Operation Petrograd

by Nick Carter

  So far a lot of people had died because of that chip. In addition to Tibbet, there was the AXE pilot outside of Tokyo, the Korean gate guard, the radio technician, and Arnold Scott at the Mito compound, and now Forester on the rocky beach, Morgan beneath the Petrograd, and Barber across the turning basin. And at least twenty Russians.

  When would it end?

  Carter took a last, lingering look across the basin. The Russian soldiers had gone crazy; they were smashing their rifle butts into Barber's body. Only Hansen was left, and he had their only radio for communications with the sub. But Carter was having another of his premonitions that Hansen was gone as well.

  He took the mouthpiece into his mouth and slowly sank back into the dark, cold water, his body ready to quit on him, only his sheer will and determination keeping him going.

  Fourteen

  The mammoth steel doors at the entrance to the turning were closing. Carter could not hear the rumble of the machinery, but he could feel the vibration in the water and knew exactly what was happening. He redoubled his efforts.

  Whoever was conducting the search operation was sharp. He had no way of knowing how many UDT men had come into the pens. He only had one body. But he was taking no chances.

  The big steel doors would, under normal conditions, be used to protect the pens from storm surge off the ocean. They could also be used to keep out enemy submarines. In this instance, however, they would be used to keep in the intruders.

  As he swam, Carter held his hands out in front of him like a blind man crossing a strange room. He knew that he was on the correct compass course for the exit canal, but he had no way of knowing how far it still was. Nor did he want to take the chance of surfacing. If they were closing the doors to keep him in, they might also have stationed guards on or near the canal entrance to watch for a surfacing diver.

  His left hand brushed the steel surface of one of the doors, and he immediately angled right, keeping his hand in contact with the steel. The door was moving inward, but slowly.

  Again Carter increased his efforts, his body screaming for rest. It was hard to breathe now; it felt as if a gigantic hand were pushing down on him, crushing his body, pressing the air out of his lungs.

  To be caught here in the basin meant certain death. Sooner or later he would have to come up for air or drown. When he came up, he would be spotted.

  The steel door seemed to go on forever. Carter began to believe he was operating in a dream world; none of this was real. Yet another portion of his brain, at a more instinctual level, understood full well that this was very real, and his life depended upon his continuing to fight.

  A thick steel flange marked the edge of the north door. The tide was running in and suddenly Carter was fighting an increasing current, made stronger by the narrowing opening.

  He pulled himself around the edge of the flange, his right hand brushing the south door. Then he was through the opening, pushing himself away.

  The current increased in the last seconds, once again shoving him back into the opening. With his last bit of strength he pushed off.

  Something grabbed at his swim fin, and he jerked his leg as the huge doors closed and eddy currents, built up against the doors by the still incoming tide, swept him around in a large circle against the riprap that rose up to the edge of the earthenwork levee.

  He was tumbling end over end, his already battered body slamming against the rocks, the countercurrent at the edges of the canal shoving him seaward.

  At last he surfaced in the steep chop slapping against the rocks along the south side of the canal. The storm had intensified, the fire and the searchlights barely a hundred yards away in the sub pens hardly visible in the snow.

  Painfully he dragged himself out of the water, farther up onto the rocks, and the full fury of the storm and the intense cold hit him with a savage intensity.

  Arctic suit or not, he would not be able to survive for very long out here. For just a moment or two he lay back and allowed his eyes to close. It would be easy, he thought, to simply drift off into sleep. It was so comfortable here. Even the cold was beginning to fade.

  He forced himself to open his eyes and sit up. He had lost one of his swim fins somewhere, and the Mac 10 still slung over his shoulder was already freezing up. Still no sounds penetrated his battered eardrums. It was hard to move, or even to think, and it took him several tries before he was able to get to his feet. The seventy-pound carrying case seemed like an impossible weight on his back. He had the urge to undo the straps and leave it. But then everyone who had been killed in this bloody mission would have died in vain. And Kazuka's injuries would have been for nothing.

  Concentrating on keeping his balance, on moving forward, Carter somehow managed to climb up the steep jumble of rocks and boulders that lined the side of the canal.

  At the top the full fury of the wind nearly bowled him over. He staggered over the crest and started down the other side into the woods and scrub where Hansen would be waiting.

  At the bottom his legs gave out and he sat down heavily in the snow. His lungs burned from pulling in the subfreezing air, and he forced himself to slow down, to take shallow breaths through his nose. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. For a moment or so the irrational fear that his heart was about to explode rose up like some kind of a dark monster in his mind, nearly causing him to panic.

  He held himself in check, concentrating instead on getting back on his feet. But it was so hard, and each time he rose up, his head spun.

  In the woods he held onto a tree for support, and when he caught his breath he lurched a few feet to the next tree where he held up again. The cold, now that he was out of the wind, seemed even more intense than before. Japan was a long way off. An impossible distance, it seemed.

  Working his way deeper into the woods, from tree to tree, Carter tried to make his brain work, tried to think out his situation. But it was difficult. Everything seemed so remote, so unreal.

