CHAPTER 55
“H
ow's the leak?” asked Borodin as he entered Compartment Eight.
“The bilge pump is able to keep up with it, Captain.”
“Good.”
Earlier, one of the two bilge pumps serving Compartments Seven and Eight burned out. The remaining pump controlled the persistent leak from the propeller shaft.
The officer in charge of Compartment Eight reported on the status of his men and critical systems. Satisfied, Borodin started to return to the CCP, when the officer asked a parting question.
“Sir, any word yet on when Captain Lieutenant Kirov will make his dive?”
“He should be in the water in a couple of hours.”
“That's good to hear, sir. I know he can do it.”
“Me too,” Borodin offered with a friendly smile. Still, he had his doubts.
Even if Yuri managed to close the bulkhead door, the
Neva
might not rise to the surface.
When Compartment Two was relieved of seawater, buoyancy calculations confirmed that the submarine should float to the surface, even with the flooded torpedo room. But success of the operation hinged on two critical factors. First, to displace the flooded seawater in the second compartment there must be sufficient compressed air available. Additional math indicated that the assembly of high-pressure air flasks nested between the top of the pressure casing and the outer hull covering contained just enough volume to do the job. But it would be a onetime event. Once the reserve tanks had vented, there would be no additional compressed air for another attempt.
The
Neva
had the capacity to recharge the compressed air cylinders, but only when on the surface. Igniting the diesel-powered compressor while submerged would suck out the entire air volume of the hull within seconds.
The second critical factor was an unknown. With the
Neva
partially buried in the bottom, the suction power of the semi-fluid muck against the steel hull remained an elusive commodity. Even with the compartment dewatered and every ballast and trim tank blown dry, the submarine might stay glued to the seabed.
* * *
“Can you take me to Point Roberts?” Ken Newman stood next to a yellow cab outside of the Vancouver bus station at 5:15
P.M
. The Greyhound from Seattle had arrived ten minutes earlier.
“Sure,” the cabbie replied. “I can take you there but it'll cost you.”
“How much?”
The cabbie quoted the price.
“Wow, why so much?”
“I heard from one of our other drivers that the Yanks have just one lane open tonight, some kind of staffing problem going on at the border. The lineup could take thirty to forty minutes to get through. The meter runs the whole time.”
“Get me as close as you can and I'll walk across.”
“That'll work. Climb in.”
As Ken settled into the backseat of the taxi, his carry-on bag at his side, he rehearsed his storyline for the border station: He needed to pick up his carâhe'd left it at Point Roberts a couple of days ago to go on a boat trip. The boat broke down near Port Angeles so he had returned for his vehicle.
Ken wanted his Corvette back, especially with his pending trial. If he was convicted of a DUI, Canada would deny him entry. But that didn't really motivate him. More than ever, he wanted payback. Laura was not going to dump him without a fight!
* * *
Captain Miller removed the .45-caliber Colt M1911 semiautomatic pistol from the ship's safe in his stateroom. He had inherited his father's handgun, a souvenir from the Korean War.
Sitting at his desk, Miller inserted a seven-round magazine into the butt of the handgrip and slammed it home. He pulled the slide back, chambering a round. After setting the safety, he turned and pointed the barrel toward the port bulkhead. “Get the hell off my boat,” he said, rehearsing.
Miller's conscience told him to take off, the specter of incarceration the driver. But another worry plagued him: He dreaded the prospect of losing the
Hercules.
The workboat not only represented his livelihood but also served as his home
.
He'd read somewhere that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration could confiscate any vehicles involved in drug trafficking: cars, airplanes, and boats.
The
Hercules
would be a juicy target. He had just over two million invested, most of it in the form of a mortgage. The Feds could take the boat and sell it at auction, pocketing whatever cash it generated. He would end up owing the unpaid loan balanceâa total screwing by Uncle Sam.
Miller's initial reaction was to evict Nick and Elena, both still in the galley; Laura and the other guy had not yet returned. Miller would then fire up the
Herc
's engine and cast off the lines. But he backpedaled.
They hadn't told him a thing about what they were looking for. It could be anything! He was just a hired hand, an innocent party.
Miller considered
Little Mack
. He had never operated it while offshore of Point Roberts. Laura owned it. And he had a Bill of Sale to prove it.
Miller's initial panic mitigated. One more run with the
Herc
and he'd earn the balance of his bonus.
Another ten Kâit
's
worth the risk!
Nevertheless, Captain Miller's guard remained up. At the first hint of trouble, he would order all ashore. The .45 would ensure compliance.
CHAPTER 56
K
en Newman reclaimed his Corvette in a lot near the border station. The gas tank was low.
