Raise the Red Dawn

Chapter Sixteen

MacKenzie took the news hard. Lasovic saw it in the way his shoulders sagged and the sudden terrible pain in his eyes. He had come back with his friend to his cabin, waiting till they were alone to tell him. When he did, it was as if the life went out of MacKenzie.

“Christ, Tom, I thought we pulled the torpedo far enough away. The whole base camp’s gone?”

“We surfaced. There’s nothing left.”

“I never thought this could happen, me back and her gone.”

“We’ll find her, Mac. Maybe they doubled back.”

“I was outside for five minutes and I almost froze. She’s been on the ice for over two hours now.” MacKenzie’s voice came close to breaking, “I tried, Tom. I thought we’d blocked the blast—”

“You can’t blame yourself. Justine’s a pro. She’s probably working out a way to contact us now. The C-One-thirty is still up there looking. We’ll find her, Mac. Believe me.”

“I wish I knew how. One mistake leads to another. I can’t help feeling I’m to blame.”

“You’re not.”

MacKenzie stood and grabbed his jacket. Lasovic had never seen him so drawn and tired. “I’m going to take us up for one more look.”

MacKenzie stood on the sail and peered into the blinding storm. It was impossible to see anything. The winds were gale force. The temperature was seventy below zero. It was futile to send a search party out in this weather. They’d soon be lost, too. Was there anything he could do to find his wife? A bitter voice inside told him there wasn’t.

For the first time in his career MacKenzie hated his responsibilities. He felt chained to his sub, to his command. He wanted to head out onto the ice and find Justine. But he couldn’t, any more than he could risk any operation for one single crew member. The navy had known the risk when it sent Justine up here. Personal considerations were to be put aside. She was the senior operative in charge of this mission, but like everyone else she was expendable. Except to him…

Spent, he climbed down the sail ladder and secured the hatch. The snow on his parka melted at once in the warmth of the conn and dripped to the deck. There was nothing more he could do. He gave the command reluctantly. “Prepare to dive.”

“Straight board, sir,” announced the chief.

MacKenzie knew his next order could be a sentence of death for his wife. He had no choice. “Take her down, Tom.”

There was a knock at the cabin door. MacKenzie composed himself. He was surprised to see Diving Officer Randall enter.

“Welcome back, Skipper. We were worried about you.”

“I appreciate that, Mr. Randall. How’s the diver coming along?”

“We made a tub in the infirmary from some empty crates and lined it with trash bags. Warm water and Cook’s coffee did the trick. He came to. Medics say he’ll lose some fingers and toes and lots of skin, but he’ll make it.”

“That’s good to hear. What’s the preliminary report?”

“The Russian translator is debriefing him now. It seems the situation on Red Dawn is just about what we figured. Some kind of new drive unit failed and caused the problems. Limited battery power. No way to repair communications. He came out to take a stab at getting the snorkel to the surface.”

“He’s a brave boy. Who’s in charge over there?”

“The same Captain Galinin you saw in the ice tunnel and a scientist named Ligichev.” Randall colored a little. “From the way the diver talks about Ligichev’s daughter, I think they’re in love. Asked me if we could get a message to her that he’s okay.”

“As soon as conditions permit. What’s Avalon’s status?”

“Lieutenant Johnson reports repairs are complete. Chief Feeney replaced all the electronics. You’ve got full communications and control.”

“Inform Lieutenant Johnson we’ll be leaving for Red Dawn as soon as he completes the checklist.”

“Right away. But, uh… Skipper?” Randall hesitated.

“Something on your mind, Mr. Randall?”

“Yes, sir. May I speak freely?”

“Of course.” MacKenzie had a personal affection for the young man. In spite of his youth and inexperience Randall had real character, the kind you could depend on. In a pinch he’d be right at your side.

“It’s about your wife, sir. Everybody knows… I mean, we all heard… Well, I’m real sorry. But I was thinking…”

“Go ahead, Mr. Randall. I have to believe she’s okay up there. I just wish I knew where.”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I figured… I mean, if it were me and I was lost on the ice, where would I go?”

“There’s nowhere to go,” MacKenzie said bleakly.

“But, Skipper, there is somewhere and I’ll bet your wife would figure it out, too. What about the icebreakers? They’re up there and coming this way. I know your wife knows about them ‘cause I heard Mr. Lasovic tell you their position and she was standing right there next to you. But you’ve probably got all this figured out already, huh?”

MacKenzie was open-mouthed. “I sure didn’t, Mr. Randall. I don’t know how I could have missed it.” He grabbed the hope with both hands. “I forgot all about the breakers. It makes perfect sense. They’re only a few miles out and closing fast. If she couldn’t find us she’d head straight for them. Sure.” MacKenzie flicked open the intercom and spoke to Lasovic in the conn, quickly explaining Randall’s theory. “Tom, radio the C-One-thirty to cover the transit line, and tell the Polar Eight to keep a sharp lookout for survivors.” He hesitated. What he was about to do violated procedure and would probably alert the Soviet sub captain to how devastating his attack had been, but in this case he was going to make an exception. He would allow himself that much. “And, Tom, send out an SOS on an open channel to look for the survivors as well. Request Ural’s humanitarian assistance.”

