by Marc Cameron
He would send a man to the surface.
A torpedo would blast a hole through the ice, hopefully pulverizing a good portion of it. This would almost certainly bring nosy Americans, but he always had the explosive disks as a fallback if that occurred. A volunteer would use the escape trunk to leave the submarine immediately following the fish, rising to the surface in a neoprene escape suit—with a satellite phone in a waterproof bag.
Commander Wan had thought the idea insane, but one did not confide such feelings to a submarine captain. It was either this, the captain had explained, or they all died immediately when the captain initiated the self-destruct mechanism, taking the priceless Mirage drive with them. In time, Wan saw that this was the only way forward—the last way.
And so Wan Xiuying found himself hunched over his desk, clutching his forelock, trying to decide which of his men he would volunteer to climb into the escape trunk, wait for it to fill with water equalizing pressure with the sea, all the while waiting for the horrific banging of the hammer that signaled it was time to open the outer hatch and swim into the cold, dark water . . . one hundred and seventy meters—five hundred and sixty feet—below the surface.
He used the edge of the desk to carefully tear the paper into three equal pieces—and then wrote his own name on each one.
30
Your request must be denied out of hand!” Captain Tian snapped, pulling the second, and then the third folded paper out of the cup in Commander Wan’s hand. “I need you here, by my side. These are incredibly important decisions that must be made. If, by some chance, any of us survive this, it should be you. You are the future of our Red Star, Blue Water Navy.”
Wan kept his voice low and even, knowing full well that he would never win an argument with the captain. The man simply did not argue. He would discuss, he would listen to reason, but if for one moment he believed that someone was arguing with him, he would, as the Americans said, pull rank, or, more often than not, simply walk away.
“I understand,” he said. “But if I may, you have said many times that you depend on my counsel. I humbly give you that counsel now. You know how important the Mirage drive is. I am in full agreement with you that if there is any way to save it and Professor Liu, then we should attempt it. Honestly, the chief engineer would have been the best candidate. He was extremely fit, and knew more about the drive than anyone besides the professor. But, sadly, he did not survive the fire. Considering our options dispassionately, I am the next logical choice. I am older than almost any of the submariners, so I am less likely to panic, and in much better physical condition than any of the more mature division chiefs. I swam competitively in secondary school and am a trained scuba diver, accustomed to the water.”
Tian took a long breath, puckering, as if smelling his top lip—it was what he did when he thought and was often copied by the men, though never in his presence.
“This is a suicide mission,” he said. “A one-way trip. No return. One way or another, you will die when you leave this boat. No question about it. In all likelihood, your lungs will rupture during ascent, or you will drown, hopelessly trapped beneath the ice. If you reach the surface alive, there is a better-than-average chance that you will be ground to flotsam by jagged pieces of floating ice. If, by some miracle, you are able to drag your broken body onto the ice and make the call, rescuers may save the ship, but the chances of anyone arriving in time to save you are almost nonexistent.”
“So,” Wan smiled, “there is hope?”
“You will eventually freeze to death.”
“If we do nothing, we all die. It would be my great honor to give my life for the crew and for China.” He shrugged, hoping it looked humble rather than haughty. “And I have heard that dying from cold is not at all unpleasant,” Commander Wan said. “They say one falls asleep.”
“A pleasant way to die indeed, unless your slumber is interrupted by a passing polar bear.” The captain pursed his lips again. “Soviet cosmonauts were issued shotguns to take into space for the eventuality that their capsule landed in Siberia when it returned to earth.” He shivered, trying to shake a memory. “I once saw the body of a man who had been partially eaten by a bear, in Siberia. The beast had broken the poor man’s neck and then eaten his kidneys. I believe he was alive during—”
“With all due respect,” Wan said, smiling, “I would just as soon die as imagine such horrible things.”
The captain took him by both shoulders, tears of pride welling in his eyes, calling him by his given name. “Xiuying, it has been my great honor to serve as your captain . . .”
