Kirov

Chapter 1

Admiral Leonid Volsky shifted uncomfortably in his chair as he stared out at the slate gray sea. There was something wrong with the morning, he thought, and something vaguely disturbing about this whole mission. He felt it from the very first, that vague sense of disquiet within him that had dogged his thoughts all morning. What was it?

The mission itself was nothing out of the ordinary—a simple live fire exercise in the Norwegian Sea. There had been so many before it, long, dull cruises punctuated by a single moment of bravado when the missiles would catapult up from the forward deck and rocket away, the men cheering them on as they went to find the target barges to the south.

He was waiting on K-266, the submarine Orel, scheduled to make its missile firing at zero eight hundred hours, but Orel was late, and the Admiral had become more and more impatient. The crew could see it in his eyes, dark brown eyes, deep set under bristling low brows. Orel was late, and for a man accustomed to tight schedules, itineraries, precise maneuvers required to coordinate fleet actions, tardiness was inexcusable.

Orel was late because her Captain Rudnikov was fat and stupid, he thought. And Rudnikov was fat and stupid because the aging incompetence of the Russian system itself still permeated the navy these days, and that was the sad fact of the matter.

Leonid Volsky was not happy. He was in his seat on the bridge of the most formidable ship his country had ever put to sea, the nuclear guided missile cruiser Kirov, flagship and pride of the Russian Navy, and he was about to unleash her scheduled missile salvo for the exercise now underway. Thirty kilometers to the south, the old cruiser Slava was towing a line of targeting barges, a makeshift NATO task force, but hapless captain of the Orel had had radioed to say that he was having trouble with one of his missiles. It seems the crew had mistakenly loaded a 15 Kiloton nuclear warhead, and not the required high explosive version designated for the target. The breach of weapons handling procedures for nuclear armaments was unthinkable. The incompetence galled him, and he let the Orel’s captain know exactly how he felt about the matter, his deep voice loud and irritated on the radio, edged with impatience, and carrying the considerable weight of his thirty years command.

The more Admiral Volsky thought about the exercise, the more he came to see in it a reflection of his own nation’s predicament at that time in history. Here he was, in the pride of the Russian fleet, yet largely alone on the cold gray Arctic seas. He was not in the warmer, busy waters of the Atlantic, nor in the tranquil humid climes of the vast Pacific. No, the Russian fleet was consigned to maneuver in these forsaken, icy waters, just as Russia herself had been isolated by a new political frost that seemed to cover the world in recent years. After conflicts with the Americans over Iran’s nuclear program, particularly involving the Russian fleet that had been sent to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, relations between Moscow and Washington had deteriorated considerably. Sadly, the Russian Navy had deteriorated as well. It was no longer the great threat that it had once been when the Red Banner Fleet was the terror of NATO war games in the North Atlantic. This exercise seem pathetic to him compared to the old days when he would sail with a full battle squadron in a powerful surface action group accompanied by five to seven attack submarines as well.

But Mother Russia was a sick old woman now, and could not afford the blue water navy she had always dreamed of. In the year 2021, the country was a strange patchwork of conflicting influences. In the big cities, there was still wealth, consumerism, along with all the ills of modernity—advertising, financial crime, corruption in government and politics. The country had opened itself to Western commerce and culture, but was still harried by a lingering state of mind that could only be described as paranoid suspicion. The Kremlin too often found foreign fingerprints on any crisis, and in a country where political and historical reality was a construct of words more than deeds, it was too easy to foist off the failures of government and Russian society as a whole on unfriendly outside influences.

When the great financial crisis fell on the world between 2008 and 2015, it was said that the Americans created the crisis as a means of destroying Russia, and America was to blame for every ill that now beset the nation. It was almost a reflexive reaction to adversity at times, this propensity to blame anyone other than one’s self, and it extended right up through the whole system to the highest levels of government.

When a TU-134 jet went down near Petrozavodsk, killing 47 passengers, the incident was first blamed on Chechen terrorists, then on faulty aircraft parts obtained from a foreign manufacturer. Nothing was said of the pilot, Anton Atayev, who was drunk as he piloted the plane that day. Later it was whispered that Anton had only turned to vodka to soothe the pain of his divorce, and that his wife had betrayed him—again foisting the real problem off on someone else. Too many Russian men were still like Gogol’s “lost souls,” mired in their own self-indulgent and complacent mediocrity, a condition described by the untranslatable Russian word poshlost. They muted the pain of their lives with vodka, and took out their simmering frustrations on their women, who were often the victims of abuse. Excuses were easy to come by in Russia—reasons, justifications, stories put forward to rationalize any ill. Anton was just a victim of an unfaithful wife, that was all, it was whispered. She should be beaten, or worse, and reminded of her place.

The words became a balm, and a means of dismissing the crushing problems of daily life, whether they were true or not. Yet in spite of their sad and degrading lot, deep down, Russians still took great pride in their heritage and roots, just as Moscow still clung to the vestige of its history in the aging architecture of earlier times, the gold domes and minarets of the Kremlin still gleaming in the wan light on the cold winter days. Now the city again had a brooding military hue at times, and the winters there were no less cold and harsh in spite of the brief warmth of Glasnost with the West that had brought capitalism to the heart of the nation.

The farther you went from the big cities, however, the more you came to feel you were still trapped in that older world, in the old fallen Soviet state where nothing of value had ever been born. Volsky remembered that last long train ride he had taken from Moscow to his base at Severomorsk. The small villages and towns were still struggling to make the transition away from communism and define a new way of life. The rusting infrastructure of the old Soviet regime was still there. Old manufacturing towns that were once centered on a worker’s kollectiv, a state farm, a factory, a shipyard, were now like failed industrial ghost towns. People struggled for the barest necessities of life and to simply secure those few things that could provide a little comfort, safety and stability for their family—food and shelter.

Thankfully, he no longer had to concern himself with those struggles. His position as Admiral of the Fleet came with certain privileges, and enough for him to keep his family and aging parents comfortable enough in St. Petersburg. He had secured his post through long years of service and hard work, however, and a stoic acceptance of the creaking machinations of the system the navy had become—a clear reflection of the decrepit state of the nation as a whole.

Politically, Russia was still fundamentally irrational at heart. It had moved from autocracy, to revolution, to empire and then into rapid decline, a fall so dark and bleak that the nation struggled to hold onto the barest hint of its old glory, prompting many to long for the old days of Soviet discipline and power. Corruption in government was everywhere apparent, yet never really challenged by any countervailing authority. A new lie was broadcast each day to justify all those that came before it, and this aching nostalgia for a time when Russia had once been a great and mighty world power was a way to forget the lies, and turn a blind eye on the corruption.

Fraud and bribery were old and familiar habits in the system. Enforcement of laws was arbitrary, and often rested on a network of complex relationships—in groups, out groups, favored sons—the blat that held the system together. Anything that got done was usually done poblatu, using blot to grease the way.

Prestige was just as important as power, and pride that had become a tainted hubris was still at the heart of the Russian psyche as well. The people endured, for if they could not easily expect a time when things might be better, they could almost always remember a time when they were worse. People lived with their broken system, lived in it, worked in it, struggled on in spite of it, and this fear that everything might again get so much worse was always at the heart of the fear in every Russian’s soul.

Getting anything done in this environment required guile, blat, and more than a little babki in the right palms, the monetary bribes that would seal deals and open doors. Vodka was a second currency in the country, and people literally traveled with cases of the stuff in the trunks of their cars—those lucky enough to even have a personal vehicle. Thankfully, Volsky had avoided the blight of vodka in his own life. He drank, as virtually all Russian men did, but was able to impose his basic rule of thumb in life on those habits—moderation in all things. Yet, vodka could be traded for gasoline, food, a night’s lodging, or special favors that might untangle the Gordian knots of local administrative districts, or bypass overly curious authority figures, and the Admiral was fond of giving it as a gift when appropriate. The system was long entrenched, a way of life, and no one avoided the necessities of blat and babki in Russia, no matter how high they had climbed.

In many ways, the blat provided by friends and favors was often more important than cash. Rubles could buy you a meal today, but friends and the right connections could feed you for a lifetime, so it was said that it was better to have a hundred friends than a hundred rubles. Yet this system of installing people in key posts due to affiliation had a blowback in the sad fact that many positions soon became filled by people who were simply incompetent. And once there, they held on to jobs stubbornly because they never knew if they would ever find another one. They were stuck to their chairs with blat, not because of any particular merit or skill they possessed.

