State of the Union (33 page)

T
here were strange, unintelligible words followed by a burst of heat in his lungs. Then silence. Soon, another burst followed, accompanied by more words and a heaviness on his chest. A bright light drifted on the edges of his field of vision.

The hot burst came again, but there was also another sensation, something soft, something moist. It reminded Harvath of water and he suddenly remembered that he was thirsty. He went to lick his lips but the moistness quickly receded.

He drew another breath and realized what was happening.
He was breathing
. As Harvath greedily gasped for air, consciousness slowly returned. He heard voices, women’s voices. The words that had been so unintelligible only moments before now found their place in his mind—Russian. The light he had seen was a flashlight held by one of the women as her compatriot attended to the other men in the room. Slowly, he sat up as he continued to suck in great gasps of air.

“Are you okay?” said a voice in English as a beam of light shone in his face. Harvath recognized the voice as Alexandra’s.

“I think so,” replied Harvath as he tried to stand up. “How did you find us?”

“I didn’t,” replied Alexandra, handing him a bottle of water she had found in one of the adjacent storage rooms. “Raisa did. She knows the ship inside and out.”

“Is she one of the scientists?”

“Yes. She was also Nesterov’s mistress, but they kept it an absolute secret.”

“Is she…” panted Harvath, who paused to take another long draught of water.

“The second scientist my father mentioned?” said Alexandra, finishing the thought for him. “No question. She told me about periodic communications she had with him.”

Harvath lowered the bottle and as he wiped his mouth along his sleeve, glanced around the room and took in the rest of the team in their various states of recovery. “What about Stavropol?”

“Everyone is going crazy upstairs over the half-empty demolitions bag Carlson was found with. All of the lower decks near where they found him are being searched for bombs he may have planted. We have to get out of here.”

“What about in the control room?”

“Something has gotten into the system,” offered Raisa. “They can’t figure it out. They think it might be a worm.”

“Not a worm,” coughed DeWolfe, as Harvath handed him the bottle of water, “a logic bomb.”

“A
logic bomb
? How did you get in?”

“The schematics Dr. Nesterov had hidden in the church showed the location of a remote access terminal. Your system is completely self-contained, so it had to be hacked from within. Dr. Nesterov knew this and programmed a code into the operating system that would provide access whether or not the user had an established account. All it took was the password.”

Raisa couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Nesterov had never discussed this with her. “But we have safeguards. We constantly do cleanups of the system to remove any such backdoors.”

“By removing the source code for the compiler and then recompiling it, right?”

“Exactly.”

“That was the genius of what Dr. Nesterov did. He set it up so that each time a cleanup happened, the compiler surreptitiously plugged the code right back in. It just kept perpetuating itself. If you knew where to look, the backdoor was wide open. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to find any trace of it in the source codes. It’s totally invisible. Quite a moby hack if I do say so myself.”

“What’s the purpose of your logic bomb?”

“I downloaded something onto your system that the geeks at Fort Meade like to call the
Hungry Hungry Hippo
. Right now it is grazing through your entire system, gobbling up everything it comes across.”

“But,” said Raisa, “after they isolate your bomb, they’ll just shut the system down and reboot.”

“By that time,” rasped Morrell, “there won’t be anything left to reboot. But right now, I agree with Alexandra, we need to get the hell out of here.”

Raisa led them down a long corridor and through a series of steel bulkheads. “What happened to you?” Harvath asked Alexandra as they continued to move.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she replied.

“Did Stavropol do anything to you?”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

Before Harvath could press the point any further, they arrived at a steep metal staircase. Raisa fished underneath it and pulled out Scot’s technical pack and Carlson’s demo sack. “I believe these are yours,” she said as she handed them over.

“Where did you find this?” asked Harvath.

“The head of the security team left them in his office for safekeeping.”

“And in the rush, he just left his door wide open?”

“Nobody trusts anyone aboard this ship. All of the doors are always locked.”

“Then how’d you get in?”

“The same way I got into Stavropol’s cabin to free Alexandra,” smiled Raisa as she held up a ring of keys. “You’d be surprised how careless the ship’s engineers can be with their property.”

Harvath removed the silenced Walther, the Pit Bull, and the silenced H&K from his backpack. “This is the extent of our firepower at the moment. Now all we need to do is to come up with some sort of diversion that will allow us to get out of here.”

