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She looked up.
The burner switched off. With his gloves, the driver began to tug at the bow plate. She kicked hard with her fins towards the sled driver, pushing away from the other diver, the regulator slipping from her mouth, leaving her tank and harness in his hands, her eyes fixed on the bow plate. He was about to let it go, let it drop to the floor. But there was no floor, just the abyss. She angled herself down and kicked hard, and caught it just as it fell from his hands, its edges still hot from the burner, cooling quickly due to the water.
It dragged her down headfirst. She was out of her harness, which meant she had no buoyancy. She was sinking fast, but dared not let it go. And she couldn’t breathe. The flimsy regulator from the small cylinder was out of reach, and if she let go of the cap with even one hand, it would slide from her grip.
The sled’s engine whined, and she hoped to God they were chasing her. She could see her dive computer. Fifty metres. Fifty-two. Fifty-four. A hand grabbed her ankle, hauling her back upwards. Fifty-six. Her lungs screamed at her to breathe. He shoved a regulator – not hers, his spare – into her mouth, and pulled her upright. But the sled got free of him, the engine still revving. It careened sideways, then slalomed into the depths, taking her return tank with it. Screwed didn’t cover it. She and the diver stared awhile, watching the sled vanish into the chasm.
When they arrived back at the torpedo tube, she half expected the lead diver to shoot her with his spear gun, or at least give her the hardest glare he could muster. Instead, he pointed to his temple with a finger and drew a circle. Technically it meant he had narcosis – but he couldn’t have, he was on Nitrox – so it meant instead that he’d not realised the mistake he’d been about to make. The other diver who’d rescued her must have figured it out as well, because if they let the torpedo room flood when she entered, it could have sent the sub over the ledge.
She held the steel bow cap to her chest with one arm, and pointed at herself, then the opening, then the cap, then the blowtorch. The driver nodded, for the first time a hint of respect in his eyes. She would have to enter, and he would seal her in. If she failed… No point going there. He took the cap from her, and she turned to face the other diver. She took several deep breaths while he switched on her head torch. She let his spare regulator fall from her mouth, and brought up the small breathing tube from her cylinder, took a short breath to check it was working, then finned to the opening.
Her torch lit up the mirror-shiny passage all the way to the inner hatch eight metres away. She put her arms in front and kicked to manoeuvre her head, then her torso, then her thighs, then her feet and fins inside. One of the divers unbuckled her fins. Of course, they’d just get in the way, especially if – when – she got the inner hatch open. She began crawling through the tube, having to hunch her shoulders to fit, the way Sergei had rounded them back at the airport. She moved forward, taking fast baby steps, with the occasional lurch. A bubbling sound began behind her, followed by clanks and flashes of blue lightning flickering down the steel tube. They were sealing her in. She’d taken four breaths so far.
Six left.
She reached the end, rewarded herself with a fifth breath, and prayed they’d selected the correct tube. It had been a carefully guarded secret, a ‘back door’ in case a submarine was ever hijacked or disabled and the normal points of entry were unusable. The missile bays couldn’t be used as the missiles were in place, but torpedo tubes had to be loaded. This one had a special device inside, just near the inner hatch. The operation had only been tested in training, until four years ago when a Russian sub had almost been lost in a fjord in Norway. Three Special Services divers entered the same way. Must have been pretty slim. Probably women like her.
She reached the inner door and prised open a square flap. The bubbling behind her ceased. They probably hadn’t sealed it completely, just enough to keep it in place – suction and outside pressure would do the rest. There were two buttons: one red, one green. She took another breath, and pressed the green one firmly with her index finger. Nothing. Wait – let it work. Pressing it again might cancel the first press.
She heard a rattling noise, like a chain rolling over steel cogs. She waited some more. Another breath, number seven. Nothing. A popping sound. And another. A creaking noise from the other side. She pushed with all her might against the inner hatch, grinding the neoprene on her knee pads and boots against the tube’s slippery floor to gain traction. No way. Eighth breath. A big one. Don’t panic. Think. Sergei had said push the green one. Not the red. He’d not said what the red one did. She could hear clanks on the other side of the hatch, but it wouldn’t open. Then she understood why.
Someone was on the other side, holding it shut.
The shock of realisation forced her to take another breath. Nine. There was a thick glass eyehole, but it was covered on the other side. She wondered if her Glock could shoot through it. She didn’t even know if it could fire underwater, only that it was meant to work once she was on the other side. Her two dive buddies could see her predicament via the camera. She heard banging behind her, then the fizzing of the blowtorch. Nice thought, but she’d never make it out in time. She squirmed to retrieve the Glock, then stuck the end of the muzzle against the eyehole. Closing her eyes in case it blew up in her face, she squeezed the trigger.
