Los Angeles Class

21

Clang… clang-clang… clang…

Randall's arm ached with the effort, but he continued wielding the spanner, striking a bare patch of cold, green-painted metal that communicated directly with the ocean outside. He'd been hitting the bulkhead for almost an hour. Trying to maintain the same rhythm, a regular one-two-one pattern, but broken in such a way that Russian listeners wouldn't realize what it was.

Clang… clang-clang… clang…

E… I… E…

The same Morse call the SEALs had used to summon the Pittsburgh on the surface last night.

Old MacDonald had a farm. E… I… E… I… Oh….

He shook his head, trying to clear it. The pain in his side was a little better, so long as he didn't move around or exert himself, but he was still feeling a bit muzzy.

Water continued to enter the crawler. It was almost three feet deep, black and oily and icy cold, lapping around the mattress of the lower bunk. With a sharp, rasping crackle, the main light in the cabin flared and went out, accompanied by a stink of chemicals as the seawater drowned the batteries. It wasn't completely dark. An emergency light aft continued to cast a wavering, fitful glow over the rising black water.

The diesel engine was still turning over, sealed behind a watertight door aft, just past the airlock. The main lights outside were still on, but he didn't know how much longer he could rely on them. If anybody aboard the 'Burgh heard his hammering, they would need the crawler's lights to find him.

How much longer did he have?

Clang… clang-clang… clang…

Funny. It was just now occurring to Randall that he'd single-handedly boarded and stormed an enemy military vessel at sea. The Navy had boarded plenty of civilian ships in the drug war, so they didn't count. The last time that had happened had been… when? The capture of the U-505 during

World War II?

No, the Marine boarding of the Mayaguez in '75 must count, even though the freighter was both a civilian vessel and deserted. Everyone had thought it was occupied by well-armed Cambodians at the time.

Well, his capture of Crawlerski Subski was the first capture of an enemy submarine since World War II, that was for damned sure. And there wasn't a single damned way he could think of to turn that interesting bit of trivia to his advantage.

Clang… clang-clang… clang…

And, now that he thought about it, the U-505 had already surfaced and surrendered when sailors had gone aboard to disarm the explosive charges the German crew had set to scuttle her. He'd had to take this boat in hand-to-hand combat, board and storm, knife clenched in the teeth … yahrrrrrr!

That hadn't been seen on — or beneath — the high seas since… when? The Civil War? The War of 1812?

He wished his knowledge of naval history was a bit better. He wanted to know.

Clang… clang-clang… clang…

If he ever got out of here …

Thoughts of home… of Carolyn. Was he ready to get married yet? He'd put that decision off and put it off, figuring it was too early to drop anchor and settle down yet. And the wife of a SEAL had no kind of life … her husband called away at any time of day or night, sent hopscotching across the globe to God knew where, and he wasn't even allowed to tell her about it so she could properly worry.

And his motorcycle. His was a beaut, a BMW K75. The feeling he had out on the road, feeling that thunder answer to the flick of a wrist… power. Freedom.

He'd always figured he would die young and spectacularly… either in a firefight somewhere, or a training accident — those happened regularly enough that every SEAL considered the possibility — or blazing down the highway pushing a hundred on his Beemer.

Not sitting in a freezing steel pipe as it slowly flooded, pounding out his last-gasp message with a ten-pound wrench.

Clang-clang… clang-clang… clang-clang…

Pittsburgh must have gone by now. It was almost midnight, and Captain Gordon wouldn't want to hang around these shallow, inshore waters longer than he had to. The Russian sailor's body bumped against his legs, and he absently shoved it aside. So why was he even still trying?

Clang… clang-clang… clang…

Hell, he should have tried to figure out how to run the damned submarine. He could have sailed it south through the Tatar Straits and come ashore in Japan, and wouldn't that have been a wild, ninety-day wonder?

Ahh, who was he kidding? She was flooding, and wouldn't have made it half a mile. He'd captured his very own submarine, and she was going down fast.

No… he. Russian ships were he….

Clang-clang… clang-clang… clang-clang…

What the hell? That wasn't right. He stopped banging on the hull. Had he gotten so fuzzy-headed he'd started banging the wrong code?

