The Chase: One Courageous Skipper Battling The Perilous Evil Out To Destroy Him. (Sea Action & Adventure) by Herzel Frenkel

through the middle of the moonlit gulf like a smuggler of olden times. The current was still fast and he could feel the water rushing over the rudder.
    Avri stayed at the helm for the next two hours. The wind was very low and almost head-on, he would have to motor all the way. He was hungry and thirsty and tired, willing to trade a sail for a cup of coffee...
    By ten o'clock that night, he gave in. They were far enough into sea to allow a rest. He turned off the diesel and they drifted into a total silence. The boat rolled gently in the calm waters. A full moon ploughed a silvery furrow across the sea. Avri stepped down into the cabin and prepared a hearty meal and a pot of strong coffee.
    Around midnight, in two or three hours, the breeze would likely pick up to a useful wind and they could sail again.

CHAPTER SIX
     
     
    Captain Poliakov and Grisha, his Chief Engineer, were alone now in the empty cabin. The Captain was tired. He was tired of playing a game whose rules he no longer understood, using equipment he couldn’t comprehend, running missions he didn't fathom, shuffled about on this chess board by Moscow-based admirals he had never met. This navy had changed too fast for him. He had been sailing, underwater and under the Red flag for over forty years now, and both environments were beginning to feel increasingly overbearing. The navy headquarters had turned into an alien territory, with not a single familiar face with whom to share a bottle of Cognac on a blue night. At times he envisioned himself riding a huge sea-mine, one wrong move and he would sink all the way down, never to rise again, and it didn't matter who made that wrong move - Captain Valarie Nickolaiev Poliakov, the mine or the sea.
    Now someone had made that wrong move. He wasn't quite sure who was it, and who was at fault. Either way, it rarely mattered in the grander scheme of things these days. If headquarters found out that he had lost the antenna, his career would be over in as little time as it took to get him out of the submarine.
    Not that he would mind getting off the sub and into a comfortable desk job at navy HQ in Odessa. He would even settle for retirement in some bleak fishing village or aboard a small freighter on the Black Sea. But none of these prospects were real. He knew it. The only option would be a long and a humiliating investigation with a very ugly verdict. It was not an ending he deserved nor was he about to let it happen.
    Captain Poliakov was resolved to do all he could, anything and everything to recover the equipment and eliminate whomever possessed it, to completely eradicate the incident from the memory of the sea.
     
    His thoughts drifted, drawing plans for his own future, or the lack of it, should he fail to recover the antenna.
    "This is a lousy situation, Grisha," he turned to his Chief and comrade. "We must act fast and effectively. Headquarters must never find out about this hellish embarrassment. We must do on our own, without any help from the navy. You and I, Grisha, we must stick together on this one. You're all I’ve got, Grisha, you're all I have."
    Grisha sat down slowly on the firm couch. He and the Captain had gone many, many miles together, since the early days of Soviet subs, through this cold war and a few hot ones. They were among the last remnants of the Second World War veterans left in the Soviet Navy. He was always sure they would serve together until the end. He had never envisioned such an end. I must not let it happen, he thought and looked up to his Captain.
    "Don't worry, Valerie," he said, calling the Captain by name, as he had always called him when they were by themselves with a bottle of Cognac. "We’ve seen much worse and lived to drink about it. We shall make it this time, too. We haven’t lost this battle yet."
    His calm demeanor reassured the Captain, as it always had, and the Captain brought out a bottle, as he always did.
    "It is almost thirty hours since we hit the yacht," said