Fortunes of War

16

Other weeks following the disaster in Tokyo Bay wore heavily on Prime Minister Atsuko Abe. At least 155,000 people died in the explosions and fires that raged out of control for two days in Yokosuka. Emergency workers estimated that 100,000 were injured; at least half the injuries were burns. Obeying standing orders, when the Yokosuka refinery fire was reported, the duty officer in the war room in the basement of the defense ministry called both Prime Minister Abe and the chief of staff of the Japanese Self-Defense Force at their homes. Both Abe and the general were in the war room when the ING tanker exploded. They sat there saying little as the reports came in. A television station quickly launched its helicopter. Soon the stunning visual panorama played endlessly from large-screen televisions mounted in strategic places throughout the room. Garish, ghastly fires everywhere, a sea of flame and destruction — these were the images burned into the minds of the men watching in the war room, and of the Japanese public, because these scenes were also playing live on nationwide television. Although Abe did not want the public to witness this calamity, he was powerless to prevent the television stations from showing what they pleased unless he wished to declare martial law, and he didn’t. He wasn’t about to admit that the situation in metropolitan Tokyo was beyond the control of the civilian government. Not yet, anyway. The prime minister’s first instinct was to blame the catastrophe on an earthquake. A tremor caused fatal damage to the refinery, which finally blew up disastrously. This would have been a good story and certainly plausible, but unfortunately the videotape from the television helicopter proved conclusively that the fire had started in several different places, as many as eight, and spread at least a half hour before the explosion that flattened the refinery and several square miles of nearby city. Worse, the cameraman in the helicopter managed to get footage of the Russian submarine several minutes before the fatal detonation. She was lying on the surface near the ING tanker, a recognizable black shape quite prominent against the reflection of the fire in the black water. When the ING tanker blew, the helicopter was dashed to earth and shattered as if it were a toy in the hands of some horrible Japanese movie monster. Of course, the television station made a tape of the video feed; they played the footage of the submarine over and over and over. The boat looked evil lying there in the darkness, its decks awash, its silhouette an ominous black shape amid the reflected glare of the holocaust. The public mood, somber enough after the invasion of Siberia was announced, turned even more gloomy. The racial memory of the B-29 firebombings of World War II was too fresh. Television pictures of burning cities, with the nation again at war, mesmerized the Japanese. The business of the nation ground to a halt as they watched in horror. Who was responsible?

“Atsuko Abe is responsible for every dead Japanese and every scarred, mutilated survivor.”

A senior member of an opposition party voiced this obvious truth; that sound bite was also carried nationwide by the television stations. Another senior politician added soberly, “It appears that our leaders have underestimated the Russians” military capacity.”

Abe’s reaction to this criticism was to cast about for ways to end the public’s unhealthy fascination with the submarine raid, the burned-out city, and the victims. He demanded legislation to censor the press, to put a stop to the public airing of negative comments. His party had a sufficient majority in the Diet to carry the day. At his insistence, the television went back to baseball and dramas; the newspapers avoided all mention of the war except when running news released by the defense ministry, which they published without comment. While he got his way, Abe was enough of a politician to realize that he had expended valuable political capital that he might need later, but he saw no alternative. If the public lost faith in the war effort now, before the conquest was assured, he and everything he had tried to achieve would be doomed. The one bright spot in the censorship fiasco was the removal of the daily list of casualties from Siberia from the nation’s front pages. Troops were encountering unexpectedly heavy opposition from ill-equipped Russian units, units that could almost be categorized as guerilla irregulars. Even without the daily butcher’s lists, however, the public seemed to sense that all was not going well. “Where will the Russians strike next?”

All over Japan, people asked that question. There were, of course, no answers. Abe supporters accused the doubters of being unpatriotic. The mood grew even uglier. Part of the problem was the economy. Japan’s stock market was quickly closed by the Abe administration when war broke out. In the real economy, things went rapidly to hell. Demand for Japanese goods in the United States, Japan’s largest foreign market, dropped dramatically. After the submarine disaster, shipowners refused to transport the raw materials and manufactured goods that kept the factories running and people eating. Idled factories laid off workers in huge numbers. Atsuko Abe wrestled with these problems, too. He and General Yamashita, the military chief of staff, believed that the military should take over the nation’s factories and shipping assets. This step was bitterly resisted by key members of Abe’s party, who pointed out that the war was supposed to stimulate the economy, not kill it. “Why is it,” Abe demanded of his party’s senior members, “that everyone is a patriot when patriotism is free, yet when it has a price, it has no friends?”

