Raise the Red Dawn

Chapter Three

MacKenzie was conferring with Tom Lasovic when Santiago looked up from his console. “We’re one hundred miles along course track two seven zero, Captain.” Seawolf had arrived at the second of Mac’s prescribed bait points, halfway to the marginal ice zone.

MacKenzie nodded. “Time to let our friend know we’re still here. Sonar, Conn. Active sweep. Let him hear us, Mr. Kurstan.”

“Sonar, aye. Active sweep.”

“Mr. Santiago, plot a course and speed back to our original position. After the sweep we’re turning back.”

“Aye, Skipper.”

Tom Lasovic had a look of grudging admiration on his face. “Gotta hand it to them, Mac. They’re quiet as hell. I’d estimate they about halved the distance we can hear them from. Got it down to five miles or so. Less in this noise.”

MacKenzie nodded. “Sonar, any idea what we’re chasing yet?”

“No, sir. Sorry.”

“Try for a partial on the signature. Be helpful to know what type of Boomer we’re dealing with.”

“Yes, sir.”

MacKenzie turned back to Lasovic. “This is how the Augusta’s captain must have felt.”

“Wasn’t she the sub that collided with the Soviets off Gibraltar?”

“That’s the one. I talked to her captain a while after. Said he never heard them. Not a sound.”

“Still,” said Lasovic fondly, “I’d bet Seawolf’s ears over any sub’s in either fleet, all this noise notwithstanding.”

“In this bullfight, Mr. Lasovic,” Randall joked lightly, “they don’t give you the ears.”

“No,” Lasovic said, smiling, “just the horns.”

MacKenzie cast his thoughts out, his telepathic sonar searching for their unseen and as yet unidentified opponent lurking somewhere in the icy waters. No, it wasn’t a bullfight. It was a man fight… and those were always deadlier.

“Control Room, Sonar. Contact, Comrade Captain. We are picking up an active sonar search. The American is still following on course two seven zero, ten kilometers astern.”

Kalik slapped a stanchion happily. “He’s still taking the bait.” In another few hours the ambient sound would increase to where it would mask them completely. Then Kalik would turn back. “Keep coming, my friend. Engine Room, full ahead.” He let the burst of speed continue for ten seconds, then ordered, “Engine Room, all engines slow ahead.”

Volkov smiled. “We are like Hansel and Gretel laying down a path of crumbs.”

“One he continues to follow,” Kalik agreed, knowing Akula‘s brief burst of speed would surely be heard by the sub trailing them. “Steady on course two seven zero.”

Lay down a few more crumbs, Kalik mused, then be gone.

“Sonar, Conn. Contact, Skipper. Got him again. Turn count increasing. The engines kicked in hard. Decreasing… decreasing… lost him. He sure is quiet. Sorry.”

“Not to worry, Sonar. We’re not hanging around. Mr. Randall, make your depth seven zero zero feet. Slowly.”

“Depth seven zero zero feet, aye. Three degrees down bubble.”

“Conn, Sonar. Thermocline at seven five zero feet.”

“Mr. Randall, take her down to seven five zero. We’ll hug that gradient.”

Sound, like light, changed direction when it passed through media of different densities. A stick inserted into a glass of water looked bent because the light waves were refracted; sound waves acted the same way. Riding a thermal, the ridge where two currents of two different temperatures met, made sound bend away. The Gulf Stream was a good example. A sub captain saw it as a river in the ocean in which he could hide his sub undetected.

Seawolf slid downward in the icy waters. There were places where the ice actually rose from the bottom in addition to hanging down from the top, a situation that could trap the unwary commander, but the charts showed there was plenty of depth in this area even so far into winter.

“At ordered depth, sir.”

“Very well. Now give me a nice slow one-hundred-eighty-degree turn to new course zero nine zero. Keep her quiet. I don’t want our friend to hear us slipping away. Right five degrees rudder, steady course zero nine zero.”

“Commencing slow turn to new course zero nine zero,” echoed Randall. “Helm, right five degrees rudder, steer course zero nine zero.”

“All ahead one-third,” MacKenzie ordered.

“All ahead one-third, aye.”

“Sonar, Conn. Any sign of our contact?”

