AK 239: The Enemy Is Already Here

Kapitan-Leytenant Casmerov, third rank, repeats his question to me. This shook me back to reality.

“What should be our depth, sir?”

I curtly answer, “Hold steady at thirty meters.”

Kapitan-Leytenant Casmerov answers, “Yes, sir.”

“What’s the depth under the keel?” I ask.

“One hundred ten meters,” said Casmerov.

Today the air temperature is a warm -1 degrees C, above the icy waters around the Kola Peninsula.

But that didn’t matter as we are already underwater, shadowing a new Borei class submarine, Knyaz Vladimir.

This old Russian maneuver was a bait and switch tactic to hide the true intentions of my Severstal.

My Russian Typhoon class Severstal (TK-20), the largest submarine ever built, was supposed to be pulled apart on a dry dock at Severodvinsk, Russia and then shipped to Sayda Bay piece by piece.

Instead, in direct violation of the New START Treaty between the U.S. and Russia, TK-20 was secretly enhanced and ordered to head west, just in case Western satellites or surveillance had picked up our movement.

They hadn’t.

No one had.

I’m upset, as I helped come up with the greatest invention since electricity. I had been promised: This will be used for protection and peaceful purposes. Instead it looks like to me like I’m driving my young crew and myself right into World War III!

As I stared at the navigation console, I am no longer thinking about the mission but rather I was rather thinking about my wife.

I hadn’t told the love of my life that my mission was open-ended. Meaning there was no date given where I would be home. This would always worry my dear wife so, instead, I left her a note that simply read,

On another mission,

Love, Valentin.

This nuclear ballistic missile submarine could stay submerged for four months if needed and we are loaded with enough supplies to do just that, and far more.

Both the Severstal and Borei class submarines are known as SSBNs (Ship, Submarine, Ballistic, Nuclear). While the Severstal is nearly thirty years old, no one but myself and a very small group of Russians knew it had been upgraded and all of her ballistic missiles removed!

That’s right!

I knew all the ballistic missiles had been removed.

However, she was then reequipped to be much more silent and much, much more deadly.

(More on that later.)

Meanwhile I’m thinking,

Why?

I didn’t wait thirty years to captain the greatest ship in the world just to murder millions, if that was the plan!

I had faced death on several prior occasions but those instances were for something in which I believed. This, I felt, was starting to feel like provocation, pure and simple.

And, little did I know, I was not given the half of it.

However, Nikolai Alexi, Kapitan, 2nd Rank, was given a full briefing but, I, the captain of my own boat, Valentin Vasili, wasn’t even invited!

I thought: This kid is part of the siloviki clan and more trusted than I, a loyal officer of thirty years! I snarled to myself as I look at the kid who just turned thirty years of age!

I’m still a bit confused: I am pretending to travel towards the old NATO underwater listening stations that have long been abandoned. The Cold War G.I.U.K. Gap between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom was the only way Russian subs could travel if we wanted to reach the oceans of the earth.

I then proudly forgot about my confusion, thinking:

Was… was the only way we could travel to reach other oceans!

The West was clueless as to my president’s true intentions. The United States had pressed its famous “Reset button” and had reduced its air, naval and ground strength to unprecedented low levels in light of the “new peace” between the U.S. and my country.

NATO was no better.

For example, the Royal Norwegian Navy sold their military base at Olavsvern. The base was built into the side of a solid rock mountain and housed submarine hangers that could withstand a direct nuclear strike.

It cost NATO five hundred million to build and would track all Russian sea vessels from Russian Naval bases on the Kola Peninsula, but no more.

It sold for five million U.S. dollars, a mere one percent of its cost to build!

It’s now rented to a “research group” owned by the Russian government!

I thought,

We are finally going to see some peace dividends. This caterpillar drive, I’ve helped work on my whole life, could be put to some important peacetime uses.

As they say in America:

Boy, was I stupid!

Just before I left I saw the president of Russia, Ivan Mironovich, on TV.

He made yet another bold pronouncement on, state-controlled, Russian TV-12.

The president said,

“Russia & China will co-operate with all of our friends and allies as we have many mutual economic and military interests around the world. We shall continue to hold regular, joint military exercises with China to show America and the West that we will not be bullied.”

I saw German banking expert, Hans Meiner, interviewed just before that. He said,