“What’s with the cans in the blanket?”

“Improvised ballistic armor,” she said. “I thought it might at least deflect a bullet if he got off a shot.”

Dean was very glad she hadn’t had to put the idea to a test. It might have worked… or the 9mm round might have slammed straight through blanket, tomato cans, and Kathy and scarcely even slowed down.

“Put the guard in the room. And gather up those cans. Benford! You help her!”

“You can’t get out of here, you know,” Golytsin said.

“I’m damned well going to try. And you have a choice.”

“What choice?”

“You can get into that room. We’ll lock you in with this guy. When they let you out, you can quite truthfully say the Americans overpowered you and escaped.”

“Or?”

“Or you can come with us. The offer’s still open.”

Golytsin was clearly thinking about it as he stood there, rubbing his wrist where Dean had nearly broken it. Benford and McMillan together dragged the unconscious guard inside the storeroom, tossing in the blanket and the errant cans. Kathy retrieved the guard’s pistol and the keys.

“Time to make your decision,” Dean told him. “Loyalty to your new masters? Or loyalty to Mother Russia?”

Golytsin turned and entered the storeroom. Kathy began to close the door… and then he glanced around suddenly and said, “Wait! I’ll come!”

“Good man. C’mon.”

“You’re thinking of the Mir subs?”

“You have a better idea?”

“No. The Mirs are kept charged and ready to go at all times. They’re the closest we have to lifeboats in this place.”

After locking the storeroom door, the four of them hurried down the passageway, rounding the ninety-degree bend in the corridor and skirting the opening in the deck leading down into the facility’s control center. The waiting Mir subs were just ahead.

“Everyone grab a dry suit!” Dean called. “We’ll need ’em topside!”

And then a sharp cry came from behind.

“Stoy! Ruki v’vayrh!”

SSGN Ohio Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1204 hours, GMT-12

“Weps,” Grenville said softly. “What’s our war-shot status?”

“War shots loaded in tubes one, two, three, and four, Skipper. Inner and outer bow doors closed. Four Mark 48 ADCAP torpedoes ready for firing.”

“Open bow doors two and four,” he said. “But manually.”

“Open bow doors two and four manually. Aye, aye, sir.”

Using the hand cranks was slower, but it could be done in complete silence. He didn’t want the Victor out there hearing the Ohydro getting set to shoot. Tubes two and four were on the port side of the vessel, on the side farthest from the Victor now, but they would be the first to bear as the Ohio came out of the Williamson.

A minor point. In modern submarine warfare, you didn’t have to be aimed at the other guy to have a chance of hitting.

But it did help. Especially at close range.

“Captain, this is Chief Mayhew.”

“What is it, Chief?”

“I know this is out of order, sir, but… can I talk to you for a sec, here in Sonar?”

“Be right there.”

It couldn’t be super-urgent for Mayhew to sidestep the usual formalities of command protocol, but it did sound important. Grenville walked forward up the starboard passageway and stepped into the sonar shack.

“Whatcha got?”

“Sir… I don’t really have anything… but it’s kind of a… a feeling, okay?”

“A feeling.”

“Yes, sir. We’re still getting occasional transients from Sierra One-one-six, okay?”

“Yes…”

“And we’re getting a lot of background from, from… all over. Ice grinding overhead. We have some biologicals. Lots of noise from the ships on the surface. In fact, half the problem is just hearing the Victor’s transients over all the background-”

“What’s your point, Mayhew?”

“Sir… look here.” He pointed at one of the two display monitors above his workstation. It had been reconfigured to show a waterfall.

“Waterfall” was the term for a particular type of sonar display. It looked like a green TV screen filled with static, but with some of that static just orderly enough to begin to sketch out white lines against the green background. Across the top were compass bearings; down the left side were time readouts, recent at the top to older at the bottom. The waterfall made the universe of sound surrounding the Ohio visible and tracked each source over time. Each line drifted at an angle across the screen, its bearing changing as the Ohio moved relative to it or it moved relative to the Ohio.

“Ignore these three, Captain,” Mayhew said, indicating the three brightest and most slowly moving lines. “Those are the three ships topside. This is Sierra One-one-six.” He pointed to another line that, over the past few minutes, had drifted sharply across the Ohio’s starboard side.

“Not much there,” Grenville said.

“No, sir. We’re close enough to pick up some noise from his screw, and some from his power plant. Down here…” He pointed to a bright patch on the line. “That’s when he opened his bow doors.”

“Yes.”

And thank God a Russian torpedo hadn’t followed a moment later. The other captain was hunting still, not sure where the target was.

“This is what I wanted to show you, sir.”

Mayhew indicated an area of random static, a vague patch somewhere behind the Russian sub. Random static… but somewhat less of it than elsewhere on the screen…

Grenville’s eyes widened as he realized what he was seeing. “Shit!”

“I think-,” Mayhew started to say, but Grenville’s hand was already on the intercom mike.

“Helm! This is the captain! Hard left rudder! Now!”

GK-1 Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1205 hours, GMT-12

DEAN SPUN, DRAGGING BACK the slide on the Makarov to chamber a round. At the far end of the corridor, perhaps eight or ten yards away, a man in civilian clothing was aiming a sidearm at them. “Stoy!” the man shouted again. “Stop!”

As Dean moved, the man fired, the shot a thunderclap in the steel confines of the base passageway. The bullet struck the overhead, ricocheted with a screech, then ricocheted again off a bulkhead somewhere at Dean’s back.

“Jesus!” Dean ducked reflexively, even though the round had already screamed past. Taking aim, he triggered a round as well, and heard the bullet bouncing off one of the walls before rebounding from the bulkhead behind the other man. Something clattered on the deck ahead of Dean… the spent round, spinning as it burned off the last of its energy.

This was, he realized, a deadly shooting gallery. Handguns simply weren’t accurate beyond a range of a few yards unless the shooter was well trained. Here, though, the massively thick steel bulkheads served to channel shots all the way down the passageway… with the effect of making this a little like a shoot-out inside a sewer pipe.

Sooner or later, even the worst shot would hit something. Dean needed to end this now.

He fired three more shots in rapid succession, not trying for accuracy so much as for a storm of bouncing, ricocheting rounds that would force the Russian gunman back behind the shelter of the far bend in the passageway.

The ugly little Makarov was uncomfortable in Dean’s hand, the grip considerably thicker than what he was used to. A disengaged part of him recalled that the design enabled the shooter to handle the weapon easily while wearing heavy gloves-a necessity in the cold, long winters of Russia.

The other man dropped to the deck, writhing. A pipe running along the overhead suddenly spurted a stream of water. A second man appeared and snapped off another shot that came shrieking down the metal corridor, then pulled back out of sight. Behind him, Dean heard a sudden gasp, a cry of, “Ah!”