The Rusalka crisis (26 February 1968) was a classified US military operation that occurred when the US Navy launched an assault on the Soviet commercial ship Rusalka and the underwater submarine fleet supply station located underneath it off the coast of Cuba.
The United States was at DEFCON 1 as the result of a crisis with the Soviet government, whose general Nikita Dragovich was planning to order communist sleeper cells to carry out a series of chemical attacks across the US as a part of "Project Nova". The Americans discovered the location of the numbers station from captured sleeper agent Alex Mason, who accompanied CIA agent Jason Hudson and a team of Black Ops operatives on a mission to destroy the numbers station and end Project Nova.
Utilizing US Navy equipment from the nearby Guantánamo Naval Base, Navy pilots utilized gunships to destroy the Soviet anti-aircraft weapons, radars, and troop placements on the ship, softening its defenses so that Black Ops operatives could board the ship. The Black Ops operatives stormed the vessel, but they did not find a numbers station aboard the ship. Instead, Mason, Jason Hudson, and a small team of Black Ops divers headed deeper into the ocean and found an underwater numbers station that was located in the supply station for the Soviet submarine fleet.
They shot their way through the facility, which began to explode and take on water as they made their way through it, and Mason assassinated Dragovich. Hudson and Mason managed to escape from the station and swim to the surface, meeting up with Grigori Weaver and the surviving Black Ops operatives, witnessing the Rusalka sinking as they swam up. With the destruction of the Rusalka and the numbers station, any chance of a Soviet attack on America was foiled, and Project Nova came to an end. The entire operation was classified, as it would have created immense panic across the Western world.
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