Clang-clang-clang… clang-clang-clang… clang-clang-clang…

He stared at the spanner still gripped in his right hand. No, goddammit, he hadn't imagined that. Someone was outside, pounding on the hull!

The forward canopy was half-submerged. He couldn't tell if water was still coming in; it was possible that the pressures had equalized, trapping the boat's remaining air in a bubble in the upper half of the compartment. He couldn't see out, though… and didn't know if the unseen hammerers outside were Fitch and McCluskey, or Spetsnaz divers come to see what all the racket was about.

By God, if they were Russians they weren't going to take him alive. And he wasn't going to wait to die inside this cold, wet steel coffin, either. He touched the knife sheathed at his hip. He would go out and meet them in the sea. Hell, that was where a SEAL ought to die, in the open ocean, not locked away inside a box….

He felt a momentary panic. The air tank and mask he'd found… he'd left them on the lower bunk, he thought, but it was underwater now and he couldn't see it. Desperately, he felt around on the mattress pad, which was trying to float but held down by something heavy… and then his hand closed on the cylinder.

He made his way aft. The airlock's inner door was still open. It was probably set up so that you couldn't open the outer door if the inner one was open; no wonder his guests hadn't come aboard. He stepped inside, ducking his head into the cold water to get through the low door opening. Dragging the watertight door shut and dogging it, he stood in the escape lock, head and shoulders only above water now.

Randall puzzled over the control valves for a minute. How did you flood an airlock already partly flooded? He opened the WRT flood valve, and the water began coming in faster.

He pressed the rubber mask against his face, almost panicked when he couldn't draw a breath… then remembered to crack the valve. As the water flooded up past his mouth, he could breathe.

Reaching up, he opened the blow valve, which ought to let the remaining air trapped in the airlock out… then drew his knife. Clumsily one-handed, because he needed to keep the air mask pressed in place, he began turning the wheel on the underside of the outer hatch… then felt someone turning it from the other side.

The hatch swung up and open, and the last of the escape-trunk air belched out, heading for the surface. Randall allowed himself to be carried with the rush, left hand holding his air tank, right holding his knife.

Wet-suited figures surrounded him … three… no four men. Not SEALs, then. There were only two SEALs aboard the Pittsburgh, so these guys had to be Russkis. He stabbed at the nearest with his knife, felt himself grabbed from behind, felt hands close on his arm and twist his weapon away.

He struggled, trying to break free. One of the men pressed his face close against Randall's face, the faceplate of his mask actually bumping Randall's nose. Randall could hardly see. There was almost no light at all, and the salt water was burning his eyes.

But the eyes he could see behind the faceplate were familiar.

Hell… that faceplate was a full-face rig. A SEAL rig….

McCluskey?…

The other man grasped his upper arm and gave a reassuring squeeze. They were SEALs. The two additional men… realization hit him. Pittsburgh carried her own complement of divers. They must have all come out to look for him.

He was having trouble with the emergency air mask. One of the Pittsburgh divers — they wore standard masks that covered the eyes and nose alone, leaving the mouthpiece free — passed him his mouthpiece and let him draw a deep, full breath of air at the right pressure and flow. Gratefully, he sucked it down, then handed the mouthpiece back.

Randall stopped them, though, as they cleared the Russian crawler sub, tugging at McCluskey's arm and pointing. Someone broke out a light, shining it into the murk as Randall pointed.

He might not be thinking clearly, but he was still a SEAL. Still buddy-breathing with one of the Pittsburgh's divers, he led the group to the west side of the crawler, pointing to indicate where they should shine the light.

It took about ten minutes of searching — the mud was so thick here after the fight, and still hadn't been cleaned out by the current — but at last they found the bodies of three Russian Spets divers … and Tom Nelson.

SEALs never left their own behind, not even their dead.

Together, with Nelson in tow, the five men swam through darkness, leaving the flooded crawler sub behind.

Gordon crouched next to the rack. "How are you feeling?" he asked Randall.

The SEAL was lying in the bunk, an oxygen mask over his face. "Better now, sir." His voice was muffled by the mask. He winced, rubbing the inside of his elbow. "Some joint pain."

Chief Allison nodded. "A slight case of the bends. Too many jumps from two atmospheres to one, in too short a time."

"There wasn't exactly time to play it by the book," Randall said.

