Chapter 33
Arctic
Crash Site
For fifty minutes after picking up the sound of gunshots, the acoustic realm around the Aurora reverted to what it had been.
The gunshots, however, had been an outlier. They simply didn’t compute. And now, having closed in on the area from which they’d come, the Aurora’s sensors were picking up more.
“I have unidentified returns on the same 340 bearing,” the sonar operator said. “Very irregular, random frequencies. If I were to guess, people moving equipment around.”
“Can you tell if this is coming from above or below the ice?”
A pause, then, “No way to tell, Captain.”
Arkady Khurtin’s blue eyes drilled into his chart.
He had Aurora on the move, crawling in a pattern as her upward-looking cameras charted the light above. Her helmsman corrected for drift, keeping a precise grid, and her ballast tank pumps worked to maintain a constant depth of 50 meters. Aside from that, she listened.
Everything had made perfect sense… until the damned gunshots. And that was what the sonar had picked up, as verified by acoustic analysis. Now someone was clattering around in the same general area, and he strongly suspected this was coming from the surface as well.
“What do you make of it?” he asked Grekov. “The shots came from a northerly bearing, nowhere near the icebreaker.”
The younger man tilted his head in conjecture.
“I can only think of one explanation. The Chinese initially locked on to the main wreckage field where the ELTs are chirping. But then they saw the big hole in the ice, perhaps like we did by downloaded satellite images. They might have sent a party to investigate.”
Khurtin hesitated. “Walk across the ice? Fifteen miles in such weather? The ice pack must be a maze of fractures and ridges.”
“It would be dangerous, yes. But not impossible.”
“What about the gunfire?”
“Perhaps they encountered a polar bear.”
It sounded preposterous to Khurtin. Less so, however, because it was the only explanation he himself had been able to come up with. Polar bears were the dominant predators in this region.
Save for one.
“Sir,” said the navigator, “we have completed the scanning operation.” He directed their attention to a screen where the thickness of the ice above was displayed.
It meshed perfectly with the satellite map they’d downloaded.
A circular breach, roughly 100 meters in diameter, lay just to the north of their present position.
If the measurements were accurate, the thickness was a mere 10 centimeters.
“It correlates with the SATRAD data,” Grekov said, referring to the satellite report.
This breach was, by their present knowledge, the only place within thirty miles where the ice was thin enough to punch through. The captain saw but two options. They could surface here and find out what the hell was going on topside… or they could remain hidden.
If they surfaced, he gave even odds on Snow Dragon 2’s radar discerning their presence.
And if the Chinese had indeed sent a search party to the area?
Then the Aurora would be seen without question.
Yet even then, Khurtin suspected the icebreaker’s captain would simply go about his business.
His mission was not to chase submarines.
Conversely, there was only one other vessel known to be in the area, the USS Cheyenne. And her captain was tasked to do precisely that. If Khurtin ran quiet and deep, he could surely remain hidden, and perhaps track the Americans again if they reappeared.
The tactical intricacies were unlike any he’d ever faced.
The Aurora was not technically an operational boat, and surfacing would expose the new Laika-class design in unknowable ways.
Khurtin had the rebel tendencies of all good sub commanders, but he also knew how to cover his ass.
If he surfaced now and his boat was seen, he had a simple excuse.
He could say he had done so in order to establish communications with headquarters.
A request for guidance in a complex situation.
He looked at Grekov and saw similar thoughts running through his head.
“If we surface,” the exec said, “the icebreaker might see us on radar.”
“Possibly. It depends how her system is configured. Our reflection could be filtered out as just another hill of ice. More worrying to me is that they might have sent a team to scout the area.”
Khurtin’s thoughts churned, but in the end he succumbed to the most basic of human instincts: curiosity. Surfacing was the only way to find out what was going on topside.
“I say we do it,” Grekov said without being asked.
It was all the captain needed to hear.
He gave the order to prepare for breaching, which was echoed around the control room.
He then addressed his exec. “If the Chinese have sent out a search party, then we should do the same. Assemble a detail to go ashore. Six men from the security roster.” Owing to cramped quarters, submarines were not manned with a dedicated security force of naval infantry like larger ships.
Instead, fire control technicians, cooks, and mechanics underwent additional training and took over that role.
“Yes, Captain,” Grekov said.
“And make sure they are armed.”
The exec looked at him questioningly.
“It’s probably nothing. But until we understand the reason for the gunfire, it seems a wise precaution.”
“Of course.”
Khurtin turned his attention to the control room to monitor the preparations for their ascent. As he did, he felt an extraordinary sensation.
The captain was already doubting the decision he’d just made.