Red Heat

by Nina Bruhns

  Who was impressing the hell out of Nikolai. Though he couldn’t understand the conversation, a serene expression had settled over her face and she spoke with elegant dignity as she and the Chinese captain conducted their short, excruciatingly polite exchange. She didn’t let his curt answers ruffle her, and when nothing further was forthcoming, she politely thanked him—at least it sounded that way to Nikolai—and with a click the earphones filled with static once more.

  She slid off the headset. “Well. That was fun. Not.”

  “What did he say?” Walker asked.

  Nikolai glared at him in irritation. The other man raised his palms in conciliation. “Sorry.”

  Julie’s expression turned wry. “He said he had no idea what I was talking about.”

  “I’m shocked,” Walker muttered.

  “Conn, sonar. More tubes flooding!” Gavrikov announced from the sonar shack.

  It was all Nikolai needed to hear. He smiled grimly. It didn’t matter what the 093 had in mind, he wasn’t sticking around to find out.

  “Bring battle stations to full alert, OOD. Prepare to dive the boat, Mr. Zubkin!” he ordered briskly. “Nav! Plot a course for those canyons. I think it’s high time we became a ghost ship.”

  He just hoped it was only metaphorically.

  One of the principal advantages of a diesel-electric submarine over a nuclear-powered one was the ability to dive and surface quickly. Ostrov moved in the water like a whale, large but swift and decisive. The 093 was more ponderous, like an ungainly water buffalo—once going it was formidable, but gearing up and turning about, it took its sweet time.

  Nikolai used every precious minute of that time to disappear.

  “Kvartirmyeister Kresney reports a leak in the galley, sir!” Danya called out just before they hit the two-one-five mark.

  Хуйня. The old tub was leaking like a goddamn sieve.

  “How bad?” Nikolai demanded over the circuit. “Can we make it?” They were diving hell-bent for leather under the big nuke, and he planned to sprint for the uneven shelter of the canyons as soon as they were clear of the hull, before the enemy could turn around and pursue them.

  “It’s bad, Kapitan,” came Misha’s report, shouted over the sound of gushing water. “Don’t dive any deeper or we risk the whole damn boat coming apart!”

  No way could they come up yet without risking shearing off the sail on the bottom of the Chinese sub, gutting it like a trout in the process. Fatal for both boats.

  He noticed that Walker had stopped translating for Julie. Her gaze was darting around the central post with a look of growing panic. Her fingers clutched the arms of her chair in a death grip.

  He paused to send her a reassuring smile. “Don’t get worried yet,” he said, knowing exactly what she was thinking. “We’ll be fine.”

  He turned back to his monitors. The second they cleared the 093, he ordered, “All ahead full, Mr. Zubkin. Full rise on bow and stern planes! Bring her up to one-five-zero and make it fast.”

  He felt the surge of buoyancy as pressurized air was blown into the ballast tanks and Ostrov cut up like a dolphin through the water toward the surface. His own adrenaline surged along with it, feeling the force of the pressure pressing his feet into the deck.

  “Conn, sonar. The 093 is starting to turn.”

  Good luck with that, he thought. By the time the nuke came about, Ostrov would already be swallowed up by the recesses of the feature-rich canyon the nav had discovered.

  “Fucking hell!” Gavrikov’s voice burst over the circuit. “Conn, sonar! Torpedo has been launched! Repeat, torpedo in the water!”

  28

  Julie knew immediately that something was very, very wrong. This time there was no frozen pause before the entire central post watch launched into a chaos of shouts and action.

  She didn’t need a translation. The Russian word torpeda was not so different from the English.

  Terror ripped through her veins, but she ruthlessly tamped it down. Falling apart now would serve nothing, and it would not save her or the lives of the others if Ostrov was about to be blown up.

  God help them all!

  At the helm, Nikolai held the tense crew together, assuming control with an iron will, calming the tumult that swept through the space, urging the men back into military efficiency, launching countermeasures, snapping commands, and ordering Ostrov into a diving sprint so fast Julie could feel the grind of the main propeller shaft as it bit into the water. He was magnificent, every inch the hero, and despite her terror Julie felt a huge admiration for the man she’d come to love.

