Page 90 of Enemy Within

Ethan and Jack hung behind the navigator and the plotting table. Ethan kept one hand on the small of Jack’s back, and his eyes fixed to the sonar display. He held Jack for his own sanity. Planning this mission out, they’d always talked about what to do once they got up on the ice. When they were alreadyinthe Arctic. They’d never thought about how dangerous it would be to even get there. What if they slammed into an ice keel? Or got trapped in the twisting ice canyons and narrow passages with no way out?

What if anAkulafound them and blew them to bits when they were pinned? It would be a long, dark dive to the bottom of the Arctic Abyss, and when the sub hit crush depth, those waters would burst in, freezing them while they drowned, suffering twice over at once.

Ethan swallowed hard and scooted even closer, wrapping his hand around Jack’s hip. Somewhere, there was a beach with their name on. A real honeymoon destination. Not slinking through Arctic waters with seventy feet of hard ice pushing down on them.

The maze of ice canyons kept them deep. The sonar array mapped the bottom, sending a picture in waterfall lines of blues, yellows, and reds to the main display. Pictures emerged from the scratchy colored lines, sound bouncing back and painting what was in front of them like there were headlights in front of the sub. The colors signaled depth and range. Blue was good. Blue was open waters and clear range. Yellow was a warning. Red, and then shades of pink, was full-on pucker time.

Red filled the screen, the bottom of the ocean close enough to drag their hands through. Boulders rose in furious magenta, seeming to pass to their right and left as the helmsman breathed like he was giving birth. Just watching, Ethan wanted to yank back on the control yoke and get them away from the bottom. Good thing he wasn’t driving. He’d slam them into the ice roof. The planesman, in charge of keeping them trim and level, had balls of neutron steel, keeping theHonoluluflat and steady and right between the ocean floor and the ice as he stared at the screens. He didn’t blink.

Something rose in the sonar’s display, dead ahead. A craggy protrusion, jutting up from the sea floor, almost like a log broken in two, snapped over some giant’s thigh.

“Sonar, Conn. What is that ahead?” Anderson never took his eyes off the screen.

The sonarman, Petty Officer “Boomer” Michaels, responded, “Not clear yet, Captain.”

“Nav, anything on charts?”

“No, sir.”

“Helm, plane up to avoid.Gently,” Anderson growled. “We’ve gotfeetto maneuver here. Thickness of the ice overhead?”

“Ninety-two feet.”

The nav officer whistled. The corners of Anderson’s eyes clenched, a slight squint.

They planed over the jumble beneath them, slowly gliding through the frigid waters. As they passed directly overhead, the sonar image cleared up, and everything snapped into perfect focus.

“My God,” the executive officer breathed.

It was another submarine, broken in two at her midship. She’d sunk to the bottom of the ocean and rested like a child’s toy tossed aside, split in half and forgotten.

“Conn, Sonar. Looks like anAkula-class. Torpedoes brought her down. It’s… a new wreck, sir. No signs of settling or sea growth.”

All eyes flicked to Sergey and Sasha. A downed Russian sub, cracked in half, in their own waters.

“Our country has never sunk a Russian sub up here,” Anderson said softly.

Yethung unspoken in the air.

What were the Russians doing? They weren’t on the path that would have taken them to Moroshkin and his fleet, and they had been heading away from Madigan’s position. A sub on the run, making a break from Murmansk to the Strait? Why had they been shot down? Had they come to warn the Americans?

Anderson’s voice rang out. “One minute of silence. Mark.”

Sergey bowed his head, grief washing over his features. Sasha stayed by his side, a solid presence, and Ethan watched Sergey lean into him, like a sapling blown in the wind.

When the minute mark passed, Anderson nodded to Sergey. “To your men,” he said simply. The submarine service was something unique. Ethan had heard about it, the jokes and tales passed back and forth to kill time in all branches of the military. But submariners were a breed apart, men who lived beneath the ocean and bent nature to their will time and time again. Camaraderie in those men crossed national lines, enough to honor the Russian ghosts they sailed over.

Sergey nodded to Anderson. “Still on patrol,” he said softly, finishing the Russian toast.

“Conn, Sonar. Ice ridges ahead. The ice is plunging, but the bottom opens up, too. We’ve hit the slope.”

Anderson nodded, and Ethan felt the Conn exhale, collective relief from a dozen men shaking out of their skin.

“What’s the depth, Boomer?”

“Two hundred sixty feet and dropping, sir. Fifty thousand feet until we reach the Continental Shelf. First ice ridge closing in eighty feet.”

Anderson steered the boat beneath the first ice ridge, gently diving her to a new depth. Some of the raw tension had fled as the ocean floor dropped away. The men didn’t hold themselves like a thousand volts were passing through their bodies anymore. They’d started to blink, to look like humans again.