In western Russia life had become even more severe than it was before the Japanese invasion. Great masses of people were still hungry, factories still idle, and civilian construction projects stalled. Everyone was being squeezed as the military slowly and inexorably took control of every aspect of the nation’s life. Every man between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five who could pass a physical was being drafted and sent to recruit depots, there to wait for arms and equipment from obsolete, worn-out factories that were being restarted by decree. Every-thing— food, fuel, clothing, housing, everything — was being rationed. The censored media printed only propaganda. A people with little hope could see that their country had gone from bad to worse. The news of the devastation in Tokyo Bay caused by a Russian submarine hit this Russia with a stupendous impact. Pictures of Admiral Kolchak and a file photo of Pavel Saratov in his dress uniform were printed in the newspapers, made into posters, and displayed endlessly on television. The meager facts of Saratov’s life from his NAVY personnel file were expanded into a ten-thousand word biography that was printed in every newspaper in Russia west of the Urals. The loss of innocent life in Japan was horrific, frightening, but the image of a few brave men in a small submarine sneaking into the Japanese stronghold to cripple the arrogant, swaggering bully struck a deep chord in Russian hearts starved for good news. The press in Europe, in North and South America, and in Australia picked up the stories and broadcast them worldwide. Within four days of the disaster Pavel Saratov was the best-known Russian alive. During this orgy of patriotism Marshal Oleg Stolypin was trying to find the wherewithal to defend the nation. As he lay in bed at night trying to sleep, Stolypin had visions of Japanese armored columns following the railroad west all the way to Moscow. He would awaken with the nightmare of Japanese tanks in Red Square fresh in his mind. There weren’t enough troops to stop the Japanese if they really made up their minds to do it. Apparently the Japanese weren’t bold enough to risk everything on one wild lunge westward. Or foolish enough. Going blindly where little was known did not appeal to Stolypin’s military mind, either. The old gray marshal did not believe in luck. Unlike the late Marshal Ivan Samsonov, Stolypin was not a brilliant man. He was smart enough, but he had to look situations over carefully, weigh all the risks, ponder the possibilities. Once he was sure he was right, however, he was an irresistible force. Stolypin had quickly assembled and put to work an experienced staff that knew the true state of the Russian army. Armed with presidential decrees and newly printed money, military arms and equipment were broken out of storage and issued to the troops and new recruits, new equipment was rushed into production, and the transportation system was drastically and ruthlessly overhauled. The marshal concentrated on building his military strength. Any plans he made were going to hinge on the forces at his disposal. Increasing those forces was his first priority. His second priority was augmenting those forces in Siberia that could hurt the Japanese now. Men, weapons, ammo, and food were sent east by truck, train, and airplane. The marshal well knew that the meager forces in Siberia could not defeat the Japanese, but for the sake of the nation’s soul, they had to fight. One day Stolypin called on Aleksandr Kalugin to discuss the military situation. He found the president sifting through newspaper clippings and watching three televisions simultaneously.

“Saratov has united the Russian people,” Kalugin muttered, waving a fi/l of clippings. “They adore him.”

A few minutes later, apropos of nothing, the president remarked, “The man who crushes Japan will hold Russia in the palm of his hand.”

He listened distractedly to Stolypin’s report. “We’re losing, aren’t we?” he demanded at one point. “Sir, the Japanese are setting up military defenses in depth to protect the oil fields around Yakutsk and Sakhalin Island. They are digging in to stay around Khabarovsk and stockpiling men and equipment for a push up the Amur valley. My staff and I believe they intend to advance as far west as Lake Baikal before winter sets in, set up their first line of defense there.”

During most of this, Kalugin was shaking his head from side to side, slowly, with his eyes closed. “Questions are being asked in the congress,” he said. “The deputies want to see progress toward military victory. Our present small-unit actions merely harass the Japanese. Surrendering half of Siberia is not one of our options.”

“Mr. President, we do not have the forces to—“

“The people demand action! The deputies demand action! I demand it of you!”

Stolypin didn’t know what to say. He didn’t panic — panic wasn’t in him. He repeated the truth to the president. “We are doing all we can. Every day we grow stronger; every day we are one day closer to victory.”

