“Yes, OV?” he asked.
“They’re ready to reboot, Admiral. The intel from the Kosmos satellites will be downloading all at the same time. It may take some time to display all the data.”
“Proceed, then,” Zhigunov said.
“Reboot, Arkady,” Vova ordered the artificial intelligence chief.
In the next fifteen minutes, Zhigunov learned that the Americans had launched a nuclear strike that had caused both Voronezh and Novosibirsk to stop communicating, and that soon after, Novosibirsk’s escape chamber had surfaced. And that not long after that, the goddamned Panther surfaced next to the escape chamber and took the surviving crew members of the Novosibirsk hostage as prisoners of war, loading them into the Panther. And soon after that, the Panther had submerged and vanished.
“What is the status of the Voronezh?” Zhigunov asked the AI chief.
“No word from Voronezh, sir.”
“That’s not a good sign after a nuclear depth charge attack, Admiral,” Vova said.
“Are the air assets able to fly?” Zhigunov asked, intending to vector in a swarm of antisubmarine warfare aircraft to the site of the surfacing of the Novosibirsk escape chamber.
“Yes, Admiral,” the AI chief said, just as all the screens went black. He looked at Zhigunov. “I may have been premature stating that, Admiral. My apologies.”
“Just fucking fix it,” Zhigunov said, glaring at the AI chief and spinning on his heel to return to his office, where he shut down his computer and grabbed the crystal vodka decanter and poured a triple and downed it in one gulp, then poured another.
That Voronezh hadn’t communicated probably meant she went down, Zhigunov thought, pouring another triple vodka. He held his head in his hands, remembering his life with Nina and young Boris Novikov. If there were any way to extract revenge from the savage criminal Americans, he would find it.
31
The deck trembled with the power of the reactor at one hundred percent output. Lieutenant Anthony Pacino left Lieutenant Don Eisenhart in the central command post and ducked into the navigation space, checking their course toward Mumbai and the rendezvous with HMS Explorer II. There was nothing much for him to do until time to surface at the rendezvous point, some four hours later. He considered trying to get some sleep, but he was too jangly from the Iranian coffee and the tenseness of the mission. He decided to go to the wardroom and reload on coffee, jumpy nerves be damned, he thought.
At the passageway outside the wardroom, two petty officers from the Vermont stood guard, both carrying heavy.
“Petty Officer Watson,” Pacino said, smiling at the machinist mate who’d first greeted him at the gangway on the day Pacino had reported aboard Vermont, which seemed like a hundred years ago. “How was the swim over?” Watson was one of Vermont’s divers and regularly took his men over the side to inspect the hull for mines or bombs before getting underway.
“It was cake for me, Mr. Patch, but all these non-divers were a pain.”
“Well, good to have you aboard our good ship.”
Watson smiled. “Good? This rust-bucket is straight from the seventies. We must be making more noise than a garbage truck dragging chains.”
Pacino nodded. “Kind of makes you appreciate Vermont all the more, eh?”
“Yes, definitely, sir. You going in? We have the Russian officers inside.”
“How many?”
“Seven in there. We took one of their guys to crew’s berthing. He and a couple of the enlisted guys are pretty sick. I’m not sure if they’ll even make it to the rendezvous. The SEAL medic, Tucker-Santos, says it must be radiation poisoning, and a bad case at that.”
“Yeah,” Pacino says. “Odds are, all of them have it. The sick guys must have been back aft.”
“Be careful in there, sir. The Russians are plenty pissed. The blonde female one especially. She’s the only one who speaks English, yet she’s giving everyone the silent treatment.”
“Hell, Watson,” Pacino said, “we’d probably be slightly out of sorts too if we’d gotten nuked and then plucked out of the sea by the bastards who’d nuked us.”
“Well, still, Mr. Patch, exercise caution. She might bite you.”
Pacino smiled and waved as he opened the door.
Inside, the seven sullen Russian officers sat in the aft seating area with one at a chair of the table, all of them with towels around their shoulders from swimming up to the hull. Pacino nodded at them, feeling all their gazes fixed on him. Grip Aquatong stood near the door with Tiny Tim Fishman at the other end of the room, both holding their Mark 6 non-lethal weapons, both strapped with their sidearms and belts full of ammunition, their thighs and calves strapped with long-bladed combat knives.
“Gentlemen,” Pacino said to the SEALs. He looked at Aquatong. “Must be nice to be away from the wheel for once, eh, Grip?”
“Nah, I like driving,” Aquatong said.
“Everybody playing nice in here?”
“Only one speaks English. The woman at the table. Abakumov was in here for a while. Spoke to her. He said her name is Trusov. Irina Trusov. She was the weapons boss on that sub.”
Pacino made his way behind the table to the credenza with the coffee maker. He looked at the woman, who had platinum blonde hair, a slightly sunburned light complexion and big blue eyes, a dark frown on her face. Her damp uniform was stained and smelled bad. Her wet hair was in knots. He could tell both bothered her.
“Coffee?” he offered. She shook her head, glaring at him. He filled his cup and sat at the table opposite her. “I’m Lieutenant Anthony Pacino from the submarine Vermont. Crew calls me ‘Patch.’”
“Or ‘Lipstick,’” Grip said.
Pacino smiled. “Or Lipstick.”
“Leep-steek,” the woman said in a thick accent. “Why?”
Pacino grimaced. “An unfortunate accident in a liberty port. Anyway.” Pacino took a sip of the scorching high octane coffee. “This stuff will clear your sinuses. Are you sure you don’t want any?”
“I do not drink coffee,” she said.
“Your name is Trusov? Irina Trusov? Am I saying that right?”
She nodded. “Are you here to interrogate me? And the other officers?” She glanced aft at the others.
“No,” Pacino said. “I should probably be sleeping until the rendezvous, but I’ve been doing too much of this stuff.” He pointed to the coffee cup.
“You know caffeine was invented by the CIA,” Trusov said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Pacino smiled. “Are you hungry? We have some pretty good food aboard. Our radio chief made beef stroganoff, pretty authentic stuff. Homemade noodles, and that gravy, it’s to die for.”
Trusov’s eyes got wider, but then she frowned again. “I cannot take food when I am a prisoner.”
“A prisoner?” Pacino took another pull of the coffee, feeling the surge of energy. Or was it talking to this woman that was giving his spirit a boost? “You’re not prisoners. These guys with guns — they’re just making sure you don’t try to take back Panther. We went to a lot of trouble stealing her. Anyway, we’re taking you to a rescue ship. We’ll be there a little after nineteen hundred. They have good medical facilities, doctors, surgeons, and they can attend to you better than we can. They’ll get you to Mumbai, India, where there are good hospitals. And from there, you’re flying back to Russia, courtesy of the U.S. Navy.”