  Clint had jumped up at the first sign of trouble and was now peering intently at the sonar repeater. For the moment, the small blip that had shot out from the still-turning 093 was heading away from Ostrov, being forced to boomerang around in a semicircle after being launched in the wrong direction due to the 093’s position.

  “It’s not a torpedo,” Clint announced loudly, bringing Nikolai whipping around. “It’s a UUV.”

  Relief seared through Julie. Oh, thank God.

  It took Nikolai about two seconds to digest this information and bark a few words into his headset. He listened, then said, “Gavrikov agrees.”

  “We’re too close for a torpedo attack,” Clint said, probably for her benefit.

  Nikolai nodded at the sonar blip, in the zenith of its U-turn but still closer to the Chinese sub than to Ostrov. “They’d risk damaging their own boat in the explosion.”

  “Nothing worse than getting sunk by your own fish,” Clint observed.

  Julie shivered at the thought. “Other than being sunk by someone else’s.”

  Nikolai scowled. “So what’s its purpose?”

  Clint pursed his lips. “Too many possibilities even to guess.”

  “Could it be carrying explosives?” he asked.

  Clint’s shoulder lifted. “If they wanted to blow us up, they’re carrying plenty of real torpedoes. They didn’t have to get so close.”

  Nikolai glanced over at her. “Julie? Any suggestions?”

  She peeled her horrified attention from the blinking dot and forced herself to think. Her heart pounded painfully. “The Chinese have been testing several new kinds of ASW technologies. I guess it would depend on whether they want to follow us, disable us, sink us, or . . .” She let her suggestions trail off. She honestly didn’t want to come up with any more scenarios.

  He didn’t press her. “Well, I’m not about to stick around to find out.” He paced back to the main console, calling out orders as he went.

  Seconds later the sub made a deep turn, and Julie grabbed hold of her chair, hanging on for dear life while the seasoned submariners simply leaned their bodies with the motion.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, listening to Nikolai’s commanding voice as he guided them away from danger, trying to absorb his calm strength through osmosis. He knew what he was doing. He’d get them out of there safely. He had to!

  She couldn’t believe it had come to this. This insane mission had changed her life in ways she hadn’t ever imagined. And now it might take it away completely.

  No. She mustn’t think that way. That wasn’t going to happen.

  She opened her eyes again, watching and listening in white-knuckled fear as Nikolai drove Ostrov at full tilt up through the steep underwater canyon, searching for a hiding place. The pit of her stomach lurched at every change of depth and turn of the rudder as the sub dashed over ridges and around seamounts to shake their pursuer. She knew their speed wasn’t more than a couple of knots at most, but it felt like a high-speed car chase at ninety miles per hour. The staccato Russian exchanges between Nikolai and his men and the urgent bleat of the overhead speakers made a taut soundtrack to the indecipherable snowstorm of the sonar monitor’s visuals. Cutting through it all was the loud, intermittent ping of the 093’s active sonar blasts, each new one making her jump out of her skin.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t take the tension any longer,
the chase came to an abrupt halt. The sub slowed like it had hit a solid wall of molasses. Nikolai gave one last clipped command and immediately every sound on the submarine ceased. She opened her mouth to ask what had happened, but he quickly put a finger to his lips, signaling for absolute silence.

  She held her breath. They’d gone ultraquiet, hiding in the uneven geography of the canyon, hoping to disappear completely.

  Adrenaline surged through her veins as she held her breath. She was certain the Chinese sonar operator must be able to hear the timpani of her heartbeat.

  Long, tense moments passed, everyone standing at attention, listening intently, eyes cutting from the sonar monitor to the hull of the boat as though trying to see through the steel walls out to the cold, black water beyond.

  All at once a high, metallic ping bounced through the space. Not the familiar hammer jolt, but a thinner, smaller sound.

  Nikolai gave a harsh curse at the same time Walker muttered disgustedly, “Damn little fucker!”