“Akula will hear it, Mac.”

“I am aware of that.”

If there was any further hesitation in Lasovic’s voice it didn’t come over the speaker. “Roger. Right away, Mac,” said the XO.

MacKenzie looked at his junior officer. “Mr. Randall, I…” He stopped, because he could not cross the line a captain was obligated not to cross. But Randall seemed to know that.

“I’m glad I could help, Skipper.”

MacKenzie felt his heart lighten. He had made mistakes, serious ones, but maybe they wouldn’t cost him his wife. And maybe he could still pull a successful mission out of all this. He drew strength from the hope. “Back to the conn, Mr. Randall. We have a lot of work left to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Mr. Randall?”

“Sir?”

“Thank you.”

“Sir?” The radio officer handed Captain Maré a sheet of paper from his message pad. “This just in. From the USS Seawolf.”

Renaud looked over from his vantage point on the bridge, interested. “That’s the American sub we’re here to assist, isn’t it?”

Maré nodded. “That’s her. Hmm… seems they’ve lost some of their people on the surface. It is likely they’re headed for us. They want us to keep a lookout for them.” He turned back to the radio officer. “Send: Message received and understood. Polar Eight has a sharp eye out.”

“Lot of good that’s going to do.” Renaud snorted. “Between the fog and the snowfall we’re down to zero visibility. We could run over them and never spot the bodies.”

“Let’s try not to, shall we?” Mare said with equanimity. “Rather a bad tone to set for international relations, I should think. Do what you can, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” said Renaud. He looked into the swirling gray mist beyond the bridge windows. If anything, conditions were growing worse. Only the Ural seemed not to notice. She was still keeping up with them, still making an almost impossible four knots under treacherous conditions. Renaud shook his head. Now they were supposed to find some lost souls wandering out on the ice cap in the middle of the worst storm in Renaud’s memory.

He swore under his breath, “Good goddamn luck.”

Phil Arlin listened to MacKenzie’s plan over the radio and shook his head skeptically. “I don’t know, Mac. It’s a hell of a risk. If we breach her pressure hull, Red Dawn will drop like a stone when she comes out of the ice.”

MacKenzie and Luke were on their way to Phoenix to pick up the tow hook. The captain was speaking by radio from Avalon. His voice came over the conn speaker. “That Russian breaker is too close to wait. If it gets a towline on Red Dawn before we do, we’ll have a right-of-salvage question arising.”

“But blowing it out of the ice. Are you that good a shot?” Arlin asked, only half kidding.

“You’d better hope so,” Mac said. “But I’m going to stack the deck in my favor. I’ll plant taggers from the DSRV.”

A tagger was a torpedo that penetrated a ship’s hull and sent out a homing signal to other torpedoes. It made destruction a certainty even if the ship took evasive action.

“How much of a charge in the fish?”

“Ten percent. We take Red Dawn out of the ice with two shots.”

“That’s not going to get the ice off her hull.”

“We’ll drill it off as best we can and blow the rest with shape charges,” MacKenzie said. “Seawolf has a few in the armory. We’ve got to drill into her ballast tanks to flood them anyway, remember? And it’s a good way to test out the swimmer delivery vehicles.”

Arlin thought it over. “Who was it said, ‘Better a bad plan than no plan at all’?”

“Wish I knew. But he must’ve been familiar with the Arctic. We’re running out of time, Phil.”

Arlin sighed. “I know. How close are you?”

“Coming up on you now. I see the tow hook on the cleats.”

There was a silence for a few moments; then MacKenzie’s voice came through. “Luke’s got it. We’re paying out the line now.”

“Mac, is there any word on Justine and the SEALs?”

There was what Arlin would have called a pregnant silence, but his friend’s voice came back firm and under control. “We think they’re heading for the breakers. Have to wait and hope.”

“My prayers are with them, Mac.”

Arlin heard MacKenzie take a deep breath. “Okay. The towline is secured to Avalon. Phoenix, we’re heading for Red Dawn. Follow us in.”

Justine looked up through ice-crusted eyes and cursed the storm. It howled back, swirling around her like something alive and bent on her destruction. It had become a personal thing, the conflict between her and the storm. Saving the men struggling along behind her was no longer her main goal. The mission to raise Red Dawn was forgotten. Even personal survival had ceased to matter inasmuch as it meant preserving her life. Survival had meaning only if it meant beating the storm.

She trudged up to the summit of another ice ridge and looked through the snow and the mist, searching for the icebreakers. They had walked at least two miles. They couldn’t take much more. Where the hell were the ships? A body’s core temperature could go only so low and then the machine began to slow until it finally stopped, like a sensitive mechanism someone poured molasses into. The blood got too thick to flow. The mind got too fuzzy to command. The inner flame flickered and went out and then you just… stopped.

