Arctic Gold

23

SSGN Ohio Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1132 hours, GMT-12

“BRIDGE, SONAR!”

“Go ahead.”

“Sir… the shrimp just cut a loud one.”

“Stay on it, Mayhew. I’m coming over.”

The Ohio’s sonar room was located just in front of the control room, adjoining it off the starboard passageway forward. Grenville walked down the passageway and stepped into the curtained-off room, a narrow compartment with four console workstations side-by-side, with a large acoustic spectrum analyzer at the far end.

At each station, display screens could be configured to show any of several key elements of the cascade of sonar data entering the Ohio’s AN/BSY-1 combat system, pronounced “Busy-One” by the men riding the boards.

Sonar Chief Kevin Mayhew was the sonar watch supervisor. At the other workstations, an ST/1 and two ST/2s sat at their boards, headphones on, their eyes locked on their sonar displays.

“Whatcha got, Chief?”

“An incidental, Captain. Wanna hear?”

“Play it for me.”

Mayhew touched a key. His sonar display winked out, then came back on, with a green trace drawing out a horizontal line. Grenville held a headphone to his ear. A moment later, he heard a sharp scrape, a thump, and a hiss as the green tracing zapped up and down like an earthquake seismograph. As the initial sound faded, he heard something in the background, a fluttering rattle… like the piece of cardboard he sometimes had attached to hit the spokes of his bicycle when he was a kid.

“Hear it, sir?”

“He bumped the ceiling.”

“Yes, sir. And did you catch at the end?…”

Grenville smiled. “He throttled up, probably to get the hell out of there, but he did it too fast. He was cavitating.”

“Exactly my thought, sir.”

Increase your speed too quickly and tiny bubbles built up on the surface of your propeller blades. When they popped, it made a hell of a racket, an effect known as cavitation.

“It’s not the ’Burgh,” Mayhew added. “Not a damned rookie trick like that. And we got enough of the engine noise to analyze. It’s a Victor III… probably the same one we recorded a year ago in the North Atlantic.”

“Not such a rookie trick, Chief,” Grenville said. “Let’s not underestimate him.”

If you scraped the ceiling of ice, it was because you were hugging the ice cap, staying tucked in close… and the only reason to do that was to lose yourself in the scatter of sound bouncing off the ice. In a way, it was like a helicopter pilot flying nape-of-the-earth in order to stay hidden for as long as possible.

Only very good sub drivers would try that.

And here was another possibility as well, a chilling one. That Russian sub driver out there might have brushed against an ice ridge and put the pedal to the metal for just an instant deliberately, knowing the American boat would hear… and just possibly respond a little too hastily, a little too carelessly.

No, Grenville did not intend to underestimate this fellow.

“Best guess on range and bearing, Chief.”

“Strongest registration was starboard side fairwater, sir. Range…” Mayhew screwed up his face, as though unwilling to go out on too slender a limb. “Not close, like right alongside close. Maybe one mile. Maybe two.”

“Good enough.” Grenville picked up an intercom mike. “Control Room, Captain. Helm, come right nine-zero degrees. Ahead slow.”

“Helm right nine-zero degrees, ahead slow, aye, aye,” was the response.

The Ohio was turning directly toward the Russian boat, slowly and quietly. The only question was whether the Russians had spotted them yet.

GK-1 Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1134 hours, GMT-12

Golytsin and the Russian marine led Dean down the long passageway, up a stairway, and directed him at last into a small and nondescript office. It might, Dean thought, have been Golytsin’s office while he was aboard the submerged GK-1 platform, but it could as easily have been a workplace for any administrator who needed one. There was a desk and two chairs, a computer and a telephone, but nothing in the way of photographs or decorations, books or paperwork, no human touch.

The marine stayed outside as Golytsin closed the door and gestured at one of the chairs. “Have a seat.”

“Is this where the torture starts?” Dean asked.

Golytsin shrugged, then dropped into the chair behind the desk and clattered an entry into the computer keyboard. “If you like.”

Dean was measuring the man. Golytsin was a little older than him, he thought-probably in his late fifties or early sixties. He had the look of a senior corporate executive.

He also looked lean and fit. If he spent much of his time behind a desk, he also must work out a lot, or get out into the country to work off the fat. Dean thought he could probably take Golytsin in hand-to-hand, but that assumption was by no means assured.

Besides, he still had the Makarov, and Dean’s chair was a good five feet from the desk. And there was the marine outside.

