Raise the Red Dawn

Chapter Two

The USS Seawolf sliced through the frigid waters of the Arctic sea several hundred feet underneath the North Polar ice pack in the kind of warmth and comfort that would have seemed starkly inconceivable to earlier polar explorers. In the control room, Captain Peter MacKenzie accepted a plastic cup containing a single sip of champagne from his grinning exec, Tom Lasovic, and joined the others in Seawolf’s conn by raising it in a toast.

“Happy New Year, Tom. And to everybody,” MacKenzie said.

His toast was greeted by affectionate calls of “Happy New Year, Skipper,” from those in the conn. The affection the men had for MacKenzie was heartfelt. Many had sailed with him on his prior command, the USS Aspen, during its battle with the rogue submarine, Kirov.

“And a happy New Year to Seawolf. After all, it’s her first,” young Lieutenant Ed Randall, the blond crew-cut diving officer, said proudly.

“The first of many, Mr. Randall,” declared MacKenzie.

“Here, here,” echoed the men around him.

Trial runs were complete, and they were on their first operational mission since Seawolf‘s commissioning just months earlier. MacKenzie was pleased with the way the crew had come together. Under-the-icepack maneuvers were difficult even for experienced submariners, but his officers, under big Tom Lasovic, and the veteran seamen in the crew had molded even the inexperienced men into a tight working unit.

After his command experience on Aspen, the widely respected Mr. Lasovic could have had his own command. But the black Annapolis graduate had preferred XO on the state-of-the-art Seawolf to command of a lesser ship. MacKenzie was delighted. There was no finer executive officer in the fleet. And in all the world he had no better or more dedicated friend.

“Well, that’s enough reg breaking for one holiday,” Lasovic said mildly, tossing his cup into a plastic bag the steward held out. “That’s it, gentlemen. Party’s over.” The crew followed suit.

MacKenzie looked around the conn proudly. “She’s a helluva boat, Tom, isn’t she? The first of her kind and tops in every way. You can feel it.”

“Sure can, Mac. That’s why I figured, the new year… well, she deserved champagne.”

“I agree. All in the best interests of morale. Makes everybody feel a little easier being down here.”

“Down here,” echoed Lasovic. “I swear, Mac. I know it isn’t any colder inside Seawolf than it would be in the Caribbean, but my skin has goose bumps half the time.”

“It’s hard to forget a million tons of ice overhead,” MacKenzie agreed, shifting his attention to the closed circuit television screen that gave them a clear view of the ice sheet over them. Icy stalactites jutted down like angry spears. Huge keels extended as deep as a thousand feet. Most startling on the screen were the occasional polynyas, originally a Russian word, areas of thin ice that let just enough of the pole’s dim light shine through to look like streaks of jagged lightning across a dusky sky.

MacKenzie ran a hand over the planes of his sharp, rugged Scottish features and felt the deep lines that wind, weather, and responsibility had put there. Tom was right.

Seawolf deserved champagne. He watched the ice for a while, running through a mental roll call of his ship’s special abilities.

She could cruise at more than a thousand feet below the surface at speeds up to thirty-five knots, with a maximum diving depth of over two thousand feet. She carried an arsenal nearly twice the size of the Los Angeles class SSN’s, including the newest acoustical homing torpedoes, which could track and attack enemy subs or surface ships. From almost a hundred feet down Seawolf could launch a mix of nuclear-tipped and conventional missiles or rapid-salvo-fire torpedoes through the eight large-bore tubes — the L.A. class had only four — in her state-of-the-art torpedo room, the biggest ever built to outgun the big Russian boats with their six tubes.

Seawolf’s advanced BSY-2 combat system integrated acoustic and fire control systems and tracked more targets than ever before at greater range. In fact, measuring 353 feet from stem to stern with a 40-foot beam, she was the biggest, fastest, deepest-diving nuclear attack sub in the navy fleet. Her high-tensile steel hull was built to withstand pressures of over a thousand pounds per square inch, and not even six-foot-thick polar ice posed a problem for Seawolf. Her low, streamlined sail had been hardened to absorb the shock of breaking through the ice, and her bow planes were retractable to permit fast under-the-ice navigation and maneuverability. Finally, her multiblade controllable pitch propeller was encased in a precisely engineered “shroud” to make her even quieter during attack.

