Voyage of the Devilfish

“Sir,” Lockover said, feeling damn uneasy to be the messenger of this news, “there’s a bad storm up there, I mean it’s from Greenland to Siberia, gale-force winds, heavy snow. We’re grounded. COMAIRLANT won’t fly anything up there and neither will the Marine Arctic Resupply units flying C-130’s. We could get a jet up for high altitude surveillance but doubtful we’d see through the storm clouds. And we just had a KH-17 pass. Kodiak’s on the phone to CIA now.” Kodiak hung up and came over to them.

Donchez waited.

“The satellite didn’t see a damned thing, sir. Not even a polar bear. There’s a chance it’s just not seeing through the blizzard… more likely there’s nothing up there for it to see.” It was 1973 all over again, Donchez thought. Another U.S. submarine sunk at the pole by a Russian. Another Pacino, on the bottom. Unbelievable.

“Was there a SUBSUNK transmission from our boat to the satellite?” Lockover shook his head.

“The Russians? Did one of theirs transmit a distress signal?”

“Sir, we’re trying to find out now through their embassy but things are pretty confused up there. And, sir, even if there was a distress signal I don’t think anybody is going to get up there for a while with this storm. It could last a week, maybe more.” Donchez glanced at the Arctic plot, looking for the Allentown. Her X flashed, but her position was a guess,

SOSUS being unable to hear her in spite of her damaged sail. For a moment he considered sending Allentown under the ice cap, then rejected the notion. One lost submarine was enough. The Los Angeles-class Allentown under the ice cap would never survive… no SHARKTOOTH underice sonar, no strength in the flimsy fiberglass sail. She’d get lost and never emerge. Goddamned L.A.-class, they were a giant step backward in submarine technology.

“Which Piranha is furthest north?” Donchez asked. “One that isn’t in trail?” Lockover turned to a computer console, typed into it, returned with a printout.

“Barracuda is off the coast of Maine, sir.”

“Vector her to the SOSUS position of the explosions, max speed. Get her up there fast.”

“Sir,” Lockover said, “she’s not loaded out for more than a few days. She was just about to head for overhaul at Portsmouth. She’ll run out of food by the time she gets to the GI-UK gap. And she has no arctic gear onboard—”

“We may well have men dying up there. Tell her to flank it. I want a report soon as she can get to a polynya close to the SOSUS position. And watch the weather. The minute it breaks, I want aircraft scouring that ice pack.”

Lockover left to get the messages out. Donchez looked up at the plot. He’d done what he could for now. He got on the NESTOR circuit to Admiral McGee in the airborne DC-9. Maybe the admiral could get an answer out of the Russians.

ARCTIC OCEAN

POLAR ICECAP SURFACE

Pacino woke up with a start from the sound of the men entering the shelter, shouting and talking to each other in excitement. Rapier came first, followed by Stokes and the others, some of them huddled together carrying men into the shelter. The men being carried in had white frozen faces. Pacino found Rapier, who had started to boil snow for a pot of coffee.

“Jon, what’s all this? Who the hell are they?” Rapier’s face was crusted white with snow and ice, now starting to melt and drip down his face. If he was surprised by Pacino’s use of his first name instead of the usual “XO” he didn’t show it.

“We… we found”—Rapier shivered—“God, it’s cold out there. We found an escape pod, I’m guessing from the OMEGA. Had Russian writing on it. It was under the ice, freed up, for God’s sake, by the Devilfish when she went down.” Pacino winced.

“We got four guys out of the pod,” Rapier went on. “One was already dead. We left him on the ice by the pod. The others were damned near gone from the cold.” Stokes and Delaney were taking the Russian survivors’ wet half-frozen clothing off and wrapping them in wool blankets. All three were unconscious. Pacino looked at their gray faces. Two were older, probably warrant officers or chiefs or whatever the Russian equivalent was for senior enlisted men. He was anxious to hear their stories, what had happened to them, how they had survived in the pod, how the pod had gotten out onto the ice. Pacino ordered them to be clothed in spare arctic parkas and watched for signs of coming to. For a long time he stood over the two Russians, wondering what their story was, if they had families. And for the first time in a long time allowed himself to think of his family, the last time he’d seen Tony, the weekend before the Allentown OP when the two of them had gone to Mount Trashmore Park. And Hillary, who became even more desirable through the cushioning of memory…