Golytsin completed the entry, then turned his full attention to Dean. “To tell you the truth, however, I dislike the idea of torture. I’m sure there are things we could do to you that would in quite short order have you telling us everything we want to know… or everything you think we want to know, anything at all to stop the pain. And yet, what would be the point? At the end, we still wouldn’t know whether you’d told us the truth or not. We would, in fact, have to start all over, at the beginning, and go through the whole process again. And again. And yet again. And then again, but this time with drugs, questioning and cross-questioning each of your answers. And then do it again with you wired to a polygraph.

“And we keep doing it all again until we can tell from changes in your responses at varying levels of stress whether you are, in fact, telling the truth… or making up stories, what you think we want to hear, simply in order to make us stop. That is the trouble with torture, you know. It takes so very long to arrive at the truth.”

“That, and the fact that you can never be sure you’ve actually gotten there,” Dean agreed. “Have you broken the subject? Or is he a very talented actor? Or might he truly believe what he’s telling you… but what he believes is a lie because someone lied to him?”

“Exactly! So… you can see my dilemma. I very much want to know about you, Mr. Dean. Who you work for. Why you’ve come here. What you know about this operation. What your employers know. What your employers might plan to do about us in the future. I could torture you until you told me… but I’d never be sure I was getting accurate information.”

“I appreciate your predicament.”

In fact, Dean was wondering where this line of conversation was leading. Golytsin evidently had tried threats of torture or sexual abuse to get information from Kathy. Why was he using such a markedly different approach with him?

“I tend to believe, personally, that torture is counterproductive.” Golytsin hesitated, then added, “Of course, not everyone shares this belief, you understand. And not everyone cares that it’s counterproductive. There are people who enjoy torturing subjects simply because… because they very much like doing it. My colleague, Sergei Braslov, for instance…”

Then it clicked for Dean. Of course! Golytsin was trying different psychological approaches, probing for weakness. With Kathy, he’d seen a woman, vulnerable, alone, a prisoner on a ship full of hostile male strangers… and he’d threatened her with rape, or with a cold and hideously lonely death exposed on the ice cap, with no one to help. With Dean, Golytsin was trying to engage him in an almost friendly, chatty relationship-not comrades-at-arms but certainly with the feeling that they all were in this together… with just a hint that the other guy might be a psychopathic monster capable of anything. It was, in fact, a variant of the old good-cop/bad-cop ploy, where a prisoner would willingly confide in the “nice” interrogator in order to avoid the mean one.

Okay. Dean could play this game.

In fact, Dean thought, he had an advantage over Golytsin. The Russian knew nothing about Dean whatsoever, but Dean already knew some of Golytsin’s background. He’d been a submarine skipper. That meant he was smart… and he knew psychology. He was also supremely loyal-back in the bad old Soviet days, Russian sub drivers were selected almost exclusively on that one factor alone. However, he’d been outspoken enough in his opposition to the war in Afghanistan that he’d been imprisoned. That suggested both a willingness to think for himself and the possibility that his loyalty might lie to his country, rather than to his government.

Feodor Golytsin, Dean thought, was a true patriot, a lover of Mother Russia willing to risk arrest and prison in her defense.

A patriot, but one working for the Organizatsiya, a criminal organization that had already done incalculable harm to post-Soviet Russia.

And at that moment, Dean saw Golytsin’s tragic flaw.

“Ah, yes,” Dean said, nodding. “Braslov. We have quite a file on him, you know.”

Dean saw the flicker of interest in Golytsin’s eyes. “File. And you work for?…”

“The Agency, of course.” Carefully, he didn’t specify which agency.

“Really? Some of my… superiors are of the opinion that the American NSA has been rather interested in their activities recently.”

Dean waved a hand carelessly, as if dismissing the thought. “Don’t be ridiculous. The NSA are mathematicians, technicians, and electronic eavesdroppers. They tap telephones. They don’t even have field agents, for God’s sake!”

“No. No, that’s what I always thought.” Golytsin was looking at him strangely, as though wondering if Dean was being honest and aboveboard… or putting on an act. He would be suspicious if Dean seemed too cooperative. “So, Mr. Dean. You claim to be a CIA agent?”

Dean spotted what was either a bit of carelessness… or a trap. “CIA agents are foreign locals recruited to work for us, one way or another. The people working out of Langley, or running local agents in other countries, are called case officers.”

“Quite so. Quite so.”

“And I gather you’re with Gazprom,” Dean said, taking the initiative. “You play with the big boys.”

