by Dean Koontz
“We certainly don’t want anyone put at too great a risk on our behalf. It wouldn’t make sense to lose some people to save others. From what you said, your captain sounds confident. So I guess we’re better off leaving all the worrying to you. Have you anything else to tell me?”
“That’s all for the moment,” Timoshenko said. “Stay by your radio. We’ll keep you informed of developments.”
Everyone except Harry and George had something to say about the call from the Ilya Pogodin’s communications officer—suggestions about preparations to be made for the rescue party, ideas about how they might be able to help the Russians scale the leeward wall—and everyone seemed determined to say it first, now, instantly. Their voices, echoes of their voices, and echoes of the echoes filled the ice cave.
Harry acted as a moderator and tried to keep them from jabbering on to no point.
When George Lin saw that their excitement had begun to abate and that they were growing quieter, he finally joined the group and faced Harry. He had something to say after all, and he had only been waiting until he was certain he would be heard. “What was a Russian submarine doing in this part of the world?”
“This part of the world?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m afraid I don’t, George,”
“It doesn’t belong here.”
“But these are international waters.”
“They’re a long way from Russia.”
“Not all that far, actually.”
Lin’s face was distorted by anger, and his voice was strained. “But how did they learn about us?”
“From monitoring radio reports, I suppose.”
“Exactly. Precisely,” Lin said, as if he had proved a point. He looked at Fischer and then at Claude, searching for a supporter. “Radio reports. Monitoring.” He turned to Roger Breskin. “And why would the Russians be monitoring communications in this part of the world?” When Breskin shrugged, Lin said, “I’ll tell you why. For the same reason this Lieutenant Timoshenko speaks English so well: The Pogodin is on a surveillance mission. It’s a goddamned spy ship, that’s what it is.”
“Most likely,” Claude agreed, “but that’s hardly a startling revelation, George. We may not like it much, but we all know how the world works.”
“Of course it’s a spy ship,” Fischer said. “If it had been a nuclear-missile sub, one of their doomsday boats, they wouldn’t even let us know they were in the area. They wouldn’t allow one of those to break security. We’re lucky it’s a spy ship, actually, something they’re willing to compromise.”
Lin was clearly baffled by their lack of outrage, but he was determined to make them see the situation with the same degree of alarm that he himself obviously felt. “Listen to me, think about this: It isn’t just a spy ship.” His voice rose on the last few words. His hands were at his sides, opening and closing repeatedly, almost spastically. “It’s carrying motorized rafts, for God’s sake, and the equipment to rig a breeches buoy to a point on land. That means it puts spies ashore in other countries, saboteurs and maybe even assassins, probably puts them ashore in our own countries.”
“Assassins and saboteurs may be stretching it,” Fischer said.
“Not stretching it at all!” Lin responded ardently. His face was flushed, and his sense of urgency grew visibly by the moment, as if the greatest threat were not the deadly cold or the sixty time bombs buried in the ice, but the Russians who proposed to rescue them. “Assassins and saboteurs. I’m sure of it, positive. These communist bastards—”
“They aren’t communists any more,” Roger noted.
“Their new government’s riddled with the old criminals, the same old criminals, and when the moment’s right, they’ll be back. You’d better believe it. And they’re barbarians, they’re capable of anything. Anything.”
Pete Johnson rolled his eyes for Harry’s benefit. “Listen, George, I’m sure the U.S. does some of the same things. It’s a fact of life, standard international relations. The Russians aren’t the only people who spy on their neighbors.”
Trembling visibly, Lin said, “It’s more than spying. Anyway, goddammit, that’s no reason for us to legitimize the Ilya Pogodin!” He slammed his left fist into the open palm of his right hand.
Brian winced at the gesture and glanced at Harry.
Harry wondered if that might be the same hand—and the same violent temper—that had turned against Brian out on the ice.
Gently putting one hand on Lin’s shoulder, Rita said, “George, calm down. What do you mean, ‘legitimize’ it? You aren’t making a great deal of sense.”