Ultimately, Seawolf‘s under-ice capabilities might be her most important attributes. Soviet ballistic missile subs lurking under the 5.4-million-square-mile Arctic Ocean and polar ice pack had made the Arctic the new battleground of undersea war. In wartime, Soviet subs could deploy from the Kola base and hide beneath the ice pack’s vast, complex regions before cruising American attack subs could attack to bottle them up. This would give the Soviets a distinct tactical advantage. They could lie in wait under the ice, silently listening for the attack sub’s approach, ready to fire as it sailed into their trap. Locating Soviet subs under the ice pack had therefore become the top priority for both the Navy Department and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known by its acronym, DARPA. This cruise was going to be the major test of Seawolf’s capabilities.

MacKenzie’s thoughts were interrupted by the crackle of the intercom.

“Conn… Sonar. We’ve got a contact, Skipper. And problems.”

“On my way. Tom, take the conn.”

“Okay, Skipper.” Lasovic stepped onto the slightly raised periscope platform. “This is the XO. I have the conn.”

In the sonar room, Sonarman First Class “Bear” Bendel was hunched over his instrument table with his headset clamped over his ears and a faraway look in his eyes. He was concentrating deeply, his auditory senses extended for miles around Seawolf by the “passive” sonar listening devices that studded her hull all along its length.

Sonar was an acronym for sound wavigation ranging. Passive sonar “listened” and collected sound with ultrasensitive electronic “ears.” Active sonar was the familiar pinging probe, which originated on the sub and was used to navigate or to locate, or range, a target. Active sonar was more accurate and, all things considered, would be the preferred choice in locating an enemy or in close battle quarters. But active sonar was a double-edged sword because nothing else revealed one’s own position quite like that burst of sound. The sub commander who used active sonar to range a target found quickly enough that the target had also ranged him. Classic high-speed, end-around World War II maneuvers were obsolete. In the nineties, you could be destroyed by wire-guided torpedoes or “smart” missiles launched from miles away. Only the silent survived.

Standing behind Bendel was his division officer, Lieutenant Jim Kurstan, a tall man with the youthful, unlined face of a choirboy. It masked a dedicated veteran officer who encouraged his men and let nothing slip by him. Bendel was a former college linebacker with hands like ham hocks, but he had a feel for sound that was a thing of beauty. Kurstan and Bendel were an exceptional team. Both had served with MacKenzie on Aspen.

“What have you got, Jim?” MacKenzie asked.

“Bear’s pretty sure, Skipper,” said Kurstan. “A Soviet sub.”

“What type?”

“Can’t tell yet.” Kurstan pointed to the wildly wavering lines on the oscilloscope-type gauge in front of them. “Seawolf’s got range to her ears we didn’t dream of a few years ago, but all this ambient noise is making it hard as hell to correlate signatures. Sounds like a cocktail shaker with a bunch of ice cubes in it.”

“Can you get a fix on course and speed?”

“Not yet.” Bendel slipped off his headphones, frustrated. “Give me a nice open ocean with a zillion fish anytime, Skipper. With all this ice shifting and cracking… it’s like trying to pick out one particular car horn during rush hour in Tokyo.”

“During an earthquake,” added the division officer darkly.

“God, I hate the ice pack.” Bendel’s big hands made delicate adjustments on the dials.

“You have my sympathy,” said MacKenzie. “But stay on top of it, Bear. This is what we’re here for.”

“Aye, sir.” Bendel put back his headphones. “This guy makes less noise than a flashlight, but he’s there all right. Just lemme get one solid contact for signature verification.”

MacKenzie grew thoughtful. “Maybe I can make things a little easier for you.”

“All help gratefully appreciated, Skipper,” Kurstan said seriously.

