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  “And if that doesn’t convince them?” dared Mac.

  “Then it’s time for the ultimate weapon,” retorted the Captain.

  “When we got word of our mission, my weapons officer had just enough time to do some brainstorming and then make a quick, unauthorized trip to the surface warfare supply warehouse. He came back with a device that’s a tried and true red herring catcher.

  Sitting on our fantail as we speak is a series of nets. My boys have already sewn them together, and are presently stitching a line of lead weights around the edges.”

  Mac couldn’t help but grin.

  “So you plan to snag them. You know, that might not be such a bad idea. In fact, I think it’s rather ingenious.”

  “I’m glad you approve of our methods,” returned the proud captain.

  “On a ship this size, we’re often called upon to improvise, and the simplest darn things are often the most effective.”

  “Sir, we just got word from the Kinkaid,” interrupted the quartermaster.

  “The Spruance and her escorts are in position to begin the intercept.”

  A look of relief crossed the CO’s face as he spoke out to the eight members of the bridge crew.

  “Prepare for action, gentlemen. Lieutenant Simmons, you may instruct sonar to begin their active sweep of the seafloor.

  Make certain that they generate maximum volume. I want a ping out there that they can hear all the way back to Vladivostok. Lieutenant Jacquemin, have your men ready those noisemakers. If our sonar sweep doesn’t stir ‘em up, I’m counting on those explosives to do the job for us.”

  As his officers began carrying out these orders, the captain discreetly lowered his voice and addressed Mac.

  “Well, here it goes. Commander. Though I’m still not sure how you fit into all this, one way or the other you’re soon enough going to see the exact nature of the vessel responsible for this operation.”

  “All that I ask is that you get them topside in one piece,” returned Mac.

  “I’ve waited a long time for this day to come, and I sure wouldn’t want to lose them right on our doorstep.”

  “You won’t lose them if I have anything to say about it,” pledged the CO, who addressed his next remark to one of his subordinates.

  “Lieutenant Simmons, have sonar interface that scan over our pa. system. I want to hear just what it sounds like to be the hunted at fifty fathoms.”

  This order was relayed, and less than fifteen seconds later, the bridge resounded with the loud, warbling “ping” of an active sonar projection.

  “We’ve got a solid contact fifty-four fathoms beneath us, on bearing two-four-two. Relative rough range 8,700 yards,” observed the quartermaster.

  “That’s our blessed bogey!” exclaimed the captain as he looked down at the plotting board. He used a red grease pencil and a straight edge to mark these coordinates on the plastic laminated chart.

  “All stop!” he ordered the helmsman.

  “Is he responding, Mr. Simmons?”

  The junior officer double-checked his sonar repeater and answered.

  “Negative, Captain. Contact appears to be hugging the bottom dead in the water.”

  Another deafening ping filled the bridge. Impatience filled the CO’s tone as he barked out his next directive to the weapon’s officer.

  “Enough of this bs, Mr. Jacquemin. Drop those noisemakers.

  And put ‘em right down their red throats!”

  The lieutenant signaled his men to begin launching the pressure-triggered blasting caps from the stem. Soon the public address speakers filled with both the resonant sonar return and the sharp, staccato blasts of a flurry of popping explosions.

  A satisfied gleam sparkled in the captain’s dark eyes as he turned to face Mac.

  “I wonder what that racket sounds like from their vantage point? It’s got to be pretty hairy, never knowing if the next blast they’ll be hearing will be coming from a Mark 16. It wouldn’t take much to blow that sucker to hell and back.”

  Mac looked on impassively as the quartermaster called out.

  “Contact remains dead in the water. Range now down to 4,800 yards.”

  “All ahead one third,” ordered the captain.

  “Mr. Jacquemin, I hope that net your boys put together does a better job than those firecrackers of yours.”

  The weapon’s officer wasted no time with his answer.

  “Just put us over the target, sir. I’ll have ‘em snagged and pulled in like a tuna in no time flat.”