A muffled click.
She should have had one more breath. But when she tried, she was sucking on empty. Story of her life. Sergei had been right with his little extra-time trick, when he’d stopped her breathing earlier, because she didn’t panic. Instead, she stared at the red button. No more options. It might blow up in her face, might try and fire her from the tube for all she knew. But there was no going back.
Her father came into her mind. Maybe she’d get to see him, finally, more than ten years after his death.
She pressed the red button.
Chapter Four (#udf8a0755-e809-586a-bcc2-80cc42d1292a)
Nadia gained some idea of how a bullet felt. She was glad she’d closed her eyes and put her hands over her head immediately after pressing the button. The small explosion blew off the inner hatch, shattered her dive mask, and squirted her into the compact room full of unforgiving metal pipes and valves.
Miraculously she didn’t gouge herself on anything. But she was deaf – temporarily, she hoped – a loud ringing in her ears like a perpetual cymbal. She touched her finger to one ear to see if there was blood, but there was only water. She touched her face: grazed, nothing serious. Water trickled in from the tube, but not much. The sub was stable. Her left ear popped, and she could hear again, though the ringing continued.
The guy who’d been jamming the hatch closed was in bad shape. She sloshed towards him through ankle-deep seawater, the Glock in her right hand. He was armed, but his right elbow was mangled, his gun hanging from broken fingers, and his jaw was badly lopsided. The hatch must have hit him in the face.
‘How many men?’ she asked.
He gurgled something. Blood dribbled from his mouth, and then he tried to move, grimaced, and stayed put. She took a look. He was impaled on a length of shiny copper tubing that had transected his spine midway up his back. Soon to be dead. Beyond him, piled in a corner, were three dead sailors. A Borei sub had a full complement of a hundred and seven men, but this had been a skeleton crew according to Sergei. Twenty men, making a test run.
‘Pizda!’ he snarled, referring to the uniquely female part of her anatomy.
‘You’ve not got long,’ she replied. His pain must have been off the scale.
He told her to go and do something with herself.
She shrugged. ‘Have it your way.’ Nothing she could do anyway except speed him on his way. She figured he and whatever he believed in needed some alone time. She paused a moment, wondering what she would say to her maker when the time came, then decided she’d just give Him the silent treatment until He explained Himself.
The workstation was thankfully waterproof, a light transparent gel casing over everything including each key on the keypad. She inserted the USB key. A message in Russian came up, asking for a password. Sergei had said nothing about a password. Not the kind of thing he would have forgotten. So, the terrorists had inserted one of their own. She wondered why. She moved back to the man bleeding out.
‘Password?’
He spat blood on the floor.
Sergei and the others didn’t have unlimited time; at forty metres they were going to go through their nitrox pretty quickly. They could abort their mission, but Sergei didn’t seem the type. He’d go in anyway, and be killed as he did so.
Not going to happen.
Back in Kadinsky’s camp, she’d been trained in torture techniques. Not just the theory. She’d not slept for days afterwards, and swore she’d never do it for real.
Yet here she was.
But this scenario was tricky. The man was dying. He had little to lose. Which meant she’d have to inflict extreme pain, as well as psychological terror. And she’d have to give him the Promise. She wasn’t sure she could do it. An image of Danton – sick torturer that he’d been, back in the Scillies – arose in her mind, taunting her, calling her a pussy, telling her she could never do what was required, never be what was required.
She visualised Moscow, Katya in Gorky Park with a hundred other people, kids playing, taunting the geese on the lake, people laughing, a father holding his son up to the sky, then a blinding flash, and half a million people reduced to ash in the first seconds of the explosion.
No.
She steeled herself. ‘Last chance,’ she said, for which she received a string of stuttered expletives.
She took out her stubby knife, and thrust it into his left shoulder, severing the tendons that controlled his arm. He half-grunted, half-cried out through gritted teeth, gave her his remaining repertoire of swear words, then began combinations. She took off his belt and strapped it around his forehead, securing him so he couldn’t move a millimetre.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, his breath thready, his voice less sure.
She didn’t answer. The divers outside, and Sergei no doubt, would be watching via the camera. She retrieved the knife, stole a breath, then made an incision in the middle of his forehead, and dragged the knife sideways, both hands on the hilt so as to exert constant pressure. She felt sick as the blood oozed out, but she continued. She needed the password. Now.
So many nerves in the face. He held out for five seconds then began shouting, another five struggling, another five kicking. She continued. His shouts turned to screams.
She paused.
‘Password,’ she said, keeping her voice level.
Tears flowed down his bloody cheeks. Her guts churned, but she gave him a cold, hard stare. Then raised the knife again.