“Thank you, sir!”
Tian stepped away. “But if we are to do this, then we should do it without delay. I am sorry that there is no more time for you to prepare.”
“I assure you, Captain,” Commander Wan said, “I would rather not linger. I was prepared from the moment I wrote my name on the papers.”
* * *
—
The PLAN Submariner Academy in Qingdao ran every student through egress exercises. Wan still remembered his experience putting on the full-face mask and “horse-collar” flotation aid before crawling into the modified torpedo tube and waiting for it to flood. When the hammer clanged three times on the hatch, he opened the flooded tube and kick-floated his way through a few feet of slightly cool water to the surface, into the arms of waiting instructors who wore scuba equipment to save him if he got into trouble.
This was not going to be like that.
The ungainly orange suit was a Chinese copy of the Submarine Escape Immersion Equipment, or SEIE, suit, designed and manufactured by RFD Beaufort Limited and utilized by, among others, the U.S. Navy. The operation was relatively straightforward. He would enter the lockout trunk wearing his suit, and attach the tube from his suit to an air connection that, when the time came, would fill the enclosed hood and provide him with flotation and breathing air on the way to the surface. The function of the trunk was exactly the same as that of the training tube in Qingdao, with the exception that this one was much larger, to accommodate several Special Forces divers, should the need arise. There were no Special Forces divers on this trip, or one of them would have had this honor.
Because of the unpredictability of the ice after it was broken—if it broke at all—it was decided that Commander Wan would enter the lockout trunk and flooding would begin as the Yu-6 torpedo was fired. Coordinates were plotted and the 880’s fire control guided the fish via its trailing wire umbilical, sending it as close to straight above their heads as possible.
Sweating profusely in the waterproof suit, Wan opened the escape trunk’s inner hatch. He saluted the crew, who had crowded into the forward torpedo room, and then hung the rubber pack containing the satellite phone around his neck, clipping it to a belt around his waist to keep it from becoming an entanglement hazard.
Captain Tian stepped forward, gave him another pack with a short shotgun inside.
“The chief sawed off the barrel, to make it easier for you to carry.” The captain pursed his lips again, patting Wan on the shoulder. “I would hate for you to see a polar bear.”
At that, the captain nodded to the assistant medic, who’d had little training but for what he got on the job. He carried a long steel needle. “The medical manual suggests submariners egressing from depths perforate their eardrums prior to leaving, to avoid a more violent tear during rapid ascent.”
“Very well,” Wan said. He did not know if puncturing an eardrum would hurt, but he thought having one ripped apart by pressure might render him incapable of making the decisions he would need to make at the surface. He pushed the SEIE suit’s hood back to expose his ears. “Please go ahead.”
“Me?” the seaman stammered. “I had thought . . .” He held up the needle with an unsteady hand.
Wan smiled, rescuing the young man by taking the needle from him and deftly popping both his own eardrums, qui
ckly, one after the other, before he had time to think. It smarted, but, to his surprise, it was not excruciating, and he could still hear.
He returned the needle and entered the escape trunk. The heavy door closed behind him with a resounding metallic thunk, muffling the sound of the cheers coming from the crew.
Almost immediately, seawater began to flow in around his feet, filling the metal box, the rising pressure causing the holes in his eardrums to hum.
He did not hurt—yet.
31
Captain Cole Condiff, skipper of the Virginia-class fast attack submarine USS Indiana (SSN 789), stood in the control room, behind the officer of the deck. They were three hundred feet under the Arctic ice, eight hundred miles south of the North Pole, approaching the point where the Beaufort Sea became the Chukchi.