Rudnikov, the Captain of the Orel, was a perfect example, thought Volsky. He was old, and tired, and rusty like his submarine. He should have been replaced by a younger man years ago. There were enough of them out there in the ranks, eager for promotion and a way up the gangways to a more comfortable place of power and privilege. Rudnikov was stuck in his post just as Russia itself seemed mired in its own systemic incompetency.

As she completed the second decade of the twenty-first century, Russia was still a nation still struggling up off her knees, a population deeply distrustful of authority, but who nonetheless submitted to it for fear of change and the uncertainty that is at the very heart of that process. Change was uncomfortable, except for the very young, and always went hand in hand with the notion of threat and instability. So the Russians adapted, and they endured the hard change of recent years, always hoping for better times, but always expecting things to get worse.

Volsky shook these sad thoughts from his mind, glad at least that Kirov was here beneath him in spite of these difficulties. It took all the nation’s technical resources, and the cannibalization of several older vessels, to build the ship the Admiral was standing upon now. As for Orel, he thought, that old submarine should have been mothballed years ago. The day of the Oscar had come and was long since gone. Construction had been halted on the last three in her class, and there would be no further development.

The same could be said for the submarine’s crew, he thought. Mounting the wrong ordnance was sheer stupidity. Such a misstep would be unthinkable in time of crisis, which was exactly what this exercise was supposed to be simulating. It spoke of gross incompetence, disorderly procedures, and poor leadership. He had seen all too much of that in his time in the navy, and was tireless in trying to root it out. If he had been aboard that boat, he would have the Captain in a pot for soup. But instead it was the Admiral who was stewing, shifting restlessly in his chair, his eyes ever on the barometer at the far wall of the bridge citadel, dark flashing glances that spoke volumes. Leonid Volsky was worried about something.

For two days now he had been bothered with an ache in a tooth that always seemed to signal bad weather. Now the sallow grey skies, rising winds, and slowly surging seas also spoke the same to him. He could ask Rodenko about it, his able radar man, but he would learn nothing more than he already knew. The Arctic seas were vast and fickle, dangerous and temperamental. They could lull you with a sea of glass under a thick icy fog one minute, and then blow with a force nine gale the next. The current situation had all the hallmarks of big storm brewing on the horizon. Rodenko would tell him the front was 60 miles out and moving at 30 knots, leaving him plenty of time to complete this exercise and batten down for rougher seas, but the smell of the air, that dull, empty, icy cold Arctic air, told him everything he needed to know. He could sense the storm, taste it, feel it as the pressure slowly dropped. His ears would ring, his eyes begin to water from the chill, his sinuses dry and irritated.

And the Admiral was irritated as well. It was something more that was bothering him now, a vague unrest, a veiled inner thrum of anxiety, an off sense of foreboding that he could not quite localize in his mind. Yes, he had good reason to worry now with tensions on the rise and war games in the offing again. The frost of a new cold war was blowing in like that distant threatening weather front. Yet this was something more. He could feel the unease in his bridge crew as well, sense their quiet apprehension. Karpov was, of course, the worst of the lot. The Captain was pacing, his hands clasped behind his back, his face hard beneath the thick wool fringed Ushanka that he always wore when on duty.

Then, like a pot that had finally reached its boiling point, the Admiral launched himself into a long, unhappy discourse.

“What does Rudnikov have to say now?” Volsky said to his radioman Nikolin. “Tell them we are fifteen minutes behind schedule. In that much time an American task force could have twenty Tomahawk cruise missiles bearing down on us, or worse. We would have lost the element of surprise, completely mishandled our approach to the target, and we would most likely be sitting at the bottom of the sea to contemplate the error of our ways. The man who fails to think ahead of time will have a very long time to think afterwards when his fat, ugly boat is berthed up in Murmansk with all the rest, waiting to be broken up for scrap and hauled away by the salvage teams. Perhaps then he will have learned the value of proper timing in a naval exercise.”

Members of the bridge crew smiled to themselves as they listened, accustomed to the Admiral’s long diatribe on most any subject that did not meet with his approval. To them he was old “Papa Volsky,” Grand Admiral, Godfather, King of the Northern Seas. And they were his well favored and trusted retainers, many of them hand-picked and promoted up through the ranks by this very man. He was a shining example of naval professionalism, a consummate strategist, strict disciplinarian, yet an amiable father to a crew he regarded as his own private family. His strength, willpower, decisiveness, and quiet dignity had been an example to them all for years now, even as his wrath would be their bane. Just the sight of him, sitting thoughtfully in his command seat, his hand toying with the wood of his pipe, was a comfort to them. His deep set eyes would flash beneath graying brows when he spoke, his voice a strong baritone suited to his ample frame.

They would do anything for him, go anywhere with him, and he returned their loyalty with the generosity that sometimes seemed out of place on a naval warship where Spartan asceticism was the rule the day. Yet no one was surprised when a box of fine Cuban cigars would turn up in the wardroom, a gift from the Admiral to all his ranking officers and chiefs.

On the other hand, like the sea around him, he could be temperamental at times, quick to anger one moment, stoic and quiet at other times when a brooding inner vision seem to haunt him, a quiet darkness that hid within his soul in a place no man could sit with him for tea. At such times he expressed his frustrations in these long monologues, lecturing, as any father would do with wayward sons. He was firm in handling any perceived breach of procedure, but never cruel or heartless. When he criticized, he could drain the blood from a man’s face in ten seconds. Yet when he praised a man, you could see the lucky soul swell right there before him. It was not mere bluster and the bludgeon of authority that gave the man his rank. His mere presence radiated command, from the cut of his uniform, to the tilt of his cap, Leonid Volsky was an admiral in every sense of the word.

Volsky crossed his arms and pursed his lips, clearly bothered by the delay. This was supposed to be a simple live fire exercise, a routine that had been practiced many times before, yet now it seemed to auger something dark and foreboding. He had a strange feeling that there was something amiss, something slightly off its kilter. It was not merely the impending onset of bad weather, or the frustrating incompetence of Rudnikov on the Orel. There was something more….He could not see what it was just yet, but some inner voice warned him that this day would be far from routine. Call it intuition, or the barnacled salt of many years experience at sea, but Volsky sensed something was wrong. He found himself listening intently to the ship, the sound of its turbines, the hum of the electronic consoles here on the main bridge, as if he might ferret out the vague disquiet that had settled over him. Yet everything sounded normal to his well tuned ear.

The ship he sailed was the newest addition to the fleet, a miraculous resurrection of one of the most imposing classes of surface combat vessels ever designed. Any sailor worth his salt will tell you that it’s bad luck to rename a ship, but the Russians never seemed to bother with it. Most ships in the Kirov class had started with the name of the Russian city, and then been renamed after a famous admiral or general. In Kirov’s case, the ship also bore the name of the revolutionary hero Sergey Kirov. Sure enough, one by one, each ship seemed to suffer some peculiar fate, an accident, a mishap at sea, then a seemingly endless berthing at a lonesome port awaiting a promised overhaul that never came. Kirov had suffered more than others. First launched in the 1980s, the ship bedeviled Western naval planners for decades. She was renamed Admiral Ushakov much later in her history, but had long since been retired after an accident with her nuclear reactor made the vessel unserviceable.

And so went the fate of each ship in this unlucky class. The second ship, Frunze, had been renamed Admiral Lazarov, and it lasted no more than ten years in active service before being decommissioned. Kalinin, the third of ship, was renamed Admiral Nakhimov and fared little better, being retired in 1999. As if to avoid the curse, the final ship began as Yuri Andropov and then was renamed Pytor Velikiy, (Peter The Great) in 1992. It continued to serve until 2014 before it, too, was berthed in Severomorsk alongside the aging hulks of its sister ships. This last ship had run afoul of the curse during an exercise much like the one Leonid Volsky was organizing today. The Pytor Velikiy was coordinating live fire exercises with an Oscar II class submarine, when the undersea boat suffered a tragic misfire with one of her torpedoes and exploded taking the lives of all hands on board. And now it seemed the same situation was repeating itself again.

