Ice Hunt Read online

  But there was no one else.

  “Captain,” his chief whispered to him. The Polar Sentinel was baffled and soundproofed, but no one dared speak too loudly lest the dragon in the waters should hear them. “Position confirmed. The Drakon is already surfaced at Omega.”

  Perry crossed to the man. He checked their distance to Omega. Still another five nautical miles. “How long have they been there?”

  The chief shook his head. Up until now, details had been sketchy. Without going active with their sonar, staying in passive mode, the exact whereabouts and location of the Drakon had been fuzzy. At least they had found the other sub. Still, that narrowed their own window considerably. The Russians must already be evacuating the station. According to the intercepted UQC communication, the captain of the Drakon would blow the base once he began his descent. The Russian captain wouldn’t risk damaging his own boat during the conflagration.

  But what was the time frame?

  His diving officer, Lieutenant Liang, stepped to his side. His features were tight with worry. “Sir, I’ve run the proposed scenario over with the helm crew. We’ve wrangled various options.”

  “And what’s the time estimate for the maneuver?”

  “I can position us in under three minutes, but we’ll need another two to rise safely.”

  “Five minutes…” And we still have to get there.

  Perry glanced to their speed. Forty-two knots. It was blistering for a sub running silent, but that was the Sentinel’s advantage. Still, they dared go no faster. If the Drakon picked up the cavitation of their propellers or any other telltale sign of their approach, they were doomed.

  He calculated in his head the time to reach Omega, to get in position, to orchestrate the rescue…and escape. They didn’t have the time. He stared at his chief. If only the Drakon hadn’t already been in position, weren’t already evacuating Russian forces…

  Liang stood quietly. He knew the same. They all did. Once again, he prepared to call their boat around. They had made a run for it, but it was hopeless. The Russians had beaten them.

  But he pictured Amanda’s smile, the crinkles at the corners of her eyes when she laughed, the way her lips parted under his own, softly, sweetly…

  “Chief,” Perry said, “we need to delay the Drakon’s departure.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want you to ping the other boat with active sonar.”

  “Sir?”

  Perry turned to his men. “We need to let the Drakon know someone shares their waters. That someone is watching.” He paced, running out his plan aloud. “They expected us long gone. That no one would be around to witness what is going to happen. By pinging them, it will force their captain to confer with his commander, delay a bit longer. Perhaps buy us the time we need.”

  “But they’ll be on full alert with all their ears up,” Liang said. “As it is, we’ll be hard-pressed to sneak under their nose and perform the rescue maneuver.”

  “I’m aware of that. We were sent north to run the Polar Sentinel through its paces. To prove its capacity in speed and stealth. That’s just what I intend to do.”

  Liang took a deep, shuddering breath. “Aye, sir.”

  Perry nodded to the chief. “One ping…then we go dead silent.”

  “Aye to that, sir.” The chief shifted over to the sonar suite and began conferring.

  Perry turned to his diving officer. “As soon as we ping, I want the helm to heel the boat away at forty-five degrees from our present course. I don’t want them to get a fix on us. We run fast and silent.”

  “As a ghost, sir.” Liang turned on a heel and retreated to his station.

  One of the sonar techs suddenly jumped to his feet. “Sir! I’m picking up venting! Coming from the Drakon!”

  Perry swore. The Russian sub was preparing to dive, taking on ballast, venting air. They were too late. The evacuation had already been completed.

  The chief stared over at him. His face was plain to read: Continue as planned or abort?

  Perry met the other’s gaze, unflinching. “Ring their doorbell.”

  The chief spun around and placed a hand on the sonar supervisor. Switches were flipped and a button punched.

  The chief nodded to him.

  It was done. They had just given themselves away. Now to observe the reaction. A long moment stretched even longer. The Sentinel swung under their feet, deck plates tilting as the sub adjusted to a new trajectory.

  Perry stood with clenched fists.

  “Venting stopped, sir,” the technician whispered.

  Their call had been heard.

