KURSHIN'S WRISTWATCH BEEPED SOFTLY at the forty-minute mark. They had gotten within one hundred yards of the submarine.
“Stop rowing,” he told the doctor, and he raised the AK74 to his shoulder, scoping the boat from stern to bow. The after hatch had been closed, as he expected it would be. There was no sign of any activity on deck, nor was the boat showing any lights.
Slowly raising his aim up the broad sail, he could see the
officer and lookout as before. One had his back toward them, the other was looking this way.
The small rubber raft bounced and moved on the small seas, the targets weaving in and out of the scope's field of vision. But he had made successful shots in conditions far worse than these.
His watch beeped again after twenty seconds at the same moment the lookout's head was centered in the reticle of the assault rifle's scope. He squeezed off a shot, the noise shockingly loud on the quiet sea.
The seaman's body was shoved forward against the rail, his head exploding in a mass of blood, bone, and gray matter.
Immediately Kurshin shifted his aim slightly left as the officer started to turn and rear back. He squeezed off a second shot, driving the officer forward and out of view beneath the level of the armor steel coaming.
If something had gone wrong in the dispensary aboard, the alarm would be sounded now, but as Kurshin kept his aim on the bridge there was no movement aboard the boat, no sounds, no lights, nothing.
After a full thirty seconds he lowered the rifle.
“The boat is dead,” he said softly. Even he was impressed and moved by what they had done and by the ease with which they had accomplished it.
“The boat itself is of no real interest to us, Arkasha,” Baranov had told him. “Although there are certain technical and design specifications our people would like you to learn for them, we cannot risk starting a war over it.”
“These boys you are giving me are going to want to keep him. Will they be able to contain themselves so that they can operate the boat?”
“That will be up to you. But believe me, they are capable.”
“Five men and a drunken doctor ⦔
“And you, Arkasha. Do not fail me ⦠this time.”
Kurshin glanced over at Velikanov. The man's lips were half parted and he seemed to be mumbling something. Aboard the cruiser he had been frightened and then disgusted. Now he was neither, he was in awe.
“It's time,” Kurshin said softly.
The doctor blinked and looked at him.
“We have no idea what messages they passed to their fleet command headquarters. We must be out of here within the hour.”
Without being told to do so, Velikanov took up the oars and began rowing them toward the submarine, lying dark and menacing in the water.
Already the flames aboard the cruiser had begun to die down. The ship was listing a few degrees to starboard. Within the next few hours she would probably be at the bottom of the sea, though it didn't really matter; there was nothing aboard now to connect her with the KGB. The nerve gas and cylinders were American made. They had been stolen more than a year ago from the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Nor was there anything to connect them in Naples, if the KGB's Rome
rezident
had done his job correctly.
Kurshin had been aboard Soviet submarines before, but he was still impressed by the sheer size of the American boat floating in the water, her black sail rising up out of the broad, gently sloping hull.
The submarine was slightly low at the stern. Kurshin directed Velikanov to approach the boat well aft of the sail so that they would be able to climb aboard. Forward she was too high out of the water, her hull too sharply sloping for them to get up on the deck.
Minutes later they bumped gently against the
Indianapolis
's hull, the waves shoving them half up on the deck. Kurshin scrambled aboard with the raft's painter and his AK74. Dr. Velikanov passed up the equipment bag, and then clambered on deck himself.
For a long beat Kurshin just stood there in the darkness. He cocked an ear to listen, but there were no sounds. Taking out his knife, he pulled the rubber raft up a little higher on deck, and then sliced the fabric with a loud pop. The little boat, almost completely deflated, floated away. They were committed now.
Slinging the rifle over his shoulder and hefting the equipment bag, Kurshin hurried forward, Velikanov right behind him, passing beneath the broad hydroplanes jutting out from the side of the sail.
There was no access into the submarine without help from inside, except from the bridge deck. Kurshin laid down his rifle and pulled a grappling hook and line from his equipment bag. Standing back, he tossed the hook up over the top of the sail, the grapples clanging loudly against the steel plating, scraping against the coaming, and then coming free.
Kurshin gathered up the line for a second try and tossed the hook up again. This time it caught. He tied the tail of the line to the equipment bag.
Unzippering his black jumpsuit, he checked to make certain his pistol was ready to fire and free in its holster strapped against his chest.
“Can you make it up this line?” he asked the doctor.
Velikanov looked up. The sail rose more than twenty feet off the deck. He nodded. “I think so.”
“Give me a couple of minutes to check out the boat, then come up.”
Again the doctor nodded.
“A couple of days and you will be on your way to Moscow.”
“Or dead.”
Kurshin nodded. “Yes,” he said, and he started up the rope, hand over hand, his nonskid soles adhering easily to the sail's plating.
Near the top he reached up over the coaming and hauled himself the rest of the way into the narrow two-man forward bridge well.
The lookout lay crumpled in a heap, most of the side of his head destroyed. There was blood everywhere, but the officer was gone, the hatch down into the boat closed.
Kurshin looked down at Velikanov who was staring up at him, and then scanned the length of the submarine. No one else was there. All the hatches remained closed.