“I need forty bucks of gas for pump three,” he told the clerk of a Point Roberts gas station.
The kid punched in the transaction on the cash register and it computed the exchange. He said, “That'll be forty-eight fifty-five.”
Ken removed two U.S. twenties from his wallet.
“Oh,” the cashier said, eyeing the U.S. currency. He'd assumed Ken was Canadian and had quoted the price in Canadian dollars. His cash register had two drawers, one for U.S. funds, the other Canadian.
Ken was about to hand over the bills when he spotted the Chevy Suburban through a window. It had just pulled up to a stop sign near the store. The gas station's exterior lighting illuminated the driver's side of the SUV.
“Son of a bitch,” Ken muttered.
“What?” the clerk asked.
The Suburban pulled out, heading south toward the marina.
Ken sprinted to the door and watched the taillights of the Suburban as it sped away.
* * *
Laura didn't notice her husband's sports car parked next to the fuel island. Another vehicle fueling hid it.
“They should have more than one lane open,” commented Yuri as traffic came to a halt.
“That's for sure.”
The lineup into Point Roberts stretched for over a quarter of mile northward along Fifty-sixth Street. It took forty-five minutes to reach the border crossing.
At the border, the CBP agent made a cursory examination of their passports but didn't bother to look in the back of the Suburban. It contained a pair of steel high-pressure gas cylinders, each about four feet long.
Yuri had a ready explanation if questioned. “Gas supplies for the workboat
Hercules
.”
Laura wasn't pleased with what she and Yuri had done earlierâoutright stealing.
As expected, the North Vancouver diving company's yard was locked. Yuri used the bolt cutter borrowed from the
Herc
's tool room to sever the padlock.
They had driven into the yard, closing the chain-link gate behind. Laura parked behind a forty-foot-long shipping container, concealing the Suburban from the road and the yard's overhead lights. There were no obvious surveillance cameras. Yuri culled through the stack of high-pressure steel bottles stored next to a corner of the office building.
He remembered the collection of cylinders, hoses, control valves, and manifolds from his previous visitâthe gas supply for a saturation dive system.
Yuri found most cylinders depleted or near empty. But he did find seven bottles with residual pressure. He selected the best pair, one with helium and the other oxygen. The pressures were not sufficient to recharge the rebreather fully, but they'd do.
Just before closing the yard gate, Laura walked over to the office and slipped a folded sheet of paper into the entry door's mail slot. Printed on the paper she'd written
Sorry, I hope this is enough
, and inside the folds she left five one-hundred-dollar bills.
Laura turned off the main road and entered a marina parking lot. As they headed south down the driveway Yuri asked, “Do you think they left anything for us to eat?”
“You want hamburgers, don't you?”
“Of course!”
Laura checked the dashboard clock: 7:05
P.M
. “If there isn't anything aboard, I'll order cheeseburgers from Fat Billie's.”
“With fries and chocolate shakes?”
She smiled. “Of course!”
* * *
After striking out at the beach house, Ken found the Suburban parked near a marina restroom building. He sat on a waterside park bench about a hundred feet from the Chevy. In front of him were hundreds of moored boats, backlit by an ocean of amber dock lights.
Where the hell did she go?
Ken was thinking about retreating to his car to find dinner, when he noticed the huge boat moored at the end of a nearby floating pier. It dominated all nearby craft. The aft deck of the massive vessel lit up, illuminated by a bank of overhead floodlights. Two figures walked into the light.
Ken stood up and walked closer to the shore. The male limped.
Gotcha!
CHAPTER 57
Y
uri and Laura sat side-by-side on the stern deck of the
Hercules
surrounded by diving equipment. Paper wrappers from their take-out dinner lay at their feet.
Laura gestured at the diving backpack in front of Yuri. “How long will it last?”
“At least three hours.”
“Are you really going to stay down that long?”
“It's all about bottom time; the longer I'm working on the bottom, the longer the decompression will be.” Yuri did not volunteer that the gas supply was only partially charged.
“How do you figure out your decompression?”
“Well, at the
Neva
's depth, and using a rebreather, it's a bit tricky. First, I have to program my dive computer to . . .”
* * *
Ken Newman was perched on the flybridge of a cabin cruiser parked four slips landward of the
Hercules
. He couldn't hear the conversation but he had a clear view of the couple.
Ken had watched as Laura and three men stood on the workboat's fantail talking. One of the guys was the bastard who'd attacked him at the beach house.
A blonde appeared carrying a bag full of takeout. She and two of the men returned to the cabin, leaving Laura and Ken's nemesis alone.
Who the hell are these people and just what are they up to?
And why is Laura with them?
