It didn’t make sense. The explosion, loud as it was, would not blank out the narrow-band signal, only the broadband. Yet the sub appeared to be gone.

Crawford knew he needed answers, and he needed them now! He grabbed the 21MC microphone.

“Sonar, Captain. What happened to the Akula?” he demanded.

The sonar supervisor was just as mystified as his skipper. He was frantically punching buttons on the narrow-band stack.

“Captain, the signal’s just gone,” he answered. “It went away at the same time as the explosion. I checked the tapes. It just went away. Our equipment checks out fine. No problems at this end.”

So that left one explanation. It was not a heartening one.

Whatever had caused the explosion somehow involved their mystery sub. That was not good. Not good at all. If the boat they had been trailing had some kind of accident on board, there could be fellow submariners out there battling for their lives at that very moment.

Crawford chewed his lower lip as he weighed in his mind the possibilities and potential courses of action. A sub in distress up here on top of the world, underneath all this ice, was pretty much on its own. There would be no way for it to signal that it needed help and no way for help to get to it in a hurry, even if someone knew a boat was in trouble.

He decided to go in closer and try to determine what might have happened. He would see if they might be of some assistance if anyone was left out there to help.

He glanced around the control room. All eyes were on him. Once again, the awesome pressures of leadership washed over Brad Crawford like a deluge of cold water. These men had no idea how to interpret what had just happened. Or any concept of what to do next. That was up to him, their skipper.

So now it was time to let them in on his plan. Trouble was, even as he opened his mouth, Crawford had no idea what that plan might be.

“Okay, so it looks like we lost contact with the Akula at the same time we heard that explosion. They were both on the same bearing. It is very possible the Akula suffered some kind of accident.” He swallowed hard. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to close the last position we had on her and see if we can find out anything. Everyone on your toes. We don’t have any idea what we might be running into.”

Sergei Andropoyov picked himself up off the deck and spat out what appeared to be tiny bits of tooth. He blinked twice and struggled to get his balance.

Gepard had stopped moving at last. The depth gauge read three hundred and thirty meters. The inclinometers showed a twenty-degree list to port and a ten-degree up angle.