She had heard it was peaceful to die in the snow. You just lay down and went to sleep, drifted away. Well, it wasn’t true. The cold wasn’t a friend; it was a lying thief. It stole from you bit by bit till you had nothing left to fight with. Cold was a monster that sucked you dry in stages. Better to die in a blazing fire, she thought, better to go in one last moment of all-consuming energy than to die by degrees, your body succumbing an inch at a time.

Valor. That was another illusion. There was nothing valorous about fighting the cold. Putting one foot in front of the other, that was what you did. All her life she had fought enemies with guns and knives and even bare hands. How could she fight the cold with those? All her training had left her with nothing but putting one foot in front of the other and shuffling on.

The wind drove the icy flakes at them in swirling staccato bursts. Her lips bled from friction against the face mask till the cold froze them, too. She cried when she realized she would no longer be pretty if she survived this. Would Mac still love her? Patches of her face had no feeling. She was sure big chunks of flesh were frostbitten and dead. She pictured taking off the mask and her face peeling away with it. That made her want to start screaming, but she knew if she started she might not stop.

She forced herself to concentrate. One foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other. She turned back to count the remaining men. Four left. Burke was gone, Hansen, too, lost somewhere in this howling madness. She could do nothing. Except put one foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other…

Her arms and legs were encrusted in rime. She shuffled forward like a crystalline robot. She no longer felt her feet. Her fingers were lifeless, maybe forever. She thought about playing the piano. Once she’d been a concert artist. Her father had taught her, along with her brothers, Sebastion and Miguel. Everyone said she had the most talent, but it wasn’t true. What she had was tenacity. She’d met enough of the truly talented, the divinely gifted, to know. They all had something she didn’t — a direct connection to God, it seemed, a link to the wellspring that defied measurement. They had talent. She had tenacity. She practiced hour after hour, forcing the keys to obey her fingers, making the notes dance as they must. It was like that here. Others might be stronger. No one was more tenacious.

She was so cold. Her mind forced her complaints out of her head. Just put one foot in front of the other. Concentrate. One foot in front of the other. Follow me. Keep putting one foot in front of the other…

She had once read about a famous long-distance runner. How did he find the strength, he was asked, to finish a marathon? How could he sustain his drive and energy for that long? He had told them something Justine finally understood, here, freezing to death on the ice cap at the top of the world. There was no finish line. Winning was an illusion. You just kept putting one foot in front of the other… one foot in front of the other… one foot in front of the other…

She kept on putting one foot in front of the other… and trudged on.

MacKenzie piloted the DSRV toward the frozen sub. “Coming up on position,” he said to Luke.

“I’m ready,” he responded.

MacKenzie moved Avalon in slowly. Phil Arlin had been right. What they were preparing to do was risky. Blasting Red Dawn out of the ice keel was a shortcut, and he had learned that under the ice cap was no place for shortcuts. But with the breakers almost on their doorstep and the time and manpower that Akula had cost them, there were too few options.

“Keep her as steady as you can, Mac. Slight forward pressure.”

MacKenzie pressed forward on the steering yoke till Avalon was almost nudging the ice keel. A drill bit had been added to the arm since the last time MacKenzie had seen Luke use it when they were trapped by a rock slide in the Cayman Trench. The drill nipped and nibbled into the ice, and chunk after chunk fell away. It was tedious work, but Luke had a master’s touch. Yard-thick shards drifted past the observation windows like jewels split from a mammoth crystal.

MacKenzie felt fatigue working on him, draining his last reserves. How long had it been since any of them had slept. Two days? Three? It seemed like a lifetime since they had picked up the signals from what they thought was a Soviet Boomer. The other captain was clever, no doubt about it That fake missile launch was one for the books. He wondered how close Akula was. Their sonar crew would be listening to the DSRV’s motor noise, probably ranging them as they worked. He searched the waters around him. Phoenix was a few hundred yards from them, waiting. The water was so clear the big black craft looked suspended in midair. Beyond Phoenix the sea faded into unseeable depths. That was where Seawolf was, on patrol, and Akula, ready to pounce.

“Up a little,” Luke murmured, retracting the drill. MacKenzie feathered the controls.

“There. Hold it.” The tow eye was visible now. Luke extended the arm and the drill bored into the ice again.

While Luke worked, MacKenzie had time to think things over. There had been precious little opportunity to do that before now. He’d come to respect the Akula’s captain as a powerful and cunning adversary. Regardless of sides they were both members of the small, elite fraternity of men who drove submarines for a living. In some ways, they were brothers; both had come to this bitter continent and both had kept their ships operating despite what man and nature had thrown at them. MacKenzie knew he had made mistakes. The truth was that both of them had. After all, Akula’s captain had been unable to protect Red Dawn.

“I’ve got the forward ballast tanks uncovered.”

“Drill into them. Small holes to vent the air slowly. If they can get the pumps working they may be able to surface under their own power.”

