To Kill the Potemkin (32 page)

Federov
complied,
dragging from his memory a
child's prayer. Polokov stopped breathing. The surgeon pulled a sheet
over his
face. "Shall we prepare for burial at sea, Captain?"

"Later."

Popov's
voice
came through the intercom
speakers. "This is sonar calling the captain. We have made contact with
Dherzinski
."

Federov
rushed to
the control room and stood
over Popov at the sonar console.
Dherzinski
was
beaming a sonic signal
over the prearranged frequency that
Potemkin
was to
use as a homing
device.

"Prepare
to
surface. All ahead
slow," ordered Federov. "Alexis, put life jackets on Bolinki and the
others to be transferred. I'm sending along a sealed copy of the log
with an
account of Kurnachov's actions for Gorshkov's eyes only. I want your
signature."

"Yes,
Captain."

On
Barracuda
Sorensen and Fogarty
heard
Dherzinski
's
signal.

"Sonar
to control.
Dherzinski
is
echo-ranging."

"Very
well,
sonar. Slow speed. We must
be near the Alpha. If
Dherzinski
starts to circle,
we'll go around with
her."

Sorensen
stood
up. "Any second now
Dherzinski
's echo ranger will pick up the Alpha. When the
echo bounces
back, we should hear it. That's when one of them might pick us up.
Cross your
fingers. If they hear us they'll never surface. And we won't be able to
see
them. And that means we can't get the pretty pictures the admiral
wants."

Tension
crept
through the ship. In the
control room Springfield studied the repeater.

"She's
turning.
Go left three
degrees." A second blip appeared on the screens. "There it is. All
stop."

The
two Russian
subs were a mile apart, six
miles from
Barracuda
.
Slowly
the two blips moved together.

"General
quarters, general quarters. All
hands prepare for maneuvering. Control to weapons. Load tubes two and
four with
Mark thirty-sevens, acoustic homing."

"Weapons
to
control, understand load two
and four with Mark thirty-sevens, acoustic homing."

"If
they discover
us right now,"
said Pisaro, "I think they'll shoot..."

Springfield
silently agreed. "Leo, if we
hear a target-seeking sonar, we got to turn tail. Tell the
quartermaster to
load the camera. When we raise the scopes, you blow off your film in a
hurry.
As soon as you're done we back off and do our best to pick up
Dherzinski
later.
We're not going to invite this Alpha driver to be a hero of the Soviet
Union at
our expense. All ahead slow."

Barracuda
inched toward the hovering subs. When the distance was reduced to a
mile
Sorensen heard strange garbled noises. The Russians were communicating
on an
underwater telephone.

"Sonar
to
control, they're talking on a
gertrude."

"Very
well,
sonar. We're sending Davic
in."

A
moment later Davic pushed through the door
into the sonar room. Sorensen greated him with a big smile. "You're on,
Davic. Listen up."

Davic squeezed
into the third console, put on
a headset and shook his head. "It's breaking up. They're too far away.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm getting something—something about
carbon
dioxide... lithium... now I've lost it again."

Fogarty
said,
"One of them is blowing
her tanks. It's
Dherzinski
,
she's rising. Now the Alpha. They're both surfacing."

Sorensen
watched
the screen. "Okay, it
seems they still don't know we're here. Sonar to control. They're
surfacing.
Holding steady at six thousand yards."

"All
ahead slow.
Helm, take us in to one
thousand yards. Periscope depth, gear for red," ordered Springfield.

The
lights in the
control room switched from
green fluorescence to cherry red.

"Take
her up.
Quartermaster, rig the
camera to number one scope."

"Aye
aye, sir.
It's going to be dark up
there."

"Switch
on light
intensifies."

"Light
intensifiers on."

"Mr.
Pisaro, try
standard film first. If
we have time, we'll activate the infrared system."

"Aye
aye,
skipper."

"Control
to
engineering. Chief, increase
steam to ninety percent. We may have to get out of here in a hurrv."

"Engineering
to
control. What's he going
to do? Fire a broadside across our bow?"

"Not
funny. Up
scopes."

