The sharks seemed to sense that their prey was helpless.
The largest of the threesome actually bumped Ivana with its tail, and then made a wide, sweeping turn, that signaled a final attack was imminent. With only seconds left to live, she wondered if she should try to make one valiant last effort to reach the hangar.
Though it was less than fifteen yards away from her, there was no chance of her getting to it safely. She decided to make her final stand right where she was.
The largest of the sharks had completed its broad turn, and was now coming straight at her, meaning business. Ivana regrasped the knife in response, and was all set to use it, when a swift-moving, torpedo shaped object came spiralling out of the depths and smacked into the shark’s exposed underbelly. The stunned white-tip lay momentarily motionless in the water, and Ivana saw that her unlikely savior was none other than Dolly, the bottlenose dolphin.
Dolly used her snout to get the message across to the remaining sharks, and soon all of them were in the midst of a hasty retreat to safer waters. Ivana couldn’t believe her good fortune. She held out her hands to hug Dolly, before following her protector to the shelter of the hangar.
She swam through the hatch and surfaced, with Dolly close at her side. Barely taking the time to yank the air hose from her mouth, she once more reached over to give the dolphin another hug. Dolly responded with an animated burst of whistles and clicks. This racket quickly gained the attention of Karl Ivar, who was seated beside the hatch, with a collection of loose parts surrounding him.
“Hey, what’s all that noise about. Dolly?” complained the grinning Norwegian.
“Karl Ivar, you’ll never believe what just happened out there,” managed Ivana between breaths.
“Dolly just saved me from a group of white-tips!”
“You don’t say,” he thoughtfully replied as he stood, helped Ivana out of the water, and directed his next remark to Dolly.
“So my friend, you are good for something else than delivering the mail and eating mullet.”
“I’ll say she is,” said Ivana, who accepted a plastic bucket from Karl Ivar. Several hand-sized mullets floated inside this container, and she pulled one out by its tail and gratefully fed it to Dolly.
“Dolly’s been keeping me company all morning,” revealed Karl Ivar.
“Luckily for you, she decided to go out for a stroll. Otherwise, you might never have been here to witness Misha’s rebirth.”
This matter-of-fact comment caused an expectant smile to turn the corners of Ivana’s mouth.
“Does that mean that you’ve finally figured out a way to repair the diving saucer. Comrade?”
Karl Ivar returned her warm smile with one of his own.
“I guess it does, though we won’t know for certain until the adapter that I’m currently working on is completed.”
“That’s wonderful news, Comrade! Because like Misha, I too feel reborn, with this second chance to return to the depths of the Andros trench, and find out just where our mysterious roadway leads to.”
Ivana Petrov would have had extra cause to celebrate, if she had known that her father was a mere sixty feet above her, in the wardroom of the Academician Petrovsky, studying a bathymetric chart of the same trench that she soon hoped to return to. With Admiral Igor Valerian anxiously peering over his shoulder, Andrei traced the rugged walls of the trench, following it southward until it eventually merged into the black depths of the Tongue of the Ocean.
“The spot you picked seems suitable enough,” said Andrei with a heavy sigh.
“Though I still find it incredible that you had the audacity to try the device on an unsuspecting target. At the very least, you could have waited until the prototype was perfected.”
“There was no time for such a luxury. Doctor,” replied Valerian.
“You military types are always in such a mad rush,” observed Andrei disgustedly.
“And now look what it got you, absolutely nothing for all your efforts.”
“I wouldn’t exactly go that far. Doctor,” said Valerian, his good eye gleaming.
Not certain what the silver-haired naval officer was referring to, Andrei looked up from the chart and watched as Valerian pulled a photograph from the file folder that he held. He then handed this snapshot to Andrei, who identified the subject matter as a single, surfaced submarine.
“She’s the Lewis and Clark,” revealed Valerian.
“Launched in 1964, this American Benjamin Franklin class vessel was recently retrofitted to carry sixteen Trident C-4 missiles. As you very well know, the Trident is accurate enough to have hard-kill capability. When one considers that each of these missiles can carry up to eight 100-kiloton MIRVED warheads, all of which are able to hit targets almost anywhere in the rodina, what you have pictured before you is a potent first strike weapons platform of the most dangerous sort.”
“So this is the unfortunate vessel that was your guinea pig,” reflected the physicist. “Unfortunate vessel?” repeated Valerian as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Open your eyes, Doctor! This warship has only one purpose, to strike our homeland a crippling preemptive blow, should the imperialists so desire.”
“I hardly think that such a first strike would be in America’s best interest anymore,” offered Andrei, who handed the photograph back to Valerian.
“But that’s the subject of an entirely different argument. Right now, my only concern is that innocent submarine that you attacked without provocation. Does anyone know what happened to it?”
“All that we can say for certain. Doctor, is that it didn’t end up in Vladivostok as we planned. The Americans have recently released a news story saying that the ship was lost with all hands off the coast of Florida, while on routine patrol. But we know that this is an utter fabrication. The U.S. Navy knew precisely where that sub was located when they lost contact with it, and so far, they haven’t even bothered to send out a single rescue ship to scan the waters of the Andros trench.”
“Then I wonder where in the world it could have ended up?” reflected Andrei, while searching his own mind for an answer to this question.
“As long as we have one less Yankee guided-missile submarine on patrol, that’s all I really care about,” said Valerian, who pulled yet another picture out of the file folder and handed it to his guest. Andrei looked down at an artist’s rendering of a submerged submarine with a torpedo shooting out of its bow tube. The vessel had a sleek, teardrop-shaped hull, with its hydroplanes protruding from the hull itself, and not out of the sail, as was customary with the majority of American submarines.
“I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen a vessel quite like this one before,” admitted Andrei.
“Join the crowd,” said Valerian with ever-rising passion.
“For this is an artist’s conception of SSN-21, or as it’s better known, Seawolf. The first entirely new class of attack submarine in the U.S. fleet in over twenty years, Seawolf’s sensors are reported to be over ten times as effective as those on its predecessor, the ever-capable 688 class. It also carries an incredible weapons load, and is outfitted with a newly designed reactor, and the state-of-the-art in computerized firecontrol systems. When it sets sail on its maiden voyage, sometime in the next couple of weeks, Seawolf will be the most formidable undersea warship that the world has ever known.
“Our country’s own naval architects hoped to field a submarine in the near future to compete with Seawolf. But the breakup of the Union and our grim economic situation make such an expensive R&D project virtually impossible. Thus the only way for us to get our hands on Seawolf’s advanced technology is to borrow it. And to carry out this important task, the rodina is relying upon you, Andrei Segeyevich. For the sake of the continued safety of the homeland, you’ve got to help us fine-tune the device that your own genius invented over five decades ago. To do otherwise will guarantee the Americans complete domination of the seas for generations to come, an extremely dangerous situation that can’t be allowed!”