18

THE working lights were on and Bloch and Isaacs were busy when Dan got back to the boat deck. The starter was grinding gravel. More First Division men were coming out of the hangar. They were olive-drab snowmen in a bulky assortment of rain gear, foul-weather jackets, hoods, caps, masks, and gloves. He noted Rocky, Speedy, Brute Boy, Ali X., Shorty. And Lassard, standing in the hangar lee with his hands in his pockets, smiling dreamily past it all at the sea. “Where’s Popeye?” Dan shouted over the baying of the wind. Nobody answered. Then he made out Rambaugh in the boat, bent over at the coxswain’s station.

“How many you want in her, sir?”

“I’m not sure, Chief. How many we usually take?”

“Is it a boarding party, a rescue party, what?”

“I don’t know. The skipper just told me—he just said to get our guys back here and get ready to put the boat in the water.”

“Well, we might not be able to. Not in seas like this. Hell, it’s hard to board a sub in good weather. And plus, this fucking diesel’s frozen or something. You people been starting it regular?”

“Every day, Chief man, you know we treat it right.”

“Ikey. Where’s Ikey? He’s good with—here, get up there, see what you can do with it.”

Dan looked at the sea. If he had to do this, he would. But he didn’t want to think about putting out into that madness in a twenty-six-foot Mark Two motor whaleboat. The waves looked higher than the boat was long. Dark as hell’s basement, too. Christ, he thought, what if we get lost? What if we get swamped, or capsize?

The engine puked blue smoke and began clattering. The black first-class, padded like a pugil-stick fighter with foul-weather gear, life jacket, watch cap, straightened proudly, wiping his hands on a rag. Lassard howled, dancing like an Indian, fingers extended in peace signs. “Cut it off, goddamn it!” Bloch shouted. “We’ll start it again when she lowers. Ikey, help Baw inventory her outfit.”

“Anchor.”

“Check.”

“Batteries, dry.”

“Check.”

“Bell ‘n’ bracket.”

“Gotcha, Ikey.”

“Thass Petty Officer Isaacs to you. Chain assembly.”

Dan studied the davits, the hoisting gear that would sway the boat up out of her chocks, swing her outboard, and lower her. Cranks and screws and lines and turnbuckles and gripes. He had no idea how they operated. He stood back, letting Bloch and Isaacs chivvy and push the hands into position on steadying lines and twofold tackles.

Finally, the chief called, “Okay, crew.” Connolly, Coffey, and Vogelpohl pushed up to the metal ladder that led up to the still-chocked boat. Dan looked at the round-faced department yeoman. “Pohl, what’re you doing out here?”

“I’m boat crew, Ensign.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Grapnel line … bailin’ pail … fenders … stern lines. Got it all, Chief.”

“Mr. Lenson, you boat officer?”

“Guess so, Chief.”

“Better board, sir. Bridge is sayin’ we’re starting our approach.”

“Have you got Mr. Norden on there?”

The phone talker nodded. Dan bawled, “Ask him how many men we want in the boat, and what we’re supposed to do.”

Out of nowhere, it began to rain. An icy, diagonal, freezing mix of rain and soft sleet that pelted down out of invisible clouds and soaked his foul-weather jacket in seconds. The men cursed and shoved around him, climbing up into the boat and settling on thwarts slick and sweet-smelling with glycol antifreeze. Loose ice slid around under the floorboards. The sleet stung his eyes and trickled down his back. He wondered what they were supposed to be doing. If this was a boarding party, it seemed like they ought to be armed.

As if thought called them into being, there were two gunner’s mates by the rail, handing over short shapes wrapped in tarp. The men started to unwrap them. “Put them under the thwarts,” he shouted, standing up. “Listen up! You, Heering—are these loaded?”

“Full magazines, empty chambers. Just work the operating rod to load the first round. This forty-five’s yours, sir. Got fire axes here for you, too. Watch ’em, they’re sharp.”

The pistol felt heavy and familiar. Plebe Summer, hot, dusty hours on the range at Greenbury Point. He checked it and stuffed it into his belt, under all the other gear.

“Mr. Lenson! Wanted on the circuit.”

He fought his way out of the boat and onto the ship again, stepping carefully across space to the boat deck. The headset was wet and cold on his ears. “Lenson. That you, Rich?”