“None, Skipper.”

“Steady zero nine zero,” Randall announced.

“Very well. Hold her steady, Mr. Randall.” MacKenzie pulled at his collar, feeling the need for a shower and some sleep. “Tom, take the conn. I’ll be in my cabin.”

“Yes, sir. This is the XO. I have the conn.”

Walking aft as Seawolf sped back to its original position, MacKenzie enjoyed the thought of his unseen opponent sailing blithely for the marginal zone, assuming they were trailing right behind. But they weren’t. Instead, Seawolf would be lying silently in wait for the Soviet captain to return and expose what he’d worked so hard to conceal.

“Home free, all,” MacKenzie whispered to no one but himself.

Ligichev entered the control room. Galinin was making notes in the ship’s log. “Comrade Captain? Excuse me.”

“Yes?”

“Is there any word from Akula?”

“None yet, Comrade Ligichev. It is unlikely that we will hear before morning.”

“But that’s twelve hours.”

“Be certain I will inform you at once.”

Ligichev started to argue but thought better of it. Remember your own maxim, he decided. Instead he said, “Thank you, Comrade Captain,” and left the control room.

He trudged back to the engine room. The cook was clanging around in the galley, and some off-duty sailors were in the crew’s mess playing cards and eating what smelled like some pretty fair borscht. An overhead speaker spewed tinny classical music. Ligichev smiled amiably, “Good evening, Comrades.”

Unsure, the crewmen stumbled to attention, ill at ease. They were peasant boys, mostly from the far-flung provinces. More than likely few spoke Russian as their native language. It was another of the inequities that was bringing the “classless” society to its knees. The majority of officers were native Russians while the crews were conscripted from the hundred other nationalities in the Soviet Union. “Comrade Chief Scientist,” one mumbled in greeting, uncertain how to respond.

“Relax,” counseled Ligichev. “I don’t bite. Truth be told, I’m not even in the navy. And my politics?” He winked. “Disastrous.”

Smiles threatened to break out.

“Worse, I have even been to America.”

Now, that was impressive. “What was it like?” asked one sailor, who took the liberty of gesturing invitingly to the central bowl of borscht. “Comrade?”

Ligichev sat. “Thank you. Delighted.”

They were a physically fit group, young, with broad faces, all dressed in their wool blues. Ligichev had been in their tiny berthing areas, as cramped as everywhere else on the ship. Comfort wasn’t a major concern of Soviet naval designers.

“You were saying, Comrade Chief Scientist… about the West?”

Ligichev took a mouthful of borscht and tried to sum it up. “For all its material wealth, it is still a new place, a country finding itself. And I came to understand something in the weeks I was there. All our lives we’ve been taught to hate and fear Americans… but the truth is there is no such thing as an American. Everybody there is from somewhere else. Transplanted Poles, Germans and Britains, Africans and Asians, Buddhists and Jews, even Russians. They’re not remotely identical. Actually, it’s an altogether impossible mix.”

“Just like the Soviet Union,” someone observed dryly.

Ligichev nodded. “But here is the difference. They are unified not by the Red Army but by belief. That’s the secret. America is not a nationality; it is a system of beliefs. All anyone has to do to be an American is to believe in their basic ideas.”

“Like?”

“Oh, that anything is possible with enough ingenuity. That individuals have inalienable rights. That real grass is better than AstroTurf, although there are many who feel… Ligichev looked up. He had lost them. He smiled kindly and ate some more.

One crewman spoke up, albeit hesitantly, a big man with the tattoo of a snake wrapped around a dagger on his thick forearm. “Comrade Chief Scientist, of course we have wondered — not that we are worried in any way, but most of us have wives and children — if it is permissible to ask what we are doing in such an old ship in such difficult waters.”

“What is your name?”

Instantly the man feared he had overstepped some boundary. “Seaman Fyodor Vaslayavich Boslik, Comrade,” he said fearfully. “But please, I didn’t mean—”

“Relax, Seaman Boslik. I am no Zampol political officer. It’s just easier to talk to a man whose name I know. Well, I can’t tell you much, of course, but suffice to say we are making history. After today, Comrades, everyone will remember the Red Dawn.”

