“I’m not comfortable waiting here that long.”
“Why?”
“The Americans and Canadians are obviously looking for us. We’ve been lucky so far. I don’t want to push it.”
Nick’s brow wrinkled. “What are you getting at?”
“It’s time for us to leave.”
“What do you mean, leave?”
“Now that the flooded compartments have been pumped out, the Neva is functioning tolerably. As long as we don’t dive too deep we should be okay.”
“Are you suggesting that you might be able to return home on your own power?”
“Maybe not all the way, but enough to get into international waters—very deep waters where we can be picked up by our own forces. Then the Neva can be scuttled.”
“But I thought that’s what you were going to do here—we’re over that dumpsite right now.”
“That’s still an option—after Yuri completes decompressing, but it’s by no means ideal.”
Nick raised his hands, signaling his confusion.
“The bottom here is only four hundred meters deep. The Americans and Canadians—if they were to discover the hulk, even after setting off the charges—could still salvage the fragments.”
Borodin continued, “Believe me, Major, they have the technical capability to recover everything. If we can get offshore in water twenty times as deep, and have enough time to remove all critical electronics, code equipment, and other gear, the shattered hulk won’t be as interesting. Besides, we’ll be able to watch the area in case the Americans start sniffing around.”
“What about all the activity to the south?” Nick argued. “They’re still looking for you there. Besides the helicopter, we spotted one of those sub hunter planes today.”
“I expect there’s more than just one patrolling. The U.S. Navy has a large air base on Whidbey Island. They probably realize that we were spying on the Nanoose torpedo test area and are trying to escape to the Pacific.”
Nick rubbed the stubble on his chin. “That means they’ll be waiting to ambush you.”
“Yes, but I have an alternative.”
“What do you mean?”
Captain Borodin unrolled a navigation chart and placed it on the table in front of Nick. He pointed with his right index finger. “This is what I have in mind.”
* * *
Nick and Laura were in the captain’s cabin, seated at the desk.
“Laura,” Nick said, “before we return to the Hercules, there’s something you need to know.”
“Yes?”
“It’s about your husband.”
“What about him?”
“He’s escaped.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how he did it, but last night after you boarded the Neva he managed to untie himself and then slip overboard, probably with a lifejacket.”
“How can that be?”
“The last time we checked him was around one in the morning. An hour later, he was gone.”
“Where could he have gone?”
“We were close to the shore at the time, several kilometers—about two miles. You could see the lights.”
“Two miles! That’s a long way.”
“It is and the water’s very cold. We’re certain he wore only street clothes.”
“He’s a strong swimmer, but with the cold water—”
“I’d say there’s a small chance he made it ashore.”
Laura fidgeted in her chair. “He’s crazy, Nick. I don’t know what he’ll do.” She threw her hands into the air. “I fed him a lot of BS about what was going on. If he gets someone to listen to him . . .”
“Did you mention the Neva?”
“No, other than what he overheard when we—” Laura stopped. “But if he was free at that time he had to have seen the Neva. It was moored next to the Hercules.”
“I know. Both Elena and I are convinced that he saw it. That’s why we think he risked swimming to shore.”
“Then he knows everything.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“We need to get back to the Hercules and get moving.”
“Yes, let’s go.”
As they exited the cabin, Nick’s anxiety eased a bit. He had motivated Laura as planned albeit with a twisted recount of Ken Newman’s escape.
Surely, Newman had drowned—the water nearly freezing and so far away from land.
That expectation further appeased Nick’s angst.
* * *
Nick and Laura returned to the Hercules. The Neva remained nearby, still semi-submerged. Both vessels drifted northward with the current.
Nick, Laura, and Elena huddled around the wheelhouse chart table. A Canadian chart covered its top. Nick summarized Captain Borodin’s new plan. A lead pencil line drawn onto the chart outlined the proposed route.
“This is madness!” protested Elena. “How can he ever think they’ll make it through there?”
Nick answered, “With some luck and our help, Captain Borodin is confident it can be done.”
“It’s really not a bad plan,” Laura added. “It’s very deep most of the way, but there are several shallow or narrow spots that will require operating near or at the surface.” She pointed to the chart, tapping a fingertip at the locations. “Seymour Narrows, here at Current Passage, and then up around Alert Bay.”
“It’s a clever plan,” Nick offered. “The Canadians won’t be expecting it.”
Elena did not buy it. She stared at the chart, studying the sinuous pathway that separated the north end of Vancouver Island from the British Columbia mainland—part of the Inside Passage to Alaska. A multitude of islands, fiords, shoals, and channels lined the route.
Elena looked up. “These channels are narrow. How will it fit through them?”
“That’s where we come in,” Nick said.
“Right,” agreed Laura. “Timing will be critical. We’ll be running ahead and . . .”
Nick and Laura spent the next several minutes completing the briefing. Elena let out an obvious groan of irritation. “This plan of Borodin’s is too risky. Moscow will never approve it.”
“That doesn’t matter,” countered Nick.
“What do you mean?”
“Captain Borodin’s not going to contact Moscow.”