“This is the captain. You ready to lower away back there?”

He thought of the storm, the dark. The pistol was blue ice, sucking the warmth of his privates. He took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”

“Radar holds what we think’s forty-one about a thousand yards ahead, on the surface. No lights, so she’s running darkened. If she’s running at all.”

“Yes, sir. What do you want us to—”

“I don’t know what you’ll hit over there. You’re going to have to use your judgment. If there’s nobody topside, or only a couple guys, board her and check out the sail and planes. Do it fast. Make sure there’s nothing of ours fouled on her. If you see the cable, chop it free and either tow it back or let it sink. Got that?”

“Uh, yes, sir, but what about the sub itself? Do you want me to, uh—to capture it?”

A grim chuckle came over the circuit. “With this guy to starboard looking on? That’s how wars start, Dan. No dramatics. Just get aboard, check it out, and get back here. Fast.

“From what Sonar’s telling me, they’re in trouble. They’re fighting major flooding. They’re probably not going to have a hell of a lot of attention to spare for you. If it goes down while you’re alongside, make sure all our guys get back aboard.”

“What about them, sir? What if they want off?”

“Good question, but you’ll have to play that by ear. If he’s sinking, and there’s room in the boat, you can pick some of them up. I don’t think I want them on the ship, though. Shuttle them over to the AGI. I’ll be covering you with the guns in case anything goes wrong. Got it?”

He repeated it back. The captain snapped, “Okay, go to it,” and left the line.

“What’s the word, sir?”

“It’s a boarding party, Chief.”

“Mind if I come? I don’t think we’ve done one of those since—what—since the war—”

“No. I need you on the falls. Somebody’s got to see we lower right, or we’ll all end up in the water.”

Dan waddled up the ladder and pushed his way back toward the boat’s helm. That answered one question, at least. He grabbed the monkey lines as Ryan rolled. Okay, he’d better make sure … “Coxswain! Who’s my coxswain?”

“Here, sir.” Rambaugh.

“We ready to lower, Popeye? Are the uh, are the plugs in?” The second-class nodded. “Engineer?”

A voice, a face he didn’t know. A snipe. Dan made sure he’d checked the fuel and oil.

“Bow hook?”

“Vogel’s bow hook, Ensign.”

“Vogelpohl, you big enough for that?”

“Been doing it for two years, sir.”

“Okay, just checking. We got a light? Chief, I need a couple more battle lanterns.… Hey! You!” he shouted. “Yeah, I’m talking to you! Put that under the seat, sailor!

“Now the rest of you listen up; here’s the word on what we gotta do.”

When he was done, nobody seemed to have any questions. They stood and sat and shivered, muttering with the blaspheming patience of sailors in the rain and spray, clinging grimly to the knotted hand lines.

“Boat to the rail,” bawled the phone talker.

Dan couldn’t follow everything that happened in the next minutes. Bloch shouted commands. The sleet fell harder than ever, driving down out of the night. The whips and steadying lines came taut.

The boat trembled under him, then lifted, swaying, from the cradle. The chief bawled, “Release guys! Release gripes! Hoist away!” Dan grabbed for the gunwale, then remembered and shifted his clutch to the knotted hemp of the monkey line.

“Hold fast,” he shouted. The bent down-curving davits, like the hooks of two upright canes, pivoted outboard and aft. The boat swung aft, then out, then forward, weaving its way around them.

Then they were hanging out over the sea, the blocks and lines creaking taut above them, the ship’s side a sea-stained wall in the rain-haloed work lights. The crew stood upright, swaying from the line. If the falls broke, dropping the boat, the men with good grips would be left dangling like a line of cured hams, to be swung back inboard. The others would plunge straight down. On the ship, Jones and Isaacs flipped fenders over opposite them. The steadying lines came taut fore and aft, and the men on them set their heels as Ryan rolled. Bloch was shouting something about a safety runner.

Lenson leaned over the gunwales and looked down at a sea like used motor oil. It rose dizzyingly swift, fell away, then surged back, its surface black and dull and somehow viscid, gruel-like, under the speckling impact of the rain, as if it were kept from solidity only by unending motion. And out beyond it, a swell and another swell and after that utter dark and dark and a thousand miles of dark till the coast of Norway.