“That is good.”

“Yes,” Ligichev agreed, “I think it’s very good. As does the captain and my daughter and the Naval High Command. If all of us do our jobs, I think we can expect quite a few medals to be passed out when this trip is over. So rest assured.”

“In all my years at sea,” said the burly Boslik, “no one has ever spoken to us about such things.” The others nodded in agreement.

Ligichev laughed. “Read Pravda, eh. Things are changing.”

“So we hear. You can depend on us, Comrade Chief Scientist.”

“Thanks for the borscht.”

“Where were you?” Ivanna asked as Ligichev entered the engine room, locking the hatch behind him.

“Talking to some of the crew.”

“And?”

“I tell you, Ivanna, we are going to have to work hard at unlearning the servility seventy years of communism has bred into decent people.”

“Not news.”

Ligichev sighed. “But it is, Ivanna. It means it’s even more important that irinium work. When the walls around our country are finally gone and we stand in front of the world having to explain our… our sleep of this last century, I want to show we achieved something more than”—he spat out the word—“slogans. We have to face the West and show we did more than just trample people into the ground. Yes, we made mistakes, but in the end, look, we did achieve some fine things. We can join you as equals.”

Ivanna smiled. “I love your passion. Well, things are changing, Father, but till they do it’s the old joke for a while longer — we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us. Now calm yourself. Even you don’t hold the entire Soviet self-image on your shoulders.”

Ligichev stripped off his jacket and went to work. There were final connections to be made and a last set of computer runs to be checked. At last they stood there, both looking like expectant parents.

“Are we going to wait?” asked Ivanna.

“No,” her father said flatly. He turned to the technicians. “Everyone. Get to your stations.”

Ivanna grabbed her clipboard and stationed herself at the control console. “Running preliminary checklist. I can’t wait to see Galinin’s face.”

“Pay attention to your work,” said Ligichev. “Temperature?”

“Irinium at required temperature, zero degrees centigrade.”

“Scoop?”

“Operational,” the senior technician called out.

The cadence continued over the constant whine of the electrical motors driving the main shaft. Tension mounted. Ligichev felt this was a global moment, like Sputnik’s first orbit or the first time the Americans’ Nautilus crossed the North Pole under the ice. Folded in his pocket was the note he would hand Galinin for transmission to Naval Command. “System operational.” That was all. “System operational.” It wasn’t necessary to be long-winded. This was history.

Ivanna met his gaze with a nod. “All systems operational.”

“Shut down,” Ligichev ordered, and his hand slapped the cutoff switch. Suddenly the motor whine they had lived with for so many days died. The propellers stopped their ceaseless spinning. He could feel the sub lose its momentum, slowing.

Ivanna hit another row of switches and fail-safe motors sprang into life. “Scoop operational, pressure building.”

“Activate,” Ligichev ordered, bright-eyed. Ivanna flipped the final row of switches on the console.

Power flowed into the irinium plates. Tiny but powerful motors sprang into life. A series of electromagnetic pushes and pulls flashed on and off moving water through the tube in a steady, powerful stream.

“Speed,” Ligichev demanded.

“Two, no… three knots,” the technician read happily from his gauges. “Five knots!”

“It’s working!” shouted Ligichev. In his excitement he danced around the engine room. Ivanna and the technicians shouted and clapped one another on the back and ran their hands over the drive tube as if it were spewing gold out the other end and not just a pressure jet of water.

In the control room the helmsman took his hands off the steering yoke and looked back at Galinin. “Comrade Captain? Our speed is decreasing. I’m losing feel in the ship. I don’t understand…”

Galinin turned furiously. He understood. He slammed his fist into the intercom. “Engine Room, I’m losing power. What is going on in there? Comrade Ligichev? Comrade! What are you doing in there?”

He was stopped by a whoop of delight emanating from the speaker. It sounded for all the world like a wild party in the engine room.

“It works, Comrade Captain. Isn’t it fantastic? Isn’t it wonderful?”

Galinin’s face was suffused with anger. “How dare you disobey my orders? Your drive is fouling the operation of my ship. Turn it off and wait for proper orders to be given. If you comply at once I will overlook this transgression. If not, I will put a stop to it myself.”

