Arctic Gold

“Mir can outdive him by perhaps twenty percent.”

“Meaning it can take more pressure on the hull?”

“Yes. Wait… you’re not-”

“No,” Dean said. “I’m not going to try to lure him beneath his crush depth. That would be crazy.”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to try to ram him. Kathy! You’ve got Benford secured?”

“Yeah,” Kathy replied. “There was some rope in this locker back here.”

“Okay. Strap yourself down.”

“No seat belts, Charlie.”

“Then hold on, damn it. Golytsin! Where are the ballast controls on this thing?”

Golytsin pointed.

“Flood the ballast and trim tanks,” Dean said. “And kill the forward lights! Let’s see if we can discourage the bastard!”

He pulled over on the stick, bringing the nose of the Mir up even higher, then over and around. Like a jet aircraft in a stall, the little submersible hung suspended for a moment, then nosed over, begi

Ahead, the four work lights on the construction sub grew brighter, and seemed to stretch farther apart.

“God in Heaven,” Golytsin said, eyes widening. “What are you doing?”

“Playing dolphin to his shark, Admiral.”

“You’ll kill us!”

“Where’s your faith in good old, solid Russian engineering, Admiral?”

At twelve knots, the Mir slammed into the construction sub, bow to bow. There was a savage bang that rang through the hull, followed by the scrape and tear of metal.

And all of the lights went out.

Nomer Chiteereh Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1218 hours, GMT-12

Braslov had been puzzled when the Mir’s work lights winked off, then decided the American was hoping to lose his dogged pursuer. Idiot! Nomer Chiteereh had sonar and would be able to hunt him down easily even in the pitch blackness of the depths.

Braslov was reaching for the sonar switch when he caught a shiver of movement in his forward view port. The Mir was just ahead, coming into the illumination cone of his own work lights.

His full attention was yanked back onto the other craft. It was close… impossibly close, and swelling to fill the forward port as though racing down to meet him.

The shock threw Braslov out of his seat, slamming him to the deck as the construction submarine heeled far over to port. The sound was an explosion of raw noise, the shock indescribable. Several internal pipes gave way, and streams of ice-cold water blasted into the construction ship’s compartment.

Braslov struggled to get up, to get back to the control panel, but the deck was now a bulkhead and threatening to become a ceiling, and it was all he could do to cling to the deck grating as the submarine heeled over.

Then salt water hit wiring, and the interior lights flicked off, came on, then flickered off once more, leaving Braslov in the deepest, most profound darkness he had ever known…

Mir Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1219 hours, GMT-12

“Golytsin!” Dean shouted. “Blow all ballast!”

“Give me a moment! I can’t see!”

“We don’t have a moment!”

An alarm was shrilling, and a recorded voice was saying something in Russian. The outside lights were off, but he could still hear the whine of the motors, and the instrument lights and LED readouts were still on.

A moment later, the Mir’s emergency lights switched themselves on. “You see, Admiral?” Dean said brightly. He reached out and thumped the console with his fist. “You Russians know how to build these things solid!”

“Don’t hit that too hard,” Golytsin warned. “Not until we know the full extent of the damage!”

Dean was pretty sure the man was cracking a joke.

Golytsin hauled down on a large handle, and there was a sudden jar as several hundred kilograms of iron suddenly dropped clear of the Mir’s keel. He pulled another handle, and they heard the shrill hiss of pressurized air forcing its way into the ballast and trim tanks. As the water was forced out, the Mir rose faster.

“Emergency surface,” Golytsin explained.

“Yeah, but there’s ice up there,” Dean said. “What happens when we hit it?”

Golytsin smiled. “Where is your faith in good, solid Russian engineering, my friend?”

The Mir rose rapidly up from the abyss…

Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 44' N, 176° 50' E 1219 hours, GMT-12

Some five miles away now, the first of the Russian 650mm torpedoes slammed into the seabed. Had the ocean floor consisted of soft mud and sediment, like so much of the abyssal plain elsewhere, the contact detonator likely would have failed to go off and the weapon would have buried itself harmlessly in the ooze.

Unfortunately, large stretches of the seabed in this region were covered by and penetrated by immense shelves of ice, methane ice clinging to the ocean floor like permafrost.

The detonator triggered and nearly one ton of high explosives went off.

With no oxygen to support combustion, the methane clathrates on the floor couldn’t ignite, but the blast did break a very great deal of ice loose and send it rocketing toward the surface.

It also liberated a large amount of methane gas-several hundred million tons of it-from the sea floor, the bubbles rising in massive clouds out of the deep.

Mir Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 33' N, 177° 45' E 1225 hours, GMT-12

“How long before we reach the surface?” Kathy asked.

“We’re passing two hundred meters now,” Dean told her, glancing at the instrument readout screen. “Maybe… another minute?” He looked to Golytsin for confirmation.

“Something like that,” the Russian replied. His hand was on the ballast control. “But I’m going to begin slowing the ascent now. You’re right, of course. We don’t want to hit the ice ceiling too hard.”

“It would be nice to be able to break through,” Dean said. “But if we happen to hit a thick patch…”

“Exactly. Even with recent climatic warming, the ice is as much as a meter thick in places, and the Mir might not be able to break through. There is also the chance, a small one, that we could come up beneath the keel of the Lebedev or one of the other ships up there. So we will come up close to the surface, and attempt to find a polynya.”

“Do you think Braslov will be able to come after us?” Kathy asked.

“I don’t know,” Dean said. “We hit him damned hard. If we’re lucky, he’s on his way down, now, while we’re going up.” He sighed. “Just one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“My boss is going to kill me. I was supposed to bring Braslov back alive.”

Nomer Chiteereh Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1225 hours, GMT-12

The construction submarine was sinking, as water continued to leak in from a ruptured seal, dragging the craft down tail first. In total darkness, drenched in icy water, Braslov struggled upward toward the forward part of the compartment. If he could just reach the controls and trip the main circuit breakers, perhaps the emergency power circuits were still good. He needed to blow ballast and surface… or at least try to regain neutral buoyancy long enough for them to come out and rescue him from GK-1.

His arm felt like it was broken. The cold was a living thing, leeching the heat from his body, leaving him trembling and exhausted.

Almost there…

The methane cloud struck from beneath, totally unexpected, a sudden shock slamming into the construction submarine’s belly and stern. Braslov had the sudden sensation that he was rising, and then the submarine flipped end for end and he hurtled into the forward end of the compartment, screaming as he slammed into the control panel. Water cascaded over and around him, stu

And above the roar, he could plainly hear the shriek of metal as the tortured vessel began to tear open amidships…