CHAPTER TWELVE
USS Halibut – Off the West Coast of Kamchatka
As dawn climbed up the eastern slopes of the Kamchatka central ridge, I approached the chart table in Control where the boat’s Navigator, Lieutenant Commander Larry Jackson, and the Skipper were poring over the annotated Admiralty chart of the Sea of Okhotsk we had received from NSA – the National Security Agency. Each corner was prominently stamped in red: TOP SECRET – SPECIAL PROJECTS. A couple of temporary curtains shielded the chart table from curious eyes, and draped over the table edge was an opaque cover sheet that could be flipped over the chart when it wasn’t in use.
Our track during the night traced back to the strait we had entered on my watch several hours earlier. For the last two hours we had been angling toward