Looking forward, he saw faces staring down from the bridge wing. Any minute, he thought. Away the motor whaleboat, away. Ten or eleven things had to happen at once when the keel slammed down. Cast off aft, cast off forward, trip the slings clear of the prop; take a strain on the sea painter; start the engine, put it in gear, meanwhile keeping clear of the side with the rudder, but not too far out, or the painter would haul the bow around and they’d crash into the gray wall of hull. And all the time soaring up and dropping, one moment opposite the helo deck, the next eye-to-eye with the copper red of bottom paint. They’d have to sheer away gradually, and watch every wave. Any of them could dump him and all these men out into the lightless, freezing sea.

Thinking this, he struggled to his feet, bracing himself on the shoulders of those beside him. Hands reached up, steadying him. He barely felt them. He was counting heads: twelve, including himself. “When we going, sir?” somebody called. He didn’t answer, counting them all again: twelve. Okay, he was as ready as he’d ever be. He shaded his eyes against a lashing of spray and looked to the bridge again.

But minute after minute went by, and still they swayed there, halfway between sea and sky, between ship and sea.

“Somebody closing, off to port,” said Rambaugh, touching his shoulder. He pointed between Ryan’s stacks. “See him, sir?”

He screened his eyes again to see two small lights close together off to port. He watched incuriously for a few seconds. The lights grew brighter, farther apart, and sharper, but stayed in the same relative position between the stacks. The pistol was digging into his gut. Having the muzzle pointing at his balls made him nervous. He mined around under his jacket, trying to shift it, then glanced up again.

Then he was struggling back to his feet, shouting at the talker. Ryan loomed above the alien lights. In the rainy mist their halos lighted sea-swept decks, a shadowy array of masts and aerials, the hammer and sickle and star, painted on her stack.

Ryan’s horn burst into a nasal drone. One, two, three, four, five short, rapid blasts.

The Soviet trawler swayed, and the distance between her lights shortened. All at once, he understood. Ryan, longer and heavier, was shouldering the smaller ship away, forcing her to sheer off to port.

His attention was jerked away by the talker’s frantic gestures. He cupped his hand to his ear. “… up forward,” was all he caught.

Dan leaned across empty space and shouted, “Chief, what’s he trying to tell me?”

Bloch grabbed the earphones. His bull-like bawl cut the rattle of rain and the blast of wind. “Everybody out of the boat, to the fo’c’sle, on the double! Going to board over the lifesaving nets.”

“Shit fire,” Dan muttered. “Goddamn it.… On your feet! Everybody out of the boat, to the fo’c’sle, on the double!”

The men slipped and stumbled, chilled through by sleet and wind. Heat loss tripled when you were wet. One seaman tripped on the rub rail, would have taken the long dive if Rambaugh hadn’t caught his collar.

He tossed one backward glance. Abandoned, empty, the boat swung like a huge slow pendulum at the end of its whips, and the dangling monkey lines capered dripping in the wind.

Forward, forward. He ran in staggering, shambling exhaustion. Men caromed off him in fatigued slow motion, like padded ninepins. They fell and fought down the port-side ladder, then splashed clumsily forward through sliding pools on the main deck. Saltwater jetted out of Coffey’s boots, ahead of him, with each of the seaman’s steps.

Pettus was on the forecastle when they got there, sawing frantically at the lashings of the life nets, broad mats of woven rope rigged along the sides. As Dan reached him, the starboard one fell away, unrolling down into the foaming sea like a venetian blind. He leaned out over the lifeline, blinking against the salt sting. His face felt like a cast in acrylic resin.

To port the lights of the AGI heaved up and down, reeled right and left. She was making heavy weather. He ignored her, running his eyes above his guess at horizon. Was there something there? Something blacker than blackness, out ahead? Or was it only his tired, obedient sight telling him what he expected to see? “Got anything, sir?” Rambaugh shouted, at his shoulder. “Not yet,” he shouted back. “Should be just ahead, though, a few hundred yards now—”

“Flare!”

He snapped his eyes front. A green comet climbed for the black bellies of the clouds, a shooting star that slowed and faded even as he watched. Then spray wiped it out.