Whipping around to face her as though she had threatened him, Lin said, “Don’t you realize why these Russians want to rescue us? They aren’t really concerned about whether we live or die. We don’t matter to them. We’re nothing to them. They aren’t acting out of any humanitarian principles. It’s strictly the propaganda value of the situation that interests them. They’re going to use us. At best, we’re pawns to them. They’re going to use us to generate pro-Russian sentiment in the world press.”
“That’s certainly true,” Harry said.
Lin turned to him again, hopeful of making a convert. “Of course it’s true.”
“At least in part.”
“No, Harry. Not partly true. It’s entirely true. Entirely. And we can’t let them get away with it!”
“We’re in no position to reject them,” Harry said.
“Unless we stay here and die,” Roger Breskin said. His deep voice, although devoid of emotion, gave his simple statement the quality of an ominous prophecy.
Pete’s patience with Lin had been exhausted. “Is that what you want, George? Have you taken leave of your senses altogether? Do you want to stay here and die?”
Lin was flustered. He shook his head: no. “But you’ve got to see—”
“No.”
“Don’t you understand…?”
“What?”
“What they are, what they want?” the Chinese said with such misery that Harry felt sorry for him. “They’re…they’re…”
Pete pressed his point. “Do you want to stay here and die? That’s the only question that matters. That’s the bottom line. Do you want to die?”
Lin fidgeted, searched their faces for a sign of support, and then looked down at the floor. “No. Of course not. Nobody wants to die. I’m just…just…Sorry. Excuse me.” He walked to the far end of the cave and began to pace as he had done earlier, when he had been embarrassed about the way he had treated Brian.
Leaning close to Rita, Harry whispered, “Why don’t you go talk to him?”
“Sure,” she said with a big, theatrical smile. “We can discuss the international communist conspiracy.”
“Ho ho.”
“He’s such a charming conversationalist.”
“You know what I’m asking,” Harry murmured conspiratorially. “Lift his spirits.”
“I don’t think I’m strong enough.”
“If you aren’t, then nobody is. Go on, tell him about your own fear, how you deal with it every single day. None of them know how difficult it is for you to be here, what a challenge it is for you every day. Hearing about that might give George the courage to face up to what he fears.”
“If he’s the one who clubbed Brian, I don’t care what he fears.”
“We don’t know it was George.”
“He’s a better bet than the Loch Ness monster.”
“Please, Rita.”
She sighed, relented, and went to have a word with George Lin at the back of the ice cave.
Harry joined the others, nearer the entrance.
Roger Breskin had taken his watch from a zippered pocket in his parka. “Five after nine.”
“Less than three hours,” Claude said.
“Can it be done in three hours?” Brian wondered. “Can they get to us and take us off the ice in just three hours?”
“If they can’t,” Harry said,
trying to lighten the moment, “I’m going to be really pissed.”
9:10
Emil Zhukov climbed onto the bridge with a Thermos of hot tea and three aluminum mugs. “Have they assembled the gun?”
“A few minutes yet,” Gorov said. He held one of the mugs while the first officer poured the tea.
Suddenly the night smelled of herbs and lemons and honey, and Nikita Gorov’s mouth watered. Then the wind caught the fragrant steam rising from the mug, crystallized it, and carried it away from him. He sipped the brew and smiled. Already the tea was growing cool, but sufficient heat remained to put an end to the chills that had been racing along his spine.
Below the bridge, on the forward section of the main deck, framed by four emergency lights, three crewmen were busy assembling the special gun that would be used to shoot a messenger line to the iceberg. All three wore black, insulated wet suits, with heat packs at their waists, and their faces were covered by rubber hoods and large diving masks. Each man was secured by a steel-link tether that was fixed to the forward escape hatch; the tethers were long enough to allow them to work freely, but not long enough to let them fall overboard.