Kalugin rose from his chair, shouting, “Lies, lies, lies! Every day the Japanese army advances deeper into Russia. I have listened to your lying promises long enough.”

He spun on the aging marshal, confronted him. “We must seize the moment. This moment in history is a gift; we must face it with bold resolve. We must not shrink from our duty.” Kalugin lifted his hand before his face and stared at it. “We must strike with all the might and power we possess. The man who strikes first will conquer.”

He smashed his fist down on a glass table, which shattered into a thousand pieces. “The prize is Russia, all of Russia. The man who refuses to be reasonable will triumph. That is the way of war. Atsuko Abe knows that. He is also a student of Genghis Khan.”

“Mr. President, we are striking the Japanese with all our strength.”

“No! No, Marshal Stolypin, we are not. We have ten nuclear weapons. When these weapons are exploding on Japan, then …” Kalugin drew a ragged breath. “Then will the victory be ours. We must apply overwhelming military force. Weakness merely tempts them, sir. I have studied these things. I know I am right. We must annihilate our enemies. Then Russia will be mine.”

One of the people Stolypin made time for every day was Janos Ilin. Ilin briefed him on the extent of the Japanese penetration of Siberia. Ilin was remarkably well informed. Extraordinarily so. He had the names of the Japanese units, how many men, how much equipment, even the names of the commanders. He used all of this to annotate tactical maps for the marshal, who spent spare moments studying them. Once the marshal questioned Ilin. “Where does all this information come from? I never realized the Foreign Intelligence Service was such a font of knowledge. I can’t even communicate with my units on a timely basis, yet you seem to be getting these maps from Tokyo every morning.”

“Sir, you know full well I cannot answer that question. If I start telling secrets, I soon won’t have any.”

“You are much better informed than the GRU.” The GRU was the army general staff’s intelligence arm. “We work different sides of the street.”

That was the last time the marshal brought up the subject. When the business of the day was over, Ilin usually lingered a few moments to chat. He was, of course, younger than the marshal and had never worked with him before. “Are you one of those,” Ilin asked, “who longs for the old days of glory?”

“Alas, no. The old days were not glorious. Corruption, selfishness, incompetence, blighted, drunken lives, universal poverty, pollution, wastage … Believe me, those days are best behind us.”

“But the army? It was huge, capable, the pride of every Russian.”

“The Kremlin gave us plenty of money and we shook our fists in the world’s face. The world trembled, yet the real truth was that the Soviet Union was never able to do more than defend itself. The nation was always poor. Our forces were designed for defense, not offense. For example, we had no ability to mount an invasion of the United States, although the Americans thought we could. Invading Afghanistan was the limit of our capability, and we lost there because we couldn’t force a quick decision.”

“So what is Russia’s destiny?”

“Destiny?” The old man snorted. “Our future.”

“After we defeat Japan? The great days for Russia all lie ahead. Without the paranoia of the Cold War, the psychotic babble of the Communists, and the expense of a huge military establishment, Russia will bloom as she has never bloomed before. You may live to see it, Ilin.”

A day or so later, as Ilin put away his charts and notes after a briefing, he said, “Too bad Samsonov is not here. He was brilliant.”

“That he was,” the marshal agreed. “He was my prodigy. I know genius when I see it, and I saw it in him. He was the best we had. Just when we needed him most, he is gone. Sometimes I wonder if God still loves Russia.”

“God had nothing to do with Samsonov’s death,” Ilin said, his eyes carefully searching the old man’s face. “What are you saying?”

“I want to know if I speak in confidence.”

“Do you think I have a loose tongue?”

“I think you are an honorable man, but if I am wrong we are both doomed.”

“I have no time for this.”

Ilin’s eyes didn’t miss a single muscle twitch in Stolypin’s face. “Ka-lugin had Samsonov executed. Kalugin’s personal bodyguard killed him. They buried him in the forest thirty miles north of the city.”

The old man’s face turned gray. “How do you know this?”

“My business is to know things. I have spies everywhere. My God, man, this is still Russia.”

“You have proof?”

From his jacket pocket Ilin produced a small photograph and passed it to the marshal. Samsonov’s head lay on a mound of dirt. There was a large bullet hole in his forehead. His eyes were open. “The hole in his forehead was the exit hole. He was shot from behind.”

Stolypin handed over the photo. Ilin took out a match, struck it, applied it to the corner of the celluloid. He dropped the flaming picture in an ashtray. “Why did you tell me this?”

