Roger Ellis - AK-239

My thirty years of command has been taken over by some arrogant kid.

I joined the Navy before this kid was born!

And then, to add insult to injury, I don’t find this out until we’re in American Waters!

These were the kinds of things the old Soviet Union did, not a healthy democracy.

I really wished he had sacked me before I left Russia!

I would be home now enjoying life with my wife.

No!

Admiral Perchinkov waited to tell me this until after I safely snuck past the USS Alaska sitting at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

I engaged our Top Secret caterpillar drive and flew through American waters which is:

An act of war in and of itself!

I helped design that drive for peaceful purposes not to create the next World War!

Admiral Perchinkov used my skills and now has, in effect, relieved me of my command.

In the old USSR days, nearly all Soviet ships had aboard: A political officer or commissar. These people held the same rank as commander of a ship and could order an attack or a stand-down order that was to be followed just as if they commanded the ship. In some key ships and army units there would be two commissars. These two could overrule any commander and take any action in furtherance of Rodina, or the Motherland. This was about as godly as the old Soviet Union ever got:

Worship of the state!

While Rodina is only a political party and now banned today, some of its mythical ideas live on in the hearts and minds of the siloviki clan, especially with President Ivan Mironovich.

This is only one more reason I didn’t like or trust the president or anyone from this idol- worshipping, billionaire nut bag club.

I put the kid in the nut bag category.

I don’t trust him at all.

I had thought those horrid days of Motherland worship were gone but come to find out, the Motherland has simply been replaced by a new god:

Crazy Ivan.

This kid is going to get us all killed.

First, the idiot surfaced underneath an Alaskan fishing boat!

I’m shocked the entire American Navy hasn’t already blown us out of the water and put us on eternal patrol!

Suicide mission, I thought, although I would never, ever utter these words aloud.

I knew every one of these kids, under my “former” command is as loyal as if they were Soviet soldiers fighting Hitler.

I think I’ve figured out what Admiral Perchinkov is up to.

I’m not about to kill a bunch of Americans for our new Fuehrer.

I’ve gotta find a way to warn the Americans without getting all my men killed first.

But how?

I have to wait for the right moment but clearly this was not it.

The little brat was at top of his class in every school he attended and he acted like it. The brat had orders from Moscow that were as if the President had spoken them himself.

In other words, my boat had been taken over by a modern day political officer!

Kapitan Nikolai came from billionaire silokivi clan parents. His father was the CEO of several oil and gas companies owned by the state, including GazProm, the world’s largest gas producer. So this kid would be set for life no matter what he chose to do.

But Nikolai’s file also showed he had a very high level of ambition. He had risen to the ranks of a commander in a GRU Spetsnaz Team quicker than any Russian in history.

Nikolai was also a true believer in the “the glory days” of the old USSR.

Nikolai indicated in his file that he would do anything, anything to return Russia to those days. Trouble was those days never existed anywhere except in books and in the minds of a few true believers, like Nikolai’s father.

The young in Russia today have been brought up in government schools and owe their entire careers to their “beloved” President.

A new twisted, modern day, version of Rodina has been resurrected from the ashes with Crazy Ivan as its godhead.

So Nikolai was in the control room and it was buzzing. Several large color screens were searching the seabed in the Gulf of Alaska for something. I was sitting at the back of the room in the “observers seat.”

I can’t tell you the insult that this was being conveyed to me by the kid.

Sonar officer, Dmitri Rostislav, yelled over the subs speaker system, “Conn, sonar, I hear it! Ten meters.”

“Aye, all stop,” Nikolai Alexi commands.

He then looks carefully at the monitors.

They are looking at a murky seabed at the bottom of the Gulf of Alaska.

A black cable no bigger than twelve inches around is seen. This cable goes into a large box that is called an: Undersea Branching Unit.

“We’re here. Tell divers to prepare,” says Alexi.

This fiber optic line, AKORN, Alaska-Oregon Network is the fastest system connecting Alaska with the Internet and the world. The cable is the nerve center of communication between Homer, Alaska and Florence, Oregon. This branching station is intended to eventually connect Juneau and Southeast Alaska with the fastest fiber optic system in the world.

In the meantime, TK-20 would be speeding up that eventuality by tapping the system to complete the AK Phase of Proyekt 239, of course, not exactly in the way intended by the AKORN designers.

Word comes over their on board communication system, “Divers are in the hatch and sealed.”

“Flood hatch and release,” commands Alexi.

Over the system in a few seconds is heard, “Sdelannyy. Zakonchennyy.” (English: “Done. Finished”).

At this point I stood up to leave the room and no one even noticed. I left the conn thinking,

I might as well go read a good book and finish decorating my tiny Christmas tree.

In fact, I’d rather be home reading a good book.

But I never let those worries reflect on my face. I certainly didn’t want to let the green eyed twenty something’s in the conn room see my concerns.

They were ready and willing to change the world or die trying.

I wasn’t.

New York Hotel

Ketchikan, Alaska

Christmas Eve Morning

As is usual for Ketchikan, it’s raining outside.

The rain had followed me from Portland to my hotel last night. I hadn’t seen the sun for a month, except on Mt. Hood last week. The sun had also peaked out on the flight to Ketchikan when we flew above a thick layer of rain clouds.

Snow was on the mountains but an unusual warm spell, 45 degrees today, had washed away all the snow in town.

The rain was so gentle on my window that it couldn’t even be heard over the TV.

A local news show from Anchorage, Alaska Today, is on and the anchor said:

“Concern has been raised that this deal will raise Russian control of the U.S. uranium market to about twenty percent. Due to low prices on the world market most uranium mines in the United States have been shuttered. Currently, the U.S. imports about half of its uranium from Russia for use in its nuclear power plants…”

I was not paying any attention.

Guess I should have been.

My flight in was unremarkable. I always loved this quirky little airport. The airport is, in fact, on a separate island across The Tongass Narrows from the quaint little town. To get to town you must be ferried across The Narrows.

Ah, Alaska, what an adventuresome place!

My room at the ‘New York Hotel’ was built at the turn of the last century. The room had authentic wood doors, beamed ceilings and hand quilted bedspreads!

The street wasn’t really noisy but the room did come equipped with ear plugs, just in case.

I’m a night owl and generally go to sleep around 2am. However, four or five hours of sleep was all I needed so it wasn’t a big deal.

The café downstairs would have great local musicians and comedians perform on weekends.