A sea smashed into the stern, and Ryan reeled so violently he staggered into the lifeline. The breaker cascaded the length of the forecastle, spraying the men like a crowd of protesters being fire-hosed. They bent their heads under it, clinging to the lifelines with one hand, the other clutching their axes.

Another flare soared, and all at once he made out the submarine. It was blacker than he’d expected—a hole in the night sea. Then the squall parted, the sleet and rain swept on, and suddenly it was close, a great low shadow length. So dark, he couldn’t tell whether it was bow-on, or stern to Ryan. He suddenly missed the battle lanterns. He cursed himself; he’d left them in the boat.

Suddenly the sun rose. No, three of them, behind and above him. Dazzled, he threw his arm up. Over their heads, Reynolds Ryan’s searchlights burned like white-hot swords thrust through a black curtain. Rain and spray blew through them, making them solid, like hot shafts of just-cast glass. He blinked away wind tears and squinted.

The submarine was enormous, much longer than Ryan. The seas broke over her like a black iceberg. Her conning tower—it was called a “sail” now—was lower and longer than that of U.S. subs. Behind it was a squat squared-off fairing, part of the deck, but raised ten or twelve feet above the pressure hull. It sloped downward as it ran aft, till it merged with the tapered spindle of the tail. Along its upper surface were the outlines of huge hatches. A double raised line ran along it. It looked like a railroad track.

The submarine canted far over to starboard, then whiplashed back. It was rolling violently, beam to the seas. Ryan wasn’t rolling, but she was pitching hard. Each time she drove downward, she smashed the sea to cream under her forefoot. Not only were the two ships out of synchronization; they responded differently to the sea. The great swells swept over the submarine like a tide-scoured rock, but they lifted and tossed Ryan like a rubber duck in a child’s tub.

He stared down the dangling breadth of the net, its bottom buoyed up by yellow kapok floats that bobbed in the churn. His mouth was metallic dry. They weren’t going to make it down that. They’d be shaken like ants off a picnic blanket, dropped into the boiling sea, and crushed to pulp between the hammer of Ryan’s fore keel and the black anvil of the pressure hull.

“On the fo’c’sle,” an immense voice spoke through the blinding dark. He squinted up at the wing, a reluctant actor on a brightly lighted stage, and lifted his arm.

“On the fo’c’sle … Mr. Lenson. Down the nets, to port, make your preparations to board.”

*   *   *

AT Annapolis, he remembered, the drill they sweated most was pier approaches in the YPs, hundred-foot diesel craft, like miniature destroyers. No one could teach you how to maneuver a ship. You had to discover it yourself. Had to anticipate the inertia of hundreds of tons of steel, the freakish and conflicting thrusts of wind, tide, current, rudder, engines, even the direction the screw turned. You couldn’t do close-quarters maneuvering by rote. You had to integrate it all faster than any computer could do vector analysis, then apply power and direction to bring the ship alongside and stop, dead in the water, ten feet off the pier.

It was tricky and unforgiving, and the seawall’s creosoted timbers and the reinforced bows of the YPs were dented and gouged. But you had to learn it. Because pretty soon, you’d be doing it at sea with ships ten or fifty times bigger, and far less maneuverable.

Now he watched openmouthed as Ryan came right slowly, smashed her way through a sea, came right again. Till she was beam-on, and fighting her way yard by yard closer to the reeling submarine.

It was an incredible demonstration of sheer shiphandling seamanship. As each swell approached, the bow swung right with just enough momentum to meet it, take the blow, and reel back still lined up for the approach. He’s coming in upwind, Dan thought. The wind’ll blow us down, pin us against the sub. But could Packer fight the old destroyer free again once she was alongside? What if one of the Soviet’s planes or screw blades tore through her paper-thin, rusty sides?

“Stand by to port.”

“Stand by,” he screamed. He bent over the rail, looking down again.

The kapok floats, fat little yellow pillows at the foot of the net, streamed the mesh out ten or twenty feet from the destroyer’s sheer, like a drapery hanging from a balcony. If Packer could lay her alongside gently enough, close enough, it might cover most of the distance between the ship and the sub.

Unfortunately, Ryan was picking up the period of the swell now. The incandescent rods of the searchlights swayed down, then up again, losing their quarry as they probed up into the squall.