  “Sir!” Another sonar tech was on his feet, hissing urgently for attention. The tech wore headphones. “I’m picking up another contact. Noise on the hydrophones.” He pointed to his earpiece.

  Another contact? Perry hurried to him. “Coming from where?”

  The tech’s eyes flicked upward. “Directly on top of us, sir.”

  Perry waved for the phones. The technician passed them to him, and he pressed an earpiece to his head. Through the phone, he heard what sounded like drums, beating slowly…more than one…their cadence picked up rapidly.

  Perry had once been a sonar tech. He knew what he heard drumming through the ice from above. “Rotor wash,” he whispered.

  The technician nodded. “There are two birds in the air.”

  2:56 P.M.

  ABOARD THE DRAKON

  Mikovsky was getting the same information from his sonar crew. A moment ago, their boat had been pinged, deliberately and precisely. Clearly someone was in the waters below—and now another party was in the skies above.

  The Drakon was pinned down, trapped.

  If the other sub had pinged them, then they certainly had a weapons lock. He could almost sense the torpedo aimed at his ass. The fact that no fish was already in the water suggested the ping had only been a warning.

  Don’t move or we’ll blast your boat out of the water.

  And he could not argue. He had no defense. Trapped in the polynya, the Drakon had no way to maneuver, no way to escape an enemy attack. Surrounded on all sides by ice, he couldn’t even get a decent sonar sweep. While surfaced here, he was half blind.

  Still, that wasn’t the greatest danger.

  He stared over the shoulder of his XO and studied the radar screen. The snowstorm and wavering magnetic fluxes in the region wreaked havoc with the readings. Two helicopters sped toward him, low over the ice, making contact difficult and target locks impossible, especially in the blowing whiteout surrounding the boat.

  “They’re coming in shallow, hugging ridgelines,” Gregor warned.

  “I’m detecting a missile launch!” another sonar man yelled.

  “Damn it!” Mikovsky glanced to the monitors feeding from exterior cameras. He could make out vague outlines of the pressure ridges surrounding the lake. The rest of the world was solid white. “Aerial countermeasures. Blow chaff!”

  There was no weaker position for a sub than surfaced. He’d rather be lying on the bottom of a deep ocean trench than where he was now. And that was where he was going…to hell with whoever had pinged them. He’d rather take his chances below.

  “Flood negative!” he shouted to Gregor. “Sound emergency dive!”

  “Flooding negative.” A klaxon blared down the length of the boat. The submarine rumbled as ballast tanks were swamped.

  “Continue blowing chaff until sail is awash!” Mikovsky swung to the crew at the fire control station. “I want to know who’s down here with us. Weapons Officer, I need a lock and solution as soon as we clear the ice.”

  Nods met his orders.

  Mikovsky’s attention flicked back to the video monitor. From the deck of his boat, a cloud of shredded foil belched into the air. The chaff was intended to distract the incoming missile from its true target. But the blizzard winds tore the foil away as soon as it exited from the sub, stripping the boat, leaving it exposed.

  As the dive tanks flooded, the Dr
akon dropped like a stone—but not before Mikovsky noted movement on the monitor.

  A spiral of snow…coming right at them.

  A Sidewinder missile.

  They would not escape.

  Then the sea swelled over the exterior cameras, taking away the sight.

  The explosion followed next, deafening. The Drakon jolted as if struck by a giant hammer. The sub rolled, carrying the video camera back to the surface. The streaming feed on the monitor showed the back half of the polynya. Its edge was cratered away, a blasted cove. The docking bollards sailed skyward. Fire spread over ice and water.

  The missile had missed! A near miss, but a miss nonetheless. A lucky blow of chaff must have pulled the weapon a few degrees off course.

  But from the force of the concussion through the water, the sinking Drakon had been shoved to the side and forced slightly back to the surface, exposing itself again. But not for long. The sub rocked stable and recommenced its stony plunge. The outside decks slipped under the sloshing water.

  Mikovsky thanked all the gods of sea and men and turned away.

