Ice Station Nautilus (13 page)

Severodvinsk
’s First Officer, Captain Third Rank Anton Novikoff, entered the Command Post, joining Buffanov at the navigation table.
Severodvinsk
was approaching the Marginal Ice Zone, and they had to slow and set the ice watches before proceeding.

Captain Lieutenant Dmitri Ronin, the Watch Officer, approached the two men, addressing the submarine’s Captain. “I intend to slow and set the Ice Detail,” he said.

Buffanov gave his concurrence and Ronin ordered the submarine to slow to ten knots. As
Severodvinsk
slowed, its streaming antenna floated toward the ocean’s surface and they regained sync with the message broadcast.

“Command Post, Communication. Have received a Commanding Officer Only message.”

Buffanov entered the Communications Post and stopped by the two printers. “Ready.”

The radioman hit the print button and a message emerged from the left printer.

Buffanov read the message, then reread it. He glanced at the radioman, who was processing the rest of the messages they had downloaded. Buffanov folded the paper and slid it inside the breast pocket of his coveralls.

“Senior Michman,” Buffanov called out. The radioman turned in his direction. “Have we received new waterspace assignments?”

The radioman scrolled through the messages on his display. “Yes, Captain.” He selected the message and hit the print button, and a second sheet of paper slid from the printer.

Buffanov took the message and returned to the Command Post, without revealing his emotions. No doubt, his First Officer and the watchstanders were wondering about the Commanding Officer Only message. The time would come when he would reveal
Severodvinsk
’s new mission. Meanwhile, they would loiter just outside the Marginal Ice Zone.

“Watch Officer, slow to ahead one-third. We will not be heading under the ice.” He turned to his First Officer and handed him the new waterspace assignment. “Have the Navigating Officer plot our new operating area.”

As his First Officer reviewed the message, Buffanov reflected on their new order. Until a few minutes ago, he had planned to put
Severodvinsk
’s new sonar systems to use, scouring the ocean for
Yury Dolgoruky
. Now, his submarine’s armament was being called into service.

26

USS
MICHIGAN

Lieutenant Mark DeCrispino swung the periscope around, then steadied up for another observation on the contact of interest.

“Iceberg off the port bow. Bearing, mark!”

As Captain Wilson watched from his chair on the Conn, DeCrispino pressed the red button on the periscope handle, sending the bearing to combat control. Petty Officer Chris Malocsay, manning one of the combat control consoles, determined the range by setting the iceberg’s speed to zero and analyzing its bearing rate.

“Range, five thousand yards. CPA range—three thousand, two hundred yards.”

Malocsay had calculated the iceberg’s Closest Point of Approach as it passed down the port side of the submarine. It would remain sufficiently far away; no course change was required.

USS
Michigan
was in the Marginal Ice Zone just north of St. Lawrence Island, headed toward the polar ice cap. Before slipping under the ice, Wilson had ordered his submarine to periscope depth for a final GPS fix for their inertial navigators.

The Quartermaster reported. “Both inertial navigators have accepted the GPS fix.”

A moment later, DeCrispino called out from the Conn, “Captain, radio download is complete and GPS fix obtained. I intend to go deep.”

“Very well,” Wilson replied. “Deploy the floating wire when you are steady on depth.”

Once
Michigan
slipped beneath the polar ice cap, she could not head to periscope depth to copy the broadcast. Instead, they would trail the floating wire antenna, monitoring message traffic over the VLF broadcast.

Lieutenant DeCrispino gave the necessary orders and
Michigan
tilted downward. Their journey beneath the ice would be treacherous, transiting over the shallow Chukchi Shelf in the Pacific and the Barents Shelf in the Atlantic. The ice keels were deep during the late winter months, leaving little room for safe transit.
Michigan
settled out at two hundred feet, and as Wilson prepared to head beneath the ice, he knew he wouldn’t get much sleep until they reached the deep-water basins of the Arctic Ocean.