  “We have a priority flash coming in from the Kinkaid, Captain!” cried the quartermaster.

  “They’re currently dead in the water. They report hitting what appears to be a mine. The damage is limited to the bow sonar compartment, and damage control teams are currently down there making an assessment. Before losing sonar, they reported that their target was on the run at flank speed, headed on bearing one-two-zero.”

  “Damn it!” cursed the captain.

  “I’ll bet my pension that they’re hauling ass down the western face of the island to pick up their buddies in the mini-sub and hightail it back to borscht town. And what the hell is a mine doing in our own waters?”

  As the answer to his own question suddenly registered in his mind, the captain barked out loudly.

  “All stop!

  Get a detail topside and have them keep their eyes peeled for anything suspicious that they see floating in the water.”

  “But the fog,” countered the weapon’s officer.

  “You can hardly see your own hand in front of your face out there,” “Damn the frigging fog!” shouted the captain.

  “And damn those Red bastards for having the nerve to lay a mine right in our own backyard.”

  Mac listened to this spirited exchange and felt a tenseness begin to form in the pit of his gut.

  “Sonar reports that our contact is on the move.

  They’re picking up mechanical sounds on the seabed headed on bearing three-zero-zero.”

  The Captain looked on impassively, and Mac dared to vent his frustrations.

  “Are we going to just sit here and let them get away like this, captain? At the very least we can utilize that net to snag the mini sub

  Mac’s plea was met by a frantic shout of warning from the quartermaster.

  “Bow lookout reports suspected mine, twenty yards off our port beam!”

  “Helmsman, reverse thrusters!” ordered the Captain firmly.

  “Mr. Jacquemin, get another detail topside on the double. We’re sitting out here in a possible mine field and we need every spare hand available to eyeball us out of this damn dilemma.”

  “But the mini-sub,” pleaded Mac.

  “We’re so damn close.”

  With problems of a much more immediate nature to be concerned with, the captain addressed Mac directly.

  “Commander, the Fanning is going nowhere until I know for certain what’s ahead of us. Now if you’d like me to take ‘em out with a Mark 16, that’s another story.”

  Mac was tempted to give the Captain the go-ahead, but reluctantly shook his head that such a drastic course of action wouldn’t be necessary. For the tracked submersible meant nothing to him blown to bits on the seafloor. His mission was to capture one as intact as possible. Only then would his doubters in the Pentagon believe that the threat was a real one and move to counteract it.

  With his disappointed gaze centered on the swirling fog that continued to shroud the frigate’s bow, Mac fought to center his thoughts. Time after time, Admiral Long had preached to him the value of patience, and now was the time to apply this wise advice. Though the Soviets might have won yet another round, Mac’s luck was bound to change eventually.

  And when it did, one of the tracked submersibles would be his to triumphantly show to a world full of skeptics. Somewhere on the planet, the mysterious vessel would once again be sent on a mission. And next time, if the fates so willed it, Mac would be there waiting for it.


  Chapter Four

  Nowhere on the planet were winters harsher nor spring more welcome than in the Soviet Union. This was especially the case in the Rodina’s Baltic region, where the arrival of the spring sun was met with all the joy and festivities of a new birth.

  Admiral Igor Starobin felt like a young man once again as he walked along the rocky shoreline that bordered this portion of Korporski Bay. It was a glorious May morning. The sky was a powdery shade of blue, with a few fluffy white clouds gently blowing in from the south. The usually rough waters of the Gulf of Finland looked almost inviting as they stretched out to the western horizon in a glimmering expanse of deep green.

  Though it wasn’t even noon yet, the sun generated an alien warmth that had been absent for seven long, frigid months. This sunshine had already brought a little color to Igor’s previously pale face. Its soothing radiance could also be felt deep in his arthritic joints, where the pain that had been a constant companion these last few weeks seemed to gradually lessen.