The Kirov class languished for years, laid up and removed from active service, the proud vessels wasting away in the cold northern harbors of Murmansk while the Russians haggled over how to find the money to refit them. But the money was never there. It was not until global circumstances forced the Russians to finally modernize their Navy that the designers and architects again began to draw up plans for an ocean going warship capable of standing with any other ship in the world. One proposal after another was drafted, yet each seemed too grandiose and far-reaching to ever be realized. In the end, the Russians decided that, with four old Kirov class cruisers lying in mothball, they would have enough raw material to refit at least one of these ships by cannibalizing all of the others. And this they did.

Built from the bones of every ship and its class, the new vessel had been given top priority in the shipyards to form the heart of a blue ocean task force that was still under development. Rather than rebuilding the ship from scratch, laying down the keel and working their way up, the ship had been gutted and redesigned from the inside out. The hull was extended and re-metaled, the superstructure modified, up-armored, and fitted out with all the very latest equipment in terms of missiles and sensors in the year 2017. Three years later, after extensive and still costly refitting, it was time to christen the new vessel and commission her into the fleet.

God created the heavens and the earth in just six days, thought Volsky, and on the seventh day he built Kirov. She was an awesome ship when finally completed. Her designers thought it only fitting that she be given back her old name, and they made her the flagship of the new Northern Fleet.

For years the Russian shipyards had turned out little more than a few insignificant frigates and corvettes. But after closely observing modern naval engagements from the Falkland Islands conflict to the wars in the Persian Gulf, Russian planners had decided it was necessary to revitalize their aging fleet with something a little more formidable. The new Kirov was everything they hoped for and more, like a proud old armored knight coming out of retirement in an hour of greatest need. At 32,000 tons when fully loaded, she was one of the largest surface action ships in the world, exceeded in size only by the American supercarriers and the aging Iowa class battleships that were now no more than tourist attractions and well past their day in any case. The Russians had always had a fondness for building things big, and building them strong. Kirov was both.

Officially designated a nuclear guided missile cruiser, Western planners referred to her as a battlecruiser, and in size and scale she was really very much closer to that ship type, which had first entered the naval lexicon during the First World War—a ship with the speed of a fast cruiser, yet the fighting power of something much bigger. At 32 knots, Kirov was as fast as any destroyer or cruiser in the world. Yet her armament was considerably stronger, updated with the very latest in new Soviet technology for both guns and missile systems.

Her primary armament was a potent array of anti-ship missiles that were carried on her long forward deck section. Unable to compete with the West in terms of aircraft carriers, Russia pursued an intensive development in the area of missile technology, and now possessed some of most lethal and efficient anti-ship missiles on earth.

Kirov also boasted the latest in Soviet naval gun technology, twin 152mm guns mounted on their new stealth turret to help lower the radar signature. The gun was the equivalent of a 5.9 inch naval battery, and could fire 30 rounds per minute at a range exceeding 25 kilometers. The day of the big gun was long gone. Even these 152mm turrets would be thought of as typical secondary armament on an old WWII battleship, or the primary guns on lighter class cruisers of that era. Heavy cruisers might carry a bigger 8 inch gun, and the battlecruisers and battleships trumped this with guns firing shells in the range of 11 to 16 inches in diameter. The Japanese behemoth Yamato carried the largest guns in the world at 18 inches, three times as large as those mounted on Kirov. Yet, in her day, the year 2021, no ship mounted bigger or a more potent array of weapons.

For air defense, long-range SAM batteries were augmented by medium range missile defense systems and an array of rapid firing Gatling guns should anything penetrate this defense.

Finally, the ship was also equipped with the latest UGST versatile deep-water homing torpedo, a total of 10 firing tubes, five on each side. This was an extremely dangerous weapon, able to range out as far as 50 kilometers and travel that distance in one hour at its highest speed. As it approached the target, be it a submarine or surface ship, or even the wake of a surface ship, it could home in beginning at a range of 2 kilometers.

The aft section of the ship was also a landing platform for three helicopters. Two KA-40 naval helos could provide over the horizon reconnaissance, radar picket duties, and ASW defense carrying the APR-3 water-jet-propelled torpedo capable of attacking submarines at a submerged depth of 500 meters and KAB-250PL guided depth charges. One KA-226 scout chopper was a modified version of the rescue helo built for the Moscow police, and carried a 30 mm cannon with provisions for air-to-air or surface attack missiles on two stubby wing pods. With a flight endurance of between 4 and 6 hours, the helo mounted HD-optical zoom and infrared cameras, and also had laser range finding. All in all, the battlecruiser literally bristled with weaponry, one of the most powerful surface combatants in the world. Considering the chaos and contradiction of the nation all this had come from, it was a miracle the ship was ever rebuilt.

Admiral Leonid Volsky had sailed her throughout her trials and made two world cruises, showing the flag in ports o’ call all across the globe and again troubling the dreams of many Western naval analysts. Now, in the year 2021, increased tensions had put the Russian Navy on a near wartime footing.

The long fall had swept away Russia’s stilted Soviet political structures, leaving a hard shell of dysfunctional autocracy in its place in the neo-Russia that grew from the ashes. Her armies had diminished, just as the navy had been broken up and sold off to scrap yards, third world countries and even China had picked over the bones, purchasing one of Russia’s two large fleet aircraft carriers from Ukraine after that country inherited the ship from the old Black Sea Fleet. China was still rising, more powerful on the world stage than ever, but Russia never regained her lost glory. She was kept at arm’s length by NATO, shunned by the troubled European Union, and was a strange bedfellow in the new Asian coalition she had tried to forge with China.

Only her resources saved her from being relegated to the status of a third rate nation now—the vast mineral deposits, timber and oil of Siberia. Yet American oil companies, ever more thirsty for light sweet crude, had played hard ball with the Russians of late. They had tried to squeeze her out of the Caspian basin long ago, and the flow of aid and technology from the West had frozen in the pipelines of Siberia. Now even the oil fields languished in decline, but as Saudi Arabia failed, and the center of gravity shifted to the Pacific, Russian leaders pushed back against encroaching Western influence and control, and went so far as to embargo their oil, refusing to deliver it to British or American terminals, or to traffic in US dollars. The tensions eventually saw the deployment of Russian military forces near the breakaway republic of Georgia, where the Americans still kept a guarded watch on Iran, and push too often came to shove when the military was involved.

American carrier battlegroups still plied the oceans, largely unchallenged. Yet in recent months, Kirov had led several extended training exercises in the Norwegian Sea, an old hunting ground for the Russians, and the doorstep to the rich warm, commerce laden waters of the Atlantic. This latest maneuver was designed to simulate a raider breaking out into the North Atlantic accompanied by a single attack submarine.

And they were late.

As he waited for Rudnikov to report, the Admiral could not help but perceive the irony of his own situation. Here he sat in this waking zombie of a ship, resurrected from a sure appointment with the scrapping yards and pressed once again into useful service. Yet the uncanny echo of past mishaps still seem to haunt him, and the ship itself. His exercise was off schedule, and another old submarine was having trouble with its weapons.

Miles to the south, the cruiser Slava was deploying a line of target barges fitted with radar jammers to pose as a NATO task force in the Norwegian sea. If they had been real enemies, thought Volsky, they would have acquired his ship long ago and have missiles inbound while he still chafed and restlessly waited on Rudnikov and his old submarine to fit the proper warhead on his missiles. The exercise would have to be deemed a failure and replayed as soon as the approaching weather front cleared. There was nothing else to be done.

“Where is Rudnikov? Why hasn’t he reported? What are they doing down there in that fat Oscar II? This whole situation is ridiculous!” The Admiral vented his impatience yet again.

Vladimir Karpov, the ship’s Captain, and his Chief of Operations Gennadi Orlov were listening, half amused, half embarrassed. This was all too typical of the fleet these days, old rusty ships; misplaced men and missions. Volsky had been intent upon changing that ever since taking his post as Admiral of the Northern Fleet. He had insisted that Kirov be built, then assigned as flagship of the fleet before he made it his own. It was a pity that there were not three or four destroyers that could sail with Kirov today, but those ships were still on the drawing boards. Kirov was alone in the cold, icy sea for this exercise, and it was just going to get colder and more lonesome as the day wore on.

Captain Karpov shook his head, noting the admiral’s obvious displeasure. “We would be better to wait, Admiral,” he said. A serious man, his eyes always seemed to look swollen and bloodshot, bulging under his thick woolen cap emblazoned with the gold insignia of the navy. A bit round shouldered from too many days at a desk earlier in his business career, Karpov had taken to the sea when things fell apart and the old Soviet Union dissipated.

