“Just like a shark,” Bones muttered.
“Which makes us the minnows.” Dane gritted his teeth and focused on the task at hand.
“How about we send a missile their way? I’m in the mood to blow some crap up.”
“What’s the point? With the mothership right up there, it could take us out anytime they wanted like swatting a fly.”
Bones cursed. “So we just let them ram us? Damn, bro, that thing is fast.”
A flood of light invaded their cabin and Dane tensed. “Brace yourself!”
For the second time on this dive they felt a jarring impact as the Russian submersible slammed into Deep Black. Bones picked up the radio transmitter.
“Now what?”
The action of metal claws grating on their sub’s undercarriage vibrated beneath them.
The Russians responded. “You tricked us with rocks. They must be uranium or plutonium ore. We do not know where they came from, but it is of no matter. The device is still on your craft. Our radioactivity readings confirm it.”
“It’s just more of the rocks. That’s all we have,” Bones replied.
“We must examine your craft to see if what you say is true.”
Bones looked over at Dane, who was fighting the sub’s controls. “What is this, some kind of deep sea traffic stop?”
Dane shook his head. “Somehow I don’t think they’re going to write us a ticket and let us go. They’re dragging us up now. Toward the submarine.”
Dane applied their thrusters full force in the opposite direction from where the sub was pulling them but still their upward progress was inexorable.
Bones looked up through the dome, aiming the spotlight. “I see it! It’s massive, man. They’re…” He looked incredulously at the dark torpedo shape menacing above.
“They’re what?” Dane never lifted his eyes from the control panel as he sought a piloting solution to their woes.
“They’re opening a moon pool door in the hull! They’re going to take us aboard.”
Chapter 12
Dane glanced up and saw the circle of light in the middle of the Russian submarine’s underside. The submersible dragged them closer to it with each passing second.
“What’s our next move, Maddock? Because I don’t know about you, but if this is the invitation,” he pointed to the assemblage of grab-arms towing them up to the warfare sub, “then I don’t think I want to go to the party.”
“Not looking forward to an evening with the comrades, eh?” Dane flipped various switches on the control panel, seeking actions that would free them from their aggressor.
“Somehow I don’t think caviar and ice sculptures are what they have in mind for a couple of Navy SEALs caught lying about a Cold War A-bomb.”
“It’s our bomb,” Dane pointed out. “They’re the ones trying to steal it.”
Bones looked up at the Typhoon class sub, the water in its moon pool shimmering under interior lights.
“Gee, why didn’t I think of telling them that before?” Bones reached for the radio. “Maybe I’ll just…”
Dane grabbed him by the wrist. “Take it easy. At this point they’re not going to let us go. So we may as well think of our strategy for once we’re prisoners of war.”
“POWs? What war are you talking about? There’s no war on right now!”
“Prisoners of the Cold War.”
Bones’ silence said volumes about the seriousness of the situation. As part of SEAL training, they’d had endurance sessions that would supposedly help prepare them, both physically and psychologically, for if and when they were ever captured and interrogated under duress or even tortured. But knowing that even the worst moments of those extreme preparedness sessions were administered by SEAL instructors, people who basically had their best interests at heart, couldn’t possibly stack up to the real thing. And as the Russian mini-sub slowed in advance of reaching the Typhoon submarine, both Dane and Bones knew that this was indeed not a drill. They were miles beneath the ocean, their craft incapacitated by an enemy combatant.
Dane slipped a hand down to his waist where he felt for the lump of his Beretta in a holster beneath his sweater. Its bulk comforted him but he knew that he would need to conceal it better. Quickly he removed the holster and stashed it beneath his seat, keeping the gun in his back jeans pocket.
“We should split our guns up,” he told Bones, who immediately ditched his holster as well to reduce bulk. “I’ll try to hide mine on my person, in case they don’t frisk us for some reason, but I think yours should stay hidden in here.”
“Makes sense, I’ll put it here,” Bones said, concealing his weapon in a compartment beneath the instrument cluster. “But I really don’t see what two pistols are going to do against a full-fledged naval war machine, anyhow. They’ve already gotten the better of us just with their mini-sub,” Bones reasoned.
“We’ve still got our missile pod with five left.”
Bones checked the view of the pod outside the dome. “Looks like once again they’ve deliberately smothered it so that we can’t fire them without blowing ourselves up.”
“I don’t suppose you can rig up a way to remote fire them? So when we’re taken off the sub inside the big sub, we can cause a distraction?”
Bones looked at the firing mechanism on his side of the dash. He flipped open the protective cover and stared at the red button within a directional keypad. Then he looked over at Dane.
“You’re the MacGyver, bro. I just know how to shoot the thing.”
The two of them peered up into the moon pool of the Russian submarine, where they could now see indistinct silhouettes of people staring down at them.
“Remind me when we get back to tell the powers that be that we need a remote control for the missile pod.”
“If we get back, I’ll be happy to do that,” Bones said glumly.
“I’ve got an idea,” Dane said slowly, transfixed by something down on the cockpit floor.
“You might want to spit it out, because we’re here.” Bones looked up and saw the surface of the sub’s moon pool mere feet away.
Dane knelt down and disconnected a gas hose, turning a knob on a tank and switching a flow valve.
“Yo Maddock, what’re you doing with our oh-two?”
“If we flood our cabin with oxygen…”
“This thing’ll be a bomb waiting for a spark!”
“Yeah. Such as from a bullet. But I don’t think I need to remind you that’s last resort only kind of stuff. This thing is our ride home. If it gets destroyed, we’re totally dependent on the Russians to get back to our boat.”
“I’m with you,” Bones said, now waving at the stone-faced Soviets waiting around the moon pool.
“You don’t happen to have your trusty butane lighter on you, do you?”
Bones shook his head. Normally he did carry one, but any kind of ignition source was strictly prohibited around submersibles due to the close proximity to pressurized pure oxygen.
“Okay, just put your hands up,” Dane said, his fingertips touching the top of their cabin dome. Bones frowned but followed suit. “Always knew I’d go places with you, man.”
Deep Black vibrated while a crane hook was latched on to their superstructure and the submersible holding them dropped away. Then they were lifted from the water through the moon pool, water sheeting off their dome, the view outside like that of looking out of a car while inside an automated carwash. Even with the distorted view, there was no mistaking the large hammer and sickle painted on the wall of the moon pool area.
“You know the Russian national anthem?” Bones asked.
Before Dane could answer, they heard the snapping of the dome hatch being undone from outside. Looking out at their new surroundings, Dane counted no less than six individuals wearing sailors’ jumpsuits pointing a firearm at their submersible. Dane figured he had time for one last sentence to Bones without being overheard.