‘Vengeance!’ he half-screamed, half-shouted.
She went over to the terminal, entered the word. The computer came to life, and she downloaded the contents of the USB key. The computer screen began to flash streams of incoherent data, half-formed disjointed images, then it blanked. The lighting in the room flickered, then went out, replaced by red emergency lights.
‘Kill me,’ he said, squinting from blood that dripped from his brow into his eyes.
She took off the camera and placed it on a ledge, facing the other way. Kneeling down next to him, her face close to his so he could spit in it if he wanted to, she spoke. ‘My father was Vladimir Lakshev. Does that name mean anything to you?’
His eyes flared, maybe with recognition, perhaps blinding pain, almost certainly hatred for her. ‘You’ve had all you’re going to get from me, suka. Just do it.’
Fair enough. The Promise. His arms weren’t working, so he couldn’t do it himself. She prised the pistol from his broken fingers, stood up, and aimed it downward at the top of his skull, execution style. Her uncle had shot a horse with a broken leg once, right in front of her and her sister. Katya had cried. Nadia hadn’t. She squeezed the trigger. The gunshot boomed around the closed room. He quivered, then stilled. A torrent of emotions threatened to explode inside her, but she held it all back. Solitary had taught her how to do that.
Later. Much later.
She checked the small glass porthole to the next section. Empty. The hand wheel turned easily enough and she stepped into the bunkroom, then froze. Sixteen corpses, all shot at point-blank range. Most were only in shorts and vests, suggesting at least some had been gunned down while asleep. Precision shooting, heart or headshots, a few in the neck, dead centre.
Whoever had done this, it wasn’t their first mission. Nor was it the work of your average terrorists, whatever they were. Such men would be patriots, passionate, dreaming of glory or martyrdom. They’d cut corners, make mistakes, go over the top when killing – rage or whatever fuelled them evident in their handiwork. This was the work of flawless, stone-cold killers carrying out their tasks with military precision.
She thought back to her own training at Kadinsky’s camps. This resembled the work of highly trained hard-core Special Forces operatives. People like her father. She thought of what she’d just done. Who was she kidding?
People like her.
Staring at the corpses, she recalled what her mother had once said, in front of her father, a jibe at him when he couldn’t respond because young Nadia had been there. She’d said that if you kill people, they wait for you. They are there waiting for you when you die. If she’d been right, the man she’d just shot was about to have his hands full. Which also meant that if she was killed, the man she’d just tortured and shot would be waiting for her too, with a carving knife to sculpt her face.
She was about to move on when she noticed something odd. Two of the corpses had an identical tattoo on their upper arms. A lizard. Maybe they were brothers. They had both been shot in the back. They were at the far end of the bunkroom, by the opposite entrance. The layout of corpses didn’t make sense, unless…these two had been the killers, infiltrators, who had dispatched most of the men but then someone else heard the shots and cut them down. She stared again at the lizard. Some kind of gang tattoo?
The next compartment was empty of bodies: on one side tall fridges and a kitchen, on the other side weapon racks behind padlocked glass doors. She listened. Distant creaks and clangs. Sergei should be aboard by now. She used her Glock to smash the glass, and selected an MP-443 Grach from the rack, attracted by its chunky grip. She checked the eighteen-round magazine, fired a single nine-millimetre round through a fridge door to check it was functional, and walked on.
Under the control room she found another body, this one in a wetsuit like hers, shot in the back. She crouched, did a three-sixty sweep, but neither heard nor saw anything. She aimed her pistol at the spiral staircase leading to the control room.
‘Sergei, you up there?’
No reply. She started to creep up the metal steps, when suddenly she began coughing, at first as if her throat was irritated, then more violently. She backed up, hunched over, her lungs on fire. Her eyes watered, and she stumbled towards a glass case housing an oxygen mask and cylinder, yanked it open, and put it on. As soon as she did, she could breathe again. Once the attack was fully passed, she carefully climbed back up the steps.
Four more corpses awaited her: two with pistols in their hands, lying beneath the periscope; the other two slumped over their control yokes, heads propped up on the dashboards where myriad red lights blinked. No entry or exit wounds. Staring around, she saw no clue of how they’d been killed, until she spotted blackened flakes of paint on the floor.
Looking up, she saw a round hole in the roof, scorch marks all around it, the tough ceiling paint bubbled and black. The hole was about the same size as the cylinder Sergei had been carrying. Must have been a fast-acting neurotoxin, released as soon as the cylinder cored through the submarine’s double hull. Then Sergei and his two men had entered, but the one downstairs had been shot. She needed to find Sergei. She descended to the main deck.