Barracuda
angled up, and at sixty feet the periscopes broke the surface.
Springfield bent
over the binocular eyepiece of the number two scope.

Olonov
stood on
the bridge on
Dherzinski
's
squat ugly sail,
looking at the short, sleek sub rocking twenty meters away in the
gentle sea.
He shouted through a bullhorn, "Who are you?"

"This
is
Potemkin
," came
Federov's reply. "Do you have the lithium hydroxide?"

Olonov's
mood was
dark. "So you're
Federov, Gorshkov's fair-haired boy. Prince of the Northern Fleet.
Pleased to
make your acquaintance."

Federov
did not
appreciate the sarcasm.
"Send across the lifeline."

It
had been
thirty years since Olonov last
worked as a deckhand. Alone on the bridge of
Dherzinski
,
he managed to fire the small rocket
that catapulted the rope across the void. Federov secured the line to a
cleat
and spoke into his headset.

"Send
Bolinki up.
Get the others
ready."

Olonov
secured
the bag of crystals to the
line and Federov slowly pulled it across. When the precious chemical
was safely
aboard
Potemkin,
Federov tied the unconscious
Bolinki into a litter,
stuffed the copy of his log into the sailor's jacket, and Olonov began
to pull
the crewman toward
Dherzinski
.

Bolinki
was
suspended over the sea when
Federov heard Popov's voice on the intercom. Radar had picked up
periscopes at
a distance of one kilometer.

Federov
was
furious at Olonov for letting
himself be picked up and trailed, compromising
Potemkin
.
He spoke to Popov again.
"Identification?"

"None,
Captain.
We never heard him...
but now we have periscopes on radar—"

"Alexis,
prepare
to dive. Load torpedoes
and flood tubes,
now
."
He shouted into the bullhorn, "Olonov, get that man aboard. You dive
first
and proceed due north exactly five hundred kilometers. We'll rendezvous
again
in twenty-four hours to finish the transfers."

Olonov
was
equally dismayed. He too was
risking exposure, and possibly being cut off from retreating back to
the Cuban
lair. Through infrared binoculars he now could see the periscopes.
Dherzinski
was compromised.

It
was three
o'clock in the morning on a
clear night. Through the binocular lenses of his periscope Springfield
saw a
mottled shape a half mile away rolling in the sea like a beached whale.
Dherzinski
. One man
stood
on top of her low stubby sail wrestling with a lifeline. As the big
ship rocked
in the waves, Springfield saw that the line stretched across to another
much
smaller submarine.

"Leo,
start the
camera. I think we've
got our hit-and-run artist here."

Pisaro
put his
eye to the Nikon's viewfinder
and activated the motordrive. The camera began taking rapid-fire
pictures.

"We
got a Hotel
class boomer and what
has to be the Alpha," said Pisaro. "They're not acting like they know
we're here."

"Then
they'll
know any minute,"
Springfield replied. "Their radar will pick up the scopes.
Dherzinski
is
sending a container across. They've got a man rigged to the lifeline.
They're
taking him off the Alpha and putting him on the missile sub—"

"Sonar
to
control. They're echo-ranging.
They've got us."

"Radar
to
control. They've picked up the
periscopes. I've got two discrete frequencies."

"They're
cutting
loose the
lifeline," Pisaro announced. "They're closing the hatches."

"Attention
all
hands. This is the
captain. Prepare for steep angles and deep submergence. Control to
radio,
prepare a position report and the following message: Soviet Hotel class
FBM
Dherzinski
and Soviet Alpha class SSN photographed on
surface. Will follow
FBM according to orders."

"Radio
to
control, aye aye."

"Sonar
to
control. One sub is flooding
his tanks, he's making way. It's
Dherzinski
."

"Steady
now,"
said Springfield.
"We'll wait until the Alpha is down before we transmit. We don't want
them
to intercept our message. Control to sonar."

"Sonar,
aye."

"Keep
track of
the boomer. We'll want to
pick up its trail fast, as soon as we're sure the Alpha isn't on our
tail.
We've got to get free of him first."

"Sonar
to
control, echo-ranging.
Dherzinski
is making six knots. She's not going down easily.
The Alpha is
holding steady on the surface."