“Wait until this front passes through and the weather clears. The targeting buoys and towing lines will be all in a tangle in these seas. Tell Rudnikov to get his missiles sorted out and meet us off Jan Mayen tomorrow at 1100 hours. There is no further need to proceed here. We should stand the men down and try again later.”

The Admiral looked at him sourly. “That will put us another day late back to Severomorsk,” he said. Then a look of resignation crossed his features, his eyes dim and distant. “Probably best to do as you suggest,” he decided. “Give the orders, Karpov. Give the damn orders, and let me know when Orel is finally ready. Tell Rudnikov—this time no excuses!”

“Aye, sir. I’ll see to it.”

Chapter 2

Captain Karpov was a straight laced and competent man, with a sharp intelligence, strong will, and much ambition. One of the only men on the ship that did not owe his present position to Volsky, the Captain had a volatile personality that sometimes seemed oddly out of place in a man with his obvious intellectual capacity. He was easily frustrated, sharp tempered, somewhat high strung and very defensive at times, though he balanced these emotions well with the steely logic of his mind. A thinker and planner, he had already plotted his course to the bridge of Kirov, winning the post in a hard fought competition with two other men. Volsky had, in fact, preferred another man, but Karpov had ingratiated himself with senior officers on the naval board, and won approval by other means. And he had even bigger plans if things went the way he imagined.

One day he would be wearing the Admiral’s cap and the bold gold stripes on the cuff of his jacket. But not today. Today his black sheep wool Ushanka hat and thick leather sea jacket would serve him well enough, and he was content to be captain of the ship where his considerable talents could be put to the best use possible—as long as he could be captain. He saluted as the Admiral left the bridge, pleased to have the citadel to himself again.

He felt a strange sense of kinship with the battlecruiser. Kirov was rebuilt from an older life, just as he was with his new career in the navy. Russia had been doing some grave digging, he thought. Finances were so tight, resources so limited, that we have to pull ships out of retirement and refit them to have anything seaworthy these days. Oh, they had given the ship a clever new coat of radar absorbing paint, fitted those new carbon fiber tiles to her siding, with a curious coating of phototropic material that would change colors in various lighting conditions. It was a futile attempt to make the big ship less observable to both electronic and optical systems at a distance, and sometimes it worked quite well, but Kirov was a large vessel with a distinctive prow and silhouette that would be recognized without much difficulty. These features built into her redesign on the citadels, gun turrets, and all weather siding would make her seem smaller than she was to a curious radar set, but she would by no means be considered a stealthy ship.

That was fine by him, he thought. A warship should look like it could fight, and Kirov had all of the classic sharp angles, stalwart masts and radar festooned towers that brought the word battlecruiser to mind when you looked at her. This is a ship that was meant to be seen and feared, not something that would slink through the seas in the dark of night like a whisper of fog, hoping to remain undiscovered like a submarine. No, Kirov was a warship, a predator at sea, menacing, dangerous and intimidating in every line and angle of her design.

Karpov hated submarines, and he justifiably feared them. When offered a chance to train for undersea warfare, he refused the assignment, recoiled from it, as if he might be joining a colony of lepers if he went. There was something vile about a submarine, he thought, something devious, something that too closely reminded him of the darker aspects of himself. He understood the work of an undersea boat only too well. In fact, he had captained his life like any good submariner might up until that first great failure that had sent him to the bottom of the sea.

Karpov had planned and plotted his way up through the corporate ranks of Gazprom, but his career took a turn for the worse under the Putin administration. The executive class of the company had evaded taxes, stripped off assets and distributed them to family members, but the Putin reforms began to root out the corruption and return control of the company to the state, which was really nothing more than taking them out of the frying pan and putting them into the fire.

In the midst of the turmoil, Karpov’s long negotiations with Western oil and gas companies came under scrutiny, the special favors, privileged access, the perks and gifts exchanged, and he found himself betrayed and back-stabbed when a consortium of Western companies led by British Petroleum undercut his position, reneged on a technology transfer deal, and left him dangerously exposed to government scrutiny. He could hear the investigators listening for him, then pinging out a more invasive search, and he was very afraid. When a government committee dropped a depth charge in the water that he knew he could not avoid, he abandoned that first career ship and went into the cold waters of unemployment, burning with resentment and vowing he would one day get even with BP and the other Western companies that had ended his career.

A few hard years followed where he sat at harbor himself, a derelict like the old hulk of the ship he now captained, without heading or compass, until he eventually decided, like so many other ruined men in Russia, to turn to the military. He joined the navy as a lieutenant where his devious skill and ruthless efficiency saw him advance quickly.

Like Kirov, Karpov had struggled to rebuild himself as well, yet to do so he had brought the same old habits and strategies of the corporate oligarchy along with him, climbing the ranks here by using the same guile and conniving undersea tactics that had seen him move up the ladder in Gazprom. The navy was just the sort of environment a man like Karpov thrived in. There were established rules here, clear pathways for advancement, well honed protocols and decorum. One could follow a sure and certain route through the ranks, much like the halls and gangways of the ship itself, and he climbed the ladders well.

It was not an easy climb, or one without conflict. Russians still had a deep distrust of capitalism, and businessmen in general after those dark years of collapse. It was as if his contemporaries could sense he had come from another world, a submarine world, and that there was no place for him now on a ship like Kirov. The Captain had to offset all this by finding the right men to please, and the right voices to silence with a well planned reprisal when necessary.

Russians were meant to suffer, or so they seemed to believe, and Karpov would see that his enemies suffered well if they blocked his way forward. His ability to undermine a potential rival was a long practiced skill. Even as a young school boy he had found that he had to use his head to survive in this world. Physically small, and even somewhat frail as a boy, he nonetheless possessed a sharp intelligence and aggressive, competitive spirit. When the boys would play in the yard, choosing up sides with the strongest among them as team captains, Karpov hated it when he would be the last one picked by either side, and hated it even more that none of the other boys would trust him to ever carry the ball in the scrimmage matches they played.

In secondary school he had taken to closeting himself away and finding solace in the souls of Russia’s great writers, and he soon fancied himself a man from the Underground, just as Dostoevsky had written about it.

Russia was a big, bruising, and rough place. Her men were the same way at times, uncultured, and relying more on brawn than brains. Karpov saw how the physical was glorified in school athletics, and knew there was no way forward for him there. He was not like any of the other boys. He could not run fast enough, jump high enough, or push his way through the line to get at the ball. Yet he suppressed his shame and determined to become a team captain nonetheless, by some other means, by any means necessary. To do so he had courted the favor of his athletic coach, staying late in the dressing room, bringing him food from home, and even gifting him with a small vial of vodka that he had found in his father’s old liquor cabinet.

Gradually, he was given more responsibility there, helping to draft the rosters, inventory the athletic equipment and see that everything was accounted for and locked up in the bins properly at day’s end. His position soon saw him assigned the task of distributing the balls and equipment to the various squads, and handing out their shoes and uniforms as well, and he loved his hard won authority and the small measure of power and control it gave him over the other boys. He saw to it that any boy who had ever offended him ended up with the most shoddy equipment in reprisal. The strong young team captains who had so cavalierly passed over him before, now had to come begging, and those who did not soon found themselves undermined in other ways as well.

Academically gifted, Karpov helped the boys he favored in their studies, and shunned and even impeded those he perceived as rivals or threats. He once went so far as to see that one lad received the wrong list of words for study on a particularly important test, and it was enough to put a torpedo into his chances for a scholarship that semester. It ended his athletic program as well when the boy failed the exam so miserably that he could not participate in the crucial team competitions that spring.

When he moved on to university studies Karpov followed much the same route, surfacing to becoming a teacher’s aide, docent, librarian’s assistant. Here it was not footballs and helmets he controlled access to, but books and information. He saw to it that he worked the desk for special reference volumes, keeping track of book requests, and here he decided who got the materials, and who did not. He moved students up or down on his lists, sometimes extracting favors and forcing them to support his other agendas if they wanted access to important information he controlled in the library.

