Andropoyov smiled even though the wind made his teeth ache and his cheeks sting. “It is good to feel the sea again, aye, Dimitriy?”

Pishkovski shouted over the wind, “Yes, Captain. It is good. It will be better, though, when we have dived and are down in the warm control room with a cup of tea.”

Andropoyov nodded and answered, “I agree. It is time. Signal the icebreaker that we are diving. Then we will lie below.”

Pishkovski aimed the Aldis lantern at the icebreaker and flipped the shutter handle. The icebreaker returned the flashing light signal and swung around to return home. The two officers scurried down through the hatch, closing and dogging it behind them.

Their mission had begun.

Chapter 2

Igor Serebnitskiv stood in the open bridge cockpit of the K-461, watching with great interest as the Gepard sailed out of the submarine pen and disappeared into the blackness of the night. The lights of the icebreaker leading the submarine away were all that marked the new boat’s progress.

He didn’t try to hide the rueful grin on his face. Gepard was a beautiful boat, so much newer and more capable than Serebnitskiv’s beaten and rusty old Volk. He couldn’t help chafing at the thoughts of Sergei Andropoyov riding high up there on Gepard’s bridge, driving a boat that should have rightfully been his own to command. Years of careful manipulation to be first on the list of commander candidates had been wasted. Political leverage had been applied, bribes surrendered to all the right bureaucrats, all for naught. To make the sting of the slight even more unbearable, his uncle, Admiral Alexander Durov, commanded the submarine fleet. With all that capital, Serebnitskiv could never understand why he had been passed over for command of K-475.

After this morning’s meeting, he understood one important thing: his uncle’s scheme and the part he was to have in it. Durov was playing a much larger game of no-return chess, and it was one in which the admiral’s nephew would have a most pivotal role. His success in this mission would propel him to heights within the Russian military he could never have anticipated. As he watched the running lights of the ice breaker being erased by the snow and spray, he could hardly wait to be in motion, to assume the rightful place of importance his skills and connections and political savvy deserved.

Still, his voice was low and unhurried when Serebnitskiv muttered the orders to get K-461 under way. K-475 had already disappeared around the point of land into the Murmansk Fjord when Volk slid out of the silent, darkened submarine pen. The ice was beginning to refreeze as the older sub crunched its way through on its own journey toward the deep death-cold waters of the Barents.