The Last Option

by Alex Lukeman

"It can't be helped."

  A few minutes later, the Russian team came back to the clearing. Two men stayed with the helicopter. The others headed for the teahouse.

  "They'll find the bunker," Lamont said. "And the tomb."

  "Nick," Ronnie said. "We can't let them leave here."

  Nick knew he was right. Moscow would exploit the discovery of the secret tomb with a propaganda blitz unlike anything the world had seen. The gold would further Orlov's sinister plans against the West.

  There were two options. He could do nothing. He could eliminate the Russians.

  "I need to get back into the teahouse to set off the charges," Ronnie said. "Those two by the chopper are in the way."

  It always ends up like this, Nick thought. Some poor bastard in a uniform has to die for the greater good. Whoever thought that phrase up was never a soldier.

  "All right," Nick said. "We take them out."

  "It's gonna make noise," Lamont said. "The others will hear."

  "We're out of options. Ronnie, as soon as the guards are down, do your thing and blow the charges. Lamont, cover him. I'll go for the pilots."

  The team was nearly invisible under the trees in their dark clothes. They moved quietly to the edge of the clearing. One of the Russians stood by the open hatch of the helicopter. The other scanned the tree line. His eyes moved past where Nick and the others crouched, then suddenly shifted back.

  "Byt' ostorozhnym!" he shouted. Look out!

  He brought his rifle up and fired, sending a stream of bullets wicking through the trees, snapping branches over Nick's head. The second guard brought up his rifle at the shout. Both men carried A-91 bullpup assault rifles, compact, accurate and deadly.

  Nick, Ronnie, and Lamont all fired. The first guard went down. Lamont grunted and fell. Nick shot the second guard.

  "Ronnie. Go."

  There was no time to check on Lamont. Nick burst from the trees and charged toward the helicopter. One of the pilots appeared at the open hatch, a pistol in his hand. He fired and missed. Nick shot him. He ran forward, pulled out a fragmentation grenade, and tossed it into the helicopter.

  He veered away from the doomed aircraft. A second later, the helicopter exploded in a fireball of orange flame, sending pieces of lethal shrapnel whistling through the air. The blast knocked him to the ground. One of the rotor blades impaled itself in the ground next to his head.

  Ronnie reached the door to the teahouse. Two Russians were in the room. Ronnie fired at them as he came through the door. One of them went down, the other got off a burst as Ronnie shot him. The rounds went wide. Ronnie ran to the closet with the secret entrance to the stairway leading down to the bunker. The rest of the Russian assault team was below. Shouts came up the stairs.

  Ronnie took out the remote detonator and triggered the explosives laid below. The floor shook under his feet. A cloud of gray dust billowed out of the stairway entrance.

  Then there was silence.

  CHAPTER 58

  It was late at night in Virginia. Elizabeth, Selena and Stephanie were wide-awake, waiting to hear from Nick.

  I am receiving a satellite phone transmission from Argentina.

  "Put it on speakers, Freddie."

  Nick's voice came over the speaker, along with the hiss of atmospherics.

  "Director, do you copy?"

  "Loud and clear, Nick."

  "We ran into a shit storm. A Russian assault team landed here. We took them out. Lamont's lost a lot of blood and is in a bad way."

  "What? What did you just say?"

  "Beck, Morgan, and Palmer are dead. You're not going to believe what we found. We need extraction, now."

  "Did you find out where they placed the bomb?"

  "Negative. But Beck said something strange. He asked me what time it was in California. He smiled when I told him. Then he pulled out a gun. Lamont had to shoot him."

  "It's California," Selena said. "It has to be."

  "It was an odd thing to ask, given the situation he was in."

  "All right, Nick. I'll get help to you as soon as I can."

  "Lamont is barely holding on. Hurry, Director. Out."

  "Damn it," Elizabeth said.

  Selena shifted uncomfortably on the couch. "Russians? What were they doing there?"