“Why not? Now that he’s on the surface, he can use all of that fancy radio gear he has on board. I bet he can even talk with Moscow direct.”
“True, but he’s not going to risk it, even with encryption and burst transmissions. If the Americans or Canadians pick it up, which they very likely will with all of the activity up here, it will confirm to them that hostile forces are in their backyard.”
“I still don’t like it. We have no authorization for any of this.” Elena switched to Russian. “Borodin should scuttle the Neva right now and we’ll take them all ashore tonight.”
“What did she say?” Laura demanded.
“In a moment.” Nick then directed his attention back to Elena, answering in their native dialect, “That’s not going to happen. Kirov has two days of decompression to go. He can’t leave the Neva until then.”
“What about Yuri?” asked Laura, having heard Nick use his surname.
Nick ignored Laura. “Borodin is not going to sacrifice Kirov after what he’s done for the crew, so just forget about that stuff. It’s not going to happen.”
“Then we’ll wait.”
“Borodin’s not going to wait. If the Canadians get wind of what he has planned, they’ll block the escape route.” Nick checked his watch. “In less than ten minutes he’s expecting us to begin heading north. The Neva is going to submerge and follow us.”
Elena turned away, conceding defeat.
“What was all that about?” Laura said, addressing Nick.
“Everything’s okay.”
“Then we should get going.”
“Right.”
Elena retreated to the galley as Nick and Laura prepared the Hercules
for getting under way. Elena busied herself by making a fresh pot of coffee. But she seethed, convinced that Nick had stabbed her in the back.
CHAPTER 83
DAY 16—TUESDAY
The Hercules approached the Seymour Narrows. The one-half-mile-wide waterway separated Vancouver Island from the considerably smaller Quadra Island. It was slack tide. With currents up to ten knots or more, passage at any other time would be tricky for the plodding Herc and the crippled Neva.
Nick had the helm and handled the portable Russian radio; Laura monitored the radar display. Elena observed from the rear of the pilothouse.
Laura studied the radar image of the waterway. Trouble was half a mile ahead, heading toward the Hercules at eight knots. The orange icon blinked onto the scope just as the Herc completed a right turn, passing the red navigation light that marked the south end of Maud Island and the southern entrance to the Seymour Narrows. Land formations had blocked the radar signal until the Herc aligned itself with the Narrows. The southbound fishing boat, the northbound Hercules , and the semi-submerged Neva were the only traffic in this stretch of Discovery Passage.
The Hercules and Neva ran tandem, averaging six knots over the bottom. Separated by just seventy feet of open water, the Herc’s wheelhouse ran even with the Neva’s sail. Captain Borodin commanded from the sail with his team of observers, all on the lookout for trouble.
To help conceal its presence, the submarine ran semi-submerged, with just the upper half of sail and the massive towed array sonar pod on top of the rudder assembly awash. On radar, the Herc and the Neva appeared as two vessels running parallel with a smaller boat trailing the pair.
The approaching fishing vessel compromised the Neva’s stealth. The partial moon in the sparkling clear night sky created the worry—the Neva did not belong in these waters. Nick radioed the threat to Borodin.
Laura turned to the starboard. The Neva’s sail appeared black as the night. The phosphorescent wake of both the sail and rudder assembly contrasted with the ink-black waters. She peered ahead. The rack of overhead floodlights on the approaching fifty-eight-foot purse seiner lit up its decks like a Broadway musical. It would pass a hundred yards to the Herc’s port.
“What should I do?” asked Nick.
“Stay on course. There’s no time for anything else.”
“But they might actually see it—for sure their radar does.”
“I know.”
* * *
Borodin addressed the four watch-standers that surrounded him. “Men,” he said in a hushed voice, “remain silent and no moving about for the next few minutes.”
* * *
Laura stood on the port wheelhouse wing. She peered aft with binoculars. The southbound fishing boat turned to the port, following the reverse of the Herc’s course. She did not observe any movement on the decks.
Laura returned to the bridge. “Anything?” she asked Nick.
“All quiet.” He monitored the VHF marine radio as well as the secure radio link to the Neva.
She checked the radar screen: no new targets.
“Do you think they saw it?” Nick asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone come out on deck. I think that’s a good sign.”
“And there was no call to the Coast Guard,” he added.
Laura stared through the windshield into the blackness of the channel. She hoped the next passage would not be as hair-raising.
CHAPTER 84
DAY 17—WEDNESDAY
All day Tuesday, a steady procession of military aircraft and warships operated in the Southern Strait of Georgia. The FSB team observed from the Explorer without deploying the side scan sonar. Later that afternoon when they returned to the marina, a messenger from the Trade Mission met them. Dubova returned to Vancouver. An encrypted message from Moscow waited for her in the mission’s code room: Terminate Operation Eagle and return home immediately. Russian military reconnaissance satellites had detected the joint U.S. and Canadian ASW search.
“They must be searching for the Neva,” offered Karpekov as he flopped into a chair by the cabin door and picked up a magazine. The yacht remained inside its Squalicum Harbor boathouse.
“Probably.”
Dubova expected the Americans would eventually discover the hulk, employing their vast arsenal of ASW gear. But it no longer concerned her. She focused on executing the exit plan.