Once, when embarrassed in debate class by another gifted student who had opposed him too skillfully, Karpov saw to it that the student waited longer than anyone else, and after finally releasing an important volume to him he found a way to slip into his dormitory room and steal away the book, hiding it back in the shelves and then spending the next two weeks pressuring and haranguing the student for its return, berating him for losing it and threatening to take the matter up with school officials.

Even the professors came, in time, to fear and dislike him when he was instrumental in ending the career of a teacher who had graded him low in an important class. He had confronted the man in his office, saying he had failed to properly consider and evaluate his essays, but his protest came to naught. The teacher would not revise his grade, and so Karpov determined how best to get even. It was here that the fine art of spreading rumor and fomenting scandal came into play. He slipped bottles of vodka into the teacher’s classroom closet, then whispered he was a drunken lush, and often kept certain students too long after class, and for reasons that were far from academics. He soon discovered the devious art of the lie, and its power to influence and harm others.

There were two kinds of lies in the Russian mind, and Karpov was a master of both. One was vranyo, the posturing and lip service everyone paid to the system, a little white lie here and there, whispered to an audience who knew very well it was a little white lie, and was perfectly content to stand as the willing believer, knowing full well that the other party knew the matter at hand was a bent and tarnished version of the truth. Russians traded vranyo with each other on a daily basis, one the liar, one the listener, and both knowing it was all a casual play. Dostoevsky had gone so far as to claim: ‘A delicate reciprocity of vranyo is almost the first condition of Russian society—of all Russian meetings, parties, clubs, and associations.’

The other lies were something more, called lozh, which was a conscious and deliberate intention to deceive. While most Russians were well adept at the subtle gamesmanship of vranyo, they often failed completely at the darker art of lozh. Writer and dramatist Leonid Andreyev wrote that Russians really have no talent for real lies, which were, ‘an art, difficult and demanding intelligence, talent, character and stamina.’ Karpov was an exception. His talent for spinning out real lies served him very well over the years. He made an accusation that ended the troublesome teacher’s tenure, and was skillful enough to make the lie stick. Karpov had learned early on that even the appearance of wrongdoing could have the same debilitating effects as a real misdeed.

Ambition was one thing, duplicity and deception another. People soon came to realize that Karpov’s ambition would always come in tandem with those darker elements. Getting things done in the sloth of protocol and paperwork in Russia took time, patience and more than a little conniving, he knew. After fifteen years coming up through the ranks at Gazprom, Karpov was a master of the subtle art of lying, a master of lozh, and he never blushed one minute for his behavior. Dostoevsky had said it best when he asserted that among Russian intellectual classes, transparent candor was an impossibility.

Karpov was a perfect example of this, scheming, controlling, subtly aggressive, and often shameless in the way he undermined his rivals. He had discovered that popularity only took a man so far in life, particularly in Russia. Fear was an equally compelling emotion for most people, a moral reference point any Russian understood well enough, and Karpov knew how to stoke those fires of doubt in any rival’s heart. He was indirect, yet ruthless and persistent. And in the end he was successful. Some men stood aside just to be out of his crosshairs, others opened doors for him just to be rid of the man and his constant harangue when he engaged them. And wherever there was a vacuum that would take him higher in the ranks, Karpov filled it with his considerable ego, and an intelligence and ambition that saw him rise quickly, making his current position of First Captain in just seven years.

With many enemies and few friends, he had become a cold man, arrogant within the hard shell of his own intelligence, and still preoccupied with details, rules, schedules and lists, still the young schoolboy in the locker room or assistant in the library. Now he shuffled the ship’s crew from one assignment to another, granted and denied favor, chastened and ground upon his chiefs, but yet his ruthless efficiency saw the ship as tightly wired as it had ever been.

They had rendezvoused with the replenishment ship 10 hours ago and taken on additional live ammunition to replace the rounds they would fire in these exercises. They were up between Bear Island and Jan Mayen on a cold late summer day, but they should be in a sheltered inlet where they could best ride out the coming storm. No use running at sea in a force nine gale, which is exactly what Rodenko, the ship’s radar man, had predicted over the next several hours.

His mind drifted to the likely play of the hours ahead. They would ride out the storm, then rendezvous with Orel off Jan Mayan and try again, if Slava managed to keep her targeting barges in line it would be a miracle. And as for Kirov, what to do about all those extra missiles crated in the holds below? Chief Martinov was taking far too long to store the munitions properly in the magazine. The Russian maxim: ‘They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work’ was well applied to that man. He would have to send Orlov down there to knock a few heads together if he wanted the missiles all sorted out in the next eight hours.

What would Severomorsk say about the delay, he wondered? The Admiral already seemed upset over the time lost by this mishap, and it led Karpov to believe that Volsky was worried about something back home. What could it be, he wondered? A personal matter? More likely it was something to do with ‘Old Suchkov,’ Chief of the Navy. He was aging, ten years older than the Admiral, and well past retirement age. Yet the old guard, as he called them, had been hanging on to power in the hierarchy above.

Suchkov was made Chief of the Navy in 2015, just six years ago, at the age of 68. Now, at 74, his failing health would prevent him serving out the usual ten year term at the post. Volsky was next in line, having come up through the mandatory billets as commander of the Black Sea Fleet, then the Pacific Fleet, and finally the Northern Fleet. If Suchkov retired, who would replace Volsky as Fleet Admiral here? Most likely Rogatin. He had moved from Novorossiysk to Murmansk two years ago, and now was comfortably installed as Suchkov’s Deputy Chief of Staff.

The Captain knew he was a long way from that chair. His normal route, after finishing at least three years here aboard Kirov, would be to take on a Missile Ship Division as Chief of Staff, then make Rear Admiral and take over operations at a base like Severomorsk or Novorossiysk. He would need to collect his medals, the Order of the Red Star, the Order for Service to the Homeland, the Order of Military Merits, the Order of Courage. Once he lined up enough color in the ribbons on his chest he could then begin the final approach to a Fleet Admiral position, and he would finally have the power he deserved.

He shrugged inwardly, thinking what a long and grueling slog it would be. Things took time in Russia. Things were promised but seldom delivered in Russia. Things too often had a way of going wrong, just like this simple live fire exercise. Karpov had already started courting the favor of men like Rogatin back home, thinking to get in with the man and possibly skip a few chairs. For now, he was proud of his post here aboard Kirov, and determined to make the most of the opportunity. He was finally out of the ranks of junior officers, a man to be respected and reckoned with, or so he believed.

Yet Dostoevsky’s line about old habits was all too true where the Captain was concerned: ‘The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.’ Now that he had been made First Captain of the ship, he sometimes repeated the foibles and jaded manners of the old Gazprom executive class he had come from, bending the rules to suit him, and exercising more license than he might have done while jostling in the ranks for promotion. This was common all through the calcified power structures in Russia, from the police stations in every town, up through government at every level. Rank had its privileges. There would be nice thin layered blini with melted butter, jam and honey on the officer’s table in the morning for breakfast, but not for the rankers below. One had to do whatever was necessary to put honey on the table, he thought, but what to do about Volsky?

Just as in his university days, Karpov had been involved in more than one deception with senior officers standing as potential rivals on his career path. He took it upon himself to investigate personal matters in the lives of men he found threatening. He learned their habits and foibles, the state of their marriages and affairs, the bars or clubs they frequented, and he became a master of spreading those subtle, destructive lies, lozh, often wrapped in the more familiar gauze of vranyo—a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as it were.

Where lies would not serve, Karpov often feigned friendship by sending unusual gifts at odd hours and in unusual circumstances. Once, he had sent a bottle of fine French champagne to a rival officer on the day after his son had failed miserably in his crucial academy testing. He rubbed it in by pretending to apologize the next day, saying he was so certain the young many would pass that he believed the gift was well made. “Perhaps next semester,” he concluded. His message in these petty and often offensive capers was obvious, and they were one of many reasons why those beneath Karpov in the ranks had come to dislike him so much. For those above him, he reserved liberal praise and the most strict and proper decorum—until he set his mind on the post that particular officer occupied. After that, when a man became an obstacle, Karpov began a long and calculated campaign to subtly undermine him, a whisper here, a rumor there, a little vranyo, a little more lozh, an arranged embarrassing moment in the line of duty that would serve to cast doubt on his rival’s competency.