Then they dropped again, and glided over the steel reef. He squinted. Something different, wrong about the hatches. But the lights moved aft, converging on the vertical stern plane, the rudder, that stuck up above the seas like a raked black tombstone. Then Ryan pendulumed to starboard and they swayed up again, canting crazily across the sky.

“Son of a bitch.”

“Popeye, you ever done this before?”

“Never, sir. Don’t want to do it now, either.”

“Think the net’ll reach?”

“It ain’t that’s what’s bothering me, sir. It’s going alongside that bitch. The captain screws up and we’ll land on top of her. Bust our back. Snap the keel. Sink us all.”

“Well, it looks like he’s—”

“Mr. Lenson! What you want us to do?”

He turned and screamed downwind, “I want three guys with me, three guys with axes. Bring that grapnel, somebody. When we get there, claw it along the side, check there’s nothing trailing underwater. If there is, fish it up and cut it. Understand?”

A light came on on the submarine, high on the sail, and swept around the sea like a two-handed sword. It steadied for a moment on the white blur to port that was AGI, then rotated round toward Ryan.

When it hit them, he shielded his eyes and peered down. The beam lighted the narrowing blackness between them. Solid steel, he thought, on both sides, and between them a little rope and a little flesh and bone. He didn’t want to be the filling in this sandwich. His left hand fumbled across his life vest, checking that the straps were tight. His right reached under it to check the pistol. It was sliding down, and he hauled it up and wedged it in tighter under his belt, the spur hammer digging into his navel.

Under his breath he muttered, hardly aware of it, “Bring her in, Captain, goddamn it!”

Ryan eased forward slowly, incredibly slowly. A sea burst over her starboard side, throwing spray high into the night. Her bow swung left, lifted by the impact of hundreds of tons of water. For a moment it looked as if she’d ride the submarine down. Then she came slowly, slowly, back to starboard.

She crept the last few yards and came to a crazily rolling, pitching halt, thirty yards upwind of the hulk and perfectly aligned fore and aft. The narrow strip of black water between them foamed. Then it began to narrow.

Ryan nosed forward a little more. She rose and fell, rolled and pitched madly; then for a moment lay almost still, like an exhausted whale tired of fighting rope and iron. A dragging clang came from aft.

“On the fo’c’sle: Away the boarding party, to port, away.”

Then despite himself he was cheering hoarsely, heard the men around him yelling too. He threw his leg over the lifeline, rolled over, and was starting down when he saw he wasn’t the first. A round little figure was plucking its way down the net ahead of him.

The ship rolled, and his hands cramped on rough wet hemp as his boots brushed the sea. Then he was jerked upward, flying through the air. A kapok float danced about his legs like a puppy.

The net slammed down again. Above him the others clung grimly, heads bent. With sudden horror, he realized none of them had rifles. They’d forgotten them in the rush forward. He’d forgotten, too. Should he order them back … no, too late, they were committed.

Almost there. He wound one arm into the ropework, and twisted around to look.

A pudgy figure poised itself, stepped out, and disappeared from his line of sight between the ship and the submarine.

“Vogel!” he yelled, letting himself down another foot or two, shielding his eyes against the insane glare of the searchlights.

The sub rolled away. Across from him, on rounded wave-washed steel, the departmental yeoman was running aft. He wasn’t on the deck flat, but the curved pressure hull. The submarine rolled back, and he dropped to his knees, holding to some intake or protrusion Dan couldn’t see. Then he was up again. He gained the stern and disappeared around the missile fairing.

It was too far now to leap after him. Ryan’s stern was being blown down against the submarine, but her bow was pivoting away. He was getting ready to try anyway when Vogelpohl reappeared, above them now, swinging the grapnel. He tucked it under his arm for a moment, coiling the line, then hurled the bitter end across the black gap of sea toward Dan.

It uncoiled in the air and lashed across his chest, wet and heavy. He snatched at it and almost lost. Then he had it. He whipped it through the net and bent it on with two half hitches, using his free hand and his teeth. When he looked up again, Vogelpohl was doubled, hauling it taut, then stooping to make it fast to some cleat or grating on the deck.