Although it was not a weapon, the gun looked so wicked that an uninformed observer might have expected it to fire nuclear mortar rounds. Nearly as tall as any of the men assembling it, weighing three hundred fifty pounds, it consisted of just three primary components that were now pretty much locked together. The square base contained the motor that operated the pulleys for the breeches buoy, and it was fastened to four small steel rings recessed in the deck. The rings had been a feature of the boat ever since the Pogodin had begun putting special-forces agents ashore in foreign lands. The blocklike middle component of the gun fitted into a swivel mount on the base and contained the firing mechanism, the gunman’s handgrips, and a large drum of messenger line. The final piece was a four-foot-long barrel with a five-inch-diameter bore, which the three-man team had just inserted in its socket; an any-light scope was mounted at the base of the barrel. The device appeared capable of blowing a hole through a tank; on a battlefield, however, it would have been every bit as ineffective as a child’s peashooter.
At times the runneled deck was nearly dry, but that wasn’t the typical condition, and it lasted only briefly. Every time the bow dipped and a wave broke against the hull, the forward end of the boat was awash. Brightened by chunks of ice and cottony collars of frozen foam, the frigid dark sea rushed onto the deck, sloshed between the crewmen’s legs, battered their thighs, and surged to their waists before gushing away. If the Ilya Pogodin had been on the windward side of the iceberg, the towering waves of the storm would have overwhelmed the men and knocked them about mercilessly. In the sheltered lee, however, as long as they anticipated and prepared for each downward arc of the bow, they were able to stay on their feet and perform their tasks even when the sea swirled around them; and in those moments when the deck was free of water, they worked at top speed and made up for lost time.
The tallest of the three crewmen stepped away from the gun, glanced up at the bridge, and signaled the captain that they were ready to begin..
Gorov threw out the last of his tea. He gave the mug to Zhukov. “Alert the control room.”
If his risky plan to use the breeches buoy was to have any chance to succeed, the submarine had to match speeds perfectly with the iceberg. If the boat outpaced the ice, or if the ice surged ahead by even a fraction of a knot, the messenger line might pull taut, stretch, and snap faster than they could reel out new slack.
Gorov glanced at his watch. A quarter past nine. The minutes were slipping away too quickly.
One of the men on the forward deck uncapped the muzzle of the gun, which had been sealed to keep out moisture. Another man loaded a shell into the breech at the bottom.
The projectile, which would tow the messenger line, was simple in design. It looked rather like a fireworks rocket: two feet long, nearly five inches in diameter. Trailing the nylon-and-wire line, it would strike the face of the cliff, explode on impact, and fire a four-inch bolt into the ice.
That bolt, to which the messenger line was joined, could slam eight to twelve inches into a solid rockface, essentially fusing with the natural material around it, extruding reverse-hooked pins to prevent extraction. Welded to granite or limestone—or even to shale if the rock strata were tight enough—the bolt was a reliable anchor. Certain that the far point was securely fixed, a man could travel to shore on the messenger line if necessary, climbing hand over hand. Depending on the angle of approach, he could even convey himself in a simple sling suspended from a pair of small Teflon-coated steel wheels with deep concavities in which the line traveled, propelled by a vertical hand crank. Either way, he could take with him the heavy-duty pulley and a stronger line to rig an even more reliable system from the other end.
Unfortunately, Gorov thought, they were not dealing with granite or limestone or hard shale. A large element of the unknown had been introduced. The anchor might not penetrate the ice properly or fuse with it as it did with most varieties of stone.
One of the crewmen took hold of the handgrips, in one of which the trigger was seated. With the help of the other two men, he got a range fix and a wind reading. The target area was thirty feet above the water line. Semichastny had marked it with the floodlight. Compensating for the wind, the shooter aimed to the left of the mark.
Zhukov put up two flares.
Gorov lifted his night glasses. He focused on the circle of light on the face of the cliff.
A heavy whump! was audible above the wind.
Even before the sound of the shot faded, the rocket exploded against the iceberg fifty yards away.
“Direct hit!” Zhukov said.