“Why can’t we just leave the ice on her?”

MacKenzie smiled. “Ice floats. Unless she’s heavy enough to submerge under the keels we’ll never tow her out of here. With the ice around her she’d just have a larger displacement and be even more buoyant.”

Luke’s face registered understanding. He went back to clearing the ice away. MacKenzie lapsed into silence. He was trying to keep a lid on his personal pain, but his normal control mechanisms were strained. In just a few days fatigue had penetrated his very bones. Responsibilities were more burdensome, the losses greater. He felt his years heavily.

With an odd, fey certainty that could only have come from his Scottish ancestors, MacKenzie knew deep down that the other captain was feeling these things, too. He wondered if the ice cap itself had done this to them, changed them both irrevocably as if just by being here a man could be robbed of spirit the way the cold robbed him of warmth. Could anyone come here and remain unaffected? He thought not. It was sad that he and the other captain would never get the chance to talk to each other, but as soon as MacKenzie placed Red Dawn in tow he would seal both of their fates. Akula’s captain could not let the Americans escape with the prize. In the end, Seawolf and Akula would have to hunt each other down.

“Almost got the first one, Mac.”

It went on, Luke steadily clearing the ice from the tanks, drilling holes to allow water to seep in. Finally Luke attacked the ice covering the tow eye. It sheared off in big platelets.

MacKenzie picked up the radio mike. “Phoenix, Avalon. We’re about ready to attach the tow hook. Stand by.”

“Phoenix on station, standing by.”

Red Dawn was embedded in the ice at such an angle the tow eye was almost out of the hydraulic arm’s reach. A foot or two more and they couldn’t have gotten to it. Luke cleared the last chunks of ice from the hull and stopped drilling. The tow eye was accessible. Seawater flooded the cavity, washing ice off the deck and the forward hatch. Deftly, Luke uncoupled the tow hook from where it was secured to Avalon‘s own hull and maneuvered it toward the tow eye on Red Dawn‘s bow.

“Give me some slack. Yep, that’s it…”

MacKenzie kept Avalon in close. They were less than five feet from the ice keel. It was a tricky moment. Once it was attached to Red Dawn, Phoenix lost every advantage an attack sub possessed. It couldn’t run or dive, and the sound of the sub in tow as it trailed through the water would pinpoint the two ships for the enemy’s sonar like a cow bell. He didn’t envy Arlin’s tactical position.

With a final snap of the joystick, Luke attached the two hook to Red Dawn. “There.” He powered down and released a deep pent-up breath. “What Luke has joined together let no Russian put asunder.” He smiled wryly. “Don’t mind me, sir. I always get emotional at weddings.”

MacKenzie picked up the mike. “Phoenix, Avalon. You have Red Dawn in tow. Repeat. You have Red Dawn in tow.”

“Avalon, Phoenix. Message acknowledged. This from the captain: Shoot straight, seevooplay.”

MacKenzie gave a dry laugh. “You heard the man, Luke. Let’s plant the taggers.” He reversed the engines and backed Avalon away from the ice keel. Seawolf had joined them and was hugging the ice for sonar concealment. A personal need surfaced, one he could not ignore.

“Seawolf, this is MacKenzie. How close are those breakers?”

“Lasovic here, Skipper. Less than a mile from us. No word yet.”

“Keep me posted.”

“Aye, Skipper. We will.”

Luke spoke with a friend’s concern. “She’ll make it.”

MacKenzie shrugged, powerless.

“You know,” Luke said, pointing at the ice keel, eager to change the subject, “this close, the ice around Red Dawn looks like it’s got fault lines running through it. You see? Like an uncut stone. I think we could split most of it off if we place the charges right.”

“Think you have the spots?”

“A couple I’d like to try.”

MacKenzie gave him the go-ahead. Luke picked up the controls and bent to the task. He was right. The ice around Red Dawn had frozen in chunks rather than in one solid floe. Pieces the size of small icebergs broke off as he drilled. “I should’ve been a diamond cutter,” he said, admiring his work. A good deal of the ice on the sub had fallen away, but she was still frozen solidly into the keel. “That’s as much as I can get. Ready for act two.”

“Right,” MacKenzie picked up the radio mike. “Seawolf… Avalon. What’s the status of the SDVs?”

“SDVs ready to launch, Skipper.”

“Launch SDVs.”

Seawolf was one of the few submarines specially modified to carry swimmer delivery vehicles, or SDVs — two-man minisubs built for naval commando units. They were still experimental and their capabilities had not yet been demonstrated, but because of the loss of the SEALs MacKenzie had pressed them into service. They were being run by his own specially trained crewmen.

“SDVs away,” Lasovic reported.

MacKenzie angled Avalon to get a look. It was quite a sight. Five dark green, torpedo-shaped crafts with Plexiglas bubbles over tiny cockpits slid out of Seawolf’s special hatches into the sea, propelled by electric motors. It looked as if a school of pilot fish had left the body of a great shark.