“Actually, Mr. Dean, I believe that I’m the one conducting this… interview.”

“Ah. And would the information you’re looking for be for you? For the Gazprom Board of Directors? Or…” Dean leaned forward in a properly conspiratorial manner. “Or is it for the Organizatsiya?”

Golytsin looked startled, then uncomfortable. “What do you know about them?”

Dean shrugged. “Enough. I know Sergei Braslov works for them. As I said, we have quite a file on him. And we know he works for Grigor Kotenko, and Tambov. Kotenko would be the guy pulling the strings on this operation.”

“And why would the American CIA be interested in them? What happens inside Russia has nothing to do with American foreign interests.”

“Come, now, Admiral,” Dean said. He paused. “It was Admiral, was it not?”

Golytsin grimaced. “Actually, I was deprived of that rank.”

“By the Politburo board that censured your stand on the war in Afghanistan. I know. The Soviet leaders of that era had gotten the Rodina into some serious trouble, and you tried to point that out. They didn’t appreciate the attempt, I seem to recall.”

Anger flashed. “What the hell do you know about it?”

Dean smiled. “Enough. We have a thick file on you, too.”

“It seems to me you know entirely too much for your own good, American.”

“Yes, well, that’s been a failing of mine ever since I was a smart-assed kid. Poking my nose in where it’s not wanted. I tend to be the curious type.”

“You Americans have an expression, I believe? About curiosity and a cat…”

“Believe me,” Dean said, leaning back and doing his best to express an attitude of calm and relaxation that he was not even close to feeling, “you and your people do not want to kill me. Or Kathy McMillan. Enough people know exactly where we are that you can’t just make us disappear. Not without exposing your whole operation. To begin with, Russia will lose her claim to the Arctic Ocean.”

“The Arctic is ours by right.”

“That has yet to be determined. Denmark and Canada, just to name two, do not agree with you. But that’s not really the point, here.”

“Oh? And what is?”

“The point, Admiral, is that you love Mother Russia. Once, twenty, twenty-five years ago, you were willing to stand up against politicians and commissars and apparatchiks when you saw them making decisions that threatened to destroy your country. Right? But now you’re working for people who are sucking the lifeblood out of Russia.”

“You do not understand.”

“Don’t I? Russia has a new chance, not just at life, but for greatness… but the Organizatsiya siphons off the profits, discourages new business, scares off foreign investment. Russia is dying, Admiral… and the Mafiya is a ghoul feeding off the corpse before it’s even properly dead-”

“Enough!” Golytsin brought his hand down sharply on a key. Dean suspected that there was a microphone wired to the computer, that the Russian had been recording the conversation.

But the conversation had veered unexpectedly in a new and unwanted direction.

“Things are not that simple,” Golytsin said. His face was flushed, and he was breathing heavily.

“No, sir. They never are.” Dean looked around the small office, at the thick steel bulkheads coated with pale green paint. “This is an astonishing facility you have here. Truly remarkable. It’s a real testament to Russian ingenuity, science, and technology, and if you’re able to develop it, it could help put Mother Russia smack back on the map. A global superpower. If Kotenko and his piranhas don’t strip her to the bone first!”

“I think this interview is at an end.” Golytsin stood.

“Time to turn me over to Braslov?” Golytsin gave him a sharp look, and Dean shrugged. “I know you were trying the good-cop/bad-cop ploy on me. Now it’s time to give me to the bad cop, right?”

“Mr. Dean-”

“You’re the one with the gun, Admiral. You decide what’s right. Just remember that you have to take the responsibility for the outcome of your decisions.”

“I do every day, Mr. Dean. Every day.”

“I imagine you met some people while you were in the gulag. People who offered you… what? An opportunity to get revenge over the party-blind bureaucrats and petty martinets who’d put you there? I’d like to know, Admiral. Is that revenge worth the survival of your country?”

“At this point, Mr. Dean, there is not much choice.” The anger had faded, leaving behind an expression of sheer emotional exhaustion.

“Bullshit. There’s always a choice!”

“Really? And what would my choice be down here?” Reaching up with the Makarov, he lightly tapped the steel bulkhead beside him. The steel was thick and gave back only a dull click. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Mr. Dean, this is a prison. It’s every bit as much a prison as the gulag.”

“Help me, McMillan, and Benford get out of here. Get us back to the surface, where we can be picked up by our people. And you come with us. We can offer you asylum.”

Golytsin expelled a single sharp puff of air, as though he’d been struck in the gut. “Asylum!” he said. “There is no asylum. Not from these people.”