With cannonlike volleys of sound, the cliff fractured. Cracks zigzagged outward in every direction from the tow rocket’s point of impact. The ice shifted, rippled like jelly at first, then shattered as completely as a plate-glass window. A prodigious wall of ice—two hundred yards long, seventy or eighty feet high, and several feet thick—slid away from the side of the berg, collapsed violently into the sea, and sent shimmering fountains of dark water more than fifty feet into the air.
The messenger line went down with the ice.
Like a great amorphous, primordial beast, a twenty-foot-high tidal wave of displaced water surged across the fifty yards of open sea toward the port flank of the submarine, and there was no time to take evasive action. One of the three crewmen on the deck cried out as the small tsunami crashed across the main deck with enough power to rock the Pogodin to starboard. With the messenger-line gun, all three vanished under that black tide. Cold brine exploded against the sail, and drenching geysers shot high into the night air, hung for a moment in defiance of gravity, and then collapsed across the bridge. Carried on the flood, hundreds of fragments of ice, some as large as a man’s fist, rained down against the steel and pummeled Gorov, Zhukov, and Semichastny.
The water poured away through the bridge scuppers, and the boat wallowed back to port. A secondary displacement wave hit them with only a small fraction of the force of the first.
On the main deck, the three crewmen had been knocked flat. If they hadn’t been tethered, they would have been washed overboard and possibly lost.
As the crewmen struggled to their feet, Gorov turned his field glasses on the iceberg again.
“It’s still too damned sheer.”
The tremendous icefall had done little to change the vertical topography of the leeward flank of the berg. A two-hundred-yard-long indentation marked the collapse, but even that new feature was a sheer plane, uncannily smooth, unmarked by ledges or projections or wide fissures that might have been of use to a climber. The cliff dropped straight into the water, much as it had before the rocket was fired; there was still no shelf or sheltering niche where a motorized raft could put in and tie up.
Gorov lowered his night glasses. Turning again toward the three men on the forward main deck, he signaled the
m to dismantle the gun and get below.
Dispirited, Zhukov said, “We could edge closer, then send two men across on a raft. They could match speeds with the berg, ride close to it, somehow anchor themselves to it, and just let it tow them along. Then the raft itself might be able to serve as the platform for the climbers to—”
“No. Too unsteady,” Gorov said.
“Or they could take explosives over in the raft and blast out a landing shelf and operations platform.”
Gorov shook his head. “No. That would be an extremely risky proposition. Like riding a bicycle alongside a speeding express train and trying to grab on for a free trip. The ice isn’t moving as fast as an express train, of course. But there’s the problem of the rough seas, the wind. No, I’m not sending anyone out on a suicide mission. The landing shelf must already be there when the rafts reach the ice.”
“What now?”
Gorov wiped his goggles with the back of one ice-crusted glove. He studied the cliff through the binoculars. At last he said, “Tell Timoshenko to put through a call to the Edgeway group.”
“Yes, sir. What should he say to them?”
“Find out where their cave is located. If it’s near the leeward side…Well, this might not be necessary, but if it is near the leeward side, they ought to move out of there altogether, right now.”
“Move?” Zhukov said.
“I’m going to see if I can create a landing shaft if I torpedo the base of the cliff.”
“The rest of you go ahead,” Harry insisted. “I’ve got to let Gunvald know what’s happening here. As soon as I’ve talked to him, I’ll bring out the radio.”
“But surely Larsson’s been monitoring every conversation you’ve had with the Russians,” Franz said.
Harry nodded. “Probably. But if he hasn’t been, he has a right to know about this.”
“You’ve only got a few minutes,” Rita said worriedly. She reached for his hand, as if she might pull him out of the cave with her, whether he wanted to go or not. But then she seemed to sense that he had another and better reason for calling Gunvald, a reason that he preferred to conceal from the others. Their eyes met, and understanding passed between them. She said, “A few minutes. You remember that. Don’t you start chatting with him about old girlfriends.”
