Toledo was less than an hour east of where they would turn south into the fjord. The Akulas were far to the east by now. They were probably turning into the White Sea, if Glass’s guess was right. Zillich reported his sonar screen was empty. There was not another ship in sight.

Doug O’Malley hovered at the back side of the periscope stand. The red-haired engineer had relieved Jerry Perez as the officer of the deck and was waiting for directions from the two senior officers.

“Eng, slow to one-third and do a careful sonar search,” Glass ordered.

“Yes, sir,” O’Malley replied. He turned and, in his usual staccato voice, ordered the helmsman, “Ahead one-third.”

The helmsman turned the engine-order telegraph to the one-third position. It was answered by the throttle man. The submarine began to slow.

Glass returned his attention to Edwards and the chart they were studying. He ran his finger around the long, narrow spit of land that projected from the eastern headlands. It closed the entrance to the Murmansk Fjord down to where it was only a few miles across from the end of the spit to the western headlands. Beyond, the fjord opened into a broad bay of deep, protected water.

“Brian, last time we went down the western side and stayed close to the beach. This time let’s hug the eastern side.”

Edwards looked at the chart. The entrance channel was narrow and deep, rising sharply on either side. Inside the entrance, near the shore on the east side, the bottom was shallow and gently sloping. Then it dropped vertically to a thousand feet deep less than a mile from the beach.

“Skipper, here is perfect. Go in deep and snuggle up to this shelf. It should hide our signature in the surf noise for anyone out in the basin and make it easy for us to listen.”

“Brian, there is hope for you after all,” Glass said with a smile. “It’s pretty much what I had in mind. Deep and slow. Real quiet-like. We’ll follow this shelf around until it heads south.” Glass ran his finger around the chart, indicating the general course they would take. “When we’re sure we have a handle on any welcoming committee, we head over to the rendezvous.”

Edwards nodded his understanding, then asked, “Should we man battle stations and get a couple of fish ready?”

“Man battle stations silently, but no weapons. We’ll be inside Russian territorial waters. We send out a fish in there and all hell will break loose. Load a MOSS in tube three. That’ll be our protection.”

The MOSS, or “Mobile Submarine Simulator,” was a small torpedo-like device that could swim out of a torpedo tube and then play a recording of Toledo’s sound signature while following a preprogrammed course. The idea was to convince any pursuer that the MOSS was actually Toledo while the real submarine snuck off in another direction.