by David Wood
“The CIA was humiliated in their defeat. Castro was still very much in power. Three months later, they saw the spaceflight as an opportunity to unleash total destruction on their enemy. Who would suspect a space capsule delivering a nuclear weapon?”
Bones squinted at the rock, blowing on its surface for a moment as if to clear it of dust, then staring at it again. Ivkin noticed him and extended a hand. “Give that back to me, please. “ Bones looked up from the rock and handed it to Ivkin without a word.
“What is it?”
Ivkin scowled at Bones. “It is a good luck charm, if you will, that I have carried for some time.”
“So what do you intend to do with this information?” Dane didn't want to spend any more time than necessary in the custody of the Russians. Sometimes he really wished Bones would be quiet, but at the same time he knew the crafty Cherokee was indispensible.
Ivkin eyed the bomb. He spoke in Russian and immediately four of his crew jumped up from the second table and left the room. Then he addressed Dane and Bones.
“I intend to return this bomb to the United States of America.”
“So you plan to take this...bomb, if that’s in fact what it is,” Dane said, “and bring it home with you to Moscow so that they can return it to the U.S. as some sort of public outing of their Cold War plans gone wrong?”
Ivkin spat out a hearty laugh. “Oh, we plan to do a little better than that,” he said, pouring water from a crystal decanter.
“Care to elaborate?” Dane asked when Ivkin only drank from his glass, saying nothing further.
“Indeed,” Ivkin said, placing his glass on the table.”We plan to detonate this bomb ourselves. Justice must be served.”
“Out here in the middle of the ocean?” Bones asked. “That would make for some sweet waves. If you’ve got an extra surfboard, I’m all in.”
“No. We are not at war with the Bahamas. You see, we are going to launch it from here, but it will detonate far away, on land. It is time to make preparations.”
The four men who left a few minutes ago returned with a cart. They placed the bomb on it and wheeled it away.
“So you’re not going to blow up our expedition ships?” Dane tested.
Ivkin stood there with his hands on the table, shaking his head. “Certainly not. We could use our submarine's nuclear warheads for that, even conventional missiles, were that our goal. As I have said, our target is one that will demonstrate to the world that it does not pay to deceive the Soviet Union, and that the true victor of the Cold War is only now coming to light. However, if what you say is correct, that this device is not in fact a nuclear weapon, or has been rendered inoperable from its time on the ocean floor, then the target will suffer considerably less damage.”
“And what is the target?” Dane asked.
“None other than Washington, D.C.”
Chapter 16
“D.C. From here?” Dane asked Ivkin. Only Dane and Bones, Ivkin and two of his crew, no doubt serving as security guards, remained in the dining room.
“Yes, we are at the limit of our range but I believe it to be feasible.”
Dane wondered how much damage the small weapon of mass destruction would do in a populated city. He wasn’t sure, but if it was supposed to bring Havana to its knees then its power must be significant. And then there were the lingering effects of radioactivity…
Bones jolted him out of his gloomy thoughts by asking Ivkin a question. “Do you plan to issue a warning that the city will be bombed?”
“I am afraid that will not be possible,” Ivkin said.
Dane threw his hat into the ring. “Will you take responsibility for the bombing?”
Ivkin smiled. “Oh yes! Why do you think you two are still alive? I am not that desperate for dining companions,” he said, looking at his remaining officer who spoke English. That man laughed softly, never taking his eyes off of their two prisoners.
“What do we have to do with it?” Dane asked.
“You will serve as witnesses to the event. I believe you were sent here by your government. I confess that I do not know which branch or agency, but it is of no great matter. You were sent to bring back the bomb, but instead, you shall bring back a firsthand account of how I used that very bomb against your leaders. By the time they hear this account, we will long since have returned to our homeland.”
“Coward!” Dane accused. “I can't believe the Kremlin would back such a plan.”
