Contents ( 55)
- In Memoriam
- Epigraph
- Cast of Characters
- Americans
- Russians
- Canadian
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Weapons and Acronyms
- Weapons
- Acronyms
- About the Author
- Also by Dale Brown
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
Anatoly Yalinsky smiled self-consciously. “I should be able to manage that, sir.”
Nakhimov nodded. “Very well.” He reached out and gripped the railing around the plot table. Other officers and sailors around the control room did the same with other holds. “Sail planes to vertical,” he ordered. On camera, they saw the huge, winglike hydroplanes mounted on Podmoskovye’s sail swivel upward and lock in a vertical position. He signaled Yalinsky with a nod. “Surface, but like a genteel lady,” he ordered. “Not like Maxim’s drunken whore.” That drew the laughs he’d hoped for.
More air hissed into their ballast tanks, giving the submarine positive buoyancy. Gradually, it rose, covering the remaining distance between the top of the sail and the underside of the ice cap in about twenty seconds. There was a sudden, sharp little jolt. Podmoskovye stopped dead, now pinned against the ice above her. “Increase buoyancy,” Nakhimov said calmly.
Still more air flooded the tanks, expelling water. Steadily, the pressure against the ice layer built up, until, with a sudden craacckk that reverberated through the hull, it gave way. Instantly, Podmoskovye bobbed through the shattered ice like a cork, bouncing high into the open air. Yalinsky sprang into action, opening valves to allow more water back into her ballast tanks until she rode evenly, at rest in the center of a raised mound of broken blocks of meter-thick ice.
At Nakhimov’s next orders, more sailors and officers went to work, climbing out through a hatch at the top of the sail and then slithering down onto the ice-sheathed hull. Quickly, they started clearing away the blocks of ice covering another, larger hatch farther back along the submarine’s 166-meter-long hull. Once it was clear, sailors began hauling thick hoses up through the hatch and out onto the ice cap. These hoses were connected to the aviation fuel bladders and pumps occupying Podmoskovye’s minisub hangar.
“Send a signal to Saint Petersburg,” Nakhimov ordered, turning away from the edge of the sail with a satisfied smile. “Inform Fleet Headquarters that we are on station one hundred and sixty kilometers from the American coast, and ready to assist in flight operations.”
Thirty-Two
Totem One, over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
A Short Time Later
Major Jack “Ripper” Ingalls looked out through the HC-130J’s cockpit windows. Through breaks in the clouds scudding southward, he caught glimpses of a vast sea of rugged, snow-capped peaks spreading out ahead of them as far as the eye could see. Pale light from the nearly full moon low in the east created an eerie patchwork of gleaming white snowfields and impenetrable shadow. The Super Hercules was at seven thousand feet, high enough to clear the tallest mountains on their flight path, but not by much.
Beside him, Laura Van Horn had her head down while she keenly studied their navigation display. After taking off from Barter Island, they’d made a slow, climbing turn over the coastal plain, babying the aircraft since their left inboard engine was still out of action. Now they were headed due south, taking the most direct possible route toward the drop zone for Nick Flynn’s team. “We’re ten minutes out, Rip,” she said. “Time to start our descent.”