  “What is it?” Julie asked in alarm.

  “The UUV. It pinged us. Jesus. I can’t believe the fucking thing found us.”

  Nikolai stalked back and forth, mouth set in an angry line. “I guess that answers our question about what it’s doing,” he said tersely, then switched back to Russian and clipped out more orders.

  The crew snapped back into action and instantly she was hanging on to the console again, clenching her stomach against the force of the submarine lurching into a sprint and continuing its uneven run through the obstacle course of the undersea features.

  All the while their small shadow followed.

  “Isn’t there anything you can do?” she asked Walker minutes later, her voice hoarse with apprehension for what might happen next. “I mean with one of your UUVs? Like chase it off? Or ram it to pieces or something?”

  They both glanced at the repeater. The small blip hovered behind them, taking on an air of menace, like one of those creepy little flesh-eating creatures in a horror movie.

  “I believe you’ve been reading my mind,” he said, and he jerked his chin at Nikolai. “Think he’d trust me out of his sight?”

  She blew out an uneven breath. “Hell, Clint. I still don’t know if I’d trust you.”

  His lips quirked. “I’m hurt.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Give me a reason to,” she said. “Tell me who you’re working for.”

  His jaw tightened as the sub went into another steep turn, and he seemed to come to a decision. To her surprise, he said, “All right. I guess it’s time you knew.” He glanced around, assessing who might be within earshot. Everyone was busy at their controls. When he was satisfied they weren’t being eavesdropped upon, he leveled her a look and said in barely a murmur, “I’m with Naval Intelligence.”

  Relief mingled with surprise. Even though it made perfect sense given his background, she hadn’t expected that particular agency. At least he wasn’t CIA as she’d suspected. If he was telling the truth.

  “U.S. Naval Intelligence?” she clarified.

  He chuckled softly. “Yes. I work for the U.S. military.”

  She swallowed. She needed to know. “Tell me why you’re here on Ostrov.”

  To his credit, he didn’t lie. “Same reason you are. To retrieve the SD card.”

  That was what she was afraid of. “Then we’re going to have a problem,” she said, wondering how the navy had found out about it. She’d thought that intel had been exclusively CIA property.

  The sub was hit by another high-pitched ping, and Clint’s eyes went to the repeater, to the enemy UUV stalking them. It was getting closer. The larger mother ship had also reappeared on the screen, hovering at the edge. “Woman, in case you hadn’t noticed, we already have a problem.”

  No freaking kidding. But he was avoiding the issue. “I’m not letting you take the SD card from me,” she told him determinedly. “Nikolai won’t—”

  “Captain Romanov is a Russian military officer,” he said impatiently, “who works as an asset for the FSB. You really think he’ll let you hold on to something this important?”

  “He promised—”

  “Trust me, he’d promise anything and do even more to get his hands on the intelligence stored on that card. It’s his ticket to saving his career. You know that as well as I do.”

  She shook her head in denial. It wasn’t true. Nikolai wouldn’t betray her. She wanted to tell Clint, to shout it out loud at him, but her words stuck in her throat. “It doesn’t matter. The point is he won’t let you take it from me.”

  Clint looked smug. “He can only stop me if he knows you found the SD card. When were you planning to tell him? Or were you going to . . . ?”

  Her fingers held the edge of her seat with white knuckles. But this time it wasn’t because of the erratic movement of the boat. It was to keep herself from reaching over and wringing Clint Walker’s neck.

  “I’ll tell him right now,” she ground out, just to prove to the insolent jerk—and possibly to herself—that she would. She stood up.

  Nikolai looked over.

  Already on his feet, Clint put a hand on her arm, urging her back down. “Julie, there’s no need to—”

  Just then the sub made another sharp turn, throwing her off balance. She landed in Clint’s arms.

  Instantly Nikolai was there, yanking her away from him. “Do not touch her,” he growled.

  Walker raised his hands, palms out. “Then stop doing goddamn loop-de-loops. Ostrov’s a submarine, not a goddamn Spitfire.”