Ivkin glared at him ever so slightly and then nodded to his two crew serving as security. They lifted rifles in Dane and Bones’ direction. “Perhaps I no longer care what the Kremlin thinks. After all, they were not overly concerned with my father's death in their service. But I will do them this last favor and retire here on my little piece of paradise,” he finished with a laugh, rubbing the stone.
“You think we’ll let that happen?” Bones said. “We’ll make sure the full force of the United States Armed Forces comes down on you like a hammer. Pun intended.”
Dane could have kicked him.
“Perhaps you are correct,” Ivkin said. “I shall have to find a more permanent solution for the two of you, but I can decide that later. I want you to live to see me exact justice on my father’s behalf. Now, let us begin!”
“Now?” Dane asked. “You’re going to fire a nuclear weapon on Washington, D.C. right now?”
“What better time?”
“How about never?” Bones suggested.
“You’re making a mistake,” Dane said. “That old thing probably doesn't work anymore, anyway, and you'll just blow yourselves up.” He hoped a dose of fear tactics might scare some sense into the crazed Russian.
“The nuclear device is relatively simple, being so old, and has already been primed by our nuclear technicians. During its flight to Washington, its reaction will be carried out and reach critical mass, causing a true nuclear blast upon impact. Even if that fails, the primer explosives will cause a conventional explosion that will release radioactive material. Either way, we are about to write our own postscript to a chapter of history the world thought was over.” Ivkin nodded to his security detail and they approached the prisoners.
“While my engineers are making the modifications to our missile firing systems in order to deliver the bomb to Washington, you will wait in your quarters, here in the house. I assure you it's much more comfortable than the one aboard my submarine. When it is time, you will be escorted to the submarine to witness this historic event."
“Well, he was right,” Bones said, resting on a velour couch. “The sub quarters makes this room look like The Ritz.”
Dane looked around at their second floor prison. Yellow carpet and drapes, pictures of seascapes adorning the walls, an old rolltop desk against one wall and a four-poster bed in the center of the room. There were windows on two walls, both barred on the outside.
“We must have gotten the guest room.”
“Just stay on your half of the bed and we'll be fine,” Bones said.
“I'm thinking, Bones, that maybe sticking around isn't such a good idea.” Dane walked to the nearest of the two windows and peered outside.
“You say that as if we have a choice. There's a trigger-happy Russkie right outside our door, you know.”
“But apparently none outside this window.” Dane strode across the room to the other window and looked out. “Or this one, but from here I have a view of the path we came in on, and some of the crew heading back to the sub.”
He walked back to the first window. He opened it, tensing when the wood creaked at first, then removed its screen. He examined the bars while he listened to Bones.
“Even if we did get out, then what? We're stranded on some little island and our sub is inside their sub, like one of those Russian nested doll sets. We'd have no way to get anywhere.”
Dane tested the strength of the bars by pushing on them. Little puffs of plaster fell into the air where the bars attached to the wall.
“I
think our best bet is to hide in plain sight. While they're busy re-boarding the sub and preoccupied with the nuke launch preparations, we sneak aboard and hide somewhere. Then, we either wait until they stop in port next and sneak off, or...”
“We hightail it out of there in Deep Black!”
“Deep Black is an oxygen bomb waiting to happen, remember?” Dane walked over to the desk.
“Well, this is all academic, anyhow, since we can't get out of…”
Bones broke off mid-sentence when he heard a dull thud as Dane pulled a metal roller track from one of the desk drawers and brought it to the window. Using the flat end of it like a screwdriver, he held it outside the window and started turning one of six screws fastening the grate to the window frame. After a few turns he was able to pull the corner of the grate from the wall. It made a sawing noise as it separated from the exterior wall, and they froze, looking to the door. But their guard hadn't heard it, so Dane resumed undoing the screws while Bones kept a sharp watch on the door, eyeballing the sliver of light where it met the floor.