“The invasion of the teeny tiny subs,” said Luke.

“Teeny tiny bombs is more like it,” MacKenzie observed, referring to the shape charges that were attached to each SDVs front grapple. The grapple was a clever multi-hook apparatus that let the SDV attach a limpet mine to the hull of a surface ship or sub before fading back to the mother ship. MacKenzie picked up the radio and called the pilot of the first SDV.

“Avalon to Jolly Green One. Prepare to place the first charge. Can you see where our hydraulic arm is pointing?”

“Jolly Green One over. We can see it, Skipper.”

“Deliver the charge right into that drill hole. Everybody else remain in position.”

They must look like a collection of weird insects come to feed on the ice keel, MacKenzie thought as the first SDV moved in alongside Avalon. The pilot adeptly maneuvered the shape charge into the hole Luke had drilled. Within seconds, the water froze around it locking it into place.

“Well done, Jolly Green One. Head home.”

“Roger, Avalon.” The tiny craft dropped down and sped for Seawolf.

“Prepare to place the second charge, Jolly Green Two.”

Carefully, the SDVs continued planting the shape charges in the fault lines with Luke using Avalon’s hydraulic arm to point the way.

“That’s going to have to do it on this level,” MacKenzie said as the second and third SDV returned to the ship. He scanned the keel overhead and pointed. “Look, up there, about twenty feet above the sail. See it?”

“A waist where the keel narrows? Yeah.”

“First tagger goes there.”

“Roger.” Luke took the controls for the hydraulic arm again, and MacKenzie brought Avalon up the ice keel like an elevator. Seawolf’s torpedomen had removed the tagger homing mechanisms from two torpedoes and placed them in waterproof casings. They would call the torpedoes in with unerring accuracy. Luke bored a hole in the ice, and the fourth SDV placed its mechanism inside the keel. They repeated the procedure on a section of keel underneath Red Dawn with a second tagger from the fifth and final SDV.

“Seawolf Avalon. Mission accomplished. All SDVs homeward bound. How do the taggers sound, Tom?”

“Loud and clear, Skipper. Fire Control says it’s a lock. The special fish are loaded in tubes one and three. We’re ready to fire on your order.”

“I’m going to keep Avalon out here for better vantage.”

“Roger. Fire control says you should move off at least five hundred yards.”

“Affirmative.”

MacKenzie looked out the observation port. It was a scene no Naval Academy textbook could ever have predicted and one that would remain in his memory as long as he lived. Hovering in the crystal-clear waters half a mile away was Phoenix, its towline trailing back to Red Dawn, still encased in the ice keel. Less than a mile away, at the apex of the triangle, Seawolf had come to all stop to fire her torpedoes, and now she, too, was motionless in the water with the tiny SDVs gathered around her. For a brief moment Seawolf Phoenix, Red Dawn, and Avalon were all suspended in space and time.

The speaker crackled. “This is Phoenix. We are prepared to tow.”

A moment later Lasovic’s voice came over loud and clear. “This is Seawolf. SDVs secure. We are ready to fire.”

In Avalon’s cabin Luke locked the arm’s controls and said, “ ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ ”

MacKenzie drew Avalon back out of harm’s way. It had no business amid the giants who were about to explode the sea.

Ligichev came to the engine room. Ivanna was working hard on the propulsion system — an emotional palliative, he figured. “Have you heard? The Americans have engaged the tow hook. Galinin saw them from the ice tunnel. We’ll be out of here soon,” he said.

“Forgive me if I don’t jump up and down.”

Ligichev put an arm around her. “I understand. But please try to forget him. You know, you are not so different from most. All of us are hurt the first time we fall in love.”

“Not this way. Please, Father, I know you mean well, but there’s nothing to say. Let me get back to work.”

“Forget the work. He sacrificed himself to save you, you know. He wanted you to go on.”

She stared at a wrench in her hands. “I know that. It makes the pain worse. How can anyone else compare? My life is over.”

Ligichev’s smile was tender and wise. “I know you think that, but it isn’t true.”

“You can’t know how I feel.”

“Ah, but I do. I was young once, even though you don’t believe it.”

“Father, I didn’t mean—”

He touched her face gently, “Shhh, I understand. I felt the same way about my parents. When you get older, you’ll be just as surprised as I was — and as they were — to find you inhabit an old decaying shell, because inside you still feel as you always did. Sixty? My God, no one feels sixty inside.” He stopped. His pontificating was only making the tears come again.

“I’ll never get over Pytor,” she said morosely.

“Listen to me for a moment. A long time ago I was in my final term at the institute and it was spring and I met and fell in love with a beautiful raven-haired girl at a party given by a friend. She was everything I ever wanted. She seemed happy, too. We soon spent all of our time together. We talked about the future we would have. When we slept together it was the first time for both of us. I swear to this day I can still remember that night with a clarity that staggers me.” He reddened a little telling her this, but pressed on. “Summer came and we had to part, but a few weeks later I finished my thesis and managed to persuade a friend to borrow his father’s car and drive me to the camp where she was training. She was a singer. A model, too.”