  "They probably broke Petroff. He would have known where they were meeting."

  "Why would Beck want to know what time it was in California? And why smile when Nick told him?"

  "It must mean the bomb is near California." Elizabeth tapped her pen on her desk. "Maybe supposed to go off soon."

  Stephanie looked at her empty coffee cup. "I need more coffee. What are you going to do, Elizabeth?"

  "Get the Navy looking for that sub."

  She picked up her phone.

  CHAPTER 59

  The best predators have always been silent. Five hundred meters below the surface of the Pacific, the Russian attack submarine K-157 was silent as the ghosts haunting the Titanic.

  K-157 was off the coast of the United States, over the abyssal plain that stretched between California and Hawaii. She was powered by a nuclear reactor that produced forty-three thousand horsepower and could travel submerged at thirty-five knots. In stealth mode at five knots, she was virtually undetectable.

  The crew knew they were on an important mission for the motherland. They'd been told the strange object under their boat was part of a scientific research project, a remote drone to measure changes on the ocean floor. No one among the crew believed the story, but no one was going to ask Captain Ivanov about it.

  K-157 was an Akula class submarine, one of eight, the cream of the Federation's undersea fleet. She was too important a weapon to relegate for something as mundane as scientific research. It had not escaped the men aboard that they'd come a considerable distance from Russia and were approaching the west coast of the main enemy, America.

  Captain First Rank Vasily Ivanov moved a few steps across the crowded command center to where his navigation officer had just finished updating K-157's position.

  "Well, Lieutenant?"

  "Sir, we have reached the coordinates."

  "Excellent. Sonar, anything up there?"

  The sonar operator looked worried.

  "Yes, Captain. There are several surface ships. Signatures indicate two American Arleigh Burke class destroyers and several smaller vessels."

  Ivanov scowled. "What are those bastards doing?"

  The executive officer stood near. "They can't know we're here, sir. They're probably on maneuvers, out of San Diego."

  "Whatever they're doing, we can't do a damn thing about it. We have a mission to complete."

  "Ready to release the drone on your command, Captain."

  The voice belonged to K-157's weapons officer, Yevgeny Kirov.

  "Very good. Arm the release."

  Kirov flipped back the cover of a red switch on his control board.

  "Lieutenant Kirov."

  "Sir."

  "Release the drone."

  "Yes, Captain!"

  Kirov flipped the switch. The drone dropped away from the sub. Its electric propeller began quietly turning, driving the bomb down into the darkness of the deep ocean. When it reached the ocean floor the drone settled gently into the mud and went into sleep mode, waiting for the next command.

  Ivanov's orders were to move a safe distance away after the weapon was released and detonate it by ELF undersea transmission. He was then ordered to send up a radio buoy and inform headquarters that the mission was a success. The hostile American naval forces above him complicated things, but he was only mildly concerned.

  K-157 moved away in stealth mode, gliding under the thermocline layer at a steady five knots. Thermocline layers occurred between the first six hundred feet or so of ocean depth and the colder depths below, a thousand feet down. It was a way to confuse enemy detection, if you had a submarine capable of going that deep. Modern nuclear submarines like K-157 could easily reach the depth needed to pas
s under the layer.

  Of course, the subterfuge was well known and wasn't always effective. In an age of submarines carrying enough nuclear missiles to annihilate millions of people, the navies of the world were always trying out new techniques of antisubmarine warfare. It was Ivanov's misfortune that the destroyers on the surface were specifically looking for him. It was his further misfortune that both of them were equipped with the latest ASW technologies.

  Aboard K-157 the sonar operator pressed his ear phones against his skull.

  "Captain. We have been detected. The Americans have launched depth charges."

  "Battle stations," Ivanov said.

  The alarm sounded throughout the boat. The time for quiet was over.

  "Helm, ahead full. Steer two sixty degrees."

  "Ahead full, aye. Steer two sixty degrees, aye."