27

ARCTIC OCEAN

Dawn was breaking across a white, barren landscape as a Cessna 182 sped north, skimming a few hundred feet above the ice. In the front passenger seat, Vance Verbeck leaned against the window, binoculars to his eyes, scanning the snow-covered ridges rippling across the otherwise flat landscape. The technical director of the Arctic Submarine Laboratory was looking for an ice floe strong enough to support an ice camp. The thickness of the surface ridges, where the edges of the ice floes buckled upward, was a good indicator. However, rescue from atop the ice might not even be possible, considering the weight of the rescue equipment.

Three hundred tons!

He nearly fell out of his chair when the commanding officer of the Undersea Rescue Command told him the weight of the fully assembled system, sitting inside a footprint smaller than a basketball court.
North Dakota
had better be stuck under some pretty thick ice. Luckily, based on his observations this morning, the ice was sufficiently thick this winter. After convincing himself the nearby floes were no thicker than the one he had selected, Verbeck directed the pilot to turn around and head back. The pilot banked the Cessna to the right, then steadied on a course returning to the GPS marker they had tossed onto the candidate ice floe.

A few minutes later, the ski-equipped Cessna glided to a halt atop the polar ice cap. Verbeck stepped from the aircraft, joined by Paul Leone, their most experienced ice pilot, hauling a duffle bag of equipment and an auger. They needed to determine the thickness of the ice and whether it was first-year ice or multiyear. First-year ice was prone to breaking apart.

Leone began drilling with the auger. The first indication was good; he had to attach several extensions to continue drilling. Finally, he broke through. By measuring the length of the auger drill, Leone determined the ice was six feet thick.

Based on the thickness, Verbeck was almost positive it was multiyear ice. But he had to be sure. The way to assess the age of sea ice was to measure its salinity. As seawater freezes, the salt water concentrates into brine, which stays liquid and gets trapped within the ice crystals. Over time, the heavy brine migrates down through the ice and eventually back into the ocean. As a result, the top of multiyear ice is nearly salt free and drinkable.

Leone scraped a chunk of ice from inside the hole and deposited it in a glass beaker, then placed it inside the warm Cessna. After the ice melted, he checked the salinity with a test strip, followed by a sip of the water. Both confirmed the water was salt free. After Leone informed him of the results, Verbeck pulled an iridium phone from his pocket, sending the GPS coordinates back to Svalbard Airport, where the rest of their gear was staged.

*   *   *

It wasn’t long before the next aircraft appeared, and the ski-equipped C-130 flown by the 109th Air Wing of the New York Air National Guard touched down nearby. The rear ramp of the C-130 lowered, and the first piece of equipment out was a bulldozer, used for building a landing strip suitable for aircraft without skis.

Next onto the ice were a half-dozen men from the Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, along with six men from the Arctic Submarine Lab, who unloaded stacks of the special triple-layer plywood used to build the ice camp huts; two layers of plywood sandwiched around an inner layer of Styrofoam insulation. The huts weren’t fancy—nothing more than six-sided plywood boxes.

The first building constructed would be the command hut, where the communication gear, both satellite and underwater, would be installed. One of the floor panels had a precut two-foot-diameter hole, which would provide access to the ice beneath the hut. A hole would then be cut in the ice for the Remote Acoustic Transmission System, the same type of underwater transmitter submarines used. Once the building was constructed, the electronic gear would be installed inside and antennas mounted on the top.

Other teams were assembling the remaining components of an ice camp, beginning with the berthing hooches. As more men and equipment arrived, the galley and generator tents would be set up, and of course, no ice camp would be complete without outhouses and pee boxes.

Leone approached Verbeck. “You still haven’t picked a name for the ice camp.”

Verbeck had been too busy, overseeing the hundreds of details involved with establishing an ice camp. “Any suggestions?”

“How about Nautilus?”

USS
Nautilus
was the first nuclear-powered submarine, and the first to transit from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean beneath the polar ice cap.

“I like it,” Verbeck said. “Ice Camp Nautilus it is.”

Verbeck checked on the bulldozer. It had finished the landing strip with no time to spare. To the southwest, a half-dozen aircraft were headed their way, small dark specks on the horizon.

They had a long day’s work ahead of them.

