“Aye, Kapitan. Don’t worry, I have three men on sonar. If the K-363 makes a move, we’ll hear her.”
Scott started up the ladder.
“Jake…”
He looked down at Alex’s and Abakov’s upturned faces.
“Be careful,” she said, even though she knew it sounded lame.
“Stand aside,” Scott said.
He spun the handwheel on the underside of the hatch to retract the dogs, then put his back against the wheel and carefully cracked the hatch off its seat, allowing air pressure inside the CCP to vent into the escape trunk. After decompression, he threw the hatch cover open, climbed into the trunk, and redogged the cover.
Inside the trunk a feeble caged lightbulb gave just enough illumination for Scott to get his bearings. He switched on the portable light and shined its beam over the silver-gray walls of the trunk, and, overhead on the upper hatch and its release mechanism. He saw water leaking past the trunk’s upper hatch seal and suspected that the hatch at the top of the tunnel leading to the bridge had also been damaged. If so, the tunnel itself might have been damaged. A catastrophic failure of the upper hatch or collapse of the tunnel would flood the escape trunk and the CCP. Normally the tunnel was dry to permit access topside. But if the K-480 was ever sunk in water shallow enough to permit the crew to escape, the upper hatch, equipped with explosive bolts, would be blown open to flood the tunnel and permit egress from the escape trunk where Scott stood.
Scott heard a heavy flow of water and saw it swirling around his orange boots and out a wide crack in the floor of the trunk into the CCP below. His inspection revealed that the crack in the floor also ran up the wall of the trunk. He followed it around the circular chamber, where it petered out in a web of cracks at one of a dozen vertical rows of one-inch-diameter bolts evenly spaced around the trunk’s circumference. The bolts helped anchor the chamber to heavy steel support frames inside the free-flooding sail.
He winced when he saw that the collision with the K-363 had not only wrenched the escape trunk out of alignment but had also pulled several of the massive bolt heads through the hardened steel wall of the trunk as if it were soft cheese. Seawater poured into the trunk through the enlarged, puckered bolt holes while it also poured in from above through the sprung hatch.
Scott concluded that the overhead tunnel wasn’t flooded, a sign that the damage wasn’t as great as he had feared. Otherwise water would be shooting out from around the hatch under pressure so great, it would have sliced through his immersion suit. He spun the handwheel on the upper hatch to retract the dogs and, bent double on the ladder below it, tested the hatch against a possible pressure head of seawater. When it gave easily, he cracked it open.
A torrent of icy water crashed over Scott’s shoulders. He felt the ocean’s cold knife through the immersion suit and knew that without it he’d be immobilized from the cold. The flood ebbed and he swung the heavy cover up and away until its lip caught the safety catch made to hold it open.
Overhead he saw a long tunnel with welded-on rungs and handholds receding into blackness. The lantern beam revealed a fan of water shooting into the tunnel under high pressure just below the sealed hatch at the tunnel’s upper end. Water crashing against the tunnel’s wall flowed down its length and poured from the open hatch below, into the escape trunk, and out through its cracked floor into the CCP.
Despite the texture molded into the heavy rubber gloves and boots attached to the immersion suit, Scott found it hard to get a grip on the steel rungs. The climb was slow and difficult. Water shooting into the tunnel drenched Scott and took his breath away. Halfway up he slipped and almost fell but held on with both hands to a slippery rung above his head.
He reached the underside of the upper hatch, played light over its rough steel, and saw that the hatch itself wasn’t damaged but that the tunnel had been caved in and fractured, which allowed water into the tunnel. Scott didn’t doubt that the tunnel would probably collapse under heavy sea pressure and flood the escape trunk and CCP.
He looked around for the emergency SC1 speaker he knew was mounted in the lower end of the tunnel.
He found the large flat speaker button painted white, which he hit with the flat of his gloved hand.
“CCP, Scott!” he bellowed.
“CCP, aye. We hear you, Kapitan. Are you all right?” It was the starpom.
“High and dry,” Scott said.
But he wasn’t. Scott slipped and fell down three rungs before he got a firm grip. Slag from a rough weld on one of the rungs tore through the immersion suit and his flesh.
“Kapitan…?”
“I’m okay,” Scott said. “We’ve got damage to the trunk and upper tunnel. Can’t go deep or we’ll flood.” He filled them in and then started back down.