Once, in an exercise much like the one Kirov had planned for that very day, he had gone so far as to tamper with the towing line clamps for the target barges that would be towed by a rival captain. Then he insisted on a high speed maneuver that he knew would tax the compromised link until it gave way, leaving the barges scattered and adrift, and well out of proper position when the live fire exercise was scheduled to begin. His report on the matter was particularly critical of his rival, and he went so far as to joke about “Kutusov’s folly” in the ranks, cementing the mishap securely in the lore of the navy at the time.

When he received word that he had been made Kirov’s new Captain, he swelled with pride—until Volsky arrived. Now he saw the Admiral as an obstacle to his free reign here; someone he had to defer to out of respect to the man’s rank, though he often thought he knew better when it came to the machinations of running the ship.

The Captain always waited for the Admiral’s seat to cool before he finally settled into it to stand his command watch on the bridge. The residual warmth always made him uncomfortable, a reminder that there was someone else above him in rank on the ship; someone he had to answer to, that the ship was not truly his.

“Come about, Mr. Orlov,” he said to his Chief of Operations. “Port thirty.” Yet even as he gave the order he heard, or rather felt a distant heavy rumble, ominous and deep, like a great kettle drum being struck by a mighty hammer.

“What in god’s name was that?” said the Captain. “That was no thunder.” There came a blinding white light, and Karpov saw his navigator, Fedorov, pulling off his headset, instinctively shielding his eyes. The searing light flashed and vanished, leaving the air alive with what looked like a hundred thousand fireflies all around the ship, strange luminescent particles that spun on the cold airs, whirling and dancing as they slowly faded to milky green. When it passed he instinctively looked out of the forward viewing panes, surprised to see that the ocean itself seemed to light up for miles in every direction with a strange phosphorescent color. Then the sea erupted in the distance, boiling up in a wild convulsion of sound and motion. The ship shuddered with the impact of a strong blast wave, rolling heavily.

Karpov gripped the side arms of his chair to steady himself, and everyone on the bridge braced for further impact, one man thrown from his seat near the helm, his eyes wide with fear and astonishment. The strident welter of sound subsided, resolving to an eerie sharp cellophane crackle that hung in the air like a wave of heavy static electricity. Then there came a low descending vroom, the sound falling through three octaves as if it had been sucked into a black hole and devoured.

Stunned and amazed, every member of the bridge crew seemed frozen, their faces twisted into expressions of numbed, painful shock. Then Karpov’s high, sharp voice broke the silence as he barked out in order.

“Action stations! We are under attack!”

Chapter 3

Admiral Volsky was halfway to his cabin when the ship lurched with the sudden motion, lights in the gangway winking and dimming. He heard the strange descending sound as he braced himself against the bulkhead, eyes wide with surprise, yet something deep within chided him, telling him he should have been more alert. The vague disquiet that had befuddled him earlier was now a jangling surge of adrenaline. An instant later every nerve in his body seemed to tingle with warning, as if a thousand needles had pierced his flesh. The feeling passed quickly, however, and he steadied himself, turning about at once and heading back toward the command bridge as fast as his heavy legs would carry him.

As he approached the citadel he saw the look on the guard’s face there by the hatch, registering shock and anxiety. But the instant the man saw the Admiral, he seemed to straighten with newfound resolve, saluting crisply, an expression of relief brightening in his eyes.

Volsky nodded to the man as he passed through the hatch and into the citadel where he could hear Karpov shouting at the helmsman to put on speed. Thirty years at sea told him the ship was already in a sharp turn, as if maneuvering to avoid the track of an oncoming missile or torpedo.

“What is happening?” he shouted, his deep voice loud and commanding.

“Admiral on the bridge!” Chief Orlov’s voice cut through the bedlam and all eyes turned to the graying command officer, waiting. The Admiral knew that he must appear decisive, in control, no matter how bewildered he himself was at the moment. He tugged sharply on the lower hem of his jacket, adjusting the tilt of his cap as he strode to the center of the bridge. Karpov slipped out of his chair, saluting to acknowledge the Admiral’s presence, and reported.

“An explosion of some kind, sir. Massive!”

“Aboard ship?”

“No, sir. It seemed to be an undersea detonation, of considerable size. Look at the ocean! I believe we may be under attack, and I have ordered the ship to take high-speed evasive maneuvers.”

At action stations the primary overhead lighting was dimmed and the bridge was wreathed in shadow, bathed with red emergency lighting and alight with the glow of many screens and consoles. Volsky looked out through the forward view panes, astonished to see the luminescent radiance of the sea all around them, as if some deep underwater energy source was emanating from the ocean floor. The flat panel digital screen mounted high on one wall to his left also showed the same scene, though the image was checkered with interference, the blocks of digital information disassembling and reassembling as the system worked to tune and display a clear signal and image. He immediately turned to Grigori Rodenko, his chief radar man.

“Rodenko?” It was clear that he wanted an immediate report from his CIC, the Combat Information Center, positioned on the right quarter of the citadel. There sat his three gods of war, Rodenko on radar and sensors, Tasarov on Anti-Submarine Warfare, and Samsonov on Combat Systems. They were already hard at work, leaning forward to note readings on their screens, and making adjustments to fine tune the data they were receiving. Rodenko turned to the admiral, a bemused look on his face.

“Nothing, sir. I read no contacts of any kind. But there is heavy interference.”

“Jamming signatures?”

“No sir. Too chaotic. Too widespread. It’s spread out over the entire bandwidth. We may have just experienced a severe EMP burst. System integrity appears normal but I’m initiating diagnostics to confirm.”

“EMP burst?” said Karpov sharply. “Initiate immediate NBC protocols!” Chief Orlov immediately repeated his order, a crewman stiffly palming a control toggle and sending a shrill alarm throughout the ship to rig for defense against potential nuclear, biological, or chemical attack. Already at action stations for the exercise, the crew would now take additional measures, screening all ports, securing all hatches, donning protective gear in the event of an attack by exotic weaponry.

Yet Admiral Volsky could see that this was clearly unnecessary. An EMP burst would have had far more grievous effects upon ship systems, and he could see his primary command and control facilities were still softly aglow in the dim emergency lighting of the bridge. The ship seemed to have full power, was maneuvering smartly, and was responding to commands in terms of its sensitive electrical nervous system. He could only assume that this had not been an EMP burst, which would have knocked down a good number of ship systems, potentially frying circuitry in all but the most hardened and well protected equipment.

“Belay that order,” he corrected the Captain. “I see no evidence of damage due to electromagnetic pulse. Signal resume standard action stations,” he said to Chief Orlov, and the surly chief nodded, snapping a quick hand gesture at the signalman who immediately sounded the all clear.

The Admiral glanced sharply at his Captain, then stepped up and into his chair and settled into the still warm seat, assuming full command. Karpov gave him an embarrassed look, a flash of anger hidden in his eyes, but said nothing.

“Tasarov?” The Admiral swiveled his chair to face his ASW Chief, Alexi Tasarov. The Captain was hovering near that station, tense and alert.

“The same, sir. No acoustic or sonic contact on passive systems. Intense noise on all passive sensors. And we just churned up the seas pretty badly with this maneuver. There’s a great deal of interference. I can’t read a thing under these conditions.”

“What about the Orel?”

Tasarov hesitated briefly, looking at his screens and adjusting his headset. “No, sir. I have no fix on her position. Her Target Motion Analysis track is void now.”

“An enemy submarine,” said Karpov. “This is how they work, Admiral. The bastards slink up on you in the dark. Tasarov, are you sure you hear nothing?”

“Not with this interference and the screw noise, Captain.”

The Admiral could see that Karpov was very agitated. He was already convinced this was a deliberate attack, and a stealthy NATO submarine was plying the waters of his mind, even if Tasarov could not hear it. He turn to his ASW man again. “Do you recommend anti-submarine procedures based on this information. Mister Tasarov?”

“I cannot report or confirm any hostile contact on passive sonar, Admiral. But the Captain may have a point, sir. That was a very strange emission after the explosion. I can’t be certain my systems are functioning properly until we do a full diagnostic. Under the circumstances, we may have been targeted by a nuclear armed torpedo, yet I heard nothing in the water, sir.”

Volsky’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, his brow set, lips pursed with some inner conclusion. “Prepare to go to active sonar,” he said quietly. And then to his communications officer he said: “Contact Orel at once.”