"Shit," Gordon said. "We're a long way from a decompression chamber."

"Shouldn't be a problem, Captain," Chief Pyter said. "If we can pop him back into the escape trunk for a few hours."

"Will that work, Doc?"

"Ought to. When you dive deep enough, and stay down long enough, the pressure forces nitrogen from your gas mix into your blood, where it stays in solution. Come up too fast, without giving the nitrogen time to be processed by your breathing, and the drop in pressure lets the nitrogen come out of solution… as bubbles that collect in your joints and a few other places like your brain, where they can cause some serious problems.

"It looks like our SEAL friend only picked up a mild case of decompression sickness. If we get him to the escape trunk, we can pressurize that back up to two atmospheres, then bring the pressure back down slowly."

"How long?" Randall and Gordon chorused together. They glanced at each other self-consciously, then laughed.

"Four or five hours should do it," Pyter said. "Just to be on the safe side."

"Four hours!" Randall exclaimed. "My God… you want me back inside that steel closet for another four hours?… "

"Well, it's that or crippling joint pain, and the chance of an embolism in your lungs or brain."

"Into the escape trunk with you," Gordon said. "That's an order."

"Aye aye, sir." But he didn't sound happy.

"I need to check some things with the COB," Pyter said. "Wait here, Mr. Randall. I'll be back for you in a minute."

"As if I have a choice." When the corpsman had left, he looked at Gordon. "Thanks for coming after me, sir."

"We couldn't very well leave you. I'm sorry about your buddy."

"Nelson. Tom Nelson" he said it as though it were important that Gordon remember the name. "That's the breaks of the game, I guess."

"Damned dangerous game." Gordon was fast becoming sick of the idea of this being a game.

"I'm just sorry I didn't get more intel on that Russian crawler while I had the chance. There were charts, circuit diagrams, even that fancy underwater pistol that nailed me…. "

"Well, you can hardly be blamed for not bringing that stuff out. You were pretty badly hurt."

"Wasn't that. I just wasn't thinking."

"Couldn't be helped. I'd say you did pretty damned well. Anyway, I imagine they'll debrief you when you get back to the world, and you'll be able to pass on a lot of what you saw in there."

"Maybe. But charts and a fancy rocket pistol would've been better. Damn, we could have learned a lot."

"Is that because you seriously think we need the intel? Or are you trying to justify a stunt as crazy as boarding and capturing a Russian minisub?"

Randall managed a weak smile. "I've been wondering that myself, sir. I… I guess it… I guess Tom's death would mean something if I'd been able to bring anything out except memories."

"He died doing what he believed in, what he thought was right. True?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then his death meant something."

"Maybe Fitch and McCluskey could go back across to the crawler. Those charts could be exactly what the Agency people were looking for when they set this recon up."

"That's a negative," Gordon said. "We were under way thirty seconds after the last of you locked aboard. We have some bad guys coming this way, and they're pissed."

"ASW forces? Do they have you spotted?"

"Hard to tell at this point. My guess is that they knew we were here … or knew we were going to be here, and are trying to flush us into the open."

"'Knew we were going to be here!' Christ, Captain! You mean the op was compromised?"

"That's exactly what I mean."

"Then… then our packages must have been captured. You think they talked?"

"I think it's worse than that. The Russians knew they, and we, were coming ahead of time, before we even entered the Sea of Okhotsk. That means the mission was compromised before we even left Mare Island."

"Shit!"

"The question is why."

"To capture the CIA people?"

"I think they want something bigger, something higher-stakes. I think they want the Pittsburgh? "God in heaven… "

"Makes sense. The Russians are pissed because we've been penetrating areas like Okhotsk and the Barents and White Seas for some years now, waters they think of as their national territory. Whether the law is on their side or ours is immaterial. They think of these incursions as just that — incursions into their territory. They haven't been able to stop our operations, but maybe they can expose what we've been doing. And embarrass us for some good old-fashioned Cold War propaganda in the bargain.

"And maybe capturing and examining an American Los Angeles class submarine would be a feather in some Russian admiral's gold-braided cap. We've had a big advantage over them in submarine technology for a lot of years, despite the damage done by the Walkers and other spies. This would give them the opportunity to match us at last, and maybe even surpass us."

