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Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
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Twenty feet back, he collided with a thin nylon cord. He seized it, waving the number two in with the phosphorescent wand. The other diver's hand fumbled over his, found the cord, too, and followed it down—into the silt.
A muffled clank told him the other diver was unsheathing the trenching tool. He had one, too, but the way they'd planned this, one man dug and the other stayed alert. He didn't know what for, though. He couldn't think of anything that might happen that they could do anything about.
When he pointed the light down again, the beam went about two inches and stopped. Murk, and lots of it. He heard the scrape and hiss and clank as the other diver dug. That was the miserable part of the job, on your belly in the muck, scraping and clawing your way down into what seemed like the most remote part of the most remote sea in the world, in the utter cold of however many thousand lost aeons had laid down this ancient silt.
Down to the cable.
The line pulled at his wrist. He flinched, then angled down, eeling
himself into the black quicksand that was the roiled, undulating bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk.
 
 
THE man in chinos and button-down short-sleeved shirt wandered nervously down the corridor aft of the wardroom. This was the first time he'd ever been to sea. He didn't like it. Being aboard a sub was a lot like being in jail. He'd been in jail once, in London, when an overzealous bobby had found him replacing the cover of a phone switch box outside the Chinese embassy. (The next day, a polite sort from M15 had come round and persuaded the Metropolitan Police to let him go, friendly relations and all that, thank you, disappear now, no fuss please, there's a good chap.) He grinned faintly, remembering.
Only this jail was 278 feet long and very training-conscious. The crew had made him qualify on everything from emergency airbreathing masks to submersible pumps, not to mention the goddamn toilets.
He clenched his fists suddenly, checking his watch for the hundredth time since the divers had locked out.
Christ,
he thought.
Let's get the fucking pod aboard and get out of here.
The pod was a tap, just like the one he'd put on the embassy phones years ago. Two months back,
Threadfin
had attached it to the undersea telecommunications cable linking the Kamchatka Peninsula to Moscow. This cable carried all the traffic between the command, administrative, and technical authorities in Moscow and the Pacific Coast submarine and missile bases. The Sovs knew that NSA monitored all their radio communications. So they used land lines for the stuff they didn't want intercepted. They buried them deep, put armed guards on them, one every mile, and bingo: They were secure from tapping.
So secure, in fact, that most of what went over the cable wasn't even coded.
The kicker, though, was that for 120 miles, the cable ran underwater.
The civilian grinned, then stopped, looking at the thick curved ribs of the overhead. He shivered, feeling suddenly cold, and looked anxiously, for the hundred and first time, at his watch.
 
 
THE number two diver grunted as his spade hit something hard. He reversed the trenching tool and probed. The buddy line fouled the handle and he had to stop to untangle it, by feel in the dark,
his hands numb now, freezing cold. Goddamn it … . Goddamn this silt … . He dropped the tool and dug with his hands, furiously, like a crazed beaver. Then reached for the Ping-Pong paddle jammed under his weight belt.
The pod emerged from the silt under their lights, the muck melting in slow-mo as the divers fanned it away. It was three feet long, black, and shaped like one of those oval pieces of foam that are supposed to keep your keys from sinking if they fall overboard. Down its center ran a groove about eight inches wide.
In this groove, free to lift out of it without hindrance or binding if it was hoisted from the surface, ran the cable. It was black, too, new-looking and smooth. There were no barnacles or coral. Not this deep, this cold.
The number two diver knelt. Like an acolyte performing a sacred rite, he hesitated, then worked his gloves under the cable.
The lead diver was ready with his tool. Levering the handle under the cable, he pried its deadweight out of the groove. The pod remained, still half-buried. The ooze had crept back a little, almost like a live thing, though it was the essence of lifelessness—of death, black and cold, every trace of sun energy sucked out, till the empty atoms were useless to even the humblest life.
Suddenly, he lifted his head. He snapped his light off, and the other diver, startled, did, too. For a long minute, they stared into the mighty dark.
Did I imagine it? thought the number one diver. I didn't hear anything. But I thought I felt something. Something … watching us?
Finally, he decided he was getting spooked. There was nothing else down here. His light clicked back into life, fainter now as the cold leached chemical activity from the batteries. Got to hurry, he thought, and anxiety made his hands clumsy as he inserted the butt of the tool into a slot, turned it, and caught the puck-shaped module as it came free. The number two slapped a new one into place. The lead diver replaced the sealing cap, turned it twice, and bore down till it clicked.
Done. The spades clanked and scraped as they dug silt back over the pod. Gloved hands passed over it, smoothing the cold, furrowed bottom. The lead diver caught the number two's eyes. He nodded and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
 
 
“MANEUVERING reports divers locked back aboard, sir,” said the chief of the watch, letting go of the switch on the muted intercom. “Pumping the trunk down now.”
The captain straightened instantly from his too-careless slouch
against the ballast-control panel. He crossed the control room with four long strides, slid down the port ladder, turned in a two-foot landing at the bottom, went down another ladder, turned, and headed forward. Crewmen flattened themselves against the sides of the passageway as he slid by, turning, too, so their chests brushed lightly as they passed. Grabbing a handhold above a massive door, he levered through and ducked under a hoist arm just as a torpedoman swung back a heavy machined-brass inner door. A little seawater ran out, dark with suspended silt. At the far end of the empty torpedo tube, circles of reflected light cupped a black object. The torpedoman reached for a battered pool bridge someone had racked on glue-on plastic brackets above the tube face. Its worn handle read: SONNY D'S, IMPERIAL BEACH. He slid it into the tube, then followed it, crawling in till only his feet stuck out into the torpedo room.
When he wriggled back out, pulling out the pool bridge, the module came with it. The civilian pushed past the captain, saying, “Excuse me, gentlemen.” He wiped the black disc with a bandanna from his back pocket and laid it on the head of a torpedo. An electric screwdriver whirred, and the cover came off with a pop.
They stared down at an empty reel and a small, complex tape drive and recording head mechanism. Under it was a second reel. The second reel was full of two-inch-wide magnetic data-storage tape.
“It's good?” said the captain.
“It's all here.” The civilian closed his eyes. “It worked. The son of a bitch worked.”
The captain grabbed a pair of phones hanging near the tube. He clicked the circuit selector. “Woody? Skipper here. Let's get the fuck out of Dodge.”
 