* * *
“What's wrong?” asked Laura, still sitting on the
Herc
's fantail deck.
“I don't trust these batteries.” Yuri held the dive light that he'd retrieved from Viktor's corpse. He aimed the beam at a sailboat about a hundred feet across the navigation channel.
“It doesn't look very bright,” Laura offered.
“I think the batteries are going.” He had replaced the original spent batteries with eight D cells he found aboard the
Hercules
, most scrounged from flashlights.
“Are there any more aboard?”
“Not that I could find.”
“What about the batteries in the light Nick bought?”
“They're rechargeableânot compatible with our system.” Nick's light was useless for Yuri's needs, limited to a hundred meters' depth.
Laura stood up. “I'll run up to the store and get some spares. How many do you want?”
“At least ten. And I'd like fresh batteries for my dive computer.”
“What kind?”
Yuri provided the specifications and added, “You know, the crew's going to be famished. Can you buy some more food for them?”
“Sure, what should I get?”
“Whatever you can find that's simple to prepareâcanned food, sandwiches, fruit. Get as much as you can. I don't know how long we'll have them aboard before they go home.”
“Okay.” But then Laura thought about it: There were over thirty men.
“I'll need someone to help carry the groceries.”
“Take Orlov. And have him pay for it.”
Laura laughed. “Okay.”
* * *
Yuri rested on a bunk in the darkened forward crew cabin. Captain Miller and Elena sipped coffee while watching TV in the galley. Laura and Nick had yet to return from the grocery run.
The once welcome pain in Yuri's left calf now taxed him. He'd taken a couple of ibuprofen tablets earlier, but they'd had no effect.
What would happen when he entered the water again?
Yuri would be violating a cardinal diving rule: Avoid diving while recovering from decompression sickness. It takes several months or more of recuperation before a bent diver can return to the water. Yuri's body had had just two weeks to heal itself.
The frigid bottom waters also concerned Yuri. He had used a chemical heating pack over his chest to warm his heart and lungs during the ascent but had no spares. He would have no choice but to don extra layers beyond his standard dive dress. He'd already raided Captain Miller's locker, selecting a thick sweatshirt, thermal underwear, and two pairs of socks.
If he could resist the cold for half an hour, he had a chance.
Yuri would not be returning to the surface. Without the extra heat to warm his chest cavity, he would not survive the lengthy in-water decompression even if he had enough gas, which he did not. Instead, he would reenter the
Neva
and decompress in the aft escape trunk. He and Viktor had used the system during their lockout work.
One slipup could be his undoing.
Should the rebreather stop flowing gas, he would expire within minutes. A suicidal sprint to the surface would retrigger the bends, this time tearing his guts out. But he'd probably pass out during that ascent; an involuntary inhalation of seawater would finish him off.
Sucking on a dry tank is a diver's fundamental terror. Even if Yuri's rebreather delivered gas on demand, its mixture control must work flawlessly. If the blend of pure oxygen and diluent were off, death could be just a few breaths away. A mixture rich in oxygen would result in convulsions and an abrupt loss of consciousness. Lean oxygen levels would starve the brain, also causing unconsciousness. For both conditions, death by drowning would follow.
The debris inside the torpedo room presented another worry.
Little Mack
provided a preview of what waited ahead. Yuri would need to take special care to avoid the maze of jagged and scorched equipment scattered throughout the compartment.
The prospect of swimming with the decomposing corpses of his former shipmates horrified Yuri; he nearly gagged at the thought. He decided he would not look at their faces.
Yuri wondered about another risk. It would be noisy aboard the
Neva
tonight; he worried that underwater sensors might detect the rescue effort.
It had been almost two weeks since he'd disabled the Venus network. Yuri deployed an autonomous underwater vehicle from a torpedo tube. It crushed the fiber-optic cable that linked the bottom sensors to the shore; the damage mimicked impact from a ship's anchor.
The plan had been to shut down the Venus array for several days to allow the
Neva
to enter and depart the Strait without detection by the hydrophones. But enough time had passed for a repair. When he'd checked the Venus website earlier in the afternoon, it remained offline. That comforted Yuri; still he fretted.
Yuri considered Captain Miller. Just what would Miller do if he succeeded tonight? But that wasn't Yuri's problem; Nick and Elena would have to handle itâsomehow, maybe with more cash.
And finally Laura, sweet Laura, she'd risked everything. How could he ever repay such a debt? How could he leave her?
Yuri reminded himself to focus on the mission. As he had done most of his adult life, he rehearsed critical tasks in his head, previewing events to come. He worked out potential problems before they became real ones. He would repeat the process until he had it down pat.
Yuri would need his plans to unfold without a hitch if he were to survive the next twenty-four hours.