MacKenzie reentered the control room. “Tom, Sonar thinks we have company. I’m going to hug the ice for a while and see if we can tag him. I have the conn. Rig for ultra-quiet.”

“Ultra-quiet, aye.”

MacKenzie hit the 1MC channel to broadcast through the ship. “This is the captain speaking. Sonar believes it has picked up an unknown ship in the area. In order to facilitate identification, we are going to shut down as many systems as we can, come up under the ice cap, and let it hold us in place. You’ll feel a bit of a thump, but if you’ve ever played bumper cars it shouldn’t be too much worse. This is not a drill. Let’s look sharp. Commencing maneuver now. Maneuvering, make minimum turns.”

“Make minimum turns. Maneuvering, aye.”

MacKenzie studied the closed circuit TV picture of the ice sheet overhead as it undulated past like the hills of some vast inverted prairie. Glistening ice keels jutted down to a thousand feet in depth. Ice stalactites looked like rows of barbed spikes. They were still learning their way around in this hostile environment, one the Soviets were so familiar with, and every canyon entered might be a valley of death that could trap a sub. But if you trod carefully there were also things that you could use to your advantage. Up ahead Mac saw a spot that suited his purpose, a broad plane of thick ice surrounded by keels jutting down at least a hundred feet. They would make a perfect curtain around Seawolf.

It was a delicate maneuver because the ship would still be moving forward even as she rose. Timing was critical, but if they slid in nice and tight Seawolf would be almost impossible to spot.

“All stop. Mr. Randall, start pumping to give us positive buoyancy. Take us up easy. Zero bubble.”

“Start pumping for positive buoyancy, zero bubble, aye.”

“Chief, watch the fore and aft trim.”

MacKenzie watched the ice sheet grow closer. “Slower. Slower. Steady now. Right ten degrees rudder. Give me a sounding, Mr. Santiago.”

Quartermaster Joe Santiago, tanned and sun-lined from spending every waking moment of his recent shore leave playing golf, peered at his upward-looking sonar Fathometer closely. Santiago’s love of the game was legendary. “Two hundred feet to contact, Skipper. Deep ice keels ten degrees off the starboard bow.”

“Keep the distance coming. Helm, rudder amidships. All back one-third.”

“Rudder amidships. All back one-third, aye.”

Santiago’s eyes were fixed on his gauges. “Rising. One hundred seventy-five… one hundred fifty… one hundred twenty-five—”

A sudden screeching groan sent shivers up Mac’s spine like nails on a blackboard. Just forward and slightly below him he saw tension bunching Randall’s shoulders and, in front of Randall, the helmsman and planesman who steered the ship in tandem under the diving officer’s direction. “Steady,” MacKenzie soothed. “We’re just rubbing up against some ice.”

“Seventy-five… seventy…”

The distance to the ice was measured from the bottom of Seawolf’s keel. Only ten feet remained. “Maneuvering, all stop.” MacKenzie grabbed the steel railing around the periscopes. “Hold on, everybody. Here we go.”

Santiago looked up. “Contact.”

Seawolf settled up against the ice with a heavy thump and some rough, grinding noise. She rocked for a few seconds, then held steady. MacKenzie looked at the TV screen. They were wedged in neatly, screened on both sides by hanging ice.

“Maneuvering, conn… Quiet as a church mouse. Spin the main engines only as necessary. Sonar, conn. How is that?”

“Sonar, aye. All ears are out. Much better. Thanks, Skipper.”

“My pleasure. Let’s see if the navy got its money’s worth with all that new equipment. Keep me posted.”

So much of a submariner’s life was waiting, MacKenzie thought. Sonar would keep the area under surveillance, listening for any noise that meant the Soviet sub was nearby. And if their unseen rival got a little too bold or careless he would never know that his signature — the distinctive sound his propellers, engines, and operating equipment made underwater — had been logged and reported to Naval Operations, where computers would remember it always. Then other attack subs who came across its path could instantly identify it, or the navy’s Sound Surveillance Systems (SOSUS) planted underwater across the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap and the Bering Strait would be able to recognize and track the sub should it try to reach southern waters to attack vulnerable tankers and merchant ships.

