“Launching Relay One,” the petty officer confirmed, flicking a series of switches. Lights that had been red turned green.
Far aft of the control room, a small hatch opened on Podmoskvoye’s starboard flank. Slowly, a small, tethered submersible floated out of the flooded compartment. Connected by fiber-optic cable, it drifted back to trail behind the larger submarine. Steadily, kilometer after kilometer of cable unreeled as the distance between them widened.
“Relay One is in position,” the petty officer reported at last. His instruments indicated that the smaller submersible was now being towed ten kilometers behind Podmoskovye.
“Release a SATCOM buoy,” Volkov ordered.
The petty officer tapped another control on his panel. A signal flashed down the fiber-optic cable, issuing a new command to the submersible’s simpleminded computer. In response, it opened one of the several tiny ports on its topside. A much smaller buoy rose through this port and slowly ascended, with another length of cable trailing behind. The moment it bobbed to the surface, an indicator light blinked green aboard Podmoskovye. The buoy’s antennas had locked on to one of Russia’s military communications satellites in orbit.
Immediately, Volkov hit the transmit button on his own display. Compressed into a millisecond-long blip, Nakhimov’s message was sent winging on its way to Moscow. Over the next several minutes, a flurry of coded signals passed back and forth between the Kremlin and the submarine. When they were finished, a new command directed the tiny, expendable satellite communications buoy at the surface to scuttle itself. Obeying, it flooded its floatation chambers and detached the length of cable connecting it to the Relay One submersible. Swiftly, the buoy slid beneath the waves, beginning its inexorable plunge down into the vast, unlit depths of the Atlantic. The somewhat larger submersible itself was slowly reeled back into its bay aboard Podmoskovye.
While they waited for its safe return, Nakhimov studied the decrypted messages handed to him by Volkov. According to their most recent reports, the Gulf Venture was still on the far side of the African continent, almost nine thousand nautical miles away. Based on its last known course and speed, the converted oil tanker must now be somewhere off the northern tip of Madagascar.
He walked over to the plot table and considered the problem for a few minutes. His officers waited in expectant silence.
“Relay One is aboard, Captain,” Volkov reported quietly at last. “The hatch is closed and sealed.”
Nakhimov looked up. He nodded tightly. “Very well.” Making his decision, he leaned over the table and scrawled a tiny cross at an otherwise featureless spot out in the South Atlantic, several hundred miles west of Cape Town, South Africa. He looked up at his navigating officer. “Plot a shortest-time intercept course to this point, Ivan.”
Pokrovsky hurried to obey, laying out a course using his parallel rulers and dividers. Finished, he turned to the helmsman. “Helm, come left to one-nine-two degrees.”
“Come left to one-nine-two degrees, aye, sir,” the helmsman, a grizzled fifteen-year veteran of the submarine service answered. He turned the steering control slightly. “My rudder is right two degrees, coming to course one-nine-two degrees.”
Once Podmoskovye settled on its new heading, Pokrovsky issued a new command. “Make revolutions for maximum speed!”
“Maximum revolutions, aye,” the helmsman affirmed, pushing a throttle control forward.
Aft, in the submarine’s Maneuvering Room, duty technicians saw the relayed order and opened valves to reactor-fed steam turbines. Instantly, the propellers began spinning faster and faster. Steadily, the massive Russian nuclear submarine accelerated until it reached its top speed — churning through the depths at more than twenty-four knots. If all went well, it would reach the point selected by Nakhimov in a little more than eleven days.
Twenty-Eight
Nick Flynn, Laura Van Horn, and Gwen Park were in the mansion’s cluttered upstairs study. Maps, printouts of downloads from different internet sites, reference books, and personnel dossiers littered the small coffee table between them — along with a laptop computer connected to Four’s secure local network.
Van Horn finished paging through the draft mission plan Flynn had prepared. She looked up with a tiny frown. “I see where you’re going here, Nick, but it’s still risky as hell.”
Sitting next to her, Park nodded. “That’s probably an understatement.”
“True enough,” Flynn agreed with a shrug. “But it beats every other option we’ve explored so far. Nothing else gives us the slightest chance of putting an assault team aboard that tanker.” He picked up a heavily crossed out sheet of paper. “Using helicopters, for example. We tried that once. Got shot down.” He crumpled it up and dropped it the floor. “Let’s just say that I’m not exactly eager to repeat the experience.”
“Fair point,’ Van Horn allowed.
Flynn took out another sheet covered with notes and hand-drawn diagrams. “Then there’s the idea of using small fast boats to close and board. Which sounds great until you realize those rapid-fire 35mm guns would blow them to smithereens a mile or two off. Not to mention that any survivors would then have to scale the ship’s hull using ropes or ladders while under intense attack from an armed crew.”
“The phrase ‘sitting ducks’ does spring to mind,” Park said quietly.
“Yeah, it does. So scratch that.” He scrunched up this second sheet and tossed it aside. “Which brings us to the plan of landing the assault force by conventional parachute,” he continued. He snorted. “Even setting aside the problem of successfully landing on a moving target… at night… and probably out in the middle of the ocean… something about the whole idea of flying a slow-moving plane into range of those antiaircraft weapons and SAMs seems incredibly stupid, so—”
“What, no piece of notebook paper to mangle for that one?” Van Horn interrupted with a half smile. “I thought that was a nice effect.”
Flynn laughed almost unwillingly. “I decided to save Four some money.”
“Oh, yeah, saving a few pennies on scratch paper. That’ll soothe Br’er Fox’s troubled heart,” she said with a wider grin. She turned more serious. “So, assuming you’re serious about implementing Plan Not-Quite-As-Crazy, what’s your next step?”
“I’ve found a place to train the assault force,” he said seriously. “And I think I know where we can pick up most of the specialized gear we’ll need. But mostly it’s going to come down to whether or not I can pull together the right team.” He shrugged. “That might be tricky.”
Van Horn raised an eyebrow. “You think?” She slouched back in her worn leather armchair. “Heck, all you need are incredibly competent, physically fit guys with a mix of weapons and demolition skills. Guys who’d also be willing to risk their necks on something like this.” She shrugged. “So who’ve you got in mind?”
“Tad Kossak, Shannon Cooke, and Alain Ricard, for a start.”
She nodded. “Yeah, they’re nuts enough. Anybody else?”
“I’ve sounded out Mark Stadler,” Flynn said. “He’s interested.”
Van Horn turned to Park. “Stadler? He’s one of your security guys, right, Gwen?” she asked. “The Marine?”
The other woman nodded. “He’s also ex — Force Recon.”