“You could tell us what you know about the Organizatsiya. Names. Places. Projects. Damn it, Admiral, you could help us shut these bastards down, and give the New Russia a fighting chance!”

“No, Mr. Dean. It’s far too late for that.” Reaching over, he opened the door to the room and gestured with his pistol. “Time to go back to your quarters. You’re right about one thing, though. Sergei Braslov will want to have a talk with you in a little while. Perhaps you’d care to discuss the Tambov group’s role in the New Russia with him and a few of his muscular friends.”

“Admiral-”

“No, Mr. Dean. It’s time for you to return.”

Golytsin and the guard led Dean back down the passageway toward the storeroom.

SSGN Ohio Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1156 hours, GMT-12

“Captain! Sonar!” Chief Mayhew’s voice came over the intercom hushed but sharp with urgency.

“Go ahead, Chief.”

“Transients, Skipper! He’s opening his bow doors.”

“Where?”

“Starboard side, Captain. Estimate range is no more than one thousand yards!”

“Very well.”

Grenville was standing in the control room again. The compartment was dead silent, filled with sailors and officers all intently attending to their duties… and waiting for the next command from him.

He glanced at the plot board behind the periscope station, where an enlisted rating was using a grease pencil to mark the Ohio’s position relative to the probable position of sonar target 116. Half an hour ago, the Ohio had turned toward the target, moving dead slow. By now, they would be passing the target, starboard to starboard. Grenville’s intent was to pass the Victor, then pull a Williamson turn, swinging around 180 and dropping in on the Russian submarine’s tail.

If he was opening his bow doors, he was preparing to fire torpedoes. That could mean he’d heard the Ohio and was getting ready to fire now… or it could mean he merely suspected the Ohio was close and was preparing a war shot just in case. Which?

And where the hell was the Pittsburgh?…

GK-1 Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1201 hours, GMT-12

Golytsin held his pistol aimed at Dean’s left side as the young Russian soldier holstered his own pistol and fumbled with the keys outside of the locked storeroom door. The door swung open, and Dean saw Kathy’s worried face inside just above a bundled-up blanket, with Benford, looking sullen, standing behind her.

There would be no better time.

Marines learned in survival-training courses that if they were made prisoner, the best times to try an escape were when they were being moved. The guards would be more distracted at those times, would be forced to pay attention to more details, and there was always the possibility of the unexpected. The Makarov was aimed at Dean’s ribs, but Golytsin’s head had turned as he watched the door open… alert to the possibility that the prisoners had elected to use this opportunity to attempt an escape. Dean whipped around to his left, his elbow sweeping Golytsin’s wrist into his body, the heel of his right hand slamming up and across and squarely into Golytsin’s jaw.

The Russian staggered back a step and Dean followed, his right hand grabbing Golytsin’s right hand and turning it sharply inward, a jujitsu move that made it impossible to maintain a grip on anything in that hand. The pistol dropped, clattering onto the steel deck.

The naval infantry guard was grabbing for his holstered weapon when Kathy lunged through the door and hit him full in the chest. It had scarcely registered on Dean that she was clutching one of the blankets in front of her, using it as a shield. When she collided with the guard, there was a clatter and a number of large aluminum cans scattered across the deck. Dean dropped to his knees, scooping up the pistol Golytsin had dropped, then coming back to his feet just as the guard slammed backward into him.

The three of them, Kathy, the guard, and Dean, went down in a thrashing tangle of limbs and wildly rolling cans of stewed tomatoes. Somehow, Dean was able to roll out from under and get on top, the Makarov in his hand swinging up, then down with savage force, striking the guard in the side of the head with the weapon’s butt just as the man managed to pull his own pistol free.

The guard sagged back to the deck, unconscious. Dean rose shakily to his feet, the pistol aimed now at Golytsin, standing several feet away. “You okay?” Dean asked Kathy as she scrambled clear of the blanket and got to her feet.

“Yeah.”

“What’s with the cans in the blanket?”

“Improvised ballistic armor,” she said. “I thought it might at least deflect a bullet if he got off a shot.”

Dean was very glad she hadn’t had to put the idea to a test. It might have worked… or the 9mm round might have slammed straight through blanket, tomato cans, and Kathy and scarcely even slowed down.

“Put the guard in the room. And gather up those cans. Benford! You help her!”

“You can’t get out of here, you know,” Golytsin said.

“I’m damned well going to try. And you have a choice.”