MacKenzie visualized both subs floating in the cold silent world under the ice.

“You’re it,” he whispered, and settled in to wait.

Kalik was hunched over beside his sonar operator with a grim expression on his face as they studied the scope. “Where the hell did he go?” Kalik wondered aloud. “He was there. I’m certain of it, Comrade Captain.” Kalik nodded. “Yes. I think so, too. Could you get a fix on him?”

“It was too quick. He is very quiet.”

“Keep listening.” Kalik hit the intercom. “Engine Room. All engines slow ahead, make turns for five knots. Keep her very quiet, Vladimir.”

“Like a drifting feather, Comrade Captain.” Kalik grinned and stepped back into the control room. Volkov looked up from studying the charts. “Americans?”

“I think so. How do you feel about playing the decoy, Viktor?”

“I would much rather sneak up and rake them with our sonar if I have the choice.”

“Me, too. But I want them as far away from Red Dawn as possible. Maybe we can get them to give chase, eh?” Kalik grew pensive, considering options. “We caught only a trace of him. Too little to get a signature. And there’s more noise out there than an Arab bazaar.”

Volkov watched Kalik weigh things in his mind like a calculator.

“But they are working under the same handicaps, eh?” The captain went on. “So it’s likely they only caught a ghost of us, too. I’ll bet they’re still looking, Viktor. That’s why he disappeared off the scope so suddenly. He went silent. Maybe he even stopped. Yes, I like that. Stop and hover under the ice and let us make the first noise.” Kalik laughed. “Well, he’s going to get his wish.”

“What do you have in mind, Comrade Captain?” asked Volkov, intrigued.

“All in due time, Viktor.” Kalik smiled. “Navigator, how far to the marginal ice zone?”

“Two hundred fifty kilometers, Comrade Captain.”

“We could make it there in less than twelve hours. Hmm… A day to draw him off and get back here. Sonar, are there any other contacts in the area?”

“None, Comrade Captain.”

“Very well. Radio Officer, signal Red Dawn to remain in the testing area, but inform them that the test is to be postponed one day. We are breaking off and will rendezvous back here at…”

“Fourteen hundred hours tomorrow,” supplied the navigator.

Surprised, Volkov leaned close to Kalik and spoke so that only he could hear. “But Comrade Captain, aren’t we under strict orders not to leave Red Dawn?”

Kalik frowned. “Viktor, our responsibility is to protect Red Dawn and the security of the test site. I can do both by drawing the American sub away. I’m certain Naval Command would agree it is the better strategy.”

“You are in command, of course,” Volkov agreed, “but I just thought—”

“Besides, that could be a Los Angeles class sub out there. Even better, maybe the famed new Seawolf herself. In our last briefing, Command said the Americans would be conducting under-ice maneuvers.” Kalik smiled wolfishly. “How can I pass up a chance to lead them around by the nose?”

Volkov shrugged. One couldn’t argue past a certain point. He’d raised the issue; that was enough. Privately he wondered if Kalik’s desire to demonstrate his superiority over the Americans was clouding his judgment.

“Navigator. Once again, return time?”

“Fourteen hundred hours tomorrow, Comrade Captain.”

“Lay down the course. Radio Officer, inform Red Dawn. And now, Viktor, for our little surprise.” Kalik opened the intercom. “Torpedo Room, this is the captain. What is the status of our forward tubes?”

“All loaded and ready, Comrade Captain.”

“Fine. Now remove the torpedo from tube one and flood the chamber with air. Build up as much pressure in the tube as possible. Be ready to fire on my signal.”

The voice over the intercom was plainly caught off guard. “Be ready to fire. . air? Comrade Captain, do I hear you correctly?”

“You do.” Kalik cut the connection. “Viktor, do you see it yet?”