  Then something caught his attention. On another video monitor. This camera, submerged a yard underwater, was aimed back toward the surface. The image was watery, but through the blue clarity of the polar sea, the image remained strangely vivid, limned by the flaming explosion of the Sidewinder.

  On the video monitor, a soldier, dressed in polar camouflage, climbed into view on the opposite ridge. He bore a length of black tube on one shoulder, aimed square at the camera.

  Rocket launcher.

  A spat of fire flamed from the far end of the weapon.

  Mikovsky screamed. “Ready for impact!”

  He didn’t even finish his shout when the Drakon shuddered from the rocket strike. This time it was no miss.

  Mikovsky’s ears popped as the rocket pierced somewhere aft, exploding a hole through the plating. An armor-piercing shell.

  They were flooding. Smoke billowed into the conn. The Drakon, already heavy with water in the ballast tanks, yawed as the seawater pounded into the stern, lifting the nose. His planesman fought his controls to hold them level. Gregor leaned over him, yelling.

  Mikovsky’s ears rang. He could not hear his words.

  The sub continued to tilt. A clanging hammered through the captain’s temporary deafness. Additional hatches were being closed, manually and electronically, as the flooding sections of the boat were further isolated.

  Mikovsky leaned against the thirty-degree tilt in the floor.

  From the video monitor, he watched the nose of the Drakon break the water’s surface, tilting high in the air like a breaching whale, while the stern, heavy with the flood, dragged downward.

  They were exposed again on the surface.

  Mikovsky searched quickly for the lone warrior who had fired the rocket—then spotted him. The parka-clad man ran along the ice ridge, diving down the far side, running full tilt.

  Why was he fleeing?

  The answer appeared out of the blowing snow a moment later. Two helicopters, both painted as white as the blizzard, a Sikorsky Seahawk and a Sikorsky H-92 helibus. From the bus, ropes tumbled out open doors as the craft slowed. Men immediately slid down the whipping lines, weapons on backs. The helibus then swung out in a wide arc, dropping soldiers behind it, aiming for the drift station.

  Mikovsky could guess the identity of the new arrivals. He had been briefed by the White Ghost.

  United States Delta Force.

  The other helicopter, the Seahawk, flew over the listing submarine, buzzing it like a fly over a dying bull’s nose. Mikovsky stared, sensing his doom. Under him, the Drakon sank into the sea, stern first. The best its captain could hope for was leniency for his crew, mercy from his captors.

  As he prepared the order to abandon ship, the Seahawk flew right over the exterior camera. Mikovsky squinted at the monitor. Something was strange about the undercarriage of the aircraft. It took a full breath for Mikovsky to recognize what he was seeing.

  Drums…a score of gray drums were attached to the Seahawk’s belly, like a clutch of steel eggs.

  He recognized them on sight. All sub commanders did.

  Depth charges.

  He watched the first drum drop free from the Seahawk’s undercarriage, tumbling end over end toward the foundering sub.

  Mikovsky had his answer to the fate of his crew.

  There would be no mercy.

  3:02 P.M.

  USS POLAR SENTINEL

  Perry stood in the Cyclops chamber, surrounded by the open Arctic Ocean. The Sentinel had retreated a safe distance away from the fighting, remaining silent in the waters. Even their motors were stilled as they floated.

  Upon the first missile strike on the surface, Perry had ordered the Sentinel to dive deep. The Drakon was clearly under attack from the surface. This was confirmed a moment later when his sonar chief had reported a successful rocket attack. Listening from a half mile away, they had heard the explosion and the resulting bubbling of a ruptured submarine.

  “It looks like the cavalry finally arrived,” Lieutenant Liang had said, grimly relieved, voicing everyone’s opinion.

  The XO was probably right. The attackers had to be the Delta Force team noted in Admiral Reynolds’s last message.

  Still, Perry had wanted confirmation before letting anyone know of their presence in these waters. The timing of this attack was too perfect. How had the Delta Force team crossed the blizzard to arrive so opportunely? And why hadn’t the two helicopters been heard before now? Had they been flying too high and were only picked up by the hydrophones as they made their bombing dive toward the surface?