“What choice?”

“You can get into that room. We’ll lock you in with this guy. When they let you out, you can quite truthfully say the Americans overpowered you and escaped.”

“Or?”

“Or you can come with us. The offer’s still open.”

Golytsin was clearly thinking about it as he stood there, rubbing his wrist where Dean had nearly broken it. Benford and McMillan together dragged the unconscious guard inside the storeroom, tossing in the blanket and the errant cans. Kathy retrieved the guard’s pistol and the keys.

“Time to make your decision,” Dean told him. “Loyalty to your new masters? Or loyalty to Mother Russia?”

Golytsin turned and entered the storeroom. Kathy began to close the door… and then he glanced around suddenly and said, “Wait! I’ll come!”

“Good man. C’mon.”

“You’re thinking of the Mir subs?”

“You have a better idea?”

“No. The Mirs are kept charged and ready to go at all times. They’re the closest we have to lifeboats in this place.”

After locking the storeroom door, the four of them hurried down the passageway, rounding the ninety-degree bend in the corridor and skirting the opening in the deck leading down into the facility’s control center. The waiting Mir subs were just ahead.

“Everyone grab a dry suit!” Dean called. “We’ll need ’em topside!”

And then a sharp cry came from behind.

“Stoy! Ruki v’vayrh!”

SSGN Ohio Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1204 hours, GMT-12

“Weps,” Grenville said softly. “What’s our war-shot status?”

“War shots loaded in tubes one, two, three, and four, Skipper. Inner and outer bow doors closed. Four Mark 48 ADCAP torpedoes ready for firing.”

“Open bow doors two and four,” he said. “But manually.”

“Open bow doors two and four manually. Aye, aye, sir.”

Using the hand cranks was slower, but it could be done in complete silence. He didn’t want the Victor out there hearing the Ohydro getting set to shoot. Tubes two and four were on the port side of the vessel, on the side farthest from the Victor now, but they would be the first to bear as the Ohio came out of the Williamson.

A minor point. In modern submarine warfare, you didn’t have to be aimed at the other guy to have a chance of hitting.

But it did help. Especially at close range.

“Captain, this is Chief Mayhew.”

“What is it, Chief?”

“I know this is out of order, sir, but… can I talk to you for a sec, here in Sonar?”

“Be right there.”

It couldn’t be super-urgent for Mayhew to sidestep the usual formalities of command protocol, but it did sound important. Grenville walked forward up the starboard passageway and stepped into the sonar shack.

“Whatcha got?”

“Sir… I don’t really have anything… but it’s kind of a… a feeling, okay?”

“A feeling.”

“Yes, sir. We’re still getting occasional transients from Sierra One-one-six, okay?”

“Yes…”

“And we’re getting a lot of background from, from… all over. Ice grinding overhead. We have some biologicals. Lots of noise from the ships on the surface. In fact, half the problem is just hearing the Victor’s transients over all the background-”

“What’s your point, Mayhew?”

“Sir… look here.” He pointed at one of the two display monitors above his workstation. It had been reconfigured to show a waterfall.

“Waterfall” was the term for a particular type of sonar display. It looked like a green TV screen filled with static, but with some of that static just orderly enough to begin to sketch out white lines against the green background. Across the top were compass bearings; down the left side were time readouts, recent at the top to older at the bottom. The waterfall made the universe of sound surrounding the Ohio visible and tracked each source over time. Each line drifted at an angle across the screen, its bearing changing as the Ohio moved relative to it or it moved relative to the Ohio.

“Ignore these three, Captain,” Mayhew said, indicating the three brightest and most slowly moving lines. “Those are the three ships topside. This is Sierra One-one-six.” He pointed to another line that, over the past few minutes, had drifted sharply across the Ohio’s starboard side.

“Not much there,” Grenville said.

“No, sir. We’re close enough to pick up some noise from his screw, and some from his power plant. Down here…” He pointed to a bright patch on the line. “That’s when he opened his bow doors.”

“Yes.”

And thank God a Russian torpedo hadn’t followed a moment later. The other captain was hunting still, not sure where the target was.

“This is what I wanted to show you, sir.”

Mayhew indicated an area of random static, a vague patch somewhere behind the Russian sub. Random static… but somewhat less of it than elsewhere on the screen…

Grenville’s eyes widened as he realized what he was seeing. “Shit!”

“I think-,” Mayhew started to say, but Grenville’s hand was already on the intercom mike.

“Helm! This is the captain! Hard left rudder! Now!”