Upon arrival Patrol Area “Igor,” maintain weapons system ready to answer launch control order within five minutes.

All forces encountered in patrol area are to be considered hostile and engaged if judged a threat to own ship.

Vivilav knew the meaning in the words, the obvious and the hidden. In a few hours, when he slipped the lines from the pier this time, Vipr would be at war. It was a war neither he nor any of his crew ever expected to be fighting. They would not be trading blows with the Americans, with NATO, with the Chinese. They would be opening fire on their own countrymen, on the ships with which they had exercised, on the brother sailors with whom they had sung and drunk, and they would be launching cruise missiles that would pierce deep into the heart of the Rodina.

This was no exercise. The shooting would be deadly real.

The veteran Russian submariner glanced up at the clock on the bulkhead above his desk. Most of the boats nowadays had bright red digital time readouts, but he still preferred the warm comfort the old brass mariner’s chronometer gave him. The faint ticking of the ancient mechanical mechanism somehow instilled in him far more confidence than all the high-tech wonders that had been built into the Vipr.

He could see the minute hand moving. Four more hours, four more trips around the face of the chronometer, until the American spy satellite dropped below the horizon and could no longer look down on this place. That’s when they would slip out into the dark, cold Barents.

The first officer stuck his head into Vivilav’s stateroom door. “Captain, the reactor is online. It is supplying ship’s power. The engines will be warmed and ready in an hour. All weapons systems are tested and ready. We are ready for sea when you are.”

“Very well.”

The first officer paused for a moment, waiting for anything else his captain might have to say. There was nothing more. He backed out and shut the stateroom door behind him.