A second U.S. sub, the Seawolf-class USS Connecticut, had departed the latest ICEX the week before, but Condiff had held his boat back, running drills, waiting. Russian subs were well aware of the U.S. Navy’s biennial Arctic combat and tactical readiness exercise. There had been nearly fifty personnel at the camp above the ice for almost three weeks. The Russians did the same kind of training, maybe even more, if you considered the proximity of their sub bases to large sheets of ice. The Chinese were throwing up ice camps, too, attempting to show some polar connection. Their subs were also here, or so he’d heard, charting, learning.
With new shipping lanes and trade routes coming into play as the ice opened up more and more each year, every nation with a toehold in the Arctic worked to make sure they had the right tools to navigate and protect their interests. If the Russians knew about ICEX, then they would be lurking, waiting on the fringes for the U.S. subs to go home.
Captain Condiff’s predatory drive kicked in at the thought, and he’d decided to let the Connecticut draw away any lurkers, and then he would fall in behind, hunting his way home.
Indiana had been under the ice for six days—since they’d said good-bye to their friends at the ice camp. Thick floe and huge daggerlike ice keels prevented deployment of the ELF antenna, making communication with the outside world impossible. Condiff expected open water by the end of watch, where the ELF could pick up any traffic from command. Until then, his sonar technicians watched the wavering green waterfall on their screens for the sound signatures of a Russian submarine.
Condiff took a deep breath. He was long past smelling it, but knew there was an odor there that those on land found disquieting if not disgusting. His wife made him wash his uniforms three times as soon as he walked in the door after a deployment. Even then, she relegated them to designated plastic totes that stayed on a shelf in the garage until the next time he went to sea.
Reusable water bottle in one hand, the skipper chatted with one of the newest members of his crew, a twentysomething woman named Ramirez. A freckled farm-boy lieutenant from Nebraska named Lowdermilk was officer of the deck at the moment, leaving Condiff to conduct his training. Unlike older submarines, Virginia-class subs like Indiana had consolidated the watch positions of dive, helm, outboard, and chief of the watch into pilot and copilot who both sat at a console in front of the officer of the deck, who gave them maneuvering orders. Combat control consoles ran along the starboard side. Sonar technicians sat at consoles to port, opposite combat control.
Along with approximately ten percent of her crewmates, this was Ramirez’s first tour. Participation in ICEX was a surprise bonus for these newbies, since Blue Noses, submariners who’d crossed the Arctic Circle, were relatively rare. It was one of the few missions a young submariner could brag about while ashore without getting into trouble.
Ramirez was taciturn, a quality Condiff liked if he did not share. Even better, she was a quick study. Her formal training was to be a sonar tech, or STS. Captain Condiff had no doubt that she would eventually become an outstanding one, but before that, he liked to have his newbies take a tour through the specialties, sonar, combat control, engineering, communications, among others, even the galley. Everyone on the sub drilled in emergency procedures, so she got plenty of that as well. Not only had these few weeks of round-the-boat training taught her a little about most of the systems, she’d been able to see firsthand how components of the crew acted and interacted. The rest of the crew also got to know Ramirez and her fellow newbies.
Each new submariner also spent half a day shadowing him. Mentally exhausting to be sure, but it had borne fruit in the form of a crew of cohesive submariners and junior officers who were ingrained with the concept of servant leadership.
Today was Ramirez’s day. She stood off his left shoulder, Rite in the Rain notebook and pen in hand, eager to learn.
“Tell me about our enemy, Seaman Ramirez,” Condiff said.
“Our enemy, sir? Here, at this moment?”
“Yes,” Condiff said. “Here on this sub.”
“. . . Russia, sir?”
“Not at the moment,” Condiff said. He turned to Lowdermilk. “Lieutenant?”
“The sea, Skipper,” Lowdermilk said. “The sea is our enemy.”
“You are correct, Mr. Lowdermilk,” Condiff said. “You may continue driving my boat.”
Lowdermilk grinned. “Aye, aye, sir.”