“But Admiral,” Karpov said again. “That will reveal our position! If this was a nuclear armed torpedo attack—”

“Then we would not be discussing it,” the Admiral countered. “Reveal our position? You think NATO will have overlooked us cruising about these last three days? They’ve had surveillance planes over us every day now. And if they did attack us, are their targeting systems all suddenly faulty? Bring the ship back on our original heading. Steer 225 degrees southwest,” he said to his helmsman now, clearly annoyed. Karpov may have been a good businessman, he thought, but he has certainly misjudged this situation. Volsky did not think this was a torpedo attack, nuclear or otherwise, but active sonar might help him find Rudnikov’s submarine.

“Orel does not respond to hails, sir.”

“Active sonar,” said the admiral. “Reacquire Orel at once.”

“Aye, sir.” The pinging pulse of the sonar punctuated the tense silence on the bridge as Admiral Volsky waited. Three pings, four, seven… The time seemed to stretch interminably, yet Tasarov remained silent, hunched over his station with intense concentration, listening with his eyes closed for a time, then blinking as he peered at his phosphorescent view screens. Karpov seemed to be listening with him, his eyes moving furtively from the ASW sonar screens to the forward view panes, and there was fear there, Volsky noted. He had seen this before in his new Captain. Karpov hated submarines, and when they drilled in ASW warfare tactics he always seemed particularly taut and on edge.

There was no contact anywhere on Tasarov’s scope, and nothing was discernable in the chaotic data stream he was monitoring now. The ocean around them played like the devil’s symphony, a muddle of odd noise and disorganized signal patterns, at least insofar as his equipment was concerned. Yet he knew his information was no more reliable now than the systems that provided it. Clearly there had been some kind of undersea explosion, and the damage may not yet be fully evident if the ship’s systems were affected. Orel had been cruising off their starboard bow, at roughly 20,000 yards and close enough for him to detect her on either his passive or active systems. Yet she was gone.

“I have no reliable readings, sir,” said Tarasov.

“I concur, Admiral,” said Rodenko. The radar man had a perplexed look on his face. “There’s nothing within thirty nautical miles of us. Nothing on any of my systems at all.”

“You have no reading on the Slava?” The Admiral was referring to the old cruiser that had been towing their targeting barges some thirty nautical miles south of their position.

“I have no acquisitions whatsoever, sir. This is crazy, I can’t even read the weather front that I was monitoring any longer! It was moving south at nearly thirty kilometers per hour, but there is nothing on my screen now. We must have sustained significant damage. I will switch to phased array and continue the search.”

Volsky’s eye was immediately drawn to the barometer, where he saw, to his great surprise, that the pressure had elevated considerably. He frowned, his thick features registering disbelief. And yet, the tooth that had been bothering him had quieted down, and he could feel the difference in the environment around him. The weather had changed, and decidedly so.

His gaze was drawn to the forward view pane where he noted the seas, which had once been swelling up with the rising wind, had also calmed. The strange luminescent glow still rippled from the depths of the water, an eerie phosphorescent green. Seeing that the digital screens had settled down, he gave an order to display the various arcs of view on the monitors.

“Pan the Tin Men,” he said calmly, his eyes fixed on the big screen to his left.

He was referring to the odd looking equipment mounted on Kirov’s two forward watch decks called the ‘Tin Men’ by the crew, because they looked much like two great metal robots standing their solitary watch. Each Tin Man mounted the HD cameras and optical sensors necessary to provide high resolution views for every arc of the ship to the flat panel monitors in the ship’s command center. Rodenko toggled switches on his console and outside the ship the steely figures slowly rotated to pan and display the sea all around the ship.

Admiral Volsky was amazed as he stared at the screen. The ocean rippled with the same odd luminescence in all directions, as if Kirov herself was the source of the energy affecting the sea. The choppy swells had calmed, and there was an unnatural stillness over the scene. In the distance, he perceived what looked like a low bank of gray white fog.

“How can this be?” he said, more to himself than anyone else. He slipped off his chair walking slowly up to the forward view panes and staring at the glowing water and distant horizon ahead, his eyes unwilling to trust the images on the screen. He was looking for the obvious signs of an undersea nuclear explosion, yet it is what he did not see that disturbed him most.

Ten minutes ago they had force five winds and rising seas, yet now the ocean was still and calm, almost glassy smooth. The long forward bow of the ship stretched out before him, its sharp prow cutting smoothly through the jade green water, and yes, that was fog ahead, thick, gray-white fog in a misty rolling cloud bank right across his intended course.

His first appreciation of the situation was that there had been an accident aboard Orel, just as it was said there had been an accident aboard the Kursk, the last doomed sub of her class. Rudnikov had reported trouble with one of his torpedoes, and he thought it had detonated. The Orel would have been cruising at no more than 200 feet depth, and if a 15 kiloton nuclear warhead had indeed detonated he should be seeing a vast spray dome forming at the water surface, a rising gas bubble, and a great chimney of violence pluming up from the depths of the sea. That weapon was on the same scale as the bomb the Americans had dropped on Hiroshima. Yet he saw nothing, just as the Rodenko saw nothing on his radar screens, just as Tasarov heard nothing on his sonar.

A tone sounded on the ship’s intercom and the Admiral’s eyes glanced up at the overhead speaker, immediately recognizing the voice of Chief Engineer Dobrynin. “Bridge, this is Engineering. We seem to be having a problem with the reactors.”

Volsky was up quickly, reaching for the microphone and thumbing the switch to speak. “Flag Bridge responding. What is your problem, Chief?”

“Well, sir, we seem to be getting some odd readings.”

“Radiation?”

“No sir, the cores are stable and there is no radiation leak… But we are getting some unusual thermal neutron flux measurements—nothing critical, just unusual. Can we reduce speed? I’d like to take a closer look and see what happens if we lower the power output.”

“Very well, chief,” said Volsky. “Keep me informed.” Then to his helmsman he said: “Ahead one third. Slow the ship down.”

“Ahead one third, sir,” the helmsman made a quick reply, the big turbines beneath them slowing their rotations as the ship glided more gracefully forward, her bow spray diminishing in the calm seas.

“Mr. Nikolin, signal the Slava to advise us of their current position at once.”

“Aye, sir.” The radioman began intonating his hail. “Task force flag to target, come in please. Advise current heading, course and speed…” There was nothing but static on his headphones, and no answer from Slava.

“Secure from active sonar. Now you can listen again, Tasarov,” said the Admiral. “Let me know the instant you have a fix on either Slava or Orel. Mister Nikolin, hail both ships. If you do not receive an answer within five minutes then contact Severomorsk. Advise them we have canceled the exercise. Note that we are investigating an emergency situation, and that we have lost position fix and contact with Orel and Slava. Asked them if these ships have reported home.”

He turned to find Captain Karpov and Chief Orlov. “Gentlemen, please join me in the briefing room.”

The three men proceeded to a secure room off the citadel, the eyes of the ever more nervous bridge crew following them as they went. Once inside the Admiral closed the door and leaned heavily on the table. “Your thoughts, Captain,” he said following proper protocol in engaging Karpov first.

“I did what I thought most appropriate, sir.” Karpov defended himself immediately. “There was clearly an explosion of some kind, and it appeared to me that it may have been a detonation from a torpedo. I took evasive action as specified by command procedures.”

“That is not what I am asking you,” said the Admiral. “Do you not find it even passing strange that a moment ago we were sailing in rising winds and seas, and now we’re looking at calming conditions and fog? Did this explosion chase the wind away? Where’s the weather front Rodenko has been warning us about for the last two hours? Did you notice the barometer? It was at 990 millibars and falling, but has now risen to well over 1000.”

“But Admiral, we saw it, felt it!” Gennadi Orlov, the ship’s Chief of Staff seemed to side with Karpov on the matter. ”There was a detonation of some kind.”

“Yes, I felt that as well. The shock wave nearly threw me against the bulkhead. My first thought is that something had happened to Orel, and the fact that we have no fix on her position now leads me to think Rudnikov may have had more of a problem than he was letting on. Yet if one of his warheads went off we should still see it well above the surface.”

“You think one of his missiles exploded, sir?”

“It has happened before,” said Admiral Volsky. “Do you forget what happened to the Kursk?”

“I remember only too well what happened to the Kursk,” said Karpov, his voice laden with sarcasm. “It was attacked by an American submarine. Then the families were paid off with blood money shipped over from Washington.”