"That's a real scary picture you're painting there, sir. For one thing, it means a traitor pretty highly placed in either the Pentagon or the Agency."

"I know."

"Are you writing Johnson and his people off, sir?"

"I'm not writing anybody off. We're here to do a job, and we're going to do it."

"There may not be anybody to pick up tonight, Captain."

"I know."

Chief Pyter reentered sick bay. "Okay, Lieutenant, Captain. We're all set in the forward escape trunk." He gave a signal, and a pair of sailors appeared with a Stokes stretcher.

"I can walk, damn it."

"I don't want you doing anything but what you're told, sir. Get in the stretcher."

As Randall got into the stretcher, he turned again to Gordon. "I don't know if there's anything to this, sir… but that crawler sub out there was parked and waiting, like it was in ambush. It was also packing a couple of small ASW torpedoes."

"Torpedoes?"

"Yes, sir: 406-mm jobs. Seventy kilos of explosive apiece. It would have taken at least two good hits to sink the Pittsburgh, but I'm thinking maybe the idea wasn't to sink her… but to cripple her, force her to the surface."

"That would make sense, Lieutenant. Thank you."

"It's also possible, sir, that there are more than the one out there."

"What makes you think that?"

"Because visibility is so shitty… and they wouldn't want to call attention to themselves by using active sonar. I think what makes sense is if they deployed, oh, half a dozen or so across the width of the Tatar Strait Channel. That way, no matter where the 'Burgh approached the pipeline to drop us off, there'd be a crawler sub within, oh, a mile or so. Maybe less. Close enough to hear us coming, maybe, and take a shot. A piece of fucking cake."

"I'll keep that in mind, Lieutenant. You have a nice stay in the escape trunk."

"Yeah. Right."

Gordon watched the SEAL being carried away. What Randall had said made deadly sense. The crawler subs, by their nature, would be hard to spot, lost in the ground clutter off the sea floor. The one Randall and Nelson had stumbled across had given away its location by leaving its engine on.

Had that been deliberate? Like bait? Or had they been counting on the fact that a crawler operating on its diesel engine didn't sound like a threat? Or maybe they'd been getting into position and simply hadn't shut down yet… not realizing that the Pittsburgh was already less than a mile away.

It didn't matter. Right now, Gordon had to assume that there were other crawlers out there, lost in silence, operating on batteries… and each packing warheads that would force Pittsburgh to the surface if they connected.

They were deep inside the Sakhalinskiy Zaliv, with Russian forces all around. Their single advantage was that the Russians didn't know exactly where the 'Burgh was….but that was an advantage that could evaporate at any moment, as soon as they were touched by a Russian ship's active sonar. All they had to do was make the rendezvous tonight, and sneak back out of the bay again.

A piece of fucking cake.

O'Brien stood next to one of the torpedo-room racks, watching as McCluskey and Fitch stowed the last of their diving gear after having carefully cleaned and checked all of it. Benson and Chief Allison were there as well. "You mean Mr. Randall killed a bunch of Russians out there? I mean… he just killed them?"

McCluskey looked up at him with eyes that carried just a touch of a haunted look, a dark expression that was hiding far more than it gave away. "I doubt that it was as easy as just killing them," the SEAL chief replied.

Getting the SEALs to say anything about what had happened outside was next to impossible. They were a closed-mouth lot who didn't open easily to outsiders.

Yet there was enough of a shared bond already that Fitch and McCluskey had been willing to tell the submariners a little. They'd said that at least four Russians had been killed… and they'd said, too, that Tom Nelson was dead. That bit of news had already spread throughout the boat. Too many sailors had seen Nelson's body brought in through the airlock and stuffed into a body bag for transport to the sub's tiny morgue locker for it to be otherwise.

"I know," O'Brien said. "What I mean is… did they attack him? Or did he sneak up on them?"

"You'll have to ask him, kid," McCluskey said.

Fitch gave an evil grin. "Maybe he wants some company in the escape trunk, man. You two could swap sea stories."

"I think I'll pass on that," O'Brien said, rubbing a hand over his clean-shaven scalp. "He'd have me for breakfast."

"He's a good man," McCluskey said. "He'll make a fine

Wheel."

"Wheel?" Benson asked.

