Voyage of the Devilfish

For a long while Pacino just sat leaning against the wall and stared into space. The shelter stayed empty, the only sounds the wind and the diesel. Strange… but he was too tired to ask himself where the others were. Finally he slept. Rapier watched the retreating figure of Pacino, called out but Pacino walked on, trudging up the ridge to the ice shelter. Let him go, he decided. At the base of the ridge was the dark jagged hole in the ice where the Devilfish had consigned herself to the deep, the water nearly black and choppy in the wind. As the wind picked up, the far side of the hole in the ice was nearly invisible from the snow and the fog. The men, who had gathered on the side of the ridge toward the hole, began to turn to go back to the shelter when Rapier heard a shout from Stokes, standing down the slope of the ridge and pointing at the hole. Rapier couldn’t make out what Stokes was saying, and all he could see was the damned hole in the ice. As he walked down the slope, the fog receded and the far side of the hole in the ice was visible. Floating in the water was something gray and round. Too round for a chunk of ice. Rapier started hurrying, catching up to Stokes.

“What the hell is it?” Stokes asked. Rapier shook his head. “I’m not sure, let’s go down and look.” The object became clearer as they approached the base of the ridge… it was a sphere, a metal sphere with a round hatch set into one side, floating in the water. Stencilled red letters were around the hatch, the printing unmistakably Cyrillic. Rapier stared hard at it. “Stokes, you remember the Comsomolets sinking a few years back? Some of them made it to the surface in an escape pod. They died later, I don’t remember details…”

“You think that thing’s from the OMEGA?” Stokes said.

“An escape pod…”

“Their subs have pods, that writing by the hatch looks like Russian…”

“XO, you think someone’s in there?” Rapier looked at the ice around the pod, trying to gauge its thickness.

“Maybe, maybe not. It could just have ejected from the hull. If anyone’s in there they’re probably dead from the cold or lack of oxygen by now.” On the other hand, he thought, if people were inside, if there were any survivors, they could be interrogated about the collision and why they fired the Magnum. There might be important documents onboard… “You men stay here. Stokes, come with me.” The two slowly made their way out over the ice, over the hundred feet to the far side of the hole and to the pod that floated about a foot from the edge of the ice. Rapier grabbed onto a handhold set into the gray surface and rotated the heavy pod so that the hatch faced him. On each side were small ridges formed in the surface of the sphere for footholds. Rapier took a handhold and pulled himself up to the hatch with his feet in the footholds.

“Stay there. Stokes, keep a grip on the handholds so I don’t float the hell away.” It took endless minutes of unscrewing the handwheel before the latches of the hatch retracted and Rapier could pull the hatch up. The air of the pod interior nearly made him sick. He held his breath, looked down into the blackness of the pod. After a moment he stood up and called to Stokes.

“Four men inside. Can’t tell their condition. Call the others over here and get some rope from the shelter.” Rapier looked again into the sphere and shook his head. Poor bastards, he thought, wondering how he could feel this way about people who had sunk his ship, killed his mates, but up here, in this freezing hellhole, well, they were all human.

WESTERN ATLANTIC OCEAN

150 NAUTICAL MILES EAST NORTHEAST OF NORFOLK, VIRGINA

ALTITUDE: 6,000 FEET

The Navy DC-9 orbited at a point above the continental shelf of the United States. Admiral Caspar “Bobby” McGee peered out a window, watching the scene as the U.S. Navy destroyer, the P-3 Orion ASW turboprop airplane and the destroyer’s LAMPS helicopter danced around a point in the sea, a point that suddenly erupted with white foam, admitting to the surface a nuclear submarine. A Russian attack submarine, easily identified as a VICTOR III by its trademark teardrop-shaped sail, bulbous bow and ellipsoidal pod on top of its rudder aft. It immediately turned northeast, heading home. An aide appeared next to him, watching the scene from an adjacent window.

“This is happening all up and down the coast,” the commander said.

“What’s the tally?” McGee asked.

“This one makes one hundred and five Russian nuclear subs surfaced after President Yulenski gave the orders to come home. That’s out of a force of 120—wait, one was sunk by the Billfish, which leaves fourteen boats to go. Once on the surface they’re covered by at least one U.S. escort unit, either an attack submarine, surface ship. Viking jet, P-3 Turboprop, LAMPS chopper and in some cases Coast Guard cutters and choppers.”