  Hansen had their radio. Carter concentrated on that thought. Together they would make their way to the coast where they had hidden the rubber raft. They would call the Silver Fish and she would come in.

  Hansen would have to do most of the rowing out to the sub. But once they got beyond the surf close into shore, it wouldn't be so bad.

  Carter stopped again to catch his breath. If they capsized, he knew he would not survive. Or if the submarine did not receive their signal and they had to stay the night and tomorrow here, he knew he wouldn't make it.

  But he had the computer chip. If he and Hansen could get off the base without being detected, there was a very good chance the Russians would believe everyone had been killed in the sub pens.

  He half fell, half slid into a narrow depression, then crawled up the other side. There were some strong lights ahead through the swirling snow. For a long time his mind would not make the connection; he simply stared dully at the lights and the moving snow not knowing what he was seeing.

  But then it penetrated. He had made it to the edge of the woods. He was at the no-man's-land this side of the perimeter fence. The light was atop one of the guard towers.

  He had come up from the canal, though, not the turning basin, which meant he was probably east of Hansen's hiding spot. But how far east? He had no way of knowing. Nor, for a very long second or two, did he have any idea which way was east.

  Carter reared back into the woods, the full force of his predicament and his physical condition hitting him hard. He was going to need food and shelter. And very soon, or he simply would not make it; he would wander around in circles out here until he either froze to death or the Russians picked him up.

  Holding onto a tree, he stared at the lights through the snow and tried to make his head work. Tried to reason it out.

  Hansen was off to the right. He would be very near the edge of the woods. He would be waiting.

  Carter stumbled off in that direction, every muscle in his body screaming for relief. For rest.

&n
bsp; Once again time seemed to take on a meaning of its own. The only thing that was important was moving forward. At all costs. Each time he fell he dragged himself up, until in the end he found himself lying facedown in a huge patch of bloody snow.

  He pushed himself up and looked from the blood across to the fence. There were no patrols in sight, nor did it seem as if the hole they had cut in the fence had been disturbed.

  But something had died here. There were signs of a terrific struggle in the snow. He tried to sort it out, but there were so many footprints everywhere… then he had it.

  Carter crawled to the very edge of the woods and looked out across the no-man's-land toward the fence. Two separate trails of blood led straight across. Two trails. Hansen, and who else?

  Mindless now of his own injuries, of his battered body, Carter got to his feet, stumbled out of the woods, and made his way across the no-man's-land, the snow and wind hitting him again now that he was out in the open.

  At the fence, the opening had been shoved back in place and there was blood around it and on the other side. On the outside of the fence.

  He looked through the mesh toward the hill that led up away from the base. On the other side was the rocky coast off which the Silver Fish was waiting beneath the water for the rendezvous message… a message that would be impossible to send now that Hansen was gone with their only remaining radio.

  Also over the hill was the fishing village of Sovetskaya-Senyev. The villagers no doubt were charged by the Russian authorities with helping watch the coast.

  Was it someone from the village who had followed them up from the sea? He had felt another's presence very strongly when they had first arrived there that evening. Had someone grabbed Hansen?

  He pulled open the flap in the wire mesh fence, crawled through, then piled snow around the opening. As he started up the hill through the scrub, something else penetrated his beleaguered brain: even across the no-man's-land — out in the open — some trace of blood were still visible. But the wind was blowing, the snow was falling. It had to mean whoever had killed or wounded Hansen had dragged him away within the last few minutes; otherwise the snow would have covered their tracks.

  At the crest of the hill, Carter lay flat in the snow and looked over the edge. There wasn't much to see because of the storm. Nevertheless, he pulled his Mac 10 around and worked the stiff slide back and forth a couple of times to loosen the mechanism.

  He looked back over his shoulder. Nothing much was visible behind him except for the lights on the guard towers that glowed fuzzily in the night sky. Nothing could be seen of the burning submarine in the pens. Morgan's body was back there in the water. Barber had died there too. Good men, Carter thought, who should never have come ashore here.

  Summoning up his last reserves of strength, he got to his feet, stumbled over the crest of the hill and down the other side, starting south down the coast to where they had left Forester's body and the rubber raft.

  * * *

  What had taken four healthy, rested — though wet and cold — men an hour to do, took Carter three. At times he lost his way, forgetting to detour inland, and he would find himself at the edge of a cliff impossible to negotiate, and he would have to retrace his steps.

  At first he looked for more traces of blood, but by now the snow had effectively covered all tracks.

  Several times on his trek he woke up to find himself lying facedown in the snow, or curled up in a ball behind some outcropping of rock. Each time it became more and more difficult to rouse himself, to push himself to his feet, to force himself to get up.

  Once he backtracked for nearly two hundred yards because he convinced himself he had forgotten the carrying case. When he got to where he thought he had left it, there was nothing but a depression in the snow where he had rested awhile. In panic he thought someone was following him and had picked up the carrying case. But then he reached over his shoulder and touched it. He realized that he had been hallucinating. The case had been strapped to his back all the time.

