Sea Devil
Page 35
“Don’t forget that without your support, this whole thing wouldn’t have been possible. You’re part of this just as much as I am. Now if that bomb casing only remains intact, and its plutonium is kept from scattering on the seafloor, we will all finally be able to rest easier.”
Also gazing up at the blue Sea King was Mac.
“We’ll all know the answer to that as soon as that chopper arrives with CURV. Captain Foard’s setting it up so that I can operate the ROV from the Bowfin’s sonar console. Its camera will show us if the bomb’s still intact. Meanwhile, we’ve also got that salvage tug and those divers on their way from Holy Loch, with the DSRV Mystic coming in for good measure.”
“I imagine that your ROV will come in handy checking out the remains of that submarine that we were forced to take out back in the channel,” observed Colin Stewart.
“It certainly will,” said Mac.
“Though for the life of me, I still can’t figure out what it was up to when it took those potshots at us. Sean Lafferty certainly didn’t seem to know anything about it, and that would appear to rule out any Soviet-IRB connection.”
“That remains to be seen,” remarked the Highlander, who scanned the wooded shoreline of the Firth. His gaze finally halted on the distinctive blue hull of a frigate-sized ship anchored off the entrance to nearby Gare Loch. It had a Union Jack fluttering from its masthead.
“I wonder when they’ll inform Her Majesty of these goings on,” said Stewart.
“If she remains on schedule, she should be leaving the royal yacht any minute now to get on with the christening.”
“I’d sure like to see her face when they do,” returned Mac.
“Though I doubt she’ll believe it when they do tell her how close she came to the end of her reign.”
Major Colin Stewart nodded thoughtfully. With his gaze still locked on the fluttering red, blue, and white Union Jack, he wondered if he’d ever be able to share this incredible story with his colleagues back at Edinburgh castle. Though even they would think that he was merely telling a tall tale as he described the events leading up to the tug’s destruction. And in a way, he couldn’t blame them, for he had trouble believing its validity himself.
Epilogue
Mikhail Borisov snapped back into waking consciousness with a start. The back of his bruised head throbbed painfully, and as his blurred vision cleared, a single sputtering candle illuminated a scene of total chaos. The Sea Devil was completely overturned.
Smashed equipment and the prone, bloodstained bodies of two of his shipmates littered the ceiling that was now the mini-sub’s floor. As he stiffly sat up, a hoarse voice broke the hushed stillness.
“Hello, Captain,” greeted Yuri Sosnovo weakly.
“Thank the fates that you too have survived.”
Mikhail got to his hands and knees and located his chief engineer propped against what was left of the sub’s gyroscope.
“My heavens, Yuri! What in the world happened to us?”
“Whatever it was, comrade, it took the lives of both Oleg and Tanya,” managed Yuri.
“They were both dead when I awoke several minutes ago.”
Mikhail stood and made his way over to his shipmate’s side.
“That’s a nasty gash you have on your forehead, Yuri. And it looks like your leg and arm are broken.”
“That’s not the half of it, Captain. I got caught up in between the sonar console and the helm when we went over, and it feels as if my guts have been ripped open.”
As the chief engineer was caught up in a coughing fit that brought blood-speckled spittle to his lips, Mikhail compassionately remarked, “Easy does it, my friend. It appears that the diving chamber is still intact.
Do you think that you could manage to crawl over there with me?”
“What for?” retorted Yuri.
“I’m finished, comrade.
You go ahead and make good your escape, and I’ll take care of activating the explosive charges to scuttle Sea Devil.”
Mikhail shook his head.
“I’ll not leave you to die alone, Yuri Andreivich. Come on. I’ll set the charges and we can take our cyanide capsules together.”
“I’ll hear of no such thing, comrade!” shot back Yuri.
“Why waste your own life on my behalf? You must survive, if only to get news of our mission’s outcome back to Admiral Starobin. Otherwise they’ll fault Sea Devil and this brilliant operation will never get a chance to be repeated.”
Knowing full well that he was right, Mikhail nodded.
“Comrade Sosnovo, as always, your valued insights are correct. I’m going to miss you, my friend.”
Yuri managed a fond grin.
“We’ve certainly been in some tight ones together. Captain. Do you remember that time off Kiel when that German corvette had us cornered…”
Yuri’s remembrances were abuptly cut short by another violent coughing fit that brought a renewed flow of bright red blood to his lips. Mikhail was also finding it hard to breathe, and realizing that the already foul air was quickly losing its oxygen content, he knew it was time to be going.
“Are you certain that you’ll be able to hit that scuttle charge, Yuri?”
The chief engineer looked up and directly met his CO’s stare.
“Of course I can, Captain. Don’t worry. 111 get to it all right, on my last dying breath, if necessary.”
