Grenville’s concern now was to steer away from the collapsing wreckage lest the Ohio become tangled in the debris… and also to put some distance between the Ohio and those Russian torpedoes.

The torps would have been wire-guided. If the enemy weapons control officer had already cut them loose before the ’Burgh’s ADCAPs hit, they would be operating under a search program, one that would swing them about in a large circle until they reacquired their target, or found a new one. If the wires had still been attached, though, when the Russian sub exploded, all steering commands had suddenly ceased. Depending on what the final set of programmed instructions was telling them, the torpedoes might go into automatic search mode, or they might simply continue running, descending into the depths.

Until Grenville knew which was the case, he intended to put as much maneuvering room between his command and those Russian torpedoes as he could manage.

Mir Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1211 hours, GMT-12

Braslov’s minisub was twice to three times the size of the Mir, an ugly, cigar-shaped monster perhaps eighty or ninety feet long. It had the blunt, rough-hewn character of a construction vehicle, and Dean imagined that it was used for heavy lifting around the GK-1, hauling and attaching sections or drill tube. It mounted two shrouded propellers aft, plus smaller directional thrusters for tight maneuvering.

Its sheer size, however, gave Dean and the Mir an advantage. As the larger submersible passed overhead, Dean brought the Mir’s bow up and around to the left. Reaching down with one hand, he slipped his arm into the open framework of the controller for one of the Mir’s mechanical arms. As his hand closed on the squeeze-grip handle inside, there was a whine of servomotors and the arm on the Mir’s port side jerked spasmodically, then extended itself, grippers wide open.

He missed. He’d been trying to jam the Mir’s arm into one of the propeller shrouds on the other sub, but there was no kinesthetic feedback to the thing, and he couldn’t feel what he was doing, or judge distance and reach. The Mir’s arm flailed wildly, banging uselessly off one of the construction sub’s tall rudders.

He tried coming right again, tried getting above the other craft.

Behind him, Golytsin and McMillan continued struggling wordlessly with Benford.

The shock wave struck, slamming into the Mir from above and from the left. Dean heard the roar, like far-off thunder, but the jolt ringing through the Mir’s hull was sharper and more insistent. The Mir tipped hard to port as loose gear and equipment crashed from storage racks and a water pipe somewhere on the port side broke with a shriek of high-pressure water.

The Mir very nearly flipped over, but somehow Dean brought the stubborn little craft back onto an even keel. He heard a loud thump behind him. When he glanced back, he saw Benford flat on the deck, evidently unconscious, with Kathy standing over him, the Makarov in her hand. Golytsin, bare-chested, was getting up off the deck, his hand pressed against the oozing wound in his side.

“Nice maneuver,” Kathy told Dean. “Give us some warning next time!”

“Wasn’t me,” Dean told her. “Shut off that water pipe! Golytsin! You know how to work the arms on this thing?”

“Da…”

“Then help me! Get up here and take that sucker apart!”

Braslov’s construction craft was just ahead, apparently dead in the water. Dean could see a large, white numeral 4 painted on the upper starboard side.

“What was that explosion?” Kathy wanted to know.

“Damned if I know,” Dean said. “It wasn’t us; that’s all I know. Golytsin! Can you disable that bastard’s props?”

“If you get me close enough to the stern, yes.”

He was studying the other craft narrowly in the glare from the Mir’s outside work lights. It didn’t appear to be damaged, but it wasn’t going anywhere at the moment. It appeared to have a very slight negative buoyancy, but it was still upright, still intact under the terrible, crushing pressure outside.

He cut the forward power back by half and pulled the Mir into a tight turn until the other minisub’s stern was directly ahead and below. Dean didn’t want to spend too much time here; other Russian construction subs might have launched from the GK-1 and be in the vicinity.

But if he, Golytsin, and Kuthy could cripple Number Four, that would be one sub, at least, that would not pursue them to the surface.

Nomer Chiteereh Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1211 hours, GMT-12

Braslov groaned and opened his eyes. That had been an underwater explosion, and one close by. A smear of blood glistened on the control panel in front of him-his blood. That explosion had slammed him forward, momentarily stunning him. He raised a hand to lightly touch his forehead; it came away wet with blood.

No matter. He’d suffered a lot worse. The important thing was… what was the condition of his submarine? Quickly he looked around, checking monitors, checking readouts. The hull was still intact, power still good, trim still good…

And the Mir with the Americans on board was swinging around onto his tail.

Braslov grinned. That would get them nowhere.

He reached again for the controls.

Mir Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1211 hours, GMT-12

With Golytsin working the controls, both of the Mir’s mechanical arms extended, reaching toward the other craft’s starboard side screw. Before Dean could grab hold, however, the propeller suddenly spun to life, the shroud pivoting as Braslov put the craft into a sharp turn.

Damn!

“Okay. We’ll just have to try to race him to the surface,” Dean said. He brought the Mir’s nose up and rammed the power handle full-forward. “I don’t suppose there are torpedoes on this thing?”

“No,” Golytsin said. “No torpedoes.”

Sluggish, the Mir began climbing.

Behind it, the construction submarine turned a clumsy circle, then began to give chase.

Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1214 hours, GMT-12

Three miles away, the two torpedoes fired from the Russian submarine Dekabrist continued their flight through the lightless deep, continuing to descend as they raced through the water at fifty knots. Though the American submarine captain was not yet certain of the fact, there’d been no backup programming directing the weapons into a search sweep. They would continue to drive into the depths until they either ran out of fuel and sank… or hit the bottom.

Groaning like a dying man, the wreckage of the Dekabrist settled toward the bottom as well. They could hear the sounds in the sonar rooms on board both the Pittsburgh and the Ohio as steel bent and twisted. Now and then, a compartment sealed off from the rest of the vessel would give way under the steadily increasing pressure, a sharp, chilling pop as seawater inexorably forced its way inside.

The bottom here was eighteen hundred meters down… just over a mile.

It would take the Dekabrist a long time to get there.

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

Dean checked the aft monitor. Sure enough, Braslov was on their tail, and coming fast. Dean could see the work lights on the construction sub like four dazzling stars in the night, the bow of the sub a vaguely seen insect’s face between them.

“He can move faster than us,” Golytsin told Dean. “Especially in ascent. More power, and larger ballast tanks.”

“Great. Fucking great…”

“But the Mir is more maneuverable,” Golytsin continued. “And more rugged.”

“How much more rugged?” Dean wanted to know.