Once Dane got the rest of the screws out Bones helped him to ease the grate away from the window and tossed it to the dirt below, off to one side so that they wouldn't land on it. They shrunk back from the window while they waited to see if someone would come to investigate outside. When no one did, they looked out the unobstructed window.
Bones shook his head. “This is not the room you wanted as a teenager so you could sneak out at night.” Indeed, there was no roof to step out onto but only a sheer vertical drop to the ground about twenty feet below.
“Hang and drop. We can do it.” Dane climbed onto the frame, grabbed onto the sill and turned around.
“Go, I hear something in the hall!” Bones warned. Dane let himself drop. By the time the sound of his impact with the ground reached Bones' ears, the large Indian was already falling through the air himself.
He hit the ground next to Dane's impromptu screwdriver. Picking up the piece of metal, he ran, following Dane toward the foliage that bordered the path. Stealthy movement was second nature to the SEALs, and in two minutes they were ensconced in vegetation that afforded them glimpses of the path they'd walked in on. They watched a small contingent of Russians walk past carrying a pair of crates. Looking down the path toward the house, two more submariners walked side by side, each carrying a heavy box.
“We take these two down and put on their uniforms,” Dane whispered. In response, Bones smacked the metal bar against his palm and adjusted his footing in the loose dirt. Dane looked up and down the path, saw it was clear except for their two targets.
“I'll take the big guy,” Bones said.
“Go!”
Dane and Bones crept silently from the vegetation onto the path behind their intended victims. Bones approached the larger man, on the right, with the metal bar at the ready. Dane ran up to the one on the left. Just as the man turned around at the sound of footsteps, Dane snapped a crisp punch to his chin, sending him stumbling backward. Dane rode him to the ground, slamming the man’s head to the ground with a sickening crack.
The Russian lay unconscious, blood from his broken nose pooling in the dirt.
Bones had the taller man in a chokehold with the piece of metal across his neck. He was on his knees, clawing at the metal bar while gasping and wheezing. Dane assisted Bones by holding down the man's arms and soon he, too, was unconscious.
The two operators dragged the fallen submariners off the path into the brush. Hands patted down the bodies, but besides the uniforms themselves, nothing of value was found.
“Would have been nice to have a gun,” Bones lamented, pulling the sailor's jumpsuit from the unconscious man.
“A radio, too. Looks like we got the kitchen runners, though,” he said, opening the coolers they carried to reveal leftover food and cooking supplies. Dane changed into the Russian uniform and balled up his clothing, looking around for a place to hide it.
Bones struggled to fit into the uniform he had appropriated, but it eventually fit.
“You look like you're part of the Village People,” Dane said. He pointed at something a few feet away before Bones could respond. “There's a hole big enough to stash our clothes.”
Bones looked, a concerned expression overtaking his features. “Hole? That's damn near a small cave.”
The ground sloped down to a greenery-shrouded depression, and there at the bottom lay a large hole or perhaps tunnel, large enough for a man to wriggle into. A few feet in, it either ended or bent out of sight in darkness.
“C'mon, let's get a move on.” Dane took his clothes and slid down to the hole. He tossed his clothing inside, then turned around. “Bones, toss me yours.”
Bones knelt on the ground, clothes clutched in one hand, eyes widening.
“Bones, throw me…”
Dane froze. Down in the hole, something moved.
Chapter 17
Bones kept his voice at a low level. “What the hell is that?”
Dane turned back around to look into the hole. He recoiled at the sight of a large animal of some kind emerging from the hole. He scrambled back up toward Bones, but the creature was faster. It dragged itself out of the hole. Dane saw flashes of its jointed legs, five-foot long antennae, and a massive pincer claw that looked as though it would be at home on the business end of a piece of heavy machinery.