“Kalugin has his men checking out the nuclear weapons at Trojan Island. They took the top experts in Russia with them.”

Marshal Stolypin took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. He kept his eyes on the residue of the photograph in the ashtray. A wisp of smoke danced delicately in the eddies of air. Stolypin met Ilin’s eyes. Ilin continued: “I am told that when Kalugin’s men are sent to kill someone, they ask the victim to sit in the front passenger seat. As the car rolls along, they talk of inconsequential things. When the victim is relaxed, off his guard, he is shot in the back of the head. It is quite painless, I believe.”

“So you have warned me.”

Ilin nodded. After a bit, he spoke again, softly. “Aleksandr Kalugin is another Joseph Stalin. He is paranoid and has no scruples, none whatever.”

“He is insane,” Marshal Stolypin said slowly, remembering his discussion with Kalugin several days before, during which the president smashed a glass table with his fist.

The Russians named the outfit American Squadron and ran stories on television and in newspapers to improve public morale. The capabilities of the F-22 Raptor were extolled to the skies. The Russian reporters called it a “superplane,” the best in the world. Flown by these ace American pilots, all of whom had volunteered to fly and fight for the Russian Republic, the F-22 would sweep the Japanese criminals from the skies in short order. Street kiosks sold posters showing the American volunteers standing around an F-22 with the flag of old Russia painted on the fuselage. No one outside the squadron was told that the flag had been painted on with water-based paint. After the photographers left, the linesmen carefully washed the still-damp paint from the aircraft’s smart skin. Col. Bob Cassidy was appalled when the military situation was explained to him at headquarters in Moscow. The Russians were not yet ready to resist the Japanese on the ground with conventional warfare tactics. When he was taken to meet Marshal Stolypin after the briefing, he kept his opinions to himself. The old man’s face revealed nothing. He listened to the translator, nodded, examined Cassidy as if he were looking at a department-store dummy. Bob Cassidy sat at attention. He felt as if he were back in the Air Force Academy for doolie summer. The old man had that effect.

Now the Russian marshal commented. “We are doing what we can for Russia, Colonel. I am sure your president would say that he also is doing what he can. I expect you to do likewise.”

“Yes, sir,” Cassidy said, blushing slightly when he had heard the translation. The marshal continued, absolutely impassive. “I would like for the American Squadron to attack the Japanese air force. Win air superiority. Once you have it, or while you are winning it, shoot down their transports, prevent them from repairing the railroads. If the Japanese are dependent on ground transportation, we will defeat them this winter.”

“May I ask, Marshal, how much pressure you want us to put on enemy truck convoys?”

“Use your discretion, Colonel. I am of a mind to give the Japanese all of Siberia they wish to take. It is a very big place. On the other hand, if you can create in them a burning desire to return to Japan, you will save many lives.”

The thought occurred to Bob Cassidy that Stolypin must play a hell of a game of poker. “This winter, your army will attack?”

“This winter,” said Marshal Stolypin, “we will kill every Japanese soldier in Siberia. Every last one.”

When the aerial wagon train arrived at the air base in Chita, the C-5 transports landed first. The base consisted of two runways, almost parallel, about seven thousand feet long. There wasn’t much room for error. The transports landed and taxied off the runway into the parking area while Col. Bob Cassidy kept his flight of six F-22’s high overhead. Two other airports, each with two runways, lay a few miles to the southwest. These were old military bases and had not been maintained, so the concrete was crumbling. An emergency landing there would probably ruin right-brace et engines. Cassidy was keeping a close eye on his tac display. A Washington colonel, Evan Register, had given Cassidy and the pilots accompanying him to Chita a brief last night, before the beer bust. “The Athena device in the new Zeros will keep them hidden from your radar. And shooting an AMRAAM at a Zero is a waste of a good missile — Athena will never let the darn thing find its target. Leave your radar off. Radiating will make you a beacon for the Zeros — they will come like a moth to light. “Sky Eye is your edge. The radars in the satellites have doppler capability. While they cannot see the Zeros, they can see the wakes they make in the air, especially when they are supersonic. A supersonic shock wave is quite distinctive.”

“Wait a minute,” one of the junior pilots said, wanting to believe but not quite ready to. “What’s the catch?”