“Really?” Ivanna had grown interested. She and her father had always had a healthy respect for each other, but now as she watched him absorbed in his memories, eyes shining, she realized how much more deeply she had come to know him these past days. As a person. And a friend. “This girl must have really been something,” she said admiringly.

Ligichev blew out a short breath. “My dear, she had legs that went on for days.”

Ivanna snorted with pleasure. “Tell me more, scoundrel.”

“Well, my friend and I took so long to reach the camp that Shara and I had barely ten minutes together before my friend and I had to turn back. The car broke down, the muddy roads… Well, I don’t have to tell you the rest.”

Ivanna nodded, eyes bright, swept into his narrative. “Of course not. It must have been beautiful, Father. Ten minutes was all there was, but you declared that your love would last a lifetime.”

Ligichev shook his head. “Sadly, no.”

“No?”

“No. Ten minutes was all it took for me to learn that she had found someone else. I was crushed. A letter from her reached me later. She said how sorry she was and how it had taken such a long time for this new love to bloom. What rubbish. It took about four days!”

Ligichev’s expression was so hapless that Ivanna laughed out loud. “You’re an old fool, telling me stories to make me feel better, as if I were a frightened child.”

“All parents are old fools. Do you feel any better?”

Wiping the tears from her eyes, she looked at him lovingly. “No, but I love you anyway. Now go away and let me hurt by myself. I have a lot of work to do if I’m to dismantle the drive before the Americans board us.”

“Right, I forgot. I’m glad to see Captain Galinin is thinking.”

“Nonsense. Galinin is sulking around the ship like a man at his own funeral. He didn’t give the order. I did. I mean, I just assumed he would, so I started to dismantle it on my own.”

“Galinin hasn’t given orders to secure the ship? It’s standard procedure. The drive is top secret.”

“Not a word.”

Ligichev thought that over. “Keep working. I’ll be back.”

Stephan had never seen a storm like this one. The winds blasted across the ice in sudden vicious bursts, gusting to over 120 kilometers an hour. The crewmen alongside him had been knocked down so many times they had to be sent back to the ship. Stephan advised the captain to send no others, to send him ski poles instead.

He bent low against the wind, using the Inuit way of pathfinding, following the sastrugi, the long wavelike ridges in the ice formed by the prevailing winds. Without the sastrugi he would have been walking blind in the whited out world, for there was no other way to pinpoint direction. Behind him the breakers continued their steady crash through the ice. He could no longer see the ships because of the storm; he could only hear their violent progress. They were dangerously close to each other. Less than a mile separated them now.

Stephan was exhausted from being on the ice so long. The temperature was seventy degrees below zero and the wind-driven ice crystals were like razor blades. He held on, keeping his internal flame at a steady, even glow, as an Inuit would. The ordeal would be over soon. The race was nearing its end. The Red Dawn was within a few kilometers, and Captain Ivanov had told him over the radio that he had communicated with their submarine Akula and was already preparing the divers to go down and attach the ship’s big tow lines to the downed submarine. As cold as he was on the surface Stephan didn’t envy the divers. He had a healthy fear of open water on the ice cap. A dunking could freeze a man to death in seconds.

He tucked the ski poles under his arm and took up the slack in the line back to the ship. He wondered if his ears would ever recover from the noise of the breakers running side by side. The ringing was so loud that when a strange sound suddenly nipped at his aural awareness he doubted he had heard it. But there it was again. He stopped gathering the line and stood with his ears into the wind. He pushed his parka hood back briefly and cupped his gloved hands to his ears. Straining, this time he heard it clearly: the unmistakable howling of a pack of white Arctic wolves.

He had run into wolves before. Resources were so limited in this land that a single pack might roam an area thousands of square kilometers, their pup-filled dens hidden from other predators somewhere in the tractless wastes. Nature had built into Arctic creatures a ferocity found nowhere else, because nowhere else were conditions so harsh and sources of nourishment so scarce. Once, with the Inuit, Stephan had seen Arctic wolves kill and gut a polar bear. It was a grisly spectacle, the wolves darting in to bite and claw, the fiercest clamping its teeth into the bear’s hindquarters and spinning around with the bear on the ice like a furry moon and planet. Despite their ferocity, Stephan had no animosity toward the wolves. Like everything else in the Arctic they had to fight to survive. The wolves’ philosophy was simple expediency: anything they saw was food.

What were the wolves stalking that was making them howl like that? Could something else be out here? He peered into the storm, but eyes were useless here. He heard the howls again and felt danger deep in his bowels. He walked ahead quickly to gain distance from the ships behind him. He was following a river of thin ice, but it was leading closer and closer to the Polar 8. He had no choice but to steer the Ural closer. He radioed Captain Ivanov and expressed his concerns. Ivanov told him the all-speed order had not been rescinded and to steer them where he had to. Ivanov also informed him of an unusual American request for assistance in locating members of their party lost on the ice cap.