Volkov scratched his head. “Frankly, Comrade Captain…”

“Here is my thinking.” Kalik ticked off points like a teacher. “I must lure the American captain out of the testing area before we can let Red Dawn proceed. But I don’t want him to get close enough to Akula to gain her signature or learn her secrets, any more than he would want me to learn his. So I must be a decoy he would follow, but not the Akula.”

The intercom saved Volkov from having to admit he was lost.

“Comrade Captain? This is the torpedo room. We are ready to fire… er, air, on your signal.”

“Excellent.” Kalik looked to his navigator.

“Course two seven zero will bring us to the nearest marginal ice field, Comrade Captain.”

Kalik nodded. “Lay it down. Michman, transfer ballast from the starboard tank to the port side. Be prepared to transfer it back quickly.”

Michman Rostov, a professional seaman roughly equivalent in rank to a chief petty officer, looked surprised. “But that will roll the ship over almost to forty-five degrees, Comrade Captain. Is that what you want?”

Kalik’s voice was hard-edged. “Viktor, make a note to have the crew’s ears checked. Yes, Michman, you heard the order correctly. Now comply.”

Trim pumps began pumping water from one side of the ship to the other. It created an imbalance, and Akula slowly rolled over. Kalik clung to the periscope housing. “Hold her there, Michman,” he ordered.

Hanging on right beside him, Volkov suddenly grinned. “Of course, if we put the torpedo tube near the top of the ship and blow air, we will sound just like a missile sub readying our tubes for a launch. Brilliant, Comrade Captain. It will fool them.”

“I hope so,” Kalik said with the craftiness of a hunter who has heard the brush rustle. “Torpedo Room, fire tube one,” he ordered.

MacKenzie heard Bear’s excited voice crackle over the intercom. “Conn, Sonar. Contact, Skipper. We’re picking up a big blast of air. Bubbles rising. Unless my ears deceive me, sir, they’re blowing a missile tube. Might be running a launch. We’ve got us a Boomer. A Typhoon, maybe. I can’t tell yet.”

“Can you give me range, course, and speed?”

“Estimated range five miles… Wait… she’s turning, turning. . Estimated new course two seven zero, speed ten knots.”

“Maintain contact,” MacKenzie ordered.

“It’s fading. God, she’s quiet. Turn count decreasing. . Damn, we lost her, sir.”

MacKenzie lost no time. “Take her down, Mr. Randall. Make your depth five zero zero feet. Ten degrees down bubble as soon as we clear the ice.”

“Five zero zero feet, aye. Flooding ballast now.”

Seawolf shuddered. The helmsman looked up from his gauges. “Captain, Diving Officer, we are breaking clear of the ice. Ready to answer bells.”

“Helm, steer course two seven zero. All ahead two-thirds.”

“All ahead two-thirds, aye.”

“Passing three zero zero feet, ten degrees down bubble,” Randall reported.

“Pump ballast to sea. Zero bubble,” MacKenzie responded.

Seawolf leveled off. “At ordered depth, sir,” Randall called out. “Five zero zero feet.”

MacKenzie leaned back and ran a hand over his chin thoughtfully.

“Mac?” Lasovic inquired. “What’s bothering you?”

“I don’t know for sure. We pick up a contact. Then we lose him. Then we pick him up again and he blows a missile tube, then turns and runs.” MacKenzie shook his head. “Maybe it’s nothing, but… Navigation, let’s make the R-and-D boys happy and give the SALDIRI program a dry run.”

“We can access, Skipper. Coordinates?”

“Sonar, Conn. What did you make that best range to contact?”

“Five miles.”

“Jim, use Sonar’s contact area as the radius. Run it up on the screen.”

Santiago flipped the switches on the new satellite look down infrared imaging instrumentation. He was locking into the new joint French-American Topex-Poseidon orbiting radar satellite, which was ordinarily used to track ocean currents for navigational purposes and to have its infrared scanners isolate a complete picture of the desired area of the polar ice cap as seen from above. Since as much as two percent of the ice cap was open water even in the coldest months, the SALDIRI program was meant to provide the captain of a ballistic missile submarine with the location of the nearest open water launch window — or to give an attack sub captain the locations an SSBN might head for.