“It's a crab!” Dane fell to the ground. Bones reached down to pull him up but it was too late. The humongous arthropod was on Dane in a flash, kicking Bones aside with a sweep of one of its legs. Dane looked up from the ground in time to see a plethora of moving parts he forgot the names of long ago in biology class—mandibles and various other feeding appendages—all moving independently like precision parts of a powerful machine. Something fell from the crab's mouth and landed on Dane's chest—a knobby rock like those in the nearby pile, but dripping with slime.
Dane felt a piece of metal against his wrist and remembered the fork. He pulled it out and jammed the tines deep into the one of the creature's eye stalks. It had little effect. The crab used its legs to pin Dane to the ground. He rocked back and jammed both of his feet into the crab's underside. The animal was jolted just high enough for Dane to roll out from under it…
…only to see another crab scamper out of the tunnel.
“Giant land crab nest!” Bones walked up to the monster nearest Dane and stabbed it with his metal shank. It pierced the creature's hard exoskeleton but sank into nothing.
Bones wrenched the tool out from the creature's natural armor. “It's like punching through drywall. There’s nothing on the other side,” he shouted. Somewhere in the back of his mind Dane registered that they were being too loud, but he preferred being captured by the Russians if they would save him from these hellish beasts.
Or would Ivkin allow them to be consumed? Maybe that's why the room wasn't so heavily guarded?
But he had no time to dwell on such matters. Bones was staving off the first crab with repeated shankings, searching for a vulnerable spot, but the second announced its arrival by crushing Dane's calf in a vice grip with its main pincer. Dane gritted his teeth in pain as he felt warm liquid ooze onto the leg of his Russian jumpsuit. He clutched a fistful of sand and pebbles and flung it into the crab's mouth and eye area. The pincer relaxed its grip ever so slightly and Dane ripped his leg free. He rolled off to one side and stood, not caring if the Russians spotted him.
What he saw terrified him: perhaps a dozen, maybe more, of the land crabs scuttled across the path and through the underbrush, converging on their location.
“Bones, there's more! A whole herd coming.”
Bones had picked up a plastic cooler the Russians were carrying and was using it as a shield against the first crab. “Open to suggestions!”
Dane scanned the route they would need to take from here to the sub if they were to remain unseen by the Russians. It was crawling with oversized arthropods, some of them basking on the mound of radioactive rocks,
others rampaging across the scrubby undergrowth. The largest ones were taller than Bones. He'd never seen anything like it, but had no time to ponder the miracles of nature. He glanced at the dumped contents of Bones' cooler but it was only a few sacks of flour and some butter. Out of the corner of one eye he spotted the second food box from the Russian he had taken down. He sprinted to it and kicked it over, spilling its contents.
Yes! Food. Even better, it appeared to be partially frozen fish as well as some uneaten clams. He dumped out the box and started hurling chunks of seafood off to the other side of the path, away from their needed course. First one crab veered to the offering, then another, then more. It was working. With the exception of the two crabs already battling them, the ginormous crustaceans made for the decoy meal.
Dane glanced over at Bones, who looked like he was at a tipping point in his contest with his ten-legged opponent. “Things are so damn strong,” he grunted, struggling to move one of its spindly limbs off his chest with both hands. Dane put his head down and barreled into the meaty decapod. It tumbled onto its back down the incline to the tunnel, where it collided with the other crab, their legs entangling.
“Over here!” Dane pointed through the foliage toward the pier. He threw the last piece of fish out onto the path, baiting three more crabs, then took off at a sprint. Bones was close behind. They passed clusters of land crabs, all either gorging on or fighting over pieces of meat.
They emerged out of the scrub into a patch of sandy soil that soon gave way to a stand of mangroves. The two SEALs flung themselves headlong into the trees, grateful for the cover of the aquatic canopy. Behind them a wayward crab attempted to follow but was too sizable to fit through the tangled, woody growth.
“Keep going.” Dane brushed branches out of the way, slogging through wet muck. He worried about losing a shoe. Bare feet were not permitted aboard a naval sub and would make them stand out. He had to slow himself in order to extract his foot with shoe attached on several occasions.
