She’s looking for us, Serebnitskiv thought. How heartwarming!

When the Gepard was in front of the Volk, a kilometer away, Serebnitskiv keyed a button on the high-frequency underwater telephone, sending a special coded pulse into the water at a frequency well above human hearing. The pulse was received by two transponders hidden inside the ballast tanks on the Gepard. They had been secretly placed there three years before, when she was still being built, and they had sat there, undetected, waiting for just this signal.

One of the transponders was hidden in the after ballast tank, right beneath the massive main shaft, where it penetrated the pressure hull. On recognition of Serebnitskiv’s signal, it shut a tiny microswitch, completing a circuit that energized a relay. The relay sent a small jolt of electricity into the primer circuit, firing a squib charge that ignited the main explosive charge waiting there.

Most of the explosive force vented downward and outward, instantly rupturing all the after ballast tanks. Sufficient energy jammed upward to bend the meter-thick shaft to a right angle and to punch a hole that was half a meter in diameter through ten-centimeter-thick high-strength steel and into the aft compartment of the new sub.

The other charge, sitting in the ballast tank beneath the torpedo room, also received and recognized the command signal. But a tiny leak had developed in the circuitry. The wiring to the microswitch had corroded through, so the circuit was not completed. The explosives sat there, inert, without the electric charge necessary to ignite them.

Serebnitskiv smiled as he both heard and felt the jolt of the explosion as it passed through the water and into the hull of his boat.

Now all he needed to do was wait while the wolf came charging to the squeals of the dying rabbit.

Michman Rudi Tschierschkey was lying in his bunk in the aftermost compartment on Gepard, trying to find a position to suit his aching muscles. Everyone else was forward, on the mess decks watching a movie, an old American Western that he normally would have wanted to see. Tonight he was too tired. Better to lie here in his bunk and try to get some sleep so he would be ready to go again in a few hours.

A long, hard day had been spent repairing the shoddy workmanship of the bastards at the Servomorsk Shipyard. Damn civilian workers didn’t care, as long as they got their daily ration of vodka.

This afternoon’s task had been to fix leaks in the still. Seawater kept seeping through bad solder joints into the distilled water, ruining it. He had to resolder most of them, and do it while bent double with his head and one arm inside the heat exchanger, a valve handle digging into his back.