Scott dropped the last fifteen feet down the tunnel and scrambled into the trunk. He unclipped the upper hatch cover, dogged it, then opened the lower hatch, unleashing a flood of freezing water onto Abakov and the starpom waiting for him at the base of the ladder. Scott dropped to the deck and collapsed in an orange-suited heap.
He was greeted by the starpom’s warning: “Kapitan, sonar contact—”
“The K-363?” Scott said.
“I hear a circulating pump—not a main, something else.”
Abakov helped Scott out of the immersion suit. He was soaked. And bloody.
“Scott, you’re injured,” Alex insisted.
“Later.” Scott squelched across the CCP to the sonar repeater.
“Close aboard, Kapitan,” said the starpom.
“Bearing?”
“Weak signature. Bearing two-four-zero…two-three-nine…two-three-eight…”
“Dropping abaft the port beam,” Scott said.
“Jake, you need some dry clothes,” Alex said.
“And you need to stay out of my way, Doctor.”
He ignored Alex’s angry look and turned to the starpom. “Okay we’re on zero-two-two. Let’s move in nice and slow. Come right to course one-eight-zero. Let’s see if we can find the K-363 and have a talk with our friend Zakayev.”
“Have a talk?” Alex, still angry, was also incredulous. “What do you mean?”
“In the U.S. Navy we call it a Gertrude: an underwater telephone that works like sonar. They’re omnidirectional and short on range and security, but it’s a way to communicate with another sub.” He pointed to the unit equipped with a mike and headphones, mounted on the bulkhead near the diving station. “I don’t know what the Russian Navy calls theirs.”
“Nina,” said the starpom.
“Let’s raise them.”
“Why would you want to talk to him? And what good would it do?”
“There might be time to strike a deal, to make Zakayev understand that he has no good options left.”
“He won’t deal,” Abakov said. “I told you, he’s determined to kill as many people as he can. You’re wasting your time.”
“Not if it’ll prevent a disaster.”
“But what if their Nina isn’t switched on?” Alex asked. “How will they hear you?”
“It’s self-activating. If we send, it’ll activate their Nina and they’ll hear us. They don’t have to answer but I think they will.”
“What makes you so sure?” Alex pressed.
Scott looked past her at Abakov. “Zakayev might be glad to hear from an old friend.”
“Me?” Abakov said, looking doubtful.
“Sure.”
“And what am I to say?”
“Tell him to surrender.”
“And I’ll say it again. Fuck your orders!”
For a small man, Zakayev proved stronger than Litvanov thought possible. He slammed his forearm into Litvanov’s throat, driving him against the chart table, pinning him and sending charts and instruments flying. He jammed the short, thick barrel of the pistol into Litvanov’s right ear.
Sailors watched, paralyzed, frightened by what they had seen and by Zakayev speaking to Litvanov in an unnervingly calm voice: “I gave you an order and you will obey it.”
Litvanov clawed at the arm crushing his windpipe. But Zakayev only bore down harder until Litvanov dropped his hands and let them go limp at his sides.
“It doesn’t matter to me how you die, Georgi,” said Zakayev, “whether from radiation poisoning or from a bullet in the brain. But die you will. Now you can order Veroshilov to trigger the charges or I’ll kill you and order him to do it. What matters is that we accomplish our mission, not how we do it.”
“It won’t work,” Litvanov croaked. “The other boat is somewhere close aboard. If he gets off a torpedo shot, we’ll go to the bottom like a rock and the reactor will go down with us.”
“But he doesn’t know exactly where we are,” Zakayev said calmly.
“He’s hunting for us, I tell you.”
“And he hasn’t found us. Are you afraid to die? Is that it?” Zakayev smelled Litvanov’s sour breath and overpowering sweat.
“No, I’m not afraid to die.”
“Good. Then you understand that I won’t hesitate to kill you.”
Zakayev kept the pistol jammed in Litvanov’s ear and reached overhead with his free hand and pulled down an SC1 mike, stretching its coiled cord taut. “Give the order.”
Litvanov took the mike and toggled the Talk switch. Zakayev pushed away from Litvanov, stepped back, and watched him, the pistol aimed at his chest. He motioned with it that he should call Veroshilov. Litvanov brought the mike to his mouth, but his flaring eyes gave him away. Zakayev spun around and was face-to-face with Veroshilov brandishing a heavy tool above his head.