In the back of the room, Cassidy tilted his chair back and grinned. Stanford Tuck had not let him down. “Well, of course there are some technical limitations,” the Washington wizard admitted. “This is cutting-edge technology. Detecting aircraft wakes with doppler works best in calm air. Summer turbulence, thunderstorms, rain, hail — all such conditions degrade the capability. The computer can sort it out to some extent, but remember the satellites are whizzing along, so the picture is constantly changing, and there is a lot of computing involved. We’ve been watching the wakes of Zeros for several weeks now. As long as the weather doesn’t change, we’ll be okay.”

Cassidy looked at his troops and shrugged. What could you do?

At 25,000 feet over Chita, Bob Cassidy wondered how effective Sky Eye was today. The air at this altitude seemed smooth enough. The sun was diffused by a high, thin layer of cirrus, which cut the glare somewhat. The land below looked uninviting. Chita was a small town on the upper reaches of the Amur River, backed up against a snow-covered mountain range, with another to the south. The arid land reminded Cassidy of Nevada or central Oregon. The runways below looked like bright strips on the yellow-brown earth. From this altitude the aircraft parking mats and a few buildings, probably hangars, were also visible. Fifteen hundred miles from the sea, the Amur River was a seasonal stream now carrying water from melting snow. Two bridges crossed the river, one for the Trans-Siberian Railroad and one for trucks. Just before the snows came, the river would cease to flow. Any water trapped in it would freeze solid. Khabarovsk lay a thousand miles downstream. From there, the river flowed northwest another five hundred miles to the Sea of Okhotsk. The tac display showed empty sky around the F-22 formation. He punched the display to take in all the territory between Chita and Zeya, five hundred nautical miles east. Five hundred nautical miles, the distance between Boston and Detroit. The distances in Siberia were going to take some getting used to. The land was vast beyond imagination. Man had barely made an imprint here. Cassidy wondered about Jiro Kimura. Was he still alive? And if so, where was he?

Jiro was on his mind a lot lately, just when he should be thinking of something else, concentrating on the job at hand. Cassidy growled at himself and tried to think of other things. Not a single bogey on the tac display, neither toward Khabarovsk nor Nikolayevsk. That bothered Cassidy. It would be nice if the satellite saw one or two…, but it didn’t. Apparently. Subject, of course, to the inevitable high-tech glitches. Cassidy glanced down at the transports on the airfield. They were quite plain at this altitude. If all was going as planned, the crews were unloading the Sentinel batteries, which were mounted on trailers. The aircraft also brought four Humvees, which would pull the trailers. A Sentinel unit was being spotted on each side of the runway and turned on. The others would be towed away from the base that afternoon and evening, set up in a pattern on local roads in the area. As soon as the units were off-loaded, the two C-5’s would take off and head back over the pole toward Alaska. Tankers were supposed to meet them several hours out. Tankers had been crucial to the success of this operation, moving airplanes and equipment a third of the way around the globe and arriving ready to fight. Finding a tanker in the va/s of the sky had always been a challenge, a real tightrope act when one was low on fuel. GPS now made the rendezvous phase routine, which was fine by everyone. Now Cassidy eyed his fuel gauges. The fighters had tanked an hour ago, so they were fat, but Cassidy didn’t know how much longer he could remain strapped to this ejection seat. He’d been sitting in this cockpit over six hours. He itched and ached. He squirmed in the seat, trying to give his numb butt some relief. Another half hour passed. One of the C-5’s taxied to the end of the runway, sat there for five minutes, then began to roll. The other was taxiing as the first one lifted off. Cassidy waited until the C-5’s were ten minutes north, then pulled the throttles back and started down.