“I’ll bet I could figure out a way to get a nice warm fire going,” replied Carlson as he pulled a roll of det cord from his sack.

A
s Carlson prepared to ignite their diversion, Alexandra said to Harvath, “Scot, you need to see this.”

“Later,” he replied.

“Fifteen seconds,” called out Carlson.

“No, you need to see it now.”

Harvath glanced at the notebooks she was examining, which she had taken from Stavropol’s stateroom. Wedged in between the pages was a picture of him with his head circled in red with crosshairs through it. There was no question of where it had been taken.

“From what I can tell,” said Alexandra, “Draegar was given a copy of this photo along with your home address.”

“Now that I know he’s coming, I’ll have to rush back and bake a cake for him,” replied Harvath.

“Time to move,” commanded Carlson, cutting off any further conversations as he popped the sparks at the bottom of his time fuse coils.

Harvath grabbed the photo and shoved it into his pocket as Alexandra gathered up the journals and everyone headed for the gangway. Outside, they formed a conga line with Morrell and Carlson on point, and Avigliano covering their six. The goal now was to reach the helicopter, which Morrell was qualified enough to pilot. They had only needed the Russian pilot to fly the chopper from Archangel City and handle any radio traffic on the way in, but now that they were on their way out, Alexandra could handle any radio inquiries and hopefully weave enough bullshit to protect them until they got to the border with Norway and were safely out of Russian airspace.

They weren’t even halfway amidships when they ran into their first problem. Carlson, wearing the night vision goggles that had been in Harvath’s pack, spotted movement up ahead and held up his fist, indicating that the column should stop. “Contact,” he whispered, as he raised Alexandra’s silenced Walther P4 and pointed it down the corridor.

Morrell leaned in close and said, “Don’t pull that trigger unless you’re sure you sighted a hostile. We don’t want any casualties among any of the crew or technicians.”

“These two are definitely hostile,” replied Carlson. “Both look like they’re carrying assault weapons.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“All right, take them.”

Carlson’s weapon bucked twice in his large hands accompanied by two muffled coughs. “Tangos one and two down,” he said.

“Let’s strip ’em,” said Morrell as he waved the team forward.

The Spetsnaz soldiers were indeed carrying assault weapons, two nine-millimeter PP-90M submachine guns. Harvath took one, and Avigliano traded Alexandra the Pit Bull for the other. The soldiers were also carrying several fragmentation as well as flashbang grenades, which Morrell divvied up amongst the team. Though it would have helped their cover if they could have gotten Harvath and Alexandra into the Spetsnaz uniforms with their black balaclavas and pretend that Raisa was helping guide them around the ship, there was no time for that. They needed to keep pressing on towards the helicopter parked on the aft deck.

Eventually, one of the engineers was able to restore the emergency lighting and the hallways took on an eerie red hue. Raisa watched with a great deal of apprehension as they passed by four lifeboats outlined in reflected tape just outside the windows. She was beginning to doubt whether Alexandra Ivanova and her colleagues were going to live up to their end of the bargain or if they were more concerned with saving their own skins and sneaking away without a trace. “We need to raise the alarm,” she said. “The people on this ship need time to evacuate. There’s some light now, that will help, but they need to get started. Your fire is going to spread very quickly.”

“Once we have the helicopter in sight,” said Morrell, “we’ll sound the alarm, but not until then.” Seeing the look of concern on her face he added, “Don’t worry. Your colleagues are going to have plenty of time to abandon ship.”

“And once they do? Then what? It’s below freezing outside.”

“There are three nuclear icebreakers and two submarines waiting out there. Trust me, this is one group of people that Russia will not want to lose.”

Raisa reluctantly accepted Morrell’s answer and settled back into line, trying to ignore the remaining lifeboats that they passed.

They were less than fifty meters from the aft deck when Gordon Avigliano dropped to one knee and yelled, “We’ve got company,” as he opened up with his weapon on full auto.

Harvath turned and saw at least five Spetsnaz soldiers as they dove through open doorways on either side of the corridor behind them. “Let’s get some cover quick,” he yelled.

Morrell immediately responded, “There’s no place to go but aft.”