“Do what you can,” Ivanov said, his tone indicating he was fully aware of how little that would be in such a storm.

Stephan made the immediate connection between the lost people and the wolves. Worried, he signed off, digging the sharp tips of his ski poles into the ice for traction and moving ahead as rapidly as the storm permitted. Things were coming together in an unpleasant way in his mind, but he couldn’t just leave the ship and wander off in search of the people. In weather like this even he risked getting lost. His choices dwindled. The wolves would be closing. With lives on the line, he decided to try something he had seen the Inuit do one night long ago outside their igloo.

They had been traveling the ice for three days, and Stephan had the unpleasant feeling they were lost. The two didn’t have many words between them, but a shrug was a shrug in any language. After another day of fruitless travel they built an igloo and settled in for the night. At least Stephan thought they’d settled in. He woke a few hours later to find the Inuit was gone. He panicked, thinking he was alone, and rushed outside. There was the Inuit sitting cross-legged on the ice, his face as blank and lifeless as a mask.

Stephan thought at first he had frozen to death, but saw that he was breathing. He sat down beside him. After a while life returned to the Inuit’s eyes along with a renewed— Stephan could only call it awareness. He pointed confidently and made the sign for home. Stephan asked as best he could what the Inuit had done to discover this.

The Inuit put his hands on Stephan’s chest, slowed Stephan’s breathing and bade him stare into the vaulted night sky overhead. He pointed to a star. Stephan fixed his gaze on it. The Inuit began to chant softly. Over and over. Stephan had seen men meditate before and figured this was just another form of it, so he allowed his mind to drift. When he’d picked up enough of the chant to mimic ‘it phonetically he joined the man on the ice chanting to a night sky ablaze with stars.

One of the things the ice taught you was man’s capacity to fool himself. You could see anything in the ice if you needed it badly enough, or got cold enough. You could see your long-lost brother coming at you over green hills. You could see your first love. Stephan would never know if what he saw that night was real or a product of his exhaustion or created by an impressionable mind, but for one brief period of timeless time he left his body to become a light racing over the ice, a bodiless wraith who knew all the colors of the cold. From high above he could see himself and the Inuit sitting alongside the igloo below him as he danced on the wind. He had no boundaries. He was swept up into the color castle of the sky where he knew all things in one blindingly clear moment of comprehension.

It went on for the entire night. Afterward, like a dream, he was never able to explain it fully or even recall the complete imagery of it. It ended when it was morning and he woke to the sun and found the Inuit already packed and ready to move on. Stephan didn’t speak for two days, staggered beyond words by the wonder of the experience.

He’d never reached for that dream state again. He always thought that he didn’t want to be disappointed if he couldn’t reach it. More truthfully, his intuition told him that, like the first act of love, it would never be quite the same again. But the scales had tipped here. There were people involved, lost people, and he had no other way to find them. He remembered how alone and frightened he’d felt when his ship went down, how close he had come to freezing to death. His Inuit training had taught him to look for balance in all things. Was there some basic cosmic reckoning occurring here? Did he owe the ice cap a life in return for once sparing his?

Stephan sat down cross-legged on the ice and stilled his breathing. Then he began to chant the Inuit song he had never quite forgotten, there on the ice amid the violent swirling winds of the worst storm he had ever seen with icebreakers crushing the terrain behind him.

After a while the noise lessened. So did the wind. For a moment the forces surrounding him seemed balanced in a kind of stasis. He was a part of the storm now and his perceptions traveled outward. He saw things his conscious mind did not fully understand, sensed things that would not be translatable upon awakening, but soon he knew in a deeper place, without knowing how he knew, that the people were lost out there… and the wolves were indeed hunting them.

Ligichev found Galinin in the forward section of the sub inspecting the ballast tank valves. “Comrade Captain, can I speak to you?”

Galinin turned. He was holding a wrench and looked preoccupied. “What is it, Comrade Chief Scientist?”

Ligichev faced the bigger man squarely. “You’re planning something. I want to know what it is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play the fool with me, Comrade. Every man on board this ship should be earnestly engaged in stripping it of classified materiel. If nothing else, certainly the drive should be broken down and prepared for disposal. Instead, what’s left of the crew are feasting as if they haven’t a care in the world, and you give no orders at all.”

“So?”

“So I am a logical man. It is a curse sometimes, but one I bear happily. You always follow orders. You followed them so precisely you wrecked the drive. Your lack of such secrecy directives can mean only one thing.”

“Which is?”

“There is no need for any additional orders because you are planning to scuttle the ship yourself to prevent the Americans from boarding her and taking the drive and the irinium.”

“I have no intention of committing suicide. Go away.” He bent back to the valves.

Ligichev took a deep breath. “I warn you. My daughter’s life is at stake. I won’t permit it.”

Galinin turned back. His face was a mask of abnormal calm. It suddenly occurred to Ligichev that he was dealing with a dangerously unknowable quantity, a man who cared nothing for his own life, a fanatic.