The first problem the Americans faced was parking their planes. The base was beyond the tactical range of Zeros flying from Khabarovsk, which was cold comfort since the Japanese now had planes at Zeya. And if they used a tanker, they could strike this base anytime they wished from almost anywhere, including Japan. With that in mind, the F-22’s were dispersed all over the field. The revetments were full of obviously abandoned fighters, some of them old Mig-19’s and Mig-21’s. Some of these antiques had flat tires, oil leaks, sand and bird’s nests in the intakes. The Americans pushed and pulled the Russian iron out of the revetments and put the F-22’s in. Then they rigged camouflage nets. Some of the best spots, concrete revetments completely hidden by large trees, were already taken by Sukhoi-27’s, which looked ready to fly. The Sukhois were attended by grubby, skinny Russians who smelled bad and didn’t speak English. The Americans passed out candy bars and soon made friends. While the candy was eaten eagerly, the Russians really wanted cigarettes, which the Americans didn’t have. Now that he was on the ground, Cassidy thought the Chita area was a bit like Colorado. The base and the small town huddled around the railroad station a few miles away were in a basin, surrounded by snow-covered mountains to the north, west, and south. The air was crystal-clear: From here, it was a long way to anywhere. At least the communications were first-rate: The Americans had brought their own com gear, portable radios that bounced their signals off a satellite, which meant that the operators could talk to anyone on the planet. Cassidy got on the horn immediately. He used the cryptological en-coder, set it up based on the date and time in Greenwich, then waited until it phased in. When he got a dial tone, he called the Air Force command center in the Cheyenne Mountain bunker in Colorado Springs. “All quiet, Colonel. They haven’t stirred much today.”

Bob Cassidy breathed a sigh of relief. By the following morning, the defenses here would be ready, but not quite yet. Everything was a problem, from berthing to bathrooms. The pilots got an empty ramshackle barracks and the enlisted got two. The bathrooms were appalling. Each building had one solitary toilet without a seat to serve the needs of the eighty people who would be bunked in that building.

“If my mother saw this, she’d faint dead away. She always wanted me to join the NAVY, live like a gentleman,” Bob Cassidy told a little knot of junior officers he found staring into a dark, filthy barracks bathroom. “Why didn’t you?”

“I used to get seasick taking a bath.”

“You’ve certainly come to the right place, Colonel. You won’t have to take baths here.”

“Fur Ball, you and Foy Sauce go dig a hole for an outhouse. Scheer, you take these others and tear down that old shack across the road for wood. Get some tools from the mechanics and watch out for rusty nails. And build one for the enlisted troops, too.”

When Cassidy disappeared, Hudek said disgustedly, “Outhouses!

We’ve come halfway around the world to build outhouses.”

“Glamour,” Foy Sauce muttered. “High adventure, fame … I am so goddamn underwhelmed, I could cry.”

That evening everyone ate in an abandoned mess hall. The stoves used wood from the nearby forest. The doctor who had accompanied the group from Germany refused to allow anyone to drink the water from the taps, so bottled water was served with the MRES— meals, ready to eat. The’ MRES were opened, warmed somewhat on the stoves, and served. Later that evening, Maj. Yan Chernov came looking for the commanding officer. He had a translator in tow. After the introductions, he told Cassidy, “My men need food. We came here from Zeya two weeks ago. The base people have no extra food.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Sixty-five.”

Cassidy didn’t hesitate. “We’ll share, Major.” He caught the supply officer’s eye and called him over. After a brief conversation, he told the translator, “Dinner for your people will be in twenty minutes.”

“We have no money. Nothing with which to pay.”

“Zeya is down the valley, isn’t it?”

“Yes. East. The Japanese attacked. I shot down a few.”

“With Su-27’s?”

“Yes, good plane.”

“My first name is Bob.” Cassidy held out his hand. “Yan Chernov.”

“Let’s have a long talk while you eat. I want to know everything you know about the Japanese.”

The sea was calm, with just the faintest hint of a swell. The boat rocked ever so gently as it ghosted along on its electric engines. Fog limited visibility and clouds blocked out the night sky. A gentle drizzle massaged Pavel Saratov’s cheeks as he stood in Admiral Kolchak’s tiny cockpit atop the sail. He took a deep breath, savoring the tang of the sea air, a welcome contrast from the stink of the boat. Alive. Ah, how good it was. Unconsciously he fingered the lumpy new scar on his forehead, a jagged purple thing that came out of his hairline and ran across above his left eye, then disappeared into his hair over his left ear. The fragments of the Japanese shell that struck the bridge had torn off half his scalp. The corpsman had sewn the huge flap of skin back in place, and fortunately it seemed to have healed. The scar was oozing in several places — an infection, the corpsman said. He smeared ointment on the infected places twice a day. Every morning he used a dull needle to give Saratov an injection of an antibiotic as the crew in the control room watched with open mouths. Saratov always winced as if the needle hurt mightily. He had inspected the bottle of penicillin before the first injection. The stuff was grossly out of date, but since it was all they had, he passed the bottle back to the corpsman without comment and submitted to the jabs. An hour before midnight. Here under the clouds, amid the fog, it was almost dark, but not quite. A pleasant twilight. At these latitudes at this time of year the night would not get much darker. At least the clouds shielded the boat from American satellites. He wondered if the Americans were passing satellite data to the Japanese. Perhaps, he decided. Saratov didn’t trust the Americans. Behind Saratov, the lookout had the binoculars to his eyes, sweeping the fog. “Keep an eye peeled,” Saratov told him. “If the Japanese know we are here, we will have little warning.”

