Panic Switch полностью

“I’ll meet you in the command post,” Kovalov said, putting away his cigarettes and stomping on his lit cigarette. He tried to stand straighter as Admiral Zhigunov’s staff truck approached, its fender’s blue flags with three gold stars flapping in the wind.

Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev adjusted his officer’s cap, which had been knocked crooked by a sudden breeze. He raised his binoculars to his eyes and glanced down the channel northwest to the unoccupied twin islands at the entrance to Reika Zapadnaya Litsa, the fjord that eventually opened into the Barents Sea. The fjord was glassy calm, but if the wind picked up, it wouldn’t stay that way long. He looked at the noontime sun, the rays of it making the skin of his face warm, and he took a deep breath, knowing that soon canned air would be the only thing he’d be inhaling, that and his cigarettes. He reminded himself he’d have to kick that habit before they returned home, since Natalia hated the smell of smoke.

“Are we waiting for anything, Deck Officer?” he asked Captain Lieutenant Sobol, the deck officer for the mobilization to sea.

Sobol stood at rigid attention. “Belgorod is ready to cast off and leave port, Captain,” she said formally in her high-pitched cartoon character voice.

Alexeyev nodded, faintly recalling that she’d already made that report, but he’d been lost in thought, thinking about the icecap. He’d never sailed farther north than the marginal ice zone, but he reassured himself that First Officer Lebedev and Navigator Maksimov had.

“Take us out, Deck Officer,” he ordered.

“Aye, Captain,” she said, and raised a megaphone to her lips while leaning over the cockpit coaming on the port side, the pier side. “Deck Chief! Cast off all lines!” She watched as Glavny Starshina Maks Alexandr, the auxiliary mechanical systems chief, repeated the order to the line handlers on deck. When the last line was released from its deck cleats and tossed to the pier, Sobol reached under the forward ledge of the cockpit and pulled the air horn lever, and a blasting, booming, earsplitting roar sounded over the slip. She raised the VHF radio to her lips. “Yard Tug Zero Five, take us to center of channel.”

The radio blared with the tug captain’s reply, “Received, taking you to center of channel and commencing movement to the fjord.”

The huge tug’s engines throttled up to a growling hum and slowly the massive vessel began to move away from the pier.

“Navigator,” Sobol spoke into her microphone connected to the electronics box beneath the windscreen, “Ship is underway, moving to center of channel and commencing tow-out.”

“Deck Officer, Navigator, aye,” the speaker on the box crackled with Svetka Maksimov’s voice.

Alexeyev watched as the piers of the base slowly moved by. Once in the wider part of the channel, south of the twin islands, a second tug, that had been waiting at idle, moved over to their port side.

“Submarine Captain, Tug Five Six, request to tie up to your port side,” Sobol’s radio blared. Sobol glanced back at Alexeyev and he nodded at her.

“Tug Five Six, tie up on our port side,” Sobol ordered on the radio.

With the tugs shepherding Belgorod out, there was little to do on the conning tower, Alexeyev thought. He would have preferred to drive the boat out without tugs, but with over thirty-two megatons of nuclear weapons onboard, it made more sense to play it safe and get towed out. It was only ten nautical miles to open water from here. The tugs turned them in the channel when the conning tower moved beyond the twin islands and they proceeded at dead slow on the new northeast course into the deep fjord. The fjord was serpentine, going from northwest at the pier to the twin islands, then northeast past the islands, turning a corner to go due north, then due east, then finally due north. After their dead-slow-ahead journey, taking an hour-and-a-half, the coastline ended and began to fade behind them. After another two miles into open water, they had emerged into the Barents Sea.

“Captain, request to cast off the tugs,” Sobol asked Alexeyev.

“Shove off the tugs, Deck Officer,” Alexeyev ordered.

“Tug Zero Five and Five Six, take in your lines and clear the submarine, and thank you.”

The tug captains acknowledged, Belgorod’s deck crew tossing over the lines. The tugs backed away from the hull, each honking their air horns twice in a gesture of farewell, then turned to return to base.

Alexeyev leaned over the side of the cockpit on both sides, checking that the deck crew had rotated all the cleats flush into the hull and had gone below.

“Deck Officer, Navigator,” the electronics box’s speaker rattled, “deck crew has cleared the deck and gone below. The hatches are shut and dogged. Ship is ready to proceed to the dive point.”

“Boatswain,” Sobol said into her microphone, “ahead two thirds, steer course zero one five.”

The breeze of their passage picked up, the flag raised aft of them starting to flap in the wind.