“It wouldn’t be a bad idea!”

Captain Second Rank Sergei Andropoyov climbed the long ladder from the control room to the bridge of the Russian submarine K-475. He loved this new boat, so much more modern than the old rust buckets he had served on so far in his Navy career. Most of those boats were now tied up over at the Polyarnyy main piers, moldering into oblivion.

Gepard was brand-new and equipped with enough technological advances to make her equal to any American submarine. She was an Akula II–class boat—akula being Russian for “shark,” a name most appropriate.

Andropoyov climbed through the hatch, leaving the cozy warmth below, and stood in the cockpit at the top of the submarine’s sail. The huge cement and steel structure of the submarine pen stretched above him and far to either side. The piers were all empty, except the one where K-475 was tied up, and another down the way where K-461, the Volk, an older Akula I sub, sat. She was ready to follow him out into the Barents and stand guard while he tested Gepard.

The commander remembered how it had been a few years ago, when this building was always buzzing with furious activity. Boats preparing to go out into the cold, dark waters of the Barents Sea to challenge the Americans and to protect the Rodina. Boats returning from arduous patrols, needing rest and repair. This eerie quiet was most unsettling after all that purposeful activity.

The giant doors at the end of the pier were open already, revealing Olenya Bay and Murmansk Fjord beyond. A biting cold wind howled out there, close and strong enough to find a way to reach in to chill them even inside the sub pen. A rusty old icebreaker stood by at the building’s entrance, smoke whisping from its single large stack. It would break a path through whatever ice there might be in the bay and fjord and lead K-475 out to the open water of the sea.

Andropoyov glanced at his watch. He turned to Dimitriy Pishkovski, his first officer. “Dimitriy, I believe it is time. If you would be so kind as to get us under way?”

The short, swarthy white Russian smiled. “I will be happy to, Captain. It is good to be heading to sea once more.”

Pishkovski said a few sentences into the phone at his ear. The knot of men standing on the pier broke up and scurried off to stand beside the bollards, ready to tend the lines that still held Gepard tied up in the pen.

He spoke again into the phone. The men standing on Gepard’s broad rounded main deck released the lines from her cleats and let them slide off into the water. The line handlers on the pier growled and cursed as they pulled the ice-cold, wet lines from the water.