Voyage of the Devilfish

“Captain,” Pacino said into the handset.

“XO, sir,” Rapier said. “Recommend we keep the speed down in the channel, sir. Last time we flanked it we got a speeding ticket from the Coasties. Max speed in the channel is 15 knots.”

“The Coast Guard has their priorities, we’ve got ours, XO.”

“Your hide, sir.” The bow wave climbed up the hull until it was breaking aft of the sail. The water stream climbed the sail itself, spraying the bridge officers. The hull vibrated beneath them with the power of the ship’s main engines, two steam turbines driving a huge reduction gear and the single spiralbladed screw. The wake boiled up astern. The wind blew in the officers’ faces, making communication possible only through screaming. Devilfish rocked in the waves, five degrees to port, then back to starboard. The periscopes rotated, the radar mast whistled as it spun in circles, the flags crackled in the wind and the bow wave roared. Usually the sounds of getting under way filled Pacino’s soul with a near-pure contentment. Today, all he could think about was his father, and a Russian admiral that had put him on the bottom.

CHAPTER 7

TUESDAY, 14 DECEMBER, 1100 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

ARCTIC OCEAN

BENEATH THE POLAR ICECAP

In the winter, the polar ice almost reached the northern Russian coast. An icebreaker had to clear the way for the fleet submarine Kaliningrad to get under way, and now it proceeded at full speed under the icecap. Admiral Alexi Novskoyy unpacked his duffel bag into the spacious lockers of the commanding officer’s quarters. Captain 1st Rank Yuri Vlasenko had been surprised by Novskoyy’s arrival on the pier, saying he had not had time to arrange conveniences for an admiral and his staff. Novskoyy had waved the protests aside. There would be no staff, just himself. Vlasenko had quickly given over his captain’s stateroom, where the admiral was now settling in.

A knock came at the door of the outer room of the stateroom suite, which led to the second-compartment passageway.

Novskoyy shut the lockers and unlocked the outer room door.

Standing in the passageway was Captain Vlasenko, dressed in his underway uniform of olive green tunic over pants tucked into boots. Novskoyy waved him into the suite, pointed to a seat and locked the door after him. Vlasenko was a short but powerful man, a champion wrestler at the Marshal Grechko Higher Naval School of Underwater Navigation. His shoulders were so big that his uniforms required special tailoring. Now in his late forties, he was losing a little of his muscle tone. His once blond hair was now grayish silver and wrinkles surrounded his eyes.

Vlasenko stared for a moment at Novskoyy’s hip, where the admiral wore a gleaming leather belt, a shining holster and a fleet-issue semiautomatic pistol. Just as on the Leningrad, Vlasenko remembered, feeling the bile rise. The man affected airs like the American general he’d read about what was his name? Patton, wore pearl-handled revolvers like a fancy cowboy… “Sir,” he began, “I came to invite you on an inspection of the ship.”

Novskoyy smiled slightly at Vlasenko. Why would his old subordinate offer to parade him through the ship he had designed himself? All the credit belonged to him. Vlasenko was the captain only as a result of his benevolence.

“No, I have no time for a tour. I have urgent fleet work, Captain. And besides, I know this ship better than any man alive, including you. I will assume — I will demand — that it is combat ready. Your job. Captain. Dismissed.”

Vlasenko stared at the admiral, managed to nod and leave. As he stood in the passageway, he heard Novskoyy lock the door from the inside. Vlasenko tried to fight down his anger. Declining a ship tour with the captain was an insult, a violation of protocol for a visiting admiral. Vlasenko wondered just what this trip meant. Kaliningrad’s original agenda of machinery tests for sea trials had been cancelled by Novskoyy the moment he had come onboard. Taking an untested vessel under the icecap for a mission was not only unprecedented, it could be suicidal. And Novskoyy was acting like he was in command of the submarine. Vlasenko felt like a First Officer instead of ship’s captain. He concentrated on the ship’s inspection. Novskoyy’s ride wouldn’t last long — in a week or two he would go back to fleet HQ, leaving him in command of the most modern nuclear attack submarine in the Russian Northern Fleet. At least an inspection would get him out of his closet of a stateroom to where he could talk to the men, the kind of walk around that the arrogant Novskoyy would never bother with.