Crawford looked at the display. Whatever they were picking up was a sub, but it was not fitting the pattern for known Russian boats. The building peaks showed a time history of sound energy at each frequency. It was shaping up to be a very interesting picture.

Schutte was right, it did look somewhat like the display from an Akula-class boat, the best sub the Russians had ever built and one equal to Miami. Those boats had all been tied up for several years now. Intelligence reports confirmed that none of them were even operational anymore. Now, if one of those “sharks” had come out to play, it would be interesting to see what she was up to.

The picture wasn’t quite right. The major frequencies used to detect and track an Akula were gone, not showing up at all. There was the brand-new line, very low frequency and so quiet that even the TB-29’s hypersensitive ears had almost missed hearing it.

Both men were thinking the same thing. This could be a new boat, and that was worth taking a closer look.

Crawford turned to Schutte and winked. “Nav, I think our whale watching is over with for a bit. Station the fire control tracking party. We’re going shark hunting.”

Chapter 4

Igor Serebnitskiv stared out the periscope of the Volk, but saw nothing. Even using the scope’s low-light capability, he could make out little more than various shades of gray. He had raced his old sub to the rendezvous point as fast as she would go, driving his crew to arrive five hours earlier than planned. A very careful search of the area found exactly what he expected—no one else was anywhere around. Now he would have ample opportunity to find himself a cozy place to hide and wait for the parade to pass by.

The craggy, mountainous underside of the Arctic-winter pack ice would serve his purposes. All he had to do was find a notch where he could tuck Volk in and hole up. The upward-looking underice sonar helped to map out the upside-down landscape over his head, but it was no substitute for seeing what he was searching for. That would take the periscope, but he would have to be very careful. A low-lying ice keel could shear the scope right off if he wasn’t watchful and careful.

Sergei Andropoyov and Gepard were due to arrive at their rendezvous point in little more than an hour, and Serebnitskiv wanted to find his hiding spot before they showed up and had a chance to detect his sub, which would be much easier with all of the K-475’s fancy new equipment. Serebnitskiv wanted to be invisible before the inevitable trailing American submarine came by, too. If the Americans had an inkling that Volk was there, his long-evolving mission was lost. They would have to start all over. That was one message he did not want to relay back to his uncle.