 
BACK in the control room, the chief watched a gauge column drop as pumps drove water from the fore and aft trim tanks, replacing it with air. The bubble of the fore-and-aft clinometer tumbled slowly forward as the bow lifted. The helmsman eased his aircraftstyle wheel back into his lap, and the lee helm rang up ahead two-thirds. Two hundred feet aft, one of the enginemen released a locking gear; with a faint hiss and sigh, the shining shaft began to rotate. The prop eased into motion again, slowly, slowly.
Threadfin
began to move. Her rudder swung ponderously on its pintles, and she curved left, continuing her swing till the blunt bullet of her bow pointed south by southwest, back toward international waters, over a thousand miles away.
Within her hull, the word ran from mouth to mouth: The mission
was over; they were headed home. In the sonar room, two enlisted men were talking about the surfing on Oahu when one caught sight of the screen.
“Conn, Sonar: new DIMUS trace, Sierra four-eight bearing two-seven-zero. Sierra four-eight classified warship, making two hundred turns on two fours.”
The OOD frowned. Two screws with four blades each meant a Soviet destroyer. He called the torpedo room. When the commanding officer got to the control room, Sonar was reporting another contact, this time from dead ahead.
The captain stood by the periscope stand, rubbing his chin as he did relative-motion solutions in his head. “Left fifteen degrees rudder,” he said.
“Captain has the conn.”
“Steady one-zero-zero. Slow to fifteen turns. Rig ship for ultraquiet.”
“Conn, Sonar: gain Sierra five-zero, bearing zero-nine-five. Sierra five-zero is a warship.”
“Shee-it,” whispered the captain.
“Conn, Sonar: Sierra four-eight and four-nine are active on eight kilohertz.”
“They're warships all right.”
“I knew that,” said the captain. “What I want to know is, why are they pinging?” He crossed to the intercom, but before he touched it, it spoke. “Conn, Sonar: suppressed cavitation in the baffles.”
The captain's nostrils widened and his face went tense. Suppressed cavitation meant another submarine. “Bearing?” he asked quietly.
“Can't get an exact bearing, sir. Too much background noise. Somewhere on the port quarter.”
He took a deep breath. “Okay, man battle stations. Make tubes one through four fully ready with the exception of opening the outer doors.”
For twenty minutes, they twisted and turned in a narrowing circle. Sonar reported more active sonars, then helicopter flybys and sonobuoy drops. Sweating, the skipper ordered turn after turn, changed depth and speed, tried to keep his bow to whichever pursuer seemed closest. The beat of the screws, the pings hemmed them in closer and closer. At one point, something hissed along the side of the hull, making the deck sway beneath their feet. “Submarine screw noise, close aboard,” reported Sonar. “Opening now, bearing one-one-five.”
The diving officer muttered, “The son of a bitch almost hit us.”
“They've got us boxed, sir.”
The captain looked around. It was the boat's exec, a stocky lieutenant
commander from Gibson, Louisiana. “It's a box,” he said again. “They're trying to force us to surface.”
The skipper thought this over. “Get the spook up here,” he said.
“I'm here.”
The civilian's head appeared at the top of the ladder. The captain beckoned him to where he stood by the scope.
“They're trying to force us to surface,” he said.
The man in chinos went white. He shook his head slowly. “I can't believe I'm hearing this.”
“It's not a decision I'd want to make. But the op order's clear about who's in command.”
“I didn't mean to say you
couldn't.
But this program's too important to compromise.”
“It's compromised already. They obviously know we're here.”
“They don't know what we're doing. What we
did.”
“It's that important?”
“It's that important. Yeah.”
“I think I understand what you're saying,” said the captain. “But do you understand what I'm saying? Let's make real sure. Tell me what you think I'm saying.”
“You're asking me if it's all right for you to surface, to give up.”
“No. I'm saying I may have to shoot my way out of this one.” The civilian licked his lips; his eyes darted around the control room.
“Captain, here's an opening,” said the OOD.
The captain swung instantly back to the plot. The exec put his finger silently between the green and the blue traces.
“Seems to be a gap developing between four-eight and four-nine. Back to the northeast.”
“We're not going to get out of this jam going northeast, Paulie.”
“No, but an end run—if we can shake them—”
“You're right; it's worth a try. Let's go for it. Shit a decoy. Soon as you hear it trigger, kick her up to flank and we'll try to drive between them.”
The
Permit
class were the fastest U.S. submarines ever to go to sea. As the reactor coolant pumps went to full power,
Threadfin
began accelerating with incredible smoothness, smoother than a train on welded rails, but so rapidly that the planesman felt himself pressed back into his seat. The glowing numerals of the rpm indicators flickered upward. A faint vibration grew over their heads, a fluttering roar like wind tearing by at great speed. It was the sound of 15,000 horsepower converting itself second by second into velocity.

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