“Coming on screen now, Skipper,” Santiago reported.

MacKenzie looked over. A circle-type polar projection representing the area around the Soviet contact had replaced the TV picture of the ice overhead.

“Infrared imaging proceeding,” said Santiago.

The image on the screen rolled, then refocused into bright blotches of color as the orbiting scanners plotted temperatures over the surface of the ice pack. As expected, almost all of the area was dark blue — thick ice, the coldest areas. Toward the edge there were small areas of green — thin ice, with slightly higher temperatures because the water underneath bled some fragile warmth. Open water, which had the highest temperatures, would be red. There was no green or red near the contact’s last position.

“No polynyas or open water anywhere near him,” MacKenzie said thoughtfully. “In fact, it’s all thick ice. Ten to fifteen feet. Too tough to break through. So it wasn’t an actual launch. And if it was a training simulation, why turn and run?”

“Because they heard us?” offered Lasovic.

“We were dead silent when we heard that launch, Tom. If he heard us at all it had to be before it. Hmm… Mr. Randall?”

“Sir?”

“Your opinion. What do you think all this means?”

Randall was not unused to the captain’s snap quizzes, as he thought of them. There was no one in the fleet he respected or admired more than the steel-nerved MacKenzie. He firmly believed that the captain’s personal courage in piloting the DSRV Mystic through the Cayman Trench and his able battle tactics during the engagement with Kirov had saved the lives of Aspen’s officers and crew.

“He knew we were listening, sir,” Randall surmised. “He wanted us to hear the launch.”

“I’m beginning to think so, too,” MacKenzie agreed. “First he offers us a tempting target, an unknown ballistic missile sub operating in our area. Of course we’d pull off to try for a signature and check out his systems. Gentlemen, do you get the feeling we’re being decoyed for some reason?”

“It’s starting to look possible,” Lasovic conceded.

“I feel like I’m in a chess game,” said Santiago, “and I’m two moves behind. A decoy? Why pull us off at all? He doesn’t have any idea of our mission.”

“Which means it isn’t our mission that he’s interested in,” said MacKenzie firmly. “It’s his. Joe, project his track. At his present course and last speed, where will he end up in, say, twelve hours?”

Santiago leaned over his charts for a few seconds, then looked up. “In twelve hours, he’ll be in the marginal ice zone.”

MacKenzie smiled. The marginal ice zone was at the outer edge of the polar ice cap and had a special set of conditions that gave ulcers to sub captains. The interaction of the ice edge with the oceanic waves caused so much grinding and splashing that the zone was filled with enough ambient noise to render sonar practically useless. Worse, water temperature and salinity gradients caused major distortions of the sound velocity field. All in all, it was a perfect place in which to lose a pursuer, and they all knew it.

Lasovic’s face held genuine admiration. “He runs, we follow. Then he disappears and comes back here. This is a smart son of a bitch.”

“I’m forced to agree,” said MacKenzie. “Joe, let’s run a search track, as if we’re hot to pick up his trail. Establish a pattern. Stay on course two seven zero and let him catch a glimpse of us at a stop point — say, fifty miles, then again at a hundred miles. But instead of staying with him from there we’ll double back here and hug the ice again. Wait for him to come back.”

“Right, sir.”

MacKenzie eased back on his heels. “I wonder what the hell he’s up to. In any event, you’re right, Tom. He’s a smart one.

“Maybe. But I think you nailed him. Nice pickup, Skipper,” Lasovic said happily, his tone indicating who he thought the smarter son of a bitch really was.

Red Dawn

Ligichev stood in the captain’s mess looking at the order sent from Kalik on the Akula and shook his head. “Ridiculous,” he said flatly. “I cannot imagine delaying the test one full day.”

“It is out of our hands,” said Galinin. “An American submarine is in the area. Kalik needs time to draw it away.”

“Fine. While he is doing that, we will proceed.”

“Naval Command says the Akula must be on station nearby during the test run. If anything were to go wrong—”

“Nothing will go wrong,” Ivanna said. “And if it did, what help would Akula be? This is the worst kind of paranoia, the need for military power when there is no threat.”

