The two-man crew in the forward compartment reduced the chamber’s air pressure to one atmosphere. Nyurba and his dive buddy went into the transport compartment. They took seats, fully garbed like the others, still using their respirators. The crew in front kept the pressure-proof hatch to the control compartment dogged, and Nyurba knew why. Everything in the minisub aft of that hatch was badly contaminated by poisons the dripping-wet point team had unavoidably carried aboard.
And there’ll be seven more shuttle trips like this before the entire squadron’s ashore.
The eight-foot-high minisub brought Nyurba and his people as close to the beach as it could. The water was twelve feet deep, and the surf zone was a mile away.
The men climbed down through the open bottom hatch, crawling into the narrow space between the mini’s hull and the seafloor, much as they’d done under Carter herself twenty minutes ago.
The water here was unspeakably filthy, and almost completely opaque. The men all tethered themselves together, in single file, by feel, using lanyards.
Nyurba led the way, guided by a glow-in-the-dark miniature inertial navigation system strapped to his wrist. He also held a waterproof mine detector, using it to check the mud and stones on the bottom in front of him. He wondered how well it would work in these conditions. Stray bits of metal debris, scattered on the bottom, forced him and the parade of divers behind to sidestep often — nothing they walked on exploded.
It took more than an hour of this, underwater, to get close to shore. As nonchalantly as they could, they proceeded along the bottom until, one by one, their heads and then their torsos broke the surface. They wiped their hood faceplates as clean as they could; Nyurba’s view was streaked by oil and worse.
Nyurba looked around, catching his first glimpse of his ancestral homeland — now to him foreign soil whose sovereignty he was violating in direct contravention of international law. After they dressed in Russian Army Spetsnaz uniforms, having come here to commit acts of war, if captured he and his men could — according to the Geneva Conventions as Moscow might choose to interpret them — be summarily executed by firing squad.
Terrific. Welcome to the old country.
The looming threat didn’t really bother Nyurba. He and his men had arrived to kill or be killed. His rules of engagement said that lethal force was authorized to preserve the security of the operation, and no one could let themselves be taken alive. Each squadron member had a cyanide pill and a pistol; the medics were bringing enough morphine syrettes to — if need be — put all of them to sleep forever. He knew that real Spetsnaz in wartime worked the same way.
The terrain to Nyurba’s front was barren and flat, the Arctic tundra on the fringe of the Kolyma Lowland. The sound of the surf was muted by his antiradiation hood. The wind was strong, maybe fifteen knots, and blew in his face, off the land.
They pressed on, plodding through the thigh-high breaking waves that shoved and tugged at their bodies, and onto a strip of gravel that crunched beneath their swim fins and Kevlar combat bootie heels. The mine detector still hadn’t found any mines. The tidal range was modest, but the high-water line was well inland because the beach slope was so gradual. The high-water line was discolored with scum and goo in livid green, sickly pink, and clotted black. Dead fish and dead birds floated among the waves or lay decomposing on the gravel; others had been reduced by hardy bacteria to skeletons, or to nothing but scattered bleached bones and bits of feathers. Nyurba was very glad that his suit and respirator kept out the smells. He saw no sign whatsoever of seals or polar bears, and wasn’t surprised.
The team made no attempt at concealment. They didn’t remove their firearms from the waterproof equipment bags — not yet. Their radiation suits were colored blaze orange, for maximum visibility. From now on only Russian would be spoken. The intention was to hide in plain sight.
Their cover story for this mission phase, in the unlikely case that someone came along the beach and asked, was straightforward: They were Navy Spetsnaz troops on a training operation, infiltrating a simulated nuclear battlefield. And it isn’t so “simulated.” They’d locked out of a secret compartment below the waterline of a passing merchant ship beyond the horizon, then used undersea scooters to get close to shore. They were part of a larger unit that was following, who would climb out of the waves soon to join up.
None of the men carried papers or any ID, since Spetsnaz wouldn’t do so on a practice or full-blown op — nor would rogues or terrorists, or German Kampfschwimmer pretending to be Russian rogues or terrorists.
Nyurba reached for his respirator mouthpiece, and grabbed it with his gloved hand through the flexible material of his hood — this way he could speak. He told the nine guys with him to rest while they had the opportunity, then inserted the respirator back between his teeth. They put down their backpacks and bags, unfastened their tethers and lanyards, and removed the Velcro straps — no longer needed — from around their suits, so they could move about more freely. Even so, their walking was slower than normal, ponderous and deliberate; out of the water, the radiation suits and respirators inside were heavy.
Nyurba glanced out to sea. He examined the lonely floe and its hummock, only four miles away. From here, the camouflage was convincing. The birds that had roosted on it earlier were gone. The horizon in that direction was hazy from mist. The sun was to his right as he gazed at the water, low in the sky, northeast. It provided a glaring, diffuse light through thin overcast.
It occurred to Nyurba that today was the Fourth of July. Happy birthday, America. The big fireworks haven’t started.
Nyurba used his instruments to make and record more measurements of the water, the air, and the grit between the larger pieces of gravel. He used a sample kit to collect small portions of the different-colored goos. This information would be of great importance soon, and later.
Not only would he study it to advise the squadron on which decontamination techniques to follow, and what German-made detoxifying medications to take. Eventually, if they returned from the mission, the data would be invaluable to environmental scientists in the U.S. already planning the postwar global cleanup effort. Secretly quantifying in detail the chemical and radioactive mess in this particular climate, at this high latitude, would fill in crucial blanks, extending available data from nearer the equator, thereby bracketing the latitude range of Europe — still a potential tactical nuclear battleground. Far more realistic, efficient, and cost-effective methods could then be devised to help heal the war-maimed worldwide ecology.
He’d already heard rumors of wonderful things, such as genetically engineered pumpkins and thistles that grew in harsh climates, absorbed and retained uranium and plutonium, and were unpalatable to animals. Harvesting these plants, and disposing of them properly, cleaned the soil and made it fertile again.
Nyurba would continue his data collection, in different ways and for different reasons, throughout the squadron’s march to the missile field, their assault, the unauthorized launch of Russian ICBMs, and their attempted escape back to the water many miles away from here. As second-in-command under Kurzin, it was standard for him to be the unit’s decontamination specialist. As a Seabee Engineer Recon Team veteran, he had the expertise to assess this pollution meaningfully in the context of coastal and inland topography, soil drainage, and other factors.