  The force of Ostrov slicing through the water made all their bodies tilt precariously. Nikolai put his arm around her waist and held her tighter.

  “Why did you stand up?” he asked her without shifting his glare off the other man. “Is there a problem here? Is he—”

  “No,” she assured him, then turned in Nikolai’s arms and rushed on before the conversation took a nosedive. “I just wanted to tell you . . .” She regrouped. “You know that thing I’ve been looking for?”

  Releasing her, he took a step back to look down at her, his expression wary. “Yeah?”

  “I found it. This morning.”

  He froze for a millisecond, then his icy gaze razored back to Clint. “He knows?”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry. He guessed. Just now.” She leaned in closer and whispered, “He’s with U.S. Naval Intelligence.”

  Nikolai’s breath jetted out angrily. “Really. Anything else I should know?”

  She hesitated, then plowed on. “We were thinking he could try to do something about the Chinese UUV out there, using one of ours.”

  Nikolai’s scowl eased fractionally. She had his attention. “Such as?”

  Clint leaned back on his heels. “Well. I’ve got an interesting little device I developed that can magnetically wipe any and all electronics software it’s aimed at. That should annoy them to no end.”

  An unwilling smile crossed Nikolai’s face. “It should, indeed.” He studied Walker for a moment. “What would it take to set that up?”

  “I’ll need to work from the UUV console in the torpedo room,” Walker said. “And I’ll need some help.”

  Nikolai considered him with a steely regard. Julie knew he was weighing how far Clint could be trusted. But he had already been cleared of her attack, and he couldn’t really make his UUV do anything bad to Ostrov without dooming himself along with everyone else. And why would he? He was after the SD card. Not out for sabotage. He wasn’t the enemy. Not the saboteur.

  “Are you on board with this?” he asked Julie.

  She gave him a wobbly smile. “Yeah,” she said.

  “Very well,” Nikolai said at length. “Do it,” he told Clint. “I’ll assign Kvartirmyeister Kresney to accompany you, and one of the weps techs to help. Will that do?”

  Clint smiled. “Perfect.”

  Nikolai nodded and started to walk away, then hesitated and turned back to Julie. “Is it in a safe place?” he asked.

  Despite the s
harp shift in subject, there was little doubt what he was talking about. When his gaze dropped briefly to her coverall pocket, she also knew he knew exactly where she was keeping it.

  “It’s as safe as I am,” she said.

  “Then let’s keep it that way,” he said tightly and strode away, back to the main command console.

  As she watched him go, her heart fluttered. It was ridiculous how huge a crush she had on that man. Absurd how crazy in lust, and absolutely in awe of him, she was. Total insanity how she’d managed to fall in love with Nikolai Kirillovich Romanov so thoroughly in such a short time. But how could she not have? He was the most powerful, intelligent, and thoughtful man she’d ever met, as well as being the sexiest man alive.

  It broke her heart completely that she would have to give him up soon. Too soon. Now that she’d found the SD card, as soon as she was able to contact Thurman she’d be recalled home immediately.

  As though reading her thoughts, Clint’s expression turned serious. “What’ll you do when they order you to leave him behind, and never allow you to see him again . . . ?”

  Pain cut through her. She didn’t want to think about that. And she sure as hell didn’t want Clint Walker reminding her of it. “That’s none of your damn business,” she snapped.

  He leaned in. “Julie. I can make it my business. I can help you be together.”

  She threw him a skeptical look. “You? How?”

  “My agency, and the navy, could learn a lot from a cooperative Russian naval commander of Nikolai’s rank and status. I’m sure they’d be willing to pave the way for him to come to the States in exchange for the opportunity to question him.”

  She leveled him a gaze. “I doubt he’d agree to betray his country.”

  “It’s not like they deserve his loyalty. They’ve pretty much thrown him to the wolves.”

  It was true. But Julie knew how honorable Nikolai was.

  “You don’t know until you ask him,” Clint persisted.

  “I suppose.”

  “The thing is . . .”

  She’d known there would be a catch. “Yes?”