  The sub hummed as the powerful steam turbine spooled up. The first depth charges exploded behind them, rocking the sub.

  For the next ten minutes, Ivanov ordered changes in speed and direction. The sound of the depth charges exploding grew fainter. None had really come close.

  "All silent, all stop," Ivanov ordered.

  The submarine slowed and stopped. No one moved or spoke. The temperature inside the sub began to rise. The air grew heavy. The sonar operator listened. They waited.

  The sonar operator raised his hand and gave a thumbs up.

  "All ahead, slow," Ivanov said.

  As the sub began to move, Ivanov thought of home and Yuliana, his wife. I'll see you soon, he thought.

  "Captain! They've found us!"

  "All ahead..."

  Ivanov never finished the sentence. The first depth charge exploded just aft of the sail, ripping a gigantic hole in the double hull. The second and third charges exploded near the reactor compartment, sending thousands of tons of seawater cascading into the doomed submarine. The water flooded into the stern. K-157 turned vertical and plunged like an arrow into the depths below.

  CHAPTER 60

  The CIA safe house was near Alexandria. Valentina stood looking out a window at the green, Virginia countryside. She thought how different it was from Russia.

  I'll never be able to go back. I'll never see Moscow again.

  She'd had a lot to think about in the last couple of days. She'd had time for the reality of her defection to sink in.

  She'd gone over it in her mind a hundred times. In the end she always came back to the same conclusion. She had made a choice for survival, a choice to live. Perhaps even a choice to find some kind of happiness in her life.

  The right choice, but she would never see Russia again. Something in her grieved for the dark beauty of her homeland. She felt as though she'd been torn out by the roots from a connection to something deep and ancient and vital.

  Vysotsky had been killed because he knew something. Whoever had killed him couldn't afford to leave her alive. They would assume he'd told her about whatever had made his death necessary. The fact that she didn't know anything made no difference at all. Anyone powerful enough to kill the Director of SVR would find a way through any protection she was given.

  That assumed Orlov would have provided protection in the first place, but Valentina knew there would have been no guarantee of that. She was now an embarrassment to the president. Orlov was a man who always had to be in control, a man who could never appear weak. She was witness to the truth that not even someone like General Vysotsky was safe from attack in Orlov's Russia. She was under no illusions that his physical attraction to her was more than a passing fancy.

  She didn't think Orlov had ordered the assassination. If he'd wanted Vysotsky out of the way, it would've been a simple matter to arrest him, take him to the Lubyanka, and eliminate the problem with a bullet to the back of the head. She wondered if her sister would know why Vysotsky had been killed, and if Selena would tell her if she did.

  Two CIA minders were in the house all the time, usually a woman and a man. They were polite but she could tell they didn't trust her. Why should they? She was a high-ranking officer in the Russian equivalent of their own organization. If the positions had been reversed, she would not have trusted them either. Whoever was on duty kept the conversation limited to simple things, like what she wanted for breakfast.

  Valentina saw Selena pull up in front of the house. She got out and came up the walkway.

  My sister, Valentina thought. It is a bizarre world I live in. How strange that we should meet as enemies and that I should end up here.

  One of the minders let Selena in. She wore a long, silver blouse that draped down over her swollen abdomen and a soft blue skirt that reached to her knees. She looked at Valentina. Her sister had deep bags under her eyes. She looked tired and stressed. Even so, there was fire in her eyes.

  "Valentina. You look good. How are you feeling?"

  "Sister. No need to lie about how I look but I am well."

  "I wish things were different," Selena said, "that you didn't have to be here under these conditions. It can't be easy for you."

  "It is very easy, compared to what I left. I have no complaints."

  "Let's sit down."

  Selena sat on an armchair upholstered with a pattern of flowers and leaves. Valentina took a seat on a couch across from her.

  "Leave us, please," Selena said to the minder. He was a tall man with dark hair, dressed in a gray suit. A bulge under his jacket showed that he was armed.

  "I'll be in the kitchen if you need me, ma'am."