"It's what we call the guy in charge of a SEAL platoon," McCluskey said. "Twelve men, two officers. The guys in charge are the Wheel and the 2IC. Mr. Randall's been 2IC, but he's in line to skipper a platoon when his promotion comes through."

"Cool," O'Brien said. For him, SEALs were a bit larger than life … real-life heroes combining the best of Rambo and James Bond who carried out exciting, deadly, impossible missions far behind enemy lines.

He wondered if he had what it took to become a SEAL. He was a submariner now, and he knew he wanted to stick it out until he got his dolphins, but after that he could apply for SEAL training, and if he made it…

"Those dead Russians," Benson said, sounding scared. "Does that mean there's going to be a war? A shooting war?"

"Not likely," McCluskey said. "The diplomats'll smooth it over."

"Right," Chief Allison added. "Y'know, a few hundred people have been killed in the Cold War already. I'm not talking about Vietnam or Korea or our people getting killed in the Mideast or even things like Flight 007 getting shot down by the Russians. There've been lots of missions like this one, and some of them haven't turned out so well, am I right, Chief?"

McCluskey shrugged. "Not really the sort of thing we can comment on."

"Yeah. I'll bet."

"In our line of work," Fitch pointed out, "if someone dies, or if word gets out that something went down, well, it means somebody fucked up."

"Your buddy was killed," Benson said. "And all those Russians. Does that mean this mission is fucked up?"

"That's one way to put it, kid," McCluskey said. "That is one way to put it."

"This op's been jinxed from the git-go," Fitch said. "Ol' Murphy's been working overtime."

"Murphy?" O'Brien asked.

"If something can go wrong, it will," McCluskey said. "Anybody who's been in combat knows Murphy's Law."

"I just wish I knew what was going to go wrong next," Allison said. "Way I hear it, half the Russian fleet is up there right now hunting for us."

McCluskey grunted. "Not surprised. From what Mr. Randall says, it sounds like this mission could've been compromised."

"You mean, someone knew we were coming?" O'Brien asked.

"That's exactly what I mean, kid."

"And a submarine's greatest strength is its invisibility," Allison said. "If the bad guys know where to look for you, you're dead."

O'Brien was used to the old hands on board the Pittsburgh painting gloomy pictures to bait the nubs, a reasonably harmless way of passing the time. Chief Allison, especially, liked to tell sea stories about some of his earlier boats, and some of those could stand your hair on end.

This, however, didn't sound like a sea story.

"There's a story going around the Fleet," Allison went on, "about an American submarine, a Sturgeon, I think, that got cornered by the Russians right here in the Sea of Oshkosh. She was spotted, boxed in, and depth charged until she was forced to surface. Of course what happened next was pretty well buried. They hushed it up completely."

"What did happen?" Benson wanted to know.

"I don't know," Allison said. "I told you they hushed it up!"

"Now you sound like Big C," O'Brien said. "A conspiracy of silence?"

Allison laughed. "Just because you're paranoid… "

"Doesn't mean they're not out to get you," the others chorused.

For O'Brien, it felt as though the laughter that followed rang just a bit hollow.

"It has begun, Felix Nikolaevich," Captain Vetrov told his executive officer. He jerked a thumb toward the speaker above the sonar console at the port-aft end of the control room. "You hear that? The wolves have scented the prey!"

The eerie, mournful ping of multiple sonars chirping and ringing through the ocean deeps punctuated the air in the compartment, each as sharp as shattering crystal. The initial chirp of each pulse was hard and clear; the returning echoes wavered and faded like dreams. The ASW surface vessels were roughly ten miles ahead, moving south, away from the Krasnoyarskiy Komsomolets.

The starpom's eyes were on the waterfall displays at the Sonar Officer's station. "It doesn't appear the prey has been flushed yet," he said.

"No. No… but they will be! And when they are …" Vetrov's right fist smacked hard against his open left palm. "We will be there, torpedoes loaded and ready!"

"The orders are to force the American to the surface," the starpom reminded him.

He waved a hand. "Yes… yes, I know my orders. But I also know my duty. The Americans have entered our waters, attempting to play the old game on our back porch. This time, we will end it, once and for all. One way or the other, my friend, the American will not escape!"

Vetrov's smile broadened. He found he was eager for this confrontation.

Yes, he would show them.

He would show them all….