He had hit the man. He'd seen that clearly in the scope. The officer had been knocked off his feet. He was certain of it.
“There is a body up here, Doctor,” he called down. “When you come up, bring it aboard.”
“Just one?” Velikanov asked.
“Yes,” Kurshin said, and turning back to the job at hand he spun the hatch wheel, counterclockwise all the way to its
stops. The wounded officer had somehow managed to get below and close the bridge hatch. If he had had the presence of mind to dog it there would be no easy way to get inside. There wouldn't be time. Soon fleet headquarters in Gaeta would be sending out an aircraft to find out what was happening.
Time, it always came down to time. And luck.
The hatch came open easily, counterbalanced on a hydraulic cylinder, the odor of machine oil and electronics wafting up to him.
The interior of the boat was bathed in red light. There were a thousand places for a man to hide himself below. If he was armed, it could take hours to flush him out. Hours they did not have.
But the officer was wounded. Kurshin pulled out a flashlight and switched it on. Blood was nearly invisible in red light, but under his flashlight beam he could see a trail of it down the ladder, and at the bottom a pool of it where the officer had probably fallen and lain for a moment or two.
Replacing the flashlight in a zippered pocket, Kurshin pulled out his gun and started slowly down the ladder into the boat, taking care to make no noise so that he could hear any movement from below.
At the bottom he stepped over the pool of blood, swinging his gun left to right.
He was in the attack center just forward of the control room. Numbers and images continued to flash across equipment panels and computer screens, and somewhere aft some sort of an indicator was beeping softly.
Two bodies lay on the deck, and a third was slumped forward over an equipment console. He could see through the open hatch into the control room where at least four other bodies either lay on the deck or were crumpled forward against their electronic panels.
Taking his flashlight out again, he switched it on for just a second or two, long enough for him to pick out the trail of blood leading aft through the attack center and the control room. He shut it off and started aft, stepping carefully over the bodies.
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Third Officer Lieutenant j.g. Ernie Boyle knew that he was bleeding to death and was desperately in need of medical assistance.
He had thought he was dreaming when Finney's head suddenly exploded, and then something slammed into his back between his shoulder blade and neck, shattering his collarbone. But it was nothing by comparison to what he'd felt when he'd managed to get below.
So far as he could tell, everyone aboard was dead. How it could have happened he had no idea. There was no blood, no obvious injuries, but they were all down.
He had made his way back through the control room into the comms center, but he had not been able to make his eyes focus or his hands to work well enough to operate the emergency communications equipment.
The
Indianapolis
was under attack. He knew that much. But by whom, or to what purpose, he couldn't know.
Help, it was the one thought that kept running through his head. He would have to contact COMSUBMED and tell them what was happening. But first he had to stop his bleeding, or he would die.
He stood just within the tiny dispensary, his breathing erratic, his back and shoulder on fire, spots dancing in front of his eyes, trying to make some sense out of what he was seeing now.
Boyle had been born and raised on a farm in northern Minnesota. Like most young men in the upper Midwest, he'd learned to hunt with his father and uncles. He'd shot his first deer when he was fourteen, and his father had made him gut it out himself, getting well bloodied in the process. But he'd never seen anything like this before.
The captain, exec, and their medic lay crumpled in a heap on the deck. Tony D'Angelo lay on his back on the operating table, a big gash in his belly. A slim metal cylinder jutted half out of his guts.
Boyle forced himself to step over the exec's body and stumble over to the supplies cabinet where he found a big box of gauze pads. With bloody fingers he managed to yank out a huge wad and press it against the massive wound in his shoulder. The
bullet had entered his back, and had exited the front, tearing a three-inch hole in his chest above his lungs.
Someone moved in the corridor. Boyle spun around, nearly falling down with dizziness because of the sudden motion. For some reason in his semidelirium he thought it was Second Officer Lieutenant j.g. Woodman. They were friends.
“Ken?” he mumbled, lurching forward to the door.
Tripping, he fell up against the bulkhead, a tremendous pain raging through his body, stunning him awake, and he staggered backward.
Everyone aboard was dead. Ken Woodman would be dead as well. The
Indianapolis
was definitely under attack. Whoever it was, they were aboard now.
The exec had a .45 automatic strapped to his hip. Boyle dragged himself to where Layman lay on his side and fumbled the weapon out of its holster. It seemed to take him forever to get back to his feet, lever a round into the chamber, switch the safety off, and turn around.
A large man, dressed all in black, stood in the doorway. He held a big pistol in his right hand, a flashlight in his left.
“What happened here,” Kurshin demanded, his English perfect.
Boyle was confused again. The .45 was pointed directly at the big man's chest, his finger was on the trigger. But the enemy wasn't supposed to ask what was happening.
Suddenly it came to him. COMSUBMED knew they were in trouble. They had sent help.
“Are you a SEAL?”
Kurshin smiled gently. “Yes. Is your skipper dead?”
“I think so ⦔ Boyle mumbled and he turned away, to look at Captain Webb, when he realized his terrible mistake.
He started to turn back when a tremendous thunderclap burst in his head, and he was falling, falling, and the darkness came.