Kovalov nodded and took the periscope, the rubber eyepieces of the optics warm from Alexeyev’s use. He put his hands on the horizontal grips. The left one could change the optical magnification. The right could tilt the view up or down. The deep blue waves of the Arctic Ocean rolled slowly toward the view. In the middle distance was an ice landscape of a thousand colors of white, glinting in the stark sunshine of the cloudless evening, at a latitude where the sun never set in the summer months. A double-peaked mountain range presided over the ice, the valley between them deep but its low point at what seemed at least ten meters higher than the periscope view. Kovalov rotated the scope to look behind them, seeing a few icebergs floating free, most small, two of them fairly large. He returned the view to directly ahead of them.
“Distance to the icepack?” he asked.
Alexeyev said to the watch officer, “configure, energize, and test the under-ice sonar.”
Watch Officer Sobol gave the command to Sonar Officer Valerina Palinkova, who stood at the under-ice sonar stack at the forward centerline of the room. As her panel lit up, the large flatpanel displays on the forward bulkhead came on, showing only a deep blue.
Palinkova manipulated her controls and sent out a test pulse. The sound was a pure bell-tone ping for slightly less than a second, the ping a high-pitched sound audible to the naked ear in the room. After a second, another ping sounded, then a third.
“High frequency tested,” Palinkova said. “Energizing low frequency.”
In between the high-pitched pings, a lower bell-tone sounded, then continued, the high and low tones alternating. On Palinkova’s display, repeated on the bulkhead flatpanels, a faint white rectangle appeared at the top of the screen.
“Distance to the icepack, a little over one nautical mile, sir,” Palinkova announced.
“Your scope, Georgy,” Kovalov said, returning the instrument to Alexeyev. “Did you transmit to Northern Fleet?”
“I did. Admiral Zhigunov knows we’re entering total ice coverage. The last he’ll hear from us in a long while, if all goes well.”
“Let us pray it does.”
“Agreed,” Alexeyev said, snapping up the periscope grips and reaching for the hydraulic control lever in the overhead. “Watch Officer, lowering number one scope.” The optics module silently lowered into the periscope well, the smooth stainless steel pole rolling downward until it stopped with a thump. “Scope retracted. Reduce speed to ahead one third, make revolutions for three knots.” He walked forward to the under-ice sonar console, crossing his arms and watching Sonar Officer Palinkova operate the system.
“Make my depth six five feet, Pilot aye,” Lieutenant Dankleff reported from the ship control console.
“Look-around number one scope,” Lieutenant Pacino said to the room.
“Speed four knots, depth one hundred feet, on the way to six five feet.”
“Very well,” Pacino answered. “Raising number one scope.” The flatpanel on the command console lit up blue, shining brightly in the rigged-for-red control room. Pacino rotated the view while training the scope upward, making sure the Omega hull was not above them, despite sonar believing him to be eight hundred yards in front of them. The display got lighter as Dankleff flew them out of the depths toward periscope depth. Eventually Dankleff called that they were at seventy feet, and the view foamed as it came out of the water and dried off in the sunshine.
“Six five feet, Officer of the Deck,” Dankleff barked.
In the distance, the icecap and its twin mountains towered over them. Pacino rotated the view quickly in a circle, but they were alone in the sea with the exception of a few icebergs floating free in the marginal ice zone. “Icecap in sight.”
“Take a laser range,” Captain Seagraves ordered.
“Laser range aye. Pacino uncovered a toggle switch and flipped it quickly up and back down and replaced the cover. “Range, one thousand eight hundred yards.” He looked at Seagraves. “You still want to keep the under-ice sonar set secured, Captain?”
“Lower your scope and take her back to two hundred, Mr. Pacino,” Seagraves said.
Back at depth, Seagraves looked over at the sonar stack lineup. “I’m convinced our under-ice sonar could be detected by the Omega’s passive sonar. Let’s close the distance to him and follow him under the ice. You think you can do that?”
“Yes, Captain,” Pacino said. “Our signal-to-noise ratio is strong and we have good contact on his under-ice sonar pings.”
“Master One’s turn count is slowing,” Senior Chief Albanese reported from the number one sonar console. “Looks like he’s slowing to three zero RPM.”
“Pilot, all ahead one third, turns for three knots,” Lieutenant Pacino ordered. He looked at Captain Seagraves. “Sir, request to launch the code three SLOT.”
