“Excellent! I need someone to translate for us.” Crawford ushered the scientist into the sonar room and handed him a set of headphones. “What is this guy saying?”

Croley listened, pressing the earphones to his head and concentrating on the feeble, scratchy sound of the voice. He nodded as he listened. He snatched a pad of paper and began to write: “Wolf, Wolf, this is Leopard. Help us. We are sunk.”

Croley looked up at Crawford, his eyes wide and his face going ashen as he realized the implications of what he was hearing.

“These are the words,” Croley said, pointing to the pad. “He is saying it over and over again.”

Crawford nodded. It was what he had expected.

“Dr. Croley, would you please stay here and translate? Tell me if anything changes.”

“Should we answer him?”

“Not just yet. Stand by.”

The captain trotted out of the sonar room and headed back to control. There he gathered Gerson and Schutte around the navigation plot. This had now become a matter of life or death. They needed to figure out what to do. Crawford told them of the translation of the underwater telephone plea.

Schutte studied the chart. It was a little over three miles from their current position to the sunken sub. Water depth there was marked at just under two hundred fathoms. Deep, but still shallow enough that a sub could sink to the bottom without being crushed by the pressure. He looked up at Crawford.

“Skipper, if they are bottomed here we need to get help quick. There’s nothing else we can do for them but say a prayer or two.”

Gerson nodded his agreement, but Crawford noticed his executive officer’s brow was creased with worry when he spoke. “Okay, XO, what’s bothering you? Something’s gnawing away in there. Spill it.”

“The way I read what this guy is saying, he’s calling out for someone named ‘Wolf.’ Or maybe a boat named ‘Wolf.’ Do you think there might be another sub that he’s expecting to be up here, and close enough to hear his distress signal on the underwater phone?”

Crawford shook his head. “Not that we’ve seen. We’re not detecting anyone else. Not even with the TB-29. Looks like we’re up here all by ourselves, except for the poor bastard on the bottom. Let’s go talk to him and let him know we’ve heard him, even if ‘Wolf’ hasn’t.”

Gerson nodded but he didn’t lose his worried scowl.

Dimitriy Pishkovski was growing ever more tired and despondent. For hours, it seemed, he had been sitting here, repeating his plea over and over again, his pain-slurred words spilling out into the cold, empty Arctic water. Why bother? Would it not be better to fetch the bottle of vodka from his stateroom and enter the next life in a stupor?