But waiting meant thinking. About Sergei? No, don’t go there. Jake? Ditto. The job. Fanatical-but-smart killers below. Probably executed the crew already. The question that had dogged her in the Scillies came back to her. Was she ready to kill?
She’d killed for the first time there. Drowned a man – a lot harder than pulling a trigger. She’d done it to save Jake and the others, though it had been too late to save Ben. And she’d shot another. No hesitation that time, because the bastard had just killed a bunch of innocents and had raped her years earlier. But there was no one down below she cared for or hated. Yet it came down to this. There was a line. Before the Scillies she’d been on one side of it. Now she was on the other. Her father’s side.
So, yes, she could kill.
A dull buzzing interrupted her thoughts. Sergei was staring behind her. She finned to spin around and saw a light, then two. The sleds, two divers apiece, one on top, one hanging at the side. They didn’t slow down. A sled approached, and she finned to get a head start, and then grabbed the sled’s rail as it passed. Sergei was on the sled in front. He glanced back once to check she was aboard, then both sleds accelerated to make up for lost time. They stayed at fifteen metres for a good ten minutes, then she felt the pressure on her ears increase, and cleared them – they were descending.
They hit thirty-five metres and levelled off. Still she saw nothing, but the sleds both slowed, and then she saw why. The forward light picked up the huge black tail fin of the Borei Class nuclear sub, like the fin of a shark, which happened to be the nickname for this class of sub. Sergei’s sled circled behind, his forward beam illuminating the massive propeller. She tried to gauge how long each blade was. Maybe three metres.
Sergei took point again, and fired a flare that fizzed forward like a lazy yellow firework. The sub was one hundred and seventy metres long, only slightly shorter than its predecessor, the Typhoon. But seeing it, positioned at one end while the flare swept forward over its dark beauty, was something else. The flare continued its arc over the conning tower, all the way to the prow, her destination. The light faded and plunged them back into darkness save for the sled’s lights. But the after-image was etched onto her retinas. Russian subs didn’t really go in for names, they were usually referred to as Projects and given a number, but Sergei had told her this one was the Yuri Gagarin. He’d have been proud.
Yet shark was the right label, too. Subs like the Yuri were the ultimate predator, patrolling the oceans, undetectable yet carrying Armageddon on their backs, a dozen missiles, any one of which could obliterate a major city, incinerating hundreds of thousands of people in a heartbeat. They had to stop its warheads falling into the wrong hands.
They picked up speed, the sleds’ beams angled downwards, two ellipses of light tracing the narrow walkway on the foredeck. Both sleds slowed as they reached the missile hatches, a dozen lined up in neat pairs. One was open.
Sergei descended from the sled to the deck, and peered inside with his torch. Nadia wanted to take a look, but the sled driver’s hand clasped around hers, welding it to the sled’s rail. Sergei could clearly see something, but she had no way of knowing what. He rejoined his sled, and both sleds surged forward. She glanced down as she passed the open tube, but could see nothing there, not even the telltale white and red cone of the missile itself. She felt a shiver. It looked as if at least one warhead was already missing.
They arrived at the conning tower, its antennae bending in the current, a sturdy metal ladder running down the outside. She wondered how Sergei and the other two were going to board the sub through the conning tower. They tethered their sled to the tower, and as her sled continued its journey, she glanced back, watching Sergei and the others setting up some equipment. She realised two things. The first was that they could easily be killed as soon as they entered the sub. The second was that she didn’t want that to happen, not to Sergei at any rate. She turned her gaze forwards.
The foredeck began to narrow in the beam of light, until it reached the sleek prow of one of Russia’s finest. As they drifted down to the torpedo hatches, she realised she couldn’t see the sea floor. Which didn’t make sense. The sled driver evidently had the same concern. He circled the sled while the second diver fired up a flare, then let it drop. It fell for a full minute before it was lost in the depths. Shit.
The driver gunned the motor and they levelled off on the starboard side with nothing beneath them but a yawning abyss. He fired a flare horizontally, along the sub’s hull, and she watched, unbelieving. Nearly half the sub was hanging over an underwater cliff.
Had Sergei known? Clearly his men hadn’t. The driver prodded the sled’s keypad, presumably sending a message to Sergei, then did an about-turn back to the torpedo tubes. She checked her dive computer. Forty-two metres. Her head felt a little groggy due to the inevitable narcosis, as if she’d downed two vodkas. The adrenaline would more than compensate. But as she stared at the enormous sub right in front of her, she wondered what it would take to tip it into the abyss.
The other two divers had backpacks like hers, but with larger twin tanks, as they would remain outside in the water. She checked the sled. Her spare tank, for the return journey, was fixed to its underside. Now the operation became tricky.
The driver keyed a command into the sled’s control pad, dismounted, and left it hovering in one spot, despite the constant slow current. She was impressed – she hadn’t known such underwater navtech existed. He then unhooked some gear, finned to the sealed torpedo tube, lit an underwater burner, and began burning through the tube’s bow cap. The blue flame was shrouded by a torrent of expanding bubbles heading for the surface. The other diver fixed a small camera and head torch to Nadia’s head. Then he hooked a lanyard around her neck, attached to the thin breathing cylinder that should keep her alive long enough to get to the other end of the tube.
Something nagged her brain about the plan. Something was wrong. But the trouble with narcosis was that it made it hard to think. One of the golden rules of diving – plan the dive, and dive the plan – was there for exactly that purpose, to stop you changing your mind at depth, when you were no longer thinking clearly. While she was diving on air, because she’d be going inside the torpedo tube on her small canister of air, the other two would be on a Nitrox mixture in order to stay outside longer. So, they should be thinking clearly, no narcosis at this depth. They didn’t seem bothered. Maybe it was just her. Still it nagged, like an unscratchable itch inside her skull.
The driver was halfway through cutting the bow cap off. The other diver fixed the modified Glock to her inner left arm. Once she’d defeated the interlock, she’d open the inner door. Water would flush her into the torpedo room, surprising anyone there. She’d have about two seconds to spot anyone, draw her weapon, and shoot them.
The sled driver was almost through. The bow cap was heavy. It would fall into the abyss. She gazed down while the other diver began unfastening the stab jacket straps holding her air tank on. She’d have to switch to the small cylinder any second. Dammit! What was it? What was she missing? She was positive they were about to make a fatal mistake.
She mentally went through the steps again: cut off the bow cap; lay it on the seabed floor, because it’s heavy. Prepare Nadia. She goes in. Pick up the plate again, then, using the sled for buoyancy, reseal the cap in position like a plug, so the torpedo room doesn’t flood when she opens the inner hatch… But the conditions had changed. She stared downwards. There was no sea floor. And half the sub was hanging over a cliff. It wouldn’t take much to tip the sub over…
She looked up.
The burner switched off. With his gloves, the driver began to tug at the bow plate. She kicked hard with her fins towards the sled driver, pushing away from the other diver, the regulator slipping from her mouth, leaving her tank and harness in his hands, her eyes fixed on the bow plate. He was about to let it go, let it drop to the floor. But there was no floor, just the abyss. She angled herself down and kicked hard, and caught it just as it fell from his hands, its edges