He was truly amazed when he finally surfaced and saw Rick Hunter still sitting in the bulrushes, chatting with Jason and Harry.
“Where the hell have you been?” asked the SEAL leader. “I was just beginning to wonder if you might be dead.”
“Well, I’m not,” snapped Ray, unnecessarily. “It was just the bottom of that rear barge. It was so dirty…nothing would stick. I had to clean every spot free of fucking barnacles before the clamp would go on.”
“Oh, right,” said Harry. “Ours was completely clean, probably been in refit. I was whipping those babies on there in three minutes. So was Jason. We both adjusted the timers for 180 seconds. By a fluke we finished at the same time. Came back together.”
“Short straw again,” said Ray. “I probably ruined my knife scraping the bottom…just hope I’m not asked to assassinate anyone else tonight.”
“No, I hope not anyway,” said Rick. “But right now it’s going to start getting lighter by the minute…we have to get back across the road and into the woods…Angela, by the way, has gone, as planned…we’ll catch up with her later.”
The SEALs emerged from the water, crouched, and observed the empty road. Then they bolted across, free now of their forty-pound weights of explosive, and, clinging to their attack boards and flippers, they jogged through the woods to the spot where the canisters were buried. Angela had left one uncovered, with their new street clothes, chocolate, and water right on top.
They stripped off their wet suits and Draegers, and placed them with the two machine guns, ammunition clips, and attack boards inside the canister. Then they dressed in socks, shoes, jeans, shirts, and jackets. They each ate some chocolate, drank some water, and piled everything else inside the last canister. Rick Hunter set the incendiary booby trap and placed it inside, against the door handle, and closed it carefully. If anyone in the next fifty or so years ever found that canister and tried the door, it would blow to smithereens with everything in it. Right now, Ray Schaeffer shoved the old bush back into the loose earth and took the last shovel and covered the disturbed area with soil and dead leaves. He and Rick twisted and turned the bush back into place, and the four of them left, carrying the last shovel and armed with their Kaybars and pistols.
They did not head back to the dirt road but went farther west, walking softly along the edge of the wood in the early morning light. They found the highway after one mile and hid on the steep bank that led up to it from the forest. A couple of hundred yards to the right, they could see an old Russian peasant woman wearing a shawl, sitting on the roadside, awaiting a lift, and they too waited.
At 0655 an old Volkswagen bus pulled up, collected her, and then drove on to a spot right above their hiding place. Angela’s face peered out from under the shawl, through the passenger seat window…“Okay guys,” she said, “let’s get the hell out of here.”
The SEALs came up off the bank like bullets and hurled themselves and their surviving shovel into the vehicle. Angela Rivera spoke freely. “This is young Vladimir,” she said, nodding at the driver. “He’s a colleague of mine, works for us in Moscow. All our clothes, papers, and passports are here. Vladimir will take us straight down to the M18, then south all the way to St. Petersburg. For the record, in case we’re stopped, we all work for a citrus-growing outfit in Florida…you all know the cover…go through it all in your minds one more time.
“Vlad’s taking us straight to St. Petersburg airport…then we’re going by private corporate jet to London. Everything’s fixed. The Russians never bother with commercial executives on private planes these days. Specially Americans.”
“Beautiful,” said Lieutenant Commander Hunter.
“By the way, did you fix the Kilos?”
“Sure did,” said Ray Schaeffer.
9
Captain Volkov moved the kilos northeast across Lake Onega at 0830 on June 11. This was the regular departure time for cargo moving at five knots. The journey to the White Sea was one of approximately twenty-four hours, the 0830 departure would see them comfortably into the canal by 1030, and to Belomorsk for refueling just as the port came to life the following morning.
The big Tolkach freighters always pulled out at this time after their overnight stop, and there were no surprises in Fort Meade shortly after 0200 when the satellite photographs showed them doing exactly that.
Admiral Morgan was pleased. No communication had been received from the SEALs by midnight, which meant everything had gone according to plan. Arnold Morgan was even courteous to Charlie as they made their way back to Washington from Fort Meade in the small hours of the morning. A thin smile played around the edges of his mouth as he contemplated the mayhem due to erupt in both Moscow and Beijing around seven o’clock (EDT) that evening.
“You’re driving beautifully, Charlie,” he observed. Which almost caused his nerve-racked chauffeur to run straight up the back of a Greyhound bus.
It was 1300 local time when Lieutenant Commander Hunter and his men, having changed clothes during the journey, arrived at the St. Petersburg airport. They disembarked the van, leaving Vladimir to get rid of the clothes, combat knives, and pistols, which he would do at the US Consulate, on Petra-Lavrova Street.
By 1500 the SEALs were on board the American Learjet, ready to take off for London. Five hours later they would be traveling business class on the American Airlines 747 making its daily flight to New York. Rick calculated they ought to be somewhere over the coast of Maine when the barges blew up in the narrow northern reaches of the Belomorski Canal.
Pieter, the steward, and Torbin, the head waiter, were not due to report for duty on board the Yuri Andropov until lunchtime. When they failed to show up, the matter was reported to the Captain and to Colonel Borsov. The senior officers ordered a thorough search of the ship, which took almost two hours, and at 1400 the executives decided the two men were undoubtedly missing.
The ship was heading south down Lake Onega now, and the Captain couldn’t decide whether just to inform the nearest police, or whether to return to the Green Stop. It was hard to imagine that anything had befallen the men in that lonely rural area. But the search had revealed that one of the ship’s rubber inflatables from the upper deck was also missing — several people knew it to be the very one Pieter had been using to take passengers on late-night sightseeing excursions.
Colonel Borsov decided something was a foot. He ordered the Andropov to come about and headed right back to the Green Stop, where all members of the crew would be expected to assist in the search for their lost colleagues.
The four old gentlemen from Minnesota and their nurse, Edith Dubranin, were also missed at lunchtime. Their table was empty; they had not been in for breakfast, and no one had seen them. Colonel Borsov himself had noticed they were not at lunch and ordered a steward to go to the upper deck and check the two suites.
The steward used his master key and found the rooms intact, but found no sign of the old gentlemen. Colonel Borsov suddenly understood that the Andropov had somehow left seven people at the Green Stop, which was precisely when he ordered the ship to come about.
All day long, Captain Volkov pushed north at his normal slow speed. There would be no more stops before the White Sea, and he always found the 120-mile journey laborious. He had made the trip many times before, in various ships, but the presence of submarines completely blocked his forward view, and the trip seemed endless as a result. He just had to sit and keep the engines steady, driving forward and relying on his son to steer from the wheelhouse on the bow of the lead barge. Young Ivan was good at that.