Glass turned back to the discussion he was having with Brian Edwards and Dan Perkins. The Toledo was operating over two hundred miles from the edge of the thick, forbidding winter pack ice. The three specially designed underice ADCAP torpedoes were loaded in their torpedo tubes, flooded down and ready to go. The outer door for tube one was already opened. Only a few seconds would be needed to send that deadly fish on its way to a target. The sub was rigged for ultraquiet; every unnecessary piece of equipment was secured so Toledo was running even more silently than the surrounding water. At the same time, Master Chief Zillich sat in the sonar room, listening intently, using every bit of his experience along with the capability of the BQQ-10 sonar system to search out the ocean for any threat.

They had approached this location carefully, circling for a maddening ten hours, all to make sure they were alone. They had heard nothing, not a hint of a man-made sound amid the popping and groaning of the ice.

Glass stared at the traces as they developed on the sonar display repeater. He gritted his teeth and rubbed his chin.

“I don’t like this,” he growled. “Nothing here. No Miami. No Russian boat. Nada. What do you make of it, XO?”

“Damned if I know, Skipper,” Edwards responded. “We drove up here to find a downed boat. Suggest we get looking.”

Glass nodded and looked at Perkins. “Mr. Perkins, looks like it’s time to unleash your mad scientist and his little toy. You ready to deploy the robot sub?”

“Yes, sir. Just give the order and Dr. Schwartz will start searching.”

Glass turned back to look at the sonar screen for a moment. If there was danger out there, they had done all they could to detect it. Now they would have to stay alert and carry on. From what little he knew of the downed Russian sub, there was little hope of finding anyone alive by now. If the Miami had somehow run into the same trouble, there was no call for help from her, either. There was only the incessant gnashing of the ice and nothing more.

None of that bode well. Still, they had a job to do.

“Very well. Commence robot sub operations.”

Bill Schwartz sat on the deck in the torpedo room, his legs crossed beneath him and a couple of pillows under his butt. As soon as he got the word, he flipped a toggle switch, watched a set of indicators for a moment, and then started nudging a joystick with his right hand. All the while, he watched a small video screen propped up in front of him on top of a stack of manuals.