  At sixty-four years of age, Igor Starobin had seen his better days long since pass. Not that he had much of a youth to speak of. What little he remembered of his earliest years took place alongside the waters of this same gulf, in nearby Estonia. Here on the banks of the Valge river, Igor was born and raised, the only son of a village blacksmith. He never remembered much about his parents.

  His mother died of tuberculosis when he was only seven, and what few memories that still remained were of a hardworking, hard-drinking father who was content to let his son run wild as the wind.

  Igor abhorred his father’s dank, sooty shop. He much preferred to spend his time outdoors, as near to the waters of the gulf as possible. As he grew into adolescence, he became an adept beachcomber, whose keen eye could pick out the smallest of treasures hidden amongst the flotsam that inevitably ended up on the shore. His finds included a chestful of raw silk, a pair of battered binoculars, and a blood-soaked life jacket that the authorities in town were particularly interested in.

  It was while roaming the shoreline that he met a man who was to be instrumental in changing his life. Father Dmitri was an Orthodox priest who took an immediate liking to Igor. Though he certainly had never been a churchgoer, Igor was fascinated by the elder’s tales of the world beyond Estonia, and he agreed to visit the priest at his monastery. Much to his father’s surprise, Igor became a regular visitor to the monastery and eventually enrolled there as a fulltime student. By fourteen he could read and write. Yet whatever ambitions he may have had to continue on in the world of academics were forever put to rest by the invasion of the Nazis.

  Forty-nine years ago, at the tender age of fifteen, Igor enlisted in the navy. Basic training took him to the fabled city of Leningrad. There he not only became strong in body, but strong in mind as well.

  Igor grinned as he mentally recreated those exciting, innocent days that seemed to have occurred in another lifetime. How invigorating it had been to meet his first real comrades from such far off cities as Moscow, Kiev, Sverdlovsk, and Odessa! And how could he ever forget his first visits to the museums, libraries, and symphonic halls that made Leningrad the jewel of Russian culture?

  As it turned out, he had all too little time to absorb these many wonders, as the first falling shells signaled that the German threat was a very real one.

  It had been much too long since the veteran naval officer had pondered such memories. Affairs of state had kept his thoughts far removed from such fond imaginings, and he was grateful for this brief respite to the shoreline of his childhood.

  A flock of ivory white seagulls swooped down from the blue heavens, and Igor watched the graceful birds as they soared only a few centimeters from the surface of the placid waters. Father Dmitri had always said that there was much to learn from the basic laws of nature.

  And the older Igor got, the truer this advice seemed to be.

  City life had dulled his inner vision. For too many years, his duty had kept him locked behind walls of concrete, glass, and steel. Shuffling papers was no way for a man to live. Fresh air and a pastoral setting was a tonic that was as necessary as bread and water. Back in his Moscow-based office, he could picture the ringing telephones and scurrying aides as they rushed to fulfill yet another order of the day. Only last week, Igor had been one of these pathetic creatures.

  It had originally been his wife’s idea to escape the city. They usually used their seaside dacha only in summer.

  But when Igor began complaining of spells of dizziness and shortness of breath, Svetlana insisted that they leave Moscow earlier than planned.

  Several projects that he had been working on were about to reach their conclusions, and Igor was tempted to postpone this visit. But fortunately Svetlana would hear no such nonsense. As Chief of Staff of Komsomol hospital, she was used to getting her way, and in this case, her diagnosis had been a correct one.

  Igor hadn’t felt this good in years. Since leaving the city his appetite had returned with a vengeance, and he was even starting to sleep through the night again. Their dacha was comfortable, and was located close enough to a village that they could walk to get supplies, but was far enough away from civilization to ensure seclusion. A recently installed telephone kept both of them in touch with their offices, and they made a mutual pledge to use it sparingly.

  A gust of fresh air whipped in from the gulf, and Igor filled his lungs with its salty essence. Now that he was quickly approaching retirement age, his years of continued quality service to the Rodina were numbered.