* * *
Ken Newman struggled to stand, wobbly on his legs. He took a couple steps from the bed to the kitchen. At the counter, he worked the manual can opener, removing the lid from a tin of peaches. He gulped down half of the contents. Juice dribbled down his chin.
Too weak to continue standing, Ken sat in one of the two wood chairs at the tiny kitchen table, placing the can on the tabletop. The one-room shack was about twenty feet square. It was his home for the past two days. He gazed out the single window. The Strait of Georgia was about one hundred yards way. How he made it up the embankment to the vacant cabin continued to amaze Ken.
The swift ebb tide current swept him into a cluster of rock outcrops off the eastern shore of Valdes Island, part of the Gulf Island chain. Just after sunrise, he dragged his frigid and waterlogged body across the rocky shoreline onto dry land.
About a mile wide and ten miles long, Valdes Island was located north of Galiano and Mayne Islands. Sparsely populated with much of the island held in reserve for Canadian First Nations, the island had no water, electrical power, or telephone services.
Ken slurped down the rest of the peaches, draining the syrup to the last drop. He shuffled back to the bed and collapsed.
* * *
He sat behind the wheel, monitoring the autopilot. The Herc surged forward into the oncoming seas as it navigated the Inside Passage. Whitecaps dotted the mid-morning seascape.
Elena entered the wheelhouse. She sat on the bench seat behind the helm. “Well, it’s done,” she said.
“What’s done?” he asked without looking her way.
“She’s no longer a threat to any of us.”
“He swiveled the captain’s chair toward Elena. “What do you mean?”
“Neither you or Nick would do anything, so I took care of it.”
“What have you done?” he yelled.
Yuri raced down the stairwell into the galley and sprinted to Captain Miller’s quarters. He ripped open the door. “Oh my God!”
Yuri’s heart sprinted as he struggled to pull himself up, horrified by the nightmare. In his dream, he’d discovered Laura’s bullet-riddled and blood-soaked body sprawled on the bunk where she’d been sleeping.
Yuri had just enough room inside the recompression chamber to sit upright. Fresh sweat oozed from his brow and both hands trembled. He jerked the oxygen mask off. A bout of coughing doubled him over.
He reached for the intercom handset and triggered the pager.
Yuri heard the buzzer’s tone outside of the steel cylinder, his home for the past two days. He had about half a day of decompression to go.
Yuri’s watcher sat on a portable chair next to the recompression chamber, dozing. He picked up the handset after the third buzz. “Yes, sir.”
“I need to talk with Captain Borodin.”
“I’ll patch you through to the central post on the intercom.”
“No. I need him here—now. Go get him. Tell him it’s urgent.”
“Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER 85
DAY 18—THURSDAY
Captain Borodin stood in the sail with his team of observers. The sun rose an hour earlier but you’d hardly notice. The mile-thick mat of vapor-rich clouds hung just a hundred meters above the sea surface. A chilled drizzle soaked everything, and one-meter-high swells rolled in from the northwest.
The Neva was at the very northern tip of Vancouver Island with the Pacific Ocean just ahead.
By following the acoustic trail blazed by the throttled-back Hercules, surfacing only in darkness to maneuver the most demanding passages, the cripple
d submarine completed the transit from the Seymour Narrows to Queen Charlotte Sound in two days.
A hundred meters to the starboard, the Hercules bucked into the oncoming seas.
Captain Borodin and Nick Orlov were speaking over the encrypted portable radios.
“He’s in really bad shape,” reported Borodin.
“What’s wrong?”
“While he was decompressing, he came down with a chest infection. Our medic is certain it’s pneumonia—in both lungs.”
“That sounds bad.”
“It is. He needs to be in a hospital. We don’t have the right antibiotics.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I think we should transfer him to your vessel. Now that you don’t have to babysit us, you can speed back to Vancouver and get him the care he needs.”
“Okay, we can do that.”
Borodin shifted position inside the bridge well. “Yuri told me that your partner is with the Trade Mission, correct?”
“Yes.”
“I think it would make sense for her to contact the mission and let them know Yuri’s on his way. They can make arrangements to get him treated and then flown back home.”
“Okay, I’ll have her phone the mission.”
“Do you have encrypted communications aboard?”
“Only what we are using now, but they’re short range only so we’ll have to use a cell.”
“Nothing can be transmitted in the open without encryption. The Americans and Canadians are monitoring everything in the region—land lines, cell phones, texts, e-mails, marine bands.”
“Looking for us.”
“Yes.”
“What can we do then?”
Borodin waited to respond. “After we transfer Yuri, send your partner over. She can use our encrypted radio to contact mission.”
“Great, I’ll let her know.”
A short time later, as the Hercules wallowed in Neva’s lee, Borodin maneuvered the bow, quartering the oncoming waves. The mass of the submarine’s hull partially attenuated the waves, making the transfer possible.
Yuri Kirov was first. Barely able to stand, Borodin watched as two sailors helped him into the raft. Just before shoving off, Yuri raised his right hand and saluted the bridge. Borodin returned the gesture.
The Good Spy Page 30