“Captain, you can’t mean it. The system is working! Ten years of effort. God, what a moment.”

“I order you to turn it off.”

“Never,” cried a female voice. “Turn off your obstructionist attitude.”

Someone snickered in the control room, and Galinin’s face grew beet red. Ivanna’s impudence was the last straw. “Comrade Electrician, you installed the override?”

Any trace of a smile vanished from the electrician’s face. “Yes, Comrade Captain. As you ordered.”

“Then engage it.”

“I cannot speak for—”

“Engage it, damn you!”

The electrician flipped the switch.

Two hundred feet aft, the water jet died. Ligichev stopped, his face turning white. “What…?” A strange crackling sound filled the room, along with the smell of ozone.

A technician was pointing to the gauges, ashen-faced. “Comrade Ligichev, there’s no system power. No electricity. He’s somehow cut the batteries out of the loop. We never prepared for this. The temperature will be critical in a matter of minutes.”

Ivanna’s gauges told the same story. “Father, the magnetic field is dead. The irinium is coming in direct contact with the seawater. We’re getting a very strong heat buildup.”

Ligichev could feel it. The temperature was rising rapidly, the drive tube already hot to the touch. The crackling was louder, too. “Quickly, close the outer doors,” he ordered the technicians. “If the tube ruptures it’s going to flood the ship.”

“But there’s no power.”

“Do it manually, damn it, but do it. Ivanna, help them. Quickly!” He grabbed the intercom. “Comrade Captain, please, I beg you. The ship is in danger. Without electricity the magnetic field is gone. The irinium is in direct contact with seawater. Heat is building up as well as a strong electrical pulse. I must have the magnetic field back in place.”

Galinin’s voice was defiant. “I’m sorry. I cannot permit my authority to be superseded. You should have thought of these things before you disobeyed direct orders.”

“You stupid fool, can’t you see what you’re doing?” Ligichev shouted.

Galinin’s voice was cold. “Yes. I have restored order. I am on my way aft to complete the task.”

Ligichev could hear that Galinin was almost obscenely happy with his oafishness. He dropped the intercom, and it swung against the bulkhead with a crack. He yanked his collar open. Ivanna’s clothing was already soaking wet. Sweat coursed down her face. The atmosphere in the room was stifling.

“Father, what do we do? The heat is rising too fast…”

Ligichev was thinking hard. “We have to channel it out. If it hits the asymptotic curve… I’ve got to clear my head. No time to be angry. Come on, old man. Think.”

A technician reached out to touch a switch but yanked his hand back, stung by a hot spark. “Comrade Ligichev, the electrical pulse is building. Fires will start soon in the mains.”

“Father?”

“Yes, yes. All right.” Ligichev grabbed his head. “We are in the middle of the largest pool of cold water in the world. We ought to be able to take advantage of that.” He called a technician over. “Can you reopen the access vent physically and block off the output valve? Then create a backflow into the main ballast tank?”

“Yes, I think I can,” said the technician, nodding slowly. “But what will that accomplish?”

Ligichev put a hand on the outer bulkhead. “The main ballast tanks are right over here adjoining the tube. We’ll channel the heat to the tanks. Then we jettison the water to dump the heat. Then we refill, reheat, and dump again. Keep pumping the hot water out to sea.”

“A heat exchanger! Yes, it might work.”

“Get to it.” The technician slipped under the drive tube, careful not to touch its scalding walls. Ligichev peered through the steamy air. “Ivanna?”

“I’m here, Father.”

“Isolate the secondaries. If there’s a pulse coming, we’re going to need working circuits when it’s over.” She grabbed a set of tools, dropped behind the command console, and began to work furiously.

Ligichev cursed Galinin for the tenth time in as many minutes and bent down to do what he could to save the ship. By his calculations they had less than twenty minutes to live. An electrical pulse was building that would explode out from the contaminated irinium and fuse every electronic circuit on board. At that point the ship would be inoperable.

But while Ligichev worked, the scientific part of his mind could not avoid the conscious realization that all their effort might be just a study in redundancy.

Within minutes of the electrical pulse that was going to kill the ship, an inexorable heat flash was going to incinerate every person on board.