"Bring her up! Make your depth one hundred feet. Shoot off a noisemaker."

"Full rise on the planes!" The diving officer ordered a short blow on the forward trim tanks to effect the maneuver. Along with the noisemaker, it created an enormous disturbance in the water. The torpedo raced in after it, missing below Chicago. A good maneuver, it was also a desperate one. The submarine rose quickly, her elastic hull popping as the pressure on the steel diminished. There was an enemy sub out there, and he now had all sorts of noise from Chicago. All McCafferty could do was run. He was confident that the other sub would chase after him with a homing torpedo circling below, but didn't understand why the other sub was there at all. He slowed Chicago to five knots and turned as the torpedo ran out of fuel below him. Next problem: there was a Soviet submarine close by.

"He's gotta know about where we are, skipper."

"You got that one right, XO. Sonar, Conn, Yankee-search!" Both sides could use unusual tactics. "Fire-control party, stand by, this one's going to be a snapshot."

The powerful but seldom-used active sonar installed in Chicago's bow blasted the water with low-frequency energy.

"Contact, bearing zero-eight-six, range four six hundred!"

"Set it up!"

Chicago's steel hull reverberated three seconds later with Soviet sonar waves.

"Set! Ready for tubes three and two."

"Match bearings and shoot!" The torpedoes were fired within seconds of one another. "Cut the wires. Take her down! Make your depth one thousand feet, all ahead flank, left full rudder, come to new course two-six-five!" The submarine wheeled and sped west as her torpedoes raced toward their target.

"Transients-torpedoes in the water aft, bearing zero-eight-five."

"Patience," McCafferty said. You didn't expect us to do that, did you? "Nice job, fire-control! We got our shots off a minute faster than the other guy. Speed?"

"Twenty-four knots and increasing, sir," the helmsman answered. "Passing four hundred feet, sir."

"Sonar, how many fish we got chasing us?"

"At least three, sir. Sir, our units are pinging. I believe they have the target."

"XO, in a few seconds we're going to turn and change depth. When we do, I want you to fire off four noisemakers at fifteen-second intervals."

"Aye, Cap'n."

McCafferty went over to stand behind the helmsman. He'd just turned twenty the day before. The rudder indicator was amidships, with ten degrees of down angle on the planes, and the submarine was just passing through five hundred feet and hurtling down. The speed log now showed thirty knots. The rate of acceleration slowed as Chicago neared her maximum speed. He patted the boy on the shoulder.

"Now. Ten degrees rise on the planes and come right twenty degrees rudder."

"Yes, sir!"

The hull thundered with the news that their fish had found their target. Everyone jumped or cringed-they had their own problems chasing after them. Chicago's maneuver left a massive knuckle in the water that the executive officer punctuated with four noisemakers. The small gas canisters filled the disturbance with bubbles that made excellent sonar targets while Chicago sped north. She raced right under a sonobuoy, but the Russians could not put another torpedo down for fear of interfering with those already running.

"Bearing is changing on all contacts, sir," sonar reported.

McCafferty started to breathe again. "Ahead one-third."

The helmsman dialed the annunciator handle. The engineers responded at once, and again Chicago slowed.

"We'll try to disappear again. They probably aren't sure yet who killed who. We'll use that time to get back down to the bottom and crawl northeast. Well done, people, that was sorta hairy."

The helmsman looked up. "Skipper, the south side of Chicago ain't the baddest part of town anymore!"

Sure as hell is the tiredest, though, the captain thought. They can't keep coming at us this way. They have to back off and rethink, don't they? He had the chart memorized. Another hundred fifty miles to the icepack.

39 - The Shores of Stykklisholmur

They'd finally defeated the counterattack. No, Alekseyev told himself, we didn't defeat it, we drove it off. The Germans had withdrawn of their own accord after blunting half of the Russian attack. There was more to victory than being in possession of the battlefield.

It only got harder. Beregovoy had been right when he'd said that coordinating a large battle on the move was much harder than doing it from a fixed command post. Just the effort of getting the right map opened inside a cramped command vehicle was a battle against time and space, and eighty kilometers of front made for too many tactical maps. The counterattack had forced the generals to move one of their precious A reserve formations north, just in time to watch the Germans withdraw after savaging the rear areas of three B motor-rifle divisions, and spreading panic throughout the thousands of reservists who were trying to cope with old equipment and barely remembered training.

"Why did they pull back?" Sergetov asked his general.

Alekseyev did not respond. There was a fine question that he had already asked half a dozen times. There were probably two reasons, he told himself. First, they'd lacked the strength to pursue the effort and had had to settle for a spoiling attack to unbalance our operation. Second, the central axis of our attack was on the verge of reaching the Weser, and they might have been called back to deal with this possible crisis. The Army group intelligence officer approached.

"Comrade General, we have a disturbing report from one of our reconnaissance aircraft." The officer related the sketchy radio message from a low-flying recce aircraft. NATO's control of the air had brought particularly grim losses to those all-important units. The pilot of this MiG-21 had seen and reported a massive column of allied armor on the E8 highway south of Osnabruck before disappearing. The General immediately lifted the radiophone to Stendal.

"Why were we not informed of this as soon as you received it?" Alekseyev demanded of his superior.

"It is an unconfirmed report," CINC-West replied.

"Dammit, we know the Americans landed reinforcements at Le Havre!"

"And they can't be at the front for at least another day. How soon will you have a bridgehead on the Weser?"

"We have units on the river now at Ruhle-"

"Then move your bridging units there and get them across!"

"Comrade, my right flank is still in disarray, and now we have this report of a possible enemy division forming up there!"

"You worry about crossing the Weser and let me worry about this phantom division! That's an order, Pavel Leonidovich!"

Alekseyev set the phone back in its place. He has a better overall picture of what's going on, Pasha told himself. After we bridge the Weser, we have no really serious obstacle in front of us for over a hundred kilometers. After the river Weser, we can race into the Ruhr, Germany's industrial heart. If we destroy that, or even threaten it, then perhaps the Germans will seek their political solution and the war is won. That is what he is telling me.

The General looked at his maps. Soon the lead regiment would try to force men across the river at Ruhle. A bridging regiment was already en route. And he had his orders.

"Start moving the OMG troops."

"But our right flank!" Beregovoy protested.

"Will have to look after itself."