Through
his
periscope Springfield saw Federov
staring back at him through infrared binoculars. He knew the Russian
was
waiting for him to transmit.

"Sonar
to control.
Dherzinski
is
still on the surface, speed eight knots, course zero zero zero."

"Mr.
Pisaro,
shoot the infrared
film."

Pisaro
changed
film and fired off thirty-six
exposures of
Potemkin.
He detached the film
cartridge from the camera
and called to the quartermaster. "Chief, get Luther to process this
film
right away."

"Sonar
to
control, the Alpha is flooding
torpedo tubes."

"Steady
as she
goes. He won't fire from
the surface. That's suicide. Control to weapons. Flood tubes."

"Weapons
to
control. Flooding
tubes."

"Mr.
Hoek,
program your fish to home on
the Alpha. Do you have her signature?"

"Yes,
sir."

"Easy
on the
trigger, Lieutenant. Very easy. Give him a chance to
back off."

In
the sonar room Davic was yelling at the blip on his screen.
"Shoot him. Shoot him
now
—"

Fogarty
turned on
him. "Shut up, Davic. Shut the hell up."

"Chickenshit..."

Sorensen
wheeled
around, barely restraining himself. "Get out of
here, Davic. Take your white suit and go to your damage-control station.
Now
."

Davic hesitated
for a moment, then put on his asbestos suit and left,
trailing an untranslatable curse.

Federov
gazed through binoculars at the four
thin vertical lines that poked out of the sea a half mile away—radar
and radio
antennae and two periscopes. He still had no positive identification
but he
felt certain it was
Barracuda
—who had a better
motive? And of course by
now they must have deduced or established that
Potemkin
had not sunk.
Once more he realized what a self-serving game it was to assume the
Americans
were stupid or easily fooled. The acoustical device may have bought
them time.
The apparatchik had brought them a crisis.

He
had outrun
Barracuda
, outdived it, out maneuvered
it, but
he had not escaped it. They were good, damn them. The very stealth of
the
American submarine disturbed him. No, this was no chance encounter; the
Americans had tracked him—precisely how, he wasn't certain, though a
likely
possibility was that they had managed to lay down a bottom sonar
system, as
rumor had had it. He also realized with a chill that the American sub
could
have sunk him. But they had observed him, and more... He had no doubt
that the
American commander was taking his picture, and he could not allow that
film to
be delivered to the Pentagon. His orders, which had always seemed to
leave him
too little room for discretion, even if he realized the reason for
them, had
been delivered in person by Gorshkov the day
Potemkin
had sailed—under
no circumstances was he to permit discovery of this top-secret, most
advanced
submarine. Well, he had been discovered. Now he had to take the action
necessary to offset the damage of that discovery.

But
first he must do what he could to drive
off
Barracuda
to make possible
Dherzinski
's escape, then using
Potemkin's
depth and speed, try to
recover his advantage. Both sides knew the rules, the FBMs of both
navies were
supposed to be untouchable. Yet now both sides had violated that
unspoken
understanding. His side had by dispatching
Dherzinski
from its hidden
station to save his ship and its wounded, and the Americans had by
persisting
in tailing the FBM and even, no doubt, photographing it just as they had
Potemkin
. He had
wondered
when he sent his message to Gorshkov describing his condition whether
the
admiral would risk exposure and identification of
Dherzinski
to save
Potemkin
. He was
glad he
had, but wondered what he would have done in Gorshkov's place...

All of which was
at best a momentary
diversion from the action he knew he must take.
Barracuda
must
be
silenced. He would make a threatening gesture, then submerge... to
attack from
the surface would give the American an opportunity to shoot back, and
possibly
destroy the
Potemkin...
And the destruction of the
Potemkin
must
not be allowed, it was not even thinkable—which thought helped him push
from
his consciousness what he was charged with doing... Secretly, in a
corner of
his mind, he wished the American would escape, save him from what he
must
do—and then quickly he shook his head, forcing himself to concentrate
on his
mission... Damn you, damn you, damn you was the inclusive litany
reverberating
in his brain, but nobody was listening, and now he no longer could.