Commander Joe Glass sat on the stool beside the periscope stand. So far, it had been quiet. Too quiet. Gonzales and Donlan were a couple of hours into their mission on the ASDV and would be working their way down the fjord. There was nothing for him and Toledo to do but sit out here at the mouth of the Murmansk Fjord and wait for their return with Beaman and the rest of his SEAL team.

Pat Durand stood over by the ballast control panel, talking with Bill Dooley. They were trying to figure out why the trim system wouldn’t prime. The piping system was built to move seawater between various tanks located around the boat. By moving water between the tanks, they could compensate for weight changes on the sub and keep it at a neutral buoyancy and level. That was called “in trim.” The discussion centered on what appeared to be a problem with the priming pump. It wasn’t drawing enough vacuum.

Jerry Perez stood back at the navigation plot, stooped over the large-scale chart of the fjord. He was keeping track of Toledo’s position. As he did, he listened to the sonar man who was standing by the fathometer, reading off the depth of water under the sub. It would be Perez’s worst nightmare to get lost in this very confined bit of water and bump into the bottom.

Tommy Zillich sat just inside the sonar room, talking to Sam Wallich through the open door while keeping one eye on his “sonar boys” as they listened to the surrounding water.

Glass watched the scene. They might just as well have been a hundred miles off Norfolk. There was no sign, except for the chart Jerry Perez had taped to the plotting table, that they were twenty miles inside Russian territorial waters, a few miles north of one of the most closely guarded submarine bases in the world.

One of the sonar men jumped. “Chief, quick! I got a contact! Sub close aboard and dead ahead!”

Glass heard the words through the door and glanced up at the broadband display on the sonar repeater. Sure enough, there was a broad white stripe that had just started. Something was out there. Something big. It was close and coming quick. There was no bearing rate. It wasn’t drawing to either side of Toledo. If they didn’t do something, there would be a mammoth collision.

Not much time to maneuver. Not much room, either.

“Left full rudder,” Glass yelled. “Steady course zero-nine-zero. Ahead two-thirds. Rig ship for collision!”