“Follow me,” Dan screamed up at the other terrified faces. He waited for the roll, then made a clumsy half leap, half-pulling himself along the line.

His boots hit not painted steel but some sort of rubber coating. It gave for an inch or two, then went solid. He leaned into it, hauling himself hand over hand up the line.

Halfway across, the pistol slipped out of his belt and burrowed down his pants leg. There was nothing he could do about it. It made a thud like a handball as it hit the rubber, bounced, and disappeared into the sea.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

Then he was up, hauling himself the last couple of feet up onto the missile deck, and Vogelpohl was leaning down with his hand out. Lenson staggered upright, stumbling as his reflexes misjudged the roll.

He stood on a reeling rectangle twenty feet wide and seventy long. At the forward end towered the sail. Two horizontal diving planes stretched out from it, the tips nearly touching the sea at the extremity of each roll. Aft of it, reaching toward him, two deep grooves ran along the top of the missile bay, then sloped behind him, disappearing into a welter of white water around the tail fin.

That was all—except for Ryan looming over them, flinging herself from side to side so desperately the sea surged out in great white billows over the even more desperately rolling sub.

Greenwald came off the net and scrambled toward him. Then Coffey. They both had axes, the handles stuffed down the backs of their jackets. He waited till Rambaugh got across, too, then waved them forward and aft.

Okay, first order of business … he ran ten steps forward, then came to a hopping, cursing halt as his toe caught the edge of one of the hatches. “What the fuck?” he muttered, bending down.

It was opening, very slowly. He could hear gears grinding beneath him in the fairing.

He bent closer, wishing for a hand light. But in the flicker glare, black then brilliant, of the searchlights, he could still make out the foot-thick tapered steel plug of a missile hatch. It was hinged on the outboard edge. He could hear gears grinding somewhere, driving it slowly up. He couldn’t see what was beneath it. But he could guess. A waterproof, frangible diaphragm, to keep out any stray leaks submerged.

Then the blunt ablative snout of a submarine-launched ballistic missile.

“Nothin’ hung up aft, far as I can see. What you got there, sir?”

Greenwald. He looked up, and their eyes met. Then Dan’s shifted to what the seaman carried over his shoulder.

When the ax head was down as far as he could reach in the gap of the massive hinge, he straightened. They watched as the hatch edge drove gradually back into it.

The inch-thick hardened steel ax head buckled slowly, like warm chocolate. The oak haft splintered with a crack like a pistol shot.

He spun to face the ship. Across fifty yards of black water, he stared into the triple suns of the searchlights. When he shaded his eyes, though, he could see them. The after five-inches.

Pointed right at him.

Destroy B41 immediately if sonar indicates imminent missile launch.

“What’s next, man?”

“They’re trying to launch these things, Rocky.”

“Yeah? We better—”

Rambaugh jogged up. He squinted at the hatch, then at Dan. “What you want us to do, sir?”

They were all looking at him: Coffey and Greenwald, Vogelpohl and Rambaugh.

There was only one thing left, and it was probably useless. Whoever was up there would probably just shoot them. But do nothing, and they’d all die for sure.

They had to try to take the submarine.

He shouted “Follow me,” and began running toward the sail. Boots thudded behind him, but he didn’t look back to see how many.

Coming around the sail, he ran full tilt into a man in black foul-weather gear coming down ladder rungs welded on the outboard side. “Kto eto?” he said. For a second, they gaped at each other.

Then he was swinging a clumsy fist, missing Dan by a good six inches. Dan grabbed the Russian’s jacket as he followed through, spun with him as his balance vanished, then let go, releasing him overboard as a sea roared over the rounded bow. It forced him and Rambaugh, behind him, to grab the ladder rungs and each other, clinging against the freezing seconds-long body slam of the Arctic sea.

When it dropped away, the man he’d shoved overboard was no longer there, but another was climbing down in his place. Dan punched him in the head before he could step away from the ladder. The crewman waggled his chin and dropped into a crouch, grabbing a handhold on the sail as they rolled violently. Dan tried to punch him in the face. This time the man parried the blow like a kitten batting away a dust ball. He was big as Isaacs, big as any man aboard Ryan. Dan fell back along the narrow deck, wishing more than he’d ever wished for anything before that he’d been more careful with the .45.

