“What is it?” he asked.
“Peter the Great has been spotted on the horizon; she’s coming on full speed.”
Collins looked at Salkukoff. “I think you’d better establish communications, Colonel, before your people start something none of us will survive.”
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t wait for this bastard to do the right thing. I have a ship and crew to protect.” Johnson left the table and ran for the gangway.
As the others gathered at the railing to watch the crew frantically throwing off lines, it was Salkukoff who came up to Jack and held out a handheld radio.
“Tell your Captain Johnson that Peter the Great has their orders; there will be no confrontation.”
Jack eyed the radio and then fixed Salkukoff with that blue-eyed glare that made the Russian very uncomfortable.
“You’ll excuse me if I side with Captain Johnson. Your trust points have slipped in the past hour. I think he’s going to err on the side of caution.”
Salkukoff smiled and then lowered his radio.
“Peter the Great is flashing a signal,” Everett said as he looked toward the horizon and the small pinpoint that was the giant cruiser as it steamed their way.
“She’s asking for a cessation of hostilities,” Carl said as he lowered his binoculars.
“Yes, Captain Kreshenko will follow orders. You can tell your nervous Captain Johnson we mean no harm.”
Jack remained looking at Salkukoff and then lifted his radio. “Captain, stand down.”
He saw the form of Johnson stop and then look back to the Simbirsk. Collins saw the captain staring up at him. Then the alarms stopped. Jack saw men lining the railing with small arms, and the .50-caliber and twenty-millimeter weapons started tracking Peter the Great as she came on.
“If that bucket has a working missile system, it doesn’t matter what we end up believing,” Everett said as he came up and stood by Jack.
“Forget it, Toad; they’re as useless on board that ship as they are on board Shiloh. If they were working, our little Russian ass over there would be a little more forceful in his welcoming of his boys.”
“I hope you’re right, Jenks,” Jack said. “If not, I just ordered those men to stand down and die.”
“He’s not wrong. Salkukoff would never give away an advantage like that. He’ll wait to attack us when we get ready to attempt leaving. He will hope to leave us here.”
They all turned and looked at Farbeaux as he approached.
“He’ll do nothing as long as we have most of the brainpower working to get us home.”
“What makes you—” Ryan started to say.
“I’ll leave that to you, Colonel.”
Ryan looked at Jack and wondered what it was he knew that his security department didn’t. Then he looked at the cold way Henri was looking at the back of Salkukoff. Collins broke away from the Americans.
“Colonel, flash message Peter the Great. Lay up alongside Shiloh and have this Captain Kreshenko join us aboard Simbirsk.”
“Wise decision, Colonel.”
Jack didn’t say anything as Salkukoff passed along the message. He walked away where he was joined by Farbeaux and Everett.
“Jack, it’s damn obvious this Salkukoff is out to get their little science project back.”
Collins looked from Carl to Henri.
“That is exactly what our friend here is going to stop, preferably in the nick of time.”
Henri said nothing as he watched the specter of Peter the Great grow ever bigger as she approached.
“What is it, Colonel?” Carl asked when Farbeaux said nothing.
“I believe it will be a matter of who kills who first.” Henri smiled that unsettling smile he had. “Number one, he knows exactly why I am here. Number two, he has the same death order as we do. Only his is far more encompassing in scope. Whoever is pulling this man’s strings has given him orders to kill us all.”
Henri Farbeaux let that sink into the Americans’ psyche as he walked away and joined Charlie Ellenshaw. Jack, Carl, and Jason Ryan watched the Frenchman leave.
“What do you think, Jack?” Carl asked.
Collins laughed aloud as he watched Captain Johnson unhappily order his crewmen to tie Shiloh back up to Simbirsk.
“What do I think? I think we’d better listen to that man’s opinion when he says Salkukoff is out to secure this ship.” He turned and faced his two friends. “And when it comes to lying and killing, Henri has the upper hand on us all. I think I’ll go with the colonel’s hunch.”
Everett exchanged looks with Ryan.
“Oh, that makes me all jittery inside.”
“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?”
“No, of course not,” Carl answered as Jack walked away. “We have our intrepid hero Farbeaux calling the shots. What could possibly go wrong?”
Jason looked down at the violet waters of this strange sea. He said nothing about the pessimistic view shared by the captain. He looked again at the water and the far-off island.
“Okay, Mendenhall, this is one time I would be happy to trade places with you.”
In the far-off distance, Peter the Great started blasting her collision horn, announcing her imminent arrival.
Suddenly, the strange violet sea of this new world was getting ever more crowded.
Captain Thorne accepted the clean shirt from his XO. He started to put it on and then saw that Gary Devers was waiting.
“Oh, sorry. The two bodies have been removed, and we managed to get the outer doors closed to the forward torpedo compartment. The torpedo room is useless to us. The aft torpedo room has been pumped free of water and will be operational within the next four hours.”
“I’ll trade the torpedo room for ballast control in a heartbeat.”
Thorne finished buttoning his shirt and then faced his XO. “Still no luck?”
“We’re trying to cross match the circuit boards from fire suppression to ballast control. No luck thus far. We do have good news on communications. We were able to get the radio up, and the ELF is breathing again. Nothing but static.”
“After we get the remaining forward spaces clear of water, try the boards from the pumps. Strip them if you have to. We’ll have just one shot at getting off this shelf, and I want all options covered as best as we can get.” Thorne left the aft torpedo room before the corpsman and his men cleared the two bodies, which was something Thorne wanted not to see at the moment.
“Skipper?”
Thorne stopped and waited for Devers.
“The crew thinks we were nuked. Or at the very least our surface fleet was nuked. I think they need a word.”
“A word about what? That we don’t know anything yet?”
“I was thinking—”
“Stop thinking, Commander. Let the crew think what they want at this time. We don’t know what happened, and I’m not about to lie to them and say it was the hurricane — which, by the way, according to water conditions, has vanished. Why do I want to scare these kids any more than they already are?”
“I see your point, Skipper.”
Thorne was starting to turn away when he stopped and lowered his head. He turned with a half smile on his lips.
“Gary, right now I’m afraid my voice will betray the fact that I’m as scared as hell. That won’t help anyone. I want them, hell, I need them to believe we can get this boat up and out of here, not what it is they will face when we do surface.”