Terminator Salvation: Cold War

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Even nuclear subs needed to go to periscope depth from time to time, to take care of urgent tasks and routine housekeeping. Communications masts needed to be raised in order to send and receive messages from the outside world. Navigation needed to get a fix that would determine the sub’s actual position. Engineering needed to vent the steam generators once in a while. Even excess trash had to be ejected, an unglamorous but essential task which, for technical reasons, was best performed at shallow depths.

For all these reasons, the U.S.S. Wilmington routinely raised its periscope every forty-eight hours or so, assuming there were no enemy machines in the vicinity.

The timing of such episodes was usually left to the captain’s discretion, but Losenko had prevailed upon the sub’s current commander—Captain Lucy Okata—to schedule a visit to the surface at a specific hour. The captain hadn’t asked for a reason, and Losenko had not volunteered one.

He felt a twinge of guilt at having gone behind Ashdown’s back, but his outstanding debt to the people of Alaska was a deeper and more profound obligation. He consulted the ship’s chronometer. By his calculations, it was nearly 11 PM in Alaska. Operation Ravenwing was already in progress. He prayed that Kookesh and her allies had not encountered any unexpected obstacles, but knew that was an unlikely wish.

It was a truism that even the most carefully worked-out battle plan seldom survived contact with the enemy. For all he knew, they had already been terminated.

“Any unusual messages?” he asked Pushkin. Again, it wasn’t by coincidence that the Gorshkov’s radioman was working a late shift tonight in the Wilmington’s aging radio shack. Losenko’s old crew had largely gone their separate ways over the last fifteen years as time, attrition, reassignment, and the hazards of war had eaten away at their ranks. But a few aging veterans had stuck with their skipper.

Pushkin was one such loyalist. Losenko had conspired to have him on duty at this crucial juncture. He leaned over the man’s shoulder as he monitored incoming transmissions.

“No, sir.” He knew the general wanted to be ready to receive any emergency alerts from Alaska. They spoke in Russian to avoid being overheard by the other radio operator, a young Filipino woman Losenko didn’t know very well. The old custom of excluding females from submarine duty had long ago fallen by the wayside. “Everything seems quiet. Just the usual encrypted updates and reports.”

Perhaps that’s a good thing, Losenko thought. He recalled the American saying, no news is good news. Maybe the silence meant that Kookesh and her crew were doing fine on their own, with no need of outside assistance. He’d like to think so.

Perhaps I dispatched Ivanov to Canada for nothing. That, too, would be perfectly acceptable. Still....

“Keep monitoring the frequencies we discussed,” he urged. For security’s sake, the Wilmington wouldn’t stay at periscope depth indefinitely. Soon they would have to return to the greater safety of the ocean depths. But until then, he intended—with Pushkin’s help—to keep his electronic ears open up to the very last minute. Molly Kookesh deserved that much.

“Aye, aye, sir.” Pushkin glanced at a chronometer. His new partner regarded them curiously, surely wondering what the old Russians were up to. Neither man illuminated her. “Looks like you might be wasting your time, General.”

“Perhaps,” Losenko conceded. “If so, it will hardly be the first time.”

Pushkin settled back in his seat, getting comfortable. A matrix printer churned out reports for Ashdown’s inspection. “You ever wonder if we’ll be able to go home someday, sir?” Neither man had set foot on Mother Russia since they had fled the Kola Peninsula. Most of the continent remained under the thumb of Skynet. “I admit that I miss the sunsets some—”

A light flashed at his console, signaling an incoming message. Pushkin sat up straight. He looked at Losenko in surprise.

“An emergency alert, from Alaska, sir. On your private channel.”

Dread gripped the general’s heart. Something had indeed gone wrong with the assault on the uranium train.

“Put it through.”

“Aye, aye!”

The other operator noted the activity.

“What is it?” she said in English. “Shall I notify Captain Okata? General Ashdown?”

“That won’t be necessary, sailor.” Losenko answered in English. Her name escaped him. Too many crewmen had passed through the sub over the years—he couldn’t keep track of them anymore. “I believe we have the situation under control. Please attend to your own duties.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” The junior operator retreated to her console, but kept glancing back at the Russians. She knew something was amiss.

With a few deft keystrokes, Pushkin moved Kookesh’s text message to the top of the printing queue. The machine spat it out in an instant. Breaking protocol, Losenko snatched the brief message from the printer with his own hand. His eyes took in three stark letters.

SOS.

His heart sank.

I knew it, he thought. The Alaskan cell was in trouble.

He briefly considered appealing to Ashdown once more, informing the general of the measures he had already taken as a precaution against just such an occasion. But, no, Ashdown was holed up in his stateroom with the latest intelligence on the shutdown code. He had instructed that he was not to be disturbed.

Losenko decided to take him at his word.

“Contact Captain Ivanov,” he ordered Pushkin. Alexei was standing by at the Resistance airfield in the Yukon, a little more than 300 miles away from Kookesh’s theater of operations. A fighter plane was fueled up and ready. “Give him the word.”

Pushkin nodded. He checked to make sure he had understood the general.

“And that word is?”

“Go.”