The next hatch porthole revealed the second of Sergei’s divers, face down in a pool of blood still oozing from his throat. Sergei was deeper in the room interrogating someone. Well, that was one word for it. She spun the wheel and entered. Sergei glanced her way, then back to his prisoner, a bald man with a curved scar on his left cheek, naked to the waist, his back covered in tattoos reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno. He was handcuffed to a valve wheel above his head. His legs didn’t look right. Sergei must have smashed the man’s knees with the large wrench lying on the floor. She swallowed, surprised the man was still conscious.
‘Thanks for uploading the virus, Nadia,’ Sergei said.
The prisoner looked her way. ‘Nadia. Nice name.’
Sergei punched him in the gut, clearly not for the first time. ‘Where is it?’ he said.
The man coughed, spat, and continued talking as if having a casual conversation. ‘I knew a man who had a daughter called Nadia. Always talked about her. Said he missed her like the rain.’
Nadia grabbed a pipe for support. That’s what her father used to say. Not to her. To her mother. A bittersweet joke between them. Love had withered early in the marriage.
Sergei took out a knife, and slid it slowly into him, just below the left rib. The man bit down. Spittle and blood bubbled from his lips as he ground his teeth. A groan turned into an angry roar.
‘Where is it?’ Sergei asked. No anger, only a sense of urgency.
The man breathed rapidly, then glanced again in Nadia’s direction. ‘You’d be about the right age. Nikolai called you his Bayushki bayu, his little Cossack.’
The lullaby Katya sang to her. But her father’s name was Vladimir, not Nikolai. That had been the name of their grandfather.
Sergei twisted the knife. This time the man screamed.
‘Leave, Nadia, it’s about to get ugly,’ Sergei said.
‘No, stay,’ the man said. ‘I’ll go.’ He looked up at Sergei. ‘You will join me very soon, comrade, at the bottom of the ocean, where you belong.’ He then moved his jaw, as if chewing something.
Sergei gripped the man’s jaw, tried to force it open. ‘Blyad!’
The man thrashed and bucked, then swallowed something. Sergei hit him in the stomach, trying to make him spit it back out, but it was no good. The man’s body relaxed, and hung limp from the cuffs. But he was still breathing, in shallow gasps.
Sergei groped for the keys in his pocket, but Nadia raised her pistol and fired at the chain between the man’s cuffs. The prisoner slumped to the floor, Sergei breaking his fall.
Sergei spoke to the prisoner again. ‘What did you mean we’re going to join you?’
The man simply stared into space.
She glanced at Sergei. ‘Cyanide?’
He shook his head. ‘TTX.’
She knew it, the deadly toxin from the blue-ringed octopus. ‘It’ll block his ability to breathe.’
‘I know what it does, Nadia.’ Sergei faced her. He spoke quickly. ‘There’s one warhead missing. And he must have set some kind of device to sabotage the sub, blow it up or take it over the ledge.’
‘He’s not going to tell us where it is.’ She knelt next to the prisoner. ‘You said you knew my father. When he was working with the military?’
His body had grown still. Paralysis was setting in. His diaphragm would stop working, and he’d suffocate. But his eyes turned to hers, his speech slurred. ‘After,’ he said. ‘Eight…years ago.’
That couldn’t be right. Her father died eleven years ago. His face took on a blue tinge.
‘Where?’ She thought about mouth-to-mouth to keep him alive, but the toxin…
He stared at her intently. ‘Eyes…like his.’ He tried to breathe in, but couldn’t. ‘T…ch.’ His body trembled once, then his eyes glazed, and the air came out of him in a long sigh, like a deflating balloon.
‘He was the one who killed two of my men, despite the gas,’ Sergei said. ‘We need to find the case. It’s ten to midnight. My guess is there’s a device set to blow the sub at midnight.’
‘Wait, slow down. Case? What case?’
Sergei wasn’t really listening. His eyes darted everywhere, as if searching the compartment. ‘If the warhead is still outside –’
‘It can’t be. What would be the point? It’s gone, somehow. Which is where we need to be.’
He gazed around him again. She understood. This was his sub, his command. And his tomb? Go down with the ship and all that bullshit? Sergei didn’t seem the type.
‘We have to find it, Nadia.’
She grabbed his arm. ‘Sergei, what case? What are you talking about?’
His gaze turned back to her, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘Of course, why would you know?’ He took a breath, and spoke quickly. ‘Each warhead has a series of arming codes, exactly for eventualities like this. Even if you steal a warhead, you can’t arm it. Best you’ll have is a dirty bomb. The arming codes are kept in a reinforced steel case, like a briefcase. Only the Commander and the Executive Officer can access it. And it’s gone.’
‘Do we know if the warhead – or any of the others – have been armed?’
