Sergei grabbed her hand. ‘This way. Leave all the doors open.’
She didn’t get it. For a submariner it was practically second nature to seal hatches behind you, just in case, to stop the whole sub being flooded should it spring a leak. She added it to her list of questions for later, hoping there would be a ‘later’.
The sub began to judder, the engine noise rising to a high-pitched whine. The propeller whirred like a dentist’s drill. And then it happened. The ship moved. A small, juddering lurch forward. Sergei stopped and tapped something into the dive computer on his wrist. She hoped Viktor was receiving the message, whatever it was. Sergei looked her way as he made the final tap.
The explosion almost knocked her off her feet, as a booming blast of air cannoned around the close quarters. Suddenly knee-deep in seawater, she waded to the hatch entrance to the conning tower section. Water jetted in with the ferocity of a rocket engine. She fought the instinct to run.
This was their way out.
‘Put your mask on,’ Sergei yelled.
She did, checking none of her hair was trapped under the rubber seals, securing the straps behind her head, pulling them as tight as they’d go.
The sub lurched forward again. Stopped. And then. No, no, no! The water, chest height, began running away from her, towards the front end. The sub began to tilt forward. Sergei dived into the broiling water and was gone. Water continued to thunder into the room, the level rising quickly, to her shoulders, her neck. It splashed over her mask, and then her ears and head were underwater, the sounds suddenly muffled, the gushing of water shifting to a deep grumbling. The air cylinder wouldn’t last long. She needed to get out. Right now.
And then she saw Sergei, on the opposite side of the room. He was closing the hatch. It made sense: water flooding the forward compartments would tip the sub further, whereas if it flooded the rear, it could delay the sub going over the edge. But another lurch confirmed the worst. The sub was on its way to a deep grave. The faucet eased off, then stopped. The chamber was full. She swam towards the hole in the ceiling. The sub began to move forward and tilt further at the same time. Seizing the ragged edges of the hole, she pulled herself through, and gripped a rung of the conning tower ladder. She glanced at her dive computer to check the depth of the dark water around her. Forty metres.
The halogen beam of the remaining sled, some thirty metres to port with Viktor and the other diver aboard, allowed Nadia to survey the scene. The sub was already at a thirty-degree angle. The propeller was at full thrust, its blades a ghostly blur. The only thing slowing the sub down was the friction of the sub’s hull against the bedrock of the ledge. But in a matter of seconds the sub would tip over and become one gigantic torpedo. She knew what she had to do. Get off the sub and swim towards the sled. But she had no fins, and the wake of the sub and its propeller would suck her in and shred her.
Where the hell was Sergei?
The halogen light focused on her. The sub began to tilt further. Her guts tightened as she looked down. The conning tower was located far forward on a Borei sub. She was already over the abyss.
Forty-five degrees.
Sergei’s head appeared. Then his shoulders. COME ON! One hand. He heaved himself up. He was carrying something. The sub began levering itself over the ledge. Tipping point. The halogen lights from the sled grew brighter, but the sled didn’t dare get too close.
Fifty degrees.
Sergei was out, carrying some piece of equipment the size of a briefcase. He reached for her hand. She grabbed it, and glanced backwards into the yawning abyss behind. The safety of the ledge was just within their reach but the sub was gathering speed. Now or never. She yanked Sergei to the left, and they kicked hard off the hull of the sub. She fell, while the massive black body of the sub, now at seventy degrees, thundered past, splintering rocks on its way, the grinding noise deafening.
She hit shaking ground, the jagged lip of rock separating her from the chasm, and she feared the entire ledge would give way. Her hands tried to dig into the rock for support, but her legs dangled over the edge in empty water, currents whipping over her body. At last the sub, almost vertical, powered past, the prop blades lost in a fury of dark foam. Instead of sucking her down, now the thrust of the propeller pushed her upwards, and she wasted no time in clawing herself fully onto the ledge.
Sergei was beside her. But whatever he’d tried to salvage – the case, she realised – was gone. She guessed he’d had to let it go or else follow his sub to the bottom. The halogen light grew brighter. But she lay there, as did Sergei, counting, waiting. A muffled boom rose from the abyss, but nothing else. No blinding flash. No detonation. The warheads hadn’t been armed. She dared to breathe again, whereupon her air became stingy. She sucked in a deep breath and held it.
The two divers on the sled were the ones she’d descended with. One of them held out a regulator for her. She had to take off her full-face mask in order to use it, so would be pretty much blind on her way back to the surface, but it was the only way. She caught a glimpse of Sergei, about to do the same. He caught her eye, initially sad, and then he smiled. He fucking smiled. She ripped off her mask and clamped her mouth over the regulator, and took several greedy breaths, then gave them the OK signal, and clambered aboard the sled as it began the slow climb to the surface.
God, she needed some new swear words.
Nadia nursed a mug of coffee, inhaled the bittersweet aroma, and let the steam float over her nose, eyes and forehead. The ascent had been short, but they’d had to wait on the surface for half an hour before the helicopter plucked them from the roiling sea. They’d travelled to Murmansk airport, flying low over the Arctic’s northernmost city, where she glimpsed the Lenin, the famous nuclear-powered icebreaker, once the pride of the atomflot but now a naval museum. Then a quick transfer to the same aircraft in which they’d arrived. Now she was on her way back to Moscow. She shivered under the thin blanket wrapped around her.
Viktor, the driver of her sled, now Sergei’s number two on this mission, got up from where he sat opposite her, and draped his blanket around her shoulders.
‘Stay warm, little tovarich,’ he said.
The Russian word for comrade was only ever used with irony these days, but she took it in a good way. The other diver, who had not yet spoken, nodded to her.
‘Next time we need to get inside a really tight hole, we call you,’ he said, and then the two men burst out laughing. It was infectious, but was cut off when light from the corridor flooded into the room, and Sergei stood there, silhouetted. Her gaze lingered.
‘Come,’ he said.
She took her mug with her, and handed the blanket back to Viktor. ‘Spasiba,’ she said, and followed Sergei to the luxury cabin.
The same four people were there – the colonel, his aide, Katya and Bransk – but the mood was sombre. Sergei summarised what they knew.
‘A single warhead was taken. They knew exactly what they were doing, and we have no idea where they are, and whether it was armed or not.’
‘Is there any way to disarm it?’ Katya asked.
‘Yes,’ answered the colonel. ‘With the codes in the briefcase our brave captain accidentally dropped in a kilometre of water.’
Nadia had to admit, they’d come so close, and then lost their one quick way of disarming the warhead. She could understand the colonel’s frustration – and there would be hell to pay when they got back. The way the colonel was baiting Sergei would be nothing compared to what would happen back in Moscow.
Sergei’s face tightened as he glared at the colonel. ‘Easy for you to say, sat in a nice warm room while we were fighting for our lives.’