A pair of external robotic arms operated from the forward observer’s seat gave the tiny vessel considerable dexterity beneath the glare of her external lights. She could be handled by a crew of four, but there was space in the cramped and cold-sweating pressure hull compartment for four additional passengers… or a squad of elite Spetsnaz in the cargo bay aft.

Today, however, there was only Golytsin.

The submersible’s sonar chirped, with ringing echoes. The diving officer read off the depth beneath the keel as they continued to descend, an almost mournful litany. “Vaseem metrov… sem… shest’ metrov…”

“I see the bottom, Kepiten,” the helmsman reported.

Side by side, heads nearly touching, Golytsin and Kurchakov leaned forward and peered down through the second of the forward view ports. “There!” the normally impassive Kurchakov said. He sounded uncharacteristically excited. A dour and taciturn man by nature, he now seemed almost boyish.

White light glared against the blackness, highlighted by drifting bits of organic debris. The bottom appeared disappointingly flat and featureless, an endless gray desert of fine silt and decayed plankton.

Mingled with the chirp of the sonar, the litany continued. “Chiteereh… tree… dvah…”

“Halt descent!” Kurchakov ordered. “Maintain position!”

The submarine’s side thrusters whined more loudly, gentling the beast to an awkward hover. The sharp increase in the thruster wash kicked up additional billowing clouds of fine silt from the bottom beneath the sub’s keel, filling the night with brightly illuminated particles. A blizzard, Golytsin thought. A winter squall such as he’d once known in the St. Petersburg -no, the Leningrad -of his childhood.

“So where is our flag?” Golytsin asked, peering into the murk as it gently subsided. As he leaned forward, the light reflecting back from outside illuminated the web of blue lines etched into his arm and the back of his hand.