  He was beginning to hear sounds again, but in the end he almost passed the jagged rock pile that marked the way they had come up from the beach. He stumbled and fell to his knees. This time he did not know if he would have the strength to get up again, but when he looked up he saw the rocks and suddenly recognized where he was. He had made it. He had made it!

  Carter got to his feet and climbed up over the hillock and over the crest so he could see the ocean. The long combers were coming in hard and crashing on the rocks. He could hear that, and he could hear the wind, but everything was at a distance.

  He watched the sea for a moment or two. It was going to be difficult getting the raft through that surf, but no more difficult than walking through the storm from the sub pens. He had come this far; there was no way in hell he'd give up now.

  He worked his way down to the tall rocks where they had stashed Forester's body and the rubber raft. But they were not there.

  Carter stood swaying on his feet, his knees weak, a hollow feeling at the pit of his stomach, looking at the empty spot behind the rocks.

  He stepped back and looked around to make sure he hadn't made a mistake, that this was indeed the place where they had hidden Forester's body and the raft. But it was the correct spot; he was certain of it. The raft was simply gone, and with it his chances of escape.

  For a long time he remained there, staring at the rocks, but he finally turned around and when he did he thought he must be dreaming.

  A young Siberian woman, the hood of her parka thrown back, her long black braids streaming in the wind, her eyes round, her olive complexion clear, stood there looking at him. She smiled.

  "Where are your other friends?" she shouted over the wind in halting English.

  Carter could just make out her words; it was as if they had come down a long, padded tunnel. He raised his Mac 10. "Who are you?"

  "Na'tukt," she said. "We have your rubber boat, and the bodies of your friend here and the one from inside the fence."

  "Did you kill him?"

  The young woman shook her head solemnly. "The Russians found your friend. They killed him. We killed them and brought their bodies with us. But what of your other two friends who went to the submarine pens with you?"

  Carter looked at her. She was from the fishing village just down the coast; there was little doubt of it. Evidently she and her people had been the ones who were following them.

  "They are dead," Carter shouted over the wind. His own voice seemed far away. It was a real effort just to talk, and the girl's face seemed to be going in and out of focus. "Did you find a radio?"

  "You cannot attempt to go to sea in this weather," the girl said.

  "I must."

  "You would die in the surf, or the patrol boats from the base would shoot at you. They have cannons. They are very upset about what you have done to their boat. They are not sure, though, if there are more of you, but they are certain that one of your submarines must be out there waiting."

  "I have to get back…" Carter started, but finally his legs gave out one last time and he pitched forward, his world going soft and dark.

  He dreamed that the carrying case was being taken away from him but that his struggles were ineffectual. He also dreamed that his clothes had been taken and that he was finally getting warm, and then his dreams turned erotic. Two women were in bed with him, keeping him warm, making love to him…

  Carter woke up twelve hours later. He lay in a soft bed, a down-filled quilt covering his nakedness. He felt rested, though his body ached all over. Only a small oil lamp in one corner provided any illumination. It was warm beneath the quilt but the room was unheated. He could see his breath.

  He started to sit up, when the door opened and two young women came in. One of them carried a bowl of steaming broth, the other a jar of kvas — a fermented Russian drink something like beer.

  "How do you feel?" one asked. He recognized her from the rocky beach.

  "Na'tukt?" h
e asked.

  She smiled broadly, and the other one giggled. "You have a very good memory. Is there anything else that you recall?"

  "Where are my clothes and the suitcase?"

  "Your clothes are being cleaned, and your suitcase is in the other room. Nothing has been harmed."

  "You didn't open the suitcase?"

  "No," Na'tukt said. She and the other girl came to the bedside and began feeding Carter the broth and the drink. It was very good.

  "The soldiers came around in the morning, but they found nothing," the second girl said. Her English was much better than Na'tukt's. Both of them were dressed in long sealskin robes, their feet bare, their hair cascading down around their shoulders.

  "My father has listened on the radio that your friend had with him," Na'tukt said. "He says your submarine has gone. They think that you are dead."

  "I have to get out of here," Carter said. "It is very important."

  "We know," the other girl said. "And we can help you. But first you must regain your strength."

  It was no use to protest, he realized, and he lay back. "What do they call you?" Carter asked.

  "Mal'ama," the girl said.

  "Those are very Siberian names for this part of the Soviet Union," Carter said. "And where did you learn to speak English?"

  "Our entire village was brought here from Okhotsk by the navy. It was required that we learn English," Mal'ama said.

  "Why?"

  "To stop spies such as yourself," she said matter-of-factly.

  "Then why haven't you turned me over to the authorities?"

  The girls looked at each other and smiled. "We had a good life in Okhotsk. It was our family home. Our life here, however, has been made very difficult. Our people were populating Siberia long before the Russian Revolution, and we will be Siberians long after the government in Moscow changes hands again."

  "We are not helping you so much as we are not helping them," Na'tukt said. "Now it is time to stop talking.