Zakayev shot Veroshilov in the jaw, the pistol’s deafening blast searing the air in the confined space of the CCP. The 9mm round tore Veroshilov’s face apart below the eyes and blew him backward against the periscope stand. For a moment he stood perfectly still, his ruined face a mask of dark blood and white bone. Then his knees gave way and he crashed facedown on deck.
The tool Veroshilov had been armed with, a heavy open-ended manifold wrench, crashed with him.
Only it bounced crazily like a thing alive, end over end, and collided with a run of stainless-steel pipes that rang like bells in a church steeple calling the faithful to services.
Litvanov, roaring, came at Zakayev like an out-of-control machine. Zakayev twisted away but not in time to avoid one of Litvanov’s rocklike fists aimed at the side of his head. The blow delivered a shock of searing pain that made points of light dance in the smoky air before Zakayev’s eyes.
Litvanov went for the pistol in Zakayev’s hand. Zakayev ripped it from Litvanov’s fingers and brought the barrel down on the back of his head. Litvanov, still roaring, dropped to his hands and knees, gulping for air.
Zakayev looked around at the sailors in the CCP stunned into silence, horrified by the faceless Veroshilov. He held the pistol loosely in his hand and gestured to the senior michman, Arkady. “You, prepare to surface the boat.”
The warrant officer tore his eyes from Veroshilov to a groaning Litvanov with blood-matted hair, trying to sit up.
“Did you hear me?”
The warrant officer fled to the diving station to initiate the surfacing routine.
“Sonar. Where is the other submarine?”
“General, I…”
“Don’t look at the kapitan, look at me when you speak.”
“I-I don’t hear her…sir.”
“What do you hear?”
“Pinging to the north. There are active sonobuoys to the west, but they are fading.”
Zakayev leaned against the chart table. They would surface and pretend to surrender. The Russians would think they had won. For that he didn’t need Veroshilov. Or Litvanov. He only needed the chief engineer who had volunteered to blow the charges. After that, it would essentially be over.
He grabbed the SC1 mike swinging lazily at the end of its cord and, watching the crew watching him, brought it to his mouth. “Chief Engineer. This is General Zakayev speaking. Kapitan Litvanov has been injured. I am in command. Listen carefully to my orders….”
Behind Zakayev, something that sounded like a cheap radio speaker filled with static made a croaking noise. A moment later a flat, mechanical-sounding voice that had been carried underwater by slow-moving sonar waves reverberated into the CCP.
“Colonel Yuri Abakov calling Colonel Alikhan Zakayev.”
“It’s Nina…” a mystified sailor said, pointing to the device.
Zakayev looked around as if expecting to see that someone he knew had entered the CCP.
“The underwater telephone,” a groggy Litvanov said, pointing to the lit-up equipment mounted on the bulkhead behind Zakayev.
“Colonel Yuri Abakov calling Colonel Alikhan Zakayev,” said the voice.
Zakayev stood rooted in place, the SC1 mike still in his hand listening to a voice from the past.
“K-480 to K-363. This is KGB Colonel Yuri Abakov calling KGB Colonel Alikhan Zakayev.”
The failed 1991 coup in Moscow. Abakov had moved up, became Colonel Abakov in the FSB, Zakayev realized, and now this. How long had they known about his plan? Days? Months?
“KGB Colonel Yuri Abakov calling KGB Colonel Alikhan Zakayev. Ali, can you read me?”
Zakayev dropped the SC1 mike and picked the Nina mike up from its cradle.
A petty officer stepped forward and adjusted the gain. “This is General Zakayev speaking.” His voice rumbled through the sea, distorted but recognizable.
“Hello, Alikhan Andreyevich. It’s been a long time.”
“You picked a strange place to meet wouldn’t you say, Yuri?”
Litvanov was on his feet, a hand to the back of his head. He waved off a sailor coming to help.
“In the middle of the Baltic. Yes. Very strange. Perhaps we can do something about that.”
“What?”
“Find a place more conducive to rekindle an old friendship.”
“We were never friends, Yuri. Colleagues.”
“Still, it would be good to talk.”
“There is nothing to talk about.”
“But there is much to talk about. We may be able to settle a few things we both have on our minds.
Perhaps we could even strike a mutually agreeable deal.”
“There are no deals to be struck. No compromises. I suggest you tell that to your handlers in the Kremlin.”
“The Kremlin. Pah! This is between you and me….” Abakov’s voice started to break up and fade. “Can you hear me, General?”
“I hear you. Between you and me, eh? And the Russian Navy.”