"Salman, what would be the effects on St. Petersburg if we blow the ship from here?"
The physicist's eyes lit. "Kapitan, we have constructed a five-megaton nuclear device in the bowels of your ship. When we detonate this device, within ten seconds, the fireball will be over three miles in diameter! Fifty seconds after the explosion, the blast wave will reach the shore of St. Petersburg, just thirty-six miles away.
"When it hits the shores of St. Petersburg, it will destroy or damage even the most heavily fortified concrete buildings and kill most of its inhabitants! And then there is the tremendous radioactive fallout, which will be intensified by the fact that we are blowing the bomb out on the water."
Perhaps Salman was right.
Perhaps they should blow the ship right now.
Sadir looked at his engineer. "Send a diving party overboard to examine the screw. I want your report back within the hour. If this job is irreparable, or if we have to request assistance, we will blow the ship from here."
"Yes, Kapitan."
Lieutenant Mike Reel popped out of the water, just beside the starboard hull. He looked up at the side of the ship as the heads of Petty Officers May, McCants, Williams, Manuel, and Felton popped up out of the water in a semicircle around him.
On the left side of the ship, Reel knew that another circle of Navy SEALs, the squadron headed by Lieutenant JG Leo Maloney, was bobbing in the water, waiting for the time to deliver a coordinated strike against the rogue freighter.
Reel gave a thumbs-up, which was reciprocated by his group. The SEALs were ready.
Reel checked his watch. Ten seconds. Nine seconds. Eight. Seven…
Floating in the water on the left side of the crippled ship, Maloney watched the countdown on his watch.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
"Now."
Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow.
Lightweight harpoon guns shot steel hooks upward, stringing rope from the water up to the gunwales of the ship.
"All secure, " announced Petty Officers Black, Doherty, Perkins, Jordan, and Worthy.
"Let's go, " Maloney ordered.
The SEALs dropped their oxygen tanks in the water, then, like Batman and Robin, began pulling themselves up the rope, rising up the side of the ship.
Maloney was the first to reach the top. Already, Lieutenant Reel had scampered onto the deck, and his men, all in black wetsuits and carrying knives and rifles, were gathering just across the ship.
The SEALs had not been discovered. Not yet anyway.
That would change.
St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral St. Petersburg, Russia
What's going on? Pete wondered, as he sat alone with his Russian-appointed counsel, Lieutenant Peter Vaslov, at the table in the front of the courtroom. Zack Brewer had not returned to counsel table, at least not yet, and Pete wondered if he would ever see Zack again.
Probably not.
Perhaps this was the beginning of the end. He looked out the windows of the great cathedral. The weather was turning uglier. Clouds darkened, threatening rain, or even hail.
Pete turned and glanced at his crew. They were all there, sitting on the rows between the stone-faced Russian guards. Frank, Walt, Darwin, the Bloodhound.
He'd seen their look before. Their eyes begged for leadership – for a command decision that would suddenly make all this go away. They were looking to him for answers, but he had no answers, other than to wait and die.
Pete could bear their faces no more. He looked away, only to find the stares of the orphans that had been on board the Alexander Pop-ovich and then the Honolulu. Theirs were the looks of confusion – of fear. He felt a surging rage that the Russians would require them to behere for theater and political show. Then his eyes caught the face of the boy named Dima.
The boy's eyes – they looked almost crossed – were magnified by the gawky glasses on his face. These eyes he had seen before. They were the eyes of a son looking at a father figure. How strange – these longing eyes of the orphan. And then, it hit him. The orphan felt a bond with the man who had rescued him and Masha from the sea.
His son, Coley, had once looked at him this way.
Pete turned away, lest the international media spot the tears flooding his eyes.
The Al Alamein Gulf of Finland
Salman Dudayev looked up. Captain Sadir was climbing the ladder from the engine room to the main deck of the ship. Salman was under him and had just stepped onto the ladder when he heard Sadir yelling, "Who are you? What are you doing on my ship?"
The physicist double-stepped up the ladder behind the captain, quickly reaching the open air of the main deck.
Waving a pistol in his hand, Captain Sadir turned toward the stern area of the ship, toward a group of ten wet, dripping frogmen who had appeared out of the sea.
"Get off of my ship!" Shots rang out from the pistol. The frogmen ducked under and behind boxes and crates on the stern area and fired back. Bullets whined and ricocheted off the ship's steel superstructure.
Suddenly the captain's head exploded like a burst watermelon. His body flopped to the deck, pumping a stream of blood from the head wound.
Salman crouched low, and then took off across the deck, towards the hatch and the interior ladder that led back up to the bridge.
"You! Freeze!" He recognized the English from his days at MIT. Sal-man ignored the command. He sprinted through the sounds of bullets ricocheting through the steel superstructure. Salman ducked into the passageway and headed up the ladder.
The thunder of stampeding feet rumbled in pursuit behind Salman's back. He was a scientist, not an athlete, and they were closing fast.
To the bridge. He had to get to the bridge. He had to reach the detonator.
Leo, take your men below, " Lieutenant Mike Reel yelled at Lieutenant JG Leo Maloney. Maloney's men went down the hatch. Reel and his men sprinted after the man that got away.
"Stop! Halt!" Reel yelled. Reel was closing fast, but the man was not responding. From the rear, the man resembled the profile photographs of the Chechen physicist, Dudayev, that the SEALs had studied, but Reel couldn't be sure. The only thing Reel was sure of at the moment, as he scrambled across the deck, was this. The man wasn't stopping and he was heading in the direction of the bridge.
He was also sure that they were close enough to St. Petersburg that a nuclear fireball of sufficient magnitude would engulf or destroy the city. And the crew of a United States nuclear submarine was being held in that city.
"Stop!" Reel closed to within about ten feet of the man and squeezed the trigger of his Uzi. A burst of machinegun fire shot out over the sea.
The man kept running, then bounded up a ladder headed directly for a section of the bridge.
Reel's mind raced like the speed of light.
Racing, racing, the thoughts flew like electricity lighting a power grid.
Only a maniac on some sort of suicide mission would fail to stop at this point. Reel knew it in his gut. The guy was going for the bomb. He knew it.
But what if he were wrong? What if the guy was only a sailor scared out of his wits by some guy in a wetsuit who had just killed his captain?
Reel was the deadliest of warriors. He was a Navy SEAL. But SEAL or no SEAL, Americans didn't kill civilians. Not without good reason.
This was happening so fast. Reel bounded up the ladder, grabbing at the man's boot. It was just out of reach.
He heard the thunder of the boots of his fellow SEALs crossing the deck below.
The man reached the catwalk at the top of the ladder and rushed into the bridge. Reel ran in behind him.
It all turned slow motion now, almost like suspended animation in an underwater ballet.
Four men stood around the perimeter of the bridge. One had a gun. He swung it to point it at Reel.