They had been out of the sub pen for less than ninety seconds when an underwater explosion hammered into them with unbelievable force.
For a seeming eternity Carter could not breathe, nor in the dark water did he have any clear notion which way was up. It felt as if every bone in his body had been crushed; his ears roared, and his eyes burned and throbbed.
A strange, towering light seemed to be wavering somewhere in the distance to his left. But he could not seem to make his body work, to make it respond to his needs.
His head broke the surface and he spit out his mouthpiece as he choked for air, his stomach churning, vomit coming out of his mouth and nose, blood streaming from his ears and eyes.
A single thought crystallized in Carter's mind: Morgan had been down there.
He turned so that he was facing the flames towering high above the sinking remains of the Petrograd submarine. But it was so far away. Carter tried to puzzle it out. He could not have been more than fifty yards away from the boat when the explosion came, and now he found that he was nearly at the southern end of the turning basin. But how, unless the force of the explosion had set up a strong underwater current that had shoved him down the basin…
One thing was certain. Morgan had died in the apparently premature explosion. Even if he had come right behind them, he would have been too close.
Which left Barber.
Carter's head was beginning to clear, though his hearing was gone for the moment except for a constant roar — almost the same sound as a very large waterfall — and a thin red haze seemed to obscure his vision. The flames reaching up to the night sky out of the Petrograd's pen colored the snowstorm in tones of red.
There was a great deal of activity on the far side of the submarine pens. Lights were flashing. Soldiers seemed to be everywhere. It was hard for Carter to pick out much of anything in the confusion and his dazed state, but as he watched he could not mistake the bundle soldiers were pulling out of the basin almost directly across from where he bobbed just on the surface.
It was Barber's Body. Morgan could not have gotten this far, and the tiling they had pulled out of the water was definitely a body in a dark survival suit.
Carter reached painfully back over his shoulder and touched the reassuring bulk of the carrying case. There was no way of telling if the chip survived the tremendous underwater shock wave of the explosion, but he had come this far with it and was not going to leave it there.
So far a lot of people had died because of that chip. In addition to Tibbet, there was the AXE pilot outside of Tokyo, the Korean gate guard, the radio technician, and Arnold Scott at the Mito compound, and now Forester on the rocky beach, Morgan beneath the Petrograd, and Barber across the turning basin. And at least twenty Russians.
When would it end?
Carter took a last, lingering look across the basin. The Russian soldiers had gone crazy; they were smashing their rifle butts into Barber's body. Only Hansen was left, and he had their only radio for communications with the sub. But Carter was having another of his premonitions that Hansen was gone as well.
He took the mouthpiece into his mouth and slowly sank back into the dark, cold water, his body ready to quit on him, only his sheer will and determination keeping him going.
Fourteen
The mammoth steel doors at the entrance to the turning were closing. Carter could not hear the rumble of the machinery, but he could feel the vibration in the water and knew exactly what was happening. He redoubled his efforts.
Whoever was conducting the search operation was sharp. He had no way of knowing how many UDT men had come into the pens. He only had one body. But he was taking no chances.
The big steel doors would, under normal conditions, be used to protect the pens from storm surge off the ocean. They could also be used to keep out enemy submarines. In this instance, however, they would be used to keep in the intruders.
As he swam, Carter held his hands out in front of him like a blind man crossing a strange room. He knew that he was on the correct compass course for the exit canal, but he had no way of knowing how far it still was. Nor did he want to take the chance of surfacing. If they were closing the doors to keep him in, they might also have stationed guards on or near the canal entrance to watch for a surfacing diver.
His left hand brushed the steel surface of one of the doors, and he immediately angled right, keeping his hand in contact with the steel. The door was moving inward, but slowly.
Again Carter increased his efforts, his body screaming for rest. It was hard to breathe now; it felt as if a gigantic hand were pushing down on him, crushing his body, pressing the air out of his lungs.
To be caught here in the basin meant certain death. Sooner or later he would have to come up for air or drown. When he came up, he would be spotted.
The steel door seemed to go on forever. Carter began to believe he was operating in a dream world; none of this was real. Yet another portion of his brain, at a more instinctual level, understood full well that this was very real, and his life depended upon his continuing to fight.
A thick steel flange marked the edge of the north door. The tide was running in and suddenly Carter was fighting an increasing current, made stronger by the narrowing opening.
He pulled himself around the edge of the flange, his right hand brushing the south door. Then he was through the opening, pushing himself away.
The current increased in the last seconds, once again shoving him back into the opening. With his last bit of strength he pushed off.
Something grabbed at his swim fin, and he jerked his leg as the huge doors closed and eddy currents, built up against the doors by the still incoming tide, swept him around in a large circle against the riprap that rose up to the edge of the earthenwork levee.
He was tumbling end over end, his already battered body slamming against the rocks, the countercurrent at the edges of the canal shoving him seaward.
At last he surfaced in the steep chop slapping against the rocks along the south side of the canal. The storm had intensified, the fire and the searchlights barely a hundred yards away in the sub pens hardly visible in the snow.
Painfully he dragged himself out of the water, farther up onto the rocks, and the full fury of the storm and the intense cold hit him with a savage intensity.
Arctic suit or not, he would not be able to survive for very long out here. For just a moment or two he lay back and allowed his eyes to close. It would be easy, he thought, to simply drift off into sleep. It was so comfortable here. Even the cold was beginning to fade.
He forced himself to open his eyes and sit up. He had lost one of his swim fins somewhere, and the Mac 10 still slung over his shoulder was already freezing up. Still no sounds penetrated his battered eardrums. It was hard to move, or even to think, and it took him several tries before he was able to get to his feet. The seventy-pound carrying case seemed like an impossible weight on his back. He had the urge to undo the straps and leave it. But then everyone who had been killed in this bloody mission would have died in vain. And Kazuka's injuries would have been for nothing.
Concentrating on keeping his balance, on moving forward, Carter somehow managed to climb up the steep jumble of rocks and boulders that lined the side of the canal.
At the top the full fury of the wind nearly bowled him over. He staggered over the crest and started down the other side into the woods and scrub where Hansen would be waiting.
At the bottom his legs gave out and he sat down heavily in the snow. His lungs burned from pulling in the subfreezing air, and he forced himself to slow down, to take shallow breaths through his nose. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. For a moment or so the irrational fear that his heart was about to explode rose up like some kind of a dark monster in his mind, nearly causing him to panic.