“It’s a sub net!” she exclaimed.
The captain joined her.
“Well I’ll be, it is a sub net.”
“Do you think we can get around it?” asked the electrician.
“Why waste the effort?” returned Mikhail.
“All I have to do is take a little swim with the net clippers, and we can be on our way again in no time at all.
Comrade Sosnovo, would you be so good as to prepare the diving chamber for me?”
The captain turned and began his way aft. The air lock was located amidships, beside the battery well.
From an adjoining locker he pulled out a black rubber wet suit and a self-contained, closed-circuit oxygen rebreathing apparatus. He wasted no time donning this gear and climbing down into the cramped air lock.
As the hatch was sealed overhead, Mikhail activated the pump lever and a stream of icy cold seawater began flooding into the chamber. The fluid quickly filled the compartment, and though the resulting pressure was most uncomfortable, he opened the valve of his oxygen tank and took several deep breaths. There was little extra room inside the chamber, and he awkwardly reached down to twist open the lower hatch. It was with great relief when his efforts paid off and he was able to slip out into the murky depths.
The net clippers were stowed behind the port torpedo pod. He readily located them and swam forward to begin the task of cutting a hole in the net large enough to allow them safe passage. His extensive training was put to the test as he began the physically demanding job of clipping the wire mesh cable.
The cold water was beginning to numb his bruised limbs, and it took a supreme effort to grasp the handles of the clippers and apply enough pressure to penetrate the wire. Time after time he had to repeat this painful process, until he was all but exhausted and still found himself with three more cable sections to cut away.
Most divers would have long since abandoned their efforts and returned to the boat to get a replacement.
But Mikhail was much too proud to do such a thing.
As a Spetsnaz officer, he had a tradition to uphold.
For he was representative of the motherland’s toughest underwater warrior, and as such, would complete the job to its very end.
It was as he placed the head of the clippers up against the coiled strands of the third section that a distant throbbing whine caught his attention. This sound seemed to intensify, and he knew in an instant that it was the signature of an approaching surface ship. Ever fearful that their collision could have set off a sensor of some sort, Mikhail grasped the handle of the clippers with a renewed intensity.
One strand away from completing the job, the water exploded with a series of resounding blasts. Though these were most likely only weak scare charges designed to frighten an adversary into panicking and giving himself away, Mikhail took them very seriously. And it was fortunate that he did, for just as he snipped through the final link of netting, a deafening blast reverberated from the waters above. The force of this concussion knocked him off the net and threw him into the side of the Sea Devil with a dull thud. He found it difficult to breathe, and with the swirling black depths beckoning him to merely let go and surrender to the cold call of eternity, the commando’s instincts took over. His limbs were heavy as he pulled his weary body down to the re-entry hatch and gratefully slipped inside the chamber.
The next thing Mikhail remembered was being pulled out of the air lock by the concerned electrician. As the hatch was sealed behind him, he managed to cry out excitedly.
“For the sake of Lenin, get us off the bottom and out of this forsaken spot!”
It was the warrant officer who vented the ballast, while the chief engineer activated the mini-sub’s single propeller and guided the vessel through the hole that Mikhail had just cut for them. There was a loud grating noise as one of the frayed ends of the net scraped up against Sea Devil’s hull. But this was nothing compared to the thunderous blasts that awaited them as they passed through the net and entered the deep waters of the Skagerrak.
“Secure for depth charges!” screamed the exhausted captain.
This frantic cry was met by a reverberating concussion that slammed the mini-sub downward and shook it from side to side like a shark tearing apart its prey.
Again the crew of four was thrown to the deck as the blast was followed by one of even greater intensity. As the lights faded, a scared-female voice shouted out into the blackness, “They’ve got us for sure! We don’t stand a chance!”
“Like hell we don’t!” shot back Mikhail Borisov.
“Comrade Sosnovo, is our engine still on line?”
With only the red emergency lights illuminating the cabin, the chief engineer picked himself off the deck and limped over to the helm.
“The power train is still operating. Captain.”
“That’s music to my ears!” replied the Captain, who momentarily cringed when another depth charge detonated above them.
“Open that throttle up all the way,” he added.
“And perhaps our Norwegian friends will tire of this senseless game and let us go in peace.”
The captain knew that it was very likely that the surface units only had a general idea of where they were located. The standard NATO tactic was for such ships to indiscriminately drop ordnance in the hope that their suspected quarry would panic and take some sort of foolish action that would give them away. In such circumstances, Mikhail was trained to keep under way at all costs. Since shock tests showed that underwater explosions affected a vessel the size of Sea Devil far less than a normal-sized submarine, it was to their advantage to get as far away from the barrage as possible.
There was a self-satisfied smirk on the captain’s face as the next explosion that greeted them was significantly more distant. Several other similarly weakened blasts followed, and only then did Mikhail stand upright and exhale a full sigh of relief.
“You can relax. Comrades. They’ve lost us, all right.”
With the cabin still bathed in the red emergency lighting, the captain added.
“Helmsman, plot the quickest course to the rendezvous point. And keep those throttles wide open. I’ve got a four-week leave waiting for me back at Kronstadt, and not even the entire Norwegian fleet is going to keep me from using it.”
The air route from Prestwick airport to Holy Loch took Commander Brad Mackenzie over a variety of Scottish landscape. From the copilot’s seat of a Sikorsky S-70 Seahawk helicopter, he viewed the lush scenery, which included forested hillsides, deep blue lochs, and several quaint villages. It was a gray and overcast afternoon. Mac was weary after his long flight in from Andrews Air Force Base, and as he yawned, the pressure in his ears suddenly equalized. This allowed him to better hear the tape that the pilot had just placed into the cockpit’s cassette player. From the intercom blared forth the spirited sound of massed pipers.
Mac identified the song that they were currently playing as “Scotland the Brave.”
“I hope that you don’t mind the music, Commander,” said the Seahawk’s young female pilot.
“I just got transferred here from Norfolk and have really fallen in love with the music of this country.”
“Is this your first visit to Scotland?” asked Mac.
She nodded.
“To tell you the truth, this is the first time I’ve ever been out of the States before.”
As a medley of familiar pipe tunes emanated from the elevated speakers, Mac began instinctively tapping his foot to the beat.
“You know, I practically grew up with this music. My great-grandfather originally came from the Inverness area in the Highlands. Why, I even know how to blow the pipes.”