  Of course, there was still one very special pet project that he wanted to see to its conclusion before he stepped down from his position of power. It had taken forty years to bring it to its current level of maturity and was already beginning to pay handsome dividends.

  The meeting he had scheduled for this afternoon would bring his life’s work one step closer to being fulfilled, That was why his Svetlana didn’t dare intercede as he issued the invitations to the two men who would be responsible for getting the ruling Politboro’s permission to implement the plan that he would soon present to them. If all went as planned, his visitors would be arriving shortly. Svetlana had agreed to prepare a special lunch for them, and afterward, he would make his presentation.

  His one worry was how Stanislav Krasino would react to his carefully prepared briefing. The deputy secretary had never been a professional soldier and was known to be a bit soft on defense issues. His position as first assistant to the general secretary made him an all-important ally, and Igor would do his best to convince the bureaucrat of his plan’s merits.

  His other guest was a different story Admiral of the Fleet Konstantin Markov was an old friend and coworker.

  During the closing days of the Great War, he had been at Igor’s side when they captured the German submarine construction facility at Keil, and knew well the great secret that it held. In the years that followed, Konstantin had been an invaluable supporter, always there to lend a helping hand when one of Igor’s projects hit rough waters. As a member of the ruling Politburo, the Admiral of the Fleet was one of the most powerful men in the entire country, and he would certainly greet Igor’s presentation with open arms.

  Anxious to get on with the afternoon’s activities, Igor took one last fond look at the surging waters of the gulf before turning around and beginning his way homeward.

  The path that he was following was little more than a goat track. Its narrow, earthen meander twisted through a series of massive boulders and crossed a sandy peninsula pitted with several tide-pools. A stand of stunted pines lay on the other side of this peninsula, and as he began crossing through them, his thoughts returned in time to the day he completed basic training and was sent home on a brief 24-hour pass.

  Though he would have preferred to spend this time wandering the shores of his childhood playground, Igor remained in the village with his father. For the first time ever, they went out drinking together. The tavern keeper was an ex-navy man himself, and kept t
hem occupied with breathtaking stories of his exploits in World War I. It wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning that they drank their share of potato vodka and dizzily headed back for home. Igor had to leave early the next mo ming and he remembered viewing the tears in his father’s eyes as he kissed his son goodbye This emotional parting would be forever etched in Igor’s mind, for it was the last time he would ever see his father alive. The muscular, close-lipped blacksmith was to die a hero’s death soon afterward in a frozen foxhole, defending Moscow from the invading Nazi hordes.

  With no other relatives to speak of, the navy was to become Igor’s adopted family. He applied himself to his duty wholeheartedly, and soon gained a reputation as a dependable, hardworking sailor. It was while on convoy duty in the Norwegian Sea that he would see his first action. This came to pass when a German U-boat put a torpedo into the side of the cargo ship that Igor had been stationed on as a gunner’s mate. The warhead exploded just at the water line, inside the main hold.

  Their cargo of Canadian wheat caught fire, and as the crew struggled to control the damage, Igor remained at his post even as the rest of the gun crew panicked and prematurely abandoned ship. It took a maximum effort on his part, but he succeeded in carrying up the shells from the magazine, loading them into the breach, and then sighting the cannon on the hull of the gloating Uboat.

  Unfortunately, all of his shots went errant, until the senior lieutenant saw his plight from the bridge and personally went down to assist him. The officer arrived just as the Germans were preparing to fire another torpedo salvo. He fine-tuned the sights on the sub’s exposed conning tower and signaled Igor to fire away.

  Miraculously, the shell smacked into its target, and when the smoke cleared, the now crippled sub was seen limping off for safer waters. Igor received an Order of Lenin third class for his efforts. He also assured himself future advancement in the Soviet Navy.

  By the war’s conclusion, he was a full lieutenant assigned to a Spetsnaz squadron whose mission was to capture as much German naval equipment as possible. It was while serving with the special forces that he first met Konstantin Markov, who held the rank of captain third rank.