“It is over, Comrade Chief Scientist, the whole affair of Red Dawn. I have orders to protect the irinium technology at all costs. This is the only way I can protect it. Maybe I wouldn’t tell this to the others. They have no real capacity to understand. But you, you have a brilliant mind. Surely you can see there is no other way.”

“You must see reason,” Ligichev begged. “A few years, that’s all you’ll really be gaining. Soon someone else will discover irinium. That’s the history of science. A few years, Captain. It’s not worth the sacrifice. It’s not worth the life of my daughter.”

“Is your daughter’s life worth more than Pytor’s?” Galinin’s eyes were bright. “There’s an example. Did you see how willingly he sacrificed himself for his country? Should your daughter do less? And as for you and me, what do we have left, really, a few years at most at our age? Is having them worth betraying your country?”

“No one’s country could ask this of him.”

“You are a fool if you believe that,” said Galinin. “A professional soldier has to face this sacrifice every day of his working life.”

“I warn you again. I will stop you unless you promise me you won’t try to scuttle the ship.”

“You’re threatening me?” Galinin laughed, a harsh, ugly bark. “Look at you. I could break you in half with one hand. Go away. Spend your last few hours with your daughter. Leave me to do what I must.” Galinin bent back to the valves.

Ligichev said slowly and distinctly, “I have never knowingly hurt another man in my life, but I will if you don’t get away from those valves.”

Galinin turned fiercely, enraged. But he stopped short. In Ligichev’s steady hand was the .25 automatic the captain had given him what seemed like ages ago. “So… it seems no good deed goes unpunished, eh? You threaten me with my own gun.”

“I’m done with words,” Ligichev said. “Get away from the valves. I’m going to lock you up in the trash room. Move.”

Galinin didn’t budge. Ligichev cocked the pistol’s trigger. It was a loud sound in the small room.

“You don’t have the balls,” Galinin said softly. He took a step forward. “Fire that in here and pierce the hull and you’ll do my work for me.”

“Stop, I warn you!” Ligichev said, falling back.

“That’s a mistake,” said Galinin. In one swift movement he darted to one side and lashed out with his foot, kicking Ligichev hard in the knee. Ligichev shouted in pain, vainly trying to aim, but Galinin was just too fast. He moved in and chopped down viciously on Ligichev’s wrist with the edge of his hand. The gun dropped from the scientist’s nerveless fingers to the deck with a loud clatter. Galinin swept it aside with his foot.

“You see?” Galinin said calmly. He wasn’t even breathing hard. “Act. Never threaten. Threatening is a mistake. You should have pulled the trigger without hesitation.”

“Yes, I see that,” Ligichev said despondently, nursing his damaged wrist. His advantage over the burly captain was gone. He could never hope to best him in a fight. “What will you do now?”

“Simple,” said Galinin. “I’m going to kill you. I can’t have you alerting the crew, now, can I?”

Ligichev’s eyes darted to the gun lying on the deck a few feet away. It might as well have been on the moon.

Galinin saw his glance and shook his head. “You can’t get to it and I don’t need it. Too loud.” He advanced, hands clenched like a strangler’s, eyes bright. “I will be gentle.”

Ligichev knew he was going to die. In a final act of desperation he swung his fist at Galinin’s head, but Galinin just caught it in his big palm and squeezed. Pain tore down Ligichev’s arm and his legs buckled. Blackness swam in his eyes. He felt a hand touch his throat…

The explosion shook the room like a blow from a giant hammer. Both men were thrown around. Red Dawn’s entire mass shifted suddenly and tossed them to the deck. Ligichev threw his arms over his head to protect himself as the force threw him into a console. Galinin was trying to get to his feet, but a second explosion picked him up and slammed him against the bulkhead wall. His eyes rolled up in his head from the force of the impact.

Dimly Ligichev understood what was happening as Red Dawn came free of the ice keel with a loud cracking sound that filled the ship. It had to be the Americans. Far away down the corridors he heard cheering, but he had no time to appreciate their rescue. Galinin was up and coming at him. Ligichev dived for the gun and came up with it. His hands were shaking and his wrist was on fire, but he wrapped both hands around the stock and pointed it at Galinin.

“Stop. Don’t make me—”

Galinin leaped at him, his face an animal mask of fury. He landed on Ligichev, pummeling him with a big meaty fist as they grappled for the gun.

Blam! The shot was louder than anything Ligichev had ever heard. Blam! He felt a wrenching pain tear at his shoulder. His arm went numb, and the gun slid out of his hand. It was over. He had no more strength. The weight of Galinin’s body lay heavily on him. It was growing harder to breathe. He prepared himself to die.

Galinin’s head rose before him like a ghost bobbing over the horizon. Ligichev’s vision was swimming from the pain. “See?” Galinin said fiercely, his eyes waxen, blood streaming down his face. “Another mistake. Never threaten. . never.”

Ligichev closed his eyes and felt the world spin away.