Condiff took a swig from the water bottle and winked at Ramirez. “I’m not kidding, you know. Even now, Mother Ocean would love to crush our hull with her bare hands. And if she’s unable to do that, she would sink and flood and freeze us without a second thought. Don’t believe me? Punch a tiny hole in the sub and then try to make friends with her. No, ma’am, the sea is an invasive species.” He took another drink and then raised the bottle as if in a toast. “And I love it more than just about any other place on the planet.”
He gestured at the nearest sonar technician. “So Petty Officer Markette, there, is keeping an eye on a surface ship making its way through the ice . . . Right, Petty Officer Markette?”
“Aye, Captain,” the STS said. “Bearing two-five-five. Heavy, slow screws. Turn count suggests it’s the Healy. Getting a lot of interference from the ice floe, but we’re estimating her at eight miles.”
The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy had been in the area before they dove. They’d picked up her groaning screws off and on throughout the week as she maneuvered through the ice, along with the periodic groans of a smaller boat they assumed to be an Arctic research vessel.
“Thank you kindly, Petty Officer Markette.” Condiff glanced at Ramirez again. “Ice . . . just frozen water . . . so still the enemy . . .”
Markette sat up straighter in his chair.
“Con. Sonar. Contact,” he said, all business. “Sound transient, far, bearing two-four-zero . . . Explosion. I think it was a torpedo.”
“I have the con,” Condiff said, moving forward.
“Captain has the con.” Lowdermilk stepped out of the way, deftly nudging Seaman Ramirez with him.
“Station a tracking party,” Condiff said before turning toward sonar.
Lieutenant Lowdermilk relayed the order on the 1 MC, or main communications circuit, alerting the entire ship that a contact needed tracking, but the captain was not quite ready for battle stations. Designated crew, along with the XO, were needed in control.
“Report,” Condiff said.
“Nothing, sir,” Petty Officer Markette said. “The sound of the launch blended with ice noise at first. The fish launched and then detonated . . . six seconds later.”
“The Healy?” Condiff said, feeling bile rise in his gut.
“Heavy screws are still present, sir,” Markette said. “Turn count is accelerating. She’s speeding up.”
“Assessment?”
Markette listened to a playback of the noise. “There it is,” he said. “Hiss, crack, boom. I think the transient was a sub firing a torpedo through the ice.”
“No other contacts?”
“No other contacts,” Market
te said.
Lowdermilk said, “Shall we find open water and send up an X-SUB?”
The X-SUB was a communication buoy developed by ALSEAMAR, that, when deployed by tether, allowed two-way communication between the submarine and ships or land while staying at depth.
“Not yet,” Condiff said. “I’m not ready to show our hand on the surface quite yet—even with a little buoy. No telling what kind of air assets are up there.” He addressed the petty officers in the pilot and copilot seats, giving them the coordinates and speed he wanted.
“. . . Take us toward the sound of gunfire . . .”
32
The other members of ELISE filtered into the secret space by ones and twos, bringing small boxes of supplies for their desks—a favorite type of pencil that couldn’t be nabbed at the supply closet, a coffee mug that had served them through many overseas assignments, or maybe a framed photo or two to help anchor them to normal life . . . whatever that was. Smartwatches, Fitbits, iPads, or outside electronics of any kind were not allowed.
Hendricks, Wallace, and Li had worked through a pool of thirty prospective personnel files and sent nine names to DNI Foley for approval. Once Foley signed off, Hendricks and Wallace had met with each of them personally and invited them to apply to participate in a special project that would require in-depth background checks, including a polygraph and a financial review that one of the men later described as more intrusive than a lingering prostate exam. Hendricks, Wallace, Li, and even Director Foley worked around the clock to complete the vetting process.
No one on ELISE knew how long the assignment would be, but once they found out it was a mole hunt, they were in it for the long haul.
Monica Hendricks sat at the head of a long oak conference table, flanked by David Wallace of the FBI and retired rear admiral Peter Li, her longtime friend and unofficial deputy on project ELISE.