“I am not unsympathetic, but I have my orders. We will delay.”

“More obstructionism.” Ivanna stood firm. “We will not.”

Galinin’s face clouded over. Ligichev saw the storm coming and stepped in. “All right, Comrade Captain. We will do as you say. Ivanna, come.”

“But…”

Galinin was gracious. “Thank you, Comrade Ligichev. You at least are a reasonable man.” With that, he left the room.

“Why do you let him push us around?” Ivanna asked, exasperated, when he had gone.

Ligichev sighed. “Two rules have always served me well, daughter. First, never ask for permission if you can’t afford to hear a no. Second, never fight when you are going to do what you intend to do anyway.”

“Ah.”

Ligichev sighed. “I suppose it’s asking too much for you to learn these rules, too. You will always be a fighter. Just like your mother. That’s where you get it, I suppose. God, we had some rows,” he said, remembering the past fondly. “One time she found out that I was entitled to shop at a Party store but didn’t because I didn’t want to have more than our neighbors. The stores they could shop in had nothing but old bread and near rotten meat. She hit me. Actually knocked me down, and I fell in the snow. Naturally, I saw it her way. When we got to the shop she bought everything in sight and shared it with half the apartment building. Quite a woman.”

Ivanna laughed. “Then we’ll test as planned?”

“As soon as we’re ready. I haven’t worked for ten years to be told to wait like some schoolboy. Now come. Any more of this coffee and I’ll need new insides.”

Ivanna followed him down the cramped corridors. Crewmen still stared, regarding her as an oddity, a woman on board a submarine. She ignored them. “Father,” she began hesitantly, “you’re sure you’re not worried?”

“We will exercise proper scientific caution.”

“I’m still not happy with the temperature gradients.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. What if we…” He began to outline the workings to her. She was soon nodding, amazed as always at the leaps his mind could make.

They entered the engineering section lost in discussion.

Back in the control room, Galinin spoke to his chief electrician. “Comrade, there is a small detail you will tend to.”

After a few moments, the electrician’s brow furrowed, “But why would you want to bypass the—”

“It is enough that I want to, Comrade Electrician. Go and do it.”

“Of course, Comrade Captain, I didn’t mean to—”

“Then proceed.”

Galinin returned to running his sub, pleased by his foresight. Fools didn’t become captains, he thought to himself, and scientists who played tactical games with a sub commander would find themselves outflanked.

Once, long before, during Galinin’s first year in the Naval Academy, an upperclassman named Rislin had taken a dislike to the gangly new boy from the provinces with his rough manners and uncultured way of speaking. Not Russian enough, Rislin used to taunt him. Farm boy. Galinin’s fists clenched when he remembered the unceasing torment Rislin had heaped upon him. But he had been determined to stay in the academy, determined to survive. The taunting went far beyond the usual new-student baiting, but he bore it.

The height of Rislin’s torture came with a plan to humiliate Galinin past the point of endurance. Rislin even convinced some of his friends to help. They would kidnap Galinin from the academy, strip him naked, and leave him in a sack on the doorstep of a degenerate bar on the waterfront where it was rumored that men slept with men. The likelihood of Galinin’s escaping without being the victim of homosexual rape was slim. Word of the plan reached Galinin through one upperclassman who, while he could not actively oppose Rislin, refused to accept such cruelty without at least some attempt at intervention.

The upperclassmen gathered as planned, but Rislin never came. They found him the next morning in his room. Someone had driven a sharp stake through a chair and suspended Rislin over it by tying his hands to a ceiling rafter. Only by holding himself up could he escape being impaled on the stake. Sometime in the night his arms must have tired. .

The episode, with its nasty psychosexual overtones, was hushed up. No charges were ever filed, but later one of Galinin’s instructors was to write of him, “He has an almost uncanny ability to anticipate aggression, which his intuition tells him will come, and strike first. He is an attacker by nature.”

Galinin put it more simply. Life was war. Get them first.