Forward in the room, on the centerline, was the under-ice sonar, a large one-person console with three display screens and a joystick, with its displays projected to the large flatpanel screens mounted on the bulkhead on either side of the console. The display showed a three-dimensional look at the ice ahead. So far, other than a few deep pressure ridges, the ice overhead had been well-behaved.
“Ice thickness overhead?” Maksimov called to the under-ice operator, Palinkova.
“Eleven meters, madam, and steady,” Palinkova replied.
“Sounding?” What was the depth below them to the bottom, Maksimov wanted to know.
“Four hundred seventy meters, madam.”
Maksimov decided to stretch her legs and got up to go to the navigation plot table on the aft port side of the room. She saw their position in the center of the display, a bright red dot in a field of blue. Their past path was lit up in a dimmer red, their intended course ahead plotted in bright blue. Maksimov put two fingers on the display and shrank the view, the scale of the plot changing to show a greater area of the sea around them. She continued to adjust the scale until the entire Arctic Ocean was shown on the plot, the blue intended course continuing northeast, then passing south of the pole and continuing in a great circle route to the Bering Strait. She took a deep breath. This transit was going to take months at this speed. What the hell were the bosses thinking, sending them this way into the Pacific, and the all the way around North America and South America to reach the American east coast? There had to be some logic to this, she thought. But whatever it was, the bosses were keeping quiet about it.
Maksimov walked forward to the port side of the room, where the long four-position console was the sonar and sensor center, manned by another senior enlisted petty officer.
“Any detects on anything hostile?” she asked.
“We’re alone in the sea, madam,” the watchstander said, pulling off one headset ear and turning to look up at her.
“Remain vigilant,” she said.
Although what they’d do if they detected another submarine following them had never been made clear by Captain Alexeyev. There was no way to perform evasive maneuvers here under ice without risking a collision with a pressure ridge. And Maksimov seriously doubted they’d ever shoot at another submarine even if they did detect one.
She glanced at the chronometer. Five hours until watch relief. And breakfast. She was hungry and contemplated having some bread and butter brought up from the galley.
Michael Pacino lay in bed next to the warm, naked body of Margo Allende and stared at the ceiling. He checked his phone for the time. It was one in the morning. He’d gotten back from the White House after ten and had arrived to find a note from Margo that she’d gone to bed, but had brought him a shepherd’s pie from the Irish pub. He’d heated up the dish and poked at it in her vast shining kitchen while scanning his phone for new emails or texts. It was too early for communications to come in for his new role as vice president, but by week’s end, he thought, he’d be buried in administrative business. And he’d have to set up shop in his new West Wing office and establish residence at the Naval Observatory, the traditional home of the vice president. Finally he’d poured a scotch and drank it while watching the SNN news on Margo’s big flatpanel in the media room. There were a few reports on the Russian Kremlin attack on President Vostov, but no other news out of Russia.
Pacino decided to try to sleep, but as he lay next to Margo, who was snoring quietly next to him, all he could think about was Anthony on the
He shut his eyes and tried to relax enough to fall asleep. His swearing-in ceremony was thirteen hours from now. He had to sleep. He needed to sleep. There’d be no time for a nap after the ceremony. He wondered for a moment about the