  When he was gone, Selena said, "People are coming this afternoon to start debriefing you. They'll want to know everything that's happened and why you decided to defect. They'll ask you about your work with SVR and your relationship with Orlov."

  "An interrogation."

  "Not in the sense you're thinking of it," Selena said. "You must realize that my government sees you as an asset. They will want to know everything about you. You have been in a unique position for years. No one wants to force you to tell them anything, but the more you tell them, the sooner you'll be processed out of here and allowed to start a new life here in America."

  "You wish me to betray my country."

  "That's one way to put it," Selena said, keeping annoyance out of her voice. "Another way is to see it as the beginning of a new life. You knew this was coming. For whatever reasons, you chose to defect. I think I know what it means to you. I can only imagine how you're feeling."

  "With respect, sister, you do not know what it means to me. I will cooperate with your interrogators. But I will not reveal anything I think could give your country an advantage over mine."

  "Fair enough."

  "You are thinking that whatever I say could provide a possible advantage. Perhaps you are right. This is not unexpected. We would do the same, if you were the one who was defecting."

  "You're right, of course. Let's talk about something else."

  Valentina gestured. "Tell me about the baby. When is it coming?"

  "Two babies. I'm carrying twins. You're going to be a double aunt soon."

  For the next hour the two women talked. They didn't talk about the ambush that had triggered Valentina's flight, or her role with SVR.

  A black Suburban pulled up in front of the house.

  Selena stood. "Time for me to go."

  "Next time I want to know more about our father."

  Valentina stood. Selena came over to her.

  "I'm so glad you're here."

  "Sister. It is good to have family, no?"

  They embraced in the European style, quick air kisses to both cheeks.

  "There will be a lot of times to talk," Selena said.

  "I hope so."

  "Don't doubt it. I'll see you again tomorrow."

  Valentina watched Selena go down the walk and exchange a passing word with a man and a woman who had gotten out of the Suburban.

  Maybe it will be all right after all, Valentina thought.

  CHAPTER 61

  Nick stood at the win
dow of the Washington loft, a glass of whiskey in his hand, looking out at a spectacular sunset. Long rays of red and gold shot into the sky, turning the clouds into a shifting palette of colors. Selena came up behind him and put her arm through his.

  "Quite a show," she said.

  "It's been a long time since I've had a chance to just stand and watch nature do her thing."

  "We should take a vacation after the twins are born. We could lie on a beach somewhere and watch as many sunsets as we like."

  "Sounds like a plan."

  "I'm worried about Lamont," Selena said.

  Lamont was in the ICU at Walter Reed. No one knew if he was going to make it.

  "He's in good hands. They know what they're doing over there."

  "It could have been you."

  "But it wasn't."

  "I want you to quit. For me and for our kids."

  "That sounds like an ultimatum."

  Selena took her arm away.

  "Maybe it is."

  "I'll think about it. I promise."

  "You'll have to do more than just think about it. I mean it, Nick. I can't do this anymore. I don't want to get a call some morning from Elizabeth telling me you're not coming back from some godforsaken place I never heard of."

  "What are you saying?"

  "I'm saying you have to choose. Let somebody else save the world. I need you." She put a hand on her belly. "We need you."

  Nick saw the fear hidden behind her eyes. Fear born out of love for him, for their future together. It was a look that went straight to his heart.

  "All right," he said. "I'll resign."

  "Don't say it if you don't mean it."

  He took her in his arms and kissed her.

  "I promise," he said.

  *****

  Far below the surface of the Pacific, the weapon lay silent on the mud of the ocean floor. Bits of drifting silt and debris were already beginning to coat the dull gray surface of the bomb. Three critical fracture lines in the Earth's crust met exactly below the spot where the bomb had buried itself in the mud.

  The radioactive material in the bomb would last thousands of years without deteriorating. The outer shell of the drone was made of an alloy unaffected by the corrosive effect of the salt water around it.