  Perry didn’t like questions he couldn’t answer—and in a submarine, paranoia was a survival trait. It kept you alive in dangerous waters.

  As such, Perry stood in the forward chamber, watching the battle through the Sentinel’s window. He had wanted to see with his own eyes what was happening. He had tried to use the exterior cameras from the control bridge, but they didn’t have the zoom capability to cross the distance.

  So Perry had improvised. Standing now in the Cyclops chamber, he used a set of ordinary binoculars to watch the battle.

  Half a mile away, the Drakon was nose up in the waters, silhouetted in the storm light beaming through the open lake above. She listed at close to sixty degrees, almost vertical in the water.

  Perry watched, knowing that his counterpart on the other sub must be sounding the evacuation alarm. The battle was already over. The Russian crew had only one chance here: to abandon ship.

  Then through the binoculars, a bright flash ignited the waters, freezing the image upon Perry’s retina before temporarily blinding him. He blinked away the dazzle as the dull explosion roared to him. It sounded exactly like a rumble of thunder, followed by the rattling of deck plates from the distant concussion.

  Perry’s vision cleared. The Drakon was fully upright, surrounded in a whirlpool of bubbles. Chunks of ice, blown down from above, rattled back up out of the depths.

  The room intercom buzzed. “Captain, Conn. We’re reading a depth charge!”

  Perry hurried away, tapping the intercom as he passed. “Pull us out of here!” he called out, then ducked through the hatch and ran back toward the bridge.

  Another explosion shuddered through the boat, rocking the Sentinel.

  These icy waters were about to get too damn hot.

  3:03 P.M.

  OMEGA DRIFT STATION

  John Aratuk accepted death. He had seen entire villages, including his own, meet brutal and harsh ends. He had held his wife’s hand as she lay dying, trapped in the wreckage of his drunken accident. Death was a constant in his life. So as others around him shouted or cried, he sat quietly, his hands bound with plastic ties behind his back.

  Another explosion shook the barracks building, setting the hanging lamps to swinging. The ice under the buildings bowed and rattled from the forces of the nearby explosions, threatening to shatter the
entire area.

  Around John, the military men were struggling to get free of their bonds, using whatever sharp edge they could find to saw through the tough plastic.

  The Russians had bound them after Jenny and the seaman had escaped, keeping them under constant armed guard. Then a few moments ago, the Russians had fled. It was clear from their hurried departure and frantic grab for supplies that they were abandoning the base.

  But why? Had they discovered what they came to find? And what was to be their own fate? These questions had been bandied about, mostly among the civilian scientists. But John had seen the answer in Lieutenant Commander Sewell’s eyes. He had overheard the conversation about the V-class incendiary bombs planted throughout the drift station. There was no doubt what was going to happen, what the Russians intended.

  Then the blasts had started, rocking the ice, deafening even the storm.

  “Everyone stay calm!” Sewell yelled in a firm authoritative voice. His attempt at assuredness was weakened as he almost lost his footing with another rattle of ice. He caught himself on one of the bed frames. “Panic will not help us escape!”

  John continued to sit, unconcerned. Jenny had escaped. He had heard the Twin Otter buzz by overhead. John positioned his feet closer to the space heater.

  At least he’d die warm.

  3:04 P.M.

  OUTSIDE OMEGA DRIFT STATION

  Master Sergeant Kanter lay on the far side of a steep pressure ridge. The rocket launcher he had used to pierce the sub was propped beside him, but it was no longer needed. His ears ached from the concussion blows of the depth charges. Even though he was half shielded by the ridgeline, the explosions felt like punches to his solar plexus. Each one pounded at him.

  He watched drum after drum drop into the sea, sink the preset ten feet, and blow. Water ballooned up, then exploded skyward, casting a funnel of water and ice high into the air. The float ice under Kanter bucked with each blow.