Harvath was about to say something, when two of the Russian troops pointed their weapons into the hall and pulled the triggers.

The corridor acted like a giant funnel, channeling the deadly fire right towards them. Thankfully, the Spetsnaz rounds went high and missed the team who dove to the floor.

“Go,” yelled Avigliano to his colleagues. “I’ll hold them.”

“No way,” replied Harvath. “We all go together.”

“We can’t. Somebody needs to keep them pinned down. I’m not going to argue about this.”

“Gordy, listen,” began Harvath who then stopped as he felt a hand reaching into his coat pocket. Before he could stop her, Alexandra had removed the two fragmentation grenades Morrell had given him and pulled both pins.

“Men,” she snorted as she pitched the devices down the hallway toward where the Spestnaz troops were hiding.

Harvath yelled ‘Grenade,’ but it was hardly necessary. Not only had the rest of the team seen what Alexandra had done, but they were already on their feet running for the helicopter.

Seconds later, the fragmentation grenades exploded, neutralizing the Spetsnaz troops behind them and starting yet another fire. This time, Raisa didn’t wait for Rick Morrell’s permission. At the next fire alarm they passed, she pulled it and ran.

Before they even burst outside onto the aft deck, they could already hear the heavy chopping of the Assault Helicopter’s rotors. “Sounds like somebody else is trying to leave without us,” said Carlson.

“Damn it,” snapped Morrell, turning to the demolitions expert. “Hit the hull charges and send this fucker to the bottom of the ocean right now.”

Carlson reached into his demo sack and removed a lightweight transmitter, about the size of a portable MP3 player, which was part of an improved Remote Activation Munition System, or RAMS. Developed by the Army Research Lab in Adelphi, Maryland, RAMS allowed Special Operations teams to remotely detonate munitions from ranges of over two kilometers away. In this case, it wasn’t the distance that mattered, but rather the amount of metal the signal had to penetrate to successfully activate the blasting caps on Carlson’s charges.

He depressed the buttons in quick succession. A series of resounding
thuds
began at the bow and came racing toward them. The entire vessel shuddered as the muted blasts signaled one gaping hole after another being torn in the enormous ship’s hull. Even if the crew raced to seal off the bulkheads of the compartments now filling with icy water, they wouldn’t be able to prevent the
Gagarin
from meeting its fate.

Charging out onto the deck, the team found that during their time inside, the storm had grown much worse. Thick snow was being driven in heavy sheets by a sharp arctic wind. Visibility had been severely impaired, but not to such an extent that they couldn’t see General Stavropol as he reached the door to the helicopter. Harvath raised his weapon, but before he could fire, the team was under attack from above.

More Spetsnaz troops, this time armed with AK-105s, were shooting at them from the upper deck. While Morrell and the rest of the team maneuvered to return fire, Harvath, along with Alexandra, held their positions.

The ferocious wind was incessant and combined with the thick snow, made it all but impossible to find an opportunity to take a shot as they heard the helicopter lift off. As it did, the blowing snow receded and through the glass Alexandra not only saw General Stavropol safe and sound onboard, but also the lopsided smile stretched across his pockmarked face.

Ignoring the fact that the hull of the
Gagarin
had steadily been filling with freezing water, Alexandra took aim, but just as she applied the final pressure to the trigger, there was a deafening groan and the ship listed steeply to starboard. The Pit Bull discharged, but the round completely missed its target as Alexandra came crashing down hard onto the perilously inclined deck and dropped one of the notebooks. As she did, the chopper’s rotor wash swept the other completely overboard.

Alexandra lunged for the remaining notebook and felt herself sliding down the deck toward the
Gagarin
’s iron railing. She threw her arms out and fought to find any kind of handhold she could, but it was no use. There was nothing between her and the fast approaching railing to stop or even slow her ever-increasing speed.

She felt herself slip beneath the railing and as if she were a cloud, become perfectly weightless. Her stomach leapt, the same way it did when she took an abrupt hill too fast in her car, and then suddenly she felt a great pain in her arm.
But that was impossible
. She knew she had slipped beneath the railing. Then she heard the voice and realized how wrong she was.

“Alexandra, help me! I can’t hold onto you.”

It was Harvath.

Alexandra opened her eyes and looked up. Harvath was leaning over the edge of the ship. He was holding onto her wrist with his left hand.

