea. A long period of enforced separation from the meddling of the land-hugging bureaucrats was an unheard-of luxury.

Igor Serebnitskiv measured the distance he had to travel, walking the brass dividers across the chart that plotted out the submerged route. He calculated the Volk would need to journey over sixteen hundred kilometers, while the Gepard would travel a thousand. Their rendezvous was a point over four hundred kilometers north of the winter ice line and two hundred kilometers west of the icebound coast of Novaya Zemlya. His uncle, Alexander Durov, would have had to think very hard to imagine a more isolated stretch of ocean.

Serebnitskiv punched the distance into his computer and added the time it would take to arrive at the rendezvous point. He needed to be in place at least eight hours before Andropoyov got there so he could search the area and find a good place to hide. The computer churned for a second or two before it spat out a speed of forty-five kilometers per hour. They would have to move fast in very shallow water.