He couldn’t just keep retreating. He had to get up that ladder, into the sail, interrupt the launch somehow. It didn’t matter what happened to him then. He had to.

But more men were sliding down now behind the big one, jumping from above onto the diving plane, then sliding down the ladder to the rolling, heaving deck. On the narrow, wave-drenched catwalk between the sail and the sea, there was room for only one at a time.

The hulk growled. He let go of the cleat and came at Lenson, and Rambaugh shouted, “Behind you, sir! The ax!”

Dan grabbed it and lunged into a roundhouse swing. The Soviet leaped back and the blade slammed into the sail, snapping off the haft. Dan gaped at it as someone shouted angrily above them, harsh peremptory barks of command.

The giant growled again and rushed him, and without thinking at all, Dan checked him Naval Academy lacrosse-style in the gut with the splintered end of the ax handle. He fell, but tore the haft from Lenson’s hands as he went down. The others charged over him, shouting, and Dan turned and ran.

When he got back to the fairing, it was packed with Russians. Apparently there was a hatch astern, over the engine room. He was quickly surrounded. Fists and clubs hit him in the back and sides. His life jacket soaked up the first blows, but then he caught a seaboot in the crotch.

The flare of agony blotted out the night. He fell into the water that swirled around the staggering, battling men. He lay there unable to breathe, gagging, waiting for the kicks that would finish him.

They didn’t come. He forced his eyes open at last, to see that his assailants, and the fight, had moved aft.

The rolling deck was covered with reeling, punching, splashing sailors, a despairing, drunken barroom brawl swept by thigh-deep seas. Greenwald ducked under a pale-faced Russian’s swing, then literally waded into him, long arms flailing. Coffey had a half nelson on the one Dan had dropped, but who’d come back, apparently, for more; the seaman’s arm pistoned as he rabbit-punched him. Vogelpohl was keeping two staggering crewmen at bay with the grapnel. Still the Ryan sailors were outnumbered. The Soviets were closing in on them, forcing them back toward the stern.

He jerked his attention back to the sail—to two men up there watching the melee. They had rifles. What were they doing? They could sweep this whole deck with fire.

Christ, he thought, I’ve got to do something. He sucked air into the vacuum in his belly and pried himself to his knees. He balanced there, gasping, in a weaving, uncertain stance.

Suddenly something small, and round, and dark arched upward from Ryan’s decks. It arched and then dropped, falling directly for him. He froze. It seemed to slow, and he watched it fall, and his breath stopped in his throat.

He struggled to his feet, caught it, and spun. It splashed into the sea off the port side before he realized it wasn’t what he thought it was.

More of them fell out of the searchlight glare, a volley of them. This time they were aimed at the Russians. The sub’s crew fell back, shouting warnings to each other as the spheres hit, bounced across the deck, and rolled into the raging water. Some of them doubled abruptly, vomiting into the seas that rolled back and forth over the deck.

A ragged cheer came from aft.

When he turned, a second wave was leaping off the nets. Gunner’s mates, quartermasters, messmen from Ryan, hastily dressed out in peacoats and foul-weather jackets, carrying baseball bats, chipping hammers, ball-peen hammers, dogging wrenches. They carried more of the round things, too. There was the windup; the peg—and another volley of Idaho potatoes mowed into the Soviet sailors, low and vicious this time, hardball pitches. He heard them thud home on chests and heads.

The line of seasick Russians wavered, bowed, then fell back under the onrush of shouting destroyermen.

Dan turned and sprinted forward, toward a suddenly empty section of deck below the great wings of the diving planes. Spray blew across the deck, isolating him briefly. When he came out of it, he was at the sail, and there, stretching upward, were welded steel rungs.

He grabbed them, not stopping to think, and began climbing as fast as he could.

It took longer than he expected. He was still weak from the groin shot. He was wheezing when he saw the turn of the sail outlined above him by a smear of light on wet metal. Someone was shouting on the far side.

For a moment he wondered: Is this smart? Then he remembered that there were no other options. He crouched for a second, listening, then poked his head over the coaming.

Black silhouettes. The vertical shafts of periscopes to his right. Confused shapes.

Then his eye made sense of them.