28

SEVEROMORSK, RUSSIA

It was just after sunrise on the northern shore of the Russian province of Murmansk, the sun climbing slowly into a clear blue sky. Standing on the afterdeck of
Mikhail Rudnitsky,
Julius Raila pulled his black wool watch cap down farther over his ears, the edges of his cap mating with his thick gray beard.
Rudnitsky
’s deck was a flurry of activity, and Raila brought his hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the bright winter sun as he watched his men unbolt the submarine rescue equipment from its foundations.

Rudnitsky,
mother ship to AS-34, a Priz class Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle, was tied to a wharf in the Northern Fleet port of Severomorsk. In addition to the DSRV,
Rudnitsky
was outfitted with the handling gear for the submersible, plus decompression chambers for the submarine crew once they were rescued. Thankfully, the equipment was far less integrated into the ship than the new Divex system aboard
Igor Belousov,
and could be disassembled and transported with relative ease.

Rudnitsky
’s crane swung AS-34 over the side and deposited it onto one of ten flatbed trucks waiting on the wharf. Personnel strapped the DSRV down for its trip to Murmansk Airport, where several Anatov 124s, the Russian equivalent of American C-5 cargo transports, were waiting. Raila ran his fingers through his beard. The disassembly was the easy part. Once the Russian ice camp was set up and his equipment arrived, he would begin the painstaking process of reassembling everything, not to mention carving a hole through the ice big enough for AS-34. Whether the heavy Anatov 124s could land on the ice was beyond his expertise. However, getting the equipment onto the ice was someone else’s problem. He had enough of his own.

29

GADZHIYEVO, RUSSIA

In the normally crowded Northern Fleet base of Gadzhiyevo, only a single submarine remained tied to the pier. The banner affixed to the ship’s brow identified the submarine as K-157
Vepr,
a third flight Shchuka-B nuclear attack submarine, dubbed Akula II by NATO. Inside the officers’ mess, Captain Second Rank Matvey Baczewski sat at the head of the table, flanked by twelve of his officers as they gathered for lunch.

It was unusually quiet during the meal, his officers sulking over their lack of orders. Every other attack and guided missile submarine had sortied to sea yesterday in search of
Dolgoruky
. But
Vepr
’s orders had been canceled without explanation. Northern Fleet had singled her out for some reason, deciding she, and she alone, was not worthy. It flew in the face of reason.
Vepr
was the most capable submarine in their squadron, consistently earning all departmental and ship awards.

Baczewski noticed the furtive glances from his officers, wondering if their Captain’s Polish heritage had anything to do with their canceled order. But Baczewski had done well in the Navy thus far; his ethnicity had not been an issue.

“Fleet Admiral, arriving.”

The announcement from topside over the submarine’s communication system caught Baczewski by surprise, and the Duty Officer almost choked as he swallowed a mouthful of tea. Lieutenant Chaban grabbed the napkin from his lap, wiping his face as he stood, almost knocking his chair over in the process. He looked toward his Captain, belatedly requesting to be excused from the table. Baczewski nodded and Chaban left the wardroom, hurrying topside to greet the Russian Navy’s highest-ranking Admiral.

The other officers at the table stared at their Captain, some with their soup spoons suspended in the air, awaiting direction.

“Eat,” Baczewski said.

His officers remained frozen. An unannounced visit by the Fleet Admiral after canceled orders did not bode well. “Eat,” Baczewski repeated, adding a warm smile this time. “Admiral Ivanov and I are old friends. He was my commanding officer on my first submarine.”

The officers followed their Captain’s order and resumed eating. Baczewski pushed back from the table, then headed forward.

*   *   *

Baczewski waited in the upper level of Compartment One as Fleet Admiral Ivanov climbed down from topside.

“Welcome aboard
Vepr,
Fleet Admiral,” he said as Ivanov stepped off the ladder.

Ivanov did not reply. Instead, his eyes swept the compartment, examining the weapons in their stows and the condition of Baczewski’s ship. Baczewski repressed a smile. In twenty years, Ivanov hadn’t changed; he had been a demanding commanding officer. Finally, Ivanov’s eyes met Baczewski’s. But there was no warm greeting.