The pain of suspending her in subzero temperatures several stories above the White Sea was emblazoned like bright red neon across his features. “Alexandra!” he yelled again. “Reach up with your other hand!”

Alexandra tried, but she couldn’t. She opened her mouth to speak, but try as she might, no sound would come out. She could feel Harvath’s grip slipping and was paralyzed with fear.

“I’m losing my grip,” groaned Harvath, his arms feeling as if they were going to tear away from his body at any moment. Summoning every last ounce of strength he had, Harvath roared and gave one final tug, which succeeded in hauling Alexandra the rest of the way back onto the icy deck, where he lay in a heap next to her, totally spent.

Harvath never noticed the two Spetsnaz soldiers until they were standing right over him and by then, it was too late. Harvath went to grab for his gun, but one of the men put his boot down on his hand.

“Easy,” said Morrell. “It’s us.”

Morrell helped Harvath up while Avigliano assisted Alexandra.

Rejoining DeWolfe and Carlson, Morrell gave Harvath and Alexandra the pick of Spetsnaz bodies and told them to get out of their clothes and into the Spetsnaz uniforms as quickly as possible, before more of the troops showed up. As it turned out, more soldiers were not what they had to worry about, as the Mi-17–1V helicopter, which had been hovering off the aft deck, turned and came back in with its 23-mm gun pods blazing.

“Incoming!” yelled Morrell as the team dove for cover.

The helicopter peppered not only the aft deck, but also half of its housing, showering them with broken glass, splintered wood, and twisted metal.

As the helicopter swung out and prepared to make another run, Harvath reached for his gun, but something else caught his eye. Leaning against a pile of coiled rope was Alexandra’s Pit Bull.

The helicopter was fifty meters out and closing fast when Morrell and the rest of the team took aim and began firing. The Mi-17–1V answered with its own deadly barrage of fire, but when it got within spitting distance and Harvath could see it as well as he could through the blinding curtains of snow, he began firing.

One then two, followed by a third of the armor-piercing rounds found their mark and the assault helicopter exploded in an enormous ball of fire.

“That was for Gary, asshole,” said Harvath as he watched the burning chopper crash into the sea.

As the team regrouped, Carlson commented on how their primary means of escape was now charred and sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

Ever the tactician, Morrell quickly sifted through the possibilities for escape and said, “We’ve got options,” he said, “We’ll figure something out.”

“Whatever it is,” said Carlson, “we’d better do it fast.”

Alexandra cleared her throat and suggested, “How about the
Vyesna
?”

“What’s the
Vyesna
?” asked Avigliano.

“It’s one of the nuclear icebreakers,” she said, pointing over the side of the
Gagarin
through the snow. “The large red one off the port bow.”

“You think the Russian Navy is just going to let us sail right out of here with it?” asked DeWolfe.

“First of all, they don’t have to know we’re on it,” replied Alexandra, “and secondly, the Russian Navy doesn’t have much to say about it. Especially if they believe that the
Vyesna
is having a problem with its reactor.”

DeWolfe was starting to see what she had in mind. “But they’ll want to put one of their people on it to check it out.”

“I doubt it. The icebreakers aren’t part of the Russian Navy. They’re all privately owned by a Russian conglomerate called the Murmansk Shipping Company. The
Vyesna
is one of the oldest in their fleet. It should have been retired a long time ago. My guess is that if there’s an accident onboard, complete with the threat of a radiation leak, the Russian Navy won’t want to get anywhere near that boat. They’ll want it out of the area right away.”

“They’ll expect it to return to port though,” said Carlson.

“That’s what I’m counting on. The service base for the Murmansk Shipping Company is on the Kola Peninsula only a hundred kilometers south of the Norwegian border. Once we are on land, we can find a car, a truck, or whatever is available and go. Up there, it is still the two months of constant darkness known as Polar night, so we’ll have added cover.”

With the fire alarm still blaring and Morrell expecting more soldiers to show up at any moment, he looked at Harvath, then studied the team and said, “I vote we grab the nearest lifeboat and get the hell out of here. If anyone’s got any better ideas, now’s the time.” When no one offered an alternative, he shouldered one of the AK-105s and instructed the team to watch their backs as they moved out.