The men ranged by the periscope stands had guns, but they weren’t firing. Someone between him and them was shouting at them. Instead of obeying, though, they were just looking down, their backs to him. One had slung his rifle and was clinging to the shears, gagging.

Dan grabbed the last rung and hauled himself with a convulsive shudder up and over the top of the sail.

Into a sort of wet steel cockpit, with folded-down windshields, and instruments, and loudspeakers bolted to the bulkheads. Gratings rattled faintly under his boots. And there was light, a round yellow circle of it just in front of him—leading down.

At that moment, one of Ryan’s searchlights licked up, right into his eyes. He flung his hand up, blinded. Then it flicked away, and he made out the man opposite him.

At the far side of the cockpit, a Soviet officer in a blue peaked cap leaned against the coaming. He was shouting at the men on the shears. His face was livid, enraged, his voice was cracking, but they didn’t stir.

Then he bent to the open hatch, and the light from below glinted from the gold braid, from the red star.

He looked to be Packer’s age. Under dark wet hair his rounded face was deathly white, with great bruises of fatigue. His mouth was a knife cut angled down, working angrily, screaming into the trunk. But again there was no response Dan could see.

The officer straightened, and looked out at Ryan again. His back was still to Dan. His profile moved against the glare of the searchlights, turning from the American destroyer to the smaller outline of the Soviet AGI, which was moving in now, Dan saw, to make up on the sub’s leeward side.

The captain wheeled suddenly, and their gazes locked across the cockpit. The exhausted, swollen eyes widened, but only for an instant. Then he didn’t look surprised anymore. He just looked … tired.

His right hand came up. Dan saw that it held a pistol.

“No!” Lenson shouted, and lunged forward. He was almost there when his boot hit ice, a slick patch on the grating, and his feet flew out from under him.

He hit with stunning force at the same moment that he heard the flat pop of a shot, faint even this close, and whipped away instantly by the freezing wind.

*   *   *

HE woke into blackness and the sounds of a ship in a heavy seaway. He was flat on his back in the dark. His fingers crept across his chest like exploring roaches. They slid along rope. Was he a prisoner? Then they found the familiar switch of his own bunk light.

He fumbled the blanket back over him, checked the line that crossed his legs and chest, lashing him in against the rolls. Then he lay back, listening to the accustomed complaint of old steel, the rush of the sea, the steady keening howl of wind. Was it his imagination, or was it increasing again?

Then he remembered, all at once. His fingers found his head, and explored the back of it tentatively. It felt like wet cardboard.

Gradually he became aware of fatigue and chills that made his legs tremble. His clothes were damp, but he wasn’t up to taking them off. He stared at the photograph, his eyes burning. Susan, Betts, I love you.… He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. Four days, five? Bridge watch, CIC, endless motion, reek of barf, acid gut from endless cups of reboiled Navy coffee. When he retched now, that was all that came up. If he lived through this, he’d never drink coffee again. Under his sodden, dirty clothes his legs and arms ached with bruises.

What had happened, what had happened to his men?…

He was seized with a sudden uncontrollable rage at whoever had sent them here with such insane orders. Sent an obsolete ship, ready for the scrap heap, out chasing storms in the Arctic winter! In some plush, heated office, some gold-braided bureaucrat had shrugged and lifted a cheek to fart and staked them out like a rabbit in a dog pound. Then when it came time to stop a nuke, expected them to play goalie.… Lassard was right. They were idiots to acquiesce in this. Fools to carry out such orders. He lay under the humming light and trembled with fatigue and anger.

And they would stay out here.…

For how long? Till the last boiler gave out, or the rudder jammed, and Ryan toppled past the razor limit of stability? Till the submarines en route, hearing the tearing steel of a breaking ship, surfaced to search the roaring waste for corpses still clinging to life jackets with frozen arms?

Thinking of that, he swung his arm up. The hands stood vertical. 2400.

Midnight: the estimated time of arrival of the U.S. and British attack boats. And by inference, the Soviet subs would not be far behind.

He lay whispering mad curses till his rage failed and faded into darkness as the ship rumbled and groaned around him. His last thought was, Would they be at war when he awoke?

And his last clear image was of Packer, his gray face set relentlessly forward against the oncoming sea.

He knew then that if they were, Ryan would fire, and receive, the first deadly exchange.