Certain that he would, Mikhail began slowly picking his way back to the diving chamber that was now positioned on the ceiling. As he pulled open the hatch, he took one last fond look at his brave shipmate. Illuminated by the flickering candlelight, Yuri snapped his commanding officer a crisp salute. Fighting the tears that were forming in his eyes, Mikhail returned this salute, then pivoted and pulled himself up into the awaiting chamber.
And from the surface of the waters immediately above the overturned mini-sub. Commander Brad Mackenzie anxiously sat before the blinking monitor screen. The CURV was well on its way to the seafloor now, and it was with great anticipation that he activated the ROV’s mercury-vapor lights. As he triggered its fiberoptic camera, the monitor filled with the swirling green waters of the Firth.
Mac carefully guided the ROV into the depths and soon located the channel’s bottom. A curious salmon swam by, and as Mac began a broad sweep of the gravelly seabed, he sighted the wreck of the tug they had sunk. Remarkably, it was still in one piece, though there was a large hole in its forward hull, just below the waterline. While visualizing the two corpses that were trapped inside this vessel, Mac guided the CURV in a wide circle. It was during this maneuver that the monitor filled with a familiar cylindrical cannister that caused an excited roar to escape the lips of those who also watched the screen and were assembled behind Mac.
“We’ve got it, and it still looks intact!” shouted Captain William Foard.
“We’ve got the damn bomb back!”
Though Mac was tempted to halt his search at this point and join in on the celebration going on behind him, his curiosity made him remain at the console.
After slowly circling the nuclear device and finding it intact, he reinitiated the circular maneuver that he was in the midst of when he first came upon the bomb.
Someone joyfully patted him hard on the shoulder, and he almost missed a series of unusual markings that were embedded in the gravel. His stomach instinctively tightened, his pulse quickened, as he closed in on these markings and found them to be an exact duplicate of the amphibious trail that he had previously viewed in such diverse places as San Francisco Bay, and most lately under the blue waters of Kwajalein Atoll. For this was the unique trail left behind by the mysterious tracked mini-sub that he had spent over a year of his life so desperately searching for!
His hands were slightly shaking as he addressed the keyboard and instructed the ROV to follow this track.
CURV proceeded less than one hundred feet when the screen suddenly filled with an object that caused Mac to gasp in wonder. Lying overturned on the floor o
f the channel was a strange-looking vehicle, part submarine, part amphibious tractor, the very vessel responsible for the tracks! And Mac could only shiver in awareness with the realization that his long search had finally ended.
Totally unaware of the elation that Sea Devil was causing in the surrounding waters, Yuri Sosnovo leadenly crawled away from the bulkhead. The candle was almost burnt out now, and with its wick sputtering in the foul air, he locked his glance on the red striped box that was set into a nearby console. Inside this glass cubicle was a single switch. All Yuri had to do was smash the glass with his palm to activate this device and detonate the series of explosive charges that ringed Sea Devil’s hull.
Ever since his captain had left him, Yuri had decided against swallowing the cyanide capsule just before he was to hit the scuttle mechanism. He would much rather die in the true manner of the Spetsnaz than take the cowardly course of suicide.
The merest movement of his broken limbs sent an excruciating pain surging through his body. Yet so strong was his will that he pushed himself onward until he was less than a half meter away from the scuttle switch. To reach it, he needed to lift himself up, and it was this effort that dislodged a bank of loose equipment that went cascading downward in a deafening clamor. When this racket finally faded, Yuri went to lift himself upward once again. Yet much to his shock, he found his numbed lower torso completely buried in a weighty mass of twisted steel and broken glass. Unable to push this debris off of him, the chief engineer could only look up in vain at the red-striped box that he was so determined to reach. And it was only then that Yuri Sosnovo resolved himself to the fact that he’d never be able to carry out his captain’s last order after all.
The sun was high overhead as Mikhail Borisov gratefully pulled himself from the water. His bruised body ached, and the swim shoreward had drained him of his strength.
Luckily for him, the tree line here extended right down to the gravelly shore, and he was able to crawl up into this cover and take temporary refuge. He lay exhausted on his back and struggled to calm his heaving lungs. Only when he successfully managed to catch his breath did he sit up and look out to the waters of the channel that he had just transited.
One of the first things that he spotted was the rounded black hull of a submarine. Appearing sleek and lethal, this vessel floated on the firth’s surface, apparently at anchor. Several seaman could be seen on its deck, and Mikhail had no doubt that they were positioned directly over his doomed command.
A large helicopter circled noisily overhead, and Mikhail could only pray that Yuri Sosnovo had been able to activate the explosive charges of Sea Devil’s scuttle mechanism. Otherwise, the Imperialists would soon have an intelligence field day as they salvaged the mini-sub and learned its many secrets.
Certain that his loyal Chief Engineer wouldn’t let him down, Mikhail turned his thoughts to more immediate concerns. For he now found himself in a strange country, thousands of kilometers from home. Yet as a Spetsnaz commando this was but another average day’s challenge, and he picked himself up to begin the long trek back to the motherland.
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