Voyage of the Devilfish

“This is a ballast tank. The Kaliningrad is a doublehulled submarine, a ship within a ship. Look up there.” And Novskoyy shined the light upward. A man could stand on top of another man’s shoulders in the tank and still not hit his head on the ceiling. “That is the pressure hull. We are standing inside the steel outer hull. This doughnut-shaped space between the inner and outer hull is filled with water when the ship is submerged. An enemy torpedo would have to penetrate five meters of water to get to the inner hull. The water is a sort of armor. The inner hull is a titanium alloy, the strongest submarine hull in the world. This ship is practically invulnerable to all but a direct hit from a nuclear warhead.” Dretzski was impressed. “Now, Alexi, you did have some reason to bring me here other than to show me a ballast tank.” Novskoyy motioned Dretzski down the ladder. Once they were back on the floor of the drydock, the shipyard worker bolted a louvered grill over the hole in the hull and the two men climbed out of the deep dock back up to the deck by the security hut. At the end of the drydock an officer motioned for the pump house to open the flood valves. Water jetted out into the dock from eight huge holes in the dock walls. Instantly the floor of the dock was filled with water, which then rose at a meter every minute. For a time they watched the ship in the flooding dock as the water began to lap at the keel. In a few minutes the water began to climb up the hull of the vessel. Dretzski began: “It’s worse than we thought. Admiral, much worse. The Americans’ nuclear-tipped land-attack cruise missiles, the Javelins, are still loaded aboard their attack submarines. Peace dividend is rhetoric. We’re guessing they have about two hundred fifty of them.” Novskoyy’s eyes narrowed, staring down at the dock and the mammoth ship. “Yes, exactly. While our weapons are waiting to be destroyed in front of a U.N. team. The latest negotiating round featured another reckless offer to eliminate sea-launched cruise missiles, all in storage in the Severomorsk arms depot. The Americans’ cruise missiles remain deployed on their nuclear submarines. Submarines that can sneak right up to the northern coast and launch dozens of their missiles at treetop level, ready to detonate on target… Did you hear about the latest Javelin test?” Novskoyy asked. Dretzski nodded. “Yes, a Los Angeles-class attack submarine launched a cruise missile from a point in the Atlantic about 300 kilometers east of Jacksonville, Florida. The missile went completely undetected by civilian and military radars. It flew over Florida’s panhandle, through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and into Texas. A hundred kilometers over the Texas state line it flew to its target, a village constructed for such tests at the Lone Star Naval Weapons Station. The target was a three-story building behind a five-story office building in the center of a 40-block downtown. The missile not only hit the target building, it hit the target window in the target floor…” As they spoke, the two men watched the dock continue to flood so as to launch the Kaliningrad.

“Our leaders are making peace,” Dretzski said heavily.

“People don’t seem to be worrying—”

“In the United States, presidents come and go,” Novskoyy said quickly. “Not long ago they elected a tired old actor who joked about dropping bombs on our people. The one after him loved his wars… They still put billions into Star Wars. They are building the Seawolf-class submarines as we speak. They still have Stealth bombers and fighters. Phased array radar-defense networks. Don’t forget America is the one that dropped two atomic bombs on civilians just fifty years ago. Why must we always make the good-faith gesture?”

“Admiral, we agree on all that,” Dretzski said, “it is what brought us together in the first place. Do you have some plan to change this situation?” Novskoyy nodded, seemingly to himself, and stared into the distance of the channel.

“I do. Some may consider it extreme, but I am convinced it is necessary for our survival. We must get rid of the threat of their terrible destabilizing missiles…” Dretzski began to look uneasy, although he was the one who had originally briefed Novskoyy on the American advantage when no one in the Kremlin or Russian Republic would take action. In fact, he had been recently passed over for promotion in the KGB, being labeled an antiquated Cold War holdover.

“I have one hundred twenty attack submarines prepared to go to sea. Each has been loaded with one SSN-X-27 nuclear-warhead-carrying cruise missile, which I managed to acquire from the arms depot. They will take station off the eastern coast of the U.S. and target every port with submarines that have the missiles aboard. When we inform both our government and theirs, there will be no missiles left. The threat will be gone.”

“It sounds very risky.”