“Well, maybe you oughta make Ustinov your CTO instead of that idiot Andretti,” Stern shouted into the phone.
Smythe held the phone away from his ear while the venture capitalist vented some more. He put the receiver back in place and spoke again, calling on his most soothing voice. “Mark, ease off a bit, old chap. Remember, what we are doing is revolutionary. There are going to be unexpected glitches. Carl Andretti is performing miracles every day. We need him. Now, I’ll give you a call this evening, just before I leave for the coast for the board meeting. I’ll have the latest numbers for you and an update on the progress. It’ll be good news, I promise.”
Smythe hung up with a happy “Cheerio!” He massaged the bridge of his nose. God, he hated these calls! Venture capitalists were the worst scum of the world. They had to be endured. They were the ones with the money, after all, and it took money to build empires.
Now, next on the agenda, he would have to deal with that idiot, Carl Andretti. He shouted at the door, “Cheryl, get Andretti and tell him I want to see him right away.”
“Should he wear his asbestos drawers?’ she shouted back.
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea!”
Captain Second Rank Sergei Andropoyov climbed the long ladder from the control room to the bridge of the Russian submarine K-475. He loved this new boat, so much more modern than the old rust buckets he had served on so far in his Navy career. Most of those boats were now tied up over at the Polyarnyy main piers, moldering into oblivion.
Gepard was brand- new and equipped with enough technological advances to make her equal to any American submarine. She was an Akula II–-class boat—“akula” being Russian for “shark,” a name most appropriate.
Andropoyov climbed through the hatch, leaving the cozy warmth below, and stood in the cockpit at the top of the submarine’s sail. The huge cement and steel structure of the submarine pen stretched above him and far to either side. The piers were all empty, except the one where K-475 was tied up, and another down the way where K-461, the Volk, an older Akula I sub, sat. She was ready to follow him out into the Barents and stand guard while he tested Gepard.
The commander remembered how it had been a few years ago, when this building was always buzzing with furious activity. Boats preparing to go out into the cold, dark waters of the Barents Sea to challenge the Americans and to protect the Rodina. Boats returning from arduous patrols, needing rest and repair. This eerie quiet was most unsettling after all that purposeful activity.
The giant doors at the end of the pier were open already, revealing Olenya Bay and Murmansk Fjord beyond. A biting cold wind howled out there, close and strong enough to find a way to reach in to chill them even inside the sub pen. A rusty old icebreaker stood by at the building’s entrance, smoke whisping from its single large stack. It would break a path through whatever ice there might be in the bay and fjord and lead K-475 out to the open water of the sea.
Andropoyov glanced at his watch. He turned to Dimitriy Pishkovski, his First Officer. “Dimitriy, I believe it is time. If you would be so kind as to get us underway?”
The short, swarthy Wwhite Russian smiled. “I will be happy to, Captain. It is good to be heading to sea once more.”
Pishkovski said a few sentences into the phone at his ear. The knot of men standing on the pier broke up and scurried off to stand beside the bollards, ready to tend the lines that still held Gepard tied up in the pen.
He spoke again into the phone. The men standing on Gepard’s broad rounded main deck released the lines from her cleats and let them slide off into the water. The line handlers on the pier growled and cursed as they pulled the ice-cold, wet lines from the water.
Pishkovski ordered the two small reserve propeller systems to twist Gepard. Unlike American subs, she had a small electric-driven propeller a few feet to either side of her mammoth main screw. They were designed to bring her home if anything happened to the main propulsion system, but they were also very handy for maneuvering in close quarters. By having the starboard screw go astern while the port went ahead, Pishkovski was able to twist Gepard’s bow away from the pier while walking the stern out, too.