"We'll see," Carter said. "On the way in, Morgan is going to plant some explosives on the Petrograd's hull. If we have to shoot our way out, he'll detonate them. With any luck the confusion will cover our escape."
Morgan nodded.
"We'll come back out the same way we came in. If the storm holds, we might just make it out tonight."
"Let's get it over with," Hansen said.
"There's going to be no shooting unless it becomes absolutely necessary… unless your life depends on it," Carter said. "Do you understand?"
They all nodded.
"Fine. I'm buying the first round when we get back to Tokyo," Carter said.
They started over the hill, keeping low until they reached the cover of the brush, and then they dashed the last hundred yards or so to the edge of the cleared area along the fenceline.
Again they held up as they waited and watched for any sign of movement. To the east and west along the fence, strong lights provided illumination for the no-man's-land, and they could just make out the outlines of guard towers. They could see no details, however. Nor would the guards in the towers be able to see much of anything below. On a normal evening, the entire area would be lit bright as day. Nothing would be able to move without being seen. Tonight, however, the storm would cover their entrance.
Carter motioned for Morgan to go ahead. The UDT man crawled away from the line of brush, crossed the open area, and at the fence pulled out his wire cutters and started to work.
Within ninety seconds Morgan had a large hole cut in the fence and he motioned for the others to come ahead.
No alarms had been sounded, which meant the fence was not wired. So far luck was running with them.
Carter and Morgan held aside the opening as Barber and Hansen crawled through. Morgan went next and Carter went through last, pulling the wire mesh closed so that a casual inspection would not reveal it had been cut.
Still no alarm had sounded, but Carter was getting an itchy feeling between his shoulder blades. He looked back through the fence the way they had come, but he was not able to see anything except the swirling snow.
"What is it?" Barber asked.
"I don't know," Carter said. But he had the strong feeling that they were no longer alone, that someone was watching them.
"Is someone back there?" Hansen asked.
"I don't know," Carter said again as he peered into the darkness. He shook his head. He had heard nothing; he had seen nothing. Yet he had the uneasy feeling that someone was back there, that someone had followed them.
He turned back. "It's nothing," he said. "We've got a job to do — let's do it!"
Keeping low, they hurried across the no-man's-land into the protection of the woods, where once again Carter looked back the way they had come.
Hansen pulled out his Mac 10 with the silencer.
"No shooting unless there's no other way out for you," Carter said.
Hansen nodded. "Just hurry it up. I don't want to stand here all night."
Carter took the lead, heading straight north through the woods. It was strange out of the wind. They could hear it in the treetops, and the snow filtered down to them almost like a fine mist.
Twice Carter stopped to listen. Each time he looked over his shoulder the way they had come. Morgan was becoming impatient, and Barber was spooked. But neither of them said anything.
A half mile further the stand of pine abruptly ended at a rising slope of piled rocks and boulders that stretched east and west for as far as they could see into the swirling snow. The slope was at least twenty feet high, and its top was capped by a concrete wall.
Evidently the sub pen turning basin was on the other side of the rock dam. The levee had probably been constructed to contain the rise and fall of the tide.
There was a lot of light over the top. If they were going to have any trouble with security, it would be there.
Carter motioned for them to fall back a little farther into the woods.
"Stay back there. I'm going up top to see what's going on," he said.
"I'm coming with you," Barber said.
"No. And if anything goes wrong — and I mean anything at all — I want you to get the hell out of here on the double. Do you understand?"
Barber wanted to argue, but Morgan held him off. "Aye, aye, sir," the Navy UDT man said.
Carter shrugged out of the carrying case straps, pulled out his stiletto, and hurried back to the edge of the woods. Silently he started up the steep rock levee.
A few feet from the top he stopped for a few moments to listen. Somewhere on the other side machinery was running. It sounded to Carter like a diesel engine. A big one. Possibly a ship's engine.
He crawled the last bit to the edge and carefully raised himself up so that he could just see over the top. The levee was capped by a broad concrete driveway at least thirty yards wide. Light stanchions were placed every fifteen yards or so along an iron fence that ran east and west.
Straight across from him the driveway ended. There was nothing beyond it but vague halos of light below and in the distance. To the left the roadway sloped downward toward a series of broad, peaked concrete roofs that were much longer than they were wide. They were the submarine pens, Carter realized. To the right the levee seemed to curve back toward the sea.
There was no movement left or right along the top of the levee, nor were there any tracks in the freshly fallen snow on the roadway.
Carter climbed up over the top and raced across the roadway to the fence between the light stanchions. Ten feet below the road was the surface of the turning basin, the water black and oily-looking as it moved from the swells outside the breakwater in the ocean.
To the east was the channel out to sea, and to the west and north were the submarine pens themselves, open to the turning basin, some of them lit, others dark. Near the north end of the basin, through the swirling snow, Carter could make out the aft end of what appeared to be a very large submarine. A huge boat. Much larger than the others there. It was a Petrograd-class submarine. And as far as he could tell, it was the only one there.
Carter hurried back across the roadway and scrambled down the rocks to where Barber and Morgan were waiting below.
"How does it look up there?" Barber asked nervously.
"It's wide open. We won't have any problem getting in. But it's a ten-foot drop to the surface of the water, so we'll have to find another way out."
"Is the boat there?" Morgan asked. "A Petrograd?"
"In one of the last pens on the far side of the basin," Carter said. "It's there, all right."
Morgan nodded. "Are we going after her?"
"Right now," Carter said.
They hurriedly pulled out their diving gear, strapping the oxygen rebreathing equipment on their chests. Each unit was enclosed in a small pack and included a canister of lime, a tiny cylinder of oxygen, and the regulator. It was a closed system. Oxygen was breathed in by the user. Exhalations were filtered of carbon dioxide in the lime canister and routed back into the system. No bubbles were produced to break the surface of the water, but the gear was only safe to twenty-five or thirty feet.
When they were ready, they worked their way back up to the top of the levee. Still no one had come along. Already Carter's previous tracks were nearly filled in by the blowing snow.
Together they jumped up, raced across the roadway, and on the far side, climbed over the fence and leaped the ten feet down into the cold, dark waters, their splashes unheard over the noise of the diesel and the howling wind.
Thirteen
The water was warm in comparison to the air temperature. Carter, Barber, and Morgan surfaced between a pair of sub pens on the west side of the turning basin about halfway between the road and the Petrograd sub. They were in the shadows there, and had surfaced on Carter's signal to get their bearings.