As his wound healed, Saratov had ordered the boat northward, keeping it well out to sea. He lay in his bunk staring at the overhead and eating moldy bread, turning over his options. He refused to make a radio transmission on any frequency. The danger of being pinpointed by radio direction finders was just too great. One evening the boat copied a message from Moscow. After it was decoded, Askold delivered it to the captain, who read it and passed it back.

“Captain, Moscow says to go to Trojan Island. I have never heard of it.”

“Umm,” Saratov grunted. “It’s not on the charts.”

“It is a submarine base, inside an extinct volcano, near the Kuril Strait. It was a base for boomers. Abandoned years ago.”

“What will we do, Captain?”

“Hold your present course and speed. Let me think for a while.”

Trojan Island. After several days of thought, Saratov decided to try it, because the other options were worse. Now he spoke into the sound-powered telephone on his chest. “XO, will you come up, please?”

When the executive officer was standing beside Saratov in the cockpit, he said, “The island is dead ahead, Captain. Four miles, if our navigation is right.”

“I haven’t been here in twelve years,” Saratov muttered. “I hope I haven’t forgotten how to get in.”

“Amazing,” the XO said. “A sub base so secret that I never heard about it.”

“You weren’t in nuclear-powered submarines.”

“What if there is nothing there anymore?”

“I don’t know, Askold. I just don’t know. It’s a miracle the P-3’s haven’t found us yet. Sooner or later they will. I thought about stopping a freighter, putting all the men aboard and scuttling the boat. We have an obsolete submarine, the periscope is damaged, we’re running low on fuel and food, and we have only four torpedoes left. We’ve done about all the damage we can do”" “Yes, sir.”

The XO concentrated on searching the fog with binoculars. They heard the slap of breakers on rocks before they saw anything. Probing the fog with a portable searchlight, Saratov closed warily on the rocky coast at two knots. At least the sea was calm here in the lee of this island. He finally found rocks, rising sheer from the sea. It took Saratov another hour to find the landmarks he wanted, mere fading gobs of paint smeared on several rocks. He was unsure of one of the marks — there wasn’t much paint left — but he kept his doubts to himself. After taking several deep breaths, Saratov turned the boat, got on the heading he wanted, then ordered the boat submerged. In the control room, he ordered the michman to take the boat to a hundred feet, then level off. While this was going on, he studied the chart he had worked on for an hour earlier that day. “I want you to go forward on this course at three knots for exactly five minutes, then make a ninety-degree right turn. If we go slower, the current will push us out of the channel.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

“If we hit some rocks at three knots we’ll hole the hull,” one of the junior officers said, trying to keep it casual. “This is a dangerous place to get into,” the captain replied, trying to keep the censure from his voice. Now didn’t seem the time to put junior officers in their place. “Sonar, start pinging. Give me the forward image on the oscilloscope.”

As the submerged boat approached the island, the hole in the rock became visible on the scope. Pinging, afraid of going slower, Saratov aimed for the tunnel. Around Saratov, everyone in the control room was sweating. “This is worse than Tokyo Bay,” the XO remarked. No one said a word. All eyes were on the oscilloscope. As the sub entered the hole, Saratov ordered the speed dropped to a knot. He crept forward for a hundred yards, watching the scope as the sonar pinged regularly. The chamber ended just ahead. With the screws stopped, the chief began venting air into the tanks. The sub rose very slowly, inching up. When the boat reached the surface, Saratov cranked open the hatch dogs, flung back the hatch, and climbed into the cockpit. The boat lay in a black lagoon inside a huge cavern. That much he had expected. What Saratov had not expected were the electric lights that shone brightly from overhead. A pier lay thirty meters or so to port. Standing on the pier were a group of armed men in uniform: Russian naval infantry. Saratov gaped in astonishment. One of the men on the pier cupped his hands to his mouth and called, “Welcome, Captain Saratov. We have been waiting for you.”