Volsky frowned. Many in the navy knew the real reason Kursk had sunk, but few would have been brazen enough to state it as Karpov had. The Admiral shook his head. “That aside, what happened to the weather? I have known conditions in the Arctic seas to change suddenly, but never like this.”

“Clearly, we need more information, Admiral.” Karpov folded his arms, a worried look on his face, his eyes darting this way and that as he considered. The logic of what the Admiral had asserted was plain to him, but it made no sense.

“There has to be something wrong with the ship’s sensors,” said Orlov. “This was no ordinary explosion. It was very energetic, and we may have sustained damage. Yes, I feel it may have been a nuclear detonation, sir. Perhaps there is nothing on Rodenko’s screen because his systems are all whacked up.”

“Perhaps, but I do not need the Rodenko’s radar system to tell me what the weather is like,” said Volsky. “We will get the equipment sorted out, but for now we will proceed to rendezvous with Slava’s last known position. It may be that Orel was damaged herself, and is not able to communicate, perhaps she has even suffered a more grievous fate. We will not know that anytime soon. But what we do know is that the cruiser Slava should be south of our position towing targeting barges, easy enough to find.”

“Then why can’t we see her on radar, sir?” said Karpov.

“It’s the equipment, I tell you.” Orlov was adamant. “There was an electromagnetic pulse of some kind. It may not have been strong enough to disable our systems, but there could be damage.”

Orlov was a practical man, big, rough hewn, and easily irritated. Yet he held his emotions tightly in hand in spite of the obvious danger inherent in the situation. Something had exploded. Something was wrong. His was a mind and hand that would first reach for a wrench or spanner to fix the problem. Afterwards he would find out who was responsible and grill them to a hard char. His thick woolen cap was pulled low on his forehead, heavy brows frowning as he spoke. And when he mentioned possible damage, the Admiral could also perceive just a hint of blame in his voice, as if Orlov was already running down the system maintenance roster in his mind, looking to single out an unfortunate mishman, or midshipman, to goad and blame for the mishap.

“Very well,” the Admiral intervened. “Initiate full, ship-wide systems checks. Every system, every component. Then, until we hear from Severomorsk, we will continue south to rendezvous with Slava’s last known position. If there was such a pulse as you describe, Orlov, then she may have sustained damage as well. This would account for the radio silence.”

“But it could be an attack, Admiral.” Karpov still had a nervous, anxious look on his face.

“A single missile? A single torpedo? Perhaps, Karpov, but would you attack in such a manner?”

“With nuclear weapons, one is enough, sir.”

“True, but to miss by a margin sufficient to leave us afloat? This is very unlikely. And no follow-on attack? You are assuming that the enemy sensors are damaged as well, and that they do not know we are still here, steaming quietly at 10 knots with active sonar pinging away just a moment ago?”

Karpov raised his eyebrows. It didn’t make sense. And when things did not fit into his carefully ordered perception of the world he was soon at his wits end. If the ship were his to command he would be on an alternate evasive heading at thirty knots. “Have you considered the possibility that Slava may have been destroyed as well, sir?”

“I am considering every possibility, Captain. And I take your concerns under advisement. That is why we will investigate this matter further. If Slava is there, then we will find her, or at least the targeting barges she was towing. If this was an attack, I do not think the enemy would have any interest and sinking them.”

“But what if Slava was also targeted with a nuclear warhead, sir? The barges would have been destroyed as well.”

“Time will tell. And to shorten the wait, let’s get the KA-226 up immediately. It will be over Slava’s position in 10 minutes.”

He was referring to the KA-226 scout helicopter carried on the aft quarter of the ship. It was ideal when used in an extended reconnaissance role like this.

“See to it, Karpov. Let us answer your questions once and for all. Tell them to rig radiation detection sensors and drop sonar and infrared detection buoys if they make no visual contact with Slava after they reach her last plotted position. If this was an attack, then it should be obvious to us very soon. Even if Slava were sunk, we should still be able to detect the wreckage on the seafloor, particularly on infrared. In the meantime, the ship is at action stations and we will complete our systems diagnostics to assure ourselves we can function should it come to a fight. At the moment we have no targets, gentlemen. So there is nothing more to be done. Now, get that helicopter into the air at once.”

Twenty minutes later they got their first report, yet even the radio transmission seemed distant, distorted and almost garbled at times. This merely added to Karpov’s suspicion that the atmosphere was still experiencing effects of a recent nuclear detonation. And when the KA-226 reported no sign of the Slava, or of any of her towed barges, the Captain was even more certain that the task force had been attacked. He paced anxiously on the bridge, his eyes searching the thickening fog ahead of them as if he expected to see incoming missiles at any moment.

Yet the Admiral sat calmly on his chair, his eyes narrowed with that vacant look of inward thought that so clearly signaled to the others that he was not be disturbed at the moment. What had happened to the rest of his task force? There were 465 men aboard Slava, and another 100 on Orel. Where in god’s name were they? The feeling that had bothered him all morning was back again. He had a clear sense that something profound had happened, but he could not discern what it was. What if Karpov was correct and this was war?

Would NATO launch a surprise attack like this, perhaps from a stealthy submarine that had been lurking undetected in the region? Orel and Slava were gone, yet his ship, the only real threat in the task force, was untouched. The more he considered this the more he began to feel that this had been another accident. Yet if Orel had suffered an accident, where was Slava? She was farther away from the sub’s position than Kirov and should have been well outside the effect radius of a 15 kiloton explosion. These odd incongruities frustrated and blocked his thinking, like pieces of a puzzle that would simply not fit, no matter how hard he tried to force them into a coherent picture.

The rest of the bridge crew sat silent at their posts, watchful, wary, and somewhat on edge. Tasarov had a pained, worrisome expression on his young face. He was checking and rechecking his system, adjusting settings, listening intently, his hand running through his hair at times as he adjusted his equipment. His brow was heavy with concentration, and it was clear that he felt somewhat responsible for the situation. If the ship had been attacked by a torpedo, why didn’t he hear it?

Rodenko, the soft spoken Ukrainian, was equally disturbed. He was the eyes of the ship, where Tasarov was its ears. The fact that he could not even detect the weather front he had been monitoring was most unsettling.

Nikolin sat at his cubicle on communications, flipping through a code book and checking his radio gain and reception bands. All his normal communication channels seemed strangely quiet, and the silence out of Severomorsk was very odd. He had sent coded emergency flash signals, and there should have been an immediate response.

Some of the junior officers seemed lost in their spacious Russian souls. They leaned over their stations, eyes glazed with the milky luminescence of the screens and systems lights, their thoughts running with the old fairy tale hero, Yemelya, the great idler. Life at sea was often endless and dull for them. They could sense that something was amiss, but had not been privy to much of the discussion among the senior officers, and so they watched the interminable sweep of their radar scopes, tuning and adjusting their equipment. Some seemed lost, others alert and curious, their eyes watching the senior officers closely, as recent events had put them on edge.

The remote helicopter reported no sign of radiation, however. And nothing whatsoever was detected by the sonar buoys—no sign of wreckage on the seafloor at all. They even patched the data through to Tasarov, so his better trained eye and ear could verify the findings. There was just nothing there. Infrared sensors, which would have easily detected heat from a ship that had recently endured combat damage sufficient to sink her, reported nothing unusual.

Then Nikolin seemed encouraged as the signal strength from the KA-226 improved dramatically. He had much more clarity, and instinctively looked at Rodenko, who smiled as he reported. “I have a clear reading on the KA-226 now,” he said. “The interference is gone.” Kirov’s systems seemed to be in perfect working order, the telemetry being received from the helicopter on Tasarov’s panel was pristine. There was simply nothing else there to be seen, so Admiral Volsky ordered the helo to return. He stared out the forward viewports, noting the color of the sea had dimmed and blanched to a sallow gray again.

“Any response from either ship? Severomorsk?” He broke his reverie, turning to his communications officer Nikolin.

“No sir,” said Nikolin. “I have sent encrypted traffic using normal wartime protocols, but I received no response.”

Karpov drifted to the Admiral’s side, his arms clasped firmly behind his back as he leaned slightly to one side and spoke in a quiet tone of voice, as if to prevent the other members of the bridge crew from hearing him. “What if Severomorsk was also attacked, sir? We could be at war.”

The Admiral gave him a serious look, but said nothing.